Tag: engineering

Why things break in space

3:22 pm

Updated and bumped: I will be discussing this story on the the John Batchelor Show tonight, February 17, Friday, 12:50 am (Eastern), and then re-aired on Sunday, February 19, 12:50 am (Eastern).
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Someday, humans will be traveling far from Earth in large interplanetary spaceships not very different than the International Space Station (ISS). Isolated and dependent on these ships for survival, these travelers will have no choice but to know how to maintain and repair their vessels whenever something on them should break.

And things will break. Entropy rules, and with time all things deteriorate and fail.

Each failure, however, is also a precious opportunity to learn something about the environment of space. Why did an item break? What caused it to fail? Can we do something to prevent the failure in the future? Finding answers to these questions will make it possible to build better and more reliable interplanetary spaceships.

ISS is presently our only testbed for studying these kinds of engineering questions. And in 2007, a spectacular failure, combined with an epic spacewalk, gave engineers at the Johnson Space Center a marvelous opportunity to study these very issues.
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A new study in China has found that electric cars are more harmful to public health per kilometer traveled than conventional vehicles.

2:20 pm

Surprise, surprise! A new study in China has found that electric cars are more harmful to public health per kilometer traveled than conventional vehicles.

The problem here isn’t the effort to develop electric cars in the hope they can reduce pollution. The problem is that our government is imposing its preference, prior to anyone finding out if this technology can actually do the job.

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The decision by China to launch their next Shenzhou manned capsule unnamed has made at least one China space expert worried.

7:15 pm

The decision by China to launch their next Shenzhou manned capsule unmanned has made at least one China space expert worried.

Why the sudden change? It seems clear that there must be technical issues at work, and they must be fairly serious. Statements in the Chinese media hint at performing tests on the small tunnel connecting the Shenzhou spacecraft to the Tiangong module after docking. If we decode the typically vague reportage, it seems fair to assume that there could be some sort of technical problem with the pressurization of this tunnel. This problem could have been exposed during the Shenzhou 8 docking.

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For its second attempt to launch the Orbiting Carbon Observatory, NASA has finally decided to dump Orbital Sciences’ Taurus XL rocket, the same rocket that failed on two previous launch attempts.

8:57 am

For its second attempt to launch the Orbiting Carbon Observatory, NASA has finally decided to dump Orbital Sciences’ Taurus XL rocket, the same rocket that failed on two previous launch attempts.

The decision to change launch rockets will delay launch by at least a year. Still, this is better than losing a third research satellite.

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“The villain of the piece.”

8:52 am

LightSquared and GPS: “The villain of the piece.”

The answer emerging from countless legal filings and Congressional hearings is that the government itself is the villain of the piece, the absence of collaboration between agencies allowing one to act without consulting the others. In bypassing its normal processes to expedite approval of LightSquared’s plan to use its mobile satellite service frequencies for a terrestrial broadband wireless network, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) left its fellow Defense and Transportation Departments, Homeland Security and others, scrambling to protect GPS signals on which they now depend.

Actually, saying the “government” is the villain is too vague. Let us name names, highlighted in bold below:

An independent agency, the FCC claimed to be acting in the public interest by boosting the Obama administration’s national broadband plan when it approved LightSquared’s proposal, but in bypassing the normal notice of proposed rulemaking step it short-circuited a technical process that would have addressed the GPS interference issue in an orderly matter. In the subsequent rush to perform tests, critics were quick to point out close personal and political links between President Barack Obama, FCC chairman Julian Genachowski and hedge-fund manager Philip Falcone, LightSquared’s majority owner.

“Substantial federal resources, including over $2 million from the FAA, have been expended and diverted from other programs in testing and analyzing LightSquared’s proposals,” John Porcari, deputy transportation secretary, testified to Congress on Feb. 8. “This level of investment in assisting a commercial applicant to achieve the successful approval of its government application is quite unusual,” he said. [emphasis mine]

Shall we put it more bluntly, as I like to do? Obama and Genachowski attempted to bypass the normal licensing procedures in order to help Falcone (who had given mucho contributions to Obama’s campaign war chest) and in the process wasted millions of taxpayer dollars while simultaneously threatening the operation of millions of GPS units used by the general public and the military.

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The Russians have confirmed that their scientists have successfully drilled into Lake Vostok in Antartica.

8:53 am

The Russians have confirmed that their scientists have successfully drilled into Lake Vostok in Antarctica.

Still no results, but this is not surprising, as these scientists will need time to analyze their data.

Update: More details from Science:

On Saturday, the drill had encountered water at about 3766 meters depth, but the team determined that it was a water lens sitting above the surface of the lake rather than the lake itself. The team collected water samples from the lens, and then kept drilling until reaching the lake surface itself. As expected, the pressurized water of the lake rose about 30 to 40 meters through the borehole and froze, plugging the borehole; the team will return next fall to retrieve the plug and examine it for signs of life.

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For the last five days there has been no contact with the Russian scientists drilling down more than two miles to Lake Vostok in Antarctica.

8:07 am

Updated and bumped: Six days now, and no word.

Fact meets science fiction: For the last five days there has been no contact with the Russian scientists drilling down more than two miles to Lake Vostok in Antarctica.

The team from Russia’s Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute (AARI) have been drilling for weeks in an effort to reach isolated Lake Vostok, a vast, dark body of water hidden 13,000 ft. below the ice sheet’s surface. The lake hasn’t been exposed to air in more than 20 million years.

Priscu said there was no way to get in touch with the team — and the already cold weather is set to plunge, as Antarctica’s summer season ends and winter sets in. “Temps are dropping below -40 Celsius [-40 degrees Fahrenheit] and they have only a week or so left before they have to winterize the station,” he said. “I can only imagine what things must be like at Vostok Station this week.”

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R.I.P: Roger Boisjoly, 73, has died.

8:00 am

R.I.P: Roger Boisjoly, 73, has died.

Boisjoly was the engineer who in 1985 warned NASA about the danger of launching the shuttle in cold weather, that the solid rocket booster’s joints might not seal correctly under those conditions, thereby causing a catastrophic failure. Sadly, he was ignored, even ostracized, and on January 28, 1986, Challenger broke apart 74 seconds after launch, killing seven astronauts.

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Virgin Galactic hopes to begin the first powered flight tests of SpaceShipTwo this coming summer.

10:02 pm

Getting close: Virgin Galactic hopes to begin the first powered flight tests of SpaceShipTwo this coming summer.

“Over the next few months we’re integrating parts and pieces of the hybrid rocket motor into the SpaceShipTwo airframe, completing ground testing of the rocket motor, and then [will] try and start powered flight over the summer,” [chief executive officer and president George] Whitesides told SPACE.com. Those rocket-powered flights, he said, will continue for some period of time. Whitesides said it looks possible “to get up to space altitude by the end of the year, if all goes well.”

The company is also building a second WhiteKnightTwo and SpaceShipTwo,

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The head of Russia’s space agency makes news again

9:33 am

The following stories are all the result of statements made by Vladimir Popovkin, the head of Roscosmos, the Russian Federal space agency, during a radio interview yesterday.

This is the same guy that only a few weeks ago was throwing accusations at the U.S. for the failure of Phobos-Grunt.

What should we make of these statements? First, everything Popovkin says is aimed at fund-raising. Whatever his background, he is a political appointee whose job is to generate interest and funding for Russia’s space program. Everything he says in public must be weighed against this reality. That he first tried to shift the blame to the U.S. for Phobos-Grunt’s loss was an effort to absolve his program from any blame and thus reduce the possibility that the Russian government might cut his funding. Now that his agency has gotten approval of its insurance payment for the failure, however, he is free to say otherwise.

Second, these announcements give us a clear indication of where the Russia space effort is heading, and that effort looks both thoughtful and intelligent.
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The Orion test capsule arrived in Alabama for tests, covered in fan signatures.

6:45 pm

You think Americans aren’t interested in space travel? Get this: The Orion test capsule arrived in Alabama for tests, covered in fan signatures.

Orion and NASA’s space launch system might not get us there, but that doesn’t matter in this case. The public is expressing its desire for space travel quite clearly. All they need is someone to provide it to them at a reasonable cost.

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