In no way is this news or a scoop, but who can resist the tale of plucky cosmonauts calmly relaying such nuggets from a dead-in-the-water space station as:
Savinikh: "We're trying to turn on the light now. Command issued. No reaction, not even one little diode. If only something would light up..."
and
Savinikh: “I’ve gotten the Rodnik schematics. Pump connected. The valves aren’t opening. There’s an icicle sticking out of the air pipe.”
Yep — all the makings of a sci-fi straight to TV movie… icicles hanging out of air pipes indeed!
However, it is not. It is the tale of two cosmonauts sent to try to recover the dead in low earth orbit Salyut 7 back in 1985. The included cosmonaut to earth communication transcripts would be comedy genius had they been scripted, if only as a parody of calm professionalism in a seemingly absurd predicament.
Over to Ars Technica for the piece: http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/09/the-little-known-soviet-mission-to-rescue-a-dead-space-station/
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Alfred on Wednesday September 17 2014, @06:25PM
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Wednesday September 17 2014, @07:03PM
This was my reaction also. I suspect is it either a pressurized leak (giving direction) or a result of microgravity.
(Score: 1) by forkazoo on Thursday September 18 2014, @06:30AM
An air pipe is pretty much going to be pressurized by definition, so if there was some humid air blowing through the pipe into a frozen station, you would get ice accumulation along the flow direction.
(Score: 4, Informative) by frojack on Wednesday September 17 2014, @07:19PM
Hanging was in the title, but the summary and the story simply said "sticking out of".
Rodnic was the name of the water system aboard the spacecraft, and the whole thing was frozen, and Ice or water was extruded out of a vent pipe and froze in place.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 17 2014, @07:29PM
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday September 17 2014, @09:06PM
and the obvious answer: long and to the left, thanks! :)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by dyingtolive on Thursday September 18 2014, @12:17AM
Probably beautifully, assuming there is no force directing it's growth.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 3, Funny) by bob_super on Wednesday September 17 2014, @06:29PM
I can already hear the commercial for space icicles: "What's in YOUR comet?"
[For the non-North-American dwellers, google Capital One ads]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 17 2014, @09:16PM
i am a north american dweller. this was not funny. i don't see the connection between icicles, credit cards, and comets.
in a completely different context 'what's in your comet?' would be hilarious. like if some darwin award-winners ingested comet cleaning agent.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Hairyfeet on Wednesday September 17 2014, @07:00PM
I remember one of the Americans going up on Mir talking about how the Cosmonauts wouldn't be phased when things like...ohh FIRES would break out, they were just like the character in the Michael Bay flick "stupid station!" /whack whack whack with a wrench/. I remember him saying something to the effect of "scared as I had ever been was aboard that thing, felt like it would fly apart any second". I remember that and him talking about how the constant cabbage farts from the rest of the crew made the place seriously funky, so this really doesn't surprise me.
Of course anybody who knows anything about Soviet history knows that was SOP, it was ALL function over form. This is why Israel just junked the tanks they captured that were Soviet, instead of somebody saying "maybe we should add a little more room for the crew" with Soviet tanks they just said "Meh just make all crew less than 5'2" and called it a day. We found the same was true of their planes when the Israelis had an operative sleep with an Iraqi pilot and got him to defect with a MIG 21, we thought it would be this uber high tech plane like the Phantom II and it turned out to be VERY crude, with cheap rivets and basic steel instead of titanium. We found out after the wall fell they figured a warplane in combat probably wouldn't last more than a few months so why build it fancy? Build it cheap and easy to fix and just trash it when it gets too beat up, that's Soviet design in a nutshell.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 1) by WillAdams on Wednesday September 17 2014, @07:09PM
A worthwhile read is Victor Belenko's memoir _Mig Pilot_ (he defected to Japan in a MIG-25)
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday September 17 2014, @08:07PM
Good luck, from memory all the books his ghostwriter wrote are gone from the market semi-permanently. A poster child for the "copyright is too long" problem. Those books are 40 yrs old and outside libraries with older collections no one is going to see them again for at least 100 years maybe more. Even worse a 40 yr old library paperback was probably pulped 20 years ago, so your only hope is a hardcover edition.
Sounds like an interesting book but I probably won't be able to read it this lifetime, unless someone scans their copy and puts it up on a P2P site.
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Thursday September 18 2014, @02:46AM
I was always interested in the Soviet tech as my grandfather was stationed on an airbase right next to the GDR border after WWII and used to say "If the Russians had wanted to take us out? All they had to do was send a single plane on a kamikaze run as we had strict orders to NEVER shoot at a single plane" and of course now we know why, it was because the CIA had spread the word that we would offer a defector a million bucks if they brought the latest Soviet plane with them when they defected. I think by the time the wall fell we ended up with at least one example of every Soviet fighter from the MIG-15 on up.
I think its ironic we went to all that trouble to get 'em during the cold war and now John Travolta just flies over and picks up a couple to play Top Gun in the desert LOL.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by Alfred on Wednesday September 17 2014, @07:35PM
LOL
It takes the familiar things to make it feel like home (to them).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 17 2014, @09:52PM
You may find it funny, but floating feces and urine can actually be a very serious problem in space stations. Less so today, of course, but in the early days before the waste disposal technology was sufficiently developed it was not at all unusual for fecal matter to come back into the manned portions of the early space stations.
Early attempts at defecation in space were semi-disastrous. Depending on the texture and firmness of the defecate matter, it would literally float out of the receptacle. Solid matter could be captured by hand and disposed of, but liquid matter would disperse. It would get onto control panels and even the astronauts themselves. Needless to say, this is not a good situation to be in. There is a biohazard risk, and it's just plain smelly.
Fecal matter and urine can't just be ejected into space all at once. If that's done, then there's the risk of it freezing almost instantaneously and colliding with the space station itself. Space stations are designed to avoid some impacts, but several pounds of solid feces could cause some serious damage depending on where it hit the station.
Modern systems basically grind the feces and combine it with any urine into a semi-liquid that's ejected drop-by-drop out of the station and into space. This prevents large, heavy clumps from forming, preventing damage to the space station if there is a collision.
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Wednesday September 17 2014, @08:42PM
I remember reading about NASA's research program to make a pen that could write in zero-G ; each pen cost $10000. The Soviet's used pencils...
(Score: 1) by skine on Wednesday September 17 2014, @09:15PM
No, a private company created these pens on their own, and later marketed them to NASA.
The Soviets adopted space pens soon after the US did. Pencils are really not a good idea when a broken tip or shavings could float into electronic equipment.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 17 2014, @09:51PM
pencil make good patch wire when life support system fail, or latch if door try to fall off
bunch of carbon shaving floating still nice to breathe than air in Russia
if pencil cause problem, hammer fix
pencil very handy tool in space
(Score: 2, Informative) by pTamok on Wednesday September 17 2014, @09:59PM
Correct. the private company is the Fisher Space Pen company http://www.spacepen.com/ [spacepen.com]
More details on the story are in the Wikipedia article
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Pen [wikipedia.org]
As the Wikipedia article mentions, before taking up the Space Pen, both the American and Soviet space programmes used pencils, and in addition, the Soviet programme used grease pencils.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday September 18 2014, @06:36AM
The thing is, it worked. While the U.S. would spend billions to make a critical part triple redundant and incredibly reliable, the Soviet approach was to design so the part wasn't critical. Space station suffers total power failure? No problem, we have days to fix it.
Not saying it's superior, just that there is probably a happy medium somewhere in there.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Thursday September 18 2014, @11:42AM
I remember hearing about the difference between US and Soviet anti aircraft guns. The US ones were super accurate with a computer tracking and targeting system that could predict course changes. The Soviet ones were built a little sloppy so the shots would disperse in a shotgun pattern. Efficacy was comparable.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Saturday September 20 2014, @09:04AM
If you want the perfect example go look up the video of the guy that invented the AK47, there is one where he actually meets the guy that made the M16 and they pointed out how different they were which fits the meme perfectly. The M16 is so accurate you can put it in single shot mode and use it as a sniper rifle but the gun is VERY sensitive to dirt, in fact in the first days of the Vietnam war it was common to see Americans using either the older M1s or the AK47 they picked off a dead NVA because their gun fouled in a critical combat moment and they lost faith in the gun.
Compare this with the AK47 which is sloppy as shit and can't hit the broad side of a barn farther than 50 yards and past 30 yards anything but body shots are right out because it "sprays" more than it shoots, but the flip side is you can pick up one that has laid in muck for a month, bang it against a tree to clear it out, and then go right into combat as it was damned near impossible to jam. When they talked to the designer he said something like "We saw with Stalingrad that nearly every battle happens when you are close enough to shake hands with the enemy, you trip over each other on patrol, so accuracy? Not important, you want accurate that is what the Mosen Nagant is for. What you want in a soldier rifle is a gun that can be effective with no more training than 'bullets come out that end' and that will work no matter how nasty the battlefield is. Because you REALLY think a soldier in the midst of battle for weeks is gonna remember to fieldstrip and clean his weapon on a schedule?"
And we can see which design ultimately proved the best for battle, with AK47s and their clones as common as dirt on every battlefield on the planet while the M16 is relegated to a handful of western countries, despite their being ample time to copy it if anybody wanted to.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Saturday September 20 2014, @11:17PM
The jamming if the M16 in Vietnam was exacerbated by a nepotistic contract for dirty powder as well. Of course the AK wouldn't care if the cartridges were loaded with black powder.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 1) by WolvesOfTheNight on Thursday September 18 2014, @12:12AM
You need work on getting better titles summaries. As interesting of a note as the icicles might be, the title is misleading. This is not an article about icicles. It is an article about "The little-known Soviet mission to rescue a dead space station." Despite my having read that article before seeing it here, my first thought was "A problem on the ISS?" or maybe a discussion of the formation of icicle like objects in zero G and an explanation of how they form.
Oh, and the article does not give enough information to say how icicle like it was. All we know is that the russian word used to quickly describe it was translated as "icicle." Maybe it was just that. Or maybe it was a blob of ice, or a coating of ice, or something else. Given the zero G thing I suspect they just said icicle instead of trying to give an exact description.
Good article, very bad title & summery...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 18 2014, @04:54PM
I think you mean "summary" = )
This was clearly meant to be a lighter piece, the tone is fitting:
Sure, it could have had a more appropriate title, but lighten up a little.