STS 122, Colombus to the ISS |
STS 122, Colombus to the ISS |
Dec 5 2007, 10:42 PM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2922 Joined: 14-February 06 From: Very close to the Pyrénées Mountains (France) Member No.: 682 |
Here we are with another Shuttle launch. Only another 1000 days to go. We're going to miss that.
HD television is available @nasa new web site but not for live videos unfortunately. May be one day on the net. On top of Colombus delivery, when Atlantis will leave the ISS, we'll have the 3rd version (out of 4 scheduled) of the 16's ISS expedition crew as follow : Witson - Malenchenko - Anderson Witson - Malenchenko - Tani Witson - Malenchenko - Eyharts Witson - Malenchenko - Reisman It's nice that (the) Atlantis will deliver Colombus (remind me of something) -------------------- |
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Dec 7 2007, 07:50 PM
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Merciless Robot Group: Admin Posts: 8784 Joined: 8-December 05 From: Los Angeles Member No.: 602 |
Mixed feelings about the potential decision to fly as-is with the empty tank sensor malfunction. Since all three are out (one's showing dry tank when immersed, the other two are showing open-circuit indications), either there's a multi-wire harness problem, which in my experience is a result of either miswiring or physical damage, or that the multiplexing device that's interpreting & relaying the signals to the rest of the vehicle isn't feeling very well. A third possibility is that one sensor's failed and some other event happened to the other two, which share an unexpected single-point vulnerability. Coincidental compound malfunctions begin to occur late in a system's life-cycle, where the Shuttle's definitely at...and, boy, are they ever a pain to troubleshoot.
Since it is a backup system, the temptation will be there for managers to fly it using a workaround, which is exactly what's being discussed. Saw this happen many times on USAF aircraft with no ill effects (esp. during Desert Storm) save piling up the maintenance discrepancies & increasing downtime after the mission. What I don't like is that an inflight abort for the Shuttle is incredibly more risky than that for an aircraft. I'm also quite concerned about the possible wire harness damage failure mode I mentioned; are there any wires for other critical systems bundled in there as well? There's an old Air Force aircraft maintenance acronym--FIFIFIL, which, cleaned up for a G-rated audience means "Fudge it, fly it, fix it later". Suffice to say that it's generally a bad paradigm to apply to spaceflight. I'm thinking that the best choice may be to bite the bullet, fix the problem, eat the holiday overtime, and shoot for the 2 Jan launch window. -------------------- A few will take this knowledge and use this power of a dream realized as a force for change, an impetus for further discovery to make less ancient dreams real.
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