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.

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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 37 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)