6 ms·

The Day the Space Station Lurched

40 points by NotSwift 5y ago

ButtSpark69 5y ago
What a generous universe to give us a second gentle reminder in such short time that end-to-end software testing is important.
- robbedpeter 5y ago
  I'm not sure why Russian technology is trusted. This is the latest of several screw-ups in the last 5 years, ranging from sabotage to incompetence to bad software coming out of Russia. It's not that their technology isn't cutting edge or valid. They simply aren't accountable to the same rigor that NASA imposes in the US. They're playing by different rules and there's no mutual recourse for misconduct or malice. National pride and reputation is all well and good, but the ISS mission deserves better. "Oops, we killed the ISS, guess we'll do better next time" isn't something that should be so frequent a possibility.
  - unionpivo 5y ago
    because they are co owners of the station. US can't just decide to not let Russians on it.
  - Clewza313 5y ago
    Not to put too fine a point on it, but the Soviet/Russian space program has a much better track record than the US: the US accounts for 15 of 19 spaceflight fatalities, and 9 of 11 training or test fatalities (including 1 for Virgin, not NASA). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight-related_accidents_and_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight-related_ac... In fairness, the US has flown around 2.5x more people into space, but the Soyuz also ferried a whole lot of them up and down.
    - pacificmint 5y ago
      > the US accounts for 15 of 19 spaceflight fatalities That’s skewed though because the US craft had more people on board. The two shuttle accidents killed 14 astronauts while the two Soyuz accidents killed 4. In terms of number of fatal incidents they are even if you discount the X-15, or pretty close if you don’t.
      - Clewza313 5y ago
        Surely the Soviets deserve some credit for never designing and continuing to fly something as hysterically unreliable and dangerous as the Shuttle? Although you do have to wonder how the Buran would have fared if it has survived the Soviet collapse.
    - hoseja 5y ago
      (published fatalities, the same way a jammed tunnel with thousands of cars recently flooded and the official death toll in all of China was 53.)
      - Clewza313 5y ago
        I hate to disappoint you, comrade, but the "lost cosmonauts" have been pretty thoroughly debunked. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Cosmonauts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Cosmonauts
    - redis_mlc 5y ago
      Actually, the Soviets had a rocket blow up on the pad near their control center, and lost hundreds of staff. Also, they deliberately launched one of their early large rockets with known defects even more serious than tiles for political reasons, and killed one of Gagarin's friends.
    - fsagx 5y ago
      Does the training or test fatalities include 3 for the Apollo 1 fire? If counting ground-based accidents, it seems incomplete to leave out the Soviet N-1 explosion that killed more than all the other incidents combined.
  - DocTomoe 5y ago
    The same rigor as NASA, huh? The same NASA that lost an orbiter and crew because of political pressure to launch under non-optimal circumstances, and another orbiter and crew because they fell prey to normalization of deviance when it came to damage assessment? Space is hard, incredibly hard. We can only guess how hard space is. And all we can do, as spacefarers, is to be better. That's the same process we used to make flight safer, and it will work with space.
  - carlmr 5y ago
    >They're playing by different rules and there's no mutual recourse for misconduct or malice. Does Russian have recourse for misconduct or malice from NASA? If not then I think it's a situation where both parties have skin in the game and are trying their best. Mistakes happen, and it would be counterproductive to assume malice without evidence. If you want to make your point, I'd at least expect some kind of statistical analysis of accident frequency vs number of contributions, and then doing an analysis if there is a significant deviation in the distribution. My null hypothesis is that the frequency of mistakes/accidents is roughly proportional to the number of modules contributed by each nation.
n_f 5y ago
the whole concept of the ISS is pretty crazy-- humans have had people in space there almost continuously for decades
- iso1631 5y ago
  Mir was occupied continuously from 1989 until August 1999. There was then an interlude until November 2000 when permanent occupation of ISS began. It's a shame in a way that Mir didn't hang on for an extra 18 months
  - DocTomoe 5y ago
    In all fairness, Mir soldiered on way longer than it was designed to, and in the last year or two had basically constant issues.
  - ypcx 5y ago
    And just like that, we've been set back by 10 years in waiting for a chair at the Milky Way Galactic Federation of Planets, which requires a 100 year continued presence of humans in space.
    - rlpb 5y ago
      What kind of Galactic Federation defines their requirements in terms of time intervals defined by the orbital period of some random planet using numbers that are nice and round but only in some alien base?
      - WalterBright 5y ago
        A Hollywood scriptwriter federation.
      - rbanffy 5y ago
        It's mostly a coincidence. It's defined as three times the half-life Rhodium 101.
  - 5y ago
gregoriol 5y ago
A whole new level of chaos monkey
LeoPanthera 5y ago
"Lurched" is borderline clickbait. The astronauts on board didn't even notice the station was rotating until they were told.
- avnigo 5y ago
  Agreed, but apparently the situation was more serious than initially reported, according to the NASA flight director [0] and his interview [1]. [0]: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/space-international-station-iss-russian-module-emergency-b1895814.html https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/sp... [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/02/science/nasa-space-station-zebulon-scoville.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/02/science/nasa-space-statio...

40 points by NotSwift 5y ago

What a generous universe to give us a second gentle reminder in such short time that end-to-end software testing is important.

robbedpeter 5y ago
I'm not sure why Russian technology is trusted. This is the latest of several screw-ups in the last 5 years, ranging from sabotage to incompetence to bad software coming out of Russia. It's not that their technology isn't cutting edge or valid. They simply aren't accountable to the same rigor that NASA imposes in the US. They're playing by different rules and there's no mutual recourse for misconduct or malice. National pride and reputation is all well and good, but the ISS mission deserves better. "Oops, we killed the ISS, guess we'll do better next time" isn't something that should be so frequent a possibility.
- unionpivo 5y ago
  because they are co owners of the station. US can't just decide to not let Russians on it.
- Clewza313 5y ago
  Not to put too fine a point on it, but the Soviet/Russian space program has a much better track record than the US: the US accounts for 15 of 19 spaceflight fatalities, and 9 of 11 training or test fatalities (including 1 for Virgin, not NASA). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight-related_accidents_and_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight-related_ac... In fairness, the US has flown around 2.5x more people into space, but the Soyuz also ferried a whole lot of them up and down.
  - pacificmint 5y ago
    > the US accounts for 15 of 19 spaceflight fatalities That’s skewed though because the US craft had more people on board. The two shuttle accidents killed 14 astronauts while the two Soyuz accidents killed 4. In terms of number of fatal incidents they are even if you discount the X-15, or pretty close if you don’t.
    - Clewza313 5y ago
      Surely the Soviets deserve some credit for never designing and continuing to fly something as hysterically unreliable and dangerous as the Shuttle? Although you do have to wonder how the Buran would have fared if it has survived the Soviet collapse.
  - hoseja 5y ago
    (published fatalities, the same way a jammed tunnel with thousands of cars recently flooded and the official death toll in all of China was 53.)
    - Clewza313 5y ago
      I hate to disappoint you, comrade, but the "lost cosmonauts" have been pretty thoroughly debunked. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Cosmonauts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Cosmonauts
  - redis_mlc 5y ago
    Actually, the Soviets had a rocket blow up on the pad near their control center, and lost hundreds of staff. Also, they deliberately launched one of their early large rockets with known defects even more serious than tiles for political reasons, and killed one of Gagarin's friends.
  - fsagx 5y ago
    Does the training or test fatalities include 3 for the Apollo 1 fire? If counting ground-based accidents, it seems incomplete to leave out the Soviet N-1 explosion that killed more than all the other incidents combined.
- DocTomoe 5y ago
  The same rigor as NASA, huh? The same NASA that lost an orbiter and crew because of political pressure to launch under non-optimal circumstances, and another orbiter and crew because they fell prey to normalization of deviance when it came to damage assessment? Space is hard, incredibly hard. We can only guess how hard space is. And all we can do, as spacefarers, is to be better. That's the same process we used to make flight safer, and it will work with space.
- carlmr 5y ago
  >They're playing by different rules and there's no mutual recourse for misconduct or malice. Does Russian have recourse for misconduct or malice from NASA? If not then I think it's a situation where both parties have skin in the game and are trying their best. Mistakes happen, and it would be counterproductive to assume malice without evidence. If you want to make your point, I'd at least expect some kind of statistical analysis of accident frequency vs number of contributions, and then doing an analysis if there is a significant deviation in the distribution. My null hypothesis is that the frequency of mistakes/accidents is roughly proportional to the number of modules contributed by each nation.

n_f 5y ago

the whole concept of the ISS is pretty crazy-- humans have had people in space there almost continuously for decades

iso1631 5y ago
Mir was occupied continuously from 1989 until August 1999. There was then an interlude until November 2000 when permanent occupation of ISS began. It's a shame in a way that Mir didn't hang on for an extra 18 months
- DocTomoe 5y ago
  In all fairness, Mir soldiered on way longer than it was designed to, and in the last year or two had basically constant issues.
- ypcx 5y ago
  And just like that, we've been set back by 10 years in waiting for a chair at the Milky Way Galactic Federation of Planets, which requires a 100 year continued presence of humans in space.
  - rlpb 5y ago
    What kind of Galactic Federation defines their requirements in terms of time intervals defined by the orbital period of some random planet using numbers that are nice and round but only in some alien base?
    - WalterBright 5y ago
      A Hollywood scriptwriter federation.
    - rbanffy 5y ago
      It's mostly a coincidence. It's defined as three times the half-life Rhodium 101.
- 5y ago

gregoriol 5y ago

A whole new level of chaos monkey

LeoPanthera 5y ago

"Lurched" is borderline clickbait. The astronauts on board didn't even notice the station was rotating until they were told.

avnigo 5y ago
Agreed, but apparently the situation was more serious than initially reported, according to the NASA flight director [0] and his interview [1]. [0]: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/space-international-station-iss-russian-module-emergency-b1895814.html https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/sp... [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/02/science/nasa-space-station-zebulon-scoville.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/02/science/nasa-space-statio...