EVA 22dec 08

Ok, it always seems to me, that during preparation and coming back in,
EVAs from both sides have the aire of organised chaos.
However that aside, I have some questions which were not answered while
listening last night (night for me)

Firstly, why is it that when installing external experiments on the Russian
section, the telemetry is not passed down via the same means as all the
other sections? Waiting to be over Russian ground stations seemed to me to
be one of the delaying factors which probably prevented the experiment
package from having more trouble shooting in situ.

The comms from the Russian suits sounds much better than the US ones to me,.
What pressure do the Russian suits work at. I always thought they were
higher than the US ones, but from listening, it sounded like this may not be
the case. Certainly getting in and out of a Russian suit sounds a whle lot
faster to me.

There seems to be some issues with the Russian airlock pressurisation
plumbing. Both going out and coming in seemed to not work very well, as if
some kind of obstruction was in the lines, indeed on coming in, they had to
revert to a manual repress from inside the airlock as the other method
stalled part way through. Not only that but there was one heck of a bang
when a lock was operated on the door, suggesting a void somewhere which
filled very fast suddenly bumping up the pressure.
Very odd.
More maintenance required.

Brian

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"Brian Gaff" wrote in message
m...
There seems to be some issues with the Russian airlock pressurisation
plumbing. Both going out and coming in seemed to not work very well, as if
some kind of obstruction was in the lines, indeed on coming in, they had
to revert to a manual repress from inside the airlock as the other method
stalled part way through. Not only that but there was one heck of a bang
when a lock was operated on the door, suggesting a void somewhere which
filled very fast suddenly bumping up the pressure.
Very odd.
More maintenance required.

That's the Russians for you. They seem to be interested in what works well
enough, not necessarily what works the best.

Jeff
--
"Many things that were acceptable in 1958 are no longer acceptable today.
My own standards have changed too." -- Freeman Dyson

Brian Gaff wrote:

Firstly, why is it that when installing external experiments on the Russian
section, the telemetry is not passed down via the same means as all the
other sections?


Not sure about the actual contracts,but it appears that the russians do
not have "equal" access to the TDRS system for their non critical stuff.
They seem to have access to USA segment comms for station operation
since the critical systems are interconnected. But for experiments,
video etc, they don't seem to have "all you can eat" access to TDRS. So
they must rely on their own ground station network which spans only russia.

(this should plant a couple antennas in australia and canada, and that
would give them much greater coverage with shorter gaps between comm
periods.