Slashdot Mirror
NASA Will Man Destruct Switch Just In Case
Ant writes "Popular Mechanics reports if the looming Discovery mission or any other between now and the spacecraft's retirement loses control, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is prepared to ditch it in the Atlantic ocean — or blow it up. The article also shows complete no-fly-zone maps and a photograph of the switch."
I don't understand why there are four switches. I mean, I understand "Arm" and "Destruct", but why "test"? Does that blow up just a small section of the shuttle? I would have thought that turning off the "Arm" would be the same as "Safe"
... it's the engineers having a laugh. Getting a kick out of the confused looks on stupid people like myself.
I know, I know
I looked at TFA, and I gotta tell you, it's an exciting picture of the switch. Actually, it looks like FOUR switches and FOUR buttons. Well worth going to the site to see it.
Didn't RTFA, but are they planning on blowing it up with people inside, if something goes wrong.
This is such a non-story. NASA has a Range Safety Officer for every single launch, manned or not, and always has.
Give a man fire, and you warm him for the night. Set a man on fire, and you warm him for the rest of his life.
...would be pretty nasty if someone if someone figured out how the radio comms for this function worked.
-- Even if a god did exist, why the fsck should I worship it?
You know, if you are going to have destruct switches... they really should look like that. A big turn key, solid, metal, single function panel that does nothing else. Heavy clunky switches that tell you you've done something. Yep, if you're going to have what is essentially a "big red button" that's how it should look. There's no mistaking that for the coffee dispenser switch. Putting modern "iPhone" styling on that would be a sin.
[signature]
What the fuck are you talking about and to whom are you talking?
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Seriously, what is going on with these things? Is there a stenographic message in that mess? Someone testing out AI language algorithms? I'm afraid to click "Read the rest of this comment..." because maybe someone did find the snowcrash virus.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
According to NASA documentation, the SRB Range Safety system is operated by encoded signals.
;)
From the description in the document, it sounds like one coded signal to 'arm' and a second coded signal to 'fire'. I'd bet that due to the nature of the system, it's transmission method will be so simple that it rarely needs to be tested and as such gives little opportunity for homicidal black-hat analysis.
Finally, I'll also bet that the codes are as top-secret as to-secret can be (as in: Get caught with this and you'll disappear forever). It wouldn't surprise me if the codes are created and handled by just one person on the day of use and never used again. Or perhaps two people where only one person knows the arm code and the other the fire code before the system is finally set.
However it's done, I'd like to think that a hell of a lot of thought went into system security
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
Did you just fall off the turnip truck? all rockets launched have this, manned and unmanned; all military missiles from short range and upward have this; private rockets will be required to have self-destruct capability also. Rockets bound for orbit have enough energy in their fuel tanks to equal yield of tactical nuclear weapon. If it malfunctions and heads for populated area of course it has to be destroyed, seven people on board who are going to die anyway should not take out hundreds or thousands on the ground.
You can fix that for yourself here:
http://slashdot.org/help
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Computer, activate self-destruct sequence, authorization Janeway Pi-One-One-Seven.
"Warp core overload initiated"
That's how they should do it...
Makes perfect sense to me but I do eat a lot of mushrooms....
I swear I didn't know it was loaded...
can any of you actually imagine being a 'range safety officer'? Full govt pay, bennies, retirement, and all you have to do is sit by a switch panel during launches. Other than that it would be lots of paper reading and maybe some busy work to make it look like you are earning your pay.
It's the job I want.
* Carthago Delenda Est *
Its funny this is "news" - they've had that switch since day one, if I know the military. And the no-fly zone has probably be a registered flightplan with the FAA since a year before day one. Interesting, yes, but not news since at least 1978 (or whenever it was they were building the fleet). I knew a guy who worked on the software on the early fleet. Made me wonder about the whole thing.
meh
Hey! Someone rediscovered Markov chains!
At least it has been useful to launch a lot of various heavy items during it's time, among them the Hubble telescope. I don't know if there have been much military use in reality of that large cargo space, and I suppose that is has been a lot of waste since most military satellites has been a lot smaller and launched by Delta rockets and similar.
But a better design would have been a modular design where the person part of the shuttle could have been launched separately. And just add a cargo module on demand.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
I have seen the movies and that is not a distruct switch panel. Where are the blinking lights, where is the count down timer, where is the second key lock, where is the music...
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
Two reasons for this come to mind, 1) The obvious not having to 'know' you were the only one who flipped the kill switch on people, and, 2) the effect of thinking it's only a one in some number chance it's really you flipping the kill switch means a faster response time (less emotional hesitation to interfere).
For all I know they do this already... it seems like a reasonable idea to me anyway.
The other issue, just as important as the explosives, is all the other chemicals on board - many of which are highly toxic. This includes chemicals like monomethyl hydrazine (MMH) used in the Orbital Maneuvering Subsystem (OMS) and in the Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs) for control. It is great stuff, you mix it with nitrogen tetroxide (N2O4) and they ignite with no spark or air required. At the same time, by the time you can smell it, you have been exposed to ten times the lethal dose. Remember when Columbia crashed and they told everyone not to go near the wreckage? this was one reason why.
As the parent said, remote destruct capabilities are simply par for the course when your strapping things to that much explosives and toxic chemicals. Really it should make us feel safer that NASA is honest about the risks and is willing to do what it needs to do to insure (as best as possible) public safety.
The Solid Rocket Boosters can't be stopped once they are started, but they have their own navigation system (rate gyro assemblies, and inertial measurement units) that are considered as/more reliable as those on the orbiter due to the rigidity of the SRBs. So the reason this "self destruct" button exists is because there is no "off" button for the SRBs, but, as far as I know, it is only an issue if its quad-redundant navigation system fails and somehow its thrust gets stuck in an unsafe vector, and that is very unlikely.
More detail, including why you can't jettison the flight deck with all the crewmembers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_abort_modes
Taking a peek at the red line diagram that shows where the shuttle cannot fly on lift off, am I the only one noticing the big fark-you to Newfoundland?
back when a SPST push button was cool, especially if it lit up on activation. That panel could be left over from the Mercury, Gemini or Apollo program.
If I were sitting on hundreds of tons of explosive fuel, I'd feel better if it took two switches and two buttons activated in deliberate order to end my life.
Invenio via vel creo
Yes. It's a switch (four actually).
One of them is even marked "KABOOOM".
Privacy is terrorism.
I am no expert in man-machine interfaces, but I think I would make the Destruct switch a different kind of switch and color than the rest of the switches. It should be red and the others orange or yellow or something.
I would just want to minimize as much as possible the chance that the destruct switch was accidentally activated if things got really hairy and fast moving and the range officer had to be prepared to blow the thing up.
I know they toggles have the red guards on them so the officer would have to flip it up before actuating, and from the article it appears to be a two-step process (arm then destruct), but four identical switches next to each other for such a critical function just seems a bit risky to me. I think I might even make it a two-person job where the 2nd could destruct only after the first armed.
But then I realize that by delaying the destruction, many more lives could be put in danger if the assembly was headed over populated areas. Still, four identical switches and buttons right next to each other, with such dissimilar functions seems a bit risky to me.
Test: ping
Arm: login root
Destruct: rm / -rf
Safe: logout
It's a Markov chain-based spam bot (aka "a Markov bot"). You feed it with text and it learns sentence fragments, from which it then generates sentences. These are used in spam (to try and get around Bayes filters) and occasionally on Slashdot. I have no idea what's the idea behind using a Markov bot to spam /. - it's an excessive amount of work for a post that will get downmodded quickly.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Maybe the GP wants a way of putting people into space that doesn't involve rockets. A giant catapult maybe? If we'd breed stronauts that can withstand acceleration forces of, say, 200g, space exploration would be much easier.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
...for covering this story that broke in 1980.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
I've read some things to indicate that, when possible, the crew would be given enough warning to attempt a "fast sep", which is an emergency separation from the tank and boosters while still under powered flight. You don't have much of a chance of surviving this, but it's better than not trying at all.
The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.
For the technical details on how this works, check out an old Risks article here. They put a lot of thought into the system.
May it's just me but instead of killing the astronauts why don't they just disconnect the shuttle from the rocket boosters, wait for the shuttle to get far enough away from the rockets either by the shuttle engaging its propulsion systems or by gravity, then blow up the tanks. By this the crew can either fly the shuttle back to the runway or jump using the provided gear.
The panel design (and the panel itself?) likely dates back at least to the 70's - Apollo/post-Apollo. The Right Stuff era - men were men, and they didn't need no stinkin' Jakob Nielsen to push the right buttons...
I agree with you for the most part. When lives, billions in tax payer money, and millions of man hours are at stake, you can never be too careful.
However, you want the self destruction button to be red?! That's asking for someone to push it! The only button that should be red is the button that disables the self destruct button and calls security to escort the idiot out of the room.
the Space Torch for nothing you know
I remember going to a talk by a guy from NASA who was discussing the safety-critical software on the shuttle. Apparently, some of the onboard software has the power to destroy the shuttle if certain conditions are met early during launch that would put people on the ground at risk. He said that the decision had to be made by software because humans could not react quickly enough - less than a second I think he said. Imagine writing that stuff...
I'm no technician, and perhaps this is clearly not possible, may someone who knows correct me, but I wonder if there is any chance that this is what destroyed Columbia? Either the explosives unintentionally detonating, or the switch being pulled. Either way, there'd have to be some sort of fuel to help the explosion. Booster fuel is somewhere, but I don't know where. Interesting possibility if it stands surface scrutiny.
in his book "Riding Rockets". The Range Safety system is nothing new, having been on almost every manned and unmanned launch that NASA or the USAF ever put up. The RSO is an Air Force officer, who intentionally avoids any social contact with the astronauts, so as not to allow personal feelings override his/her duty to protect the public from a wayward launch.
In Mullane's book, he questions the the mindset of the NASA engineer who thought it a good idea to have the RSS system light an indicator lamp in the shuttle cockpit, giving the astronauts a second or 2 of notice (with no way to intervene) before the charges go off.
He also relates an amusing story of a fellow astronaut making obscene comments about the RSO's mother over the Air/Ground link as they sat on the pad waiting out a launch hold.
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
The runway can handle any plane that ever flew, including the shuttle.
Looks like slamming into Newfoundland is acceptable.
Just a slight correction: the solid rocket boosters (SRBs) dont use monomethyl hydrazine or dinitrogen tetroxide. They primarily use aluminum perchlorate.
MMH is not the primary, this is true, I believe, however, that it is used for stabilization near the bottom skirt of the SBR, for slight course corrections and the like.
"What happen if I push it?"
"maybe something good, maybe some thing bad. But that's just it: we're not going to find out, are we?"
Can he resist the giant Candy like Button?
-- Sig under construction...
It is used as a fuel for the auxiliary power units (APUs) which provide hydraulic power to gimbal the SRB nozzles.
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
The summary and headline are perfect examples of bad 'science' writing, as has been discussed here not so long ago. The statement that NASA "is going to" is precise, but misleading. They are going to do as it says. But the statement implies that they are just now starting to do this, and haven't in the past. That is wrong. The RSO has always had the emergency flight termination ability and responsibility. When that kind of error is made on /., chalk it up to your average person doing reporting. When a professional media outlet does it, as in TFA, it's either extremely poor journalism, both in writing and in editorial, or it's hype, pure and simple. When the headline and/or summary have it, but the body of the article contradicts them and gives the straight facts, it's the latter. It's a damn shame they have to use hype to sell stuff. It'd be so much nicer if they used quality.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Thank you. That comment made browsing /. today worth it.
College-Pages.com - Online Colleges, Degrees, and Programs
I met a RSO once. He laughed and joked about stuff like anyone else. There are jobs that are hardcore, and I imagine they put very trustworthy, career path people in those jobs. If you do a good job in sensitive positions for a lot of years, say on a nuke sub or in a missile silo, or you are a pilot and flew a lot of nuke missions, you're kind of a good fit for jobs like this. Not necessarily balls of steel, just proven capable of doing the right thing at the right time without really breaking a sweat.
Mistakes happen :
Global Hawk Destroyed
Because it looks like the labels on the Self-Destruct button were written with a Sharpie. I just hope the Space Shuttle itself isn't built with stuff I buy at Staples.
...uses a system, even older than this one, that in the case of aborted mission flies crew to safety on a separate set of rocket engines.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
This reminds me of the joke that the last message relayed from the space shuttle Challenger before the explosion was the Teacher-in-space asking "What's this button do?"
Thanks for posting that! I was about to stick to the usual /. traditions but now that I found out that I get to see a picture of four buttons instead of just one for the price of RTFA, I considered it worth it.
Booster hydraulic power units use hydrazine monopropellant, not monomethylhydrazine.