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Space Station Leak Found, Fixed
Rommel writes "NewScientist.com is reporting that the cause of the leak in the International Space Station has been found and fixed. The leak was found in a hose in the Destiny lab module. The hose was used to equalize pressure and eliminate fog between two panes of a window. While the leak was so slow it was unlikely to pose a direct threat to the crew for months to come, some equipment on the ISS is only certified to operate above a certain air pressure. The leak was originally mentioned on Slashdot a few days back."
...as they now get to make "first leak in space" jokes.
I was looking forward to watching the ISS sputter around the sky like a deflating balloon with a couple astronaughts hanging on for dear life and screaming bloody murder.
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That's one small step for duct tape, one giant leap for mankind.
some equipment on the ISS is only certified to operate above a certain air pressure.
such as the crew maybe?
Yeah, but just think of all the tubing, wall panels, airlocks, windows, and god knows what else that had to be check. And especially since it was a leak in a piece of tubing, I'm surprised they found it so fast.
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the leak was really Carl Rove, right?
...for telling the crew how to fix the leak using a roofing nail, some hair spray, and a roll of toilet paper.
The crew said they'd get right on it as soon as those supplies were delivered.
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I guess it wouldn't have been practical to dip the whole station in a tub of water.
This is actually a bit frightening when you think about it. If it took them nearly a month to find this problem imagine if it were a much more serious threat. You would hope that the station would have sensitive enough monitering equipment to detect where problems are occurring. I would probably think twice about spending my powerball winnings on a vacation to the ISS and wait till the Hilton is on the moon, ...no not Paris you dirty minded /.er, although 0-Gravity sex... ...nevermind.
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"The spacecraft has apparently been taken over - "conqured" if you will - by a master race of giant space ants. It's difficult to tell from this vantage point whether they will consume the captive earth men or merely enslave them. One thing is for certain: there is no stopping them; the ants will soon be here. And I for one welcome our new insect overlords. I'd like to remind them that as a trusted TV personality I could be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves." - Kent Brockman
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Sounds more like it was trying to equalize pressure between the space station and the vaccuum outside...
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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - The $1.4 billion U.S. Destiny lab opened for business at the International Space Station Sunday, cracking the hatch on a new era of scientific discovery that one day could lead to human expeditions beyond Earth orbit.
Heh...cracking the hatch....leak...funny.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one the bus load of girls just went down.
If it was a bigger problem it would probably be easier to find. If you were losing 1 psi an hour from a significant leak, it wouldn't be hard to track down even without any special instruments.
Here is another good article from The Austrailian with more details. The pressure rose from 13.92 psi to 14.11 psi when the leak was sealed.
Are you using an old Pentium for your calcuations, or do you just work for NASA? They'd be down to 13.01 psi thank you very much! :)
another IIS leaked fixed... ...oh wait...
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
Did they find the money leak that put this thing way over budget?
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Guesstimating from some info here, Denver, CO is ~12 PSI. A tall mountain in the US is ~10 PSI at the top.
Lousy, cheap NASA equipment! It wouldn't work down here on Earth anyways.
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Anyone else find the last paragraph of that article a bit scary?
"The leak was made more worrisome because the main oxygen generator, which has been working only sporadically, failed again last week. Russian flight managers are designing a way to fix it this week with spare parts already on the station."
Shouldn't the OXYGEN generators be...oh I dunno...WORKING most of the time? Failed again last week reminds me of the infamous furnace fighting scene from a Christmas Story.
I can just see a Russian cosmonaut banging on it with a wrench cursing...
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...Otherwise: .03psi of air per day.
Engineer 1: We're leaking
Engineer 2: (thinking in head: hmmm, there's 1,418,550.14 pascals of air) What's the big deal? we have 129,000 years untill the air's all gone. Tell the astronauts to not worry about it.
Engineer 1: Makes sense to me. Let's get coffee.
-Bucky
I was reading a good page on low-pressure physiology (had to do witk HALO skydiving) where they did the calculations and figured out you're about equally screwed with or without O2 on Everest - if you don't bring O2, you're naturally sluggish and slow, but if you do, you have a hard time getting enough extra energy to make up for the extra weight you have to carry. There is a "sweet spot", but go very far outside of it and you might as well just breathe the thin air.
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A small correction on the Apollo 1 fire. The fire hazard from low-pressure pure oxygen is comparable to the fire hazard from a full-pressure atmospheric mix. I believe there are physiological effects to low-pressure oxygen that make it less desirable.
What happened with Apollo 1 is that it was supposed to use low-pressure pure oxygen in flight. However, on the ground, they couldn't do that because the capsule was only meant to take pressure pushing out. If they had used low-pressure oxygen on the ground, it would have been crushed by the outside air. So they just increased the pressure. Oxygen at 3psi is ok, but oxygen at 16psi is an incredible fire hazard. Fire starts, everybody dies.
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With reduced pressure, the thermal capacity of the cooling air is proportionally reduced. Combined with changes in forced air flow and microgravity not creating convectional cooling, you can have long-term overheating issues with equipment that consumes very little power.
This is solved on satellites with conductive cold/hot plates, but that results in much heavier equipment.
Regarding leakage rates, it's very difficult to estimate leak flow rates. The flow might be proportional to pressure squared, or cubed. If it's in an elastic seal, it may completely re-seal when the pressure drops to a specific level.
Humans can function at elevations of about 5psi (see the other posts about mountain climbers), and survive on a little less. Since O2 is less than 20% of the atmosphere, you can theoretically live on 1psi of pure O2. But secondary effects are killers at that low pressure, such as keeping enough moisture in the lung tissue. When near-pure O2 is used, it is usually at about 3psi or nearly the partial pressure of O2 at sea level.