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Minor Leak Being Investigated Aboard the ISS
Josh Fink writes "Space.com is reporting that the International Space Station has a minor atmosphere leak. 'An inspection of a vestibule bridging the station's new Harmony connecting module and NASA's Destiny laboratory indicated a slight air leak of about three pounds (1.3 kilograms) per day ..A close-up inspection of the vestibule seal by the station's three-astronaut Expedition 16 crew using an ultrasonic leak detector found no trace of a leak on Wednesday, [NASA spokesperson Lynette Madison] said. Studies of the station's overall internal pressure also found no signs of decay, she added.' While this is yet another technical issue with the ISS, when will this end? I am all for the space program, but there have been some major issues lately."
When you encounter a problem you fix it, it's that simple.
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guys... I work for nasa on the space station program... i am amazed at how people frame the detection and fixing of problems on the space station are such a negative thing... the space station construction is so incredibly difficult and complex... and when we have issues, people point them out as never ending. This is the 2nd space station... compare that to the 2nd airplane.
And the biggest thing that amazes me is that these problems are the biggest reason to have the space station!!! We have to learn how to fly in space long term... and fix problems just like these!! what kind of problems do you think we will have when we go to the moon and mars?? do people honestly think if we just drop what we are doing and took off trying to get to mars, we would find out just how much learning we have left to do.
overall, i think the american public is left feeling ashamed of the problems they see on the ISS, instead of being proud of the accomplishment because they don't really comprehend just how insane the Apollo successes were, and how ahead of their time they were. We really do have a lot left to learn about flying in space and fixing things in space with the materials in place, and unless we want to take insane risks and costs like were done in the Apollo program, we need to do that with the space station.
these problems... their detection, isolation, and recovery, are the greatest asset of the space station.
Being "for the space program" requires some acceptance of the massive risks inherent in manned space travel.
You're not kidding. The submitter's complaint is like bitching about the Wright Brother's airplane not being able to fly 100 people across the Atlantic by the end of 1904. The thing is an experiment, ok? Some problems may be due to poor decision making, but I think we can still cut them some slack here. This is not like the Challenger disaster where I believe upper management committed criminal negligence for political expediency. They were warned about that impending failure to the point that the TV news reporters were discussing it before launch. So they got a leak. Use it to ventilate the bathroom.
What?
The purpose of the ISS is to learn how to build and maintain large facilities in space. It is a learning process. My question to those that use issues like this as a reason to criticize the ISS is simple: Would you rather have this kind of problem come up on a lunar base where the crew was three days, not two hours from safety? How about on a Mars mission where there was no chance of sending repair parts or rescuing the crew? It is far better to discover issues like this, or the torn solar panel, or the metal shavings they found in an array rotary junction, now and figure out how to deal with it and prevent it from happening again in the wading pool of low Earth orbit rather than in the deep ocean of space.