
Space station leak caused by drill, not meteorite - skolos
https://www.upi.com/Hole-responsible-for-space-station-leak-caused-by-drill-not-meteorite-Russia-says/2331536013870/
======
baldfat
> According to Russia Today, the person responsible for the hole has been
> identified.

That was pretty scary sentence for me. Short story, I know the guy who made
the mistake on the mirror for the Hubble Telescope.
[https://www.nasa.gov/content/hubbles-mirror-
flaw](https://www.nasa.gov/content/hubbles-mirror-flaw)

He was a great guy and was the President for the Trouts Unlimited when I was a
kid. That one thing defined him for so long. Was pretty sad story to me. He
did one mistake but the quality control department were never troubled like he
was even though they had it right in front of them for years.

~~~
skj
"An unnamed source told RIA Novosti the person responsible for drilling the
hole filled it with glue instead of reporting the mistake."

A mistake is one thing. Mistakes are lessons and it's good to have people who
have some solid lessons in their backgrounds.

Trying to patch it with some glue without telling anyone is a character flaw
and the person needs to go, so everyone else gets the lesson.

~~~
LeifCarrotson
That's easy to say from our position, but I'd bet that the person responsible
had a pretty good idea what would happen if they reported it.

At my current machine shop, I'd have a half dozen people documenting what
happened, helping to design, implement, and rush out the repaired part,
adjusting customer expectations, and making sure that the process that allowed
me to make the mistake is fixed so that others repeat it.

In my previous job, it depended on the day. Sometimes you'd get called into
the boss' office and cussed at for a while with no consequences, sometimes
you'd get something capricious like confiscating the offenders' drill bits and
requiring check-out for each hole from the foreman's office for a week. (It
only lasted 3 days, but that literally happened.) Sometimes the boss was
having a really bad day with customers or vendors he couldn't punish, and you
could have a half dozen guys bodging a repair out of the boss' view and
keeping him distracted. Or fired on the spot, if it didn't work. I lasted 5
years and 37 hires and fires at that 20-man shop, should have left so much
sooner.

The official story is:

> _It is a technological error by a specialist. It was done by a human hand --
> there are traces of a drill sliding along the surface._ \-
> [http://tass.com/science/1019791](http://tass.com/science/1019791)

Drills should not be sliding along the surface of a part. You locate the hole
by marking with calipers from a known location and hit the intersection with a
punch. Especially in curvy aluminum aerospace work. And there's certainly
little opportunity for anyone to go get some glue, install it, wait for it to
cure, and paint/cover it up without inspection. I am surprised, though, that
they didn't just weld in some filler and grind it smooth.

I suspect that NASA and some of their suppliers are nominally more like the
former but practically there's still some risk to admitting error, and that
Roscosmos/Energia is closer to the latter.

~~~
zaarn
>You locate the hole by marking with calipers from a known location and hit
the intersection with a punch.

Okay, and now do that in microgravity in a spacesuit with the thick gloves.
Good luck.

~~~
compsciphd
this wasn't drilled in space....

~~~
err4nt
Where did they have to repair it when the plug came loose and began leaking
again?

~~~
plopz
It said the astronauts used an epoxy to plug it, but I don't think it required
a space walk. I assume it was doable from inside.

------
yummybear
I wonder what work environment exists, that would cause a worker to hide their
mistakes and endanger the crew, instead of reporting it. And how many more
mistakes go unreported?

I hope russia addresses the root issue, and not just fires the person
responsible.

~~~
mmjaa
Thinly veiled Russia-hate? Its not like US engineers are immune to such
ridiculous mistakes. Why make this a Russia thing?

~~~
yorwba
Since the hole was in a Russian Soyuz capsule, it seems likely that Russia
will react in some way. I don't think it's "Russia-hate" to hope that they'll
take steps to prevent similar issues in the future.

------
kinj28
This has happened before and that was catastrophic.

On June 30, 1971, the crew of Soyuz 11, Soviet cosmonauts Georgy Dobrovolsky,
Vladislav Volkov, and Viktor Patsayev were killed after the cabin vent valve
accidentally opened before atmospheric re-entry. There had been no indication
of trouble until the recovery team opened the capsule and found the dead crew.

~~~
eps
As tragic as the Soyuz 11 incident was, it's hardly similar in any of its
aspects:

"The fault was traced to a breathing ventilation valve, located between the
orbital module and the descent module, that had been jolted open as the
descent module separated from the service module, 12 minutes and 3 seconds
after retrofire. The two were held together by explosive bolts designed to
fire sequentially; in fact, they had fired simultaneously. The explosive force
of the simultaneous bolt firing caused the internal mechanism of the pressure
equalization valve to loosen a seal that was usually discarded later and which
normally allowed for automatic adjustment of the cabin pressure. The valve
opened at an altitude of 168 kilometres, and the resultant loss of pressure
was fatal within seconds."

------
walrus01
This is why they do things like x-ray every cm of the welds on the new Astute
class submarines. Trust, but verify.

~~~
djcapelis
For what it’s worth, that’s how a lot of critical welds are verified. X-raying
welds is fairly standard practice in the field if the strength of the weld is
important enough. And it’s not as much about trust as how much it is fairly
easy to make a mistake while welding and not know it. A good welder paying
close attention can tell whether a weld is good with fairly high accuracy. But
that’s not always enough certainty and when skilled honest people make
mistakes here, they won’t nevessarily know it. So, you X-ray.

------
stcredzero
I bought a laser cutter from a company in Guandong for the makerspace I was
involved in, and there were about a half dozen similar "bodges" I discovered
in the manufacture. There were two acorn nuts which were attached to bolts
that didn't go all the way through, so were effectively decorations. (The
other 8 did, so I know that was a total bodge.) The bodges even included the
way the bracket holding one of the mirrors was installed.

I know for a fact that you can buy epoxy which matches the index of refraction
of most kinds of glass. The guy who drilled the hole and filled it with glue
must have been in a bit of a hurry.

PSA from Matt Groening: If you drink, don't drill!
[http://home.earthlink.net/~foghornj/drinkand.html](http://home.earthlink.net/~foghornj/drinkand.html)

------
SomewhatLikely
Do these modules undergo pressure tests before launching? I would hope there's
some quality control to catch this type of flaw.

~~~
londons_explore
I would expect "glue in a hole" to fail as the sun hits the module every 90
mins, and the surface probably heats to 100C and cools to -25C. That kind of
heat cycling causes expansion and contraction, causing the boundary between
the metal and the glue to weaken then fail.

One can test for that in the lab, but it involves heat cycling for a _long_
time to reproduce the same number of cycles the space station could undergo in
its multi-decade lifespan.

~~~
INTPenis
Where do you get this glue info? I don't see it in the article.

So someone accidentally drilled through an expensive space station module on
earth and filled the hole with glue. Wow..

~~~
unwind
Third paragraph, with a quote directly after it:

 _An unnamed source told RIA Novosti the person responsible for drilling the
hole filled it with glue instead of reporting the mistake.

"The glue dried and was squeezed out, opening the hole," the source told the
media outlet._

It's fun that the astronauts did the proper/final fix with epoxy, which to
most people is of course _also_ a glue. So perhaps the worker used (or mis-
used) the wrong glue to fix this, rather than tried to cover up the mistake?
Of course it sounds reasonable that it should have been reported, which didn't
happen, so so the working environment seems improvable.

~~~
INTPenis
Ugh ok, wtf. Believe it or not but with JS disabled I get a completely
different text that doesn't mention glue.

~~~
croddin
I can reproduce that on chrome with JS off. It looks like the first two
paragraphs are there but covered by the image.

------
rbanffy
I imagine incidents like this will become a lot more common as space travel
becomes commonplace and spacecraft are built in assembly lines.

Also, the fix should be simple - either the epoxi or a small metal plate glued
or welded on top of the hole (I'd suggest glue, because of the lower thermal
stresses). The guy used the wrong glue.

It's just one atmosphere. Taking turns and putting a finger on top of the hole
is a reasonable emergency fix.

~~~
hrnnnnnn
The Expanse sci-fi novel series goes into this subject quite a lot.

The people who live on and around the outer planets ("belters") are all said
to have an extreme fixation on ship maintenance, those who didn't having been
"weeded out" of the gene pool by their negligence.

~~~
rbanffy
The ones who don't carry duct tape will certainly be weeded out rather
quickly.

~~~
stcredzero
There's some kind of aircraft repair tape like duct tape, which is made with
much stronger fibers and uses a much stronger adhesive. It's not called
"aircraft tape," however. That's something else. A friend was telling me that
there was a small hole in a submarine once found patched by the stuff.

I try to carry 4 strips of medical tape stuck to the back of my emergency
credit card. I think I have to check it and restock.

~~~
rbanffy
The one used in aircraft is called speed tape. It's thick aluminum foil and a
high-grade adhesive and resists well to heat, some fire, and lots of wind.
There's also one called "Gorilla tape", IIRC, that's like duct tape but much
stronger.

A submarine is subject to much higher pressure differentials than aircraft or
spacecraft (and also from the wrong directions for easy repairs from the
inside) and I wouldn't recommend relying on it for long. I'm not sure how
speed tape would work if applied in a vacuum, but I guess most repairs like
this would be done from the inside, under some pressurization. Speed tape
would be better, but, if you have external thermal blankets over the hull,
duct tape should do just fine. It's only 1 atmosphere, after all (0.25 if you
can do pure oxygen).

Eventually, when you stop by a proper facility, you'll want to do something
more permanent (and fix the thermal blankets/external hull, because, if it was
a micrometeorite that reached the pressurized part, there must be a hole there
too).

~~~
stcredzero
_A submarine is subject to much higher pressure differentials than aircraft or
spacecraft (and also from the wrong directions for easy repairs from the
inside) and I wouldn 't recommend relying on it for long._

The story was that the discovery was one of horror. Basically, it was a
tragedy averted. Also, the tape was on the outside, but I forget the
particulars.

~~~
rbanffy
I hope the crew knew about it and was ready to surface if it started leaking.
Well... I guess submarine crews are a good model for astronauts in that they
live surrounded by a lethal environment. The difference is that, if you
venture outside low Earth orbit, you may be days away from safety, so an extra
amount of zeal with improvised repairs may be warranted.

------
self_awareness
A rock hitting a space station is a meteorite or meteor?

~~~
alxlaz
The word you're looking for is _meteoroid_.

( _Not_ meteorite. It's not a meteorite until it has fallen on solid ground or
water :-) ).

They're objects whose size is smaller than that of an asteroid, but larger
than that of a micrometeoroid or space dust particle. Basically anything
larger than a grain of sand, but not big enough to be an asteroid, is a
meteoroid.

~~~
stcredzero

        And the meteorite's just what causes the light
        And the meteor's how it's perceived
        And the meteoroid's a bone thrown from the void 
            that lies quiet in offering to thee
    

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGoNCvoZuYA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGoNCvoZuYA)

------
de_watcher
Living up to the standards of the Russian space station in the Armageddon
movie.

~~~
chopin
"Welcome to the craft where all parts are made by the lowest bidder" is the
one citation I remember. The Russians were greeted this way.

~~~
henrikeh
Which is a quote based upon a quote by Alan Shepard[0].

[0]:
[https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alan_Shepard](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alan_Shepard)

------
some_account
Just a few days ago people on HN were believing it was an asteroid. If anybody
would have challenged that, they would not have been believed.

My point is, people believe most things, specially from space agencies,
without having any means of verifying it. And they believe it without any
doubt.

If I told you that these space agencies are lying to the public, would you
believe it? There is so much evidence of nasa and ess fakery. It just annoys
me that most people still believe anything coming from these sources.

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
> Just a few days ago people on HN were believing it was an asteroid. If
> anybody would have challenged that, they would not have been believed.

Typically people do and should believe things based upon the strongest
evidence. While you can't trust them to be totally right all the time, you can
assume that, barring additional information and reasonable cause for doubt,
that the most credible sources information is a good place to start. Do you
have a source that's more credible than NASA in regards to events occurring in
space with NASA astronauts?

------
informatimago
Err, nothing says the identified responsible was a Russian. The glue had time
to dry off, so the drilling may have occurred a long time ago. Let's not jump
to conclusions, But the suspense is insufferable!

~~~
comboy
What does it matter if it was a Russian or not? Obviously that person should
have reported it, but I'm surprised that there wasn't more QC. I imagined at
least a few people inspect everything after it's "ready to go".

~~~
mmjaa
The only reason it matters if it was a Russian engineer or not, is so that
Americans' currently engaged in two-minutes hate can use this story as yet
more confirmation of their bias against Russia. There's simply no other reason
to point it out and make an issue out of it.

~~~
Tor3
So where did it say that a Russian did it? The only reference is to a
'specialist'. You're putting up a straw man so that you can push it down. You
sound like you're from that well-known trolling group btw.

~~~
mmjaa
Your reading comprehension not so good? Blinded by hate? Look at the person
whose message I responded to - it was _them_ who mentioned it was a Russian.

>well-known trolling group

Yeah, thanks for proving my point that America is in the grips of two-minutes
hate right now ..

~~~
Tor3
I've read all the comments. The main theme is a discussion about how a working
environment can be set up to avoid such potentially disastrous things to
happen - i.e. hiding technical problems and errors instead of doing it
properly (report, fix, verify). It's not like it's only happened in Russia.
Everybody knows about the Challenger disaster, which came about due to (in
that case) management ignoring issues, so it's different, but still similar.

Or do you really prefer that things like this shouldn't be discussed or
revealed, but be hidden under a carpet instead?

(and a lot of people here, including myself, are not American. Wouldn't go
there if I were paid for it. So that's not what this is about. At all.)

