Posted on 10/26/2021 8:03:55 AM PDT by BenLurkin
Indeed, they need to resolve one outstanding item before Crew-3 can lift off — a slight redesign of Crew Dragon's toilet system.
That tweak was prompted by an issue experienced on SpaceX's Inspiration4 mission, which sent four private citizens on a three-day trip to orbit last month. After that capsule, named Resilience, returned home, inspections revealed that a tube hooked up to a toilet storage tank had popped loose during flight.
This "allowed urine to not go into the storage tank but, essentially, to go into the fan system," Bill Gerstenmaier, vice president of build and flight reliability at SpaceX, said during Monday's news conference. But the leak didn't markedly affect Inspiration4, he added.
SpaceX decided to revamp the toilet system on the Crew-3 capsule, known as Endurance, going with an all-welded structure to eliminate tube pop-offs, Gerstenmaier said. NASA needs to give the redesign a final thumbs-up before Crew-3 can fly, but that is expected to happen in the coming days.
The toilet issue could potentially apply to another Crew Dragon: the capsule known as Endeavour, which flew SpaceX's Crew-2 mission and is still docked to the ISS. Endeavour is scheduled to come back to Earth with the four Crew-2 astronauts soon — on Nov. 4, if Crew-3 launches on time.
Astronauts on the orbiting lab have examined Endeavour, looking for signs of corrosion caused by leaked urine (or rather, by an additive that SpaceX puts into the Crew Dragon septic system to remove ammonia from urine). They haven't found anything troublesome, and analyses by teams here on Earth indicate that all should be well for Crew-2's return, Gerstenmaier said.
(Excerpt) Read more at space.com ...
Urine in the fan system, in a zero-g floating capsule. My childhood dream of becoming an astronaut doesn’t sound so disappointing now.
So something hit the fan? : )
You don’t do it into the wind, or into a fan
spooky cruise
No photo has been found for Jeff Bezos that matches his image seen in Comment 6 above.
But suprisingly the facial details of William Shatner in the Blue Origin photo are exactly the same as seen in this photo - https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/l4ivXeBrvxSfQllxGXH1qQ—/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTk2MDtoPTc2OA—/https://s.yimg.com/uu/api/res/1.2/1qc_qkwpPFiy6r9UqF3NxA—~B/aD02MTQ7dz03Njg7YXBwaWQ9eXRhY2h5b24-/https://media.zenfs.com/en/afp.com/6d758114ca757b66ad0ba7cb7c153005 - taken with his (then) wife, Elizabeth, at a September 19, 2017, Star Trek Discovery Premiere in Los Angeles.
Better then the sftf
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