Space Station Saved By a Toothbrush?

Hugh Pickens writes "Denise Chow reports that two spacewalking astronauts successfully replaced a vital power unit on the International Space Station today, defeating a stubborn bolt that prevented the astronauts from properly installing the power unit on the ISS's backbone-like truss with the help of some improvised tools made of spare parts and a toothbrush. Astronauts Sunita Williams and Akihiko Hoshide started by removing the power box, called a main bus switching unit (MBSU), from where it had been temporarily tied down with a tether, then spent several hours troubleshooting the unit and the two bolts that are designed to secure it in place on the space station's truss. After undoing the bolts, the spacewalkers examined them for possible damage, and used improvised cleaning tools and a pressurized can of nitrogen gas to clean out the metal shavings from the bolt receptacles. 'I see a lot of metal shavings coming out,' Hoshide said as he maneuvered a wire cleaner around one of the bolt holders. Williams and Hoshide then lubricated a spare bolt and manually threaded it into the place where the real bolt was eventually driven, in an effort to ensure that the receptacle was clear of any debris. Then the two applied grease to the sticky bolt as well as extra pressure and plain old jiggling until finally 4½ hours into the spacewalk, Hoshide reported: 'It is locked.' When Hoshide reported that the troublesome bolt was finally locked into place, the flight managers erupted in applause while astronaut Jack Fischer at Mission Control told the astronauts 'that is a little slice of awesome pie.'"

Comments

This is why we need people in space

[jmorris42]

And this is why robots aren't going replace people anytime soon. One little thing goes wrong with an unmanned mission and either a major subsystem is written off or the entire mission is a failure. People are able to do thigs robots aren't going to be able to do for quite a while longer. And it gets even worse as soon as you go beyond full duplex radio range. If you have to send a command, wait for a result, try something else, repeat until you scream, things get really slow the second you aren't executing preplanned directions without errors.

And people can perform physical actions we have yet to build a robot to do reliably. Sure they can put thousands of bolt on one after another on an assembly line but how many could deal with this one stuck bolt? None. Now try to build one that can open up a panel and troubleshoot wiring or plumbing.

Re:This is why we need people in space

[whoever57]

And this is why robots aren't going replace people anytime soon

A robot might not have cross-threaded the bolt in the first place (why do you think there were metal shavings in the threads?)

Re:This is why we need people in space

[adolf]

A robot might not have cross-threaded the bolt in the first place (why do you think there were metal shavings in the threads?)

Galling. If you haven't experienced it yet, you just haven't yet turned enough bolts.

Re:This is why we need people in space

[Paul Slocum]

I'm not much of an expert, but I can think of more human missions that have failed (expensively and tragically) than robotic missions that have failed. And the mars rovers have lasted dramatically longer than expected. Plus, getting the rover unstuck from the sand shows that you can fix tough problems that require improvising even with a robot.

Re:This is why we need people in space

[Bacon Bits]

You've got some flawed reasoning there, because if robots made the offending part it wouldn't have had metal debris in it.

It's worth noting at this point that there's a good chance the errant part was made by machine. Perhaps not a robot in the technical sense, but not a human either.

More to the point, the argument that humans will create flawed tools while robots will not is false on it's face. Robots are tools made by humans. What's to stop the robot from being flawed in the first place?

[Insert "it's turtles all the way down" reference here]

Re:This is why we need people in space

[gagol]

Non human payloads don't have the same levels of safety regulations...

Re:This is why we need people in space

[sFurbo]

How big a part if the ISS's power budget is life support? How much lighter and smaller could it be if it did not have to accommodate humans? If there were no humans aboard, it would be much easier to shut of some systems temporarily or permanently in case of power problems.

In short, humans make space travel large, energy-intensive and expensive. Sure, they also make it more flexible, but it is not a given that that outweighs the massively more complex operations they require.

Re:This is why we need people in space

[stepho-wrs]

Except you are solving a known problem, after it happened.
It's much harder to solve problems before they are known.
It's much harder to build a robot that can solve unknown problems.

What might be useful though is a general purpose manipulator that can be controlled by humans on the ground.
Humans are useful because they have brains, eyes and general purpose hands, the combination of which can solve a huge number of problems.
Give the robot cameras, hands so that it can pick-up and use other tools or even non-tools (ie whatever is laying around the craft but wasn't explicitly designed as a tool) and a link to a human controller.

Re:This is why we need people in space

[VortexCortex]

True, but not everybody's success rate is the same. One good trick is to start by turning the screw backwards until you feel it click, then start tightening.

WTF. You mean they WEREN'T doing it this way? I thought everyone did this -- It's how you start a screw.

Oh to be an alien drifting along that orbit:
"Look at the silly hairless apes, thwarted by a single simple screw.... Oh my, listen to them all cheering now. Congratulations you primitive little beasties, you've tightened an errant fastener in SPACE! Wow. Let's get out of here, at this rate it'll be centuries before they even discover reusable pop rivets."

Re:This is why we need people in space

[TheLink]

I haven't seen manned missions to Mars yet.

Are you making a valid comparison? Or are you from a different time.