Brian Thorn wrote:
This is all just SO encouraging when we're talking about going to the
Moon and Mars. "We want to build a moon base, but don't ask us to keep
a CMG working or go up 300 miles to Hubble, it's too hard..."

Maybe we should just pull the plug on NASA now.


No. Au contraire. This is the real science being done in space right
now. NASA may talk about watching crystals grow in a test tube as the
science, but the real stuff is testing items such as CMGs, Elektron,
CDRA, laptops etc and anything else that has failed or given many
hiccups and learning why it does this and how to fix it.

So while it makes NASA look "incompetant" when you hear about CMG
failures, or make russians look stupid with Elektron's colourful
history, these are very valuable experiences and both NASA and Russia
should be learning a lot from it.

The EVA to pick a piece of lint out of the tiles near the nose landing
gear door was probably a no brainer for the crew. But to NASA, it was a
major "push the boundaries" event, similar to the first EVA with only 2
crewmembers on the station which NASA procedures stated was impossible
to do, but which the crew showed was quite possible to get done and thus
pushed the boundaries.


A lot of the restrictions are ground based due to rules/procedures
written a long time ago, and it takes certain events to get NASA to give
the OK to do something which in the past was judged too "out there".
The fact that NASA now feels confident enough to relax some of those
rules is a good sign that NASA is gaining experience and confidence in
its ability to do new stuff and push the boundaries in space.

There is progress being made due to the failure of devices.