Russia To Save Its ISS Modules 280
jamax writes "According to the BBC, 'Russia is making plans to detach and fly away its parts of the International Space Station when the time comes to de-orbit the rest of the outpost. ... To facilitate the plan, RKK Energia, the country's main ISS contractor, has already started developing a special node module for the Russian segment, which will double as the cornerstone of the future station. ... Unlike many Nasa and European space officials, Russian engineers are confident that even after two decades in orbit, their modules would be in good enough shape to form the basis of a new space station. "We flew on Mir for 15 years and accumulated colossal experience in extending the service life (of such a vehicle)," said a senior Russian official at RKK Energia...' Is Russia the last country where engineers are not (yet) forced by corporations to intentionally produce designs that fail two days after warranty expires? There used to be a lot of equipment manufactured by various countries (Germany is the first one that comes to mind) that lasted virtually forever — old cars or weapons systems, but one rarely sees anything of the sort these days."
Why burn them up? (Score:5, Insightful)
It could be something like the pyramids or the the Eiffel tower or the Chinese wall.
No. (Score:5, Insightful)
Mars rovers? Voyager? NASA seems to be doing okay with that.
Products that last (Score:3, Insightful)
I so miss things which are made to last. Perhaps this is not a product of rocket science, but the chair I'm sitting on right now is a pre-WW2 german-made one. A regular chair, not one of Aeron types or whatever. Why? Because no desk chair I ever bought lasted more than a year; the one I inherited from my grandparents which they in turn inherited from their ancestors is still working fine.
I fully agree with the article poster's sentiment for old German products. Bring such chairs to the orbit and the ISS will be able to continue forever.
Re:Why burn them up? (Score:5, Insightful)
wouldn't it be much cooler to put them in an orbit halfway between the Earth and the moon
Yes, it would be cool to have space junk at a Lagrange Point [wikipedia.org]. It'd be even cooler to actually use it rather than leaving it as an hazard. However, I doubt if the station has that much propellant.
Not worried (Score:5, Insightful)
Longevity (Score:3, Insightful)
Value Engineering & Built-in obsolescense (Score:5, Insightful)
Is Russia the last country where engineers are not (yet) forced by corporations to intentionally produce designs that fail two days after warranty expires? There used to be a lot of equipment manufactured by various countries (Germany is the first one that comes to mind) that lasted virtually forever -- old cars or weapons systems, but one rarely sees anything of the sort these days."
No, but the space industry is one of the few where things are built to last. Portable consumer electronics are among the worst for quality except for a few notable examples like the iPod Mini and the Nokia 6310(i). Soldered-in lithium batteries, surface-mount MLC flash memory and electrolytic capacitors don't last all that long. Satellites are over-engineered, if anything goes wrong with them you can't put it in a cardboard box with styrofoam and send it back to the manufacturer.
The quality of cars hasn't actually gone down - when The Wall was knocked down lots of old Soviet cars like the 2-stroke Trabant were abandoned for second-hand German cars. Of course manufacturers are filling up modern cars with cheap consumer electronics and cheap Chinese DC motors to move every little thing because apparently buyers are too lazy to use their hands for anything. So while all the in-car entertainment and motorised windows,cup holders, sun roofs and central locks might break the car itself (engine & chassis) will probably be in a better state after 20 years than a '70s car would have been after 20 years since engine technology has improved and the underside of the car is better protected from rust.
Re:Value Engineering & Built-in obsolescense (Score:4, Insightful)
Trabant was not a soviet car, it was a GDR designed and made one.
Survivorship bias (Score:5, Insightful)
It is called survivorship bias. Almost all of the things produced in the past have long since broken down. We only see what stood the test of time and therefore tend to assume that things were built to last back in the day.
Re:German equipment that lasts forever (Score:2, Insightful)
I still see a lot of GM cars and trucks from the 80s' on the roads and in decent shape. Most American made products actually last a long time.
On the other hand, Chinese made stuff is not always very long lasting and usually poor quality, but it is very cheap.
Soviet made products, electronics and cars, did not have a good reputation in Easter Europe in the past.
Old Stuff (Score:5, Insightful)
Old stuff seems to last forever because the old stuff we have left is the stuff that survived. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. There's plenty of old junk-- but that went out with the trash years ago. Every era manufactures a bunch of unreliable crap, too.
To make matters worse: through sheer chance, some unreliable junk survives for a century now and then, too. While this stuff is all at the statistically unlikely end of the bell curve, and 99.9% of its cohorts have vanished, what remains by dumb luck reinforces the idea that "stuff was made better in the old days."
Re:Survivorship bias (Score:5, Insightful)
In Russia... (Score:2, Insightful)
In Soviet Russia, things outlast you!
Re:Survivorship bias (Score:4, Insightful)
The reason is simple; Steel vs. plastics.
It's not that simple. You *can* make things that last out of plastics. My son is playing with plastic toys I used to play with and they're in good shape. The problem now is with cheap, thin plastics.
Re:German equipment that lasts forever (Score:4, Insightful)
I come from a country that used to import Chinese crap way before that became "fashionable", and let me tell you, chinese products had a reputation of being crap already 30 years ago. With the trend in engineering as mentioned in the summary, things hadn't improved. Sadly, such lack in QC (or simply disregard for human life) extends to chinese food products as well. For that reason, I never ever buy any food or cosmetic product made in china, and actually avoid everything else whenever possible. Last time when my wife found this "lovely dinosaurus-shaped puppet", I was forced to buy it even though was china-made.
As for russian technical products, this is (or used to be, at least up until 15 years ago, I'm not up to date on their latest trends in production) a very weird mix of excellent quality parts and abysmal quality parts, assembled together with the greatest attention about 50% of the time, but also assembled together with half-arsed nonchalance the rest of the time. And often the two approaches at assembling are found in the same product. This results in an analog oscilloscope that would otherwise last forever and have excellent measurement parameters, if it wasn't for the CRT that, when produced, didn't quite meet the vacuum tolerances, and the capacitors in the probe being made from spit. Just for one example.
Re:Survivorship bias (Score:1, Insightful)
Why?
A lot of things actually were built better "back in day" because it wasn't as simple as jumping in a van and driving down a nice paved freeway if the item in question malfunctioned.
Another factor was serviceability. Again, this was because the alternative very well may have been waiting several weeks for a part or mechanic to make their way to the site.
The answer isn't that obvious (Score:4, Insightful)
That is not a simple fact, but a grandiose fact claim on your part.
Some products may have been more durable in the past, some not so much. You would have to look at a case by case analysis, do some testing, empirical work to figure out what is true.
Metal and steel rusts and bends. Lots of mechanical and moving parts can cause all sorts of problems, line shafts wear out, cloth cables, springs, reed relais, etc.
Wooden joints that where glued or screwed together tend to get loose, etc.
No material is perfect. And cost saving can leed to simplicity, which can benefit durability greatly.
I believe that especially eletronics and computing is getting much better. Complicated VHS tape drives broke down all of the time. Reel to Reel tape drives had lots of problems. Optical is better and solid state even moreso.
Re:Survivorship bias (Score:5, Insightful)
It isn't so much a case of metal vs. plastic as of things being designed with computers and modern materials.
An engineer working on paper would deliberately over-spec the materials and parts to account for margin of error, but now computers loaded with precise details of each material available can calculate exactly what is required to, e.g. pass a particular safety test or hold a particular load.
There was a BBC Horizon program which mentioned this back in 1982. Back then it was standard behaviour to over-spec anything safety related (e.g. bridge supports) by a factor of three, a it tended to spill over into non-safety things too. I don't know what they do these days.
Re:Typical of the Russian mindset (Score:5, Insightful)
They tend to design things to outlast the competition.
I don't know about that. 3 totally different forms of government in one century. They weren't designed to last.
Building versus doing (Score:4, Insightful)
Unfortunately, much of NASA is focused on building things, not doing things. Look at the argument [washingtonpost.com] over the repair capabilities that made the Hubble a success : Nasa is letting go of those capabilities. The new Manned Space Flight System - Orion - will not have the capability to repair future Hubbles. In my opinion Hubble is the biggest success NASA has had since Apollo, and as before we are going to let the capability die.
The builder types of would respond "its cheaper to build new ones," except, of course, we more or less won't. The current paradigm means that we will launch a telescope, have it fail, and then wait 20-30 years until another of the same type can be orbited. And, there seems to be no real effort expended on new types of propulsion [digitaljournal.com] and certainly no effort on new types of manned propulsion.
The Russians, meanwhile, view everything they have ever launched as an asset. You bet that they are going to use their ISS modules as long as they can, and maybe just a little more.
Re:Before someone says it (Score:2, Insightful)
The Zvezda module, which is the main Russian module of the ISS, was constructed by the Soviet Union in the 1980s. It's closely related to the core module of Mir, and was intended for Mir-2 until that was canceled. (Both these modules are in the Salyut family, which had its first launch in 1971. )
Re:Why burn them up? (Score:4, Insightful)
1a. It takes a lot of energy to move something the size of the ISS into an orbit high enough not to fall on our heads in the relatively near future;
1b. There is no orbit halfway between the earth and the moon. Even if you considered one of the five "stable" Lagrange points, they are not all that stable in the long run, not for unattended, unfueled vehicles anyway;
2. I think it admirable that the Russians are not merely throwing their stuff away but at least show the willingness to keep it up there and try to reuse it. Even if this fails in the end, they will learn a lot from the attempt. And too many of us are conditioned not to maintain and repair things, but throw them away when they break (or even when they're simply not in style anymore) and buy new.
Re:No. (Score:3, Insightful)
Mars rovers? Voyager? NASA seems to be doing okay with that.
How about Toyota? Just watch Top Gear killing a Toyota Hi Lux [youtube.com].
Re:Before someone says it (Score:3, Insightful)
I wonder if they are going to have a big "red" button installed that they can push.. I sure as hell would...
Honestly I think this is pretty damn smart.. might as well use something until it breaks if it costs ungodly amounts of money to put up there in the first place..
I mean do the odds of someone dying really increase any? My understanding is a pea sized object can kill them all at any time anyhow, that or the sun can get pissed off and kill them all...
ae
Re:Before someone says it (Score:5, Insightful)
One more point, posted in violation of slashdot rules...
Isn't part of the reason we have a space station to learn how to fix stuff when it breaks? How are we ever going to explore space if we have to head back home because the widget broke three months into our trip to mars. (yea I am aware that returning could not be possible due to the orbital differential of mars/earth and the thrust requirements or whatever... I mean, I did watch a Discovery Channel special once so that DOES make me an expert you know...
ae
Re:old German cars? Bwahahaahah (Score:1, Insightful)
You need to recalibrate your understanding of the word "old".
that isn't his point (Score:2, Insightful)
The point is, the need for desks will always be there. He has a desk that was built stout enough so it can last through generations of humans using it. One good desk can be built instead of ten chintzy ones that fall apart after a few years, like those pressed sawdust hunks of crap they push at the office supply stores now. In that sense, it is probably a pretty efficient use of the materials and multiple humans will get the benefit from it. And being steel, even when it is finally so worn out that it isn't worth fixing, the steel itself is easily recyclable, whereas pressboard is just landfill mulch.
And as for not needing to support weight, I know I can't be the only one here who has climbed on a desk to change the lightbulb overhead or to run cables through drop ceilings. Try doing that with your pressboard and little peg lock together marvel.
My personal desk I am sitting at right now is a very adeqaute and simple cobjob made from an old birch plywood and fir edging (strong) platform single bed I built years ago and now just laid across two of those similar type antique made from heavy steel filing cabinets. Yep, used it to paint the ceiling, climbed right up on the sucker, didn't need to move it, just throw a dropcloth over it. Probably could stick 1,000 lbs on the thing if I really wanted to. Would I replace it with an officemax special? Not only no but hell no!
Really, there's something to be said for building things to last in the first place, this use stuff for a short time and then throw it away is highly energy intensive and wasteful. Build/buy strong, then recycle or repurpose like I did with the bed, that's the way to save time, energy and cash.
Re:Before someone says it (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Not enough credit (Score:3, Insightful)
Ditto. Years ago an automobile was all but dead once (if) it reached 100,000 miles. Today's versions regularly hit 100,000, 150,000, or even 200,000 and keep on rolling.
People don't give the darn things enough credit. You design a device that will run for a decade or more with minimal maintenance and that will start up after a week of sub-zero winter nights in Wisconsin or after spending days on end broiling in the Phoenix heat.
Consumer electronics are on a much faster track, but even there they DO more. Try rendering some HD video on a Pentium... if you can get fit it onto the hard drive. Hell, the average FILE on my iPod is larger than my first hard drive.
Two days past warranty is too long! (Score:3, Insightful)
I fully agree with the article poster's sentiment for old German products.
There are still some things made properly (i.e. without the designed-in short lifetime), but their number is declining, alas. Cheap shit forces good shit out of the mass market, and into expensive niches. This trend has been very clear for at least 15 years (I speak as a PhD engineer with 30 years experience).
The design objective nowadays is not really 2 days past warranty, but one day. Unfortunately, some fool puts an extra day into leap years, which necessitates one or more additional days of overengineered lifetime, as warranties are calendar-based.
An upcoming insidious trend is to make the warranty for complex items conditional on regular service, which can only be purchased from the manufacturer, due to "trade secrets" or protected "intellectual property".
Re:Hubble (Score:3, Insightful)
Because the lens was incorrectly ground due to an error in the software that ran the grinding process.
Wouldn't you test a lens that you were going to send into orbit?
Re:The answer isn't that obvious (Score:3, Insightful)
Anecdotal evidence time: My family's panasonic microwave that we bought around 1986 or so has only just recently been replaced, and not because it broke down, it just wasn't heating quite as quickly as my mother liked so she decided to replace it. The cheap piece of crap she replaced it with will probably last five years and need to be trashed. Planned obsolescense [wikipedia.org] is, sadly, very real and part of the same Wall Street culture that gave you the current financial crisis, the real estate boom, the S&L scandal, and the dot com crash. There is a good article here [fastcompany.com] that I highly recommend about the practice and how it is being pushed not just by the manufacturers but also by the retailers. You can get another piece of the puzzle here [msn.com], in an article about how the CEO of CostCo resists pressure from Wal Street (you know, that was a typo but I decided to leave it... shit, now I'm going to have to fire up the gimp when I'm done posting this comment) to drive "growth" at the expense of his employees or the quality of the store (not that CostCo is perfect by any means, still a good article and worth a read though).