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Space Station Spacewalkers Stymied By Stubborn Bolt
Hugh Pickens writes "Reuters reports that astronauts at the International Space Station ran into problems after removing the station's 100-kg power-switching unit, one of four used in a system that distributes electrical power generated by the station's solar array wings, and were stymied after repeated attempts to attach the new device failed when a bolt jammed, preventing astronauts from hooking it up into the station's power grid. Japanese Astronaut Akihiko Hoshide got the bolt to turn nine times but engineers need 15 turns to secure the power-switching unit. 'We're kind of at a loss of what else we can try,' said astronaut Jack Fischer at NASA's Mission Control Center in Houston after more than an hour of trouble-shooting. 'If you guys have any thoughts or ideas or brilliant schemes on what we can do, let us know.' Hoshide suggested using a tool that provides more force on bolts, but NASA engineers are reluctant to try anything that could make the situation worse and as the spacewalk slipped past seven hours, flight controllers told the astronauts to tether the unit in place, clean up their tools and head back into the station's airlock. NASA officials says the failure to secure the new unit won't disrupt station operations but it will force engineers to carefully distribute electrical power from three operating units to various station systems and says another attempt to install the power distributor could come as early as next week if engineers can figure out what to do with the stubborn bolt. 'We're going to figure it out another day,' says Fischer."
Duct tape?
Just thinking out loud here: how many bolts does it take to hold down the power unit in the first place? If the original plan calls for ten bolts, then one missing bolt would only diminish the strength by 10%.
I would expect that in 2012, NASA engineers would be capable of producing bolts that fit. Haven't they learned anything from Hubble?
Last weekend I watched NASA's "When we left the Earth" again on Netflix. They are capable of great, great achievements. Yet, they keep shooting their own foot with these tiny little things..
I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
Using the power of SCIENCE, I will move the bolt! Thank GOD for SCIENCE, without it we would still be living on Earth like those poor stupid Italians!
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Clearly they need to oil the threads. Or use anti-seize. Or give the tiny Japanese man a cheater bar. ;)
I suppose there are no tap and die kits onboard to cut new threads into either the bolt or the module. Should be added to the tool inventory.
Silicon & Charybdis McLuhan Kildall Papert Kay
Any self-respecting engineer has a can of WD-40 handy for moving stubborn bolts, de-greasing and baiting fish.
WD40
If a bolt will not turn, lubricant is a pretty clear answer...
As for the cheater bar, that's what they were afraid to try because they are probably afraid of snapping the bolt. Bad thing to do in space.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"Stubborn [Bolt] Stymies Space Station Space[walkers]" ... So close, yet so far away.
Sigh
Unfortunately, there'll be no FTFY coming from here -- move along.
Yesterday's Weirdness is Tomorrow's Reason Why
Common error with multiple fasteners. Loosen the other bolts, then tighten them all evenly.
Simple
Damn those self-sealing stem bolts.
put some soap on it and it will go all the way in :)
Get the oxy acetylene out all any stuck bolt needs is bit of heat.
They should have used self-sealing stem bolts, they don't have this problem.
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freeze the bolt, heat the fitting
"If you guys have any thoughts or ideas or brilliant schemes on what we can do, let us know."
They're asking Slashdot?!
Just hammer it in with a crescent wrench.. what's the matter with these people?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Oh, come on, this thing weights zero in orbit, they can just scotch-tape it in place! ;)
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Sounds like they got the bolt cross threaded.
Just need to back out the bolt, run a thread chaser through to clean up the threads and try again.
And if NASA has an Amazon Prime membership, Amazon will have it delivered to the space station by Wednesday (if they pay the $3.99 overnight delivery fee). There may also be a small surcharge for orbital delivery.
Stubborn Screw Stymies Space Station S-tronauts: so stylish slashdot suggests some of the stylish self-sealing stem sort!
In a vacuum the metal parts, if very well machined, might be trying to bond together. Ball Aerospace used to sell a compound that was designed to keep the door on the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) from seizing shut in the vacuum of space. They sold it later to coat LP records to reduce friction from the diamond stylus dragging through the groove in a vinyl record. Perhaps they have some of that or moly paste for the threads like used for the spark plug in a gasoline motor with aluminum head threads. Just a thought...
. . . there's always one last bolt that doesn't fit, and too many screws of the wrong size, too few of the right size, a dinky little five-sided hex wrench, and an ancient Egyptian plan for building pyramids written in Hieroglyphics.
NASA needs a gear-head astronaut with NASCAR Hillbilly Armor experience. And a six-pack to offer him, because he will refuse to take pay for such a simple task.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
The big question now, if the problem is cross-threading between bolt and threaded bolt-hole, after the bolt has been jammed nine turns, is, can the bolt be removed? Forcing in a cross-thread situation often causes galling, especially in light materials, which causes thread jamming that makes removal require more torque than the cross-threading in required. Removal and check for alignment and thread-fit at first indication of a binding before the normal tightening turn is correct procedure. Especially where extremes of temperature may cause significant expansions and contractions. More especially where original measuring and fitting were done in human environments, at 20 degrees C.
Unscrew, add washers for about 6 turns, rescrew.
"Do you guys have any ideas?"
The all-too-common customer support query. I wouldn't want to be on that help desk.
What about a bar of soap? Back before WD40 was in everyone's tool chest, a bar of soap was the go-to thing for everything from wooden draw runners to stubborn screws.
Isn't this just "normal" wear and tear?
There's always a designed life for these systems.
After a few years, say hasta la vista baby to $100B.
Take a nut the same size as the offending one and cut across one end with a hacksaw (or whatever you have to hand), then fasten it onto the bolt. After a few times on and off the thread should be somewhat better.
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
Right.
1. Remove bolt.
2. Shine pen camera and light down the hole.
3. Remove foreign object that slipped in there when nobody was looking, or forgot to check first.
It's called the "Law of Small, Easily Lost Items", aka "The Law of Dice".
"Any small, necessary object, when dropped, will travel a distance that is inversely proportionate to the force provided or otherwise available at the moment of dropping, and settle into the most ridiculously inaccessible or otherwise inconvenient location. The level of consternation to be generated in recovery or removal is a multiple of the risk involved in the attempt, times the expense of the most fragile object involved in the recovery, or the physical/mental/emotional pain likely to be generated during a catastrophic failure of said recovery operation."
[End Of Line]
Anyone with a beard would have welded that sucker together already!
Maybe if the can apply heat to the nut it will loosen to the point where it turns more easily and take it off. Use a die to clean up an repair the bolt's threads. Send up another nut on the next trip that's tapped out a couple mils oversize, with graphite or maybe buckyball lubricant and a split-ring washer to hold it in place.
What are you going to make it out of? It has to function in a vacuum over a wider temperature range. 5W20 oil will evaporate. The Hasselblads sent to the Moon had, as I recall, all the bearings replaced with PTFE so they could function lubricant free. (There is still at least one left on the Moon, if you want to collect it, but it's out of warranty).
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Get the beeswax up there at reasonable cost. SCRAMjet propelled bees?
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Such progress! Surely human colonization of the solar system is months, nay weeks away by now! Elon? Richard? Let's go!
its *certainly* under warranty, right? I would assume so. and you guys all kept the papers? (someone has to have them. check your trunks and gloveboxes).
if you return it in time, you can get a swap. I'm pretty sure.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Yeah, I was just thinking that the Japanese probably screwed it up by forcing it 9 turns.
...Like we used to say in the shop -- Cross threads are better than no threads!
Seriously, back it out and try again, does wonders sometimes.
Apart from the already mentioned assembly technique of tightening all bolts incrementally, if there were power tools aboard such as a dremel, the astronauts could have made a makeshift tap out of one of the bolts by simply cutting a groove along the side. The tap could have been used to clean the burrs out of the threads.
if they just cross threaded the beeeatch.
"Erm... Houston, we have a problem. Poindexter just cross threaded the space station."
Flappinbooger isn't my real name
Spit on it.
How much you want to bet it's yet another imperial vs. metric error? This has been a recurring problem with NASA due to the fact that many of it's suppliers are based in the US, and the US, inexplicably, insists on being the only country on the planet stuck in the pre-metric dark ages. An ounce of prevention is worth 1.7086 kg of cure.
Have You Tried Turning It Off And On Again ... or hit it.
I wonder how long the Slashdot editors spent thinking of a word for "bolt" that starts with S.
Isnt getting all words of a headline starting with the same letter something like a journalgasm for journalists?
get a rat-tail file after it. you know the old fashioned triangle file, or a thread cleaner. Always works on earth.
Imperial nut.
Screw did immediately come to mind. However, although my sense of literary license allows screw and bolt to be synonymous,
it seemed necessary to avoid the purist's obvious beat-down scream that Bolt!==Screw. Then, there was the idea
Space Walker was two words -- George Lucas probably the one responsible for changing it to the debatable one word due to Skywalker.
About then is when it occurred to me that I'm taking this way too seriously.
(Not sure if it's okay to admit to not knowing the meaning of "S-walker". Is it? If it isn't, never mind.)
.
Yesterday's Weirdness is Tomorrow's Reason Why
There's probably a billion people out there who've been been screwed by a bolt that didn't have lubricant applied.
I'd do a study on the various methods to average the knowledge from all that to make a decision but no time for that in a proper way I guess.
Pen trading spray is the thing you need. I I assume that has been tried.
Sorry I can't help but chuckle when I see this old chestnut in this setting...
In lieu of the right spray we've used wd40 but not sure that would penetrate without gravity.
The next one would be applying shock or vibration. You could do this within safe limits. Another one could be heating the nut while drawing heat away on the bolt. Perhaps there's some kind of conical reflector for that?
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"lug nut fixed it" - Name that movie.
If you guys have any thoughts or ideas or brilliant schemes on what we can do, let us know.
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Have gnu, will travel.
Hold the bolt steady, and rotate the space station!
If the device does not have any moving parts then washers/spacer should be fine. If there were moving parts the torque could snap/bend the fastner so then washers/a spacer would be a bad idea.
This isn't an English/SI issue is it? Please tell me we have an all metric ISS.
I bet the americans supplied the wrong bolts. It wobnt be the first time they mistook Metric with Imperial. This is the Mars lander incident all over again.
This is like trying to fix a car over the phone. What size bolts? What are the materials involved? Galling of threads?? Is bolt softer than the piece it's screwed into? Is a photo of the offending parts too much to ask for?? They don't really want our help, do they?
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
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Regardless, you have to process the 5TB of data at least once. This project will store md5 hashes of all files in a flat file, and you can run other scripts over them to detect duplicate files, and another script to comment files in a group that you want to keep.
This is one of the problems with robotic missions... these weird, out of the ordinary events. If this had been a robotic mission it would have been Galileo all over again. "We didn't think this would be a problem so we didn't build to solve it. Now we have to live with the workaround."
Robots are fine for simple things but as the complexity of the machines increases it becomes easier to go with the count on the army of humans who would be willing to make the journey.
But it might lead to premature re-entry.
http://www.myconfinedspace.com/2009/07/20/its-never-miller-time-in-space/bloom-county-jpg/
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Read: http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2012/09/iss-program-recovery-plans-mbsu-1-installation-failure/.
And you will see that this is more than simply a problem of keeping the thing attached. They actually need that bolt to pull the unit down into a precision-engineered housing containing the electrical connectors that make the unit usable. I grew up with a healthy respect for duct-tape, bailing wire, and JB-weld, but this ain't the place for farm-boy engineering!
Put a pipe on the wrench, crank that baby! If you wonder about the hole left, ream out the hole after the bolt is out, tap new threads, use a slightly larger bolt. DONE! What kind of engineers don't already know this?
This stubborn bolt incident may turn out to be a blessing in disguise
So far we human have been using many of the same things that we use on Earth and applying them on exotic locations, such as space
Inside the gravity well, whenever we meet with a stubborn bolt problem, we have many means to solve it - either apply lubrication to the bolt to make it easier to manage, apply brute force and get it in no matter what, or we throw away that stubborn bolt and replace it with another bolt
But on space, such options are not available, and/or not applicable
Maybe this whole thing is a blessing in disguise
Maybe, out of this experience, someone will come out with another method to affix two things tightly together, without having to rely on bolts and nuts
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Geometric dimentsioning and tolerancing to the rescue. What do the Engineers that Designed this say?
Can any other measurements corroborate the seated-with-9-turns status?
If you take this and another bold out, and reinstall this one, will it seat, leaving the new #4 bolt a few turns proud?
Somebody forgot to check the thread pitch!
Story Musgrave. He was in charge of fixing the Hubble, and is a complete bad-ass. He has a "good-old farm boy" attitude, that is exactly what you want for fixing machinery in remote locations.
And some duct tape can go a long way! As seen on Mythbusters...
or maybe using an Imperial bolt in a metric hole?
It is an International space-station after all.
Nice one. And so true it hurts.
and heating it? Works on rusted bolts...
It sounds to be like the thread pitch is wrong to me.
New bolt and a few new ones with a slightly different thread and something to take a cast of the thread that's needed to be mated against if the new ones don't work, so a correct one can be made.
if the shavings are still stuck in the threading, perhaps inserting a small magnet would be able to clean them out?
-> duct tape?
Dremel + zero-G = sharp metal filings floating EVERYWHERE!!!
Personally, I like anaerobic adhesives. I spent time researching them when I was an R&D engineer, and they have never let me down when properly applied. But they are not the best for things that have to be routinely replaced.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Send a tap up there with the next supply run (or better yet a set of them) to clean out the threads. And then use some blue locktite. It's a big machine. They should have a full set of tools to fix it. It shouldn't be all components. One of the things the space station should be for is to learn how to do these kinds of things (mechanical maintenance). Installing some monolithic component sent from earth really isn't the same thing as doing mechanical work. In the future people will need to be able to really fix shit say halfway between here and Mars, or Titan, or Europa. No one is going to be able to just send up a new power module and have guys on earth adequately handle your power for you while you're orbiting Jupiter. Send them some real tools and tell them to fix it. Start learning how so they teach the lucky ones who will follow.
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Stick a big enough lever on there, and you can move the world!
[WARNING: Do not try on actual Earth]
swap it with other bolt, removed from other power-switching unit. sometime it helps.
Cut a vertical slot in the bolt so the metallic particles have a place to get out of the way instead of jamming the threads.
Unscrew 1mm. Insert C-shaped washer. Screw in 1mm.
even apple know that power supplies are better attached via magnets.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Why not cut the head off of the bolt and then use a nut to secure the box? Surely if the other end of the bolt is stuck this should be secure enough.
Call Ed China
Sharp is not that big of a deal. I'd think that their optical properties are a much bigger issue. Presumably they have star trackers, windows and other optical paraphrenalia out there on the ISS. Wouldn't do much good flying in a cloud of reflective dust now, would it...
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Hey! Has anybody heard of bailing wire and masking tape! Holds down lots of things!
About a 3 ft long cheater bar.
One of the bolts is fine thread. You just forced it into the helicoil insert. Remove the bolt check for debris check the thread size and replace the helicoil and rebolt that puppy.
If you got some metal washers that fit at your disposal, you could unscrew the bolt, put the washers on it, then start screwing it down. The washers will close the distance from the missing 6 turns. That'll tighten it down adequately until the next mission when you can bring some extra tools out there into space (such as a wire brush perhaps) that you can use to scrape out whatever piece of space dirt is clogging up the threads inside the hole and keeping it from screwing all 16 turns.
I have a suggestion not a fix. Suggestion is that from episodes of Star Trek. Replicators, we don't have them yet but gives the ability to create items on board the Enterprise and well any federation ship. If they had those on the ISS they could simply recreate the bolt, based on the article wasn't clear if they were trying to remove the bolt or screw it back in. Sounds like they wanted to screw it in but it wasn't happening. More to the point we don't have replicators we do have 3D printers the closest we really have to replicators. If they had a 3D printer on board they could simply create a new bolt with new threading.