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Electrical gear should be properly insulated and staff operating on live electrical equipment should wear appropriate protection gear. Moreso on Mars than on Ea
by petre 8y ago
Electrical gear should be properly insulated and staff operating on live electrical equipment should wear appropriate protection gear. Moreso on Mars than on Earth.
- walrus01 8y agoAt the voltages and amperages this size of small off grid pv system is, all you would ever need is insulated gloves and 1000V rated insulated electricians tools. We're not talking about arc flash suits here.
- petre 8y agoRight. You only need stuff readily available at any hardware store. But somehow a crew member managed to electrocute himself and whoever set up the habitat wiring managed to do a lousy job with the circuit breaker panel insulation. I can't really blame that woman for leaving the experiment.
- walrus01 8y agoYes. I could go buy the necessary tools to build a much better pv system right now from home depot, Platt and graybar. This is all commodity off grid photovoltaic stuff and then ordinary 120v distribution on the AC load side. Nothing special or NASA about it. Maybe they have some current shunts in place or ammeters monitoring load data, same as a residential "Sense" install.
- lopmotr 8y agoWhenever someone does a bad job, there are others who could have done it better, but you couldn't have done that person's entire job better because you weren't available and didn't apply and probably weren't qualified for all their other roles. I think the real problem is that Hawaii apparently has loose electrical safety regulations. Where I live, you're not allowed to wire your own fuse box. It might even be a criminal offence, but no homeowner would ever do that. If there are exposed live wires, then some electrician is responsible for that failure.
- neurotech1 8y agoLisa Stojanovski is a friend. I fully respect her decision to leave, and don't blame her one bit for leaving when concerns were not taken seriously. Does anyone remember STS-107 Columbia accident? That tragedy showed what was wrong with NASA safety culture.
- walrus01 8y agoWould be more amusing if they stayed, and OSHA inspectors and the local Hawaiian county's electrical code inspectors drove up there and knocked on the door.
- duxup 8y agoThe other participants concerns with continuing the mission probabbly would involve them pretending the OSHA inspectors were Martians.... because you wouldn't want to risk the study or anything!