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Astronaut to Attempt Spacewalk Record
MattSparkes writes "Two residents of the International Space Station will take a spacewalk tomorrow to try to jam a stuck antenna on a docked cargo ship back into place. The spacewalk will set a US record of over 65 hours spacewalk experience. During the spacewalk, the astronauts will "use a hammer and a chisel to try to pound the antenna into place". Precision engineering at its very best I'm sure you'll agree."
They're going to use a Hammer and a Chisel... I thought these pieces of equipment were highly delicate...
Apparantly they're more like IBM computers...
Me failed English...
FreeBSD over Linux. If my comments seem odd, this may explain...
...we need a bigger hammer!
And ... I'm hoping they have some kind of equally precise system for relieving themselves?
"Oh God! It burns! GET THAT TUBE FIXED I HAVE TO PEE GODDAMMIT!"
64 hours should be enough for anyone.
I can understand the practical applications of, and use for, packing a hammer aboard a space cargo flight, but i can't for the life of me imagine what they would do with a chisel?.. maybe they hid it inside of a cake?
It's not a hammer.
It's a highly specialized kinetic-energy inertial impartion implement.
After all, it cost far more than a mere hammer...
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
As long as I had the hammer and chisel
I would go ahead and carve my name in the side so other spacewalkers could see that I was there already.
We are Dead Stars looking back Up at the Sky
Did they forget about the BB gun, pepper spray, 6" knife and rubber tubing? Oh... Wrong astronaut...
i cant wait to see it, wonder if something new on nasa.gov
--------
Camila17
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When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
Imagine spending 65 hours playing whack-a-mole.
Task Mangler
Stuck Antenna? It's not the AE-35 unit that's failed, by any chance?
Now if he was breaking the moonwalking record, that'd be more newsworthy.
Oh, a record for US astronaut spacewalks? Yawn. That Russian has 80+, you know? US triumphs are not so special as to be noteworthy compared to the superior exploits of other nations. This mind-set isn't new - I recall learning about the space race in grade school and god help you if you remembered who Yuri Gagarin was but forgot that first American guy in space, whoever he was.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
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When the Russian cosmonaught takes a hammer to the fuel systems saying "this is how we fix things in Russia". Or something to that effect.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
Nappy or no nappy.
In communist Russia, the space walks YOU!
Help! I've fallen in a karma hole and I can't get up!
Hammer Time.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
But you need to read up on the reality of fixing things to, from and on orbit and beyond - and the engineering that goes into a lot of it. Chariots for Apollo comes to mind, most of what happened on certain Gemini flights, lots of Skylab, and the ups and downs of cold and hot soaks to make things behave. So how do you make sure the radioactive thermocouple generators on board Galileo don't get cracked in manufacturing? They're plutonium ceramic encased in iridium - good luck x-raying that for defects.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
The next person to pull that one out is going to be taking a space-walk of their own.
Sans the suit.
This mind-set isn't new - I recall learning about the space race in grade school and god help you if you remembered who Yuri Gagarin was but forgot that first American guy in space, whoever he was.
Of course. Because he went on to other things. His name was "Alan Shepard", which should ring a bell in most Americans. He also walked on the moon.
Have you read my journal today?
If it doesn't work, hit it with a Hammer.
If you break it, it didn't work anyway.
(usually as applied to delicate electronic equipment)
Use your head, can't you, use your head,
You're on earth, there's no cure for that - S. Beckett
We call that "percussive maintenance" (i.e. hit computer to fix).
stuff |
in Soviet Russian space stations hammers did use you!!!
Sounds like the technique used to try repairing the TV camera on Apollo 12.
Unfortunately, "percussive maintenance" was no match for a vidicon tube that got aimed into the sun...
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if anyone actually RTFA, you'd know that the ship with the faulty antenna is a trash barge that's going to burn up in the atmosphere as soon as they can hammer the antenna out of the way, or cut it off. i'm sure they wouldn't try to fix the ISS's communications antennae with a hammer and chisel.
When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail. Or some such.
The Right Reverend K. Reid Wightman,
I'm not a metalworker, so I'll ask a stupid question here...
If you're chiselling a piece of metal, aren't pieces of the metal going to flake off? I'm just thinking of the orbiting debris issue - would the specks be too small to worry about?
US triumphs are not so special as to be noteworthy compared to the superior exploits of other nations.
Oh yeah? Well at least we knew to bring a chisel instead of a sickle!
The enemies of Democracy are
You're right, the mind-set isn't new, sports records are also kept by country. In my high school, we even had state and local records! But God forbid that anyone else than America be chastised for it. I'm sure that my principal should have looked up the times of that Kenyan fellow who was faster than any of our track team.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
THAT's an amount of work worth mentioning.
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The chisel is over kill. You only need to tools in aerospace. A hammer and a roll of duct tape. If it moves and it isn't supposed to use the duct tape, if it doesn't move and is supposed to use the hammer.
Is buying a Harley Davidson as your first motorcycle since you were 16 at age 49 a midlife crisis issue?
Yeah, hey how about that Union of Soviet Socialist Republics!
Oh wait. . .
Never mind.
Of course the Russians had more space walk experience. They had to keep in shape because there was always a pretty good chance they were going to have to walk home from the Mir.
Is buying a Harley Davidson as your first motorcycle since you were 16 at age 49 a midlife crisis issue?
*ducks*
After 3 days without programming, life becomes meaningless
- The Tao of Programming
..it's the fact that it's been to space.
-- [insert sig here]
Development notes at http://devscribbles.blogspot.com
He needs the astronaut's best friend - the inanimate carbon rod!
"Knowledge, sir, should be free to all!"
~Harcourt Fenton Mudd
Maybe even a double layer.
Some records are dubious.
You know, like record number of hours seated comfortably inside the spacecraft vs. record number of hours pounding things back into place.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Whoa there, Dave, hold on a minute!
I once read about an American astronaut going outside his spacecraft to fix an antenna alignment problem, something happened and he didn't come back in again. I seem to recall some other stuff happened, too. I think they even made a movie about it.
When was that, anyway? About six years ago?
"Good news, everyone!"
If the article or summary had been mis-leading, then you would have a point. But it wasn't, so your "insightful" post is nothing more than a troll.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
It's a joke. Laugh.
Blerg.
... to try to jam a stuck antenna on a docked cargo ship back into place.(pulls down mask)
LONE STARR!!!
When you're paying about $20,000 to lift that hammer into orbit, I sure as hell hope that they'll splurge, instead of going for the $5 Walmart model. Ditto for their food. When each meal costs that much to lift to orbit, they may as well eat caviar, lobster, and Dom Perignon. The added cost is insignificant.
Brute force and ignorance will overcome engineering and planning every time.
nt.
How to use the ellipsis.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
Next thing we know, the whole station will be held together with duct tape. "I'm already visualizing the duct tape over your mouth." "Errors have been made. Others will be blamed." We can't solve every simple problem with a hammer. Look what happened to the russian's sicle and hammer combo. Sliced oxygen lines and way too much vodka drifting near where MIR used to exist. Beware the American Chisel!
Have Tardis, will travel.
Actually, engineering a system to support a human operator allows for a much wider range of choices when it comes to solving problems. Engineering an automated system that accurately forsaw every possible failure mode would be prohibitively expensive to begin with, would proceed from there to introduce an increasing number of problem-solving subsystems that would bring their own vast array of possible failure modes in a cascading chain of prohibitive expenses, and end with the realization that predicting all possible failure modes is actually impossible anyway.
On the other hand, putting human ingenuity and adaptability right there at the scene is not only much cheaper in comparison, but it also provides capability for solving unexpected problems on the fly.
This spacewalk is actually in keeping with the finest traditions of aerospace engineering--the tradition of recognizing when "precision" engineering is a bad idea, and choosing an imprecise but adaptable engineering solution instead.
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...is he going to hammer in the morning, or the evening?
It was Greg Norman, wasn't it? Or some other golfer...
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
What do you mean NEXT thing? But seriously, if I were going into space, you can be damned sure I'd be bringing some duct tape along. This is the kind of news NASA should publish more often, it brings a more real and personal touch to the space program. That was what always fascinatd me about the Russian space program (especially MIR): making do with inadequate and often totally inappropriate tools.
Lose: misplace or fail || Loose: not bound together
Ok... I fail to understand what kind of antenna repair takes 65 Hours.
Not to mention, how did they arrive at that figure... surely it's not a 65 hour task... maybe a 2 hour task with 63 hours of extra time to compensate for any unexpected situations.
I'm betting they used Murphys law on this one... the guy in space say... sure I can do that in 15 minutes... the tech on the ground thinks for a second. "hmm 15 minutes + murphys law time for the unexpected = 65 hours"... ok you have 65 hours alloted for this task. If the guy in space had said 10 hours.. it would only have been 25. That's Murphy's law at work, the quicker you expect to get it done the longer it takes.
It once took me 26 hours to change a light bulb. The glass bulb pulled out of the threaded base, then someone turned on a switch while I was standing on the ladder with a pair of pliers trying to remove the rest of the bulb. A day later, once my back stopped hurting from the fall, the new bulb was in.
Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.