ISS? More like HISS, am I right? Space station air leakage narrowed down to Russia's Zvezda module The location of the air leak from the International Space Station (ISS) has been identified. According to Russia's Roscosmos, it is in the Zvezda Service Module transfer chamber. While not an imminent threat to the crew's safety, the usual seepage of air has grown in recent months, necessitating a hunt for the culprit. The …
One of the NROL-44 aborts happened at T0. The two side boosters started fine but the middle one didn't because it did not get a burst of high pressure helium needed to spin up the turbo pumps. The side boosters had to shut down really fast because the engines are designed for a single use and when they were still in production cost something like $10M to $20M each. I expect the cost of two more would start with "How much can you afford?"
The August 29 attempt actually stopped at T minus 3s but the announcers continued to countdown to "liftoff" and speculated it was a hotfire abort. ULA later clarified it was an automated abort, the flames were external, and neither the boosters or main engine ignited.
Still, this doesn't do anything to make ULA's hardware look like it's improving.
Set up a few cameras to fully cover the space (if it isn't already fully covered) then evacuate the people (and animals, if any) from that module, seal the door, disable the ventilation and shut down everything else with a fan like computers. After a while when the air has become completely still other than the leak a delayed release container opens up and releases colored smoke. Watch on video and see where the smoke goes.
you have to ask how they found the leak in the Soyuz a while back.
That one was apparently caused by an inaccurate drill hole, followed by a sloppy patch job (if I remember correctly). once found, it was patched in space and apparently had no additional leaking.
I wonder if coating the entire outside of the module with the equivalent of soapy water. would reveal bubbles, like when a mechanic checks for a leak in a car tire. (yeah US'ian spelling)
Other possibilities, turn off the fans, seal the room, use a small smoke source at various points, and then watch where it leads. An extinguished match would probably be enough. What, nobody's got a light on the ISS? [such simple things on earth]
1. Phosphorous fragments floating about. V bad.
2. Graphite fragments, pretty bad.
3. Dropping the lit match: Potentially catastrophic.
Smoke can be made without a naked flame. We had a fog machine for productions at school, worked with kerosene. Risk of it going off with a fart noise. As Lysander I pretended I couldn’t find Demetrius to fight him both led astray by our excellent female Puck with the stuff just above knee high swirling as we moved.. Great fun.
Flames in space are hemi-spherical and burn rather differently to flames on earth as there is no gravitational gradient to cause 'rising' hot air:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24733000-900-lighting-fires-in-space-is-helping-us-make-greener-energy-on-earth/
If the compartment is at all cluttered with equipment, you would have to watch for smoke outside, as the hole could be between a console and the external skin of the module.
I guess the leakage is imperceptible, way smaller than a tire leak, else they would be rushing to ferry replacement air reserves to the IIS by now. This, and the definitely not flat and featureless inner hull surface of the module might make it quite difficult to spot a welding line which has gotten porous.
Obviously smoke isn't an option, they can't just open the windows and ventilate when it's over. They would have to keep breathing that smoke until all the smoke particles have settled in the astronauts' lungs and on the sensible instruments up there.
IMHO they have better chances finding it from the outside, except of course space walks are limited in time and it would take months. They'd need some automated method revealing some physical effect which happens when air seeps out into space.
Doctor Who - State of Decay. A Tom Baker episode I never saw, but for some reason had the audiobook on tape as a kid. The Doctor realises that the vampire's castle is in fact a spaceship - hence the pointy tower - and launches it so that it will come back and pierce the giant vampire creature's heart. He basically turns it into a Space Stake.
Although surely that shouldn't work, as it's not made of wood? But I guess if you start looking for plot holes, you'll never finish.
We need a happy descent into nostalgia icon. Or just an old git one...
It has been a bad few weeks for US-based rocket fanciers as SpaceX, United Launch Alliance (ULA), and Northrop Grumman took turns at failing to get their respective rockets off the ground.
Generally, a rocket failure is not takeoff so much as a rapid unscheduled disassembly, which known to affect even senior aerospace companies. Failure to reach orbit is another common failure in the launch industry.
Launch scrubs and delayed takeoffs, on the other hand, are sensible precautions. Launch services aren't airlines trying to appease hundreds of angry, restive passengers with timely takeoffs. Instead, they have customers expecting that their billion-dollar hardware gets delivered correctly, intact, and operational.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
