Space Station Suffers Power Glitch 53
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? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not done yet (Score:5, Insightful)
They're building it. Make as many analogies to building an office building as you like - they're all applicable. The trouble is while you can build a research facility on Earth in two years, it turns out with limited funding doing that 90 miles above the earth is somewhat harder. A 5x or 10x multiple doesn't seem all that bad if you look at it that way.
The biggest problem we're likely to encounter in this business of space exploration is impatience from folks who think that if you can get from London to Tokyo in a day, 3 months to Mars is just unreasonable.
I don't really see why anyone is surprised... (Score:3, Insightful)
Why, even if we look at a best case supposition for the future, the mostly-utopian Star Trek, do you see Scotty, LaForge, or O'Brien cooling their heels all the time? Of course not. They're always replacing this or fixing that or realigning this or repolarizing that and heaven help us if they have to remodulate something. And if they have to do this all the time, it's a wonder NASA has as few problems as they do.
Just remember, a busy engineer is a happy engineer.
Re:What's that thing for? (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe you needed to pay more attention in history class.