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Spacesuit Problems Delay ISS Repair Spacewalk
Ars Technica reports that the next planned spacewalk in the continuing repairs of the International Space Station's ammonia pump has been delayed, because of problems with the spacesuit worn by astronaut Rick Mastracchio. From the article: "According to Deutsche Welle, the problem is with how the sublimator (a cooling unit) in Mastracchio's suit operated when entering ISS airlock. NASA said the question is whether water entered the sublimator at that time. 'During repressurization of the station's airlock following the spacewalk, a spacesuit configuration issue put the suit Mastracchio was wearing in question for the next excursion,' NASA said in a statement. Delaying the next steps of the valve replacement from Monday until Tuesday will give NASA time to address the issue. Mastracchio is scheduled to wear a backup suit and needs this time to have it resized."
It should also be cheaper, lighter, shoot industrial-level laser from the eyes and include a lightsaber. Stupid scientists can't do anything right. If only they read /. once in a while they might learn something!
They should have built simpler, more reliable suits.
I wonder if it would be cheaper to retool the suits, or to select crews of suitably similar size and body type?
I don't doubt that the current hardware has some legacy decisions that NASA would like to rethink, or at least replace with current iterations that are smaller and more reliable; but it's not as though they added complexity for the fun of it the first time around. Keeping things within safe, never mind comfortable, parameters in a vacuum isn't trivial.
Oh FFS. Let's see: the whole human race doesn't have 10,000 hours of EVA activity logged, but we've been sailing on the ocean since before recorded history. Yet somehow, somehow, there's still things to be learned about designing, building and sailing better sailboats. Ask any America's Cup team. NASA has eventualities even most good engineers would never dream of already planned for, printed up, and sitting in a binder, waiting for that 1 in 1,000,000,000 Bad Thing (tm) to happen. But /tards will always be there to say "derp, they should have done that, and done it cheaper, after all, my tax dollars <chest thump> droooolll...".
Slashdotters are clever and generally well informed, but this is way out of your league.
I'm trying to moderate today but the fact is that none of you know anything about space suits.
Consider yourselves modded down one point.
For many years, many well trained people have devoted time, energy and tons of money to devise a better space suit. It's hard to imagine even a very clever reader here having anything worth contributing to the issue. Please move on to a story where your comments will be competent.
...omphaloskepsis often...
A tethered suit (like the early diving suits) would fix any problem with a life-support system. Why not have a tethered backup for suits?
Learn to love Alaska
You would be surprised at how much changes in the vacuum environment in an orbit around a star. Suddenly the whole tether needs to be insulated, lest whatever working fluid you carry freezes in the shadow or boils in the sunlight. The insulation needs to survive flexing in those temperature extremes. Earthbound liquid ocean environment is quite thermally benign - it is all within the confines of liquid salty water. Almost none of the non-metallic materials used in this 100+ year old pre-SCUBA technology would withstand the environment of space for any usable length of time.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.