There may be not one but two new air leaks in International Space Station: Russian boss tells us not to panic Russian cosmonauts have detected another leak in the International Space Station – and suspect there may be a second – months after they just patched a hole. The head of the Russian segment of the ISS Vladimir Solovyov told a Russian TV news channel that orbiting platform's residents right now need a microscope to find the …
They just need a nice cuppa:
https://www.theregister.com/2020/10/22/space_in_brief/
A floating teabag showed where the previous leak was, but they might need two this time. There are Russians on board so bound to have teabags around.
I also find it odd that they measure pressure in milimeters of Mercury. OK so on Earth air pressure is measured in mm Hg, as the number of mm a column of Hg is supported in a vacuum against gravity. But in the weightlessness of space, orbiting the Earth, surely they should measure pressure in Pascals?
"If you really want to see pressure, try doing it in C# with a deadline!!"
No thanks. I once tried programming in Windows with Visual C++ (I think), and got in a real state. My poor constructivist single thread mind was bamboozled by it. I stick to ANSI standard C from Kernighan & Richie now.
you can find leaks in high pressure air systems by squirting soapy water onto the suspected location, and it'll form bubbles and foam where the leak is.
A similar substance might help find them in a vacuum. It would have to maintain a liquid state while in a vacuum though.
Alternately, how about a gas that produces a recognizable signature, glows under UV light or turns into ice crystals as it expands into the vacuum, or something equally visible that you could shine lights on and see "something" out in space... ?
Certain CFCs mixed with oil or alcohol might do this last part, and then you'll see reflective things coming out through the hole [which would then sublimate, but hopefully if the right combination would show up long enough to see the leak]. Hopefully would show up in a visual scan of the outside.
Also a possibility, there's a kind of tire filler (like 'fix a flat') you can use for self-repairing bicycle tires, which if it is contained within a layer between an inner and outer wall of a compartment, could self-seal against most leaks. This would be pretty cool if a module were inflatable, as the outer skin could be layered and contain such a material. I guess it'd be "fix a flat" for the ISS.
You seem to be forgetting the little incident of the last hole that was discovered on a Russian segment. Where the head of roscosmos tried to claim that the hole was caused by one of the astronauts deliberately sabotaging the ISS.
It was written about right here on El Reg: https://www.theregister.com/2018/09/04/drill_caused_soyuz_hole/
So the Russians are just as keen to deflect blame if they think they can get away with it as those in the West.
Funnily enough I seem to recall that when smoking was banned from airliners it stopped one of the ways engineers used to spot leaks in the cabin. Apparently all they had to do was look for the staining caused by the escaping smoke.
It may be an apocryphal story of course but seems plausible.
Not apocryphal, true
Aircraft tended to be riveted together in those days, and if one (or more) was a teeny bit loose, air would escape from the pressurised cabin carrying with it cigarette smoke. This would leave a brown smudge on the outside of the fuselage.
Any place there was even a microscopically small leak, a brown smudge. Easy to find :)
Of course, cabin crew and passengers were also breathing the same fugitive air, getting lovely brown smudges on their lungs, too :(
Definitely true. I remember seeing some photo's of the interior panels of an ex-passenger 747 being removed, showing the inside between the covering and the pressure hull being basically filled with a thick gelatinous yellow goop. The result of years and years of tar, nicotine and other chemicals from smoking seeping into the insulating material, turning it into a disgusting sludge. It's unfortunate I cannot seem to locate those photo's anymore.
To be fair, the problem was a stress fracture at the corner of a square window caused by multiple pressurization/de-pressurization cycles as opposed to a constant pressure difference.
Being one of the first pressurized airliners of its era, none of the engineers had come across metal fatigue, and none of them knew that sharp corners were especially vulnerable. Its one of the reasons aircraft windows are oval.
... of an old Sci-Fi short story. Occupants of a space station that had suffered a break up retreated to one module that could be sealed off. While waiting for the rescue ship, they discovered a small hull leak. Unfortunately, the module section they were in lacked any useful repair materials.
Their solution: Take turns dropping trou' and sitting on the pinhole.
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