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Could a Dirty Rag Take Out a $2 Billion Satellite?
An anonymous reader writes "The alleged rescue of a U.S. military communications satellite underscores some of the weaknesses in U.S. space efforts. Quoting: 'The seven-ton “AEHF-1,” part of a planned six-satellite constellation meant to support radio communication between far-flung U.S. military units, had been in orbit just one day when the problems began. The satellite started out in a highly-elliptical, temporary orbit. The plan was to use the spacecraft’s on-board engine to boost it to a permanent, geo-stationary orbit. But when the Air Force space operators at Los Angeles Air Force Base activated the engine, nothing happened. The Government Accountability Office would later blame the failure on a rag left inside a fuel line by a Lockheed worker.'"
Seems like the gov't should sue lockheed for failing to deliver the working satellite as contracted.
Hopefully that'll happen (which will probably leave that worker jobless) and we'll get some of our tax dollars back.
Shhh... I can dream!
Must be a really small rag or really big fuel line. Seriously, how would this happen? It's a freaking satellite engine, not the shuttle main.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Isn't this sort of like asking if a $5 wrench could wreck a car engine if it were left inside of a cylinder? Is anybody going to say "no"?
And yes, I went with the car analogy right from the start. Deal with it.
I read the internet for the articles.
Double checking for dirty rags! Boom...worth at least 45k a year with pension and benefits.. climb around all the pipe systems and check that shit.
It's hard. Any little thing that goes wrong will likely cause the whole thing not to work.
That's why it's rocket science.
Ah, industrial espionage at its finest...
Well just send up the shuttle to collect the rag.... wait a minute... oh yea... Never mind.
Who puts an engine together without a test fire? Seems to me that some simple checks would have prevented a very big waste of funds and effort. I guess it won't be a total waste if they can learn from it.
Assembly failure - leave a rag.
Inspection failure - did not check for rag.
Pre-flight final inspection - still did not find the rag.
Wow, complete failure all the way down the line from assembly to mating with the launch vehicle.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
At least one of the recent Soyuz failures was put down to a similar issue - debris left in a fuel line by a worker.
and has destroyed vital military property
time to lock him up with no trial and throw away the key
So, somebody can't come up with the used rag disposal accounting paperwork and the GAO concludes that it must have been left inside?
I mean, this kind of thing is good for sponges during surgery, why not satellite assembly?
So, the problem is the satellite is 'on the rag'?
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
I've seen a rag left in a gas turbine engine after a rebuild a USN destroyer that managed to damage the engine when it was first started up once placed back in the ship. That was as several million dollar mistake.
Coming up with an ingenious method of saving a $2 billion satellite rather than scrapping it and sending up a replacement is a sign of weakness?
FTA: "They didn’t know it at the time, but a fuel line had become clogged. The blockage “was most likely caused by a small piece of cloth inadvertently left in the line during the manufacturing process,” according to the Government Accountability Office." (bolding mine).
So no, we don't know that a dirty rag caused a two billion dollar satellite to fail. We think a fuel line became clogged, and some government bean-counter pulled the dirty-rag hypothesis straight out of their derriere so they could sign off on this one and go home.
That sound's pretty amazing. How do they take a satellite in an unstable elliptical orbit and determine that a fuel line inside of it has a rag? Did they know before it launched? That seems unlikely. Did they go up there and find out? That seems even more unlikely.
That this is a communications satellite. Sounds like someone might've better communicated during the build process right here on the ground. ;)
Already been established that they were able to overcome the rag and get the satellite into a functional orbit where it can fulfill its mission objective. http://www.spaceflightnow.com/atlas/av019/120103rescue.html
"Finally, it speaks to the size and age of the U.S. space arsenal that the Air Force felt it had no choice but to rescue AEHF-1 instead of replace it with a back-up spacecraft. 'The asset inventory is getting so tight that they spent months limping the heap to its proper orbit,' the insider lamented."
Look guys, before you throw away (replace with a backup) a $2 Billion satellite, I damn well hope you try some pretty heroic measures. Those are my tax dollars in (the wrong) orbit! So I'm very glad you didn't have (to use) a backup satellite.
Anyway, does anyone know if the low power thrusters which were eventually used to put this satellite into the correct orbit used the same fuel tank as the clogged thruster? Otherwise 1) I'm very surprised they had enough fuel to get there and 2) they would probably have very little left to last the lifetime of the mission. So let's hope that all the thrusters used a central (hydrazine?) fuel tank and there's plenty left.
Space is hard and while the U.S. program has certainly had its ups and downs at least it hasn't seen the near total collapse as what happened to the Ruskies. They had quite a bad year last year and that blogger walking around their factory just exposed their problems more. If Mars is going to be a "Red" planet it will because of China not Russia.
As in this case with the Russian NPO "Energomash" http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2083556/Meet-girl-blogger-sneaked-inside-Russian-missile-factory--security.html
A Dirty Rag? C'mon - RTFA! "The blockage 'was most likely caused by a small piece of cloth inadvertently left in the line during the manufacturing process,' according to the Government Accountability Office."
That could mean a tiny fragment of fabric. It's not like they put a rag in the gas tank to keep gas from leaking out. sheesh.
"You dirty rag, you killed my brother!"
Table-ized A.I.
So how's that satellite doin' today? Not so hot, she's on the rag.
Apparently, the people who put the satellite into the necessary orbit did say "no". Kudos to them.
One info I have yet to see in any of the stories I have read on this.
The "main" engine doesn't start so they use thousands of firings of the maneuvering thrusters to circularize the orbit. Do the "main" & maneuvering thrusters use the same fuel source or has the mission longevity been compromised? Does anyone know?
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
It's not like they have little nanites with cameras crawling around there. Fine, the main thrusters aren't working, but how did they manage to specifically blame it on a piece of rag in a fuel line? Aren't there a lot of ways a thruster can fail to fire?
So why do they not check the forms before launching the satellite into orbit?
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
"Finally, it speaks to the size and age of the U.S. space arsenal that the Air Force felt it had no choice but to rescue AEHF-1 instead of replace it with a back-up spacecraft. “The asset inventory is getting so tight that they spent months limping the heap to its proper orbit,” the insider lamented. "
Translation:
We spent tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands, heck maybe even a couple million on labor to save a $2,000,000,000 dollar satellite rather than build another 2 billion dollar satellite. You probably don't need a MBA to figure out the cost-benefit analysis on that one.
We must be increasingly on the alert to prevent our enemies from taking over our satellite fuel lines, thus knocking out our military communications. Mr. President, we must not allow a dirty rag gap!
1) The word "dirty" doesn't appear in the article.
2) Dirty rags are not used in the clean room environment of satellite assembly.
3) Sensationalistic, made-up title heading. Is Slashdot now Digg?!?
Same guys that put the g-sensor in upside down on the Genesis sample return capsule. Lockheed can do this over and over again because they've engulfed aerospace talent and production resources to the extent that they're too large to punish effectively.
How could it happen? See the Genesis investigation board report for an example:
http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/149414main_Genesis_MIB.pdf
Because it's true.
No brain, no pain.
just like in invasive surgery, there would be a known count of 'sponges' and after buttoning up, they had all better be accounted for.
If I had one of those, I'd use it to smash the world's smallest violin!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
See on this page what happened in February to the European launcher Ariane 4 (look for piece of cloth):
http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/arine44l.htm
Let me get you straight. The satellite is not completely broken, it is now in the correct orbit fulfilling its mission.
The root cause is one that is all too common in many industries, not just Aerospace. Cutting costs by way of hiring children to do grown-up work. Today it seems that the $25 Billion that the USA spent to put a Man on the Moon was money well spent, in that it layed the groundwork for the technical industries that have made 21st Century life possible for all the world. They need to spend another $250 Billion on Aerospace to lay the foundation for another 50 years of innovation and to keep ahead of the pack.
"If the only tool that you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail." Donny Rumsfeld
Billions of dollars in technology, but nobody with an air nozzle hooked up to an air compressor found at any car mechanic's shop to blow out a fuel line.
I8-D
The satellite had a redundant engine?
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Why do they dismiss the possibility of alien parasites that look like rags and feed on satellite engine fuel?
Minute amounts of metal dust in the wrong place can take out a satellite without problems. Dirty rags are just overkill.
What about a rocket with grape shot? Pretty sure that make a day or two everything up there.
Sorry, thought this was a slashdot poll. Anyone else remember the hubble and the problems there?
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
So a satellite costing $2 billion to design construct and launch failed due to a small error. How much of that money was truly wasted? How much would it then cost to construct a replacement using the same design? One would hope that the majority of costs associated with this thing are design and testing related that would not be lost by the need to try again.
I think that this was deliberately done; it's some kind of experiment to see how fast a satellite's orbit deteriorates as a function of the cost of the rag or F(r). I mean we're really only dealing with paper and ink...I bet the components to make $2 billion only amount to about 1 oz. of gold. I say that we use the next satellite and target it with a giant spit-wad and let'r rip: escape velocity should be sufficient to be able to take it out...a giant space lugee if you will.
The Government Accountability Office would later blame the failure on a rag left inside a fuel line by a Lockheed worker.
It sounds like someone forgot to switch to winter blend and is using Lockheed as a scapegoat. ;-)
Reminds me about all those stories of bottles put inside cars during assembly. Here's a funny one (albeit fictional):
A man goes to a car dealership one day after inheriting a good deal of money (or after a great business deal, whatever -- he has a lot of money somehow). After looking around the lot, he picks out the nicest, newest, fanciest, most expensive car he can. He pays cash up front and drives out of the dealership in the new car.
On his way home, he starts hearing a rattling sound -- something must be wrong. So he turns around and goes right back to the dealer. The dealer is of course very sorry, and offers to either fix the car or let the man take a different one while they order a replacement. The man really wants the car, so he just has the guy fix it. Two hours later, the mechanics give the car back, saying they couldn't find a thing wrong with it. The man is a bit wary, but he drives home. Whatever the rattle is, it has stopped.
A day or so later, the rattle starts again. He takes it to the dealership, and they still can't find anything wrong with it. This continues for a number of weeks -- sometimes the rattle even goes away on its own. Anyway, after nearly two months of it, the dealer is very upset -- he doesn't want to get a bad reputation. So he orders a replacement and exchanges it with the man for the malfunctional car.
Then he orders the mechanics in the shop to do a complete tear-down to figure out the problem. They begin taking the car apart, piece by piece, but they can't find anything -- until they take apart the door. Inside, they find a piece of metal pipe, along with a note. Written on the note, in a scrawling, worker's hand is: "So, you finally found the rattle, you rich son-of-a-bitch."
RTFA.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
It was probably a very, very clean rag.
http://www.check-six.com/Crash_Sites/SR-71_953_crash_site.htm
It's fantastically easy to destroy things.
Conversely, it takes a lot of effort to gather resources and collaboration to make things work.
It follows that societies engaged in destructive behaviours will always show an amazing rate of success -- even more so at making things, which are hard by nature, completely unattainable.
The current international climate will prevent man from exploring space; to avoid that, IMHO, nations should forge treaties or even do it at UN level in order to avoid he above mentioned destructive behavior and foster international collaboration.
My uncle was in cancer remission for >20ys when the US-VA went in to fix a simple abdominal hernia. After they sewed him up, he was okay for a couple of weeks, but then got very sick. An infection was ravaging his body and the doctors could not localize the infection. After months of antibiotics, they found the rags and removed them and scooped out all the necrosing tissue. By this time, his immune system had sunken so low that the cancer was able to make a come back which ended up killing him (after months of chemo).
All this to say.. forgotten rags (and implements) are a pretty significant problem in many disciplines (not just fuel lines), and why many operating rooms now have a "time out" materials count in pre and post-op. Maybe launch pad protocols should adopt the same.
Tweeks
Why title this with a "dirty" rag. It seems a clean rag in the fuel line would have disabled the satellite just as effectively.
how is the elliptical orbit expected to decay?
This was avoidable if proper protocols were followed.
I suggest a revision. All satellites shall be subject to a careful search by your local DHS officers. It will reenter (presumably) American Airspace at some point .... so you can never be too sure!
This search might involve the delicate dismantling of the satellite by the DHS officers.
The satellite won't get put back together properly. It will wrecks several billion dollars of government money, pisses off several major defense contractors, taxpayers and politicians in the process. DHS will be scrapped along with all the ultra-penetrating cancer causing detectors.
You're welcome!
There's an old Belfast poem about exactly such a thing. It's called "The Diagonal Steam Trap". It's about Harland and Wolff which used to be the worlds biggest ship builder. They were on a contract to build a ship and it wouldn't start due to "the feed pipe 'wa suffed 'we a rag" it's well worth a listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxUXviafW94
When launching a multi-billion dollar satellite, don't panic, and uh, don't forget your towel.
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
According to this link: http://spaceflightnow.com/atlas/av019/120103rescue.html the satellite has attained the correct orbit and will soon be operational. They don't call them rocket scientists for nothing.
Most expensive rag ever !
The airlines did it and improved by amazing amounts (nobody remembers how bad it was) and the things were much less complex to fly back in those days; the pilots were insulted by it as well. CHECKLISTS WORK.
Something that important should involve multiple checklists; to error is human no matter how good and smart you are. Doctors are the most arrogant pricks I've ever met so they'll put up a huge fight and have a hard time admitting it when the error rate goes down by half. It likely would go down by half; that is how badly it is needed.
Nurses too... a friend of mine fought off his nurse violently (as much as he had strength post op) she had to call people in to hold him down and sedate him and luckily somebody heard his screams and READ the chart and realized she had the wrong person! he would have died and without a proper autopsy the cause wouldn't have been known. Mistakes killed my father too. Checklists must be mandatory by law like the pilots who have no issue with them today.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Hey all you ignorant posters.. This is an Air Force satellite, not a NASA one. NASA can't afford $2B satellites, for one thing, much less a constellation of 6 of them.
And guys, it's the defense folks who track all those orbiting things. NAVSPASUR is part of it, there's other assets (like the cameras on Maui), and NORAD publishes the definitive list.
We'll just send the Space shuttle up, recover the satellite, bring it back to earth, fix the problem and relaunch it. oh wait... nm.
-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+ *** http://www.mountainfort.com *** +-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-
You know when you go into a shop and buy something even vaguely electrical, the salesdroid always tries to push the extended warranty on you? I bet the US military declined that option, then Lockheed felt really smug about it because the terms were 12 months or 25,000 miles*.
(*which is a bit less than 1 orbit of the planet, but hey, it looked good to you on paper for a second there, huh?)
several space projects have failed because of blocked fuel lines or similar problems due to forgotten items.
Can't they "simply" test the full operation of the sattelite, including the engine, before mounting it on the rocket?
Othe solutin would be to have every item, even rugs, fitted with serial numbers and rfid chips so you can easily and fast account of the whereabouts (or not) of everything.
Atari rules... ermm... ruled.
The launcher delivers the satellite into a parking orbit, from which it then re-shuffles itself (ejects cowlings, etc) and then fires one or more burns to put itself into it's final orbit. In Phobos-Grunt's case, on a heading for Mars ; for this satellite, a different geocentric orbit. But for some reason (rags, software glitches?), the secondary burns don't happen. Shortly after, the satellite becomes a meteor, and maybe a constellation of impactors.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
What I want to know is how much did we pay for that rag?
Just an FYI on "alleged" and "weakness". This kind thing is not that unusual: either the black swan of something bad happening in a space craft or being able to engineer a solution to keep the mission on track.
I used to work for the company that was central to this little rescue operation and over the last 50 years that company (and I over a number of years) have done exactly the same thing for very similarly "catastrophic" problems. During my tenure of 5 years there I worked on rescuer/FA teams involving a dozen similar situations. Most of them were "successful" like this story. Sometimes we simply managed to prevent future bad situations.
This is simply how things work: shit happens despite all the planning and care. This is something that "modern" folks stupidly don't get: YOU CAN NOT PLAN FOR EVERYTHING OR MAKE RISK IS 0% PROBABILITY. Reality doesn't work that way - so sorry, get used to the disappointment!! There are folks in the world who understand this and who can think on their feet and recover from bad situations like this. They're the people who did this rescue, for instance.
Oopss