I’d Love The Mileage On This One
CNN trying to act like a news source by carrying this Associated Press story: Space station computers rebooted, partial power restored
HOUSTON, Texas (AP) — Russian computers that control the international space station’s orientation and oxygen and water supplies were partly working again Thursday after failing the day before.
Flight controllers in Moscow were able to re-establish some communication with the computers overnight, and Russian engineers were working Thursday to restore the rest of the system, NASA space station flight director Holly Ridings said.
“They’ve made a lot of progress,” she said. “There are some cleanup steps to do still and some investigation.”
Officials with NASA and the Russian space agency still don’t know why the computers went down. They had never seen that type of failure on the space station before, and they believe it may be related to electrical power rather than computer software.
A new solar array had been unfolded outside the station Tuesday to help provide power for the orbiting outpost, and astronauts spent Wednesday hooking up a joint that will let the solar arrays track the sun.
I don’t want to go all Fristian with an extremely long distance diagnosis, but the problem, possibly power related occurs as people are mucking about with the solar arrays that supply power. I get a feeling the two events might be related.
4 comments
Does it bother you that the computers were said to be partially working? In my limited experience with computers I would say that if your computer appeared to be partially OK it wasn’t. It is amazing what wishful thinking will do for perception.
Actually, more than a little as any of those three functions are an emergency, and if the orientation isn’t working, disconnecting the shuttle is more than a little tricky.
Russians tend to be rather casual about redundancy and back-up systems.
“Russians tend to be rather casual about redundancy and back-up systems.” – Bryan
I can’t help remembering a few years back when there was a wastewater recycling problem on Mir, with two Russians and one American on board… and the Russians, because of cash problems, couldn’t send replacement toilets for a couple of weeks. I wrote some scatological doggerel about it, but regrettably it’s no longer online.
Their emergency oxygen was that mining candle. They look at space flight as inherently dangerous and down spend time or money on safety. If kosmonauts die, they will get a medal and someone else will take their place.