[Douglas Adams] will tell you not to forget your towel when it comes to space travel. But NASA may start mandating that astronauts always carry a toothbrush. That’s because when a recent repair on a critical International Space Station component went wrong it was a toothbrush hack that saved the day.
The culprit here is a bolt that wouldn’t re-seat after replacing a power transfer module that routes electricity from solar cells to the station’s electrical systems. About how many times have you had trouble with bolt threads? Now put yourself in a space suit in orbit for eight hours trying to get the thing to work. Yikes!
Just like in the movies there was a team of engineers at the ground center which gathered all the supplies available in the ISS. They figured out that metal shavings in the threaded hole needed to be cleaned out and the area lubed for the bolt. One of the two types of tooth brushes on hand would work for the lube, but needed to be stiffened. There was also a brush for cleaning the threads which was made out of a jumper cable. The images seen above are the step-by-step instructions the team uploaded to the astronauts who reproduced their hacked hardware to complete the repairs.
[Thanks G Mob]
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Now someone does not have a toothbrush in the space station. Bears breath!
Better than death from asphyxiation and/or freezing to death because you have no power. ;)
ble in the ISS. They figured out that metal shavings in the threaded hole needed to be cleaned out and the area lubed for the bolt. One of the two types of tooth brushes on hand would work
How do you lubricate something with a toothbrush?
Or did they use lubricant and applied it with a toothbrush?
Of course it was a special NASA self lubricating teflon toothbrush…
Thankyou. I have lost a strand of spagetti.
Always start threaded fasteners by hand, not socket wrench etc. Gloves! Yikes! Screws in space. Is Grey Tape sticky in the vacuum of space?
Yes, yes it is.
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2008/21apr_ducttape/
Although come to think of it, it might not be to healthy to be unrolling duct tape in space.
http://www.nature.com/news/2008/012345/full/news.2008.1185.html
I first thought “Nah, not the grey stuff.” But reading that other article, that the first thing the tape got on it was moondust, like instantly when he pulled it off, I thought “Oh static charge” so yah, it couuuuuuuld give off Xrays too.
However, I dunno if you realise that the dental xray plates they’ve been using the last 10 years or so are 100 times more sensitive than they used to be… You might be able to expose them by flicking a florescent light on and off a few times or holding them on an ’80s TV or monitor… and you probably zap yourself every time you’re in sight of sparks, or even if you get a bunch of static shocks you’ll get a few x-ray exposures.
It’s another of those “The dose makes the poison” kind of things.
very similar to the http://hackaday.com/2012/09/07/saving-the-iss-by-hacking-a-toothbrush/
Did you even read the whole article? A group of hackers re-made the hack in similar fashiom to how the astronaut had to once NASA published the documents.
Yes its related, but its not the same…
Fair enough, I read the article. and not surprisingly a little MORE confused than I was before.
The first article was published on sept 6th and referred to this happening the day before, September 5th and indicated it was a 220 lb MBSU that had failed and needed replacing.
the second article refers to an august 30th date, a date 6 days prior to the other article and is about the same MBSU, an identical 8 hour and 17 minute eva by the same crew members, Williams and Hoshide.
I have to ask: were there TWO toothbrush hacks at the same time, or just one? or was there just a shoddy reporting job done by some one. in fact the only thing really different about it is that HAD reports it differently by indicating “Space dust” thats building up around the bolts to remove them, but I find no mention of that in the original article, except in someones comment on the article.
Please elaborate on this once YOU’VE read BOTH articles and compare them.
I will wait for you to shed some light on this
Interestingly enough, the events in the article are supposed to have happened on august 30 2012. Too bad they forgot how they solved the problem before, luckily they came to the same toothbrush conclusion.
Well I’m glad they’re back into the Apollo 13, get ‘em home, get it fixed, mentality, as opposed to the “meh, it might not work, anything we could do would probably be futile, watch ‘em burn” late Columbia era mentality. (I’d have been all “F. Y. Houston, I’m going out to take a look…” and have been duct taping the seat cushions over the thing if it gave a fraction of a second more ablative resistance.)
They should have known better than to sell off all their self-sealing stem bolts.
I’ve got a delivery of those coming next week. I wonder how much latinum NASA would give me for it?
+1 For the Hitchhikers Guide reference.
Two questions:
1) Was any m00se carving involved with the sharpened end of the intergalactic toothbrush?
2) Was it given as a gift by an Oslo dentist named Svenge?
As a shade-tree mechanic, I’ve often wondered how they deal with EVA-issues where bolt threads strip-out, (or heads snap-off).
It’s not the greatest environment in which to work, and if you’re replacing a component, and you have one of these “oh crap” moments – the root cause could have been some dude on the ground 10 years ago, who torqued the bolt too tight, or it could have been the bolt was manufactured out of spec, or it could have been that it’s just been sitting out in LEO for 10 years and the metal fatigue finally got to it. Or; maybe the last EVA service job didn’t snug it down enough. Either way – now you’ve got to do a complicated extract/drill/tap job on-orbit. Hope that there’s enough meat left, hope that you’ve got a larger-size bolt, hope that you’ve got the tools and the leverage at that spot – hope that the shavings you bore out of there don’t get into mischief in the electrically-charged microgravity environment, – I think we can forget welding or adhesives.
I’ve had to deal with these in my garage, and let me tell you – if you’re on a weekend project, and you screw this up at 1pm on a Saturday, well, the auto-parts store is closed until Monday, so you’re basically screwed if you don’t have the parts on-hand. (and if you didn’t have budget for a new manifold or timing-belt cover, or whatever, then you’re really screwed).
That’s in my comfy garage. I can’t imagine how they’d deal in space.
“That’s in my comfy garage. I can’t imagine how they’d deal in space.”
Luckily, in space no one can hear you scream.
“The first place you start is, OK, if I had this problem at home, what would I do?” said Van Cise. “My response to things like this is just go get my big torque wrench and torque it real hard, and if it breaks I go get a new one. The problem is that in space we can’t run to the hardware store and buy a new nut if it breaks.”
Really? Your first response to a stuck bolt is “TURN HARDER!!” Yikes…
Maybe I’m missing something here, but when I typically need to clean shavings out of something I try to use some compressed air… maybe that’s considered too uncontrolled for them?
Brass brush. I use that sucker for everything and am surprised that isn’t in the ISS toolbox checklist between teflon tape and precision calipers.
They should be using quick disconnect fasteners.
Maybe it poses some sort of security threat, but to me it seems like an excellent idea to harness the power of the internet should something more serious like the Apollo 13 incident happen.
By providing a list of supplies available and details of the problem to tinkerers, engineers, etc. it is more likely to find a better solution faster than relying on one small group of professionals, no? it’s almost like cluster computing, i’m sure theres a closer term i am not aware of
Crowd sourced engineering?
I find it slightly amusing that the International Space Station was sent instructions by NASA using measurements in inches. If the highest eschelon of engineers still use imperial units, what hope is there for the rest of the US?
Speaking as one who learned to measure using inches…AMEN! Why can’t we change over?
I decree that women shall use metric while men shall use imperial (whatever! lol)
Douglas Adams won’t be saying much of anything to anyone any more……..
This made me think of something: They should send up a 3D printer to the space station – then if they need a piece, they can just print it off instead of waiting for a supply ship.
unfortunately 3D printers are juicy for electricity so not much good when the solar panels need fixing to make electricity. my Dimension 768 sucks the equivalent of 2-3 washing machines running
Plus there’s some interesting problems in making a 3D printer work in zero g, turns out gravity is quite useful in terms of things staying where you leave them, and allowing convective cooling to operate.
Could run it under “centrifugal” gravity, but then you might find your uprights pointed toward the axis or something.