Why aren't such things connected with a lanyard to the spacecraft?
They usually are... you can see the unconnected tether in the video.
Astronauts drop tool bag into orbit that you can see with binoculars
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Re: Astronauts drop tool bag into orbit that you can see with binoculars
#72"That tool bag, valued at $100,000, circled the planet for months until meeting its fiery end after plunging to Earth and disintegrating. Experts believe last week's missing tool bag will share the same fate as it hurtles in the upper atmosphere, which has become increasingly littered." That makes no sense. Its like they are saying it burning up will 'litter' the upper atmosphere. I assume they meant to say that it b…
> which has become increasingly littered
This isn't saying that the toolbag has become litter in the upper atmosphere, but that the upper atmosphere, in general, has become littered by other things.
Re: Astronauts drop tool bag into orbit that you can see with binoculars
#73"That tool bag, valued at $100,000, circled the planet for months until meeting its fiery end after plunging to Earth and disintegrating. Experts believe last week's missing tool bag will share the same fate as it hurtles in the upper atmosphere, which has become increasingly littered." That makes no sense. Its like they are saying it burning up will 'litter' the upper atmosphere. I assume they meant to say that it b…
It's just poor sentence structure. "which has become increasingly littered" is a general statement about the upper atmosphere.
It is true that litter in very low orbits is oversensationalized, though.
Re: Astronauts drop tool bag into orbit that you can see with binoculars
#74"That tool bag, valued at $100,000, circled the planet for months until meeting its fiery end after plunging to Earth and disintegrating. Experts believe last week's missing tool bag will share the same fate as it hurtles in the upper atmosphere, which has become increasingly littered." That makes no sense. Its like they are saying it burning up will 'litter' the upper atmosphere. I assume they meant to say that it b…
It's clumsily written. They combined two unrelated truths into the same sentence. It should have read
> Experts believe last week's missing tool bag will share the same fate. It's currently hurtling through the upper atmosphere, which has become increasingly littered.
Re: Astronauts drop tool bag into orbit that you can see with binoculars
#75Anyone got a link to an official report detailing what happened? The article is kinda light on details, but I assume this is a major mishap that can only happen if multiple things go wrong simultaneously? Everything m they do up there is a precisely choreographed dance so it would be interesting to read a technical report on that.
Yes it's a bit light on details. But they do point out the most important facts, namely what gender the astronauts are and that it has not been officially confirmed whether the tool box contained a 10mm wrench. Personally, that's everything I needed to know about the situation.
You forgot that what they dropped resembled a white satchel.
Re: Astronauts drop tool bag into orbit that you can see with binoculars
#76They need a drone to go and pick these dropped items. How much fun that would be!
Now you've got me genuinely curious -- does something like that exist? A space drone with gas propulsion and a grasping hand? It seems like it would be "relatively" simple, and useful for basic tasks that don't need a full human. I mean, now that you mention it, it really seems like that ought to be a thing, and that this would be a perfect use case for it. (Visual inspection of the ISS exterior would be another.)
>does something like that exist? A space drone with gas propulsion and a grasping hand
>Visual inspection of the ISS exterior
Yes, minus the gripping hand. [0]
"The sphere, which looks like an oversized soccer ball, was released by Mission Specialist Winston E. Scott during the STS-87 spacewalk and flew freely in the forward cargo bay for about 30 minutes."
Re: Astronauts drop tool bag into orbit that you can see with binoculars
#77Tool bag “valued at $100,000”? What could possibly be in there?
Probably just regular stuff but of a high enough quality that we'd consider sending it to space? Defense and space equipment procurement is usually a lot more expensive than normal because 1) companies exploit the bidding system 2) you really don't want a screw driver that fails when you're re-attaching a solar panel to something floating in LEO since the run to the local Lowe's is going to be quite expensive.
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Re: Astronauts drop tool bag into orbit that you can see with binoculars
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's hard to have more failsafes on a single toolbag than "don't let go". The mission was successful (or it seems, partially successful, not due to loss of toolbag); losing the toolbag is the "one thing" that can go wrong without risking the real goal.
I’m not familiar with how the *nauts tether themselves to the station, but I figured it would be something similar to safety tethers when working up high in precarious situations —2 tethers with only 1 allowed to be disconnected at any particular moment. I wouldn’t have been surprised if the same thing were done for anything that they don’t want to float away. But, perhaps that adds more complexity than it’s worth.
Tools don't need to be safe, though; you need to be safe from them. IANAA, but two tethers on your toolbag sounds like a great way to accidentally fuck up the two tethers on yourself.
Re: Astronauts drop tool bag into orbit that you can see with binoculars
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's hard to have more failsafes on a single toolbag than "don't let go". The mission was successful (or it seems, partially successful, not due to loss of toolbag); losing the toolbag is the "one thing" that can go wrong without risking the real goal.
In this case it worked out fine, but if the tool needed to complete the task was in the tool bag, things would have worked out differently. Bonus points if one of the tools needed to undo what they had started was also in the tool bag that got away.
Why do you assume there's only one toolbag with the necessary tools? There's the kinds of things you have redundancy of (tools, food, computers), to deal with the things you need redundancy for (life, structural integrity, atmosphere).
Re: Astronauts drop tool bag into orbit that you can see with binoculars
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
Probably just regular stuff but of a high enough quality that we'd consider sending it to space? Defense and space equipment procurement is usually a lot more expensive than normal because 1) companies exploit the bidding system 2) you really don't want a screw driver that fails when you're re-attaching a solar panel to something floating in LEO since the run to the local Lowe's is going to be quite expensive.
And also, a lot of it is low volume stuff, and fixed costs in manufacturing are huge. The reason the tools you buy at the home improvement store are cheap is because the fixed costs are spread out over thousands to millions of units. Design/labor/fixturing/tooling/etc can be brutal for low volumes. If you want to build a single Lego, the tooling could cost you hundreds of thousand of dollars.
You think a Lego piece is expensive, you should see the total capital outlay required to make an apple pie from scratch!