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ISS NASA Space United States Technology

Russia Thinks Someone With a Drill Caused the Recent ISS Air Leak (arstechnica.com) 255

Last week, NASA discovered a small pressure leak on the International Space Station. U.S. and Russian crew members managed to trace the leak to a 2mm breach in the orbital module of the Soyuz MS-09 vehicle and patch it with epoxy. The drama might have ended there, as it was initially presumed that the breach had been caused by a tiny bit of orbital debris, but Russian news outlets are reporting that the problem was a manufacturing defect. "It remains unclear whether the hole was an accidental error or intentional," reports Ars Technica. "There is evidence that a technician saw the drilling mistake and covered the hole with glue, which prevented the problem from being detected during a vacuum test."

"We are able to narrow down the cause to a technological mistake of a technician. We can see the mark where the drill bit slid along the surface of the hull," Dmitry Rogozin, head of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, told RIA Novosti. "We want to find out the full name of who is at fault -- and we will." From the report: NASA spokesman Dan Huot, based in Houston where the space station program is managed, deferred all comment on the issue to Roscosmos. The spacecraft was manufactured by Energia, a Russian corporation. A former employee of the company who is now a professor at Moscow State University told another Russian publication that these kinds of incidents have occurred before at Energia. "I have conducted investigations of all kinds of spacecraft, and after landing, we discovered a hole drilled completely through the hull of a re-entry module," the former Energia employee, Viktor Minenko, said in Gazeta.RU. "But the technician didn't report the defect to anyone but sealed up the hole with epoxy. We found the person, and after a commotion he was terminated," said Minenko. In this case, the technician used glue instead of epoxy. As the Soyuz hull is made from an aluminum alloy, it could have been properly repaired on Earth by welding, had the technician reported the mistake.
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Russia Thinks Someone With a Drill Caused the Recent ISS Air Leak

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  • by axis_omega ( 771398 ) on Wednesday September 05, 2018 @02:12AM (#57255020)

    I am pretty sure that terminated in Russia is not a good thing.

  • Let's be real (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 05, 2018 @02:22AM (#57255046)

    The reason there are issues because people fear losing their jobs if they report a mistake of their own doing. It happens at some companies that don't realize that a mistake is part of normal business operations and thusly an expected cost.

    They should find the person that did this and interview him and then hold his management responsible.

    • Re:Let's be real (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Wednesday September 05, 2018 @02:48AM (#57255138)

      Mistakes happen where people work. Show me a person that makes no mistakes and I show you a person that does not work.

      What sets good and mediocre companies apart is how they deal with the mistakes that happen and how they mitigate them.

      • Re:Let's be real (Score:5, Interesting)

        by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Wednesday September 05, 2018 @06:34AM (#57255638)

        The problem is not the hole (mistake 1), the problem is attempting to fix it incompetently (mistake 2) and hiding mistake 1 (mistake 3). From the drill-bit-slides, this was also a low-skill person that should not have been allowed near the vehicle (mistake 4). I mean, when I drill aluminum, the result does not look anywhere this bad and I am just an amateur.

        This does not qualify as normal mistake anymore. This is a cluster of negligence and dishonesty that is pretty bad.

        • Re:Let's be real (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Dare nMc ( 468959 ) on Wednesday September 05, 2018 @07:15AM (#57255736)

          > I mean, when I drill aluminum, the result does not look anywhere this bad and I am just an amateur.

          Yes, but how many holes does your drill have to make in aluminium before it can be replaced or sharpened with a jig.

          It could still be more about equipment, and poor factory management than about unskilled labor. A slightly bent drill bit does exactly those marks, and using a punch on every one of thousands of rivet panels might not be required/allowed at that place.

          I just finished a factory five chassis, drilling many many thousands of rivet holes in aluminum, likely very similar to what work was done on this body. Drill bits get killed doing this job by hand easily, as you line the two panels overtop each other before drilling to make sure the holes align correctly, and drill through both. You will occasionally have a gap (that rivets would eventually pull together) and the bit jumps between those sheets (after drilling though the top sheet into the bottom sheet) it will inevitably not come through clean and side load the bit causing it to be bent or chipped. Most of the time a drill bit was dead on average of 10-20 holes, but it could be after one, or a hundred drills. And these type of factory jobs in lower wage/class oriented countries tend to be overly stressed on preventing theft by over control of access to all supplies.

          And I bet those aluminum panels are every bit as tough or more than the ones on my car. It isn't like drilling into freshly cast aluminium, these panels have been worked to have a hardened surface.

          • Aluminum isn't just worked for hardening, it's heat treated. You can drill through treated aluminum again and again with a good drill bit, though. I did a project with 2024-T3 and as long as I cooled the bit it would last ridiculously long.

            • > Aluminum isn't just worked for hardening, it's heat treated.

              Were talking about thin plate,
              It is not strengthened by heat treatment; instead, it becomes stronger due to strain hardening or cold working of the material. [twmetals.com]

              > you can drill through treated aluminum again and again with a good drill bit, though

              Of course you CAN. Once you have hand drilled 10,000 rivet holes with a 1/8" drill bit, only then will you understand what this guy's job is like and how wrong your statements are for this application

              • Were talking about thin plate,
                It is not strengthened by heat treatment; instead, it becomes stronger due to strain hardening or cold working of the material.

                Plate and sheet both are regularly tempered. I don't know what grade of Aluminum this hole was in, do you?

                Of course you CAN. Once you have hand drilled 10,000 rivet holes with a 1/8" drill bit, only then will you understand what this guy's job is like

                Well, I've drilled hundreds of rivet holes with a 5/32" drill bit, so I have a pretty good idea. If you go through fast enough to rapidly damage the bit you'll wind up with shavings in between the layers and they won't be pulled close with the rivet at all. If you go slowly, and cool the bit between uses, it will last hilariously long.

                • by gweihir ( 88907 )

                  This is a space vehicle. If you cannot afford to replace drill-bits before they go bad, we have mistake 5 in addition, gross mismanagement of funds.

                  • This is a space vehicle. If you cannot afford to replace drill-bits before they go bad, we have mistake 5 in addition, gross mismanagement of funds.

                    I wonder how many holes you'd have to drill before you could justify a sharpener. Since it would have to be a high-tech space sharpener to avoid throwing metal dust everywhere, probably a whole hell of a lot.

        • Indeed the problem isn't the hole. The problem is the way the issue was handled. Someone made a mistake drilling a faulty hole. Ok. Now the next step should have been to report this and result in the part being replaced with a known good one. Case closed. What did happen was that the person tried to hush it up. The problem here is not the person trying to cover his mistake up but the fact that he feels it's necessary or even that it's a good idea. And that's not the fault of the person that drilled this hol

          • by gweihir ( 88907 )

            Probably a management issue or corporate culture, yes.

          • And that's not the fault of the person that drilled this hole but a flaw in the way this company handles such human error.

            That's a pretty big assumption. I work in a place where making a 6-figure mistake will result in, at worst, a written reprimand, and most of the time not even that much. The entire culture is built around accountability and owning up to your mistakes. Yet we still occasionally get idiots trying to cover up mistakes instead of admitting to it and handling it properly.

            Some people just hate admitting that they fucked up.

  • Traditions (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 05, 2018 @02:23AM (#57255048)

    Traditional Russian acts of courage and character: 1. Topple a Tatar on a horse before he burns Moscow, without any weapons. 2. Wrestle with a tiger, shirtless 3. Caviar and vodka 4. Travel to space with a holey space craft.

    • by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Wednesday September 05, 2018 @02:47AM (#57255128)

      Old joke: Wealthy merchant tells man he can marry his daughter if he manages to do 3 things:
      1. Drink a full bottle of vodka
      2. Wrestle a bear to the ground
      3. Fuck his grandma

      He downs the bottle, heads into the bear den and after half an hour of screams and battle sounds, he emerges with scratches all over, yelling "Ok, where's the hag I have to fight with?"

    • Travel to space with a holey space craft.

      So that's what it was about... [alamy.com] He added an extra character by mistake?

    • by gtall ( 79522 )

      I thought it was wrestle with caviar and vodka...shirtless.

  • by raymorris ( 2726007 ) on Wednesday September 05, 2018 @02:23AM (#57255050) Journal

    "Dmitry Rogozin, head of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, told RIA Novost "We want to find out the full name of who is at fault -- and we will."

    Facepalm! Dmitry Rogozin is at fault, you nitwit.

    The problem is that the workers were afraid to admit a mistake and get it fixed - to the point that they'd rather jeopardize the mission by hiding the mistake than acknowledge an error. So this jackass responds with "we will find out the full name of the person [and then ...]". That attitude IS the problem, dummy. To fix the problem, your statement would need to be "we want to find out why workers are afraid to acknowledge errors and fix the organizational culture so that errors can be acknowledged and fixed properly, rather than hidden."

    • Welcome to the wonderful world of Soviet indoctrination. The system is flawless. The problem is the human in the system. We need to eliminate the problem.

    • by Kiuas ( 1084567 ) on Wednesday September 05, 2018 @03:19AM (#57255212)

      To fix the problem, your statement would need to be "we want to find out why workers are afraid to acknowledge errors and fix the organizational culture so that errors can be acknowledged and fixed properly, rather than hidden."

      As a Finn with a couple Russian friends who've left their country because of 'organisational culture' let me give you some perspective. This is Putin's ' Novorossiya' where transparency is nonexistent and those who fail to satisfy the powers that be are thrown into jail in the best case, get into mysterious accidents or commit 'suicides' [informnapalm.org] in the worst case. The space program is a key component in the cold war (which never really ended, it's just changed its nature to be less about armed conflict and more about information warfare) propaganda just as it was in the past, and as such it is of great importance to Kremlin. Whoever made the mistake is not afraid of getting fired, because getting fired is the least of your concerns in this situation. If I were him, I'd already be on my way out of the country and never drink any tea [wikipedia.org] I haven't prepared myself..

      The problem is not the the organisational culture of Roscosmos, the problem is the organisational culture of the entire State Meet the new boss, same as the old boss:

      "Enemies are right in front of you, you are at war with them, then you make an armistice with them, and all is clear. A traitor must be destroyed, crushed."
      -Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin in 2001, speaking to journalist Aleksei Venediktov, to whom he added “You know, Aleksei, you are not a traitor. You are an enemy.” (source: David Remnick, “Echo in the Dark,” [newyorker.com] in The New Yorker, September 22, 2008)

      This is why seeing Trump act like Vlad's obedient little lapdog earlier in the summer here in Helsinki was one of the most absurd things I have ever witnessed in my life. Had you told me ten years ago that you're from the future where the fucking president of the US of A bows down to kiss the ring of Putin and call the European Union a foe, I'd have told you to go get your head checked. Yet here we are. My grandfather who's in his 80s said to me after the press conference that he thinks the Russians are winning, because 'one of the guys is a former KGB agent, and the other is a clueless goof.' Although grandpa is no political scientist, I have a hard time disagreeing with him here.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        It was Victoria Nuland, former Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs at the United States Department of State, who said "fuck the EU." [youtu.be] She was nominated by Obama. You remember Obama, the same man who bugged Merkel's phone? The US regarding EU as a foe didn't start with Trump.

        Who can blame Obama for his views? What do you call people who rip you off on trade to the tune of $150 billion every year? The EU is a security free-rider that exploits American generosity to run a massi

        • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

          by Kiuas ( 1084567 )

          It was Victoria Nuland, former Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs at the United States Department of State, who said "fuck the EU." [youtu.be] She was nominated by Obama

          So you contrast a phone call on Youtube that I cannot even in any way verify to be from the actual people you claim it to be from, to the sitting president of the US openly calling the European Union an enemy. How the hell does that make any sense? The Union and the US have had their disagreements in the past as w

        • by Uberbah ( 647458 ) on Wednesday September 05, 2018 @08:50AM (#57256164)

          For a continent flush with cash and a large budget surplus, every member should be able to spend an adequate amount on its own defense.

          Defense from who? NATO destroyed Libya, and some of it's member nations were behind the destructions of Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. It's the rest of the world that needs defense from the United States and its poodles, [ft.com] not the other way around.

        • by Chris Mattern ( 191822 ) on Wednesday September 05, 2018 @09:20AM (#57256344)

          What do you call people who rip you off on trade to the tune of $150 billion every year?

          I call them "trade partners". I also call people who regard a trade deficit as "ripping off" "abyssmally ignorant of the basic facts of economics." A trade deficit is when a country sends us more good then we send them--for which they take dollars that *we print*. This is bad?

        • But Whatabout Obama?

          Yo, cluestick, your MAGA hat is crooked.

    • by zmooc ( 33175 )

      It's so sad/funny to know that the top comment describing the one and only right thing to do will just remain here, hidden in the comments section.

    • Well, I think it's the best comment about the issue.
  • by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Wednesday September 05, 2018 @02:44AM (#57255116)

    "We want to find out the full name of who is at fault -- and we will."

    Reminds me of the old joke of Putin allegedly saying "If we had search WMDs in Iraq, we would have found some!"

    Like every good programmer knows, if you're searching for something, put one of the thing you search at the end of your dataset yourself so your program terminates correctly.

  • When I first read the headline, I thought it was going to be some story about Putin thinking someone drilled a hole into the hull (while in space) to sabotage the ISS.
  • by Anonymous Coward

    NO NO NO NO NO

    It could NOT have been repaired on Earth by welding.

    DO NOT EVER UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES EVEN THINK about repairing stressed aluminum by welding. Once aluminum has been fatigued, welding only damages and weakens it further.

    A spinning drill bit that ultimately caused a hole would have certainly yielded the aluminum in the immediate vicinity, and attempting to weld it only would have made it weaker.

    YOU CANNOT FIX BROKEN ALUMINUM WITH WELDING..

    For the love of Pete, are you trying to get someone ki

    • It is not stressed aluminum but thanks for the info. The force of the vacuum of space (15psi) on a 2 mm hole is very small.
  • Fellow had better change his name and get a food tester ...
  • Russia (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Their best engineers understand they have the worst manufacturing in the world. That's why everything they make is big, ugly, but it always works.

  • I'm not saying it was aliens, but it was aliens. Proof Positive [ytimg.com]: A talking head on TV.

    And this is why Trump wants a space force -- Space Alien Terrorists. Or Astronaut Terrorists, same thing, just inside out. OR: an ISS Astronaut is actually an ALIEN -- that's even worse, They're Already Here [imdb.com].

    First they travel here to get our technology, then our women, and then our water. We're in trouble!
  • Drills don't cause air leaks, people do.
  • Seriously, this is weird that somebody would make such a mistake and not report it. I just wonder if maybe it was debris, but simply resembles a drill? However, if they have glue on the inside, than not.
  • ... that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

    Probably some worker ran a power tool into the lining and then either they or their superiors tried to patch it up paint over it to conceal the error.

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