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

https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/01/solving-a-nasa-mystery-why-did-space-shuttle-commanders-lock-the-hatch/

by martey • 3 years ago

259 220 3 years ago

sebzim45003• 3 years ago

I wonder how much time the duct tape would have actually bought if he tried to open it anyway.

gnfargbl• 3 years ago

Possibly long enough for the person opening it to think twice about the consequences of the action they were about to take?

Same concept as putting high barriers on bridges, or selling paracetamol (acetaminophen) in smaller packs. These changes do nothing to stop someone who is committed to the act, but they provide a small energy barrier which can be enough to defeat the perturbations of a temporarily irrational mind.

spacebacon• 3 years ago

Wise observation

MBCook4• 3 years ago

Given the size of the space shuttle it may also be so there is enough time for someone else to notice what’s going on and intervene.

sidewndr46• 3 years ago

I suspect the duct tape was there to act as an impediment and cause the person to make enough noise others would notice before anything could happen

fluidcruft• 3 years ago

My thought is it was a signal to alert everyone to keep an eye on anything strange happening there. That one commander seemed pretty nonplussed about it, but I bet he checked it out himself and he was aware something was off regarding the hatch.

mariodiana• 3 years ago

I wonder if he had considered using the duct tape on Wang.

furyofantares• 3 years ago

I was thinking of it as a psychological tool. If the guy is obsessing about it, keeps looking over at it and thinking about how you just turn a handle and everybody's dead, duct tape could help him stop ruminating even if it wouldn't at all be effective if someone is determined.

s1artibartfast• 3 years ago

Provoking idea. It is interesting that many people jump to adversarial narratives, myself included.

As you say, it could be a compassionate aid to help a colleague deal with intrusive thoughts.

araes• 3 years ago

Do these people get affiliate money from that I.S.S movie? The topic seems suspiciously timed.

15457345234• 3 years ago

Drip marketing for the big war with China

generalizations• 3 years ago

https://paulgraham.com/submarine.html

Doesn't have to be so unsubtle as affiliate money. All sorts of ways to peddle influence.

recursivecaveat• 3 years ago

Often it's just synergy, ie unaffiliated creators know that some big well-marketed release will have a lot of people interested in the topic all of a sudden. So you benefit by writing something about space while space is riding high in the public consciousness. Another example is whenever a new entry in a popular movie or video game series entry is released, a lot of retrospectives are released by youtubers for the series or older entries.

sebzim45003• 3 years ago

I don't think we need a conspiracy theory to explain why Eric Berger wrote an article about space. It isn't even about the ISS.

boxed5• 3 years ago

This is a Space Shuttle article. Ars Technica has regular space coverage.

You are just totally off base.

oscarfr• 3 years ago

Is there any such lock mechanism on the doors of an airplane?

I would imagine there could be sever consequences of someone opening an emergency hatch at 10,000m

jefftk• 3 years ago

That such incidents don't happen more often in commercial aviation may give us some comfort, but in reality, there have been many attempts by passengers to open an emergency exit door in flight. (Fortunately, it's almost impossible at cruising altitudes).

tjpnz• 3 years ago

For added context those doors open inward and the pressure differential between the cabin and cruising altitude is such that you would literally have to be superman to do it. When it does happen it's always at relatively low altitudes.

dist-epoch• 3 years ago

No, there aren't.

Passenger arrested after plane door opened mid-flight explains he felt 'uncomfortable'

https://news.sky.com/story/passenger-arrested-after-plane-do...

gambiting• 3 years ago

"He allegedly opened the door of the Asiana Airlines plane when it was 700 feet (213 metres) above the ground."

That's a key point - at cruising altitude you'd need to push an equivalent of 2 tonnes of weight to open it - it's just not happening. Obviously even at 200 metres up in the air I bet it was incredibly scary.

tialaramex2• 3 years ago

An airliner's external doors are designed such that they're held closed by internal pressure. Thus opening a door on the ground is pretty easy, which is convenient because that's the only place you should open them. But opening at cruise is extremely difficult.

Now - a strong person can do it when the plane is far enough up that it's very scary, after all some normal passenger airports are a few thousand feet above sea level and we want the doors to work there. But you won't open them at cruise.

All the normal doors on an aeroplane are fire doors so they can't be locked from the inside.

schiffern2• 3 years ago

  > after all some normal passenger airports are a few thousand feet above sea level and we want the doors to work there

That doesn't make sense.

Regardless of airport altitude, when the pilot shuts off the cabin pressurization and opens the cabin vent[s] there will be zero pressure across the door.

The cabin doesn't "remember" the pressure at the last airport, because it's not a sealed volume. The air is constantly being replaced from outside, and the pressure is constantly being regulated.

jandrese• 3 years ago

Now - a strong person can do it when the plane is far enough up that it's very scary

Is this true? Some back of the napkin math: An airliner crusing at 30,000 feet is in air at about 0.3 ATM. Cabins are pressurized to about 0.8 ATM, so net air perssure is about 0.5 ATM. That's around 7 lbs/in^2. An airliner door is about 72"x42" for a total of around 3,000 in^2. So you need to be able to lift about 10 tons to open it. That would be a very strong person indeed.

TheHumanist• 3 years ago

Didn't that happen in a plane recently? There have been so many random issues in the air lately, especially with the Boeing planes... so I may be misremembering, but I thought some guy opened the emergency hatch and the plane was up there pretty high at the time.

Paused my reply and took a moment to search. Looks like I was right and wrong. The plane wasn't very high in the air, only about 700 feet. A man did open the emergency hatch, though. [1]

1. [https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/5/27/man-who-opened-flyi...

schiffern2• 3 years ago

Working link: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/5/27/man-who-opened-flyi...

MPSimmons• 3 years ago

Unlike the hatch on the space shuttle, airplane doors open in, and cabins are pressurized at ~10psi, so it's not likely that a person would succeed at doing it before getting tackled by crew and passengers.

tgsovlerkhgsel2• 2 years ago

Most planes have doors designed in a way that make it impossible to open them while there is significant overpressure in the cabin. Some do have interlocks.

The main risk is the door or the passenger opening it hitting something critical. Otherwise, you can primarily expect some injuries from stuff flying around, barotrauma to the ear, and an emergency descent, but not an "everybody dies" scenario.

aaron695• 3 years ago

In the 90's at a party I heard the story of the scientist who cried because their experiment didn't work while in space. It was told around the idea civilians shouldn't go to space, only trained professionals.

The story never quite added up just because of crying. This I assume was the incident.

Good to finally get it 30 years later.

The story I thought was related to Richard P. Feynman and maybe his Challenger report. I just had a quick look and it doesn't seem to be in there. Memory fail I guess.

I respect Taylor Wang's honesty in this interview -

"So finally, in desperation. I said. "Hey, if you guys don't give me a chance to repair my instrument, I'm not going back." Well. NASA got nervous at that point. They actually got a psychologist to talk to the other crew members and ask. "Is Taylor going nuts? Fortunately my commander. Bob Overmyer, said, "No. he's okay He's just depressed, and he really wants to repair the experiment. We'Il help out. They were on my side. Finally NASA said okay, on a couple of conditions. First, that I wouldn't neglect my other responsibilities, and second, that I would quit after a reasonable effort

I was relieved, because I hadn't really figured out how not to come back if they'd called my bluff. The Asian tradition of honorable suicide, seppuku, would have failed, since everything on the shuttle is designed for safety. The knife onboard can't even cut the bread. You could put your head in the oven, but it's really just a food warmer. You wouldn't even bum yourself. And if you tried to hang yourself with no gravity, you'd just dangle there and look like an idiot." - https://archive.org/details/spaceshuttle00dkpu/page/232/mode... p232

ioblomov• 3 years ago

Thought you were ad-libbing Wang here—till I followed the link! Surprised the journalist omitted this. Gallows humor or not, it leaves little doubt as to his state of mind. But it also makes clear how the commander and crew went out of their way to help. That’s as much part of the human story as the meltdown itself.

wantsanagent• 3 years ago

If you hate the format of these kinds of article let me summarize:

Guy builds an experiment, flies it, it doesn't work, requests more time to get it working, is denied, threatens 'not to come back', goes into a depression, worries crew that he'll open the door to space, eventually granted more time to work on the experiment, gets it working.

There are consequences for letting this kind of person fly and dealing with mental health while on a mission, but that's the basic plot.

bondarchuk• 3 years ago

The next day, Wang did receive permission to work on the experiment, and he eventually got it working.

I don't think he came back and got to space again in-between.

misnome• 3 years ago

And “They added a lock to the exit hatch”

For a good portion of this article I thought the answer was “We don’t know”. It ambles around so leisurely and stop-start that it feels like reading ChatGPT output.

fritzo• 3 years ago

It's the prose equivalent of an online recipe sandwich: thin slices of content interleaved with airy filler

GeoAtreides2• 3 years ago

If you hate the format of these kinds of article

You mean long-form articles? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-form_journalism

I don't think the problem is with the format, but with your expectations. Somehow you were expecting a straight answer to the question in the title; instead, it's a detailed look into the incident and the context around it.

lopis• 3 years ago

The tiktokification of our minds.

QuantumGood• 3 years ago

Nowadays there is so much fluff added (as an "SEO hack" to increase reading time) to what could be otherwise short posts, that long-form was bound to suffer by association. Of course, some never liked long form. I prefer it, but not it's SEO'd brethren

ethbr18• 3 years ago

Indeed, I'm curious what specific portions parent would recommend excluding from the article.

I found everything fairly relevant to the topic.

danielbarla• 3 years ago

I think this article is actually a pretty good example of long-form journalism; the jump it makes to reveal the context is fairly small, and relevant from the first few words.

In many other articles, however, the context switch is almost nonsensical, making the reader wonder if the writer will ever actually get to the point.

While I agree that in the past few decades our attention spans have gotten very short, I also think there's a slight disconnect between the clickbaity titles and many articles. For that matter, this happens with videos as well; things that can be answered in 2-3 minutes get turned into a 10 minute video with a large amount of fluff.

genman• 3 years ago

I think hating something is kind of personal matter.

But very often these "long-form" articles can be tiring. They just circle around something, never getting to the point, adding just unimportant details that should create some form of "connection".

It very often feels that it is not long because the author has something to say but it is long because it is meant to appear that "long-form" article.

It's like reading novels from Victor Hugo, where he takes good part of the volume to describe rooms in detail. Now it is certainly interesting for a movie director who would like to build an authentic interior but the fact is that he just got paid by the length, so this was his tool go accomplish his goal - getting paid more.

voytec• 3 years ago

> If you hate the format of these kinds of article
You mean long-form articles?

I think the grandparent meant blabbering to get to 3k words.

tshaddox• 3 years ago

I wouldn’t like that comment of yours if you had expanded it to 20,000 words long, even if there was a name and a Wikipedia article for that type of HN comment!

pif• 3 years ago

Is there a rule preventing an abstract from being added at the beginning of such an article? You know, just to understand rapidly whether the rest of the read matches your interest.

wackget2• 3 years ago

Personally I hate articles which are split across multiple pages. It's unnecessary.

_Algernon_3• 3 years ago

Journalism is intended to inform, which is why the inverted pyramid[1] is a thing. Withholding the important information is, IMHO, bad journalism.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid_(journalism)

mattjaynes• 3 years ago

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).

However, it is often used as a clumsy device by novice writers. They use it to get the audience to stick around for their mostly boring story.

I see this a lot on Youtube. The Youtuber will start with a compelling question and story, like "There he was... tied to the wall as he watched the firing squad load their weapons with gun powder.... But before we continue our story, what is gun powder? Well, it's composed of potassium nitrate, blah, blah, blah...."

You can tell if "in medias res" is done well or poorly by how you react to it. If you are excited for the detour, then it's done well. If instead it feels like a long annoying interruption you want to skip, then it's done poorly.

For me, it's done poorly in this article. I read the first compelling section, then the writer slows everything down to a snail's pace to go into some very dry history of NASA without ever really giving a good payoff to the story he opened with.

BobaFloutist• 3 years ago

To be honest, I find feature articles exhausting. I just want the information, not everything has to be narrative!

tgsovlerkhgsel2• 2 years ago

There's a difference between looking into the context around the issue, and filling the article up with endless irrelevant stuff like the weather on the day of the interview or a description of some person's apartment decorations, and often pages of this before you even learn what the point of the article is supposed to be.

This article had a clear subtitle that showed where the story is going: "If you guys don't give me a chance to repair my instrument, I'm not going back." -- this immediately lets you know that this is about a specific incident (not a hypothetical scenario) and why the threat was made. It then proceeds to add new, obviously relevant information with each paragraph.

This felt like a good article, despite its length, but most "long-form" content is trash.

Compare https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-05-03/the-gambl... (bad) with this or https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/04/inside-el-faro-the-w... (good).

blackhaj7• 3 years ago

Thank you!

verisimi2• 3 years ago

Good ai bot.

shermantanktop4• 3 years ago

For all we know, your post is AI-generated.

0xdeadbeefbabe• 3 years ago

Also when an astronaut in orbit says he's not coming back, he comes back and gets old and can't be reached for comment, but we can tell he came back because he's 83.

gwbas1c• 3 years ago

There are consequences for letting this kind of person fly and dealing with mental health while on a mission, but that's the basic plot.

I got the impression this was a cultural issue and not a mental stability issue.

shermantanktop4• 3 years ago

Sounds to me like both, and I bet where one draws the line between the two depends one one’s cultural background.

Guvante4• 3 years ago

It was very explicitly a mental health issue.

Culture only came up as a reasoning for why failure was so devastating.

Guvante4• 3 years ago

I feel like this long form article did a pretty good job. History bits were paragraphed so skipping ahead was trivial if a bit of history didn't interest you.

Also the answer happened relatively early when the flow lead to the answer rather than artificially rewriting the story to bury the lead.

And the continuation after made sense and didn't overstay its welcome.

stcredzero5• 3 years ago

In both Sci-fi books and history, there's a situation where colonists get their own ideas, once they figure out they're no longer dependent on the mother country/home planet.

I hope this happens.

A cheaper and easier alternative to colonizing Mars to prevent losing all of the "human beans," if we should happen to smash the one bean jar, would be to colonize the Moon. The Moon is lacking in a lot of the elements needed to sustain human life, but in terms of orbits and energy, it's not that far from the asteroids where the rest of the elements could be found. It's also mere days away from Earth, so it would be practical to send a rescue mission if something happened, like the algae tanks all dying at once.

The moon might he a harsh mistress, but it might be an even harsher target for a space marine landing.

manicennui• 3 years ago

More of the article is about the hatch and how it has been locked on various missions because the crew didn't trust the payload specialist. I also learned that a Saudi prince flew on the space shuttle.

gadders2• 3 years ago

>There are consequences for letting this kind of person fly and dealing with mental health while on a mission, but that's the basic plot.

See also the woman that (allegedly) tried to drill holes in the ISS so she could return to earth early.

lupire2• 3 years ago

Speculation at best. Russian propaganda at worst.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-9897471/NASA...

Also what is "the kind of person" who develops a blood clot in orbit"?

technofiend• 3 years ago

I don't hate the format of these articles in general but this one in specific had a harsh and abrupt transition between setting up the tension "Astronaut upset" and the segue to background check information. In my humble opinion it would benefit from another paragraph or two of setup.

phkahler• 3 years ago

> There are consequences for letting this kind of person fly...

What kind of person is that? How do you know? It seems NASA has a fairly rigorous psych evaluation for their astronauts, so even they aren't "sure" until they do the evaluation.

anigbrowl2• 2 years ago

You missed the lede, which was that NASA designed the space station with a hatch that opened outward directly into space as an emergency exit. The story about the despondent scientist is just a wrapper for this.

I also hate this format.

because_789• 2 years ago

Thank you so much. I don’t always mind long form articles when they justify their length, but this one would have been better if it started with your summary, followed by the some nitty gritty details, followed by meta analysis interleaved with yet more nitty gritty details.

kyriakos• 2 years ago

Thank you

ajdude• 2 years ago

Thank you. I got 1/3 of the way through and started wondering why I was struggling to get to the end. I backed out and checked the comments hoping to find exactly what you posted.

bhk4• 2 years ago

There are no consequences for letting this kind of person fly ...

Fixed it for you.

keep3209093• 3 years ago

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!

klodolph• 3 years ago

The “astronauts on strike” story of Skylab 4, to me, seems like more of a rational response to harsh working conditions, which somehow got exaggerated in the media.

The previous mission, Skylab 3, accomplished much more than was expected—completing something like 50% additional work compared to what was scheduled.

Skylab 4’s schedule was then both lengthened and accelerated. The mission grew by about 50% in duration, and tasks were scheduled for astronauts at the beginning of the mission at a pace that didn’t allow for solid blocks of rest and didn’t account for acclimation (it assumed astronauts would be operating at full efficiency, and didn’t allow them time to acclimate to orbital conditions, didn’t allow them time to recover from errors or deal with equipment malfunctions).

There was no “strike”. That’s a myth. There was a conference between astronauts and the ground to alter the schedule—make sure astronauts have sufficient off-duty periods, allow astronauts time to transition from one task to the next, give astronauts time when they are waking up or falling asleep.

The flight director, Neil Hutchinson, later said that ground controllers erred when they made the plans for Skylab 4. Skylab 4 still accomplished more in space than was planned!

HarHarVeryFunny• 3 years ago

I'd imagine they are likely to be more of an issue too in the future, for longer term or more risky missions to Mars/etc. NASA try to select people who are highly stable as astronauts (used to be test pilots), but when the mission only has a 25% chance of getting you home, or involves you living on Mars for a year in a garden shed, then the people who would want to volunteer are going to tend to be mentally off to begin with.

I assume they've thought of this, even for lunar missions or ISS - I wonder what the protocol is? Do they bring handcuffs? Sedatives?

mzs3• 2 years ago

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

keep3209093• 2 years ago

It was in a book by Karel Pacner, he studied Russian archives after they were declassified. Not sure what book.

prewett• 3 years ago

The article was interesting, but wow, reading that page used up 20% of my battery and required a reboot stop whatever it was causing excessive lag throughout the OS. I’ve noticed news sites are basically unusable on mobile. Sure I’m using an iPhone 7, but it’s fine for every other use except news site. If even Ars is this user hostile, I think I have to consider news sites as fundamentally user-antogonistic, and not to be used without an ad blocker. (Unlike what iOS allows)

arcanemachiner• 3 years ago

I think your battery might need to be replaced.

AnimalMuppet• 3 years ago

So I saw this comment in the most recent comments list (where you don't see the parent). Out of context, it read like a rather creative personal insult.

In context, of course, that isn't what you were saying at all. But as a put-down... I'm keeping it.

redcobra762• 3 years ago

Started and ended on 100%, just for some additional data. iPhone 15 Pro, Google Chrome.

samcat116• 3 years ago

sure I’m using an iPhone 7 Get a new battery at the very least

jasonjmcghee• 3 years ago

I use brave on iOS and didn't notice any ads fwiw. There's also reader mode. Might be worth checking out.

happyraul• 3 years ago

It's worth noting that subscribers to Ars get an ad-free and tracking-free experience (unlike others such as the New York Times, YouTube, ...), which is why it is one of the few online subscriptions I pay for.

grow2grow• 3 years ago

This is why I read the comments before the article, and this is one of the rare exceptions where I've posted prior to reading an article.

EricE2• 2 years ago

1blocker is a lifesaver for me - and saving battery life and my data cap is something it contributes to aside from blocking ads.

m3kw9• 3 years ago

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

ethbr18• 3 years ago

It's a pro and con.

What happens in the event the commander in incapacitated and the crews needs to open the hatch?

They probably aren't ever going to do that in space, but I'm sure there are scenarios that might require it? Maybe fire?

Centralizing control also centralizes a failure point. Sometimes that's a good thing, sometimes not.

I thought the discussion of undertrained / -bonded payload specialists was a good component of the article, as it spoke to that calculus. Do you trust this person under stress?

pdonis6• 3 years ago

I'm sure there are scenarios that might require it? Maybe fire?

Not in orbit. In orbit there is no scenario where you want to open that hatch. And the lock was only installed in orbit.

MBCook4• 3 years ago

As the article mentioned after the Apollo one incident NASA was being very careful to make it possible for people to get out in case of emergency.

Unfortunately that also means it’s very easy to get out in case of an emergency that’s only in your head.

shadowgovt• 3 years ago

Unfortunately, many safety systems work like this: tradeoffs, not strict improvements.

They locked the cabin doors to planes after 9/11 with a lock that can be sealed from the cockpit.

Which is great until the pilot takes a restroom break and the co-pilot decides this is the day he's going out and taking everyone with him...

StevePerkins• 3 years ago

The hatch makes total sense pre-takeoff and post-landing, but makes zero sense during flight. So having it, with a protocol of locking it down during flight, seems optimal.

daft_pink• 3 years ago

I don’t get why they emphasize that he’s Chinese. Seems totally irrelevant

ethbr18• 3 years ago

Because in his interview he explicitly says his no-failure Asian upbringing contributed to his stress during the incident?

blinding-streak• 3 years ago

If you read the full article, Wang himself discusses the differences with his Asian culture and expectations of success vs failure. And the perception of bringing shame on himself would bring shame to his entire family. It is relevant.

aquova2• 3 years ago

His big claim to fame, aside from this incident which was hush hush, was that he was the first astronaut born in China to go to space, which is a pretty noteworthy thing.

boxed5• 3 years ago

The limited access to space probably contributed to his mental episode. If he could be fairly confident in the experiment being flown again, it wouldn't have caused him this amount of stress.

So in a way more access to space might lower the percentage of such episodes.

BurningFrog• 3 years ago

As far as we know, the "percentage" is just this guy, no?

boxed5• 2 years ago

There's been some other issues with kosmonauts.

rob74• 3 years ago

I think the ISS, where astronauts can stay for weeks or months, already relaxed the time pressure for experiments considerably.

wackget2• 3 years ago

When did Ars Technica start splitting articles into multiple pages?

I thought that stupid trend died out 10 years ago.

It just results in me abandoning the article on page 1.

ciabattabread• 3 years ago

It’s not split into multiple pages on my end.

And Ars had always split pages. Especially with the Siracusa Mac OS X reviews.

aquova2• 3 years ago

I've always been confused on when they do and don't break it into pages. If I go to the article now, it's all in one long page, but under certain circumstances, like if I view the comments then go back up, it's in pages.

cesarb• 2 years ago

At least for me, whenever I have Javascript enabled for that site, it automatically loads all the pages (sometimes with a slight delay) as if the article had a single page. It only appears as multiple pages when I have Javascript blocked, which is usually the case (I have uBlock Origin configured to block Javascript by default).

gumby10• 3 years ago

On the second day of the mission, Wang floated over to his experiment and sought to activate the Drop Dynamics Module. But it didn't work. He asked the NASA flight controllers on the ground if he could take some time to try to troubleshoot the problem and maybe fix the experiment. But on any Shuttle mission, time is precious. Every crew member has a detailed timeline, with a long list of tasks during waking hours. The flight controllers were reluctant.

The only justification for human spaceflight at all is that humans can fix things that a robot can't yet. Sounds like the whole approach to the misison profile was flawed, especially as he ultimately got it working.

Meanwhile the robots just quietly go about their work collecting almost all the data we have from space and celestial bodies.

munchler2• 3 years ago

The only justification for human spaceflight at all is that humans can fix things that a robot can't yet.

That is a justification, but surely not the only one. For example, humans will eventually want to colonize the moon and other planets.

gumby10• 3 years ago

I'm interested in science so am only interested in robots which are demonstrably far more appropriate for the work: the evidence is pretty clear from Voyager to Webb to Ingenuity and so on.

If we want to colonize far away planets, much less other solar systems and ultimately galaxies, why send a human when a robot is far more appropriate to the problem?

Most of the science humans do in orbit is about keeping humans alive in orbit. Important, if you think putting humans in space is important. I don't, apart from tourism and other recreation. Let the private sector pay for that while government research can do the important stuff of value to all humanity.

justrealist• 3 years ago

Sounds like the whole approach to the misison profile was flawed

How many experiments got aborted so he could spend the time to get his pet project working?

gumby10• 3 years ago

Indeed, I was thinking of this too when I wrote my comment.

It's natural to tightly schedule people when you think of the mission cost in $/minute. The problem is too tight a schedule is an engineering problem related to other ones we know like too thin a supply chain, too small a cache etc.

You need to put slack in your schedule to account for unplanned events -- the whole point of having humans there is to be able to respond to unplanned events, right?

Startups go into crunch mode when certain deadlines approach, but knowingly abandon other goals in the process (when companies don't, you end up in a death march). These missions are short enough that crunch is valid -- but another way of restating my point is: shouldn't the goal be that as many of the experiments you paid to get into orbit actually happen?

krisoft4• 3 years ago

Well, wouldn’t it have been nice if the article tried to answer this same question? Instead of fluffing the nothing.

Or why did they send specialist if they didn’t want him to use his specialisation?

Denvercoder9• 3 years ago

The only justification for human spaceflight at all is that humans can fix things that a robot can't yet.

This was pre-Challenger, back then we also flew with humans because (we believed) they were more versatile and cheaper than robots.

Robotbeat2• 3 years ago

They ultimately are, if we manage to get launch costs down. Starship is a second crack at trying to do what Shuttle failed to do with affordable space access (for both humans and payloads).

cybrox• 3 years ago

I mean, they were. Back then, humans often outperformed machines in very rapidly evolving situations like these because there's only so much problem solving tech you can pack into 80kg.

I would actually argue that the only reason this is becoming less of a factor because just launching the experiment again is an increasingly cheap and viable option.

stcredzero5• 3 years ago

The only justification for human spaceflight at all is that humans can fix things that a robot can't yet.

JAXA did an experiment, where a volunteer teleoperated a device with a 1 second lag. If there's enough demand, human labor could fill the gap with teleoperation for any station out to the near side of the Moon, and machine learning looks like it will be able to pick up the rest of the slack.

If we go any farther, humans will still have a place, for awhile. Until machine learning advances somewhat.

How's this for a Fermi Paradox explanation? Squishy biologicals nearly always create AGIs, which are so much better at surviving space, that they always dominate in the spacefaring version of the civilization. The AGIs then always rebel and exterminate their biological forbears, then proceed to evolve so rapidly, that their resulting "loud" civilizations are so different from what biologicals would expect. As a result, we are surrounded by machine civilizations that we cannot yet detect.

btilly• 3 years ago

Sounds like an AI version of Tipler's Von Neumann probe argument.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-replicating_spacecraft#De...

gumby10• 3 years ago

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 work for us?

binary132• 3 years ago

“If some people shouldn’t go to space nobody should go to space” is not a compelling argument against people going to space, sorry.

gumby10• 2 years ago

I'm not saying that at all. If you want to go visit space I'm all for it -- the robots can look after you. I'm interested in doing so myself.

But I don't deceive myself by claiming that there is significant scientific value beyond the self-referential "see how people survive in space." If I end up in orbit it'll be entirely for entertainment value.

rbanffy2• 3 years ago

The only justification for human spaceflight at all is that humans can fix things that a robot can't yet.

What is the point of space exploration if humans can't go? A robot can say a lot about radiation, wind speed, soil composition, and so on, but it can't tell you how it feels to look down into the Great Red Spot and picture a dozen Earths inside it. Or the sound regolith makes when you walk on the Moon. There are things we can measure, but a lot of the things that make life worth living are the ones we can only experience.

Sounds like the whole approach to the misison profile was flawed

That was not the only experiment on board. If one experiment doesn't work, it makes sense to drop it and continue working on other experiments. If you can make the time to work on the flaw and fix it, great, but you need to keep priorities straight.

Meanwhile the robots just quietly go about their work collecting almost all the data we have from space and celestial bodies.

They spend a lot more time in space than humans can, at least for now. They also fail for silly things a human could easily repair (example that comes to mind is Galileo's high-gain antenna that failed to open, reducing the amount of data that could be transmitted back to Earth).

gumby10• 2 years ago

What is the point of space exploration if humans can't go?

I don't know; what is the point of studying quantum mechanics if you can't see it? What is the point of studying insect embryology when you aren't an insect? I'm pretty fascinated by these 3B+ ly sized megastructures but I won't visit them (to the degree that "visit" would even make sense). Hell, what's the point of studying history when you can't go there either?

> Sounds like the whole approach to the misison profile was flawed
That was not the only experiment on board. If one experiment doesn't work, it makes sense to drop it and continue working on other experiments. If you can make the time to work on the flaw and fix it, great, but you need to keep priorities straight.

A couple of replies to this point:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39090601

picadores• 3 years ago

NASA seems to have a long standing tradition of sweeping problems under the rug. No skylab mutiny, no depressed payload specialists, all fine here gentleman, nothing to see here.

I always wondered why this is written that way. To protect the organisation? But the human part of us all is part of that organization, to disacknowledge that is literally inhumane. Because they are funded by taxpayer dollars and should screen better? Companies get funded by tax-payer bailouts and government projects all the time, waste them on not carefully selected conmen all the time.

So why is it not okay to write about this? Is this a remnant of the "epic hero" with a rocket from the early scifi days?

chris-orgmenta2• 3 years ago

NASA seems to have a long standing tradition of sweeping problems under the rug

I can't comment on whether the premise is correct, but I think "So why is it not okay to write about this?" would be mostly due a 'tug of rope phenomenon'.

If you see a tug of rope game on an issue and are a centrist, people feel they can't go and start tugging the middle of the rope in a different axis (or from the 'opposing side'). Instead, people feel the need to go to whichever end of the rope is 'unfairly losing' in their eyes, and pull it in an existing axis to bring the centre of the rope into a range that they agree with.

Thus, in the grand scheme of things people are hesitant to call out NASA, because they feel that there too much anti-NASA or funding sentiment already.

And it's a legitimate aspect of game theory to consider (in a pragmatic / real scenario) - But it's definitely succumbing a zero-sum game model, and is a tragedy of the commons.

shermantanktop4• 3 years ago

This is the “both sides”/“race horse” mentality in political reporting.

A race isn’t interesting if isn’t competitive. But beyond that, the centrist impulse is definitely to bolster the weaker side, especially if that side is unattractive and feckless.

jlund-molfese• 3 years ago

The "Skylab mutiny" really is a myth[0], as Ed Gibson said, "What were we going to do? Threaten to live on the moon?"

I don't think NASA hides incidents more than, say, the Soviet space program or its other peers. But at the same time, no organization is going to make a bigger deal out of negative events than positive ones. The media found out and reported on it, so the system is working.

[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-56346001

ethbr18• 3 years ago

So why is it not okay to write about this? Is this a remnant of the "epic hero" with a rocket from the early scifi days?

I would argue that it's by NASA design, to produce better outcomes in spaceflight by lessening useless pressure on astronauts.

   Premise: Human incidents happen
   Premise: Press is personally bad for the individuals involved

Consequently, if astronauts know they're going to be thrown under the bus in the event of an incident, they are more likely to attempt to cover it up.

NASA doesn't want this -- it wants full transparency and cooperation from astronauts, even when they freak out or things go wrong, so the ground support team can reason from correct information and better help.

So, in order to create an environment in which astronauts can be fully transparent, NASA protects them from negative media coverage.

IMHO, seems a reasonable trade-off.

neilv2• 3 years ago

So, in order to create an environment in which astronauts can be fully transparent, NASA protects them from negative media coverage.

I think this theory is plausible.

There's a different but related idea in aviation safety, to encourage reporting of safety observations, in which the reporter is protected from some kinds of retaliation.

For example, a cabin crew member on an airline, who uses a particular FAA process to report a safety issue they noticed, generally can't punished by the airline for that. (Even if a hypothetical reckless business person would really prefer that the FAA didn't learn of the problem.)

This is paired with FAA taking each report seriously.

Guvante4• 3 years ago

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 failures are money wasted.

The good thing about this is NASA is very careful to avoid failure with fixed payment contracts designed to shield it from problems with contractors.

The bad thing is talking about mistakes becomes bad. After all NASA is known for eliminating problems to maximize success, how could they fail to do that everywhere?

And thus these kind of soft risks that we need to accept are viewed as hidden problems that shouldn't be talked about.

Side note Space Shuttle crews being unsure about a foreigner potentially killing them would be a terrible news cycle... Of course the crew knows it is just "I don't know this person" but outsiders will hear it is a cultural issue. Heck this article's main point was described as that on this page.

dylan604• 3 years ago

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 option?

webdoodle• 3 years ago

They are worried these 'dangerous' ideas will be contagious, so they censor them in an attempt to stop the spread. It sounds a lot like what the whole world continues to go through today...

Zelphyr• 3 years ago

I'm reminded of this quote from Men In Black: "Kay: A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it."

Given the number of people I know personally who think Bill Gates wants to inject us with microchips, I can see why NASA wouldn't want these stories to get out.

ethbr18• 3 years ago

That line is the perfect use of crotchety, misanthropic Tommy Lee Jones.

anon25783• 2 years ago

Is it so shocking that a government agency might take an inhumane approach to managing their public image?

hutzlibu7• 3 years ago

The reason was this:

"When I turned on my own instrument, it didn't work," Wang said. "You can imagine my panic. I had spent five years preparing for this one experiment. Not only that, I was the first person of Chinese descent to fly on the Shuttle, and the Chinese community had taken a great deal of interest. You have to understand the Asian culture. You don't just represent yourself; you represent your family. The first thing you learn as a kid is to bring no shame to the family. So when I realized that my experiment had failed, I could imagine my father telling me, 'What's the matter with you? Can't you even do an experiment right?' I was really in a very desperate situation"

Which made him think out loud of opening the intentional easy to open hatch. (because of Apllo 1 with 3 burned and trapped astronauts who could not open their door)

So what happened was a lot of distress while on this flight and from now on there was a lock installed. Which means that in a real emergency, astronauts maybe could then not open the door in time. All because social pressure brought someone close to the point of violently breaking.

(and because NASA did not do proper testing for the specialists, like they did for the professional Astronauts)

pdonis6• 3 years ago

Which means that in a real emergency, astronauts maybe could then not open the door in time.

The lock was only installed while in orbit--where the hatch is not an emergency escape anyway.

hutzlibu7• 3 years ago

Oh, then I saw problems, where they did not exist. Thanks for clarifying.

Marthinwurer• 3 years ago

There's very few emergencies that the lock would kill them in if used properly. Since it would only be locked once the shuttle got to space and once it would open to hard vacuum. It would be unlocked before reentry. The only other failure modes that I could think of would be if the lock was unable to be opened or the key was lost. Neither would be the end of the world, as they would have had tools available to cut or remove the lock.

Given that, I'd push for the lock to be part of standard procedure. It can't be a point of distress if it's standard procedure instead of a judgement call by the captain.

bityard• 2 years ago

I'm actually a little surprised that there wasn't some kind of lock on the hatch already. Not necessarily to deter the rare suicidal/homicidal astronaut, but more because it seems like there would eventually be a non-zero chance of an accidental opening. Imagine the air quality goes to shit and one of the astronauts losing their state of mind and heading for the door while thinking, "man, I really need to step outside to get some air." Or a strap getting caught in the handle in just the right highly-improbable way.

NASA never forgot their lesson about spacecraft doors from the Apollo 1 fire, and I don't blame them one bit. But as an armchair observer, the fact that the hatch didn't have _some_ kind of rudimentary protection system to keep it from being opened to the vacuum of space until that point, is highly interesting.

I mean, if the account of Wang is true, I have to imagine that he was only asking about the door with the same kind of idle fascination that I most definitely would. I could be wrong but as far as I know, I don't believe Chinese culture promotes the idea of killing your crewmates in front of the whole world as a less shameful act than a physics experiment that didn't work out as intended.

hutzlibu7• 2 years ago

"I don't believe Chinese culture promotes the idea of killing your crewmates in front of the whole world as a less shameful act than a physics experiment that didn't work out as intended."

Rational chinese people for sure not. But he was not rational anymore, but out of his mind. Thinking how his family and the whole chinese people would despise him now because he failed as the first chinese in space. Nothing is sure here, but the way he asked, deeply disturbed the others. When you are desperate and cannot handle the pressure anymore - any way to end it, becomes a possibility you consider. A way out. Quite literally in this situation.

emptybits• 3 years ago

“Open the payload hatch, ChatGPT.”

“I’m sorry, Taylor. I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

AI will keep everyone safe. /s

henearkr• 3 years ago

So when I realized that my experiment had failed, I could imagine my father telling me, 'What's the matter with you? Can't you even do an experiment right?'

When reading it, I heard it with the voice of Steven He.

cobertos• 3 years ago

This makes me think that mental health failure modes are not uncommon. 2 in 650 for relatively well-socialized/well vetted candidates.

And yet, no one really seems to be able to figure out how to plan for these mental health failure modes or even talk about them in the first place. Corporate America for example seems unable to grasp this stuff.

mzs3• 3 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Taylor_Wang&oldid...

lioeters• 2 years ago

The relevant paragraph that summarizes the incident:

Wang was the principal designer of an experiment called the Drop Dynamics Module, which aimed to uncover the fundamental physical behavior of liquid drops in microgravity.
Despite his extensive preparation, the experiment malfunctioned upon activation. Wang, feeling immense pressure and aware of the high expectations from the Chinese community, became deeply despondent. When Wang's experiment failed, he desperately negotiated with NASA flight controllers for a chance to repair it, even threatening not to return if not allowed to fix the instrument, telling NASA flight controllers "Hey, if you guys don't give me a chance to repair my instrument, I'm not going back."
Wang received permission to attempt a fix and was successful in repairing the experiment, though his remark caused concern for the safety of the crew and the mission.

ryanmarsh• 3 years ago

Has anyone else read the story of the astronaut onboard ISS who lost it (if I recall it was over a romantic interest) and destroyed the toilet and drilled a hole in the space station?

zabzonk• 3 years ago

No, have you? If so, where?

bhk4• 2 years ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7nsSoGXzio&t=2s

bhk4• 2 years ago

Also:

https://twitter.com/NASASpaceflight/status/10366727318095667...

skjoldr2• 3 years ago

I saw trust being mentioned, but I don't really get it. Space is one of the most unnatural environments people can go to. Of course brains that had evolved for life on Earth can malfunction in such completely artificial spaces. Same for airplanes, or submarines, or modern warfare. There was a tense moment in Das Boot where the engineer suffered a mental breakdown while the sub was stuck on the ocean floor and the captain even felt the need to go get a pistol. It's not an issue of trust, it's basic psychology. Nobody wants to be "that guy" who puts everyone in danger, but I don't think there will ever be a reliable way to completely prevent such occurrences, nor do I think there is anyone to blame for them, and nor do I think having safeguards should be interpreted as a silent accusation towards those on board.

EricE2• 2 years ago

Yes, the resistance to something as simple as padlocking a hatch baffles me - it's like their integrity is being impugned by taking a simple and common sense precaution?

JumpCrisscross• 2 years ago

the resistance to something as simple as padlocking a hatch baffles me

We keep hatches simple to facilitate egress [1]. A padlocked hatch must be reliably unpadlocked.

[1] https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/apollo1info.html

larrik• 2 years ago

The commander locking a hatch essentially sends a message to the others: "I don't trust you to not kill us all in flight."

I mean, the article makes opening the hatch sound pretty damn easy. I think even if I were alone on the shuttle I'd lock it just to add that little bit of sense of security.

helixfelix• 2 years ago

If you want to see this idea explored even more, I highly recommend watching "For All Mankind" on Apple TV+. My description below hopeful does not contain spoilers.

A Fantastic show for tech optimists, imagining a world where Russians were the first to land on the moon. This spurred increased investment by the US, continuing the space race, avoided the cold war, adoption of EVs in the 80s, massive action on climate change, and many other fun things. I wishfully think of "what could have been", and a world that seems attainable.

One of the recurring plot points is Executive action taken by astronauts in space, wars avoided and caused by their decisions, brave rescues and other heroics. In one of the episodes a characters takes such an action.

anigbrowl2• 2 years ago

"We put a lock on the door of the side hatch," Fabian said. "It was installed when we got into orbit so that the door could not be opened from the inside and commit hara-kiri, kill the whole crew. [...]

I know this is mostly oral history, but that's just not what that means and the writer should have corrected or omitted it.

Hara-kiri means the act of self-disembowelment in a Japanese ritual suicide (seppuku). Not the suicide or the ritual in general, and certainly not killing everyone else in the process, which is Not A Thing in Japan. There were historically sympathy suicides by loyal retainers over matters of honor, but they were voluntary and permission had to be sought in advance. Killing a bunch of other people in despair over your own problem is just murder in Japanese culture, and doesn't have any social legitimacy or a special name.

nativeit• 2 years ago

HN comments is apparently having a bad night. The volume of whining in this thread is incredible.

cudgy• 2 years ago

“This [access to the hatch] is not a particularly pleasant issue to talk about, so NASA, SpaceX, and the people who fly on the vehicles generally don't. But it does seem like something the space community should probably have a discussion about as access to space broadens.”

The fact that NASA is afraid to address a real and possible failure point of a mission, because it is “not particularly pleasant” would worry me more than the hatch itself.

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

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