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I don't understand how this incident, involving a Russian spacecraft, necessarily indicates that NASA now has a poor safety culture again. The argument seems t

I don't understand how this incident, involving a Russian spacecraft, necessarily indicates that NASA now has a poor safety culture again. The argument seems to be missing a step.

slowmovintarget 5y ago
Agree. The way the article is written you'd think this was NASA's station. How dare NASA let this happen! It doesn't belong to the US, it isn't NASA's station, it is the International Space Station. The module that tried to take its football and go home was Russian.
- rhcom2 5y ago
  The article is criticizing what it sees as NASA's desire to go along with the Russians and just ignore it without a real investigation.
- alisonkisk 5y ago
  The modules was latched to an American module. When your left arm decides to "go home" and your right arm doesn't, it's a problem for your right arm too.
figassis 5y ago
If all the US side has are flywheels to counter orientation issues, rather than thrusters, maybe costs are being cut where they should not?
- motoboi 5y ago
  Just as no one carries a winch to counter their vehicle sudden backward acceleration. We just have turning wheels for normal day to day control. It’s much more efficient just having a sane procedure to check which gear you are engaging.
  - alisonkisk 5y ago
    We have two kinds of brakes.
    - greedo 5y ago
      Actually, most cars have one type of brake, with two modes of activation.
- simonh 5y ago
  It may be just down to the geometry of the station if the Russian sections are in the most efficient positions to mount the thrusters. Or maybe it’s because you need to have a single control system in control of each system, one for the thrusters and one for the flywheels, and it’s not viable to have those span the US and RU sections. In practice you need both systems. You can’t just run up flywheels indefinitely, every now and then you need to use thrusters so you can spin them down. Meanwhile flywheels give you fine control that’s difficult to achieve with thrusters, especially on something as big and complex as the station.
  - dtgriscom 5y ago
    Small quibble: the ISS gyroscopes are constant-speed; they apply torque to the station by pivoting their axes. The argument stands, though; if there's a constant need for torque then eventually the gyroscopes will end up all pointing in the same direction (a "singularity") and unable to apply further torque; thrusters will then be needed to balance the gyroscopes being returned to effective orientations. Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_moment_gyroscope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_moment_gyroscope
    - suyjuris 5y ago
      I found this very interesting, thank you for sharing!
- Denvercoder9 5y ago
  The ISS has always been designed as an integrated station of the Russian and US segment. There was never any need to duplicate functionality between both segments, as independent operation of each segment is non-goal.
divbzero 5y ago
The core of the argument is in the response to the incident: > To calm things down, official NASA spokesmen provided very preliminary underestimates in how big and how fast the station's spin had been. These were presented without any caveat that the numbers were unverified—and the real figures turned out to be much worse. The Russian side, for its part, dismissed the attitude deviation as a routine bump in a normal process of automatic docking and proclaimed there would be no formal incident investigation, especially any that would involve their American partners. Indeed, both sides seemed to agree that the sooner the incident was forgotten, the better. The author, who worked in Mission Control operations in the 1980s, argues that similar signs of degrading safety standards and minimizing mistakes led up to the Challenger tragedy.
- webreac 5y ago
  Degrading safety is a very plausible explanation. Another one is that they know exactly what went wrong and they cover for each other because the mistake is so ridiculous that it would tarnish their reputation.
  - alisonkisk 5y ago
    That's the same explanation, as thoroughly explained in the article -- politics is degrading and overriding safety.
    - unethical_ban 5y ago
      I disagree - if they are covering for a minor, understood and embarrassing mistake, then it does not mean they haven't learned lessons or that they aren't improving those standards and changing processes internally. It simply means they don't want to talk about it to the public, and want to keep it off the 6pm news. I'm not saying they *have* learned any lesson or that there isn't incompetence/laziness somewhere. I'm just saying that trying to keep the incident low-key is not itself an indication of that. As someone who has worked in IT operations, there are plenty of times where I have seen a near-outage occur because of a bad process. And many times, the offending team would quietly get their shit together but also not publicize their mistake, so as not to incur the wrath of execs.

I don't understand how this incident, involving a Russian spacecraft, necessarily indicates that NASA now has a poor safety culture again. The argument seems to be missing a step.

slowmovintarget 5y ago

Agree. The way the article is written you'd think this was NASA's station. How dare NASA let this happen! It doesn't belong to the US, it isn't NASA's station, it is the International Space Station. The module that tried to take its football and go home was Russian.

rhcom2 5y ago
The article is criticizing what it sees as NASA's desire to go along with the Russians and just ignore it without a real investigation.
alisonkisk 5y ago
The modules was latched to an American module. When your left arm decides to "go home" and your right arm doesn't, it's a problem for your right arm too.

figassis 5y ago

If all the US side has are flywheels to counter orientation issues, rather than thrusters, maybe costs are being cut where they should not?

motoboi 5y ago
Just as no one carries a winch to counter their vehicle sudden backward acceleration. We just have turning wheels for normal day to day control. It’s much more efficient just having a sane procedure to check which gear you are engaging.
- alisonkisk 5y ago
  We have two kinds of brakes.
  - greedo 5y ago
    Actually, most cars have one type of brake, with two modes of activation.
simonh 5y ago
It may be just down to the geometry of the station if the Russian sections are in the most efficient positions to mount the thrusters. Or maybe it’s because you need to have a single control system in control of each system, one for the thrusters and one for the flywheels, and it’s not viable to have those span the US and RU sections. In practice you need both systems. You can’t just run up flywheels indefinitely, every now and then you need to use thrusters so you can spin them down. Meanwhile flywheels give you fine control that’s difficult to achieve with thrusters, especially on something as big and complex as the station.
- dtgriscom 5y ago
  Small quibble: the ISS gyroscopes are constant-speed; they apply torque to the station by pivoting their axes. The argument stands, though; if there's a constant need for torque then eventually the gyroscopes will end up all pointing in the same direction (a "singularity") and unable to apply further torque; thrusters will then be needed to balance the gyroscopes being returned to effective orientations. Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_moment_gyroscope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_moment_gyroscope
  - suyjuris 5y ago
    I found this very interesting, thank you for sharing!
Denvercoder9 5y ago
The ISS has always been designed as an integrated station of the Russian and US segment. There was never any need to duplicate functionality between both segments, as independent operation of each segment is non-goal.

divbzero 5y ago

The core of the argument is in the response to the incident: > To calm things down, official NASA spokesmen provided very preliminary underestimates in how big and how fast the station's spin had been. These were presented without any caveat that the numbers were unverified—and the real figures turned out to be much worse. The Russian side, for its part, dismissed the attitude deviation as a routine bump in a normal process of automatic docking and proclaimed there would be no formal incident investigation, especially any that would involve their American partners. Indeed, both sides seemed to agree that the sooner the incident was forgotten, the better. The author, who worked in Mission Control operations in the 1980s, argues that similar signs of degrading safety standards and minimizing mistakes led up to the Challenger tragedy.

webreac 5y ago
Degrading safety is a very plausible explanation. Another one is that they know exactly what went wrong and they cover for each other because the mistake is so ridiculous that it would tarnish their reputation.
- alisonkisk 5y ago
  That's the same explanation, as thoroughly explained in the article -- politics is degrading and overriding safety.
  - unethical_ban 5y ago
    I disagree - if they are covering for a minor, understood and embarrassing mistake, then it does not mean they haven't learned lessons or that they aren't improving those standards and changing processes internally. It simply means they don't want to talk about it to the public, and want to keep it off the 6pm news. I'm not saying they *have* learned any lesson or that there isn't incompetence/laziness somewhere. I'm just saying that trying to keep the incident low-key is not itself an indication of that. As someone who has worked in IT operations, there are plenty of times where I have seen a near-outage occur because of a bad process. And many times, the offending team would quietly get their shit together but also not publicize their mistake, so as not to incur the wrath of execs.