Maybe someone who knows more about the ISS than I do can answer this:
Naively, I would assume that there are airlocks between the different sections of the ISS. I would also assume that they would close these airlocks while doing the kind of work they are doing to repair the leaks.
So, assuming I'm right (and my assumptions might be wrong,) why do the astronauts need to shelter?
There aren’t even doors between sections. Airlocks are serious things, there is one or two for station for EVA. There are multiple hatches for docking spacecraft.
One of the innovations of ISS is larger docking adapter with bulkhead that is removed after docking. Russian section still uses hatches. All of the cables go through the docking adapter or hatch which makes impossible to close door or quickly disconnect.
There are doors (called hatches) between the segments. Each segment flew up separately and pressurized. So there are actually two hatches between each segment, since there’s one on each.
If things go wrong, they're already in the vehicle supposed to bring them back. It might be upsetting to be 3 locked doors away from your best way to come back home
I feel like other rocket builders, whether private or government, have way less launches but they have more successful launches percentage wise than Space X.
The only thing that matters is that things do not blow up with humans onboard: SpaceX simply accepted blow-ups as part of development cost, made sure nobody was hurt when they happen, and ended up building a rocket to carry humans to ISS much faster than eg. Boeing who got a bigger grant and is still not trusted to do that and bring them back (having only launched once to ISS last year, and not bringing astronauts back). So both faster and cheaper, and with some spectacle included too (everybody likes fireworks, right?)
They also started at the same time, and Falcon is now considered old tech (because SpaceX has been blowing up their new tech in the meantime).
Maybe parent feels like rocket science is a field that should have few launch failures?
I can't give you a quantitative answer since I'm usually focused on new research rather than what company/nation did said research... but their stuff does seem to blow up on the launchpad more often than NASA's :-)
I certainly am not. The only positive thing I have to say about those two is that SpaceX has cool rocketry tech.
>Why post anything online?
Typically people post things on HN for different reasons than they do on reddit or bsky, but your post seems like a much better fit for reddit or bsky. These types of factually nonsensical ideological signaling posts are popular on those websites, but are generally considered to be in poor form on this website.
Oh you mean like the endless spam about how Macs are the best laptops and computers in the world, being able to run large models at dogshit low tok/sec for the price of twice what would it take to build an equivalent dual 3090 desktop that will be much faster?
Furthermore, there is nothing wrong with calling out shit companies ran by shit people, that present a real danger to the world.
> Because he suffers from MDS and as such can not but complain endlessly about anything which Musk has started. It is an unfortunate affliction for which the only cure seems to be extraction from whatever environment the sufferer inhabits and removal to another environment where there are no other sufferers, then slowly acclimatising to this new environment until the sufferer is again able to consider the person causing the derangement objectively.
Pot, meet kettle. It sounds like both of you should go outside and touch some grass.
Im not saying Dragon will explode. Im just saying that its ironic the person I was replying to used the word "supposed" like it may malfunction.
As for MDS/TDS, be careful about accusing other people of those. Its not really about politics, more about bring your character into question of supporting pedophiles.
>Falcon 9 is also the most successful vehicle ever flown.
I feel like thats due to the sheer number of launches, which turns out are mostly paid out of pocket, as Space X is hugely unprofitable.
Thats not to say its not a good design, the Falcon engine is actually well made because of the open cycle design which is MUCH simpler to control than the Raptor which is the equivalent of Twin Turbos + Nitrous on 2.0L 4 banger pushing 1000 hp.
Yes, well, that and by aerobraking in the atmosphere where all that potential energy the capsule gained during launch has to be shed. There's plenty of reentry videos from Starship tests which show what happens to vehicle parts which are less protected by heat shields.
Well, I won't claim to know the answer, but "please do not move between different airlocked sections while this work is underway" sounds a lot like the definition of "shelter" to me
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".
There are normally-open air-tight hatches between modules. Various utility connections and air ducts are normally run through the open hatches so it would take a bit of work to disconnect these connections before they could be closed.
Not exactly something you want to be doing under time pressure.
If such a conduit would connect two sections that the hatch is meant to isolate, you would have to make the conduit and everything running through it airtight, even under a catastrophic loss of air. If the conduit didn't seal as well as the hatch, which is meant to withstand hard vacuum on the other side of it, it would defeat the purpose of the hatch.
Most stuff runs outside of the capsule including power and dangerous ammonia. They use connectors that fit to the hull and have plugs on each side. Gases/liquids can be controlled with valves. And parts can fit tightly together to make a seal. The stuff running through the hatches is designed to be quickly disconnected in an emergency.
I guess the main question about this kind of routing is if things are safer kept on the unpressurized side or not. And that the risk of a small hole on the hull is offset by reducing the risk of leaks in the pressurised area.
They just didn't have enough of reserved general purpose connections for future use. I guess this woild be especially the case with the Russian modules, which were literally surplus Soviet manned space army outposts(such a thing do not make a lot of sense, they did it anyway).
If it made pew-pew sounds (inside the station, obv), mission accomplished regardless of it actually being able to shoot anything down, up or everywhere.
The story that I read somewhere was that it was tested once but the recoil either damaged the station or it would have affected its orbit so they never tried it again.
There was also Polyus which was going to be an entire battle station designed to counter Reagan's SDI satellites[0], but it never made it into orbit. It had lasers, though.
If that test round of bullets came out at 1000m/s, I wonder where are they now?
They'd cover around 1.5 billion km (<1 billion miles), and be past Saturn's orbit if fired away from the Sun. But it would not achieve escape velocity on its own, and the station was obviously moving relative to Sun and Earth, so we'd have to account for it too.
I think the service module is both structurally and functionally critical. If it is failing and you do not know why, catastrophic failure is presumably possible, not just some air loss. A hole or crack in the module is now apparently double the size it was until recently, that is a trend that presumably could continue to rapid unscheduled disassembly.
Compression loss can lead to a decompression of sorts if I had to guess... it is a vaccum out there. The force from a decompression can yield a chain reaction or strongly disrupt the entire station.
Naively, I would assume that there are airlocks between the different sections of the ISS. I would also assume that they would close these airlocks while doing the kind of work they are doing to repair the leaks.
So, assuming I'm right (and my assumptions might be wrong,) why do the astronauts need to shelter?