[FPSPACE] Russians finally agree ISS is too noisy?

[DwayneDay]

-----Original Message-----
From: Keith Gottschalk <kgottschalk at uwc.ac.za>

> 2nd, two countries (USA & Rus) who are the world's largest manufacturers of submarines should have oodles of experience in designing quiet propellers & fans for air conditioning etc! Maybe the analogies between spacecraft & subs go beyond hermetical seals & few windows to the "silent service"?

This is a quibble, but the United States is not currently one of the world's largest manufacturers of submarines.  The US will commission its first submarine in six years and produced only three new ones during the 1990s:

http://www.strategypage.com/messageboards/messages/462-658.asp

The US Navy is trying to achieve a production rate of one sub per year, but critics claim that it needs to produce at least two per year to maintain the industrial base.  And according to the above article, there is justification for this--the Royal Navy stopped producing submarines for a decade and when they restarted they had a lot of problems.

That said, I'm not sure that Russia is also one of the world's two largest submarine producers either.  I cannot obtain reliable figures, but the Russians have not produced a new nuclear submarine in over a decade, and their production of conventional subs is around 1-2 a year, I believe.  Unfortunately, I cannot find any reliable data on the web on this.

My guess is that China is the leading submarine producer, although they primarily manufacture severely obsolete subs for patrol missions.  Second is probably Russia, but might be the Germans.

However, the premise of your comment is correct--although the US and Russia are not producing the most boats, their technology remains the best.  In terms of quieting, latest generation Russian submarines and American submarines are apparently essentially equal, although American sonar is superior.

Bringing this slightly back on topic, the analogy is not a bad one.  I believe (and Jim O can probably confirm) that one of the guidelines for "off the shelf" equipment is that if it is banned from submarine use, NASA will not use it.  This is because of similar safety considerations for an enclosed environment.  This was an issue several years ago when the Russians wanted to use some French-made batteries for ISS.  Those batteries were specifically banned from submarines because they posed a fire hazard.  NASA argued that if they were unsafe for the enclosed space of a submarine, then they were unsafe for the enclosed space of ISS.  The Russians launched them anyway and this created a space between the two sides.

I remember hearing an informal chat between a couple of NASA people who were involved in this issue.  They agreed that NASA often goes overboard with unreasonable safety requirements for operational equipment.  But this was one instance where they felt that the Russian position was a bad one.



DDAY