Space Station Suffers Power Glitch

TheSexican writes "As if the MRO's vision problems weren't enough, it seems that NASA has another problem on their hands as of late. " The problem itself has been solved; one of the solar power array went off line, and had to be repaired, but is back up and working.

Re:What's that thing for?

[necro81]

Keep in mind that the station was designed for a crew complement of seven. Right now it has three. Keeping the station running is requiring most of the attention of those three. This is not a surprise. What has been a surprise has been how long the construction has taken, which has (in part) prevented the other four crew members, who would be doing the bulk of the science work, from going up. Other hangups that have held things up: redirected funding, the grounding of the shuttle fleet, and the not-yet-complete crew escape vehicle.

Re:What's that thing for?

[iso-cop]

Why yes, I am glad you asked. http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/science/ index.html [nasa.gov] will get you to the weekly science overview and the current expedition science overview. You get all this while the place is still under construction. Just think when a crew of six is available with full laboratory environments in the next few years. By the way, http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structur e/iss_manifest.html [nasa.gov] gives a summary run down on when to expect new capabilities to be in place.

Re:It's not done yet

[darkwhite]

It absolutely did not take seven years to get Japan and Germany to a stable, safe, violence-free and rebuildable if heavily damaged condition.

Occupation of Japan and Germany preserved the power structure, did not facilitate ethnic and sectarian conflict as well as unrestricted religious extremism, and was well tolerated by the occupied populations. Japan's emperor, who had massive de facto authority over his people, supported the American occupants. Germany was immediately ripped and drawn into the immense power spheres of the Cold War participants, and its population was so utterly exhausted and unused to the idea of civil war that there was no room for internal instability. Both countries had exhausted their supplies of young, active men and had massive populations of old, highly experienced workers who had the expertise to rebuild the highly industrialized infrastructure. Both countries had advanced, secular societies with few internal tensions.

The US occupation of Iraq went terribly wrong because it did not account for a huge set of very important factors contrary to the above. The power vacuum after the invasion very quickly set off a chain reaction which will now be resolved in a bloody civil war.

Re:It's not done yet

[bill_mcgonigle]

It absolutely did not take seven years to get Japan and Germany to a stable, safe, violence-free and rebuildable if heavily damaged condition.

I'm not sure which events you're thinking of, but I'm thinking of the widespread starvation and the Warewolf insurgency in Germany in 1945 and 1946, the dismantling of German heavy industry which continued into the 50's, the Marshall Plan which ran through '51, and the reconstruction loans and military occupation which followed that through '55 - when Germany was finally stood up on its own and allowed to join NATO.

OK, so we were in there 11 years, not 7 (not counting our bases which are still there today).

In Japan we didn't really do as much to help them until we needed them in 1950 to fight the war in Korea, using Japan as a base of operations, and thereby stimulating the Japanese economy, bringing about the rise of Toyota, for instance.