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How NASA Kept the ISS Flying While Harvey Hit Mission Control (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: In the days before Harvey hit Texas, flight controllers at NASA's Johnson Space Center outside of Houston had a decision to make: should they evacuate or ride out the storm at the agency's Mission Control Center? The dilemma wasn't just about the safety of the flight controllers. These personnel are tasked with flying the International Space Station -- a round-the-clock job that can't be done just anywhere. If there's a gap in ground communication, it could put the astronauts in danger. [...] On August 22nd, three days before the storm hit, the mission team was briefed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and decided the best plan was to stay put. They realized that whatever hit Texas would likely hit Round Rock, too, which is located outside of Austin. Plus, Harvey's real danger looked to be the water rather than the winds. The building containing the Mission Control Center is designed to withstand flooding incredibly well. But the team also knew they had to prepare. "Where you don't want to find yourself is just a single flight controller in any position who can't leave because there's no one to replace them," says Scoville. So the flight controllers were told to come into work early and to make sure they had a way to both enter and leave the center safely. Many showed up Friday night with "big, monstrous climbing backpacks," says Scoville. Meanwhile, cots were set up in a nearby room and in a building that serves as an astronaut quarantine facility, where astronauts quarantine before launch to avoid getting sick in space. "We have training rooms that are a mere copy of the flight control room," says Scoville. "They have the same consoles and same screens, but we turned off the lights and put some cots in there. It was interesting to see these rooms usually lit up with all these screens blacked out for people to sleep." Throughout the weekend, Mission Control operated with the bare minimum essential personnel needed to keep the ISS working safely. Normally, flight controller teams work in nine-hour shifts, swapping out three times a day. During the storm, only about six flight controllers worked each shift, and some stretched their shifts to 12 hours. Because the flooding made the roads impassable, everyone had to spend a couple of nights at NASA.
According to the linked article on theVerge, Hunstville, AL is the backup control room. Should a nearby hotel in Round Rock, be insufficient.
I hope they gave those folks a couple doses of Modafinil to keep them going. Early, right after waking up. The drug puts you into a mode like when you've got work due soon, and you're not panicked, but you're dead-focused on it--it's the mode your brain goes into when there might be tigers around, but you haven't found a tiger hunting you yet, so you're on high alert so you don't die. You get a headache and you forget about it in 4 seconds, and notice it every hour or so and don't bother getting a Tylenol because you have other shit to do.
Not only does it make the long shift tolerable, but it makes the exhaustion from that kind of overwork go away. Stuff lasts 14 hours, so you take it early because it's not so nice to sleep on (you can, but it's nice to have it out of your system).
I got some for ADHD, but it caused the most severe depression that can exist after a few weeks of daily use. That's not even a listed side-effect, and I had slept... pretty much not at all for a year prior. Amphetamine also causes depression while it's active: I don't sleep for 26 hours and I feel kind of lethargic and dysphoric until the drug wears off--but not fatigued. My psychiatrist finally gave me Strattera instead and it caused serotonin mania at full dose; it's working at the current dose, and I want to try trimming it back a bit to see if I can get more energy and less emotional suppression without a relapse of never-ending insomnia and uncontrollable impulsiveness.
Modafinil, by the way, is prescribed for shift work syndrome. If they're interrupting their circadian rhythm, that's what the drug is for, so says the FDA. A real doctor who can actually give medical advice would have to have a look to make sure they're not taking any drugs with bad interactions; it's a good ask before you put people under this kind of strain.
In my opinion, we should be investigating the viability of statutory availability for certain temporary, high-strain, high-risk situations--disaster response, long-hour surgery, and so forth--because those situations are miserable and mistakes mean people die. If this is a proper and safe tool for these critical situations, then it's ludicrous for us not to use it.
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The Russian control room is a big no go. Can you just imagine all the investigations that would be launched to determine who may have "colluded" with Russia and possibly participated in illegal technology transfers that may have violated US sanctions during the cutover process? We would have to double the number of Senators, Representatives, FBI agents, NSA agents, CIA agents, and independent investigators to get it all sorted out. It would be a lot less painful just to watch the IIS de-orbit and crash. The only upside to this would be if it could be made to crash at a specific target such as NK.