Space Station Flight Was 'Wilder' Than We Thought

Why submit a page quoting half the article rather than the actual ArsTechnica article? <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=43549796">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=43549796</a>

I haven&#x27;t been on slashdot in a long time, and boy is it a shitty experience.<p>Using Orion browser with uBlock Origin, initially the site loads fine. Then it tries to load ads. It detects that the ads don&#x27;t load, so it displays an overlay that looks like a crash modal &quot;oops, something went wrong&quot;, shaming the user into believing THEY did something wrong.<p>Dismissing the modal reveals that the CSS was unloaded in the background.<p>Thanks but no thanks.

In the end, SpaceX is America’s only reliable way to get to space. It’s great that it’s also cheap considering that. Boeing is, as usual: cheap, fast, good; pick none.

It sounds like the entire issue was caused by a design issue with a thruster which had never been used in space before.<p>Surely one can switch out the thruster for a redesigned one, or even a totally different type of thruster if the team has lost confidence in the design, and be flying again in months?

I read “fight” at first glance and thought “wow there was a fight on the space station? AND it was wilder than we thought?”

tldr: These guys suffered rapid, progressive failures of their thruster control loops in orbit. They were close to either being stranded in space or impacting the station, in what might have been a lethal circumstance. Rebooting regained them just enough control authority to dock, and they did; Nobody wanted to risk touching the capsule after, not knowing how many minutes the thrusters would still be operational.

&quot;slashdot&quot;. now there&#x27;s a name I&#x27;ve not heard in a very long time