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If only they had access to the best engineers in the world who no doubt thought of that because they know what they are doing… oh wait, they do!
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By design, in fact. It’s not atmospheric pressure in a space craft, because it turns out we can breathe just fine with a lot lower pressure if the oxygen content is higher. So, tweak the gas mix and you can run at, say, 4psi instead of 14. Now the hull can be a whole lot thinner (aka lighter, aka easier to get up the well). Credit Apollo engineers for figuring this one out. It was part of an 11th hour crunch to get weight down.
ETA: Oops, I was wrong about ISS here. Thanks @Michael_R_Smith for the correction above.
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That was my dad fixing our washing machine back in '72 or so, but where did you hear about it?
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Ah yes. The thinking [hu]man’s duct tape.
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It’d be like an axe with a new handle and a new head.
I remember people suggesting this when Mir was being shut down. Cut loose the older modules and replace them. But it locks you into legacy interfaces, for what is effectively a new spacecraft.
The new world is completely different. Its not a partnership between USA and Russia. Its a thing more like a hotel, serviced by privately run vehicles.
At some point you just have to start from scratch.
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Those engineers didn’t write the article though. This is the expert opinion of the journalist at TASS.
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With all the brilliant engineers involved in the design, what if it turns out like The Wonderful One-Hoss Shay?
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Luckily journalists aren’t responsible for fixing space stations.
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I hope they brought some duct tape.
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Up there it’s called Spacelite.
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It’s a crack but it’s not statistically significant
Probably because P-values are kept in a bag in outer space and recycled into drinking water.
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I think this is going to be true for anything we build in low earth orbit. But once the structures start to get attached to places like Luna or Phobos or Ceres, it will become important to design them in a way that’s more future-proof.
Wet navy warships have hard points and conduits set up so it’s possible to install weapons systems that weren’t possible when the keel was laid, so there’s a limit to how much needs to be rebuilt with the next upgrade. Something similar seems inevitable once we start building structures and vessels that take us to actually useful spots in the system and let us stay there. Before then, there’s a pretty big design space to be charted.
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There may be not one but two new air leaks in International Space Station: Russian boss tells us not to panic
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Crack an egg in the leaking module. Just kidding.
I’m sure there’s a name or formal version of this engineering rule, but it never fails that anything designed to not leak will and anything designed to always flow won’t.
What is gun tape?
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