Good news on ISS **** distillery?

Jorge R. Frank wrote:

It would be wise. But that *is* *not* the same as a *flight* *spare*.

There is indeed a ground test unit. I personally witnessed co-workers
drinking from a bottle of water that had been processed by it.

Their opinion: "The horse this came from has diabetes". :-)


Pat

"Jorge R. Frank" wrote in message
...
Jeff Findley wrote:
So, it woudn't have been wise to have an identical unit on the ground as
a starting point for debugging or ground testing of potential
modifications to the ISS unit?

It would be wise. But that *is* *not* the same as a *flight* *spare*.

There is indeed a ground test unit. I personally witnessed co-workers
drinking from a bottle of water that had been processed by it.

Got it. Only one unit has been built and certified for flight. So there is
similar, possibly virtually identical, hardware on the ground that's used
for testing, debugging, and etc. That's pretty much what I expected, but
the media does not make this clear.

I realize the news media can be imprecise with their terminology. That is
why it is unwise to take their words as gospel.

Sometimes this extends even to NASA PAO.

Jeff
--
beb - To paraphrase Stephen Colbert, reality has an anti-Ares I bias.

"Jeff Findley" wrote in message
...

"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
dakotatelephone...

Time will tell:
http://spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/st...d9/index5.html

The story is a bit disturbing. The centrifuge in the unit is mounted
on dampers to help with noise and vibration (which is a bad thing for
microgravity experiments mounted on ISS). The solution to the problem
involves removing the dampers and hard mounting the thing. This would
seem to be a *bad thing* for experiments on ISS.

The other disturbing tidbit in the news story is that there is NO
backup hardware for this unit. They've got to get THIS unit working
on ISS or they can't expand the crew from 3 to 6. WTF? NASA has
money to burn for Griffin's pet projects, but none for spare hardware
that's critical for ISS. This deserves a facepalm:

http://www.forumammo.com/cpg/albums/...o-facepalm.jpg

Jeff
--
beb - To paraphrase Stephen Colbert, reality has an anti-Ares I bias.

If we didn't have a serious problem behind this
thread, the apparent bias of the thread to sound
like a rather bad 3 year old boy, might be
amusing.

The serious problem concerns recycling. Apparently
NASA is making a feeble effort in this direction,
but I get an impression there aren't very good heads
working on it.

Well, eventually they are going to. A pound of stuff
in space is *a pound of stuff in space* that got there
by being lifted out of our Terran gravity well. A
pound of gold costs more today than a pound in orbit,
but they are both out there in the same ballpark. It
it a ballpark too costly for private people and
businesses to go out there and start building new
settlements and a space culture.

So we ought to be thinking about recycling, and maybe
someone actually is. Could this serious topic
actually make it into sci.space.policy? ??

Titeotwawki -- mha [sci.space.policy 2008 Nov 26]

On Nov 26, 11:09*pm, Pat Flannery wrote:

Their opinion: "The horse this came from has diabetes". :-)

I thought that was a punchline to a joke where two men sent their
favourite beers to be tested by a chemist, to work out once and for
all which was better.

"Neil Gerace" wrote in message
...
On Nov 26, 11:09 pm, Pat Flannery wrote:

Their opinion: "The horse this came from has diabetes". :-)

I thought that was a punchline to a joke where two men sent their
favourite beers to be tested by a chemist, to work out once and for
all which was better.

==============
There's a similar line in Young Doctors in Love.

"Tastes like plain old **** to me!"



--
Greg Moore
Ask me about lily, an RPI based CMC.

On Nov 27, 2:37*pm, OM wrote:

....That's the joke and punchline I remember.


To be precise, I think the exact punchline I remember is:

"I regret to inform you that your horses will never race again."

Neil Gerace wrote:

I thought that was a punchline to a joke where two men sent their
favourite beers to be tested by a chemist, to work out once and for
all which was better.


The way I heard it, it was a guy trying to avoid being drafted into the
army by replacing his urine sample with apple juice.

Pat