
US segment of ISS evacuated due to possible cooling system leak - adenner
https://blogs.nasa.gov/spacestation/2015/01/14/space-station-update/
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jgrahamc
"Update: #Exp42 crew informed by controllers that it's starting to look like a
false indication, either a faulty sensor or computer relay."

[https://twitter.com/NASA/status/555353082209767424](https://twitter.com/NASA/status/555353082209767424)

~~~
exDM69
Some more (unofficial) information:
[http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=36561.0](http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=36561.0)

The above was based on several livestreams from the ISS as well as mission
control. The public streams are down now.

It seems like there were several alarms and issues, including a fire alarm,
but seems like they were (mostly) false alarms. Crew going through appropriate
checklists.

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garblegarble
The public stream is still up at [http://www.ustream.tv/channel/live-iss-
stream](http://www.ustream.tv/channel/live-iss-stream) and broadcasting the
station/earth communications

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mabbo
Not following NASA and the ISS and well as I used to, I know there were plans
to build a 'lifeboat' for the crew. Is that a thing now? If something
catastrophic happens, what does the crew _do_?

~~~
ceejayoz
There's always a Soyuz attached, which the crew can hop into and return to
earth if necessary.

 _edit:_ There's also the now cancelled
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crew_Return_Vehicle](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crew_Return_Vehicle),
which is probably what you were thinking of.

~~~
nodata
The Soyuz only seats three.

~~~
arrrg
If there are six onboard two Soyuz will be docked. Always. There will never
not be lifeboat for everyone, nor was there ever not one for everyone.
Currently two are docked and those are the two lifeboats.

Those aren’t only lifeboats, though. They are also just the normal crew return
vehicles. Here is how crew rotation currently works: Three depart in the
oldest Soyuz docked to the station, leaving the station with a crew of three
and only one remaining Soyuz. A couple days later a new Soyuz arrives at the
station, meaning there’s now a crew of six and two Soyuz docked to the
station. Then everyone stays up there for a couple months longer before the
now veteran crew departs on the oldest Soyuz and everything repeats.

One advantage of doing it this way is that you are constantly renewing the
lifeboats, so a Soyuz doesn’t have to survive years in space, only six or so
months before it is replaced. Basically, it has to work for its main purpose
(returning the crew to Earth as planned) anyway, insuring that it also works
as a lifeboat. (Though I would assume that many changes were made to make the
Soyuz work as a lifeboat. I would imagine that rapidly departing from the
station, potentially with injured crew, is quite a different task compared to
a planned departure.)

~~~
Morgawr
This makes me wonder, I assume they have procedures to dock a deserted ISS,
right? What would happen in case of an emergency where both teams (3+3) have
to return back to Earth, leaving ISS without a crew? Will they be able to "get
back in"?

~~~
draven
I hope so, if not, they would not have ben able to dock with it after it's
been built (and empty at the time).

~~~
Morgawr
Well, the ISS was actually built as a constant iterative process, it wasn't
just sent on space as is and then assumed operative. Also I'd assume the first
module that was sent to space might have contained humans already right on
departure from the Earth.

But yeah, obviously they have procedures to retrieve and re-enter an empty
ISS, I was mostly curious how or if there's any material around.

~~~
JonathonW
Zarya (the first module, launched in 1998) was pressurized and could support a
crew short-term-- the crew of STS-88 (which launched Unity, the second module
added to the ISS) entered the station and began unstowing gear and stuff. The
ISS couldn't support its permanent crew until Zvezda (the station's service
module) launched in 2000, though-- Zvezda contains the station's primary life
support equipment and contained crew facilities like toilets and bunks.

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AYBABTME
If something major was to happen inside the ISS and poison all the air or
something.

I wonder how we would go about recovering the station, without a space shuttle
to go around and live on while doing repairs.

~~~
neikos
As far as I know the station is too close to earth and is thus slowed by the
atmoshpere -> It will crash and burn on earth if no one keeps it on track.

~~~
viewer5
What do you mean? What stops that from happening now? Does it have thrusters
that burn now and then to maintain its orbit?

~~~
CWuestefeld
_Does it have thrusters that burn now and then to maintain its orbit?_

AIUI, the Soyuzes (is that the right plural) that are attached as
lifeboats/return craft, also are used to adjust ISS orbit. They've got
engines, etc., so it's relatively easy to use them in this capacity.

~~~
TkTech
You are correct, but the station also has two main engines on Zvezda that are
rarely used. It's easier and cheaper to keep these main engines ready for
emergencies and let the docked craft perform altitude boosts.

As to the parent comment, burns are required because the ISS is at a _very_
low altitude. It is still technically within our atmosphere and experiences
significant drag from it. In addition, as the stations rotation changes, it's
corrected using gyroscopes on the station. Once these gyroscopes have stored
their maximum momentum in the flywheels they need to be released, and
thrusters are used at that point to cancel out the momentum.

Something a lot of people don't seem to realize is that the station is moving
all the time. Anything you do on the inside, such as exerting force on a wall
or running on the treadmill (which had to be specially designed to minimize
vibration transfer to the station) affects the station and must be cancelled
out over time. The station moves as part of it's daily operation as well, such
as when it enters [night glider
mode]([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Glider_mode](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Glider_mode))
to reduce atmospheric drag.

~~~
CWuestefeld
_Anything you do on the inside, such as exerting force on a wall ... affects
the station and must be cancelled out over time._

Won't this cancel itself out over time anyway? If the astronaut kicks off one
wall (acquiring momentum by applying a force), won't he just float over to the
opposite wall and negate that momentum by applying a complementary but
opposite force?

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superpatosainz
This actually makes me wonder: what if there's a false bomb report in the ISS?
Akin to when some 12 year old prankster says in twitter that there's a bomb in
flight XYZ123, will chaos happen up in the ISS?

~~~
pavel_lishin
Who would be in a position to report a bomb in such a way that it would be
plausible?

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vans
Nice background !

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halfdeadcat
If they only had some sort of self-contained atmosphere suits.

~~~
sandworm
There is an odd-man-out problem. Nobody has ever tried to don a spacesuit
without some help from people not in spacesuits. So even if they had enough,
which they probably do not, it might not be possible. Getting into a modern
suit also requires hours of decompression to adjust to their lower pressure.
You can't just hop in and step outside.

(Mercury/Gemini and early soviet pilots were suited/dressed before takeoff.
And Apollo suits were different than modern systems.)

~~~
VLM
This is very complicated. I was researching this as kind of a logic puzzle or
scheduling logistics kind of game. Not just evac the ISS, but general ISS ops.
This is actually pretty boring compared to the engineering challenge of
working around ECLSS issues and the mysteriously complicated electrical
system. Elements of lemmings and DF and simcity and scheduling game on the
ISS. On a map of modules that is not a full mesh connected network, etc. How
long can you improvise in face of disaster kind of game mechanic. This game
idea went nowhere, mostly.

First of all the Orlan suits are just tuned up moon suits, continuous
evolutionary change since the 60s no revolutionary change like the USA suits,
and it appears two dudes have no problem dressing each other while in suits. I
couldn't find anything one way or another WRT one dude jumping in a suit by
himself or much about Russian suit training. I get the feeling it wouldn't be
a problem based on past mission profiles for two astronauts to dress each
other aka it's been done but isn't talked about much, just kinda assumed. That
doesn't mean a 3rd unsuited helper would have nothing to do.

Sokol suits are available but they are not really built for outdoor use
(thermal, wear and tear, sun visors, maybe harnesses?), you'd be basically
immobile and probably stiff and uncomfortable after awhile. Doing an EVA in a
sokol would likely suck pretty bad but would beat breathing space. If there's
a hole in the capsule during re-entry (or takeoff) the sokol will keep you
alive for a couple hours, although uncomfortably.

The USA suits don't fit thru russian airlock holes (holy cow! but true!) so
you can only put the (two?) USA suits thru the Quest airlock. The Russian
suits can go out Pirs airlock, although many believe it'll never happen, Pirs
is supposed to be re-entered when the new russian multipurpose lab module is
launched to replace it. We'll see if that ever happens. Russian suits
historically went thru the Zvezda but its ridiculous, you seal the hatches and
open a door to the outside, its not a "real" airlock. I was never able to get
stats on which modules could "zvezda style" evac if necessary.

Where the suits are stored is a mystery vs where the disaster is (meteor hole
or whatever). I guess if you need to get to Quest and there's a de-pressurized
segment in the way, one of the Russians has to go out and fix it.

I never saw any pictures or written description claiming more than 2 USA suits
in stock and 2 Russian Orlan suits in stock at any given time. I believe they
have a sokol for every crewmember, three sitting in each re-entry capsule. The
onboard suits are rotated and thrown out every couple years. The Russians got
new Orlan suits a couple years ago with semi-advanced onboard system debugging
computers, kinda interesting.

Decompression sickness is crazy analog and non-binary thinking goes over VERY
poorly on this site, lets just say its a game of statistics, and if half of
DCS symptoms don't even kick in for 6 hours (or whatever it was exactly) then
given the 100% possibility of death vs maybe 50% some symptoms in six hours
and 10% death, then obviously you risk it. If you have the most expensive
people on the planet the furthest of our species from medical help and you're
in no hurry, then you spend the full 3 hours doing the pre-breathe and the
ISLE exercise protocol. In the olden days they slept overnight in the airlock
but ISLE works and only takes 3 hours... Just spending a half hour in utter
panic breathing pure O2 during a disaster in healthy young athletic bodies
"probably" lowers the odds of DCS to about zero, or at least lower than the
odds of whatever would make you panic EVA, so in practice its probably not an
issue. You wouldn't screw around with DCS unless you were in severe danger,
but you wouldn't have an emergency EVA just for the heck of it either. My
point being if you die of DCS thats probably just a dice roll that something
else almost got you anyway. Its not the main threat or even the most important
threat. There would be no need to risk DCS unless you were about to die, in
which case the odds of DCS not killing you are pretty good. Or rephrased DCS
is not a realistic game criteria in my planned game that went nowhere.

~~~
sandworm
I'm no expert. My opinion on the suit difficulties is based on the recent ars
article on the subject of space rescue.

[http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/02/the-audacious-
rescue-...](http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/02/the-audacious-rescue-plan-
that-might-have-saved-space-shuttle-columbia/)

"Ars consulted a number of sources to gauge the difficulty of donning
spacesuits without any assistance from unsuited crew. Though none would speak
on record, the consensus is that it would involve what was universally
categorized as an extremely high degree of difficulty."

