Nasa can’t open its asteroid capsule - Tortoise

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• I_Has_A_Hat@startrek.website ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Lol, this reeks of the occasional stupidity behind necessary red tape. For those that didn’t read it, 2 of the fasteners require tools to remove that are not certified for the pure nitrogen environment they’re working in. Because it’s NASA, I can guarantee there is a very tightly controlled list of tools that are allowed to be used in the lab; each of which has gone through hundreds of hours of testing, documentation, and approval by at least one board. So even though all they need is essentially just a screwdriver, it’s going to take weeks or months to get all the approvals in place to use it.

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  • LastYearsPumpkin@feddit.ch ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    You seem to be talking out of both sides of your mouth there.

    They’re dumb because there’s red tape, but the red tape is there so they don’t accidentally ruin the sample? It’s stupid, but it’s a good thing?

    This is NASA, the smartest people in the world, who just spent a ton of time, money, and resources retrieving a small sample of material. They don’t want to fuck it up. The tools have to fit in the container, they have to not contaminate the material, they have to do one job and do it perfectly, and they have one chance at it.

    Let them take a minute to think about it, there’s no rush here.

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    • Heggico@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      But they designed the container… they decided the environment to open it in… why haven’t they already tried and certified the tools needed to open it? Wasn’t that thought of in advance? Or is this just a case of, these tools should work, but for some reason failed? Which is what i’m assuming, since only 2 of the 35 can’t be removed, but still.

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