What a TEASE

[RichardS]

I've been following this thread since it first started. All very interesting, and beyond my ken.

BTW, I reckon M O'B is a bare hunter.

 

[hatman]

I honestly did think anyone else would be reading this. I thought this had evolved into the type of discussion you have with a random at the bar while on the road after a hard day of peddling hamster milking machines.

You never know when Greg is lurking in the back of the bar, just waiting to pounce on a serious conversation, and lighten the mood a little.

Nice catch..

I wouldn't exactky call it a "catch". During an otherwise normal start-up, we suddenly got an automated system shutdown due to a LOW pressure reading in what should have been a pressurized leg. And as we watched the telemetry, the pressure dropped over the course of an hour down to 2psia... the realtime brainstorming shifted from a leak to the cabin, to a leak to space vacuum. Three days later, I finally came up with a scenario to explain the data... but it took a team of much smarter people than me to put the numbers to it and a whole lot of chasing through NASA to find out the source and chemical makeup of the water they were using.

How did the problem get solved? Bubble cabin air through the water or just stop using the alternate source?

In the short term, we enacted a flight rule to maintain the rack temperature within a 2 degree range, to reduce the pressure swings, even when we were not running the system. We also re-designed a check valve and a relieving solenoid valve in S/N 2 of that component (which was just getting ready to ship) and launched it on the next shuttle, to widen the tolerance of the component to pressure shifts. The new unit also had a fully charged gas bubble, which would take almost a year to be depleted at the usage rate the system was seeing at the time. But the long-term solution was to launch the water processor, and start providing water with the proper range of dissolved gases.

What type of analytical testing can they do up there to ensure water quality? I'm assuming that on-line instrumentation would be useful, but that they'd have to resort to wet chemistry methods.

Hah! It took me longer than I expected to find, but I remembered that on the same launch that the Water Processor went up, so too did teh TOCA... though I couldn't remember what the heck it stood for, and I have no idea how it works:

The joint crew also will activate the Total
Organic Carbon Analyzer (TOCA II), which
will be used for on​

​

​

​

‐board water quality
monitoring. The crew will process previously
collected urine through the WRS. They will
then collect samples of drinking water
processed by the WRS and send it back to Earth
for analysis. This will begin a 90‐day water
quality validation that is required before crews
can begin consuming the recycled drinking​

water.

We also have conductivity sensors in the water processor to detect increases is conductivity, which indicate increasedcontamination. Here is the press kit from STS-126, which launched the WPA and the TOCA (which I actually got an all-expense-paid trip to go see... VERY COOL)

Actually I am impressed by the hijacking. I kind of wish my profile didn't spoil some of the fun.

Really? While his initial post had me ROTFLMFAO, I'm not seeing his usual staying power... I mean Greg would usually have about a 3:1 ratio of tangent versus on-topic posts in teh thread within 12 hours of the initial hijacking...

 

[hatman]

I reckon M O'B is a bare hunter.

Meaning he hunts in the buff?

 

[RichardS]

Yup

 

[Mark O'Brien]

Hah! It took me longer than I expected to find, but I remembered that on the same launch that the Water Processor went up, so too did teh TOCA... though I couldn't remember what the heck it stood for, and I have no idea how it works:

You went to space ona ll expenses paid trip? Awesome!

Yeah right, like I'm going to read all 114 pages of that document.

So here are my highlights.

Page 30 lift mechanism for midget astronauts
Page 33 GLACIER is pretty cool (pun intended)
Page 39 WRS
Page 40 The TOCA (I believe we have a few of these kicking around)
Page 44 Apparently Astronauts use a lot fo Purell and lick their dishes clean.
Page 74 Don't care about the aRED
Page 97 Anagrams rock, yo!
Page 113 David Waters, he's my dog.

 

[Mark O'Brien]

Meaning he hunts in the buff?

Alleged hunts in the buff, alleged.

 

[RobMatthews]

Alleged hunts in the buff, alleged.

Nah, it's more about what is hunted...

 

[Oorang]

So, anyone else care to hazard a guess as to Mark's profession?

The fun is kind of ruined by him having it listed in his profile on on linked in

But I am going with Cookie MOBster... Cause you know they're big and blue.

 

[hatman]

And on the homefront, you can congratulate me (I think). We are expecting our Third come this Christmas.

We lost the baby this weekend. Truth to tell, I almost lost Kelley too. The hospital staff seemed much more rattled than I ever expected to see professionals, which almost made me lose my own hold, when I realized just how much more serious it was than I had at first thought. But they managed to stop most of the bleeding before they brought her in for surgery, which made a big difference. Without going into TOO much detail, they gave her 6 liters of fluid in two lines to stabilize her before the surgery, then gave her 3 units of blood afterward. And when they discharged her the next day, her numbers were still somewhat low.

 

[RichardS]

Jeez, that's tough. Really sorry for your loss. Hope Kelly and you are managing OK.

Richard