Big Three?
What are the Big Three Hadfield is talking about?
At a guess, these are three things you do not want to have happen in space, what are they? Loss of power, loss of atmosphere, and fire?
The US section of the International Space Station has been evacuated due to the detection of "harmful emissions". The Russian Federal Space agency said a leak from the cooling system took place around 11.44 MSK (7:44 GMT). "Currently, the US segment of the ISS is isolated, the crew is safe and is located on the Russian segment …
> What are the Big Three Hadfield is talking about?
They are right in his blog.... wasn't hard to find:
http://colchrishadfield.tumblr.com/post/108081273658/emergency-on-the-space-station-this-morning-high
"If it breaks through to the inside it is one of the big 3 emergencies. The other two we train for are fire/smoke & contaminated atmosphere/medical. "
No, not from the space station emergency, but apropos the suggestion to take a sniff. In a chemistry lab far, far, away, and in a time long, long ago when hazardous materials were still allowed to be in the same space as children, I saw a chemistry master (who was generally very careful [1]) make a stupid mistake. During a demonstration, he reached for a reagent bottle, expecting it to be some solvent or other, and took a sniff to confirm. Turns out, it was concentrated ammonia solution, and one little sniff quite literally knocked him backwards. Moral: you really don't want to get NH3 up your nose.
[1] This was the same man who taught us the correct way to do an olfactory sampling: hold the material some distance away from you, and using a cupped hand gently waft a little of the air over it towards your nose: don't draw breath deeply: you might not want that stuff down in your lungs.
If there's a problem in the russian section they retreat into the Soyuz capsules. Until the US has a man-rated ship capable of docking to the US side, a problem on the russian side means abandoning the station until a repair can be bodged together from the outside or by spacewalking from a soyuz to the US side airlock.
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At the top the page just tells me Loading..... for ever. Lower down I thought that the latest news is/was/will be from 1st October 2015? :)
I read elsewhere that nothing actually detected bad stuff, but a cooling water pressure increase, followed by air-pressure increase suggested the possibility of an amonia leak.
It is. Imagine that "something" is dangerous. Now think that if you only put 1 sensor and it doesn't work. If the "something" bad happens, everyone dies.
So you would put more than one. Now what do you so if 1 sensor says that "something" has happened? You play fail safe. After all maybe the something is only detectable in one location, or maybe your redundant sensor has failed.
Let me ask you a question. If somebody pushes the fire alarm button in your company(/school/whatever), do you evacuate, or wait until every single fire alarm button is pressed?
"Let me ask you a question. If somebody pushes the fire alarm button in your company(/school/whatever), do you evacuate, or wait until every single fire alarm button is pressed?"
We had a fire alarm test just last week on our site (specifically to test peoples reactions).. Results: 20% of people evacuated, of those 90% returned to their offices before being given the all clear...
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