ISS crew assignments changed

Thursday, Feb. 5, 2004. Page 3

'Incompatible' ISS Crew Ditched

http://www.moscowtimes.ru/stories/2004/02/05/012.html

By Simon Saradzhyan
Staff Writer




The crew lined up for the next flight to the international space
station in April will be changed after cosmonaut Valery Tokarev and U.S.
astronaut Leroy Chiao developed "a psychological incompatibility" during
training, Russian space officials said Wednesday.

The switch will be the second for the Expedition 9 crew, which is
scheduled to lift off for the ISS on April 19. NASA replaced its first
choice astronaut for the flight, William McArthur, with Chiao on Jan. 12,
saying McArthur had experienced "temporary medical issues."

Chiao had been preparing with Tokarev at the Gagarin Cosmonaut
Training Center in Star City outside Moscow, but the two didn't hit it off,
a Russian Aviation and Space Agency official said by telephone Tuesday.

"One of the factors was a psychological incompatibility," said the
official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

So the trip instead will be made by cosmonaut Gennady Padalka and U.S.
astronaut Michael Fincke, who were previously slated to fly to the ISS in
the fall as Expedition 10, the official said.

Also going on the April flight is the European Space Agency astronaut
Andre Kuipers of the Netherlands.

Kuipers will spend a few days aboard the ISS before returning to Earth
with cosmonaut Alexander Kaleri and U.S. astronaut Michael Foale, who are
currently living on board the station.

Tokarev and McArthur -- who has already overcome his health
problems -- are now planned to fly as Expedition 10, the space official
said.

He said NASA was already aware of the planned switch and it would take
about two weeks to complete the paperwork giving the U.S. side notification
of the plan.




NASA spokeswoman Deborah Rahn said by telephone from Washington that
she had "no official information" about the switch.

A NASA representative in Moscow confirmed he knew about the plan but
said he had not heard of any personal conflicts between Chiao and Tokarev.

Although Padalka and Fincke are now in line to become the next ISS
crew, they may end up grounded if either develops health problems or fails
to pass a final check at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in April, the Russian space
official said.

Chiao and cosmonaut Salizhan Sharipov are now training as their backup
crew in Star City, he said.

Kent Betts wrote:

Thursday, Feb. 5, 2004. Page 3

'Incompatible' ISS Crew Ditched

http://www.moscowtimes.ru/stories/2004/02/05/012.html




Tokarev's continuing string of "How many Chinamen does it take
to.....?" jokes found but little favor with Chiao, nor did the American
astronaut take to being continually referred to as "Number One Son" by
his Russian compatriot at all well... but the straw that broke the
camel's back was when Chiao found Tokarev's laundry sitting outside his
door one morning....the laundry basket sitting in a bamboo chair with a
large number of skyrockets glued to its back, a kite attached to either
armrest, and "Shenzhou Simulator" crudely, and no doubt drunkenly,
scrawled on it with what appeared to be human excrement. :-)

Pat

Kent Betts wrote:

Thursday, Feb. 5, 2004. Page 3

'Incompatible' ISS Crew Ditched

http://www.moscowtimes.ru/stories/2004/02/05/012.html



Now this is strange- this story says it was McArthur, not Chiao, what
was the problem:
http://en.rian.ru/rian/index.cfm?prd...-04&do_alert=0

pat

"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
...

Now this is strange- this story says it was McArthur, not Chiao, what
was the problem:

http://en.rian.ru/rian/index.cfm?prd...-04&do_alert=0

but that's just because of the health thing, they're not saying that Mac was
the one being "incompatible" or whatever.

--
Terrell Miller


"It's one thing to burn down the **** house and another thing entirely to
install plumbing"
-PJ O'Rourke

Terrell Miller wrote:

but that's just because of the health thing, they're not saying that Mac was
the one being "incompatible" or whatever.


This is one thing where I'd trust the Russian's judgement...they have
had plenty of experience with what can go wrong if psychologically
incompatible persons end up on a space station together.

Pat

"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
...

but that's just because of the health thing, they're not saying that Mac
was
the one being "incompatible" or whatever.


This is one thing where I'd trust the Russian's judgement...they have
had plenty of experience with what can go wrong if psychologically
incompatible persons end up on a space station together.

yep, call it the Linenger Effect

--
Terrell Miller


"It's one thing to burn down the **** house and another thing entirely to
install plumbing"
-PJ O'Rourke

On Sat, 7 Feb 2004 16:42:56 -0500, "Terrell Miller"
wrote:

"Pat Flannery" wrote in message

This is one thing where I'd trust the Russian's judgement...they have
had plenty of experience with what can go wrong if psychologically
incompatible persons end up on a space station together.

yep, call it the Linenger Effect

....Goes back further than that, to Soyuz 11. According to some
accounts, Dobrovolsky and Patsayev had problems of various sorts with
Volkov, who felt that he had more "experience" in problem solving than
Dobrovolsky, and was ****ed at being reportedly ignored whenever he
suggested a workaround to a particular problem. In this case the
Soviets had sent up as mission commander Dobrovolskiy, who was a
rookie cosmonaut. Volkov, on the other hand, had flown previously on
Soyuz 7, and by some accounts felt he should have been commanding the
mission instead.

....The first signs of the friction reportedly occurred when the
primary instrument aboard the station, the Orion telescope would not
function because its cover failed to jettison. Apparently Volkov opted
for the "let's get out there and fix it, period!" approach, while
Dobrovolsky opted to follow Baikonur's orders to continue on with the
rest of the mission and not take any excessive risks. Volkov was
reportedly quite vocal in his dissatisfaction with the decision, and
apparently made it clear that if -he- were in charge, he'd have gone
out there and removed the cover regardless of orders.

....From there, the relationship between the two started going
downhill. The cramped working conditions didn't help any, and the two
factors combined made it difficult to conduct what remaining
experiments were planned for the mission. By the last week of the
mission, Volkov was reportedly extremely withdrawn, depressed, and
kept to himself as much as possible.

....After a small fire occurred, Baikonur mission planners decided to
cut the mission short and return the crew after only 24 days, instead
of the planned 30. Outside from the Orion telescope failure, most of
the planned experiments had been all or mostly successful, and they'd
already passed the endurance records set by the US Moon landings and
the Gemini VII mission. Besides, it was better to get the crew down
before Volkov went bonkers and did something rash.

....The rest we already know. A valve was either improperly closed
prior to undocking, or somehow was forced open by the undocking. The
crew tried to close it, but with less than a minute to locate the leak
and seal it, there simply wasn't enough time for a suitless crew to
accomplish this. By most estimates, less than 4 minutes after
undocking the crew were unconscious and/or dead.

....Of course, there's been this rather subtle conspiracy-class theory
about what happened with that valve. There have been rumors for years
that Volkov would have been drummed out of the Cosmonaut corps and
subsequently court martialed for his insubordination and near-mutinous
actions. As a result, those rumors have fed another one - one I forgot
to ask Jim about during our meeting last year, dammit - that Volkov
sabotaged the valve to either:

a) Kill himself and the rest of the crew rather than face the music
for his behaviour.

b) Make himself a hero by finding the valve leak first and sealing it.

....The problem with either of these is lack of information. As part of
the troubleshooting procedures for an air leak, the crew shut down all
radios and other audio sources to facilitate finding the hiss produced
by the leak. For obvious reasons, those radios were never turned back
on, and as a result we have no aural information as to what was going
on in those last minutes. In fact, it wasn't until after the accident
board findings that the valve was revealed to have been the source of
the leak, and quite some time after that before the Soviets revealed
the crew were aware of what was happening and tried to stop it.

....Thankfully, tho, this theory hasn't had much life other than a dull
murmur here and there. Unlike the ones about Komarov screaming for the
heads of the engineers who built his quickly auguring Soyuz 1, or the
ones where Gagarin was shot out of the sky by two drunken KGB deer
hunters, or the ones that Geo currently is helping the J-C brothers
spread like stale Vegemite over molded toast, this one's probably kept
subtle simply because most of us find it hard to believe that a
trained Cosmonaut and a Son of Matya Rossia would take that kind of a
chicken**** coward's way out of having his head handed to him after
landing. Granted, the fabricated hero bit's about as far fetched, but
thankfully both of them have almost no life.

If only we could transfer their thanatos state over to the J-C
bull****s...



OM

--

"No ******* ever won a war by dying for | http://www.io.com/~o_m
his country. He won it by making the other | Sergeant-At-Arms
poor dumb ******* die for his country." | Human O-Ring Society

- General George S. Patton, Jr

"OM" om@our_blessed_lady_mary_of_the_holy_NASA_researc h_facility.org wrote
in message ...

...The first signs of the friction reportedly occurred when the
primary instrument aboard the station, the Orion telescope would not
function because its cover failed to jettison. Apparently Volkov opted
for the "let's get out there and fix it, period!" approach, while
Dobrovolsky opted to follow Baikonur's orders to continue on with the
rest of the mission and not take any excessive risks.

This didn't happen during the mission, but PRIOR launch. When telemetry
showed the cover of the solar telescope (not the Orion, which was fitted in
the transfer compartment) wasn't jettisioned, several members of the team
opted to launch a soyuz with two crewmembers, suited in the Yastreb
spacesuits (used during Soyuz 4/5), and remove the cover during a spacewalk
(either direct from soyuz or after docking). However, this plan was ruled
out when it became clear that modifications to Soyuz-11, construction of the
spacesuits, and the training for such a mission, would take too much time.
(see fi 'Soyuz' by Hall/Shayler, page 175)

Neither soyuz-11 nor Salyut-1 carried spacesuits for EVA sorties (see for
instance 'Russian Spacesuits" by Abramov/Skoog, page 150). Orlan-D
spacesuits for EVA activities were first carried by Salyut-6, although the
Sokol suits used from Soyuz-12 onwards could possibly support a very short
emergency EVA. Without access to spacesuits, there is no way an EVA could
have been discussed DURING the soyuz 11 mission.

...The rest we already know. A valve was either improperly closed
prior to undocking, or somehow was forced open by the undocking.

Prior undocking there was some discussion on a sensor reading, showing the
descent module entry hatch (between the descent and orbital modules)
incorrectly closed. Accesive high cabine pressure during extra leak-tests
prior undocking might have contributed to the weakening of a cabine air
relief valve, located under the chair of Drobovolski. This valve became
dislodged during separation of the orbital and descent modules (which was a
bit rougher than usual) after retrofire (aprox. 30 minutes after undocking),
resulting in a quick decompression.
Probably in an attempt to find the source of the leak, the crew turned off
all (noisy) onboard receivers, however they didn't have enough time to close
the valve or block the air escaping through it.

Geert Sassen.