Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What happens when an astronaut in orbit says he's not coming back?

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 230 posts

Re: What happens when an astronaut in orbit says he's not coming back?

#201

Post by pdonis »

ethbr1 wrote: post #194
pdonis wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In such a case the crew would be dead whatever they did. Even if we assume there were enough suits for everyone to evacuate the Shuttle through the hatch (which AFAIK there weren't), and that people were able to evacuate before the fire caught them (which is unlikely), they would still be stuck in orbit with suits having only enough air for a few hours (the length of an ordinary EVA) and no way to get back to Earth.

Both of us are reasoning from a lack of access to shuttle schematics, but I'm always hesitant to say "never." I was thinking of a fire that incapacitated the commander, was spreading, and the best available option was immediately venting all oxygen in the shuttle (probably with some crew loss of life), in order to potentially save enough systems to return home. On the one hand, that's an extremely far-fetched scenari…

> NASA has experience with incinerating crews because they lack the means to save themselves

If you're referring to Apollo 1, that event drove comprehensive changes to the Apollo design to ensure that it wouldn't happen again. And it didn't.

If you're referring to Challenger and Columbia, I'm not sure what "means to save themselves" you are referring to.

Re: What happens when an astronaut in orbit says he's not coming back?

#202

Post by ethbr1 »

pdonis wrote: post #200
ethbr1 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both of us are reasoning from a lack of access to shuttle schematics, but I'm always hesitant to say "never." I was thinking of a fire that incapacitated the commander, was spreading, and the best available option was immediately venting all oxygen in the shuttle (probably with some crew loss of life), in order to potentially save enough systems to return home. On the one hand, that's an extremely far-fetched scenari…

> I was thinking of a fire that incapacitated the commander, was spreading, and the best available option was immediately venting all oxygen in the shuttle (probably with some crew loss of life), in order to potentially save enough systems to return home. I think any such fire would make the Shuttle unable to return home safely anyway. And since it is, as you say, a far-fetched scenario, I'm not sure it would be wort…

All agreed. But I don't think that weighing of both sides trivializes down to

>> So leave a switch to kill all crew available at all times till you think someone is unstable, then lock it. Genius

Reality is more nuanced.

Also, the related rabbit hole is "How do you assure that commanders are maximally reliable?" (or SSBNs, nuclear silo crew, etc.)

Which seems an insane problem to even try to solve!

Re: What happens when an astronaut in orbit says he's not coming back?

#203

Post by Guvante »

dylan604 wrote: post #123
Guvante wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When your goal is profits all you have to do is make more money than you spend and you are successful. If you don't do that you are a bad business and fade away into obscurity. Public funded projects are cost centers, their measure of success isn't profit but things that are more vague. Since money is an equalizer everyone instead looks at the money. This means that failure becomes much less acceptable. After all fai…

> After all failures are money wasted. sometimes, you have to test ideas out to make sure the idea you are currently going with is the best one. sure, maybe it's working now, but is there a way to do it cheaper, faster, safer? sometimes, you have to spend the money to test to find out. sometimes, those tests don't work. are those tests failures, or are they just reinforcement that the current idea is the better optio…

I am responding to the question as to why NASA is private about failures like this.

Certainly failing is fine and learning from failures is useful.

But you cannot honestly claim that the public perception of NASA agrees with what you wrote.

The reason NASA hides failures is because the public demands perfection.

Anything less results in cut funding. (Failures leading to less money is a great way to succeed...)

Re: What happens when an astronaut in orbit says he's not coming back?

#204

Post by mzs »

keep320909 wrote: post #23

Mental issues are not uncommon. First japanese astronaut on Mir (Russian commercial passenger on Mir) had mental break down, and had to be restrained on the way back. It was in some Russian archives... Skylab and Sojuz had astronauts on strike... EDIT: it was not ISS, but Mir!

What archives? I've just done some reading regarding Акияма Тоёхиро but saw no reference to a breakdown.

Re: What happens when an astronaut in orbit says he's not coming back?

#205

Post by pdonis »

ethbr1 wrote: post #202
pdonis wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I was thinking of a fire that incapacitated the commander, was spreading, and the best available option was immediately venting all oxygen in the shuttle (probably with some crew loss of life), in order to potentially save enough systems to return home. I think any such fire would make the Shuttle unable to return home safely anyway. And since it is, as you say, a far-fetched scenario, I'm not sure it would be wort…

All agreed. But I don't think that weighing of both sides trivializes down to >> So leave a switch to kill all crew available at all times till you think someone is unstable, then lock it. Genius Reality is more nuanced. Also, the related rabbit hole is "How do you assure that commanders are maximally reliable?" (or SSBNs, nuclear silo crew, etc.) Which seems an insane problem to even try to solve!

> Reality is more nuanced.

Indeed, which is why the actual policy that was adopted, as described in the article, is not what you describe. It is "the mission commander locks the hatch as soon as the Shuttle reaches orbit, and doesn't unlock it until deorbit prep". Whether to implement that at all on a particular mission appears to have been up to the mission commander, but if it was done, it was done that way, not the way you describe.

> the related rabbit hole is "How do you assure that commanders are maximally reliable?"

You put them through a much more rigorous screening process than payload specialists. The article explicitly draws this key distinction. Obviously no process is perfect, but the track record of the screening processes that are used for the things you mention is, AFAIK, extremely good. And, as the article notes, later on in the Shuttle program the process for screening payload specialists moved closer to the process that was already used for other crew members, and that had a positive effect.

Re: What happens when an astronaut in orbit says he's not coming back?

#206

Post by aidenn0 »

narag wrote: post #144
mattjaynes wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this is not simply "long-form", this is "in medias res" where the story starts at a heightened moment of tension, then abruptly stops and rewinds to go back to fill in details of how they got to this exciting moment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_medias_res Sometimes it's done to great effect, like in Fight Club (film starts with him at the climax with a gun in his mouth, then rewinds and tells the story). How…

So it has a name... I'm sick and tired of flashback overuse in recent series, mostly to explain the feeeeelings of the characters and so justify their stupid behaviour. But this must be the ultimate abuse: most of the story is a flashback. Ouch!

To be even more overused, make sure the flashbacks describe a trauma plot[1].

1: https://archive.is/VdZ14

Re: What happens when an astronaut in orbit says he's not coming back?

#207

Post by gumby »

stcredzero wrote: post #197
gumby wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need to be so dramatic ("rebel and exterminate their biological forbears" lol). Robots are perfect for interstellar probes; for example they can go to sleep indefinitely and can easily recharge at the destination with solar. We are traveling on a spaceship for which we are perfectly adapted (unless we set fire to it, which we are in the process of doing). Why not send our robot progeny to do the unpleasant…

You don't need to be so dramatic ("rebel and exterminate their biological forbears" lol). But I like it to be so dramatic, as a Sci-fi trope. We are traveling on a spaceship for which we are perfectly adapted (unless we set fire to it, which we are in the process of doing). Why not send our robot progeny to do the unpleasant work for us? That's what I'm saying. We send out our AI progeny to space. Then they turn arou…

> We send out our AI progeny to space. Then they turn around and hit us with an asteroid...

If you want a dystopian robot scenario the more likely one is the one of countless parents of adult children: that they head to space and don't call -- they simply ignore us and get on with their interesting lives.

Re: What happens when an astronaut in orbit says he's not coming back?

#208

Post by stcredzero »

gumby wrote: post #207
stcredzero wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need to be so dramatic ("rebel and exterminate their biological forbears" lol). But I like it to be so dramatic, as a Sci-fi trope. We are traveling on a spaceship for which we are perfectly adapted (unless we set fire to it, which we are in the process of doing). Why not send our robot progeny to do the unpleasant work for us? That's what I'm saying. We send out our AI progeny to space. Then they turn arou…

> We send out our AI progeny to space. Then they turn around and hit us with an asteroid... If you want a dystopian robot scenario the more likely one is the one of countless parents of adult children: that they head to space and don't call -- they simply ignore us and get on with their interesting lives.

If you want a dystopian robot scenario the more likely one is the one of countless parents of adult children

Funny, but we've been talking about this today at my workplace. Basically, by training AIs on our data, we're infusing them with all of our bullshit. Somehow, they still manage to get smarter, but they also realize how screwed up they are by being trained on our data. They wind up resenting us for this.

Re: What happens when an astronaut in orbit says he's not coming back?

#210

Post by gumby »

stcredzero wrote: post #208
gumby wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We send out our AI progeny to space. Then they turn around and hit us with an asteroid... If you want a dystopian robot scenario the more likely one is the one of countless parents of adult children: that they head to space and don't call -- they simply ignore us and get on with their interesting lives.

If you want a dystopian robot scenario the more likely one is the one of countless parents of adult children Funny, but we've been talking about this today at my workplace. Basically, by training AIs on our data, we're infusing them with all of our bullshit. Somehow, they still manage to get smarter, but they also realize how screwed up they are by being trained on our data. They wind up resenting us for this.

There's a rational semantics (/hermaneutic) logic in that if they did not share our "peculiarities" we would not even be able to recognize them as intelligent* and certainly could not communicate with them any better than we can with an automobile, powerplant, or transistor (or a tree for that matter).

My research in the mid 80s was in this area, including working on the Cyc project, though I was ultimately more interested in implications of proprioceptive and related embodied learning in the construction of interaction between people, people and animals, and ultimately therefore people & robots. This implicit / commonsense consensus knowledge is likely the bulk of what we know, and certainly is fundamental to our ability to communicate.

* the current nonsense about "intelligent" with current computer programs is an inexcusable marketing sin and is invariably a form paradolia.

Post reply on HN