5 ms·
For every complex, difficult and hard problem, there is a simple, easy and wrong solution. Paint obviously is not the right tool for making seals air tight.
by malfist 5mo ago
For every complex, difficult and hard problem, there is a simple, easy and wrong solution.
Paint obviously is not the right tool for making seals air tight.
- setopt 5mo agoHow about glue?
- justinator 5mo agoBubble gum? Like do they chew space bubble gum that they could then smoosh in the holes? In college, we'd use toothpaste for the holes left from nails in the walls we hung up our posters with.
- doublerabbit 5mo agoIt's time to kick ass and chew bubble gum... and I'm all outta gum
- dylan604 5mo agoIsn't the main problem finding the hole and not what should be used to fill the hole?
- stackghost 5mo agoThey need Matt Damon, a chopped up wooden crucifix, and some silicone caulking
- jmaw 5mo agoThey need Phil Swift, "To show the powerful adhesion of flex-seal, I sawed this space station in half!"
- justinator 5mo agoYou'd think after 8 years, they'd have found the hole!
- Auracle 5mo agoJust spray Fix-a-Flat everywhere. Or coat the outside with a soapy water solution.
- dotancohen 5mo agoThey're not teenage boys.
- ornornor 5mo agoDon’t try this if your toothpaste is the blue or green minty flavoured type. You’re welcome.
- taolson 5mo agoWe actually did this in my freshman dorm room, as the paint color almost exactly matched the original Crest "green".
- MSKJ 5mo agoDuct Tape, the answer is always duct tape
- Forgeties79 5mo agoFound the scrub who doesn’t know about gaff tape
- ChoGGi 5mo agoI don't think you can be an astronaut on the ISS without being a handyman, and the handyman's secret weapon is duct tape.
- Forgeties79 5mo agoTrust me, grab some yards of gaff tape and try it out. You’ll thank me later!
- jonah 5mo agoIn general, gaffer's tape is the superior product, but for this use case, I'm thinking that duct tape with its solid backed film and thicker adhesive might be more airtight.
- jbxntuehineoh 5mo agocan't one of them just put his thumb in the hole? duhhh
- JTbane 5mo agoThey did use space tape (Kapton) and epoxy for that weird case with the hole drilled in the ISS.
- tclancy 5mo agoYou ever try to open an old paint can? Checkmate, atheist.
- Whatarethese 5mo agoFlexseal obviously
- honeycrispy 5mo agoYou're being sarcastic, but I would like a technical explanation of why this would not work.
- dotancohen 5mo agoDelta P
- rzzzt 5mo agoHow about _Space_ Flexseal?
- guyzero 5mo agoDelta P is one atmosphere or less, like 15 PSI. Lots of stuff can handle 15 PSI. Now, will it immediately off-gas and embrittle on exposure to vacuum? Different question.
- kortilla 5mo agoYeah, that’s like being 33ft under water. Not extreme by any means.
- Dylan16807 5mo agoIt is not obvious to me that there is no specialized type of paint that would be appropriate. Doing the whole module sounds like a lot of mass though.
- dotancohen 5mo agoIt's hard vacuum on one side. There's a reason the word "hard" is used to describe it. A few years ago a Soyuz was improperly drilled during manufacture. This was patched with a super epoxy... and then began leaking air on orbit. Paint won't seal what a super aerospace epoxy failed to seal.
- Dylan16807 5mo ago> There's a reason the word "hard" is used to describe it. Because it's more extreme. Do you think a soft vacuum of 0.002 atmospheres of pressure would be notably easier to prevent leaks into? > A few years ago a Soyuz was improperly drilled during manufacture. This was patched with a super epoxy... and then began leaking air on orbit. Paint won't seal what a super aerospace epoxy failed to seal. Wasn't the fix on the ground a secret patch by the person that drilled the hole? I don't trust that to have been done properly. And then when they noticed it was leaking... they used the super aerospace epoxy. Which was labeled as temporary but as far as I know it's still the fix. Also that was a serious hole, 2mm wide, not a microhole like you'd try to fix with paint.
- malfist 5mo agoThe odds of the leak being on a surface that can be painted is low. Most likely it's in a gasket or seal that has degraded
- ordu 5mo ago> For every complex, difficult and hard problem, there is a simple, easy and wrong solution. > Paint obviously is not the right tool for making seals air tight. So my obvious solution is obviously too obvious to be right, and obviously the right solution is not obvious. The sad thing, is you are just reiterating what I've said already, without providing any useful answer. "Paint obviously is not the right tool" is a statement that not just not obvious for me, it looks simply wrong. They search for microcracks and use a sealant to seal them. Sealant is not a paint obviously, but in the same ballpark.
- IAmBroom 5mo agoThe sealant has to be self-setting; it cannot rely on atmosphere to "dry" it, because the side facing the hole will never dry. In order for it to dry, it would have to be air-permeable, so not a good sealant at all. So, the sealant has to be either a 2-part epoxy (harder to mix and apply), or a UV-cured epoxy. It has to adhere to a vast array of surfaces, since we cannot predict if the next leak will be in aluminum, cracked ceramic, silicone gasket, rubber gasket, plastic.... Anything it outgasses must be extremely inert, so that it doesn't cause a new problem when it reacts with a different surface (the gas on the ISS is never diluted by a giant planetwide reservoir). Paint is obviously not a two-part epoxy nor a UV-curing epoxy; nor is it guaranteed to have fully inert outgases; finally it is not likely to be adherent to all the possible surfaces. It's as if the situation requires a robotic diamond drill, and you propose we hit it with a big rock. The big rock won't do.
- itishappy 5mo agoObviously you need to use air tight paint.