Is this one of those examples where Nasa spends $50m developing special acronymed gloves, and the Russians went to the chemist and bought some bog standard rubber gloves?
You're referencing that one chain mail from the late 90s right? That said that Americans spent millions developing zero-g pens but the Russians used a pencil?
Yeah, it's fake and stupid. Pencil shavings chip off and don't fall to the floor in space. The graphite parts float around and clog up critical equipment. Pencils themselves are flammable and after the Apollo 1 fire killed three astronauts, NASA was a little gun-shy about sending flammable material into space. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/the-write-stuff/
It's super fun to talk about simple solutions and how NASA loves to overengineer things, but there are actual constraints to consider in micro gravity.
What’s interesting about this is how poor the fan would have been on it’s own. Let’s say you set it up on day 1, now on day 200 you notice it’s off, and suddenly you have no idea how many empty boxes you just shipped.
However, as part of a redundant system it seems like a great idea.
You could pay someone for years and year just to watch and make sure the fan stays on... for less than the price of the consultant they paid. If that person can also do other things, even better.
"You don’t have to be an engineer to appreciate this story.". Actually It's a lot easier to enjoy the story if you aren't an engineer. The use of compressed air is so bog standard on production lines it would be the first solution proposed before a meeting was even scheduled.
You mean like the space pen vs pencil thing, where Fisher spent his own money to design and make it and sold it to both the Americans and Russians because pencils are a huge fire hazard in zero G?
Is this one of those examples where Nasa spends $50m developing special acronymed gloves, and the Russians went to the chemist and bought some bog standard rubber gloves?