Comment on Boeing Embarrassed as ‘Stuck’ Astronauts to Return with SpaceX.
NegativeInf@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Hopefully this is a catalyst for further NASA contracts resulting in specifications for spacesuit compatibility. Huge oversight.
Is it really a big deal for a spaceflight that was meant to carry four people in spacesuits to instead carry two people in spacesuits plus two empty spacesuits?
Sure there probably should be some kind of standard, but it feels like there’s much bigger problems to worry about.
Go ahead and piss on the control panel of your Tesla while on autopilot at highway speeds.
Small problems can lead to unforeseen consequences. Mitigate all problems as best you can.
I don’t own a Tesla? I don’t even own a car at all.
But I do have some experience with software engineering and know there’s pros and cons to everything. Standards are great but there are times when there’s a reason you need to make something for a specific purpose. I don’t know the specifics (and I’m guess you don’t either) of how a space suit interfaces with a space craft, but I can see how the requirement to have a spacesuit interface with multiple types spacecraft could result in an increased complexity. 99% of the time every spacecraft will have the same number of spacesuits as astronauts, and it’s only on a rescue mission like this that the number will differ. But on a rescue mission there will also need to be the same number of empty seats as the number of astronauts being rescued meaning there will always be enough room to carry the number of necessary spacesuits.
The time to have a standard spacesuit standard would’ve been before either the Dragon or the Starliner launched. As it is creating a standard would mean components in both the spacesuits and spacecraft components in one or both of the programs will need to be redesigned. Which opens up the potential for a problem similar to pissing on a Tesla dashboard (weird analogy). You should mitigate that by not imposing an unnecessary re-design of space suit and space craft components.
Sure they may want to have a standard, but it’s best they wait for a future re-design of the space craft is happening for other reasons to require it. Let the engineers make that engineering decision, not impose it because of some extremely minor inconvenience caused by a single failed mission.
linearchaos@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I don’t even understand how exactly they can be incompatible. Are we talking sittings or is it the overall dimensions It seems crazy that they wouldn’t take that into account when they were doing their design work.
NegativeInf@lemmy.world 2 months ago
The starliner suits are made of woven rubber bands and paperclips.