Following on the absurdities of the Boeing Starliner imbroglio, yet more news about a potentially dangerous limitation.
Two astronauts stranded at the International Space Station after their Boeing spacecraft malfunctioned could be there much longer than anticipated because of an incompatibility with their spacesuits.
. . .
With the commercialization of space, NASA is not as deeply involved as it once was with every aspect of mission and spacecraft design.
As a result, an incompatibility between the spacesuits designed by SpaceX and Boeing has reportedly created an issue returning Wilmore and Williams to Earth.
“The Boeing spacesuit is made to work with the Starliner spacecraft, and the SpaceX spacesuit is made to work with the Dragon spacecraft,” NASA told Fox News Digital. “Both were designed to fit each unique spacecraft.”
There's more at the link.
I'm a bit mind-boggled by this. After all, right from the beginning, astronauts aboard the ISS had to be prepared to use either the US Space Shuttle, or the Russian Soyuz capsule, to get to and from the space station. This was routine, therefore their spacesuits were doubtless designed and fitted to be used aboard either spacecraft. There would (should?) have been routine interoperability. When and why was this routine expectation dropped? Why were ISS space suits not equipped to work with any of the space vehicles that might currently deliver or collect astronauts? That's the Soyuz from Russia, the Starliner from Boeing, or the Dragon capsule from SpaceX. Why was no common design - or, at the very least, a set of common adapters - agreed between all parties, to ensure their spacesuits could work with each other's hardware?
The current problem appears to have arisen in a non-emergency situation, so there may be time to sort it out (even if that means flying up a couple of replacement spacesuits to the ISS). However, what about an emergency? What if damage to the ISS, for whatever reason, requires its evacuation? If the astronauts were faced with an immediate need to "get out of Dodge", but their spacesuits prevented them using the only vehicle(s) currently docked with the ISS and offering a means to get away, they'd be well and truly in the dwang, wouldn't they?
Why did nobody think about this beforehand?
Peter
30 comments:
NASA already has an answer from Apollo 13, they could use duct tape to fit the square air scrubbers into the round sockets.
Sporty's pilot shop should sell a set of hose adapters for astronauts who are traveling internationally.
Nobody put interoperability in the Interface Control Document, probably because we have never been in this situation before. If a requirement isn't in the spec or ICD, it hasn't been bid on and won't be paid for. NASA dropped the ball by not calling for common suit connectors in the Dragon capsule and the new SpaceX suits.
Coverage of this mess, sparse as it is, seems so strangely casual and detatched, considering the impending tragedy. "Oh well, sucks to be you..."
These people are stupid. I would think they would space walk and enter the capsule. Once there then reprogram the software. The software should be sent up from Boeing.
NASA and thus SpaceX already have their measurements. SpaceX has already said they can produce their suits and send them up on the Crew Dragon that would bring them back.
Suit incompatibility has been around since the start of the ISS. Cosmonaut suits are obviously imcompatible, too. What I hadn't appreciated is that Cosmonaut seats are custom, so they have to sit in their assigned seat.
"Nobody put interoperability in the Interface Control Document, " Bingo!
They contracted companies to build spacecraft at a firm, fixed price and never thought to put something like this in the ICD. It actually would have made the system cheaper because it's one less thing to devote design effort to.
OK, not much cheaper.
The neat thing about the SpaceX suits is they cost about $200,000 to make. For in-vehicle-only pressure suits, that's chump change, sofa change, pocket change. Cheap at twice the price.
SpaceX can whip up an adaptor system, but, really, it's easier to just make two suits. They have very talented people that work very quickly and can get it done.
As to the suit issue, you forgot one other vehicle. The Orion capsule. Which uses standard NASA space hardware. This means the US is currently 'flying' three completely different outfits. Well, actually, two right now because Orion isn't flying. Then again, neither is Starliner so SpaceX wins. Again.
Oh no, there were plenty of people on the Team that pointed out that suit interconnection should absolutely be common and per spec and unalterable and unchangeable and not subject to change or re-interpretation but they were drowned out by people who have never been in space or plan to go there. It literally would not have cost anything to put it in the spec for all spacecraft WE PAY FOR.
I would not be surprised to learn that the Boeing suits are NASA compatible, but also that those details were never shared with SpaceX. They didn't expect SpaceX to get off the ground, and they only gave the contract to SpaceX so people would stop complaining about the same 2 companies getting all the contracts.
The astronauts can still wear the Boeing suits in the SpaceX capsule, but they won't be able to plug in the sensors that track vital signs, so if one of the Boeing people has a problem, no one will know until they're on the ground.
Custom seats are understandable under Old Space rules where nothing happens and nobody flies before years of notice, and the capsules are all one-shots anyway.
New Space rules where there multiple launch systems in the warehouse and manifests can change on a moment's notice call for new rules for the suits too. Nothing custom, everything common including seats, and interoperability between vendors is mandatory.
FYI: NASA reported this week that tomorrow, Saturday, they will make their final, this time they really mean it, final decision of how Butch and Suni will leave ISS.
Place yer bets if they're joking or not.
I still say crew 9 will be the taxi.
"Why did nobody think about this beforehand?"
Bean Counters aren't paid to think about such things. But they save a lot of money by getting rid of fired the engineers who did think of such things.
Now Boeing is trying to figure out the most cost effective way to cover up their mistake
"This was routine, therefore their spacesuits were doubtless designed and fitted to be used aboard either spacecraft."
Nope, pretty much every generation of spacecrafty has had its own custom suit. The difference is that this is really the first time we've had such an issue happen (bad capsule) and there were multiple options for a replacement. Before it was swapping one Soyuz or Shuttle for another (and the latter didn't even have suits until after Challenger on the thought that it might offer a glimpse of hope if there was another disaster. Spoiler alert: it didn't help).
But Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Vostok, Soyuz, Buran, etc. all had their own unique suits. Unsure about Vostok vs. Voskhod but that was so early it didn't matter anyways.
Because DEI is rightfully spelled DIE, and all the people pointing out the impending problems were too old and white to be worth listening to.
Peter, space emergencies were considered in 1969 and the American public was briefed via the famous silver screen. Marooned is on YouTube as a pay move if you need to see the answer to space emergencies.
Dave
I have posted this before on this subject. Very early design concepts of the Crew Dragon showed seating for 7 in a 4 over 3 configuration. I wonder if for the Crew 9 mission, that SpaceX could add a couple of additional seats instead of internal cargo? Send up the 2 additional suits that SpaceX says they have that will fit Sunni and Butch with 2 extra seats added and voila the problem of getting them home safe is solved! It would be an "experimental" configuration but what the heck, Dragon has been shown to work quite well.
back in the '50s, on the back of their inhouse magazine IBM put a message: "PLAN AHEAd" with the 'd' falling off the line
Again, private enterprise triumphs over the bureaucracy of government. NASA will have to concede to a private company to lessen the risk to lives their debacle created.
The incompatibility is deliberate, not accidental. (but see comment below)
When the Commercial Crew program was started, it's only reason to have two vendors was to have a second option in case something went wrong with their primary vendor (Boeing). As such they specified that the two craft should have as little as possible in common, down to the connectors used, so that if there was a problem discovered in one, it would not affect the other.
(As a practical matter, this is a good thing, otherwise the Boeing version would have been mandated and we would not have the much sleeker SpaceX suits)
Now, I believe that NASA should have invested in converter boxes that would allow a Boeing suit to connect to a SpaceX craft (or a SpaceX suit to connect to a Boeing craft), but since the Boeing craft is still being tested, I can give them a pass for not having such a thing ready before the first flight.
Remember, these are not EVA suits, designed to protect them or let them operate exposed in space, and they don't wear them for most of the flight in the capsules. These are only used for a few hours during takeoff and landing, designed to protect against the capsule malfunctioning (the Soviets lost a crew who were landing without suits when a malfunction opened the capsule to space during landing)
So it really does not add a lot of risk to have Butch and Sunni laying in the cargo section of a Dragon for reentry without suits.
As I say, they should make adapter boxes to allow for cross connections during an emergency, but only if they are going to continue Starliner manned flight
The fact that they did not include the option to land the Starliner completely under ground control in case something happened to incapacitate the Astronauts is a FAR bigger problem IMHO. As I understand it, NASA used to have this capability as a requirement for capsules, and it's only a year or two since a Soyuz was hit by space debris and damaged to the point where they had to detach and land it autonomously to send up a replacement.
David Lang
You guys don't keep up with the latest paperwork. Both the NAACP and the N.O.W. have subsections in their charters providing free adapters for any of their members of suitable (no pun intended) color/gender, for the next 4 decades. I believe K. Harris signed the final approval. No white males allowed.
Simplest way to phrase it:
Space takes money.
Money involves politics.
Politicians are (redacted).
We had an engineer who designed instrument packages for the company. His designs always incorporated many connectors (D9, D25, Cannon, Parallel, etc.) at the inputs and outputs, to be able to use whatever was available wherever the box was installed.
This engineer came to us from NASA, where his talents were not appreciated.
Winston Clark, you were brilliant.
This looks like misdirection to take the heat off of Boeing for their incompetence in every step of this multiyear melodrama. The suits are the least of their worries.
I served 25 years with NASA most of it in experiment operations in Low Earth Orbit on both Shuttle and ISS programs. While all this saddens me it does not surprise in the least.
When we retired the shuttle fleet all ISS astronauts were forced to comply with Russian space suit restrictions so as to be compatible with Soyuz seating requirements thus reducing the max highth requirements from 6'4" to 6'2" if I remember correctly. I retired in 2011 so details are fuzzy.
Also sat on a number of evaluation boards and do recall a host of shenanigans pulled to get around hard requirements for space rated equipment. For example the Microgravity Science Glovebox facility rack sat dormant for the first six months on orbit unusable due to a faulty power supply built under contract to ESA and questioned well before launch at a review I attended in Bremen at the contractor site. As I recall the exact quote was "We're ESA we know what we're doing!"
The decision this morning (saturday) is that they can't predict what is happening with the thrusters, so they are going to take several steps
1. configure the crew 8 dragon so that Butch and Sunni could fly back without suits in it.
2. send the Starliner back to earth uncrewed
3. send the crew 9 dragon up with only two crew and two SpaceX suits for Butch and Sunni
4. have Butch and Sunny return with crew 9 after 6 months.
The problem is that the additional testing of the Starliner thrusters at White Sands is showing that they don't understand what is happening. The thrusters are getting hotter than predicted, they are getting hot when the big thruster fires (which was not predicted), and one set of thrusters is getting hotter than the other 3 sets.
When these thrusters get too hot, a teflon seal expands and starts blocking the oxidizer line, which (finally) explains the uneven performance that they have seen on all three flights.
The manufacturers and other users of these thrusters have never seen them get as hot on other craft that have used them.
David Lang
The space suits will not fit through the hatch. More Boing-DEI crap.
> The space suits will not fit through the hatch. More Boing-DEI crap
umm, those suits (the SpaceX suits, the Boeing suits, and the Soviet suits) are only used inside the capsule, and only for takoff and landing. They are not used during normal flight and are not used on the station.
They fit through the ground hatch (they wear them as the get in and out on the ground), but it doesn't matter if they do or don't fit through the hatch onto the station, because they would never be used there.
NASA idiots were too busy working on getting Muslims into space and combatting globull warming to bother with such minutiae as space suit compatibility.
Not holding my breath for the idiots that did that to be fired, but they should be.
NASA is all such a colossal waste of money.
What makes anyone think they aren't having an emergency now? Ill bet there's a load of full britches at nasa and boing. Stranded astronauts could be a problem
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