Wackiest Anomalies

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JennieM
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Wackiest Anomalies

Post by JennieM »

The topic of the space madness got me wondering. What are some of the wackiest, craziest anomalies you have either had on a mission or, for counselors, came up with?

My friend, Dwayne, who was a Level II/ASA counselor actually got in trouble for his, but it was funny at the time (aren't they always). On a 12 hour mission, he had a soap opera on the mission. The pilot and mission specialist were "dating." Midway through the mission, Dwayne gave the girl (can't remember if she was the pilot or MS) a balloon and instructed her to put it in her flight suit because she was going to be "pregnant." A while later, the guy started having an affair with a Payload Specialist and the "pregnant" girl found out.

Needless to say, all the Level II/ASA counselors had a stern talking to about how they weren't allowed to simulate "pregnant campers" anymore.
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Post by kidjim25 »

We had a lovers spat in mission control one year INCO jumped CAPCOM because the anomolie was that CAPCOM was having an AFFAIR with INCO's wife
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Post by Hotdog »

wow! gonna be hard to top that one.

most anomalies i can remember are pretty boring ones (ATO, malfunctioning GPC).

the big one I had was the fire on Enterprise i had to put out because all of my crew were either on the space station, out on EVA's or sick in the mid-deck and unable to help.

the sick crew members really got into their roles and made things pretty difficult for me and my crew! Our Pilot was so bad that we had to duct tape him to the airlock and shoot him full of Valium to calm his ass down! luckily he magically got well just in time for deorbit and landing!
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Post by rkolker »

ImageNot the wackiest, but the one which was the biggest challenge was the one we did for the 8 day pilot in 1990, where the PAM blew up right after it had cleared the orbiter, leading to lots of orbiter damage (loss of the control lines to the aft RCS and OMS, tile damage, I forget what else) requiring planning and executing contingency EVAs and a contingency launch of a second orbiter with repair tools and supplies. We woke up the "off" team and brought them in to tiger team planning for the new mission, spent several hours building the flight data file for the contingency mission. Meanwhile the on-orbit crew was discovering their tile damage by examining the orbiter with the RMS camera and the folks in the MOCR were dealing with all kids of side effects caused by the explosion.

No "space madness" required, and at the end of the 24 hour sim, we were all worn to a frazzle.

Space Camp never ran that scenario again. It's a shame, but it takes an experienced team to make it happen.
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Post by empress »

Ha-ha - I was in the orbiter when the blew up the PAM. They hit the payload bay / crew cabin wall with a baseball bat and turned off all of our lights!!! We knew it was a "bad thing" that had happened...! :)
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Post by JennieM »

Refresh my memory, please. What does PAM stand for?
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Post by rkolker »

JennieM wrote:Refresh my memory, please. What does PAM stand for?
Payload Assist Module. It was the kick motor for most of the shuttle satellite deploys, particularly the "spinners". They actually had a problem with them exploding at one point (Hoot Gibson tells the story well), but always when they were well away from the Orbiter. We just moved it close enough to do damage (but not so close that the Orbiter would be destroyed, which would have made for a short and uninteresting sim)

I have the whole scenario at home somewhere. I developed the scenario, and the gang at Space Camp made it happen (including creating a tile repair/replacement kit we used with the 5DFs on the side of Enterprise). It was a really good thinking anomaly for a 24 hour (or longer) sim. I kinda had to sit back during the sim since I knew what was going to happen (at least initially) but it was worth it to see it play out. We spent hours tiger teaming and designing the repair mission from bits of Flight Data Files and timelines and flew two concurrent missions from adjacent MOCRs, using Atlantis and Enterprise, maintaining communications between the two and the tiger team with runners. There were some "Contingency procedures" in the can we had developed, but not all of them were appropriate (we didn't want to make it TOO easy).

As I mentioned above, it ended up a bit too hard, and I'd simplify it for a less prepared group, but I'd love to see someone try it again.
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Post by SpaceCanada »

As I mentioned in the other thread, we had some interesting real life anomalies in my adult session on top of the fabricated ones.

Also, we had a computer malfunction that kept throwing us off because everything looked normal on my screen except this blue box hovering by the waste management blackwater tank levels. The levels stayed at empty, or 30-some percent the whole time on my MOCR screen and never rose like they should, so we had a backup in the system twice before we purged the tanks and the problem went away for a bit but promptly returned. After trying everything in the book to fix the problem they finally figured out my console had a malfunction and that particular sensor was not reading on my machine. Figures... after a nice re-boot of the whole system the sensor worked again and the 'pee problem' went away for good. Seriously, we had conferences over this problem, every idea under the sun was used to try and fix it - leaks, experiment mishaps, an incontinent crew member, everything! Computer glitches... hey... they happen!
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Post by 1MileCrash »

it wasn't an electrical or component anomaly but on the space station we had a meteor shower. while we were taking refuge one of the girls was supposed to have broken her leg in the rush there. so we had to carry her from the place where we were hunkering at back to the main area to work on her. not easy.
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Post by Benji »

The PAM explosion seems like the type of anomaly I'd love. Those psychological anomalies are sometimes funny, but they ruin the realism that I enjoy.
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Post by empress »

I agree - I prefer "real" anomalies over the more "soap opera" ones... One of my favorites, although not "wacky," was brought on by a node that was dropped by one of our mission specialists during the construction of a truss. (Note to MS: Never drop things when a counselor is looking...) Laws of orbital mechanics aside, it did come back to haunt us, crashing into our KU-band antenna on a later orbit. Can you say "LOS"??? We ended up having to use the S-band antenna for "sporadic" communication with Mission Control. And yes, "LOS" is "SOL," spelled backwards!!!

PS to 1MileCrash - How'd your crewmate break her leg in Zero G???
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Post by 1MileCrash »

empress wrote:
PS to 1MileCrash - How'd your crewmate break her leg in Zero G???
i actually have no idea. i can't recall...it's been almost 10 year...holy crap...i feel old now.
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Post by rkolker »

I reread the original of the PAM explosion scenario last night (I really need to clean up some time!). A few things I had forgotten.

We had to train for an entire "regular" 24 hour sim, with EVAs and ISS experiments and everything, since nobody knew the explosion was going to happen.

There were three launch windows for the rescue/repair mission at 10.5, 12 and 13.5 hours into the sim. Planning had to take into account which launch window we would use.

I had planned a crew transfer using the famous (and never used) crew rescue balls, but we couldn't figure out how to mock them up. After the crew member got in, a neutrally boyant substitute was going to be transfered using the RMS. Never did get to do that one.

As I mentioned, there was a long list of contingency plans I developed for the tiger team to choose from (although I never did develop all of them...ran out of time).

It was fun to reread the plans from 1990, and the newsletters to the team as we developed the program (although the sim was a secret from all but two of us). At one point we were talking about a 30 hour sim, but I'm glad we didn't do that, I was exhausted enough after 24.
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Post by JennieM »

empress wrote:I agree - I prefer "real" anomalies over the more "soap opera" ones... One of my favorites, although not "wacky," was brought on by a node that was dropped by one of our mission specialists during the construction of a truss. (Note to MS: Never drop things when a counselor is looking...) Laws of orbital mechanics aside, it did come back to haunt us, crashing into our KU-band antenna on a later orbit. Can you say "LOS"??? We ended up having to use the S-band antenna for "sporadic" communication with Mission Control. And yes, "LOS" is "SOL," spelled backwards!!!

PS to 1MileCrash - How'd your crewmate break her leg in Zero G???
I agree. I prefer the real ones more. It challenges you to use your brain and you have more of a feeling of accomplishment when you figure it out.

You know, you could have used morse code too when you couldn't use the S-band. :wink:
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Post by Mercergl »

I was informed that I was to have a "Spaz attack" in Mission Control. I randomly sat op, and lost it. That was probably the only time I could strangle a teammate or kick a chair across the room without severe punishment :wink:
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Post by des »

Of course, real psychotic episodes (which could happen in space), are much scarier and really quite a lot different. People don't really go nuts ala the movie version. Usually what happens is over time a person will grow increasingly paranoid, suspicious, remote, angry, and irritated over trivial things.

I think it would be very hard to deal with, and at first maybe people wouldn't take it esp. seriously. Then the problem would continue.

Sorry to introduce reality. I keep trying not to do this.
:-) However, it does make the SC versions of this much less realistic since they aren't even related to real life psychotic breaks at all. However, if I were dealing with trying to come up with anomolies for a 24 hour mission for teenagers, i might throw them in too. Of course, 24 hours with teenagers will give you a psychotic episode. Just ask parents.


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Post by monkeynautt »

For my 24 hour mission it was not full of medical anomalies. There were only 2 or 3 that I remember. But we did have other technical problems, like the fan being backwards in the toilet and having to be fixed and the fire on station (in the drop tower - I have always had one in there everytime I was on station).
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Post by pilotgirl21 »

During my second time at camp, I was in Mission Control for the 6 hour EDM and I had "food poisoning." It was really the only thing that I remember happening in Mission Control, so I really played up the part. I don't remember much else during my other times at camp.
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Post by rkolker »

pilotgirl21 wrote:During my second time at camp, I was in Mission Control for the 6 hour EDM and I had "food poisoning." It was really the only thing that I remember happening in Mission Control, so I really played up the part. I don't remember much else during my other times at camp.
Real World -

You get on the loop and call the back room and they send someone to take your place. You go home. End of anomoly.
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Post by des »

In space it would be a bit harder. But various astronauts have had cases of space sickness that were fairly difficult. They dealt with the 2-3 days of discomfort. If it were a serious form of ecoli or something it would be more difficult. But most food poisoning is more benign. MC isn't such an issue as Rich points out. I'm sure that sort of thign happens routinely.

The other difficulty in space is whether the poisoning happened due to food from space or before. I am sure in longer duration flights they control the astronauts intake for a few days (make sure he eats no food from China?). I would seriously doubt the food sent INTO space has much time to be contaminated. It isn't really too much real food.

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rkolker wrote:
pilotgirl21 wrote:During my second time at camp, I was in Mission Control for the 6 hour EDM and I had "food poisoning." It was really the only thing that I remember happening in Mission Control, so I really played up the part. I don't remember much else during my other times at camp.
Real World -

You get on the loop and call the back room and they send someone to take your place. You go home. End of anomoly.
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