It'd be freakier if it was taking on air.
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Probably installed an airopen instead of an airlock.
NASA: None of our engineerscan solve this problem.
HVAC guy: Hmm, can't use soap bubbles in space... maybe if they use some smoke to make the leak visible....
Hilariously water with dye is almost certainly how they're detecting the leaks position since most of the fun tracer gases are oxygen replacers or straight up toxic.
The only reason to use gases for this on earth is because liquids are too heavy to be sucked towards to small leaks. In space, isn't there a case to be made to use some small light solids? Not styrofoam because theyre staticky. But if you found something of equivalent density that would float towards the leaks, but didn't pick up static and could easily be cleaned out of the air filters...it would be useful for this.
High oxygen environment and almost anything in a powder is extremely explosive including plastic and for that matter baking soda. Some things that aren't even flammable are potentially explosive when powdered, science is weird sometimes.
Plastic yes, baking soda no. What part of baking soda would burn? The molecule is already about as oxidized as it could be.
Shit you're right I meant flour.
Restaurant guy: one of your employees probably taking a little smoke break.
Fill the ISS with water and you'll be able to see the leak.
This is probably the dumbest thing I've heard. You clearly have no idea what you're taking about. To find the leak they need to spray the outside with soapy water. If that doesn't work the next step is to put the ISS in a bathtub and fill the bathtub with water
Idiot. You obviously have no idea about the logistics of launching a bath into space. You'd need to send a bucket on a rocket (aero dynamic).
Put the ISS into the bucket, fill with water, then squeeze the ISS and look for bubbles.
Fucking fools. Just use a robotic arm to bend the whole suspect section. You'll see the cracks open up as you flex it back and forth, and can spray some flex seal in the cracks. Seriously, try a little bit.
Brainless hemroids! Shmear the conspicuous gelatinous substance from front to back, always from front to back. Freshen & powder, and wrap her back up before she starts spewing like a little lad.
Great now there's an 1800's sailor on the space station.
I'm gonna show you ninnies how to really skip this boat
What a bunch of morons. Just hang some clothes around the ISS and if they wave you've found your leak. No need to send anything because astronauts already have clothes up there ...
You all are fools, all this time finding the leak and none of you brought the tire patch
It's the I-SSsssssssssssssssssss
Because there’s a hole in it, stupid.
That’ll be five million dollar bucks for my consultation.
Line-item breakdown:
Fix-a-flat, $5.
Knowing where to squirt, $4,999,995.
But the hole is on the Russian side and the Russian side is absolutely perfect. No holes here, Comrade, breathing is a luxury some people do not get. Do not become one of those non-breathers Comrade.
“The ISS is leaking?? Where?”
“It’s high overhead, orbiting the earth at tremendous speed. But that’s not important right now.”
The ISS has been leaking air for 5 years, and engineers still don’t know why
*raises hand*
Uh, is it the cold unforgiving vacuum of space that forbids our existence there?
Space doesn't really have a temperature as you need something to be hot or cold! And in the vacuum there isn't much.
So just unforgiving vacuum.
It's not cold physically, it's cold emotionally.
If you really play with definitions you can equate cold to things that are thermal insulators and hot to things that are conductors. By that (very stretched) definition a vacuum is cold. Perfectly cold.
The stretching: Even if something is like a thousand degrees but it's a near perfect thermal insulator, it won't feel that hot when you touch it.
My brain just imploded from that realisation and it troubles me.
I can intellectually reconcile what you said, but my reptilian brain cannot comprehend the phenomenon for whatever reason.
I instinctively don't believe that the radiation only is how heat is transferred in the vacuum even though I know that this the case. We always have had 3 (convection, conduction and radiation), and that stumps me.
Heat transfer by radiation complicates things. We lose the majority of our heat that way, and we'd lose a lot more if every cubic inch of the spaces we inhabit weren't flooded with thermal radiation from the objects that surround us.
You can absolutely judge the temperature of a volume, vacuum or not, by its radiation content at any given moment.
You're describing a thermal balance. Temperature is a property of matter which doesn't exist in a perfect vacuum. That said, the space around ISS is far from a perfect vacuum (atomic oxygen sucks). In any case, the typical temperature model starts to breakdown with increasing vacuum.
Sure, but in any practical sense it is a temperature. It would be silly to say space isn't cold (or hot depending) from a regular person's perspective. Thermal balance creates an effective temperature, even if it wouldn't be described as a temperature within some technical frame of reference.
That's a fair point.
Doesn't that throw off the trajectory over time?
Negligibly, they already lose significant enough altitude from the rare atmosphere up there to need to do boosts, but yes if it is a net force
Because it’s a slapped-together mess of duct tape and hope?
The ISS is old. It was never meant to last past 2013. At this point, minor malfunctions, like this are expected.
The ISS needs to be replaced with a larger orbital research platform.
No it needs to be expanded so that it can house thousands of different species.
Someone needs to close the damn window, we aren't paying to heat the entire universe
Question: When Air leaks from the ISS, does it just orbit with it indefinitely as an "air bubble" or maybe a dispersed "air cloud" around it or will it eventually settle down into the atmosphere?
In a vacuum, gas will expand indefinitely, so they probably become stray atoms of gas, that will orbit for a little, ocassionallt hitting each other and probably eventually falling back in the atmosphere.
Have they tried lighting a match and following the smoke?
Hot box the ISS! We need to train stoners to be astronauts so the can come save the day!