Credits to: @mattblaze@federate.social
EDIT: they’ve changed the article’s original title :(
No commentary on the fact that they launched them with a helium leak in the first place? Seriously? They found the problem and scrubbed a launch, only to go forward with it when they couldn’t figure it out. WTF man.
Now the helium leak is worse, and you’re just gonna give them a pass.
They scrubbed, investigated, found it was acceptable, launched, and discovered previously unknown issues. The original leak isn’t getting worse, they discovered more, smaller leaks, that still don’t pose a danger to the mission.
Discovering the cause of the 5 RCS thrusters shutting down with only 4 of them being able to restart is the current focus of things, because the spacecraft is no where near running out of helium.
It’s all still within the scope of this test flight’s objectives, so they technically aren’t wrong to say things are going well even when they’ve found issues.
Question: If you had to design a bridge, and you did, and it was built, and then you noticed it sways in the wind, would you tear it down?
And if you answer yes: This is normal. Bridges are designed with a certain level of flex in mind, and they have redundancies to allow for this. Too much is a problem of course, but a certain amount is normal and budgeted for.
And it’s similar here: The helium leaks were not planned to be there, but there’s a certain redundancy in the system which means that a certain level of helium leakage is not an issue.
