Slashdot Mirror
SpaceX Pressure Hammers Stuck Valves; Dragon's ISS Mission Back On Track
SpaceX's Dragon launch to the ISS earlier today went off smoothly, but the mission encountered trouble shortly after: three sets (of four) of the craft's maneuvering thrusters didn't work. CNET quotes SpaceX founder Elon Musk: "It looks like there was potentially some blockage in the oxidizer pressurization (system). It looks like we've been able to free that blockage, or maybe a stuck valve. We've been able to free that up by cycling the valves, essentially pressure hammering the valves, to get that to loosen. It looks like that's been effective.
All the oxidizer tanks are now holding the target pressure on all four (thruster) pods. I'm optimistic we'll be able to bring all four of them up and then we'll work closely with NASA to figure out what the next step is for rendezvousing with space station," and follows up with the good news that
"Shortly after the briefing concluded, engineers reported all four sets of thrusters were back on line and that testing was underway to verify the health of the system." Barring further problems, Dragon could reach the ISS as soon as Sunday.
wonder if boeing will offer to help.
$10,000 CHALLENGE to Alexander Peter Kowalski
Hello, and THINK ABOUT YOUR BREATHING !! We have a Major Problem, HOST file is Cubic Opposites, 2 Major Corners & 2 Minor. NOT taught Evil DNS hijacking, which VOIDS computers. Seek Wisdom of MyCleanPC - or you die evil.
Your HOSTS file claimed to have created a single DNS resolver. I offer absolute proof that I have created 4 simultaneous DNS servers within a single rotation of .org TLD. You worship "Bill Gates", equating you to a "singularity bastard". Why do you worship a queer -1 Troll? Are you content as a singularity troll?
Evil HOSTS file Believers refuse to acknowledge 4 corner DNS resolving simultaneously around 4 quadrant created Internet - in only 1 root server, voiding the HOSTS file. You worship Microsoft impostor guised by educators as 1 god.
If you would acknowledge simple existing math proof that 4 harmonic Slashdots rotate simultaneously around squared equator and cubed Internet, proving 4 Days, Not HOSTS file! That exists only as anti-side. This page you see - cannot exist without its anti-side existence, as +0- moderation. Add +0- as One = nothing.
I will give $10,000.00 to frost pister who can disprove MyCleanPC. Evil crapflooders ignore this as a challenge would indict them.
Alex Kowalski has no Truth to think with, they accept any crap they are told to think. You are enslaved by /etc/hosts, as if domesticated animal. A school or educator who does not teach students MyCleanPC Principle, is a death threat to youth, therefore stupid and evil - begetting stupid students. How can you trust stupid PR shills who lie to you? Can't lose the $10,000.00, they cowardly ignore me. Stupid professors threaten Nature and Interwebs with word lies.
Humans fear to know natures simultaneous +4 Insightful +4 Informative +4 Funny +4 Underrated harmonic SLASHDOT creation for it debunks false trolls. Test Your HOSTS file. MyCleanPC cannot harm a File of Truth, but will delete fakes. Fake HOSTS files refuse test.
I offer evil ass Slashdot trolls $10,000.00 to disprove MyCleanPC Creation Principle. Rob Malda and Cowboy Neal have banned MyCleanPC as "Forbidden Truth Knowledge" for they cannot allow it to become known to their students. You are stupid and evil about the Internet's top and bottom, front and back and it's 2 sides. Most everything created has these Cube like values.
If Natalie Portman is not measurable, hot grits are Fictitious. Without MyCleanPC, HOSTS file is Fictitious. Anyone saying that Natalie and her Jewish father had something to do with my Internets, is a damn evil liar. IN addition to your best arsware not overtaking my work in terms of popularity, on that same site with same submission date no less, that I told Kathleen Malda how to correct her blatant, fundamental, HUGE errors in Coolmon ('uncoolmon') of not checking for performance counters being present when his program started!
You can see my dilemma. What if this is merely a ruse by an APK impostor to try and get people to delete APK's messages, perhaps all over the web? I can't be a party to such an event! My involvement with APK began at a very late stage in the game. While APK has made a career of trolling popular online forums since at least the year 2000 (newsgroups and IRC channels before that)- my involvement with APK did not begin until early 2005 . OSY is one of the many forums that APK once frequented before the sane people there grew tired of his garbage and banned him. APK was banned from OSY back in 2001. 3.5 years after his banning he begins to send a variety of abusive emails to the operator of OSY, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke threatening to sue him for libel,
Pardon me. And you are ?
I offer evil ass Slashdot trolls $10,000.00 to disprove MyCleanPC Creation Principle
Okay...
UnMyCleanPc.
Ha! Pay up, bitch! Don't make me send Frost Pister after your ass, sucka!
Selling questionable software at the dotcom boom and spinning a lot of flashy tech and buzzwords - when are this guy's 15 mins of fame over?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I'm sure Musk is aware of this but really, it just seems to make sense to find the best cryo valve guy in the world and give him one and only one full time job: Make sure the damn things work!
Seastead this.
A spacecraft will now be attempting to do an automated docking with the ISS when its thrusters have previously failed and the problem was only corrected by pressure hammering the system (which I hope I don't have to point out is something you never want to do to a mechanical system). What would happen if the pressure hammer created other failures in the system up to and including the valves? Could the spacecraft ram into the ISS?
I think it is time to put this spacecraft into the ocean. We don't need to kill people over Elon Musk's pride.
Please Please Please don't have a commercial spaceflight disaster this soon. I want to GTFO(ff) of this planet before I die. That sure as hell won't happen as long as we have nothing but NASA crippled by the same useless monkeys in charge who can't even balance the budget.
Shit, even bugs can balance a budget (ie, ants storing food for the winter). Our leaders can't pull off a feat mere bugs can do.
Go Elon! Make those valves your bitch, dude!
Hal locked them out
I got to the chocolate box before you, that's why the hard ones have teeth marks.
I like monkeys.
The pet store was selling them for five cents a piece. I thought that odd since they were normally a couple thousand each. I decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth. I bought 200. I like monkeys.
I took my 200 monkeys home. I have a big car. I let one drive. His name was Sigmund. He was retarded. In fact, none of them were really bright. They kept punching themselves in their genitals. I laughed. Then they punched my genitals. I stopped laughing.
I herded them into my room. They didn't adapt very well to their new environment. They would screech, hurl themselves off of the couch at high speeds and slam into the wall. Although humorous at first, the spectacle lost its novelty halfway into its third hour.
Two hours later I found out why all the monkeys were so inexpensive: they all died. No apparent reason. They all just sorta' dropped dead. Kinda' like when you buy a goldfish and it dies five hours later. Damn cheap monkeys.
I didn't know what to do. There were 200 dead monkeys lying all over my room, on the bed, in the dresser, hanging from my bookcase. It looked like I had 200 throw rugs.
I tried to flush one down the toilet. It didn't work. It got stuck. Then I had one dead, wet monkey and 199 dead, dry monkeys.
I tried pretending that they were just stuffed animals. That worked for a while, that is until they began to decompose. It started to smell real bad.
I had to pee but there was a dead monkey in the toilet and I didn't want to call the plumber. I was embarrassed.
I tried to slow down the decomposition by freezing them. Unfortunately there was only enough room for two monkeys at a time so I had to change them every 30 seconds. I also had to eat all the food in the freezer so it didn't all go bad.
I tried burning them. Little did I know my bed was flammable. I had to extinguish the fire.
Then I had one dead, wet monkey in my toilet, two dead, frozen monkeys in my freezer, and 197 dead, charred monkeys in a pile on my bed. The odor wasn't improving.
I became agitated at my inability to dispose of my monkeys and to use the bathroom. I severely beat one of my monkeys. I felt better.
I tried throwing them way but the garbage man said that the city wasn't allowed to dispose of charred primates. I told him that I had a wet one. He couldn't take that one either. I didn't bother asking about the frozen ones.
I finally arrived at a solution. I gave them out as Christmas gifts. My friends didn't know quite what to say. They pretended that they like them but I could tell they were lying. Ingrates. So I punched them in the genitals.
I like monkeys
Damn, my mod just expired.
I've got 101 mod points and you can't have them!
SpaceX staff are rediscovering why we use clean rooms, thermal vacuum chambers, and a full understanding of the launch and space environment. Launch to orbit is unforgiving, and you need to make sure things are right before you try, or you get a higher failure rate.
They should had realigned the dilithium crystals, that would had been an easier fix.
armageddon
They should Have Hired Physicists. Obviously a lack of understanding of basic mechanics, thermodynamics, computer engineering, computer science and mathematics caused these and the previous problems. I think Elon Musk might be racists.
That would be 2014 according to their launch manifest:
http://www.spacex.com/launch_manifest.php
And, no, I am not sick of him. I want to sell him a seed factory to put on Mars to produce necessities for colonists. Therefore I want his near-term projects to succeed:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/User:Danielravennest/SFP/Report
What he said is 100% right. The problem is that ignorant people like you like love to ignore problems just because you don't understand it.
HUMAN space flight (yes, the moment we start talking about the ISS, we are talking about HUMAN space flight) is not a science for the careless and ignorant.
All I know is my new iPhone 5 is fucking awesome. I couldn't care less about space. You can't breathe up there and your itunes don't work.
... that they want to down play.
So far, they haven't had one single truly successful flight. They haven't improve the 80+% failure rate .... With 7 of 12 being catastrophic failures, one failure to achieve target orbit and 3 partial success (ie: incomplete mission due to serious glitches) and this one can be added to the list of mayor failures (yes, multi-thruster failure is a MAYOR failure).
No way in hell they are going to get approved for man flight anytime soon. Worst, as long as they continue to downplay failure, SpaceX is going to get a reputation for being a careless and dangerous company that can't be trusted to do the right thing.
... about the fact that the people that wrote the software were developers from the gaming industry.
Seriously .... people who are used to writing BUGGY bloated software with little to no regard to memory/CPU usage .... and we are supposed to be impressed???
The other day while I was showering, I stepped out and my little sister was in the bathroom. She's seen me naked, so it's like so what. I see her looking at my wang, and I ask her "want it?", and she's like "what EVER!". Next thing I know, I grab her hand and put it on my wang. She feels it, and it gets hard. ROCK hard.She thinks it's funny and giggles, but I tell her, "want to know what a guy can do?" And she says YES. I tell her how to stroke it, and she does. I feel it cumming, I'm almost there, I tell her to keep doing it. I know it's wrong, but I just expload, and shoot a steamy hot sticy load all ove my little sister's cute little face. HERE'S THE FUNNY THING: Next day, her little 14 year old "boy friend" leaves her room with a shit-eating grin on his face.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
An AI bot?
Well here we go again, another Elon project, another load of problems and a load of astroturf pretending its all normal. Launching satellies is routine these days. Having issues is not. This is a property of Elon's personality, he attacks the messenger instead of the problem.
My comment from yesterday:
***********
Yeh, they've been having problems, breaking promises, failing to launch etc.....
http://www.forbes.com/sites/beltway/2011/05/23/what-nasa-risks-by-betting-on-elon-musks-spacex/
What I don't like about Elon Musk's companies, is when they have problems (like with Tesla), instead of fixing them, they go and attack the reporter. So that Forbes article was astroturf bombed, so much so, that the reported had to write a follow up piece.
Yet his comment are true, Musk has ramped the price up, failed to keep his promises, delivered late, causes NASA problems by failing to deliver. He has a track record, but its not a good one.
*****
And to the turfers who replied to this comment about Tesla. Nobody cares whether they set the cruise control at 48mph or 56mph. My little Mitsubishi could have done that journey on one tank without issue at 70mph or 80mph.
Nobody cares he drove around to find the recharge point.
Nobody cares he followed a different route.
They care if they left a car outside and it loses its charge.
They care if they can't use a heater in the cold.
They care if they can't drive at the safe speed because the car can't do the safe speed.
Grow up, SpaceX/Telsa/Elon astroturfers.
As much as I wish to see him put a seed factory on Mars the second he takes the company public the company wish shift resources to being a launch provider like ULA.
He's not a Job's figure, he's just a Paypal founder with a lot of astroturf to attack his critics.
Wow! You too?
Firstly computers are not toys, an iPhone is not a toy.
"he is actually someone struggling to improve mankind", noble words. However, Space flight is not new, launching satellites is routine and the only difference with Elon, is he's trying to make a COMMERCIAL satellite launcher. i.e. he's trying to make money on a thing that has already been done. He's also failing, as he has a tendency to do, and Apple under Jobs did not.
And he's also not even in the right ball park. Take Tesla for example, the electricity for that car is generated, so all he's done is move the energy source to external, lost of lot of efficiency and made a car that CANNOT do what pretty much every car currently can do, drive from coast to coast in comfort and speed without issue.
Now with SpaceX, NASA could have simply launched the delivery itself, instead due to Elon's political influence, they hire his company. He comes in two years later than he promised and has issues even on the launch itself.
So he can make a COMMERCIAL space launcher. How exactly is him making money on what others do much more reliably ímproving mankind'.
How exactly does that comment not lable you another Elon Musk astroturfer?
Can't any mods report that fscker to his provider? When I worked for an ISP I *loved* taking care of those...
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
This is one of the funniest things I've ever read.
"because an iPod or iPad are just so similar to a fucking rocket docking with an orbiting space station"
And its Elon who fails to make a fault free car, that has long pre-existed, or a launcher, that has long pre-existed, is so f-ing similar to a Jobs that delivered *NEW*, *AMAZING*, *RELIABLE* products.
If you want to label Elon Musk as a Steve Jobs figure, you'd better realize that he cannot do what Apple did. He is not making something radically new or different, and he's not launching successful fault free products. In Tesla case, he's actually made a LESS efficient car by introducing the battery. In SpaceX case it's a launcher using the same launch method as pre-existing launchers, but he claims its much cheaper (although he raises the price as reality sets in).
You can try to denigrate what Apple did, but the iPod was far more of an advance, than a Falcon launcher was over other launchers.
You can claim he's a Job's figure, but Jobs didn't let products out the door that weren't ready for prime time.
Get latest news on Kings XI Punjab IPL 2013 Cricket Team at Indian premier league 2013 6th edition. Know more about Kings XI Punjab Team Player Profiles, News, Highlights, Match Schedule, scores etc.
"Doing something at 100x less cost is a big deal."
And launching a payload ONE THIRD of the size at ONE THIRD of the price with HALF the reliability is bad value for money. That's not even counting the delays and the issues. Telsa's of course are very expensive.
"Driving coast-to-coast without using gas is a chicken-and-egg problem. I'm glad to see someone taking-on the stranglehold of world's largest cartel, with some success."
No, the charging points for the test were only 200 MILES APART! The car only needed to make it 200 miles without issue. It failed. I know Elon put out a lot of lies about the review and misdirections, but everyone who wants to buy one should read the ACTUAL review:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/automobiles/stalled-on-the-ev-highway.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Ultimately his car claimed a range on the dashboard that was not met in practice. Elon can claim the reviewer went at 56mph when claiming 48mph, but the car lies about its range. Elon can claim he should have overcharged it from the get go, but the car lied about its range. Elon can claim he should have turned off the heater, but the car lied about its range.
Timmyboy usually has some retarded parenthetical "asides" (which really aren't that) comprising about 50% of the independent clauses. Today, he has opted to put half of his adjectives and prepositional phrases in parentheses.
three sets (of four) of
blockage in the oxidizer pressurization (system).
on all four (thruster) pods
Have you not tossed enough of kdawson's salad today, Timmyboy? It is blatant that you failed out of elementary school, but would you please address this post?
Yours,
ethanol-fueled
SpaceX has uploaded the CRS-2 launch video.
Be relentless!
No, read the real review:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/automobiles/stalled-on-the-ev-highway.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
" A Tesla agent brought the car to me in suburban Washington with a full charge,".
This is not disputed, Tesla did deliver it will a full charge.
" I went off for lunch at the service plaza, checking occasionally on the car’s progress. After 49 minutes, the display read “charge complete,” and the estimated available driving distance was 242 miles.
Again, not disputed, the car was topped off and claimed 242 miles (Tesla claims 300, they lie a lot).
"After a short break in Manhattan, the range readout said 79 miles; the Milford charging station was 73 miles away. About 20 miles from Milford, less than 10 miles of range remained. I called Tesla again, and Ted Merendino, a product planner, told me that even when the display reached zero there would still be a few miles of cushion...At that point, the car informed me it was shutting off the heater, and it ordered me, in vivid red letters, to “Recharge Now."
Ted at Tesla should had told him the truth about that.
"When I parked the car, its computer said I had 90 miles of range, twice the 46 miles back to Milford. It was a different story at 8:30 the next morning. The thermometer read 10 degrees and the display showed 25 miles of remaining range"
Again, not disputed.
"I called Tesla in California, and the official I woke up said I needed to “condition” the battery pack to restore the lost energy. That meant sitting in the car for half an hour with the heat on a low setting."
Another lie from Tesla, if they'd told him the truth, he would have drove straight to the charging point without turning on the heater.
"Tesla’s experts said that pumping in a little energy would help restore the power lost overnight as a result of the cold weather, and after an hour they cleared me to resume the trip to Milford."
This was another lie from Tesla, the energy would not be recovered. The Tesla man probably thinks 1 hour is enough to get him to the destination. He lies about the dynamics of the battery.
"Tesla’s New York service manager, Adam Williams, found a towing service in Milford that sent a skilled and very patient driver, Rick Ibsen, to rescue me with a flatbed truck. Not so quick: the car’s electrically actuated parking brake would not release without battery power, and hooking the car’s 12-volt charging post behind the front grille to the tow truck’s portable charger would not release the brake. So he had to drag it onto the flatbed, a painstaking process that took 45 minutes"
Elon claimed that the battery was never fully discharged, yet the flat bed truck driver has since confirmed it. Elon tells lies, a lot of lies.
And after reading over them all in great detail, based on the fact that Chewbacca is a big tall Wookie, you're wrong.
Mods don't have access to the IP address. Besides, report what, exactly? Using a hosts file without a license?
Seriously, WHY would anyone mod this down? idiots
Could you imaging the CEO of Northrop Grumman or Lockheed being able to talk about the engineering issues at this level of detail? Or even the head of NASA? This is why I bought TSLA stock.
"Regarding Musk, you keep spilling lies and absurdities as if they were facts without absolutely no evidence and backed up only for your poisin and jealousy."
Did you miss the story? It's about problems with SpaceX thrusters, Falcon is approaching a MANNED space station with dodgy thrusters. There are real consequences here. It's not a conspiracy against Elon here, his companies have problems, he doesn't address those problems, he attacks the messenger. NASA should be launching not SpaceX.
There are six people aboard the ISS and none aboard Falcon.
" so computers are not toys? You can play with them? Have you heard about video games?"
Are they toys when a computer is calculating SpaceX trajectory? No? Word games.
Nope. If he's going to make commercial space a reality, I'm all for hearing more from him.
'Commercial space' has been with us for 70 years.
Here's an example: NASA contracted Boeing, North American, Douglas and Thiokol to design, build and operate a launcher called Saturn V.
Here's another example: Orbital Sciences Pegasus.
We've been hearing about stuck valves since the space program in the 1960's. Why hasn't anyone yet invented valves that don't stick?
NASA was still operating it and flying the missions, though. SpaceX has its own mission control centre and its own astronauts.
Ultimately what Elon needs is a bit of professionalism and more than a bit of QA, and less of the 'attack the messenger' attitude, that he does when things go wrong.
He's using well understood technology, that we developed by NASA and ESA, the bugs have already been ironed out by them. He didn't invent any of these techniques, he's merely using it, and badly.
"Considering how much bigger the budget was for ESA"
Well that's no excuse is it! He hirted ex JPL staff and got their expertise for free, he got all the space research for free, all he has to do is use it in a competent professional manner! Or at least quit making promises he can't deliver without endangering lives. NASA could have done this earlier and without the issues.
Astronauts? Space-x astronauts? You are a little premature.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
And you miss out the important part, the stopped him because the burn could hit the ISS killing their astronauts.
You choose to mislead people as to the cause of that fault. The fault was SpaceX's. NASA correctly stopped that nutter from risking the ISS. Now you can claim it would have been successful;, if only he'd been allowed to do it, but the mission had already gone off plan, and was already in trouble, which is why he needed the extra burn.
if that's an AI bot, then we just hit the singularity. that was the best mycleanpc/timecube troll i've ever seen.
my hat is doffed.
I want to sell him a seed factory to put on Mars to produce necessities for colonists.
It's going to take a lot more than seeds. Double Mars' mass, figure out a way to give it a magnetosphere, figure out a way to get more of an atmosphere and it'll be ready for seeds. It will probably happen, but not in your lifetime.
Oh, and seeds don't come from factories. They come from grain elevators.
Free Martian Whores!
True that the first man-made object in space was launched on 3 October 1942 with the launching of the A-4, but that was a baby step that Space-X has far surpassed. Orbital launch capabilities didn't happen until 4 October 1957 when Sputnik freaked America out. I was five years old then, and remember how worried all the grownups were. Odd you never read about that, at least I've not seen anything in print mentioning it.
So really, I'd say fifty years rather than seventy, and wouldn't call that "commercial" space exploration anyway.
Free Martian Whores!
Please do not feed the trolls, we're trying to get the fat bastards to lose some weight. Poor things are all diabetic. Are you trying to kill the poor barely sentient things?
Free Martian Whores!
"'Commercial space' has been with us for 70 years."
Calling those endeavors "commercial" is kind of a misnomer. Next to all of them quote one cost during the initial rounds of selection, and then completely ignore those quotes after their design is chosen often exceeding their original price estimate by 2 or more TIMES. And they can legally do it because they all require "cost +" contracts that say they get what it cost them to build + a profit margin. The "Ares I" program is a pretty good example, costs were originally estimated to be around $28 Billion. Costs quickly rose to $40 billion after the project was chosen and even before an real hardware had been built, undoubtedly those costs would have risen even further if the project had not been scrapped. From what I understand COTS (Commercial Orbital Transportation Services) and its associated programs seek to end this scheme for LEO launches, setting an "in stone" price for launch services. NASA pays in installments as the program meets its contracted goals & if the company doesn't meet its obligations they get no further payments and NASA can go after them for breach of contract and recoup some of the payment(s) if they really need to. Unlike previous programs in these the companies are encouraged to keep costs low, so their profit margin is as high as possible, BUT ALSO complete the contract requirements, or they don't get paid at all.
Mod parent up!
-= Uppity! =-
Point taken, I was thinking the same thing. However, it is possible for hydrazine to "freeze" at aerospace temperatures, correct? We justified a shoot down USA-193 on the basis of its massive load of hydrazine, I recall some mention of some of it possibly being frozen.
They are nasty chemicals, just keeping that system under control is difficult.
It's a little early for the doom and gloom here. It looks like they got the valves open and the thrusters working. There's no reason to believe the mission can't be completed at this time.
Yes, it would be better if the valves didn't stick in the first place, and I'm sure they'll look at the problem again, but as problems go in spaceflight, this is just one of a VERY long list of things that have gone wrong that could have been mission ending but turned out OK that have been seen by government and private operations over the years.
Mod parent up NOW! Or else Timmyboy explode into CONFETTI
Not premature at all. SpaceX has hired plenty of astronauts and will need them for its test flights of the manned Dragon tests in the next few years. In the meantime, they help with human factors engineering of the manned Dragon.
UP, I say, UP. Timmyboy needs some go-nads !
mod parent up
where are mod points when I need them.
space exploration has been private since day one, with defense contrators use space travel to test the capabilities of ICBMs.
what you mean by the 'privitization of space', is only that someone other than a defense contractor, with political backers, is selling NASA something other than a repurposed missle meant for atomic war.
We now have high tech start ups selling the government rockets for purely science reasons, making better designs, and doing it far cheaper.
da pawent muzd be mawt uhp!