ISS is still leaking air after latest repair efforts fail The International Space Station (ISS) is still leaking air from the Russian segment of the outpost despite efforts to eliminate the losses. Sergey Krikalev, executive director of the Human Space Flight Program at the Russian space agency Roscosmos, made the admission during the pre-launch news conference for NASA's SpaceX Crew …
It'll be them sanctions wot did it, the Russians can't get proper JB weld and are relying on that fake stuff advertised on tiktok
Don't see the problem. Improvisation. If they can't get the good stuff, they can at least use leftover porridge, or Weetabix. And if sacntions deny them access to that, the supermarket own-brand dry wheat bisk will do the job just as well.
Mix with a little milk, wait until it forms a disgusting paste, apply to affected area and once it's dried on, nothing short of concentrated sulphuric acid will shift it.
"In space, no one can let you smoke a cigarette."
Given that comments have been made that state ISS smells like a prison, a stick of incense wouldn't go amiss. These are trained scientists. They should be able to monitor one stick of incense to make sure they don't wind up burning the whole thing down (Up?).
There's no smoke in a vacuum.
I put a tiny electric motor in a vacuum chamber to see how fast it could go with no wind resistance and a lot of extra electricity. I never saw any smoke in the chamber despite all the hot parts evaporating. The pump sure stank.
> no smoke in a vacuum.
Big difference between "slow leak" and "vaccum".
Yes, walking around with a cigarette is how we used to trace poor air circulation in buildings. (In days when ashtrays were built right onto hallway walls.) Yes, with multiple leaks we needed a ladder to get in the near-field of every register-- ah, that's not needed in orbit.
Given the wealth of space-station-hole-plugging expertise we've got in this forum, the article could at least have quantified the leakage to make sure our insightful ideas about duct tape, ciggie smoke, soap and water et al can be properly thought through. A web search suggests that the ISS steady state air loss is about 500 grams per day, and that has risen to about 1 kg per day due to the shonky Russian parts. The 500 gram differential is equivalent to the air in about 12 inflated car tyres, or about 0.4 m^3 at STP, and using the Systeme Plebian "pop bottle" standard unit of volume it's 200 PET pop bottles per day. Taking the car tyre equivalent, we're talking about losing a car tyre of air every two hours, and that suggests our methods could work, that's a fair bit of air to be losing and not finding the leak.
I'd like to offer up a solution that doesn't fix the leak, but stops it being a problem. Elon attaches a specially made 400 km hosepipe* to a bracket off the side of his next launch. The hosepipe unreels as the rocket goes up, and then is linked to the ISS. Then they've got a tube they can suck in air from the atmosphere, hey presto, problem solved. In fact, attach a second one for a water and nutrient mix, and that solves the inconvenience of water and food supplies, then convert the existing ISS toilet into a space garderobe (in the meaning of a mediaeval castle toilet). An illuminated world map in the privvy could show the 'naut which countries air their foulage would burn up in, enabling them to time things to selectively offload on chosen nations. I am such a genius, if only I'd been on the ISS design team.
* Continuous hose, of course. Those Gardena or Hozelock connectors always leak like buggery.
The problem is that astronauts in 0 G need a certain amount of airflow to stay alive as gravity and convection don't help to move CO2 rich "exhaust" gasses away. Fir the kind of leak NASA is concerned about they'd need basically dead still air, but to create that on the iss it might put a bit too much emphasis on the dead part
I seem to remember reading that the astronauts on Apollo 13 tried to sleep in the deactivated command module. First it was cold, then slightly warmer as the air they breathed out enveloped them like a blanket, but after that they woke up gasping for air as there was eventually also a blanket of CO2.
Gaffers Tape is a bastardized Duct Tape (or Grey Tape).
Gaffers Tape holds the stage together.
Grey Duct Tape holds the Universe together. And based on Apollo 13 (Ron Howard and Tom Hanks were space nuts and were considered Technical Nazis during filming to keep it accurate as far as techie stuff goes), Grey Duct Tape (at least 1 roll) was standard on Apollo flights - and by extension, I would hope for all post-Apollo space habitats.
Ven she suck it feel vonderful, ultimate wacuum yust outside, perhaps small hole vill be missed.
Naw but seriously folks, steam will solve the problem. Put on a kettle in the affected.area and the water vapor will find its way out the hole along with the air. The water will freeze around the hole, then you send someone on a spacewalk to look for the ice on the outside. And that's when you discover that the Russians used sheet metal screws to attach equipment to the walls.
That's what I thought but given that it's been so long and people much smarter than us haven't isolated the leak yet I suspect it's a bit more complex unfortunately :(
I'd think that the proclivity of water to expand when frozen might be a risk factor for turning an acceptably small hole into an unacceptably large hole too.
... to find it and fix it from the outside. On the inside, the leak is probably buried behind a lot of equipment. Which may have to be removed to gain access.
In order to find it from the outside, one approach might be to spray some gas on the outside of the suspect module which will react visibly with the leaking O2. Even a small bottle of butane and a continuous spark gap would reveal the leak as a small flame (not big enough to be harmful). If it doesn't ignite, it will dissipate harmlessly.
It might seem like a lot of work just to find a leak that can be lived with. But working out the details of leak detection on a station that is soon to be retired will come in handy for other missions.
no idea how the ISS was constructed, but if there is any kind of double hull involved - which would seem likely, as it would be unpleasant having external radiation hitting the other side of the wall you're living against - then the gas will leak into the inter-hull space, then find a way to an exit point - or several. The outer body of the station would be subject to a lot of thermal stress so it is quite likely riddled with cracks. Possibly even opening and closing with thermal expansion making them intermittent leaks.
We all know the way to make an intermittent fault disappear, is to ask a service guy to look at it...
"On the inside, the leak is probably buried behind a lot of equipment. Which may have to be removed to gain access."
I'd be all for an extra shift or two if I was there and worried about the air supply.
The supply line can be subject to all sorts of hiccups. Northrup had to cancel a supply flight due to damage on their rocket. Weather is always an issue and if a F9 went bang, there'd be a stand-down until they figured out why. Who even knows what's up with the Russians and I haven't seen a Japanese supply flight mentioned for some time (I don't always pay attention). How much spare air does ISS have?
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