NASA has lost it.

RalphInCA

RalphInCA

Cleared for Takeoff
Joined
Jun 1, 2014
Messages
1,353
Location
McMinnville, OR
Display Name
Display name:
RalphInCA
RalphInCA said:
It seems NASA was planning to send another probe to Mars, but one of the instruments developed a leak.

It's going to take them SEVERAL MONTHS to figure out what to do, and up to FIVE YEARS to redesign the part.

Just to fix a leak.

NASA has completely lost it. The NASA of the moon program is gone, completely gone.

So sad.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-nasa-mars-mission-20151222-story.html
Click to expand...

Time from bombing of Pearl Harbor to dropping of atomic bomb on Hiroshima was 3 years and 8 months.
 
From the article:

NASA managers and French designers of the instrument said Tuesday they must now decide whether the leak in the vacuum-sealed connector needs to be repaired, redesigned or the mission scrapped.
Click to expand...

If NASA is to blame it is with their selection of contractors.
 
SkyDog58 said:
From the article:



If NASA is to blame it is with their selection of contractors.
Click to expand...

If you're in a bureaucracy like NASA, you can kill your career much faster with an "oops" than you can advance your career by accomplishing things. With checks and balances, that means there is always someone on the team to slow down the people who actually want to accomplish something.
 
RalphInCA said:
Even back in the moon program days they used contractors.
Click to expand...

And they failed then, too. Two Apollo missions were total losses, and one killed its crew.

Like it or not, space travel is hard and very expensive. You get one shot with very complex unproven technology. If you think you can do better, JPL is quite close to you.

Rush stuff like that and mistakes happen, often unrecoverable.
 
MAKG1 said:
And they failed then, too. Two Apollo missions were total losses, and one killed its crew.

Like it or not, space travel is hard and very expensive. You get one shot with very complex unproven technology. If you think you can do better, JPL is quite close to you.

Rush stuff like that and mistakes happen, often unrecoverable.
Click to expand...

I assume you are reffering to AS-204 (later designated Apollo 1) and Apollo 13. While Apollo 1 was certainly a design flaw, the entire command module was scrutinized (for lack of a better term) in a relatively short time. I'm unfamiliar with the OP's story, but five years for a leak does seem excessive in comparison.

Apollo 13 was a loss of the mission, but far from a total loss. I don't think we need to debate that one.

Sorry to get sidetracked...
 
RalphInCA said:
It seems NASA was planning to send another probe to Mars, but one of the instruments developed a leak.

It's going to take them SEVERAL MONTHS to figure out what to do, and up to FIVE YEARS to redesign the part.

Just to fix a leak.
Click to expand...
Remember, the launch window only opens every two and a half years.

It's going to take months to figure out the problem. If a redesign is necessary, the new unit will have to be designed, validated, and tested before installation...and after installation, the integrated vehicle itself will need to be retested (thermal cycle, shock/vibration, probably thermal vacuum). Probably will use the original French company, unless you want to go through the entire process of issuing RFPs, collecting proposals, being sued by the losers, etc.

In the interim, a new launch vehicle will need to be procured, tested, etc., and the reworked spacecraft integrated atop of it.

Now, maybe all this can be done in the two and a half years until the next window. But if they miss the window...well, then a THIRD launch vehicle will have to be procured and the spacecraft itself will need to be placed into storage. Two or so years after THAT, the spacecraft comes out of the cooler, gets extensively tested (for the third time!) and re-integrated.

As for concerns about how long this takes: Where's the fire? Are we afraid something is going to scuttle under a rock if the mission is delayed for five years? How much overtime is the American public willing to pay to have this launched in 30 months rather than 60 months?

Flying in space ain't like dusting crops. These are sophisticated machines, operating in the worst environment in the solar system, with absolutely no ability to perform any but the most perfunctory maintenance over the 5-10 years the vehicle is expected to operate.

Unless there are lives at stake, you do NOT take shortcuts in space vehicle development...unless you're a throw-away mission with a 30-minute duration or a deliberate attempt to accomplish a lot on little money, and willing to accept the risk. If you've got an unlimited budget, there are things you can do. But those days ended 40 years ago.

Ron Wanttaja
 
Last edited:
My prediction, they'll fix it, it will launch in March. It will be a success, someone forgot to tighten a screw.
 
The 5 years has to do with the orbits of Earth and Mars. All we have to do is change one of those, and it can happen sooner.

Or we could build the transporter. Beam me up.
 
But they are good at Muslim Outreach, and fabricating false cliamte change data to blame man.
 
Throw some super glue and duct tape on the instrument and be done with it.
 
MAKG1 said:
If you think you can do better, JPL is quite close to you.
Click to expand...

GREAT IDEA!

I'm gonna head over there today and take over.

Gonna fire the whole lot of them. Anyone want a job as a rocket scientist?

I wonder if Leonard of Big Bang Theory is available.
 
wanttaja said:
As for concerns about how long this takes: Where's the fire? Are we afraid something is going to scuttle under a rock if the mission is delayed for five years?
Click to expand...

I would think NASA should be concerned. They already have a perception problem with an apathetic public and our current President. This isn't helping with that.

I am, and have been since the sixties, one of NASAs biggest fans, but this concerns me. It seems to show a typical beurocratic government organization, not an exciting one that is inspiring to the world.

I am fairly well educated and understand the complexities of a high tech program and the problems related to orbital and planetary dynamics, but GEEZ - several months to figure out a problem??? On a probe? When you already know it's a leak?
 
I've only known one person who worked at JPL, but he's easily one of the smartest people I know, and I move in fairly rarified circles.
 
RalphInCA said:
I would think NASA should be concerned. They already have a perception problem with an apathetic public and our current President. This isn't helping with that.

I am, and have been since the sixties, one of NASAs biggest fans, but this concerns me. It seems to show a typical beurocratic government organization, not an exciting one that is inspiring to the world.

I am fairly well educated and understand the complexities of a high tech program and the problems related to orbital and planetary dynamics, but GEEZ - several months to figure out a problem??? On a probe? When you already know it's a leak?
Click to expand...

It's a group think mentality, where youth is generally valued over experience. Generally most places have one guy or gal who can figure this stuff out, if they are well run, most are not. These contractors tend to demoralize the older guys who know what to do and drive them out, leaving the wheel to be reinvented. The Ivy MBA schools look at technology and technical people as a commodity that can be bought and brought in on a whim, just like an MBA. Unfortunately this isn't so and simple things cause failure. It's really kind of sad.
 
PaulS said:
It's a group think mentality, where youth is generally valued over experience. Generally most places have one guy or gal who can figure this stuff out, if they are well run, most are not. These contractors tend to demoralize the older guys who know what to do and drive them out, leaving the wheel to be reinvented. The Ivy MBA schools look at technology and technical people as a commodity that can be bought and brought in on a whim, just like an MBA. Unfortunately this isn't so and simple things cause failure. It's really kind of sad.
Click to expand...

Yeah, there's some of this, but it's mostly what Kyle said in post #6.
 
I heard , from a friend, that there was going to be a name change at NASA. New name NAA !

Cheers
 
I listened to a speech by Rutan right after the SpaceShip One was transferred to the Smithsonian (in fact, we rode around the museum on a golf cart with him prior to the talk).

He says NASA's big problem is that they are boring. He also repeatedly pronounced it NAY SAY.
 
NASA manned flights need to get out of the traffic pattern and go on another cross country. Until then... BORING!
 
Those of you bashing NASA for this incident must not have read anything.

First, the instrument that has the leak was built by the French space agency, CNES. They generally do good work, but they had a snag on this part, and CNES is still fixing it. NASA provided other parts of the spacecraft, and was to provide the launch. So the whole mission is delayed for the French instrument.

Second, the multi-year delay issue is not due to a failure of NASA. It is due to nature. The orbits of Earth and Mars are far apart, and 'windows' that are a few favorable weeks for launch happen only once every 26 months. The window this time was March 4 to March 30, 2016, and it was decided that the French instrument won't be ready by then.

trajectory.jpg
 
RalphInCA said:
I am fairly well educated and understand the complexities of a high tech program and the problems related to orbital and planetary dynamics, but GEEZ - several months to figure out a problem??? On a probe? When you already know it's a leak?
Click to expand...
There are two key points.

The first is *where* the leak is. Don't know the vehicle layout or the design of the instrument, but there's a good chance it's NOT just behind a convenient inspection panel (which are rare on spacecraft, in any case). GETTING AT the instrument might require partial disassembly of the spacecraft...and afterwards, you have to reassemble the thing again. And THEN, you've got to at least run it through vibration testing (to verify it's mechanically correct so it can survive the launch) and thermal cycle testing (~two weeks of temperature variations, while operating, to ensure the electronics are still OK). Very possibly you might even have to do thermal vacuum testing; sticking it in a large vacuum chamber, illuminating it with sun simulators, and running the temperature up and down to simulate as closely as possible the conditions of space.

(Favorite vacuum chamber chamber story: The visiting VIP who asked if we had to tie the spacecraft down so it wouldn't float around inside the chamber. He thought gravity went away with the air.)

Now, I've worked programs where we DIDN'T re-run major programs after a problem was found in testing. But these were small satellite programs with multiple vehicles, not huge one-off planetary-exploration programs.

The second point is *what kind of a leak it is*.

Imagine you've got all the taps shut down in your house, but the meter shows a verrryyyyy slight flow of water. How do you find the leak? Well, you can cut open the walls and look for signs of water.

Now, take all the water out of the plumbing system and install a vacuum pump. NOW find the point where air is leaking *into* the system.

Oh, and you can't use soapy water to form bubbles because of the exotic materials the system is made of.

If it's a very slight vacuum leak in the instrument, finding it will be real fun. Hopefully, it will have been designed to tolerate overpressure so they can pressurize it with helium and use a sniffer. But on some systems I've worked on, we have permanently sealed stuff like test ports once the system has been verified (since it eliminates problems with the test port itself).

Ron Wanttaja
 
If we were really smart the next mission would be a 3D printer. We could then just print the next mission package with high powered lasers and Mars dust.:D
 
RalphInCA said:
It seems NASA was planning to send another probe to Mars, but one of the instruments developed a leak.

It's going to take them SEVERAL MONTHS to figure out what to do, and up to FIVE YEARS to redesign the part.

Just to fix a leak.

NASA has completely lost it. The NASA of the moon program is gone, completely gone.

So sad.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-nasa-mars-mission-20151222-story.html
Click to expand...

Let's not forget the old metric versus imperial(standard) measurement mess about a decade ago.
 
flyingron said:
I listened to a speech by Rutan right after the SpaceShip One was transferred to the Smithsonian (in fact, we rode around the museum on a golf cart with him prior to the talk).

He says NASA's big problem is that they are boring. He also repeatedly pronounced it NAY SAY.
Click to expand...

Big words. How's Burt's space program going these days? Are they giving people rides into "space" yet? What the hell is the hold up??!! They've had plenty of time to get back on track. His operation is starting to look, you know, boring. :rolleyes2:
 
wanttaja said:
There are two key points.

The first is *where* the leak is. Don't know the vehicle layout or the design of the instrument, but there's a good chance it's NOT just behind a convenient inspection panel (which are rare on spacecraft, in any case). GETTING AT the instrument might require partial disassembly of the spacecraft...and afterwards, you have to reassemble the thing again. And THEN, you've got to at least run it through vibration testing (to verify it's mechanically correct so it can survive the launch) and thermal cycle testing (~two weeks of temperature variations, while operating, to ensure the electronics are still OK). Very possibly you might even have to do thermal vacuum testing; sticking it in a large vacuum chamber, illuminating it with sun simulators, and running the temperature up and down to simulate as closely as possible the conditions of space.


Ron Wanttaja
Click to expand...

Good points Ron. One minor nit, the instrument is not installed on the spacecraft yet, it is still in Paris at the lab where they were testing the latest fix (and discovered it didn't work). The spacecraft war shipped to the launch site without it, and will now be shipped back to Denver.
 
SkyDog58 said:
NASA manned flights need to get out of the traffic pattern and go on another cross country. Until then... BORING!
Click to expand...

Umm, just like aviation, boring in space flight is good. Be careful what you wish for. "Exciting" is for movies.

Or do you enjoy random thrown rods over hostile terrain? Maybe hire some kid to whang your prop randomly with a hammer, just to make it interesting. Perhaps cut a random control cable or short a power lead to ground?

It amazes me how many people are willing to cast judgment without understanding any of the issues, what the consequences of rushing are, what the physical constraints are, and even the history of spaceflight.

Hint: What caused the Challenger explosion?
 
Dav8or said:
Big words. How's Burt's space program going these days? Are they giving people rides into "space" yet? What the hell is the hold up??!! They've had plenty of time to get back on track. His operation is starting to look, you know, boring. :rolleyes2:
Click to expand...

Well the budgets are hugely different aren't they. ;)

Cheers
 
ColoPilot said:
Good points Ron. One minor nit, the instrument is not installed on the spacecraft yet, it is still in Paris at the lab where they were testing the latest fix (and discovered it didn't work). The spacecraft war shipped to the launch site without it, and will now be shipped back to Denver.
Click to expand...
OK, thanks. Looks like they have a convenient way to remove and replace it; probably did all the testing with a dummy.

Depending on how vital the instrument is to the overall mission, they could just bolt on ballast and go.

Ron Wanttaja
 
MAKG1 said:
It amazes me how many people are willing to cast judgment without understanding any of the issues, what the consequences of rushing are, what the physical constraints are, and even the history of spaceflight.
Click to expand...

Yep. We pilots always complain about the misconceptions non-aviators have about flying, yet over the years, I've seen a stack of dumb pilot comments about space. Some examples:

"Why did Columbia had to re-enter so fast? Couldn't they slow-flight?"

"Why didn't Columbia just fly up to the Space Station?" (Asked by a pilot with a doctorate in physics)

Space is not air; spacecraft are totally different than aircraft.

Ron Wanttaja
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top