NASAs $100,000 mistake

Space exploration is risky. Just sitting in orbit in the ISS or in the shuttle is risky.

Life is risky. Walking down the street is risky. Driving across town is risky. Point is..we all take a risk each day of our lives.

When we curl up and say that space is risky to a point where we begin to believe it is "too" risky, even after decades of study and research and hours in space, we have become less than what we once were before sending the first American up into orbit and even less than what we once were before going to the moon.

It was risky to explore the western frontier after establishing the original 13 colonies and then even more risky to pull away from Britan and becoming the USA, and risky to expand further west to add more states to the union. Had those pioneers of exporation curled up in a corner afraid of the risk and not taking the risk and being those pioneers, the USA would be a completely different situation today.

Again the point here is that if it were not for the risk taking, there wouldnt be a space program or perhaps even a United States of America! With progress there is always risk, and without risk and the determination to overcome that risk and succeed, we might as well say lets just throw in the towel to everything and be less than what we are capable of being.



HO HO HO!!!!

But they get training dont they? Lots of training I assume? they are taught to expect things like this? Somebody was not prepared on that space walk.

reply to post by SuperSlovak

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Yes, all the astronauts recieve training for nearly a year, before the actual flight if undertaken, but what must be understood is that, to err is human, they are also humans and they too make mistakes, and actually, it was better that Piper left the bag to float away, she had told the cause of the happening in an interview, the reason is, when she first opened the bag, she found it full of grease which had leaked out, and she opened the second bag to take some cloth to wipe the grease, but accidentally, the bag started drifting away, and in video, you can see her reaching for it, but in a quick change of mind she decided not to, because, what if the second bag also drifted away? The entire EVA would be ruined. So, it could have been a lot worse, saved by the spark of the mind.

reply to post by SuperSlovak

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what is your point ??????????????

accidents happen - get over it

no ammount of training or preparation wil address every eventuality

btw - as you clearly think NASA training is " inadequate " because acidents still happen

what are your views on driver training [ automobile etc ] or pilot training [ military / private / commercial ] - i guess they must be utterly inadequate too as accidents still hapen on the roads , and planes still crash due to pilot eroor

wow, a tool bag worth 100,000 dollars?...let's see ...forged metal pieces, and some type of woven bag. what? did they have a 90,000 dollar gold bar in the bag too? hey, NASA...i got an all-metal roofing hammer in my garage i'll let you have for mere 1,000 bucks.
maybe they had a really, really, expensive piece of test equipment.

[edit on 25-12-2008 by jimmyx]

First, I just want to give some props to RFburns...He actually took the time to refute my statement with factual evidence as to why the ideas that I had wouldn't work. Prove me wrong, it's one of the ways of how we learn. For the rest of you that only wanted to attack me and my statement....YOU are in the very same group of "smart" people that I hate.

My ideas wouldn't work...Kool and the gang. BUT just maybe I have enough intelligence to think up the same thing that these space guru's are thinking up as well...I just didn't have the money or time to spend on research, proving or disproving my solution.

What ideas exactly did you all come up with to get better life out of a rover?

Let us hear it smart asses, I mean smart people...

One last thing...why exactly wasn't the bag tethered? Seems like poor planning to me.

[edit on 25-12-2008 by midnightbrigade]

Do you think, that the metal roofing, will be able to withstand the extremes of space? the metal would undergo extreme heating and cooling in succession and will break under stress in no time and also, will it be sufficient to provide cover for the astronauts and able to maintain pressure suitable for living?

The components which we use here on the ground will not be suitable at all for that environment, firstly, there is the temperature to be withstood and also the need for it to be light to reduce lift-off weight, and thirdly, the design should allow the equipment to run on batteries, all have to be designed from scratch, there is a special skunk-works team for this very purpose at GSFC. And this makes space tools very expensive, all are custom designed.

And, understand that nearly 50% of all inventions over the past few decades, right from fast and safe aeroplanes to the freeze dried food(which is to date, the food for astronauts in orbit) available in super markets are NASA inventions.

Yes, there are many NASA inventions we put to good use in our everyday life, this is one of them:





Go to this site to see "10 NASA Inventions You Might Use Every Day"
science.howstuffworks.com...

While some of the items in the bag were off the shelf, other components were not. Some of the tools have to be specially modified/developed to work in space. The high price tag probably includes the R&D costs as well as testing and certification.

Many regular aircraft components have rather high prices as well, due to making them airworthy. For example, A Dado panel, which runs along the floor just under the side walls, costs about $5000. It's just a chunk of molded plastic about 1.5 feet wide and a 1 foot tall, with holes for air to pass through. Nothing special about them, but they're expensive.

So NASA isn't alone when it comes to high priced tools and components. It's pretty much a normal thing in the Aerospace industry.

Well it was supposed to be tethered. But something caused it to come loose. Either it became loose by itself, or it wasn't attached correctly to begin with, nobody knows. But it wasn't due to poor planning.

Thanks midnightbrigade. Your ideas were sound and right on track with the solar pannels and the dust problem. The JPL engineers did not anticipate the problem even after the Viking probes were already there on the surface. Pathfinder, the first rover, actually traveled from place to place and encountered different environment situations, going in some areas that had less wind due to large rocks or hills blocking the wind and dust to going into areas where it was wide open flat land and wind and dust galore.

After finding that Pathfinder's solar pannels would get a blanket of dust on them, the engineers first idea was in fact the brush wiper concept. They even tried a vacume type brush concept where a small fan pulled the airflow, to suck up the dust as the light brushes went over the pannels. But that also ended up scratching the very smooth surface of the solar pannels and thus decreased their efficiency almost to a point of being completely useless.



Definately give yourself some credit! Common sense solutions do not require space guru slide rules and certifications to think of ideas to solve a problem.



My idea to get some extra juice out of the system would be to have small wind generators on board, similar to the small wind direction and speed units that anyone can find at a good hardware store. Small, and would not take up any more weight or cost to implement, there could be two of them to catch the wind, turn a small duty generator that simply augments the solar pannels to keep the batteries charged.

This would also be a solution to help keep the batteries fairly charged at night as well as when the dust saturates over the solar pannels. And as strong as the wind is up there, the wind can definately turn the propeller to drive a small, light back-toruque generator. That would definately assist in keeping those batteries and systems up and running. They could be made of temperature resistant materials so that they would not freeze up and can fold and pack away just like the extending arm does that drills into the rock and gets close up pictures with the micro-cam. Since the wind likes to blow on Mars, well why not use it to the advantage to generate some power.



Merry Christmas!!!!


HO HO HO!!!!

With a few exceptions women and power tools (with the exception of vibrators) just don't mix. Anytime they use my tools, they never put them back and then when I need one, I spend more time searching for the tool than using it.

All these years of having space walks, I can't say I ever remember anyone losing an entire tool bag - though I do recall a tool being dropped on occasion. Maybe that's because there haven't been too many women doing space walks - I don't know - you'd think she'd of treated it like a purse instead of her husbands tool box, but who knows - maybe she was throwing a tantrum and wanted to get back at another astronaut.

As far as the tools being expensive - well good tools are expensive. It's easy to have 5-10k worth of tools in your tool box at home and people with specialty tools spend even more. I wonder if the tool price was including the cost of transport - or just the cost of the tools in the bag?

They do have some pretty neat drills and ratchets with counters that count each revolution - so they know how many turns it will take to remove or install an item with the proper torque.



[edit on 25-12-2008 by verylowfrequency]

Much of the reasons why some of those tools and other items being so expensive is because they are not mass produced. They are specialty manufactured and in very limited amounts, which makes them expensive.

Lets say a powered tool to turn a handle for the astronauts to use to open pannels in space cost 10,000 bucks. If that particular power tool was mass produced and marketed for use on Earth, that price would drop to 20 bucks or less. Plus the tool must be able to withstand the solar radiations from the sun and other factors, such as half of the tool in sunlight can heat up to 250*F and the other side of it facing away from the sun would be as cold as -250*. Thats quite a strain on a power tool. No doubt the typical Black & Decker power tool found at wally world would not survive in such an environment.

As to the teather for the toolbag, maybe the hook wasnt latched properly or was not closed completely and it just came loose, drifted away. Its also possible the astronaut/s simply forgot to attach it. There could have been an attempt to retrieve it, the thruster packs would have enough fuel to manuver to it and manuver back, since both themselves and the toolbag are moving along at the same speed. The thruster pack adjusts for attitude control, but it is not designed for prolonged travel use.

An astronaut could have teathered themsevles off, give themselves a little push off the ISS towards the toolbag, grab it, attach it to another teather belt that the astronaut brings with him/her, and then simply pull himself/herself back to the ISS on the teather they are attached to.

The risk factors are considered of course, and obviously it was decided that a 100,000 dollar toolbag wasnt worth going after and taking the risk.



Merry Christmas!!!!

HO HO HO!!!!!

Space mistakes are interesting. A whole tree of cause and effect mind maps are generated and the weak link(s) identified. A little conference on the loss of the equipment, covering present operational significance, future proceedural changes, and the psychological effect of the mistake on the astronaut's morale, motivation, and team interaction.

Or they just said, "Forget it, let's eat."

reply to post by RFBurns

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RFburns, you are going on my friends list.

I was thinking the exact same thing about a wind generator on the rover..my only issue with it is that the differential on it would have to slip like a mofo...that way the turbine would turn at nearly the same rate as the fan. That would produce a lot less power, but would also negate the use of heavier duty equipment (i.e. add weight) to withstand the torque.

Also, as far as the tethering issue is concerned, you said exactly what I meant, just a lot more eloquently. My failing is not in my reasoning, only in my communication of said reasoning. So to all that I offended, I will work in the future to exhaust my exasperation BEFORE I post, that way we wont have these misunderstandings.

reply to post by RFBurns

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Thank you for posting that. As to the poster that suggested a "wiper blade" in the first place...are you daft? So they did test it to see if it would work, but my first logical thought is one that was proved by the experiment. Dust scratches glass. The more polished the glass and finer grade the sand, the more absolute the damage. That is just common sense.
As to the fan, yeah. There's a no brainer. Lets see, we could take a fan, or two, roughly the 90 - 120mm(or the sizes used in a common computer case) and blow any dust off of the solar lens. That is unless there happens to be dust particles in the surrounding air, which would then be jetted directly into the glass material causing...wait for it....scratch pits.

Wiping blade? Bad idea, immediate an irreversible damage.
Fans? Bad idea on a longer scale, since it would take more time to create massive damage.

Nope. The Mars winds put it there, its probably best to let them sweep it off. You can bet there will probably still be some long term damage from this process as well.

Toolbag lost in space. Gone. Simple as that. You cant put that milk back in the bottle. Its a mistake, but I guess the people blasting this person who has spent the better part of his career preparing to go into the most lethal and dangerous environment conceivable by man have never made a mistake of a similar scale. So lets just tell off the professional space jockey and make a mockery of his life's work because he forgot to hook up a cable.
Why dont some of you that are downing this action just go online and apply for the space program. Make sure to put on your resume that you have never dropped a tool. I am sure that will be the new benchmark they use.

I am not going to apologize for the sarcasm. Sometimes stupid things tick me off.

reply to post by wheresthetruth

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Ever heard of laminate? Human manufacturing makes this super thin, scratch resistant material that goes on glasses to help avoid things in the air, oh I don't know, say DIRT from impacting the lens and causing light refraction.

Now I know what your going to say, any material placed on the solar panel is going to decrease efficiency. But to that, I gotta ask, isn't a a rover, that's slightly less efficient (i.e. it can only travel 9 KM a day as opposed to 10) and lasts for 6 months better than a Rover that can travel 10 KM per day for 3?

I won't apologize for my sarcasm either. Ditto

reply to post by midnightbrigade

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Added you as well.

The laminate idea is also a good one. Im not sure what NASA's next move is to help prevent the dust problem, but I think that the small wind generators could make up for loss of power with dust on the solar pannels.

The next rover, MSL, was slated to go to Mars in 2009, but has been delayed until 2011. I think there were some issues they needed to work out, and hopefully they will add a normal digital RGB camera, plus something to augment the solar pannel issue. We can only wait and see, and hope that they resume the mission plan for 2009. There is a neat camera on that rover, called MAHLI, that will get exremely sharp hi-definition close ups of those fossils in the rocks found by Spirit and Opportunty rovers. Obviously someone at NASA wants a closer look at these fossils, perhaps to see if there are any similarities to fossils found here on Earth.

IF there are similarities, that changes everything in what we thought we knew about how life began there on Mars, and here on Earth.



Cheers!!!!

Perhaps a little research would help narrow the focus, rather than a bunch of personal (seemingly uninformed) opinions ?
Like for instance the actual footage, and explanation?

Astronaut loses tool bag in Space - Short version - STS-126

YouTube Link

YouTube Link

So was it her fault for not checking the tie-down, or the fault of whoever failed to "transfer" the bag , originally?

Or the engineer, designer, manufacturer or tester of the grease canister that leaked ?
Just sayin'...

Personally, I would want to be packing facts, before spouting my opinion. But that's just me. Old school, I guess.

I recall hearing that they were planning to put a standard RGB camera on the MSL, but that was a while ago, so plans might have changed.

As for solar panels, there won't be any at all, since they will have RTG's on board.