rcj@killer.DALLAS.TX.US (Robert Johnson) (09/30/88)
Control: Discovery, you are go for 104% throttle up.
Discovery: Roger, go at 104% throttle up.
<<SIGH OF RELEIF>>
Well, as everyone knows now, we back in buisness!!!
Just a few notes though:
1) What the hell was that just of fire coming from the side of the
SRB? (The starboard one, I believe...) Someone else mentioned it
a few messages back, and I never heard any commentators mention
anything about it, nor anything about it in the press conferences..?
2) Could someone elaborate on the problems that they are having with the
cooling system?
3) What was the problem that they were going to hold the countdown at
T-31 seconds for? They decided to forget about it, but what caused
it?
And a forth, and final note: Did you see that the Russians decided to let
the press at some pictures of thier shuttle? Looks one hell of alot like
ours. I noticed that it was on the pad, too...When are they launching, and
who will be flying? I know that the pilot kicked the bucket a few months
ago....
Acctually, one more thing just came to mind: Does the agreement by the
Allies acctually mean that Freedom might go up? When will work comence,
and why the hell did they sign something which says that the Shuttle will
be the only thing used? Why not use a combination of Arians, the Japanese
launcher, and the Shuttle? It would be a hell of a lot faster that way...
--Robert
P.S. Could someone post a revised timetable of NASA select, please?lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall) (09/30/88)
In article <5680@killer.DALLAS.TX.US> rcj@killer.DALLAS.TX.US (Robert Johnson) writes:
: Control: Discovery, you are go for 104% throttle up.
: Discovery: Roger, go at 104% throttle up.
And a very hearty "Roger" it was, too.
: 1) What the hell was that just of fire coming from the side of the
: SRB? (The starboard one, I believe...) Someone else mentioned it
: a few messages back, and I never heard any commentators mention
: anything about it, nor anything about it in the press conferences..?
I saw that too. I was very relieved when we got separation. All of us in
the dark room at JPL cheered.
All that aside, a benign explanation might possibly be some kind of refraction
of the image of the normal flame due to shock waves or such. Shore looked like
a flame to me though. We'll know soon enough. Whether it was a flame,
anyway.
One thing that bothers me about these SRB's is that, if someone were to
sabotage them, you couldn't determine that after the fact because the
evidence ends up in the form of a large hole. At least, a hole considerably
larger than the sabateur made.
: 2) Could someone elaborate on the problems that they are having with the
: cooling system?
The flash evaporator is a means of cooling the shuttle when the radiators
aren't deployed. They just let water evaporate in the thing. Apparently
they let too much water to it, and it got too cool, and partly froze up.
To thaw it out they just decided to let the entire shuttle run warm for a bit.
When I checked on them in the afternoon, they were running about 86F in the
cabin. The folks on the ground were recommending they drink about 8 more
ounces of water per hour.
Apparently it's just one of those situations where the silly thing worked
too good. Kinda like having weather that's too good to launch in, doncha know?
Actually, much of the delay was not due to weather. The close-out crew
seemed to be really slow. Of course, the hatch has been redesigned,
and some of the crew may have been new at this (or at least out of practice),
and they were checking everything three times it seemed. I don't remember
them taking so long to check cabin pressure before.
Also, the cooling fans in one of the partial-pressure suits blew their
fuses, and they had to bring in some new 5 amp fuses from elsewhere.
At first I wondered why they wouldn't have 5 amp fuses on board, but they
probably do--those fuses are probably reserved for flight problems, however.
: 3) What was the problem that they were going to hold the countdown at
: T-31 seconds for? They decided to forget about it, but what caused
: it?
The reason they were able to forget about the problem is that it was
predicted even before they came out of the T-9:00 minute hold. The guy
at the OTC (orbiter something control?) said that the cabin pressure
was near the upper end of the nominal range, and that as the countdown
proceded it might well raise an alarm if the cabin got warmer (from the
sun). I gathered that they'd forgotten to take into account the extra
oxygen being introduced into the cabin from partial pressure suits (do
the suits in fact release oxygen to the cabin?). Anyway, one of the
astronauts requested that they keep the sunvisors in the window till
T-2 minutes rather than the usual T-4 minutes, just to keep solar
gain (and air pressure) lower. Just about the time they took the
sunvisors down (T-2 min), the alarm went off anyway. This is one of those
alarms that the computer would see and automatically stop the countdown at
T-31 seconds. I suspect the decision to override the alarm had already
been made (or at least contemplated) several minutes earlier.
That's all I was able to gather from listening to two NASCOM circuits
simultaneously. Some of it is speculation on my part, and I certainly
don't speak for NASA.
Larry Wall
lwall@jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov.danno@microsoft.UUCP (Daniel A. Norton) (10/01/88)
In article <2961@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall) writes: > ... >Also, the cooling fans in one of the partial-pressure suits blew their >fuses, and they had to bring in some new 5 amp fuses from elsewhere. >At first I wondered why they wouldn't have 5 amp fuses on board, but they >probably do--those fuses are probably reserved for flight problems, however. > ... > >Larry Wall >lwall@jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov. I didn't know that fuses generally just "blow." I suppose that it's possible that the fuse itself was faulty, but I wonder what the real problem was. -- Any opinions expressed are mine, not my employer's. nortond@microsof.beaver.washington.EDU nortond%microsof@uw-beaver.ARPA {decvax,decwrl,sco,sun,trsvax,uunet,uw-beaver}!microsof!nortond
adolph@ssc-vax.UUCP (Mark C. Adolph) (10/04/88)
In article <5680@killer.DALLAS.TX.US>, rcj@killer.DALLAS.TX.US (Robert Johnson) writes: > Control: Discovery, you are go for 104% throttle up. > Discovery: Roger, go at 104% throttle up. > > <<SIGH OF RELEIF>> I was listening carefully at this point due to discussions we've had about pilots and superstition. I heard: Control: Discovery, go at throttle up. Discovery: Roger, go. Will we never again hear "Go at throttle up" from a shuttle cockpit again? -- -- Mark A. ...uw-beaver!ssc-vax!adolph
gcangel@ihlpe.ATT.COM (452is-Angel) (10/11/88)
Hey Danno cut it out with sending a zillion copies of the same article. -- Capt. Gary C. Angel | "Beam me up Scotty there isssssssss USS WHATEVER | intelligent life down here YIKES!" AT&T Bell Labs | - Some Crazy Trekker att!ihlpe!gcangel | - Capt of the USS WHATEVER
jlc@atux01.UUCP (J. Collymore) (10/12/88)
In article <111@microsoft 25144,1,1.UUCP>, danno@microsoft.UUCP (Daniel A. Norton) writes: > In article <2961@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall) writes: > > ... > >Also, the cooling fans in one of the partial-pressure suits blew their > >fuses, and they had to bring in some new 5 amp fuses from elsewhere. > >At first I wondered why they wouldn't have 5 amp fuses on board, but they > >probably do--those fuses are probably reserved for flight problems, however. > > ... > > > >Larry Wall > >lwall@jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov. > > I didn't know that fuses generally just "blow." I suppose that it's > possible that the fuse itself was faulty, but I wonder what the real > problem was. > -- > Any opinions expressed are mine, not my employer's. > nortond@microsof.beaver.washington.EDU nortond%microsof@uw-beaver.ARPA > {decvax,decwrl,sco,sun,trsvax,uunet,uw-beaver}!microsof!nortond Excuse me, but I have just counted approx. 110 successive postings of this article. Would the author please explain why his article was duplicated and sent so many times? Did anyone else receive this many postings at their site? Would the author please take steps to investigate this, and ensure that it does not happen again. Thank you. Jim Collymore
winter@Apple.COM (Patty Winter) (10/13/88)
In article <755@atux01.UUCP> jlc@atux01.UUCP (J. Collymore) writes: >In article <111@microsoft 25144,1,1.UUCP>, danno@microsoft.UUCP (Daniel A. Norton) writes: >> I didn't know that fuses generally just "blow." I suppose that it's >> possible that the fuse itself was faulty, but I wonder what the real >> problem was. > >Excuse me, but I have just counted approx. 110 successive postings of this >article. Would the author please explain why his article was duplicated >and sent so many times? Did anyone else receive this many postings at their >site? Would the author please take steps to investigate this, and ensure >that it does not happen again. The author (actually, authors--it happened in some other newsgroups as well) had nothing to do with it. It was triggered by a problem in Microsoft's news software. You can read the news.admin newsgroup if you want further details. It's turned into quite an adventure for Usenet system administrators. :-) Patty
knudsen@ihlpl.ATT.COM (Knudsen) (10/14/88)
110 copies? You need a bigger computer ^-). Here at Bell Labs we got 2500 copies of it. Our internal netnews administration posted a notice about how this posting (and a couple of others in other groups) tickled a bug in netnews software that kept spewing out copies till someone hit rubout. I got the impression that it was not even the author's own site that got bit. I manually edited my .newsrc file to skip the 2500 copies. No way of knowing how many legit articles mixed in there got trashed. -- Mike Knudsen Bell Labs(AT&T) att!ihlpl!knudsen "Lawyers are like handguns and nuclear bombs. Nobody likes them, but the other guy's got one, so I better get one too."
tneale@aeras.UUCP (Tom Neale) (10/14/88)
In article <755@atux01.UUCP> jlc@atux01.UUCP (J. Collymore) writes: >In article <111@microsoft 25144,1,1.UUCP>, danno@microsoft.UUCP (Daniel A. Norton) writes: [much deleted] >Excuse me, but I have just counted approx. 110 successive postings of this >article. Would the author please explain why his article was duplicated >and sent so many times? Did anyone else receive this many postings at their >site? Would the author please take steps to investigate this, and ensure >that it does not happen again. I counted closer to 500 postings at our site. What was going on ? -- Blue skies, | ...sun!aeras!tneale | | in flight: N2103Q | The hurrieder I go Tom Neale | in freefall: D8049 | the behinder I get. | via the ether: WA1YUB |