201–210 of 283 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you count the Soyuz leak, then the Boeing counts too! That was far more serious than anything you listed. Two astronauts stranded for nine months taking the ISIS supplies intended for others. This is after they safely docked, which was considered risky at the time.
The Boeing mission was scrubbed out of an abundance of caution. IIRC, nothing bad actually happened.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Air filtration is one of the hardest things do deal with in space. I don't know what solvents would do, but I remember that astronauts' bone density loss in space means there are challenges around managing the significant amount of calcium captured by the air scrubbers in the ISS.
Wouldn't the calcium go out in your urine?
https://ttu-ir.tdl.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/f8ca865b-1...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The hubris of forgetfulness; to think that until Elon showed up the West couldn't even put a person in space anymore. The Soyuz, the MIR, the human space records, the Venera program, closed cycle rockets, all have no equivalent in the West. Even their version of the shuttle was superior (it flew 100% autonomously). I don't like Musk, but he single handedly saved the Western space programs.
This sense of national pride based on long past achievements will always be bewildering to me. Do you really think a country that is actively engaged in a full scale open land war and whose economy is in shambles is able to maintain (much less build) a venerable space program? Elon might have saved the American tax payer from the senate launch system jobs program, but the majority of the global space industry is and…
Im Italo-American. The closest I ever got to Russia was my cousin going to Moscow to, and I quote: "learn new things, like how to snort vodka"
It seems to me that you are projecting your dislike of the government of Russia into your evaluation of their engineering merits.
They landed drones on Venus, and on the Moon before Apollo 11
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, including the BBC’s: https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsstyleguide/all#:~:text=our%20style...
That certainly explains it; this particular acronym is even called out distinctly in the style guide. But "Nasa" still looks weirder to me than "NASA" does. Like writing "The Scsi bus went Awol" instead of "The SCSI bus went AWOL" also looks weird.
Why Nascar, Not NASCAR?
Auto racing fans chafe at our rules on acronyms. Here they are, from our stylebook:
acronyms. An acronym is a word formed from the first letter (or letters) of each word in a series: NATO from North Atlantic Treaty Organization; radar from radio detection and ranging. (Unless pronounced as a word, an abbreviation is not an acronym.) When an acronym serves as a proper name and exceeds four letters, capitalize only the first letter: Unesco; Unicef.
We limit the uppercasing to four letters because longer strings of capitals are distracting and tend to jump off the page.
https://archive.nytimes.com/afterdeadline.blogs.nytimes.com/...
Or at least, that used to be the rule. I can't find anything newer about their style on their site, but here's a recent article (not published under the Athletic either) that uses "NASCAR":
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/22/sports/autoracing/kyle-bu...
> After multiple inspections and sealant applications, Nasa reported in January that pressure readings suggested a stable configuration had been reached - though there remained uncertainty about whether the leak had truly been sealed or whether air was simply escaping elsewhere. I'm clearly not understanding what they're trying to say here. If _one_ leak was sealed, but the air was "escaping elsewhere", it would stil…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In this case, per the article, "shelter" meant "shelter in a capsule capable of returning to earth and put on the spacesuits that you wear during return to earth". I.e. leaving the actual ISS structure entirely.
I would guess they're worried about breaking something, but thanks for the clarification (and apologies for not having RTFA)
Does someone know if push come to shove, do they have a ready to go escape pod or ship to go back Earth anytime in an emergency? How many backups do they get?
The rule is that at all times enough return vessels must be docked to the ISS for everyone on board. These are usually the same vessels they used to get up to the station. This has the consequence that if they need to re-dock one of the vessels (for whatever reason) all the astronauts that would normally use that vessel must board it for that menuvre. Just in case it fails to dock again. And they don't normally have…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are of course potential failures, but not quite as violent as oceans gate. There is 1 atm of pressure difference between the inside and outside of the ISS. At titanic depths the pressure difference between inside and outside of the submarine was approximately 400 atm. Thats why the ISS can have small leaks like this that are a problem but not catastrophic like they would be in a deep sea submarine.
The differences in engineers for space versus the ocean are fascinating. You'd think space stations and submarines would be interchangeable because they both deal with pressure differentials, right? Wrong. They'd fail in fascinatingly different ways within minutes or hours in the opposite environment
Imagine something like this happening halfway to Mars and zero chance of escaping, getting any help or parts sent to you.
The Zvezda module has been in orbit since July 2000. I don't think any crewed interplanetary mission is going to last that long for the foreseeable future.
I suppose that they were counting on the capability to resupply, otherwise they might have carried more contingencies from launch, but still.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
yeah, why can't they just make astronauts wear goggles, then stop the fans, and tell them to squirt some superglue in the air to let it clog the hole?
Put a bit of spare sheet metal over the hole and let the pressure differential hold it down. For added safety affix a post-it not with DO NOT REMOVE written on it in all capital letters and underlined. They can even use those special zero-g ballpoint pens they spent eleventy-billion dollars inventing back during the johnson administration.
wait, do they have to have matched CTE and k to the existing material... hmm