ISS May Have A Leak 523
Rio writes "The International Space Station is experiencing a slow, steady drop in air pressure, and American and Russian flight controllers are investigating possible causes of the leak. The Local 6 News report says Mission Control notified astronaut Michael Foale and cosmonaut Alexander Kaleri about the leak just before their bedtime late Monday afternoon. Mission Control first noticed the drop in pressure Jan. 1 and said the data showed a daily decline of about 2 millimeters of mercury. As of Monday, the pressure had declined a total of nine millimeters. That is equivalent to about one-quarter of a pound per square inch, said NASA spokesman James Hartsfield."
IIS May Have a Leak (Score:5, Funny)
Damn Slashdot... I was about to come out in my penguin outfit to show my Linux Pride.
Re:IIS May Have a Leak (Score:5, Funny)
Re:IIS May Have a Leak (Score:5, Funny)
I'd have thought the need to use the word "may" in the topic would be a giveaway that we clearly weren't talking about IIS.
Re:IIS May Have a Leak (Score:5, Funny)
Re:IIS May Have a Leak (Score:5, Funny)
Re:IIS May Have a Leak (Score:3, Funny)
Sorry, it had to be said!
Re:IIS May Have a Leak (Score:5, Informative)
Re:IIS May Have a Leak (Score:2, Informative)
Re:IIS May Have a Leak (Score:5, Funny)
I would tend toward the interpretation that they *do* have the same letters:
"IIS" has the letters {I, S}
"ISS" has the letters {I, S}
The two sets are the same.
IMO, I think to get at what you're saying you would need to say they have the same letters with the same frequencies.
But this is just a matter of opinion, and I don't think my way is "right" and your way is "wrong".
Toolkit (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Toolkit (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Toolkit (Score:5, Funny)
Duct tape only worked on Mir (which, incidentally, is the Russian word for "duct tape").
Re:Toolkit (Score:3, Funny)
I believe that you would find that the inside of IIS is made exclusively of ducktape. That would partially explain why it has had so many security vulnerabilities. Quick and dirty is the name of the game, as long as it has shiny graphics and glossy marketing materials. However, I would debate your point about how well IIS works.
Re:Toolkit (Score:3, Informative)
Also, Duct Tape is the silvery cloth gear, Duck Tape is what you use to tape up your bird.
Re:Toolkit (Score:3, Funny)
i believe that "Duck Tape" was the term used by the US military before somone realized that it was useful for patching leaks in ventilation systems
Were that true, I shudder to think what they were doing with it before then, or what it meant to the ducks. What else do you believe? :)
Re:Toolkit (Score:5, Funny)
Just look around outside for the hissing white spray, like they do in the movies and bad Star Trek episodes...
Martian Sabotage (Score:4, Funny)
bump (Score:5, Funny)
Re:bump (Score:5, Funny)
Re:bump (Score:3, Informative)
duct tape (Score:5, Funny)
Re:duct tape (Score:5, Funny)
Such a job clearly requires silly putty.
Re:duct tape (Score:5, Funny)
Re:duct tape (Score:5, Funny)
Now taping ducks on the other hand, is one of its greatest strengths.
Re:duct tape (Score:3, Funny)
nothing says "poor workmanship" like wrinkles in the duct tape. . .
Re:duct tape (Score:3, Funny)
Re:duct tape (Score:3, Funny)
Sounds like (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Sounds like (Score:5, Funny)
One giant leap for MacGuyver fans around the world
So .... what's their plan of action? (Score:5, Interesting)
When is it time to take action?
Do they have a way to leave?
They have a supply of Oxygen and Nitrogen to repressurize the station, but how long will that last?
It would be nice to sit in on the decision-making, just to observe...
Re:So .... what's their plan of action? (Score:5, Informative)
There is indeed a Soyuz for emergency (Score:5, Informative)
"A Soyuz capsule will always be docked at the ISS, capable of carrying two people in a medical emergency, or three people in other emergencies. A crew will take a fresh Soyuz capsule to the station every six months."
http://science.howstuffworks.com/space-station11.
Re:There is indeed a Soyuz for emergency (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, in an emergency, you do what you have to do.
No one is ever left aboard without a lifeboat (Score:5, Informative)
They plan around the lifeboat capacity. Even when they used to move the Soyuz between docking ports on Mir (i.e. to free up the only port that a shuttle orbiter could use) everyone had to go aboard the Soyuz for the maneuver, just in case they couldn't re-dock. If they couldn't, they'd abandon the station until another crew could be launched to re-man it.
Of course, they've always able to re-dock so far. There hasn't yet been an unscheduled abandonment of a space station.
The Soyuz-TMA spacecraft serving as the current lifeboat is the one that Foale and Kaleri were launched in. But a Soyuz has a finite shelf-life. Occasionally Russia launches a short-duration crew to bring up a new Soyuz (with fresh batteries and other supplies) and take back the old one. That's just part of sustaining the long-duration mission and its crew.
ISS has more docking ports so they don't have to juggle them like they did on Mir. (And there are no scheduled shuttle orbiter arrivals before late this year anyway.) But if they had to move the Soyuz for any reason, it would still be the same thing - all aboard and leave no one behind.
This is a procedure NASA learned from the Russians, among many things they learned from each other. Remember, when they started working together on the Shuttle-Mir dockings in the mid- to late 90's, NASA had the experience with big shuttle orbiters, but no long-duration platforms. Russia had the experience with space stations, but wasn't able to bring as much cargo up, and almost nothing (in comparison) back down. Each had what the other needed so that worked pretty well, besides all the symbolism it made for the end of the Cold War.
So, what are they going to do now? My guess is the first thing will be to close all the hatches to try to isolate and identify the module (or docking port between modules) with the leak. They have a finite supply of gas with which to repressurize the station - so this can't go forever without becoming a danger of shutting off a module. In a worst case scenario (which can't be ruled out yet but also isn't likely yet either), they'd have to abandon the station and take the Soyuz on re-entry back to Earth. So they have to look for it and try to fix it ASAP.
At any given time, if Foale is forced to make a life-and-death decision as commander, even he could initiate abandonment of the station. He was aboard Mir when the Progress collision occurred in June 1997. They had to close the hatch to the Spektr module (where all of Foale's on-orbit personal belongings were), losing that module and the power from its solar panels. He's seen worse than this. But I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't sleep well tonight.
Re:So .... what's their plan of action? (Score:5, Interesting)
Looking for it.
When is it time to take action?
You mean, try to fix it, or abandon the station? Now for the former and when it gets about 1000 times worse and becomes a threat to life support for the latter.
Do they have a way to leave?
Yes. A Soyuz spacecraft is always docked to the station in the case of an emergency evacuation.
My approach would be thus: if the leak cannot be located, start sealing off compartments (this means effectively turning them off, I believe) If it gets that bad, though, I think it means abandoning the affected compartment. This combined with the November event concerns me greatly, but it isn't time to panic yet.
Re:So .... what's their plan of action? (Score:5, Informative)
They are losing 2 mmHg daily, which is 0.03867 psi daily. Normal atmospheric pressure is 760 mmHg, and 0.5 atm is 380 mmHg. If this leak is at a constant rate (which might not be true) then it will take 190 days to get down to 0.5 atm, which is about half a year. Also, I suspect that a healthy man could be subjected to well below 0.5 atm, especially if the pressure were reduced so gradually.
Re:So .... what's their plan of action? (Score:5, Interesting)
When I was taking physics in college, one of the professors there was an ex-SR-71 pilot (it was a community college) and gave a talk about air pressure, air mix and breathing. (It was some years ago, so hopefully I remember the pertinent facts)
At the altitude the SR-71 flew, the air pressure was something like 1 or 2 millibars (I forget exactly, but it was really close to zero) and for entirely practical reasons the cockpit could not be pressurized, so the pilots sat in a "space suit" (it wasn't an actual space suit, but pretty close). However the space suit couldn't be pressurized to 1 atm or it would be too stiff for the pilot to move.
The obvious solution was to drop the pressure in the suit, but as it turns out if you drop the pressure too low, the partial pressure of CO2 in your lungs doesn't get high enough for it to send a signal to your autonomic nervous system to take a breath. It turns out that when the CO2 in your lungs reaches a partial pressure of about 5% of 1atm, your brain decides its time to take a breath.
What this all boils down to is, as the pressure drops, the relative concentration of oxygen has to increase to keep the balance of the partial pressure of oxygen and CO2 in your lungs, or you will start suffering symptoms of oxygen deprivation.
I believe in the case the prof was lecturing on, a pure oxygen mix at 3.5 psi was enough to keep you lucid while being low enough you could actually move around.
Re:So .... what's their plan of action? (Score:3, Interesting)
Good report on the facts. I do believe they have space suits on the station...
Regards to this problem, the loss of this much air should impart a significant rate to the space station. This would make it tend to make the station spin or move a bit. As a result the location of the leak should be pretty easy to determine.
Re:So .... what's their plan of action? (Score:3, Interesting)
The 71 cockpit was pressurized to 26K' equivalent. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:So .... what's their plan of action? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:So .... what's their plan of action? (Score:5, Informative)
The S.I. unit for pressure would be kg/(m sec**2), normally referred to as Pascal, or Pa for short. 1 mmHg ~= 133.32 Pa. 1 psi ~= 6894.8 Pa. 1 atm = 101325 Pa. 1 bar = 1e5 Pa, therefore 1 mbar = 100 Pa. Would you also like to know torr, inHg, and inH2O?
How can you tell a mathematician from an engineer? A mathematician won't use units anywhere in an equation, whereas the engineer will use 6 different units for the same thing in the same equation, just to make things interesting.
Re:So .... what's their plan of action? (Score:3, Informative)
At 10,000 feet MSL, atmospheric pressure is around 19in Hg (IIRC). At sea level, standard pressure is 29.92in Hg. Most people are starting to be affected in some way by hypoxia when in an unpressurized plane at 10,000 feet MSL - they may feel perfectly alright, but they are mentally nowhere near as sharp as they would be at sea level. Not really a good thing in the
Re:So .... what's their plan of action? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd be worried about it hitting a tipping point and really getting nasty fast.
Re:So .... what's their plan of action? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:So .... what's their plan of action? (Score:3, Funny)
What!? (Score:5, Funny)
Astronauts have a bedtime?!? Screw that, there's goes my plans for the future.
Re:What!? (Score:5, Funny)
MISSION CONTROL: "Hey guys, have a good night's sleep, and by the way, the Space Station is slowly depressurizing, and we can't work out why. Oh well, see you in the morning.".
Visible? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Visible? (Score:5, Interesting)
If you assume that the more complex a seal is, the better chance it has of leaking, then the docking hardware might be a good place to start looking.
Re:Visible? (Score:5, Funny)
ok (Score:5, Funny)
Or in this case space and look for the air.
Re:ok (Score:3, Interesting)
At this rate (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:At this rate (Score:3, Funny)
Unfortunately, he's only got 10 fingers...
That's funny, I have 1010 fingers.
Obligatory Simpson's Reference (Score:4, Funny)
Race: With that hatch open, we'll burn up on re-entry! That's it: if I go, I'm taking you to hell with me.
Homer: Wait a minute, Race. Wait a minute...wait!
[breaks off a support rod]
Aha! Now I'll bust that pretty face of yours!
[tries to swing it, but it catches in the door]
Aw, stupid bar.
Buzz: Wait, Homer. If that bar holds, we just might make it back to earth.
Homer: Oh. [voice rising] I'll bash you good!
What a lullaby (Score:2, Funny)
Oh, and before you go to sleep, one last thing. You're running out of air. Pleasant dreams.
nice timing (Score:2, Funny)
How are they supposed to get a good night's sleep after they've just been told that their home is leaking oxygen?
So technically... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:So technically... (Score:5, Funny)
It depends which side of the wall you're on. Sucks for the astronauts, blows for mission control.
Re:So technically... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:So technically... (Score:2)
Right man for the job? (Score:4, Funny)
They have a leak and they bring in Mike Foale? Why do they need a motivational speaker? Or are things that bad. Further more what kind of rockets have we developed to get Cris Farley up there? Or did he go up by himself in a soyuz?
Re:Right man for the job? (Score:2)
This could put ISS on ice (Score:5, Interesting)
One possible cause of the leak is from a meteorite impact. I have a tiny bit of experience with this from my grad school days. During the design stage of the American module, there was some concern about what would happen if there was an impact from debris. Tests showed that if the impact object was the right size, the entire damaged section could "unzip" and the and essentially blow up, likely killing the astronauts and disabling ISS. The design was tweaked, and it was showed that the section would not unzip, instead it would leak (probably not as slow as what is described, though-- think hours to reach vacuum, not months or seconds).
I have no idea if that's what happened-- it might be a completely unrelated issue. But just wanted to point out that a tremendous variety of possible events are considered, and NASA really wants to assure that none of these could result in a catastrophic event.
Re:This could put ISS on ice (Score:5, Interesting)
Think about it... (Score:2, Funny)
Slow leak, still way above Denver pressure (Score:2)
Re:Slow leak, still way above Denver pressure (Score:5, Informative)
You're absolutely right (Score:4, Informative)
Uh.. light a match? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Uh.. light a match? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Uh.. light a match? (Score:5, Funny)
1. Problem is discovered
2. Noone on earth can possibly come up with any helpful ideas to rectify the situation
3. A senior officer, remembering lessons learnt from camping trips with his/her/it's dad, pulls some totally unrealistic and inappropriate solution out of their arse
4. The captain agrees with the plan, it is set in motion and by ignoring numerous breaches in the laws of physics, the damn plan works.
Problem solved, plus as an added bonus you become a "ISS Hacker" and can put a glider on the bottom of your homepage.
Cheers
Stor
Use the B-rate sci-fi movie trick: (Score:5, Funny)
Then, patch it with chewing gum, and have a beer (or shot of vodka) to celebrate the success.
They do allow cigarettes, gum, and alcohol on the ISS, don't they? Of course! All of the movie space stations do!
Need for concern??? (Score:3, Insightful)
It sounds kinda easy to me...find some way of sealing off a section and put the equipment in that room (if it's portable)...come back in a day...if the pressure hasn't dropped in 24 hours, you know it's not THAT module...even moreso, if it happens in more than 1 section, it might be shared systems...
I know they probably have a better way to deal with this, but isn't there multiple backups? Wouldn't this be a good use of those backups? I just don't see the concern...they have a russian capsule that can be used as an escape pod...in the worse case, they'll just leave the station for a while...
I've always been under the impression that they don't NEED anyone aboard the station to dock, but it helps...
I can see the conversation now... (Score:4, Funny)
Mission Control: "Well guys, we have some good news and some bad news. The good news is, you're having to deal with two fewer millimeters of mercury per day."
Astronauts: "That's good. Mercury's bad...right?" Mission Control: "Did we say mercury? We meant mercury as in 'air pressure'. G'nite!"
soapy water.. (Score:5, Funny)
Dammit Bruce! I told you... (Score:4, Funny)
Ways to find the leak (Score:3, Funny)
2) Take up smoking - use a modified bong to prevent excessive discharge of ash.
Re:Ways to find the leak (Score:3, Funny)
NASA will commission a $1bln bong project from an expert company just to get one that gets nose going up your nose.
BTW, a very interesting project: a bong that works without gravity!
I'm an astro-nut (Score:5, Insightful)
That being said, the ISS has long since become a turkey. It's time to cut that thing loose and build us something usefull. In particular, real telescopes that will let real science be done. This space station is nothing more than a big money black hole.
I'd much rather have a space based inferometer placed at one of the Earth's lagrange points. We could learn a lot from something like that! What are we learning from ISS? Russia has no money... nobody else will cooperate with us... people can't stay up in space for a long time (hello mir?) and our space program is woefully inadequate. Great. Billions of dollars for this? I could've told you this years ago...
Bryan
Watch out for that hand... (Score:4, Funny)
You know, Alexander, this may be our last night alive together..
Uh huh.
Well... There's been something I've been meaning to ask you...
Uhm... Ok?
I've noticed... When you're alone in the shower... Uh... You look so lonely...as the water slowly rolls down your back...cheeks glistening in the glow of the fluorescent light.
Get off me freak!
Simple non-wastefull solution (Score:3, Funny)
After that resume hanging out in weightlessness until the next problem.
Re:Simple non-wastefull solution (Score:3, Funny)
Then you need what we used in the Army: '100 mile an hour tape.' Just be careful what you stick it to.
-cp-
Alaska Bugs Sweat Gold Nuggets [alaska-freegold.com]
Netcraft Confirms:ISS is Dying (Score:4, Funny)
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered ISS community when NASA confirmed that ISS atmosphere has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 95% percent of all atmospheres. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that ISS has lost more atmosphere , this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. ISS is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by falling dead last in the recent "Space Stations: What's hot and what's not".
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict ISS's future. The hand writing is on the wall: ISS faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for ISS because ISS is dying. Things are looking very bad for ISS. As many of us are already aware, ISS continues to lose atmosphere.
All major surveys show that ISS has steadily declined in cool factor. ISS is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If ISS is to survive at all it will be among russian dilettante dabblers. ISS continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, ISS is dead.
Fact: ISS is dying
This is easy to fix (Score:3, Funny)
A lot like a flat tire, huh? (Score:3, Funny)
Bicycle Repairman!
Equivalent? (Score:3, Informative)
According to Google, 9mm of mercury is 1200 Pascals [google.com], whereas 0.25psi is 1700 Pascals [google.com].
NASA (Score:3, Interesting)
a few points(are we geeks or not) (Score:3, Interesting)
i would start looking in that direction.
2. there are a number of posts about watching objects(insert with balloons, pepsi, dr peper,,,) float thru the station and use that for an indicator of air flow.
as with other manned space programs the ISS has CO2 scrubbers(remember apollo 13) that keep the air clean. i was under the impression that the air is circulated thru these and that a flow already exists because of this. i also recall reading that with skylab this flow effect caused lose items to commonly be found at one end of the station.
3. newtons laws of motion and inertial navagation.
even though the ISS is in a fixed orbit, it still makes use of an inertial navagation system. it is required to keep the station from tossing and tumbling out of control when the astro/cosmo-nauts move around. each of their movements create a reaction which causes an equal and opposite reaction on the station. a computer is constatly making corrections to maintain pitch and attitude of the station. a log these corrections will show these reactions to be somewhat random with an almost noise quality.
with a contiuous leak of a known size in the iss, a constant known vector(except for location) is created. once the noise is removed the location should be able to be calculted from the log information.
in short, break out the slide rules!
This is good! (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, provided they actually solve it
Millimeters of mercury? Pounds per square inch? (Score:4, Funny)
"Houston, pressure is down again, we've lost three hogsheads of air in the last lunar month."
"Sorry, ISS, can you translate that into firkins per square thread?"
What would happen if they had to evacuate (Score:5, Informative)
here [msn.com] here [spacedaily.com] and here [space.com]
Re:The problem is that the ISS is 'international' (Score:2)
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Re:The problem is that the ISS is 'international' (Score:2)
Grow a brain you troll... (Score:5, Informative)
1. No "international" = no "space station".
If there hadn't been international cooperation, we wouldn't have a space station in orbit right now. Compared to the Russians, what NASA knew about space stations could be written on a postage stamp.
Lest you forget, Skylab wasn't exactly a screaming success (heck, one of its solar panels failed to deploy: you could hardly call that an auspicious start). Its longest period of occupancy was 84 days and it was deployed as one unit and nothing like as modular as the ISS.
On the other hand, Mir far outlived its operational life (and would have done so by an even greater margin if the bean counters hadn't tried to cut so many corners), and was occupied almost constantly for 15 years. During that time, docked with 31 spacecraft, 64 cargo vessels, 9 shuttle missions visited it and it was home to 125 cosmonauts/astronauts from 12 different countries. It was, of course, modular, like the ISS. Oh, and before Mir, the Russians also had the Salyut series of space stations up and running throughout the 1970s and 1980s.
When Russia came on board, the ISS gained a lot of expertise; the sort of expertise that money just can't buy. If you think you can find one person at NASA who thinks that putting up a space station as complex and as expensive as the ISS could have been done by the US alone then you're deluding yourself.
2. NASAs main partners in the ISS are Canada, ESA, Russia and Japan, but most of their modules have yet to be deployed.
There is no "British" space agency involvement in the ISS. However, there is ESA (European Space Agency, of which Britain plays a very small role) involvement in the ISS. This involvement includes the Columbus Laboratory, the Automated Transfer Vehicle, Nodes 2 and 3, the European Robotic Arm, and the Data Management System for the Russian Service Module. However, most (if not all) of these elements have yet to be deployed, so I fail to see how they can be responsible for a pressure leak when they're sitting on the ground.
The same is true for the Japanese involvement, the Japanese Experiment Module (JEM) also known as Kibo, which is currently undergoing testing at the Kennedy Space Centre prior to launch. Sorry to break it to you, but if their module isn't up there, I can't see how you can hope to "share the blame for this latest debacle" with the Japanese either.
By the way, the single biggest contractor on the ISS is Boeing. Last time I checked, Boeing was an American company.
3. A "sole space agency" is in charge. It's name is NASA.
The ISS may be international, but NASA is its lead partner. All others play second fiddle to it and that's never been in doubt. If there's someone "in charge of making sure everything [runs] right" that someone is NASA.
So that's D'oh!, D'oh! and thrice D'oh!
Seriously, if you could get off your xenophobic high horse for a second (and get some basic facts right too) then perhaps you might have a point (ie, that someone screwed up, again) albeit a rather weak one. But trying to turn this story into a "USA rules, rest of you just suck" gloat is pathetic, particularly when you're so off-base.
Re:No Luck... (Score:2)
Re:No Luck... (Score:2, Funny)
SETI finds something?
To help clarify the situation... (Score:3, Informative)
(I have no data on the standard operating atmospheric pressure of the ISS. Perhaps someone else can supply that so we can make a more direct measurement of the percentage fall.)
Pretty simple... (Score:4, Funny)