• Question: If you broke down what would you do first ?

    Asked by robo-tay123 to Simon, Julia, Delma, Andrew, Alex on 15 Dec 2015.
    • Photo: Delma Childers

      Delma Childers answered on 15 Dec 2015:

      I’d call for help and get to work to try to figure out why I broke down and what I can do to fix it. If the repair is beyond me, that’s where the call for help could be really handy. If something breaks on the space station that can’t be fixed, the crew will return home.

    • Photo: Alexander Finch

      Alexander Finch answered on 15 Dec 2015:

      Yes, as Delma says, you try to fix it yourself, and get help if you can’t do it yourself.

      On the space station, there’s lots of computers and people monitoring everything all the time to spot any problems. For all the things that might go wrong, there’s a plan to fix it! Because sometimes repairs are hard or impossible to do in space, most important things are replicated – which means there are several copies of everything – in case something breaks. So if one battery stops working, they have other they can use until they fix the first one.

      If I had to repair something, I’d start by gathering all the info I could and use that to make sure I really understand what’s gone wrong. Usually, I’d do some tests to find out more about the problem. Repair is typically a matter of swapping the old one out and replacing it with a spare!

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