ISS Oxygen Generator Fails

caino59 writes "It hasn't been too long since the food shortage on the International Space Station - now the main oxygen generator has failed. Apparently, the backup supply should allow them to make it to 60 days, which is past the next scheduled trip up. Hopefully, previous crews didn't hog all the O2."

ISS vs MIR failure rates?

I'm probably talking out of my ass, but didn't MIR have a much lower failure rate for critical equipment than ISS? What might the reasons be? Overly complex design of ISS equipment? Something else?

Re:ISS vs MIR failure rates?

I'm not sure if that is true of not... MIR was a much smaller design. Here are two things I do know about MIR:

--There was a major fire in 1997, the crew was barely able to extinguish it before it killed them (story here) [lubbockonline.com].

--We have no idea what the fa

Re:ISS vs MIR failure rates?

Well then, perhaps there should be a FULL TIME maintenence guy up there who's job is exclusivly to float around and tweek stuff before it goes bad?

Re:ISS vs MIR failure rates?

Name's Scruffy... the janitor.
I'm on my 10 minute break.
Scruffy's gonna die the way he lived.

Re:ISS vs MIR failure rates?

Scruffy's gonna die the way he lived.

Spaced out???

Re:ISS vs MIR failure rates?

Last I checked, the entire crew is composed of full time maintenance people. Aren't they spending only a couple hours a day conducting actual experiments?

Re:ISS vs MIR failure rates?

What this tells us is that Space Stations *are not* and *can not* be maint. free.

Re:ISS vs MIR failure rates?

That was the original plan. Station maintenence is a full-time job for two and a half crewmembers, and the original plan called for a crew of nine.

Re:ISS vs MIR failure rates?

IIRC the oxygen generator on ISS is the same type as was used on MIR? Seem to remember a slashdot -story about lack of engineers who knew how to work it a few months back.

That would make parent-post's point moot in this particular case, methinks...

Re:ISS vs MIR failure rates?

For one thing, I know that the treadmill on the ISS has been broken almost all the time, everytime a shuttle/supply ship went up in 2002-2003 in carried parts for the treadmill.

This is straight from the Russian scientists mouths who helped design and serv

Re:ISS vs MIR failure rates?

Makes you feel real eager to hop on a dramatically more complex Mars mission with no resupply for two years, doesn't it? Space engineering is hard.

O2 Generator is Back on-line

This is a non-story. The problem was fixed. Here is a link to Spaceflight Now: SpaceFlightNow [spaceflightnow.com]

Re:O2 Generator is Back on-line

You must be new here.

Re:O2 Generator is Back on-line

So how much would you pay for 22827
starting big 5 dollars :)

Re:O2 Generator is Back on-line

I nominate you for the most ironic combination of post and sig ever.

Re:O2 Generator is Back on-line

I nominate you for most cruelly coincidental combination of content error and sig discussion of knowledge [tri-bit.com] ever.

Irony has more than one meaning.

OK, so the use of 'irony' in the above post is probably still a misuse (although I'm willing to admit we've lost that one along with latin plurals - especially on fora such as /.). However I checked your site and you're a little too precious regarding th

This would not have been as much of a problem

This would not have been so bad if Dmitri didn't start thinking that the ISS was getting stuffy, and he opened both doors in the airlock to get some fresh air in there.

And the guys at EA thought they...

...had bad working conditions!

MIR

Why again did they give up MIR?

Re:MIR

Dude, it was old.

Oh, and it crashed into the Pacific.

Let it go, man. It's dead.

How space stations work

I was curious about the "Elektron Oxygen Generator" and found a brief description
here [howstuffworks.com]:

1. The Russian Elektron generator will make oxygen by splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen (electrolysis).
2. Solid fuel oxygen generators or oxygen candles will be burned to make additional oxygen, if required.
3. The space shuttle or Progress supply ships will bring nitrogen from Earth, and store it in external tanks on the station.
4. In later phases of construction, external tanks will supply oxygen; these tanks can be refilled by the space shuttle. In the final stage, an additional electrolysis oxygen generator will be added to the station.
5. The pressure control assembly (a system of pumps and valves) will mix the nitrogen and oxygen in the right percentages, monitor the atmospheric pressure and depressurize the station when necessary to prevent overpressure or to extinguish a fire during an emergency.

This is a non-issue

Just send the high-school chick out on an EVA to plug in the spare oxygen tanks.

What NASA Needs Most...

... is to put a Home Depot in orbit just a few minutes aread of the ISS. Everytime something breaks, they can just pop on over, use their points card, and in a few years, save up enough to buy a whole new ISS!

No, wait, they have to talk to HGTV and get

Re:BREAKING NEWS!

Not only that Drudge is linking to a story saying that they fixed the problem, as is a post in here.