One hull crack located in ISS, another one suspected • Hacker News Board

Re: One hull crack located in ISS, another one suspected

#231

Post by onethought » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 12:45 PM UTC

tachyonbeam wrote: post #161

onethought wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with Privatised space industry is your country doesn't control the agenda. SpaceX is a pretty rare thing, the rest of the private space industry (Blue Origin, Virgin, Boeing) is as much of a money pit as NASA was. Then you have rapidly progressing government run space programs like China and India. The fact that the US banned China from the ISS and banned Non-Americans from participating in what it deems…

Electron Labs are a successful competitor to SpaceX in the satellite launch space. They don't have the same capabilities, but they are much more cost effective than Boeing. Virgin Orbit also just successfully launched a satellite with a rocket attached to an airplane. I think it's possible we could see more serious competitors to SpaceX given enough time.

You mean Rocket Labs? - yes agree they have a similar innovation culture to spaceX (from the outside)

Re: One hull crack located in ISS, another one suspected

#232

Post by blackrock » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 12:45 PM UTC

NewLogic wrote: post #188

WalterBright wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Government contracting is not at all indicative of how the free market works. Also, the free market would never have built a design like the space shuttle. Pushing very heavy wings and landing gear into space doesn't make sense and never did.

It was actually the side-mount design that made the least sense. It left the heatshield completely exposed to ice and insulation strikes.

Could they have mounted 2 space shuttles, bottom to bottom, instead?

Where the 2nd space shuttle was the fuel tank, and it lands somewhere down range, and is then transported back to the launch center by barge.

Re: One hull crack located in ISS, another one suspected

#233

Post by throwanem » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 1:06 PM UTC

mikro2nd wrote: post #220

throwanem wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suits can bring material in, and do. I forget if it was the "smell of space" or the "smell of the moon" they were talking about, but I remember reading that one astronaut described the odor as like that of burnt gunpowder, and that suitborne particulates proved to be the source.

I shudder to think what the inside of those space suits must smell like...

Yeah, Mike Mullane has a lot to say in his autobiography about the earthier odors of spaceflight. Suits probably aren't all that bad by comparison with what the Shuttle cabin got like near the end of a long mission, especially if the toilet was acting up - a circumstance I gather was regrettably less rare than might be imagined by the naïve.

It's something that science fiction doesn't really explore - jokes about Trek's near-total lack of sanitary fixtures aside, even self-consciously grittier fiction like the Expanse series seems generally very disinclined to go there. I understand why, but that doesn't stop me thinking it'd be fun to see some hard-sf author really get into the weeds of why and how space makes something as elementary as the cleanly voiding of bodily waste into a surprisingly complex and difficult engineering problem.

Re: One hull crack located in ISS, another one suspected

#234

Post by nosianu » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 1:06 PM UTC

segfaultbuserr wrote: post #148

keyle wrote: post #60

I burst into laughter reading the Russian's quotes. I love how casual the astronaut is about it! I'm no astronaut but I wouldn't be sleeping with crack in my hull, leaking air.

> He underscored that air loss due to the crack are insignificant. "This leak is like as if you’d drill the hull with a 0.2 mm diameter drill. I’m not sure such drills even exist in household. I had to check my collection of PCB drill bits when I was reading it, and yes, I confirm that I'm a proud owner of a 0.2 mm drill at home, it was the smallest one in the box ;-)

The existence of a drill is no guarantee that you can actually create a hole. I once was a battle tank maintenance guy and we had to replace a cover placed in front of the armor. The replacement had holes in different positions, no problem, just drill a new hole, right? An hour and a few broken drills later we gave up. No doubt there are drills that work on that armor-steel, my point is, depending on the material just any drill may not be good enough. An hour of hard work barely caused a <0.5mm "deep" scratch to appear! PS: We solved the problem by not solving it. Attaching three points instead of four was enough, de decided. That tank would never see a real battle but was only used for training anyway.

Re: One hull crack located in ISS, another one suspected

#235

Post by bregma » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 1:07 PM UTC

coryrc wrote: post #110

HenryKissinger wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have we invented a material that is resistant to these thermal cycles indefinitely, or at least within a range of temperatures of several thousand degrees? I'm never going to have my own Star Destroyer if we continue to use subpar materials.

Steel, below a certain loading (err, ~20% of max fatigue?) does have indefinite life.

Even burning jet fuel can't melt such steel beams?

Re: One hull crack located in ISS, another one suspected

#236

Post by blackrock » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 1:18 PM UTC

snoshy wrote: post #123

onethought wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with Privatised space industry is your country doesn't control the agenda. SpaceX is a pretty rare thing, the rest of the private space industry (Blue Origin, Virgin, Boeing) is as much of a money pit as NASA was. Then you have rapidly progressing government run space programs like China and India. The fact that the US banned China from the ISS and banned Non-Americans from participating in what it deems…

Echoing the sister comment to add more color, I think when it comes to this scale of money, it becomes too easy to conflate public and private capability. The ISS cost $150 billion. That is a kind of cost that even the tech behemoths of the world today would not be able to stomach. Some efforts really require country-coffer levels of money to be realized. That means the US government directly controls which projects…

China finally have their own heavy lift rockets, the Long March 5B. This gives them the ability to finally launch a Mir-like space station, which they will start assembling this year.

The 5B also gives them more options.

In 10 years, when they complete their own Super Heavy Lift rocket, the Long March 9, of Saturn V class, then things will get interesting. It seems like they will ace this one as well. This can help them send human missions to the moon.

But the interesting developments, are their space plane research. Which they started back in 2006, and estimated it would take 15 years, and would require a heavy lift rocket, the 5B, which they now have. This would put it around the 2021 time frame, which is now. And last year, they successfully tested their secret space plane prototype. If they scale up their space plane, and enable it to transport humans too, then they’ll have an interesting mechanism to transport their astronauts to their space station, and return them gracefully back to the earth.

Then, it seems they will succeed with their Long March 8R, for reusable vertical take off and vertical landing, similar to SpaceX. It seems they will be the 2nd organization, after SpaceX, to achieve an operational VTVL system.

I figured, if they can robotically stick the moon landing in a vacuum, using retroactive propulsion, then they can probably land a reusable booster back on earth.

Re: One hull crack located in ISS, another one suspected

#237

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 1:18 PM UTC

Freaky wrote: post #86

TeMPOraL wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

rot13 because it's a bit of a spoiler (IMO half the fun of reading hard sci-fi is seeing the science and engineering being presented): Gur fuvc gur cebgntbavfgf geniry ba vf cebcryyrq ol INFVZE guehfgref, cbjrerq ol n ahpyrne ernpgbe ehaavat zbygra zrgny nf pbbynag. Gb enqvngr njnl tvtnjnggf bs gurezny cbjre, gurl rzcybl n enqvngbe gung vf rffragvnyyl n ynetr neenl bs 3Q cevagref. Gurer ner ornzf fbzr uhaqerqf bs zrg…

Further reading - uggcf://ra.jvxvcrqvn.bet/jvxv/Yvdhvq_qebcyrg_enqvngbe

[deleted]

Re: One hull crack located in ISS, another one suspected

#238

Post by aero-glide2 » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 1:19 PM UTC

It is supposed to be retired in 2024. But politicians will push it to 2030 so that ISS contractors keep getting paid.

Re: One hull crack located in ISS, another one suspected

#239

Post by gspr » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 1:22 PM UTC

hef19898 wrote: post #227

techdragon wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other than the growth (in terms of length across the surface in question) of a crack/fracture, tape is a pretty valid solution as long as it can hold the pressure. In fact on the “inside” that’s even more strait forward since the pressure pushes the tapes bonding surface interface into the opening, so depending on how malleable the “tape” is, it might not even need “glue” to do the job of sealing a hole sufficiently…

The pressure difference is one bar, so duct tape is more than enough to hold that. Aging is different story all together, so.

> The pressure difference is one bar, so duct tape is more than enough to hold that.

This is something I have to consciously remind myself of a lot when thinking about space technology. I have this reflex-like feeling that "the vacuum of space" must be a huge obstacle. But then one remembers that 1 atmosphere is the equivalent pressure of a water depth of 10 m. This always blows my mind. In some sense, humans do live naturally pretty close to one end of an absolute scale (pressure). Dealing with near-0 temperature is hard. Dealing with near-0 spatial distance is hard. Dealing with 0 pressure is actually not that hard in the grand scheme of things.

Re: One hull crack located in ISS, another one suspected

#240

Post by dotancohen » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 1:24 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #168

geocrasher wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you imagine the infomercial mileage they'd get out of that?

Full Disclosure: I have no financial interest in flex-seal. My general experience with glues is I'll use bolts. I can't get superglue to stick anything together other than my fingers. My rear view mirror fell off again, the third time I glued it on with superglue.

Superglue is horrible for rear view mirrors, for a few reasons none of which I remember offhand. There exists special rear-view mirror glue, which is easy to use and is a permanent fix.