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Old August 14th 04, 11:26 AM
Andrew Gray
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Default 50-page brochure (Russian and English) about Progress M50

On 2004-08-12, bob haller wrote:

However bob is more interested in the appearance (replacing badly
needed supplies with luxury items) than the reality ('luxury' items
that help keep the crew sane).


Ahh if some minor component fails I will restart this discussion. morale is
definetely important but currently the station is in emergency mode without
shuttle supplies


Delightful though the idea is, ISS minor components are not identical
small mechanical bits; the term covers pretty much half the mass of the
station, a truly scary number of different devices, many of them
essentually unique (and most critical you-die-in-minutes-if-this-breaks
hardware with, I believe, some form of spares or backup). Things break
on ISS all the time; they send the faulty bits back (as with the
glovebox) or wait for new hardware to be sent up.

Do you really think that "sending up minor components" is a rational
thing to do without knowing what you need? All the spare EMU gloves in
the world won't help if your problem is with an ECLSS flowline
somewhere, and an extra screwdriver is a poor substitute for a monkey
wrench. It's a foolish argument - by this logic, all flight space would
be spare components, because something might break somewhere and you'd
have to fly it up later otherwise.

--
-Andrew Gray