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In no way is this news or a scoop, but who can resist the tale of plucky cosmonauts calmly relaying such nuggets from a dead-in-the-water space station as:
Savinikh: "We're trying to turn on the light now. Command issued. No reaction, not even one little diode. If only something would light up..."
and
Savinikh: “I’ve gotten the Rodnik schematics. Pump connected. The valves aren’t opening. There’s an icicle sticking out of the air pipe.”
Yep — all the makings of a sci-fi straight to TV movie… icicles hanging out of air pipes indeed!
However, it is not. It is the tale of two cosmonauts sent to try to recover the dead in low earth orbit Salyut 7 back in 1985. The included cosmonaut to earth communication transcripts would be comedy genius had they been scripted, if only as a parody of calm professionalism in a seemingly absurd predicament.
Over to Ars Technica for the piece: http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/09/the-little-known-soviet-mission-to-rescue-a-dead-space-station/
(Score: 2) by Alfred on Wednesday September 17 2014, @07:35PM
LOL
It takes the familiar things to make it feel like home (to them).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 17 2014, @09:52PM
You may find it funny, but floating feces and urine can actually be a very serious problem in space stations. Less so today, of course, but in the early days before the waste disposal technology was sufficiently developed it was not at all unusual for fecal matter to come back into the manned portions of the early space stations.
Early attempts at defecation in space were semi-disastrous. Depending on the texture and firmness of the defecate matter, it would literally float out of the receptacle. Solid matter could be captured by hand and disposed of, but liquid matter would disperse. It would get onto control panels and even the astronauts themselves. Needless to say, this is not a good situation to be in. There is a biohazard risk, and it's just plain smelly.
Fecal matter and urine can't just be ejected into space all at once. If that's done, then there's the risk of it freezing almost instantaneously and colliding with the space station itself. Space stations are designed to avoid some impacts, but several pounds of solid feces could cause some serious damage depending on where it hit the station.
Modern systems basically grind the feces and combine it with any urine into a semi-liquid that's ejected drop-by-drop out of the station and into space. This prevents large, heavy clumps from forming, preventing damage to the space station if there is a collision.