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Space Shuttle teleprinter reverse engineering

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Re: Space Shuttle teleprinter reverse engineering

#51

Post by atoav »

eigenvalue wrote: post #21

This is cool but it just makes me think the Shuttle was absurdly inefficient across the board. Why waste not just the launch weight but the engineering work on making such a specialized printer? Aren’t we talking about the late 70s/ early 80s? Surely there were commercially available printers that could have been substituted that would weigh less and wouldn’t have the overheating issues. Having unlimited government m…

If you trust that office printer to survive a roll down a steep mountain sure.

Your idea of how electromechanical devices "just work" is based on office environments (and even there they fail with astounding regularity today, half a century later).

As an electrical engineer that has repaired many (also very old) devices I don't think you have a realistic idea of why the thing looks as it does. One point is environmental factors (strong vibration, harsh radiation, potential temperature differences etc) another one is risk managment. If your commercial printer fails, how will it fail? You better know exactly what it's failure modes are, because you are the guy who selected that printer and you are reaponsible for both the failure of the mission and the potential death of astronauts who trust you. Still feel secure about the choice? Then you are probably the wrong person for the job.q

TL;DR: look for a certain (recent) submarine failure to see how well your approach works in practise

Re: Space Shuttle teleprinter reverse engineering

#52

Post by generj »

rtkwe wrote: post #28
perihelions wrote: post #11

Wait, do normal printers need gravity to work? If I were to find one and flip it upside-down, would it continue functioning normally?

Normal printers probably wouldn't handle the shaking of launches and the extra G forces during that which for shuttle were ~3Gs.

And when shuttle was developed, printers barely existed. Both inkjet and laser desktop printers were introduced commercially 1-3 years before the shuttles first flight in 1981, and weren’t very reliable yet. Desktop printers still aren’t as reliable as a teletype or dot matrix printer. There’s a reason airlines use dot matrix for printing flight manifests at the gate.

Ink plotters, teleprinters, and fax machines ruled the world. But plotters are dreadfully slow at writing text. Radio fax machines may have been viable if they were rugged enough. But they probably weighed as much as the teletype and were much slower - only real advantage is printing diagrams and photos.

Re: Space Shuttle teleprinter reverse engineering

#53

Post by amelius »

krisoft wrote: post #9
eddieroger wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was pretty stuck by that, too, and it made me wonder if maybe I don't understand or underestimate the value of paper transmission. I suppose if radio communication is good but flaky, or for persistence of instruction, like procedures, then it would be good for them to be able to print. But at such a cost!

I guess with modern googles one would just pack an "ipad" equivalent tablet. If one worries about accidents and freak space particles disabling it give them 3. If one still worries one can develop a "space rated" tablet. But probably at those radiation levels one should also start worrying about the crew's health. But of course that is projecting our current capabilities back in time. I looked it up and the "Osborne…

iPads are more hazardous than you think:

https://appleinsider.com/articles/23/07/14/fatal-helicopter-...

Re: Space Shuttle teleprinter reverse engineering

#54

Post by amelius »

generj wrote: post #2

I am fascinated they used 60 pounds and a large amount of space for this teleprinter. At 30K per pound of payload that is $1.8 million per flight. Really shows how important reliable printed updates were considered. And all the flaws of the printer that were managed around - turning it off to save power and prevent it overheating with specific tones.

> At 30K per pound of payload that is $1.8 million per flight.

Yeah, but they could save by using white-label ink cartridges.

Re: Space Shuttle teleprinter reverse engineering

#55

Post by dylan604 »

dylan604 wrote: post #32
eddieroger wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was pretty stuck by that, too, and it made me wonder if maybe I don't understand or underestimate the value of paper transmission. I suppose if radio communication is good but flaky, or for persistence of instruction, like procedures, then it would be good for them to be able to print. But at such a cost!

Maybe they remember the situation with Apollo 13 where they had no way to right down the procedures other than by hand and using space pages from the existing printed documents. You then had the issue where the guys were so fatigued and CO2 levels getting to a point of making vision blurry. I could see where that might have factored into the decision of wanting to avoid all of that with the ability of printing new/mo…

too late to edit, but right != write

Re: Space Shuttle teleprinter reverse engineering

#56

Post by dylan604 »

wildzzz wrote: post #22
eigenvalue wrote: post #21

This is cool but it just makes me think the Shuttle was absurdly inefficient across the board. Why waste not just the launch weight but the engineering work on making such a specialized printer? Aren’t we talking about the late 70s/ early 80s? Surely there were commercially available printers that could have been substituted that would weigh less and wouldn’t have the overheating issues. Having unlimited government m…

It's overkill for normal office use but the space shuttle is going to have some massive vibration and mechanical shock during launch. All systems have to be ruggedized to withstand the environment. A commercial unit might not survive the trip up and building some sort of vibration damping system for it might take up more space. If the manufacturer can't guarantee the uptime for the commercial unit, they might need a…

> It's overkill for normal office use but the space shuttle is going to have some massive vibration and mechanical shock during launch.

Maybe you haven't seen how some delivery drivers treat the packages in their care. I swear I've received boxes that look like the were shaken, not stirred, to the level of a rocket launch.

Re: Space Shuttle teleprinter reverse engineering

#57

Post by KineticLensman »

throwanem wrote: post #31
KineticLensman wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am fascinated they used 60 pounds and a large amount of space for this teleprinter. IIRC the Zion space habitat in Neuromancer had a state-of-the-art line printer which at one point spews continuous-fold paper into the weightless environment. They had however got rid of the slide-rules that were essential in early-era Arthur C Clarke spaceships

That was Haniwa, not Zion. The printer was spewing paper because someone had put a laser through its faceplate while Corto was taking the ship. Also, Haniwa is described explicitly and implicitly as an exoatmospheric luxury yacht, and thus likely wasn't designed for high acceleration. Also, I'm pretty sure it was a thermal printer, not a line printer as here. Also, Neuromancer is period-piece literary sf. So I'm not…

In terms of relevance, I was amused that real and contemporary fictional spacecraft both had paper printers

Re: Space Shuttle teleprinter reverse engineering

#58

Post by bluedino »

perihelions wrote: post #11

Wait, do normal printers need gravity to work? If I were to find one and flip it upside-down, would it continue functioning normally?

Imagine a printer in zero gravity just spraying printed pages around the cabin of the shuttle, since pages don't neatly fall into the output tray.

Re: Space Shuttle teleprinter reverse engineering

#59

Post by dylan604 »

kens wrote: post #36
ghosty141 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah somebody should mirror it. In general I dont understand why people post things like this on X. Its a horrible platform.

Serious answer: I post things on Twitter because it is easy, lets a huge number of people read my thread, and provides easy interaction. I post the same threads to Mastodon and get orders of magnitude less interest. I also write blog posts, which take a huge amount of time (a week versus an hour) and are hit-or-miss. Sometimes they are very popular and sometimes they disappear without a trace.

Might it be that it takes a week because you spend time thinking things through in a much more coherent manner rather than just submitting stream of conscious level tweets? Sounding professional instead of trendy?

Re: Space Shuttle teleprinter reverse engineering

#60

Post by dylan604 »

samstave wrote: post #30
DaSHacka wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think Challenger was sabotage Mind explaining your reasoning? As someone not very familiar with the details, I'm curious

As much as Dylan wants to denegrate my post: I have always believed the Shuttle was sabotaged. I watched it live when it happened when I was a kid and followed all aspect from the lead up (we voted for Kristy in my school IIRC) -- but there has always been a lot of weird strangeness about the shuttle and the demise of its occupants. Ant to Dylan - relax - I can speculatively hold dystopian-sci-fi what-ifs without you…

If by calling Google means doing a simple search using their platform, sure, I called them:

https://www.google.com/search?q=Shuttle+Challenger+report

The very first result is a very official looking link to a .gov site. The second link is to the wikipedia article on the investigation. The third link is to a link from NASA. These are not QAnon level "does his own research" level results like your quippy thoughts.

So, compared to you, yes, I do know all about it. I know people that worked on the shuttle missions and were in mission control on the day of the Challenger disaster. They lost friends that day. I'm seemingly orders of magnitude closer to it than "i saw it live on TV as a kid".

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