Space Station Saved By a Toothbrush?

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Space Station Saved By a Toothbrush?

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday September 5, 2012 @02:07PM from the break-out-the-emergency-floss dept.

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.'"

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This is why we need people in space by jmorris42 · 2012-09-05 14:07 · Score: 5, Insightful

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.

--
Democrat delenda est
1. Re:This is why we need people in space by crmanriq · 2012-09-05 14:21 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  You are missing the obvious difference:
  Robots don't use toothbrushes.
  Notoriously poor dental care. It's almost like robots are, um, ... British.
  Why do you think the cybermen just use speakers? And the daleks hide inside their little trash cans?
  
  --
  If it's worth doing, it's worth doing for money.
2. Re:This is why we need people in space by CheeseTroll · 2012-09-05 14:32 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Perhaps, but a robot wouldn't have had a toothbrush in space, would it?
  
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  A post a day keeps productivity at bay.
3. Re:This is why we need people in space by whoever57 · 2012-09-05 14:47 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  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?)
  
  --
  The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
4. Re:This is why we need people in space by adolf · 2012-09-05 14:58 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  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.
  
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  Kid-proof tablet..
5. Re:This is why we need people in space by Paul+Slocum · 2012-09-05 15:03 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  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.
6. Re:This is why we need people in space by timeOday · 2012-09-05 15:19 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  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.
7. Re:This is why we need people in space by jamstar7 · 2012-09-05 15:42 · Score: 2
  
  And the ISS would be down 25% of its total powre budget for months to come.
  
  Let's face facts. The only way to make space safe for robots is keep them close enough to humans for repairs. Otherwise, one tiny component fails, so does a significant portion of the mission.
  
  --
  Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
8. Re:This is why we need people in space by khallow · 2012-09-05 15:45 · Score: 2
  
  oh well, at least we've got another three, and we're still under budget."
  Um, not the NASA in our reality. They're almost never under budget and they never build four copies.
9. Re:This is why we need people in space by jamstar7 · 2012-09-05 15:46 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  Take a look at the overall mission records to Mars. About half the missions have failed spectacularly, compared to what, half a dozen manned missions that ended in death? I'm including Apollo 1 and a couple known Russian meatshots, btw.
  
  --
  Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
10. Re:This is why we need people in space by khallow · 2012-09-05 15:48 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  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.
11. Re:This is why we need people in space by khallow · 2012-09-05 16:03 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Then you are indeed not much of an expert. Mars missions are notorious for failure. Manned missions despite their many flaws are not. For example, there have been four in-flight accidents that killed astronauts out of perhaps 200-300 manned missions over the past 50 years. In comparison, 26 of the 50 unmanned missions to Mars have failed.
  
  This is not intended to be an apples to apples comparison (going to Mars is a wee bit harder than achieving orbit and doing a few things for a few days). I'm just pointing out the far greater number of failures on the unmanned side.
12. Re:This is why we need people in space by EETech1 · 2012-09-05 16:17 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  It is very easy for some CNC machines to tell if it has a dull or broken drill bit, or tap. I don't think it would take that much to add that capability to many of today's robots.
  We had servo controlled torque wrenches with process monitors on a robotic production line where I worked that could also tell you way more about how that bolt (torque and turn) tightened than most observant skilled wrench operators (yes there is a skill to feeling a bolt tighten) and almost anyone that does it for 8 hours straight. Every bolt, every time, perfectly tightened, or rejected!
  The logic to determine the failure (bolt, threads, nut, washer, or part interference) was there, and normally spot on, I doubt the programming to rework the various parts would add much to the complexity of today's state of the art assembly (line worker replacement) robots.
  Cheers! to our manual labor (job) eliminating robot overloards!
13. Re:This is why we need people in space by Bacon+Bits · 2012-09-05 16:57 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  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]
  
  --
  The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
14. Re:This is why we need people in space by gagol · 2012-09-05 17:14 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  A multitask space robot builder would probably pack cleaning brushes and advanced 3D printer.
  
  --
  Tomorrow is another day...
15. Re:This is why we need people in space by Solandri · 2012-09-05 17:38 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  The power unit is probably vital only because the ISS is manned, and having humans aboard means a higher power requirement. The thing about space is that the enormous launch costs (on the order of $5000 per kg at the low end) means many things you take for granted on earth (like a toothbrush and toothpaste) add horrendously to your overall cost. Estimates are that it takes about 2 tons of life support equipment to keep one person alive in space. So sending a single person to space incurs an extra $10 million in cost (ignoring consumables like food, water, and oxygen). For a fraction of that, you can just build your unmanned system with redundant backups for everything, including "vital power units".
  
  e.g. The cost of the manned mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope cost almost as much as building and launching a replacement HST. If we'd had an unmanned launch vehicle other than the Shuttle capable of putting something Hubble's size into orbit, we could've put 3 HSTs into orbit for the cost of one Shuttle-launched HST and one repair mission. Remember the Solar Max repair mission? Ever wonder why aside from Hubble, that was the only repair mission conducted by the Shuttle? Because it was literally cheaper to build and launch a replacement satellite than to send the shuttle up to repair one.
  
  We're trying to run before we can walk. We should kill the manned space program for about 10 years, or at the very least drastically scale it back. Work on lowering launch vehicle costs. Once we get those costs down to about $1000-$2000/kg (Falcon comes close), then restart the manned program. The Shuttle and ISS wasted hundreds of billions of dollars just so we could brag "Look! We have people in space!" If that money had been spent instead on researching and developing cheaper launch vehicles, we could've potentially been putting a dozen people in space for the cost of putting a single person in space today.
16. Re:This is why we need people in space by gagol · 2012-09-05 18:37 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Non human payloads don't have the same levels of safety regulations...
  
  --
  Tomorrow is another day...
17. Re:This is why we need people in space by sFurbo · 2012-09-05 18:55 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  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.
18. Re:This is why we need people in space by stepho-wrs · 2012-09-05 18:56 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  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.
19. Re:This is why we need people in space by azalin · 2012-09-05 19:20 · Score: 2
  
  Nice try, but if there weren't any humans on board, the power budget would have already been much lower to start with. Therefore the power loss would still have seriously impacted the mission.
  Machines make for cheaper space travel not only because the need less support, but also because you can afford to loose them.
20. Re:This is why we need people in space by VortexCortex · 2012-09-05 20:05 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  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."
21. Re:This is why we need people in space by LordSnooty · 2012-09-05 21:25 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Having bad teeth matters not a jot when you're too fat to fit in your spacesuit. See, i can stereotype too!
22. Re:This is why we need people in space by ColaMan · 2012-09-05 23:10 · Score: 2
  
  Orbital mechanics is a difficult thing, which I shall freely admit to having only small amounts of clue about. However the following is as I understand it (and general consensus on the internet seems to agree)
  Losing a screw at 90 degrees vertically to your orbital velocity ('dropping' it towards earth, for example) merely perturbs its orbit - if you were in a perfectly circular orbit to start out with, the screw would now be in an elliptical orbit with an apogee and perigee. Wait half an orbit and it'll be coming past again on its way to/from apogee/perigee.
  Losing it to the left/right or your direction of travel however and you'd probably lose it for a long time.
  Losing it forwards or backwards is the equivalent of entering a transfer orbit like sending satellites from LEO to GEO - however when you're doing that with satellites to stay in the final orbit requires another burn to match the speed for your new altitude, so I don't know where it'd end up. But I'll hazard a guess that it will oscillate back to your current altitude, I just don't know where it will be at that point.
  
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  You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
  There is a lot of hype here.
23. Re:This is why we need people in space by khallow · 2012-09-05 23:40 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Russia has a couple as well with its Soyuz. Parachute didn't deploy on one and decompression of the capsule for the other. Wikipedia says these were designated Soyuz 1 and Soyuz 11.
24. Re:This is why we need people in space by DarkOx · 2012-09-05 23:54 · Score: 2
  
  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.
  
  Might take more time, but I always just start'em forward by hand unless they are in an inaccessible place on then end of an extension or something, then I use the method above. I have never cross threaded a hand started bolt or screw, the trouble with the above method is there are often lots of ways to make a 'click' or have it feel like the thread has dropped into place. Its a pretty good method but mistakes are still possible.
  
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  Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
25. Re:This is why we need people in space by sapphire+wyvern · 2012-09-06 00:12 · Score: 2
  
  +1 for being named LordSnooty. Perfect match of username to post.
26. Re:This is why we need people in space by JoeMerchant · 2012-09-06 00:40 · Score: 3
  
  This particular bolt problem might have been solved by a team of thousands on the ground, but if you've got the people up there already, it's going to be faster and cheaper to use them than to do something clever with fabricators, manipulators, etc.
  By the time the robot fabrication factories get to be as capable as humans, they will be just as costly to launch into orbit and maintain there.
27. Re:This is why we need people in space by Hillgiant · 2012-09-06 01:35 · Score: 2
  
  Precisely. I would rather send 10x as many missions and have half of them fail than send a mission where 90% of the payload is devoted to measures to keep the fragile, unnecessary biological components alive.
  
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28. Re:This is why we need people in space by jellomizer · 2012-09-06 02:33 · Score: 2
  
  Well what would be the point of a space station if it couldn't accommodate humans?
  The goal of the ISS is for humans in space. Life Support is ISS main mission.
  
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  If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
29. Re:This is why we need people in space by LongearedBat · 2012-09-06 04:54 · Score: 2
  
  Then listen for the click. Space is so quiet that you could hear a pin drop.
Biggest Surprise by SuperKendall · 2012-09-05 14:09 · Score: 4, Funny

I'm more surprised that they have spare toothbrushes on hand than I am they were able to fix this.

--
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
1. Re:Biggest Surprise by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-05 14:16 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  after your second or third space-one-night-stand with the martians, you learn that its only polite to
  keep extra toothbrushes
Space station saved by ... Brains ... by davidwr · 2012-09-05 14:12 · Score: 2

Space Station Saved By Human Beings Using Their Brains And The Resources At Hand
There, fixed that for you.
Now this is not really news, is it?

--
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1. Re:Space station saved by ... Brains ... by tragedy · 2012-09-05 14:57 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  It wasn't them, it was the inanimate carbon rod!
all hail by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-05 14:24 · Score: 4, Funny

all hail the inanimate carbon rod!
Obligatory Simpsons by DarkBlackFox · 2012-09-05 14:26 · Score: 4, Funny

"It's an inanimate carbon rod!!" http://i.imgur.com/ijjIh.png
Thank you, Slashdot... by Schmorgluck · 2012-09-05 14:31 · Score: 2

Now I have the MacGyver theme music stuck in my head. Thank you oh so very much!

--
There's nothing like $HOME
1. Re:Thank you, Slashdot... by jd2112 · 2012-09-05 15:08 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  MacGyver
  
  In
  
  SPACE
  SPACE
  Space
  Space
  space
  space
  
  --
  Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
Spare? by PPH · 2012-09-05 14:46 · Score: 5, Funny

"Williams and Hoshide reporting in commander. We have good news and bad news. We managed to clear the threads on this power unit and complete installation. That's the good news. The bad news is that the only toothbrush we could find was yours."

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Have gnu, will travel.
My faith in NASA has been restored by sabri · 2012-09-05 14:48 · Score: 5, Funny

American spaceship, Russian spaceship: all fixed with toothbrush!

--
I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
Re:Yeah but how much did the toothbrush cost? by PPH · 2012-09-05 14:49 · Score: 4, Funny

You get one free with each toilet seat.
Don't ask.

--
Have gnu, will travel.
Re:Toothbrushes by Mashiki · 2012-09-05 15:16 · Score: 2

Hah. Toothbrushes, they clean, whiten, brighten and fix clutches and space stations.
My first car was a '81 mercury lynx. The thing was a piece of shit. But it worked, it got me from point to point. But it used an old style mechanical clutch with no built in spacer adjustment. I fixed that with a toothbrush and some bailing wire. I got another 40,000mi out of that clutch, and by that time the car was dead.

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Om, nomnomnom...
Re:Good, now... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-05 15:38 · Score: 3, Interesting

Now hunt down the machinists, engineers and managers responsible for a manufacturing process that left "lots of metal shavings" in a piece of life critical aerospace equipment and flay them alive as a lesson to all other machinists, engineers and managers.
Post the video on youtube, with a message officially obviating all current and future contracts with each and every subcontractor involved in this pathetic farce.
Ah, yeah, except the metal shavings were probably from the first cross-threaded bolt that was carving out a new threading in the mounting. Although astronauts are known to be god-like in competence, without any additional information, it would initially appear to be a case of operator error when the original bolt was first attempted.
The shavings, where did they go? by advocate_one · 2012-09-05 19:03 · Score: 3, Interesting

I hope they had some means in place to capture them like a magnet and some sticky paper... (a vacuum cleaner would have been useless there). Who knows where those shavings could get to if not captured...

--
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.