Boeing Starliner Capsule "Trapped in Space"?

[redlig]

The beancounters are going to lose these 2, and then what ?

What is two in the general press to improve the life of mankind ? Perhaps the ones responsible were trained by the caring folk at Ford that instigated the book" Unsafe at any Speed" By Ralf Nader . If my memory is correct.

 

[redlig]

They were scheduled for 8 days and been stuck up there now for two months. What's worse, just before launch, Boeing decided they wanted to ship some extra equipment up there so they removed the pilots personal baggage allowance. That is all of their spare clothing and personal effects, all they have is what they were wearing and have now been wearing for two months.

There are no clothes washing facilities on the ISS.

One mission did try washing clothes but had a bit of trouble waiting for a drying breeze. Or so I've been told.

 

[Erie Fred]

"Spray on,, peel off clothing" on sale now !

 

[DanZac]

Do you still get dirty in space?

It's not like they're up to their armpits in a rusty, dirty, greasy old Cortina engine bay are they.

 

[Morris]

One mission did try washing clothes but had a bit of trouble waiting for a drying breeze. Or so I've been told.

Surely you just hang it out the window.

 

[Screwdriver]

One mission did try washing clothes but had a bit of trouble waiting for a drying breeze. Or so I've been told.

In reality and in the vacuum of space, your clothes would dry out in no time...

 

[redlig]

In reality and in the vacuum of space, your clothes would dry out in no time...

On leaving the wet clothes where does the water actually go.

 

[Ross365]

I think I read that the Boeing capsule's batteries get to their "best before date" in September.

 

[redlig]

I suppose it could be looked on as being the high teck version of being stranded on a desert island and waiting to be rescued.

 

[Screwdriver]

On leaving the wet clothes where does the water actually go.

It is a common misconception that "space" is cold and that unfortunates thrown out of airlocks will instantly freeze etc. It is almost the opposite of the truth!

In a vacuum a liquid will actually boil under such low pressure i.e. virtually zero in a vacuum. A boiling liquid will of course evaporate and would disperse as a gas. Also as we all know, a vacuum is a great insulator which is how a vacuum flask works. Heat cannot conduct away (by touching a colder substance) but can only radiate.

Couple of interesting digressions:

A "radiator" like the one bolted to your wall is actually a conductor. It warms the air which touches it. While it also does radiate heat, that has a much lower effect in heating the room.

There is no such thing as "cold". An object can only have a temperature from zero (very difficult to achieve!) to 10^32 K (Google suggests 142 nonillion), sort of a Planck Temperature. So a "cold" thing is merely coldER than some other thing. It does not have a property of being "cold".

In fact you might argue that we (and our wet laundry) are unusually hot thanks to the Big Bang and that eventually everything will cool down over time as energy dissipates. The only thing stopping that from our perspective is that gigantic ball of fusion power we call the Sun. That will also impact your ISS washing line. In the shade, water will boil off and evaporate but in the direct glare of a star, in a vacuum...

The Sun's rays would bake you to a crisp and give you the ultimate suntan. We are incredibly well protected on Earth with the magnetosphere (causing the Van Allen) belt diverting the extremes of radiation and the atmosphere also absorbing much of the high energy particles and radiation being fired at us. While the ISS is protected by the magnetosphere, there is no atmosphere to prevent hard radiation from bombarding anything in its direct path.

They probably ought to use a tumble drier to be honest...

 

[Misterg]

On leaving the wet clothes where does the water actually go.

It spreads out into 'space' - there's a lot of it to fill up.

The residual pressure outside the ISS is about 0.00000000003 atmospheres which still corresponds to millions (if not billions) of molecules per cm^3.

 

[ajlelectronics]

A "radiator" like the one bolted to your wall is actually a conductor.

'Tis a convector Shirley?

 

[MetalMonkey]

They probably ought to use a tumble drier to be honest...

But just not a hotpoint....

 

[julianthegypsy]

On leaving the wet clothes where does the water actually go.

It would boil until there was nothing left.

 

[Screwdriver]

'Tis a convector Shirley?

Convection is the process by which heat is conducted by contact with air. It is a semantic distinction I make since we are comparing heat transfer in atmosphere vs. in vacuum.

 

[redlig]

It would boil until there was nothing left.

But I was taught that it is impossible to destroy matter just change it . If correct what into and where.

 

[Morris]

But I was taught that it is impossible to destroy matter just change it . If correct what into and where.

Not destroyed, individual molecules dispersed in space.

 

[julianthegypsy]

Not destroyed, individual molecules dispersed in space.

That's what I meant. Water boils at 0⁰C in a vacuum as any fule kno.

 

[Screwdriver]

But I was taught that it is impossible to destroy matter just change it . If correct what into and where.

You may be thinking of "energy". It is impossible to destroy energy.

No one really knows what energy is but we do know how it works and what it does. It is the capacity to do work, the ability to change the geometry of nature over time and the more of it you have, the more changes you can make.

Without being destroyed, energy dissipates by averaging itself out. So you put a hot thing next to a colder thing and one gets colder as the other gets hotter until they are both in equlibrium. The total amount of energy (in this case heat energy) remains the same but the concentration of energy has "smeared out" and is now just a little bit less useful.

It is a vastly complex phenomena you may hear referred to as an increase in entropy which links the process of energy transfer to the perceived passage of time. For the dedicated scientist, it s closer to information theory which takes you down a deep dark rabbit hole, ever more and more complex until you end up with Stephen Hawking.

...and look what happened to him.

 

[Screwdriver]

That's what I meant. Water boils at 0⁰C in a vacuum as any fule kno.

Yikes. Sorry no. It's not that simple and it's not 0ºC. Any liquid will boil at any temperature is a better understanding bearing in mind, water (for example) can only be a liquid at certain temperatures/pressures.

Lets hope our hapless pilots in the ISS don't get to find out what happens if for example, the door falls off as they depart...