| ▲ | ordu 3 hours ago |
| Can't they just get things out of the module and paint it fresh? Maybe with some special paint, or with several layers of a paint? Obviously they can't, it looks like an obvious solution they couldn't have missed. But I wonder why it is impossible to do. |
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| ▲ | malfist 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| For every complex, difficult and hard problem, there is a simple, easy and wrong solution. Paint obviously is not the right tool for making seals air tight. |
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| ▲ | Dylan16807 41 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | It is not obvious to me that there is no specialized type of paint that would be appropriate. Doing the whole module sounds like a lot of mass though. | | |
| ▲ | dotancohen 25 minutes ago | parent [-] | | It's hard vacuum on one side. There's a reason the word "hard" is used to describe it. A few years ago a Soyuz was improperly drilled during manufacture. This was patched with a super epoxy... and then began leaking air on orbit. Paint won't seal what a super aerospace epoxy failed to seal. | | |
| ▲ | Dylan16807 a minute ago | parent [-] | | > There's a reason the word "hard" is used to describe it. Because it's more extreme. Do you think a soft vacuum of 0.002 atmospheres of pressure would be notably easier to prevent leaks into? > A few years ago a Soyuz was improperly drilled during manufacture. This was patched with a super epoxy... and then began leaking air on orbit. Paint won't seal what a super aerospace epoxy failed to seal. Wasn't the fix on the ground a secret patch by the person that drilled the hole? I don't trust that to have been done properly. And then when they noticed it was leaking... they used the super aerospace epoxy. Which was labeled as temporary but as far as I know it's still the fix. Also that was a serious hole, 2mm wide, not a microhole like you'd try to fix with paint. |
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| ▲ | tclancy an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | You ever try to open an old paint can? Checkmate, atheist. | |
| ▲ | Whatarethese an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Flexseal obviously | | |
| ▲ | honeycrispy 34 minutes ago | parent [-] | | You're being sarcastic, but I would like a technical explanation of why this would not work. | | |
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| ▲ | setopt 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | How about glue? | | |
| ▲ | justinator 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Bubble gum? Like do they chew space bubble gum that they could then smoosh in the holes? In college, we'd use toothpaste for the holes left from nails in the walls we hung up our posters with. | | |
| ▲ | ornornor an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | Don’t try this if your toothpaste is the blue or green minty flavoured type. You’re welcome. | | |
| ▲ | taolson 26 minutes ago | parent [-] | | We actually did this in my freshman dorm room, as the paint color almost exactly matched the original Crest "green". |
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| ▲ | dylan604 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Isn't the main problem finding the hole and not what should be used to fill the hole? | | |
| ▲ | dotancohen 24 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | They're not teenage boys. | |
| ▲ | Auracle an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Just spray Fix-a-Flat everywhere. Or coat the outside with a soapy water solution. | |
| ▲ | justinator 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | You'd think after 8 years, they'd have found the hole! | |
| ▲ | stackghost 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | They need Matt Damon, a chopped up wooden crucifix, and some silicone caulking | | |
| ▲ | jmaw an hour ago | parent [-] | | They need Phil Swift, "To show the powerful adhesion of flex-seal, I sawed this space station in half!" |
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| ▲ | doublerabbit an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | It's time to kick ass and chew bubble gum... and I'm all outta gum |
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| ▲ | JTbane an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | They did use space tape (Kapton) and epoxy for that weird case with the hole drilled in the ISS. | |
| ▲ | MSKJ 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Duct Tape, the answer is always duct tape | | | |
| ▲ | jbxntuehineoh an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | can't one of them just put his thumb in the hole? duhhh |
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| ▲ | hgoel 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| If you mean on the outside, paints that apply well in vacuum and microgravity probably need to be developed and tested first. If you mean on the inside, it'd be a lot of time and disruption to devote to maintenance on a station that's already having to spend an increasing amount of time on maintenance instead of science. The modules have a lot of stuff that has been wired between them over the years, all that would need to be sorted out, consequences understood and more before ever starting the work, and by then it'll be time for the ISS to retire anyway. |
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| ▲ | nomel 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | > well in vacuum and microgravity probably Wouldn't all paint works well in microgravity? If it didn't, I would think you wouldn't be able to apply it to your floor, walls, and ceiling, with the same paint. | | |
| ▲ | hgoel an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | I think it's hard to say. Water sprayed at a ceiling doesn't congeal into a ball the way water floating in microgravity does. Paint that would fall to the ground if it didn't stick to anything on Earth, would just be floating around in microgravity. Any dissolved gasses or moisture can usually passively sort themselves out due to their differing masses, but again, not in microgravity. | | |
| ▲ | nomel 39 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Yeah, the application system is probably the tricky bit, rather than the paint. > Any dissolved gasses or moisture can usually passively sort themselves out due to their differing masses, but again, not in microgravity. This is a solved problem with the ECLSS system [1], required from humans releasing ~3.3 lbs of water per day, and exhaling gases that must not accumulate or form dead zones, and normal VOCs scrubbers [2] due to most modern materials releasing them. I suspect it would be more of a "how many extra filters do we send" type problem and cycling the collected water a couple more times. [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13640... [2] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Typical-concentrations-o... |
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| ▲ | alpinisme an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | Not OP but I’d imagine the big problem with microgravity is not after application but during application. No idea the scale of that problem but obviously open cans of liquid paint are not realistic (not that anyone was suggesting they were) |
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| ▲ | echoangle 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Some problems i can see with that: It might be hard to access the actual pressure hull from the inside (there's probably insulation and padding on top) If you use paint, you somehow have to get rid of the solvent in it when it dries, which might be a problem when painting a whole module |
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| ▲ | Lalabadie 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | 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. | | |
| ▲ | kakacik 6 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | Do they literally sweat their bones away? I can imagine how it would work on molecular level via sweat / breathing, but I would expect >99% to be simply pissed and shat away. | |
| ▲ | PaulHoule an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | Wouldn't the calcium go out in your urine? |
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| ▲ | numpad0 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| 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? |
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| ▲ | snickerbockers an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | 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. | |
| ▲ | switchbak 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Oh come on you can't be serious. Clearly this needs some JB-Weld :P | | |
| ▲ | dylan604 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Flex Seal would be my suggestion. It works as seen on TV | | |
| ▲ | jmaw an hour ago | parent [-] | | "To show the powerful adhesion of flex-seal, I sawed this space station in half!" |
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| ▲ | soupspaces 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Some fire decal while they're at it? |
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| ▲ | adaml_623 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Cardboard's out. No cardboard derivatives. Paper? No Paper. No string. No sellotape. |
