Why ISS Computers Failed

Geoffrey.landis writes "It was only a small news item four months ago: all three of the Russian computers that control the International Space Station failed shortly after the Space Shuttle brought up a new solar array. But why did they fail? James Oberg, writing in IEEE Spectrum, details the detective work that led to a diagnosis." The article has good insights into the role the ISS plays as a laboratory for US-Russian technology cooperation — something that is likely to be crucial in any manned Mars mission.

Comments

Urgh.

[Airconditioning]

The article reeked of condesension towards the Russians. It's no way to report on your partners in space.

Re:Urgh.

[Ethanol-fueled]

Hell yeah. Mod parent up. The real heroes are in space cooperating and solving problems.
Seriously, all of that political cold war-era cockwaving should stop.

Redundancy != Safety

[quanticle]

I think NASA should have learned this lesson by now. After all, the Challenger disaster showed this principle as well. In that case, the same cold temperature that weakened the primary seal on the solid rocket booster weakened the secondary as well, sapping its ability to provide redundant backup. In this case, the same condensation affected all three computers equally.

Its troubling to see them taking shortcuts on safety and redundancy, when such measures have resulted in loss of life before. How hard would it have been to have had three shut-off cables?

Proper debugging technique

[dd1968]

These computers functioned for months or years. When they failed, the right question to ask first was "what has changed?" This is exactly what the Russians did. According to the author the Russians first considered potential causes stemming from the newly installed solar power wing, the visiting shuttle, and the expanded station structure (the reason for the shuttle being there). One conclusion is that they were pointing the finger at NASA and playing the blame game. Another is that they were doing what good engineers anywhere would do to debug the problem.

The author is obviously way more qualified than I to assess the situation and he may well be right but from the content of the article I came away thinking, wow, I would have looked first at all the recent changes to the station and the power supply too.

Indeed, how many russion casualties have there bee

[SmallFurryCreature]

Tell me, how many casualties have the russians had in the last decade, even last two decades? This was in the days of Mir, when the russians maintained a continues space pressence year after year and the US was out of space for year after year for blowing up space shuttles.

So whose tech is behind whose? The ISS didn't plunge out of the sky when the Space Shuttle was not available, apparently the russian capability is more then enough to operate it.

And finally, who build the de-humidefier that was the fault in the first place?