Posted on 11/10/2015 5:24:03 PM PST by BenLurkin
The first story recounts a 1997 fire on the Russian Mir space station.
The episode is re-told through multiple astronauts and Russian cosmonauts but the central figure ends up being American astronaut Jerry Linenger, who was new to the space station at the time of the incident.
It's both relatable and horrifying to discover that the stupid mistakes that happen in every workplace also happen in space: Instead of being out of soap or sanitizer, the first respirator Linenger tried on didn't provide oxygen.
...
He also tells a second story of an incident four months later when an out-of-control cargo ship careened toward the Mir.
(Excerpt) Read more at communityvoices.post-gazette.com ...
If it was easy we’d all be doing it.
I’ll catch it between ads during the debate tonight. It will be on again soon anyway.
My brother worked at the Kennedy Space Center before he retired. He used to tell me horror stories about space missions, usually related to Russian hardware. Their portion of the station was a compound kludge and Mir is a ride from hell.
Yeah, Russian tech and equipment generally sucks, but they’re the only nation to send their cosmonauts into space with SHOTGUNS. Major points.
No DVR? Talk about outdated technology.
I recall the IAM Shop Steward at the railroad locomotive shop I worked at once saying, "Hell, if it were easy, you'd have women and children doing it!"
Apollo 13 Accident
Approaching 56 hours into the mission, Apollo 13 was approximately 205,000 miles (330,000 km) from Earth en route to the Moon.[12][13] Approximately six and a half minutes after the end of a live TV broadcast from the spacecraft, Haise was in the process of powering down the LM, while Lovell was stowing the TV camera, and Houston flight controllers asked Swigert to turn on the hydrogen and oxygen tank stirring fans in the Service Module, which were designed to destratify the cryogenic contents and increase the accuracy of their quantity readings.
Almost two minutes later, the astronauts heard a “loud bang,” accompanied by fluctuations in electrical power and firing of the attitude control thrusters.[6] The crew initially thought that a meteoroid might have struck the Lunar Module. Communications and telemetry to Earth were lost for 1.8 seconds, until the system automatically corrected by switching the high-gain S-band antenna used for translunar communications from narrow-beam to wide-beam mode.[14]
Immediately after the bang, Lovell reported a “main B bus undervolt”, a temporary loss of operating voltage on the second of the spacecraft’s main electrical circuits. Oxygen tank 2 immediately read quantity zero. About three minutes later, the number 1 and number 3 fuel cells failed. Lovell reported seeing out the window that the craft was venting “a gas of some sort” into space. The number 1 oxygen tank quantity gradually reduced to zero over the next 130 minutes, entirely depleting the SM’s oxygen supply.[15]
Because the fuel cells generated the Command/Service Module’s electrical power by combining hydrogen and oxygen into water, when oxygen tank 1 ran dry, the remaining fuel cell finally shut down, leaving the craft on the Command Module’s limited-duration battery power and water. The crew was forced to shut down the CM completely to save this for re-entry, and to power up the LM to use as a “lifeboat.”[16]
This situation had been suggested during an earlier training simulation, but had not been considered a likely scenario.[17] Without the LM, the accident would certainly have been fatal.[18]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_13#Accident
“Okay, Houston -I believe we’ve had a problem here.”
Audio clip at Wikipedia: 2min, 59sec
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Apollo13-wehaveaproblem.ogg
I was fortunate enough to actually meet Jack Swigert and have an extended conversation with him. Fascinating guy with a lot of fascinating stories. He said the crew was too busy to be scared, except for the brief period when the spacecraft passed behind the moon and they lost communications with Ground Control. He said they all just looked at each other in the cold and the silence, a quarter of a million miles away from home, and — to use his words — “realized just how f__ked we were.”
Government contractors: Lowest Bidder ?
They have to submit a lengthy document describing how they meet or exceed the specifications.
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