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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.
A switch to destroy all gay niggers, what could be better?
...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?
Blow it up? with people on board? sure am glad i don't work for NASA...
build a newer & better launch vehicle, the space shuttle belongs in an automobile wrecking yard (or a museum)...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
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.
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if it weren't for the devastating reaction by what's left of our atmosphere. keep pretending if you must. alternatively,you can be more helpful than you might have imagined. there are still some choices. if they do not suit you, consider the likely results of continuing to follow the corepirate nazi hypenosys story LIEn, whereas anything of relevance is replaced almost instantly with pr ?firm? scriptdead mindphuking propaganda or 'celebrity' trivia 'foam'. meanwhile; don't forget to get a little more oxygen on yOUR brain, & look up in the sky from time to time, starting early in the day. there's lots going on up there.
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dictator style micro management has never worked (for very long). it's an illness. tie that with life0cidal aggression & softwar gangster style bullying, & what do we have? a greed/fear/ego based recipe for disaster. meanwhile, you can help to stop the bleeding (loss of life & limb);
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the bleeding must be stopped before any healing can begin. jailing a couple of corepirate nazi hired goons would send a clear message to the rest of the world from US. any truthful look at the 'scorecard' would reveal that we are a society in decline/deep doo-doo, despite all of the scriptdead pr ?firm? generated drum beating & flag waving propaganda that we are constantly bombarded with. is it time to get real yet? please consider carefully ALL of yOUR other 'options'. the creators will prevail. as it has always been.
corepirate nazi execrable costs outweigh benefits
(Score:-)mynuts won, the king is a fink)
by ourselves on everyday 24/7
as there are no benefits, just more&more death/debt & disruption. fortunately there's an 'army' of light bringers, coming yOUR way. the little ones/innocents must/will be protected. after the big flash, ALL of yOUR imaginary 'borders' may blur a bit? for each of the creators' innocents harmed in any way, there is a debt that must/will be repaid by you/us, as the perpetrators/minions of unprecedented evile, will not be available. 'vote' with (what's left in) yOUR wallet, & by your behaviors. help bring an end to unprecedented evile's manifestation through yOUR owned felonious corepirate nazi glowbull warmongering execrable. some of US should consider ourselves somewhat fortunate to be among those scheduled to survive after the big flash/implementation of the creators' wwwildly popular planet/population rescue initiative/mandate. it's right in the manual, 'world without end', etc.... as we all ?know?, change is inevitable, & denying/ignoring gravity, logic, morality, etc..., is only possible, on a temporary basis. concern about the course of events that will occur should the
The new comments system has reduced user contributions by about 25%, so when are you going to pull the plug on this abortion?
Never, because your egos won't allow it? Or is it the corporate strings attached to your backs that make you favor appearance over functionality despite any supposed geek-cred?
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
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.
Computer, activate self-destruct sequence, authorization Janeway Pi-One-One-Seven.
"Warp core overload initiated"
That's how they should do it...
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
The shuttles seem to have an easy enough time breaking themselves to pieces, both on launch and on final approach to Earth, the money could have been put to better use on...say...making the current shuttle more safe? I'm sure the astronauts going up there are even more comfortable now knowing that the only rescue plan available in case of equipment failure is a switch in a NASA office that blows up the shuttle they're in.
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 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
...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.
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The runway can handle any plane that ever flew, including the shuttle.
Looks like slamming into Newfoundland is acceptable.
"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.
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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.
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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.
Listen p*ssy. I'm sure your the same homo that posted earlier about alf's boner and you just want to remain anonymous fo