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."

Comments

Comes with the territory

[SIGALRM]

I am all for the space program, but there have been some major issues lately

Being "for the space program" requires some acceptance of the massive risks inherent in manned space travel. If mechanical systems are design-simplified it may reduce points of failure.

KERMIt, a "Kit for External Repair of Module Impacts", is one of those simple systems being developed at Marshall Research to seal punctures in the ISS. It will enable crewmembers to seal punctures from outside damaged modules that have lost atmospheric pressure. Delivery of the kit is scheduled for next year. KERMIt is also useful for sealing leaking atmospheric seals as TFF article describes (more info here).

failure is not an option?

[sohp]

Seriously, the story of the space program is not "we did so well nothing went wrong" but, "when things went wrong we used our guts and brains and fixed them"

Examples:

Gemini 8 thruster stuck. Armstrong was able to regain control and return safely home.
Apollo 11 landing 1201 and 1202 program alarms. Programmers on the ground and flight engineers were able to rapidly determine that the alarms posed no threat and the landing continued to success.
Apollo 13. Catastrophic explosion disabled the service module. The astronauts returned home safely using the LEM as a lifeboat and some creative navigation.
Skylab launch: Ripped off a solar panel and part of the outer skin. Astronauts were able to rig a replacement screen to cool inside of the lab and open the other solar panel that was stuck partly open. Three expeditions extended the time in space records and recorded what was then the most detail solar observations ever.
STS-49: Multiple attempts to capture and return an Intelsat satellite failed, but a final attempt involving the shuttle commander flying directly to the satellite and it being hand-captured by 3 spacewalkers succeeded.

There are plenty more, including the recent working solving problems with stuck and torn solar panels.

Incidentally, these kinds of things are why I favor human spaceflight over robots for complex and difficult challenges.

Re:3 lbs a day!?

[j79zlr]

While this may sound funny, but isn't that a lot. While air does have weight how much air is 3 lbs? The area over vermont 10' deep?

If you took an invisible column and surrounded the Eiffel Tower, the air inside that column would weigh more than the steel structure.

Idiot OP?

[dotancohen]

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. Are you kidding? Do you not have any idea how fucking complex and unique the ISS is? My 2008 Ford Focus has gone in for repairs three times in the four months that I've owned it, and Ford has been building those motherfuckers for over 100 years now. The ISS is the third of it's kind, designed and built from scratch and completely hand made. In space! By people wearing spacesuits! You don't expect a problem every now and then?!? I'd go so far as to say that problems are the major mission of the ISS. The creation and solving of problems is building experience for NASA, the Russians, the Europeans, and everybody else involved. Not to mention those brave guys up there actually manning the thing. Problems or not, the ISS is one hell of an achievement. The fact that it hasn't killed anybody yet is either a miracle or testimony to the amazing engineering that has been invested in it.

Re:Problems never end

[david.given]

That said I have to wonder if the ISS could be bumped into a lower maintenance orbit and used as a hub for a bolo style rotating space station.

It's too low as it is --- there's enough air resistance that it has to be reboosted at intervals to keep it in orbit. (It has to be that low because otherwise the shuttles can't get there. They have lousy range.) Lowering the orbit any further would be very dangerous.

As for spinning it (you did mean bola, right? Unless you were actually thinking of giant robotic tanks, which I will admit would be quite cool), not only is it not designed for that and would fall apart, but if you want gravity there's plenty on Earth, where it's quite cheap. One of the main purposes for getting into space is to get free fall.

I rather regret that Mir was destroyed for purely political reasons. If the ISS was built as a set of add-on modules to Mir, gradually superseding Mir's own modules as they began to break down, construction could have gone a lot faster. Even if the Mir modules stopped working completely, they'd still have considerable value as salvage.

Rather than a trip to the moon, I would be far more excited to hear about an ISS greenhouse that does all of the air and water maintenance.

I want a balloon. A ten or twenty metre inflatable habitat module, semitransparent hopefully, in which plants a grown. Inflatables and plastics are the future of spaceflight; look at the cool stuff that Bigelow Aerospace are doing. But even they are simply replicating existing modules using inflatables. It ought to be possible to use the new materials to radically change the way space stations are built. How about a 100m wide spherical envelope, full of air, with your space station built inside? Now, that would be cool, particularly once you have a decent amount of plant life in there...