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It is now July, time once again to celebrate the start of this webpage in 2010 with my annual July fund-raising campaign.

 

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A Dragon cargo capsule had a valve issue at ISS in June

The Dragon cargo capsule that had been docked to ISS in June apparently had a faulty valve that impacted no operations but has required SpaceX to review similar valves on all manned and cargo Dragon capsules.

The valve — known as an isolation valve — is designed to come on in case of a thruster leak, Reed said during the press conference. Since no leak was happening at the time it was stuck open, the valve “didn’t have to serve any purpose.”

The affected spacecraft, known as CRS-28, otherwise returned to Earth normally on June 30 after 25 days in space. After checking into the valve on CRS-28, SpaceX looked at its entire spacecraft line. They found “corrosion among certain units,” Reed said, which SpaceX is looking into identifying and addressing.

Knowing SpaceX, it will now not only find out the root cause, but fix it so that the corrosion never appears again, thus making its Dragon spacecraft even more reliable.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

4 comments

  • pzatchok

    I wonder if its corrosion from the fuel or from the salt water on landing?

  • pawn

    Corrosion control is hard. Better to engineer change out/inspection hardware and logistics and rebuild/repack methods to minimize turn around time and cost. The fact that this problem was allowed to cause a failure on orbit is a bit disconcerting.

  • Jeff Wright

    Same as with Starliner…

  • Corrosion control is hard.

    The need for perpetual vigilance to prevent natural processes from turning the useful to rust or dust* … and yet, the universe still maintains its combination of structure and dynamic behavior … are evidence that we didn’t just happen … we weren’t just created … but that the Creator is still intervening in His creation to this day.

    Including with humanity, for the behavioral/moral order is subject to corrosion by us, with similar destructive results.

    * though as a “battery guy”, this means y’all keep buying more batteries from me :)

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