Astronauts Fix Phantom Space Station Ammonia Leak 54
astroengine writes "During an unscheduled spacewalk on the space station's exterior on Saturday morning, NASA astronauts Tom Marshburn and Chris Cassidy carried out the mother of all plumbing jobs: They detached a suspect ammonia pump, replaced it with a spare and watched for any further ammonia leakage. The emergency spacewalk was carried out in response to a troubling ammonia coolant leak that was discovered on Thursday. The coolant is used to maintain the temperature of the vast solar arrays the space station uses to generate electricity for its systems. 'It will take some diagnostics, still, over the course of the next several days by the thermal systems specialists to fully determine that we have solved the problem of the ammonia leak," said NASA commentator Rob Navias during the live NASA TV spacewalk broadcast. 'But so far, so "good."'"
Wetware Controller advantages (Score:4, Interesting)
This is why having humans onboard beats robotics. An event like this on an unmanned craft could be crippling. With humans onboard, it was quickly found and fixed.
Though it is only a question of time before robotics will be dexterous and smart enough to go out and replace a broken module like what just happened. In the meantime, Humans +1 | Robots +0.
Re:Chris Cassidy is a fucking hero (Score:1, Interesting)
Why is he a hero? Did he save an old lady from being crushed to death by an out of control semi? Did he save a baby from a fire? Did he perform an emergency tracheotomy with a ballpoint pen that allowed someone to not asphyxiate? Did he donate one of his kidneys to someone that would die without a transplant? Did he find the cure for cancer, AIDS, ALS, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's ?
While he may be very competent at what he does, that hardly makes him 'a hero', sorry. We should really quit this deification, it's very unbecoming.