Space station air leak caused by hole drilled from the inside - Sensationalist Headlines

Space station air leak caused by man-made drill hole, reports say Astronauts successfully patched the two-millimetre hole with tape and sealant last Thursday morning after it had caused a small, non-hazardous pressure drop the night before. *flex tape joke*

that doesn't bode well for the soyuz's reputation. Hopefully we get our acts together and launch on new vehicles sooner rather than later, Russia can't build proton rockets anymore because they kept screwing up and the soyuz could be next.

Dunno if Energia in particular has had problems, but Russian space companies have had a massive drop in manufacturing rigorousness over the last 5-10 years or so.

To be honest, Soyuz was more reliable than STS. Still, Dragon Crew is clearly the best bet for future rendezvous with the ISS>

who gave the clown engineering access

that's exactly what I was thinking when I saw this thread title, lmao

Still makes me laugh I know it's probably not doller store shitty tape but still

https://youtu.be/APNPFbMvRFk Cody's lab did a great video on this for those wondering about the science behind the issue.

I suppose it's less worrying than having the hole drilled from the outside.

Dragon and Starliner will be flying crew next year.

That's not the main reason Proton is being canned. Roscosmos is trying to stop using the Baikonur launch site, since it's being leased from Kazakhstan at a $115M a year. To that end, they're transitioning to Plesetsk and Vostochny, both in Russia. Neither have launchpads configured for Proton - Vostochny only has Soyuz and Angara pads, while Plesetsk also has pads for Rokot and a couple now-discontinued rockets. The Angara A5 is supposed to fill the role of the Proton, while being more economical by virtue of sharing components with the Angara 1.2 (sort of like how Falcon 1, Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy share components, although the first is long since discontinued). However, between the sort of corruption and incompetence you'd expect under Putinist Russia, and SpaceX devouring the international launch market, Angara has not yet made a "real" launch and is currently believed to cost more per-flight than Proton. As for the first half of your post, we're working on it. Dragon V2 is supposed to do an uncrewed test in November, with crewed flight in April '19. Starliner had some last-minute delays due to an anomaly with the abort motors, and is scheduled for an uncrewed test in early '19, crewed in mid-'19.

I don't understand how this says anything about Soyuz's reliability, this was likely an intentional act of sabotage. This is absolutely crazy news.

yes the economics of proton are failing but it can't be ignored that they haven't been able to reliably launch them due to a litany of manufacturing defects that have cropped up in recent years as Russia struggles to keep its space industry alive

Russia has always had issues with quality control. Proton might have been affected slightly worse because it's an old, complex design, but it's not a "recent years" thing, save on geologic timescales.

If it was sabotage, who did it, and why?

Sabotage seems unlikely. If it was an attempt at sabotage, it was a hilariously bad one - very easy to find before launch, thanks to the drunken-idiot tool marks, and very little damage ultimately done. A planned act of sabotage would, bare minimum, have been less conspicuous, and probably more dangerous. It is far more likely to be negligence - someone drilled something they weren't supposed to, then someone patched it up badly, probably to meet a tight schedule or to cover their own ass.

The hole was found IN SPACE while docked to the ISS. It was not there when it left earth, the hole was patched by astronauts not by production crew on the ground. You don't go around drilling 2mm holes in spacecraft where there are no fixtures needed or present. Pure speculation obviously, but the US is about ready to switch over to their own space craft for astronaut transport, and god knows however many other countries will be taking part. A significant hole in a space craft can have the thing rip itself to pieces through depressurization, luckily this did not happen. Spacecraft construction is not a hap-hazzard job, every action is logged and planned and rechecked, you don't go around drilling holes in spacecraft, everything is done to a set production standard. Blaming it on a rushed worker is leaning heavily on naivety imo

whether it was there when it left or not is unknown. the likelihood that it was done in space is hilariously low. no highly trained, highly educated astronaut is going to punch a hole in their own ship on purpose, and even if they wanted to, the possibility of them doing it without anyone else knowing is super low considering space and sound considerations. spacecraft construction might not be haphazard in the west, but russia's space industry is practically falling apart and riddled with wage issues, corruption, and outdated production lines and techniques. apply occam's razor here, what's more likely, that russia intentionally sabotaged their own side of the space station with a leak that wouldn't cause the station to depressurize noticeably for weeks, or that a disgruntled worker made a mistake and tried to patch it up without telling anyone?

Despite the word "sabotage" used here, could it be that what they mean is an "intentional act" which doesn't necessarily entail some conspiracy to destroy the space station, but instead someone simply snapping mentally and drilling holes where and when one shouldn't I suppose they have the air pressure data and can use that to calculate how long the hole was there.

It's a weird one for sure. Other sources say it could have been done on the ground or in space, they are unsure at this point. I did read however that if the hole was not located, the Astronauts would have run out of air in 18 days. It's wrong of me to make assumptions, but if it has the inquiry suspicious of sabotage, either personal or corporate, it's a very strange occurrence. They aren't ruling out that it was a homesick astronaut either, who knows what being up there for extended amount of times might do to ya, we are still figuring that out. https://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/russian-space-agency-claims-hole-in-international-space-station-was-drilled-deliberately-a3927686.html I hope they get to the bottom of it.

Corporate sabotage in space? Are you serious? The Russia Today article said it was done on the ground and the worker who did it was already identified. They drilled the hole and tried to patch it with glue without telling anyone. Sabotage or harmful intentions may be likely but I don't think this is some huge anti roscosmos conspiracy. So no meteorite? Reports say Russian Soyuz spacecraft depressuri.. Russia would love to try to blame this on an American astronaut.

I hold my hands up. I couldn't have imagined someone being such a reckless cunt in this day and age, I hope he gets absolutely torn up for this, he coulda killed people. Either way, it's a huge dagger in the side for Russia's space program.

The current leading theory (as mentioned in TFA) is that the hole was present but patched before launch, and that the patch failed in-orbit requiring the crew to respond and patch it again. This is a strong indication that a) drilling the hole was not malicious (why leave apprentice marks to call extra attention? why patch it if you want to cause damage? if you're going to make a hole and patch it in a way that passes muster but fails over time, why not make it a big enough hole to be a safety problem?) and b) Roscosmos's QC is lacking (if the patch was done to spec, why did it fail? if the patch wasn't done to spec, why not? why was such a visible error not given extra scrutiny?).

They might've found it during pressuring the capsule for flight if it wasn't patched. Assuming it was in a location that's pressurized during launch. I could see it being a worker who didn't want to get in trouble so tried to hide it with epoxy that they use for other things. Hoping that it would hold.

I hope that we can get more materials like this flight worthy. Even if a drill had punctured it, it would've sealed strongly no problem. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVWFvKxrcLg

Okay, who tried hanging a fucking picture in space?

Yeah, well. That specific material requires it be in contact with oxygen to harden. Not sure how well that's going to work in an ISS wall breach.

Air escaping from the vehicle hardens the polymer within a few seconds.

I can imagine it hardening on one side, but then keep draining at the vacuum side.