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The Mir Space Station

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204 pointsrmason31 comments

Speaking of science on MIR, I was working in a space research department that was involved in building an X-ray telescope that was attached to MIR. It actually at one point got repaired in flight with a spacewalk to install a replacement detector:

http://www.sron.nl/hea-update-category-1211/100-hea/2308-com...

Ended up in use for several years. One of the challenges was that the whole space station had to be reoriented to point the telescope, so it was tough to get to look at what you wanted to see when you wanted to see it. The technology was cool though. It was designed for hard X-rays (up to 30keV). At the time mirrors that were used to focus X-rays (using grazing incidence) could not focus above a few keV. Pinhole camera optics worked at higher energies but obviously have low throughput. The solution was basically lots of pinholes arranged in a pattern that produced a highly overlapped image, but overlapped in a way that allowed a unique deconvolution and reconstruction of the original source, so you ended up with both relatively high resolution and also high sensitivity.

Decent high level description here:

http://www.paulcarlisle.net/codedaperture/

As mirror technology has improved it is possible to image high resolution X-rays with mirrors now, but gamma rays are still an application for coded masks.

This is a pretty good video about the subject as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ezhdhHNku0 - Coded Mask - Sixty Symbols

> By the time the station was finally abandoned in 2000, its degeneration into a disgusting orbital stinkbomb had become an open secret. In one particularly egregious incident in 1998, American astronauts discovered that dirty water globules—some of which were roughly the size of basketballs—were casually free-floating behind some of the station’s service panels. These gross liquid orbs, which were alternately brownish or cloudy white in color, had become miniature planets of activity for the opportunistic microbes that were attempting to commandeer Mir.

So, how does the ISS compare on the hygiene front? They did show some mold, but didn't really talk about it. If it's cleaner, what did the ISS do right and Mir do wrong?

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2007/11...

scroll down a bit, a picture description read like this:

Fungi on the ISS, growing on a panel where exercise clothes were hung to dry. "This is a good example of how biological contamination isn't an old problem or just specific to Mir," points out Mark Ott.

That's actually the mold I was referring to, but they don't really say much about the ISS besides that. Almost all of that article is about Mir.

>and Mir do wrong?

one of the main factors that affected Mir was that USSR and its economy had disintegrated and during the 199x Russian space agency (and related government R&D institutions and factories) employees were having even their small salaries delayed for months (so the ones who hadn't by the time left the industry for better pastures, had to do side employment/business just to survive), the hardware production on many military/space-industrial-complex factories stopped and whatever stockpile of parts available was sold into the others, non-space markets, like for scrap or precious metals. It came to the point that some parts delivered to Mir in the end of 199x were actually bought at a flea market.

I'd imagine one of the reasons that this happened is because of condensation behind the panels and a lack of knowledge on how to keep things clean when you're unable to ever exchange air with somewhere.

Thoughts on what they'd do to fix this in the ISS (all unconfirmed):

1. Service panels would be painted or coated with something to discourage or prevent condensation on the surface, thus preventing water build up.

2. Knowledge and use of cleaning supplies that won't leave a toxic atmosphere, thus allowing you to keep the microbial build up down. You can't use bleach or ammonia in a space station without killing people eventually.

3. More routine maintenance to catch these kinds of things. From what little I know MIR became less and less well maintained as it aged because of issues like you described. Avoiding that maintenance and cleaning would encourage the build up further accelerating the problem.

Since the ISS has been in constant use and expansion I've got to imagine that they've managed to solve the first two and just as a natural consequence the third must happen in order to keep the station functional for the crew. Might be a good set of questions to keep in mind the next time Chris Hadfield or another astronaut does an AMA on reddit.

Mundane looking stuff like this is probably the real challenge with long term missions like a Mars mission.

> American astronauts discovered that dirty water globules—some of which were roughly the size of basketballs—were casually free-floating behind some of the station’s service panels. These gross liquid orbs, which were alternately brownish or cloudy white in color

I was just putting my morning cup of coffee (Australia, 8.30AM) to my lips when I read that, luckily I managed to control my gag reaction and avert spilling it everywhere.

Mir was also rather neat in that it was mostly self-assembling: All big modules were built from TKS space craft and rendezvoused and docked fully automatically, with kosmonauts only required for the final touches. While it did limit available living space (as fraction of total volume), it's a much more flexible concept than requiring a Shuttle to haul up everything and dock it under human supervision. Maybe not for manned space stations, but e.g. long-range interplanetary probes could be launched in parts and self-assemble before departing for the outer solar system. (Anecdotally a few NASA engineers were itching do to that for decades, but with the US not having the necessary technology, it was always rejected.)

I think we should judge it by its budget. The same thing we admire on SpaceX and other companies.

Wiki says total cost was $4.2 billion over its lifetime (including development, assembly and orbital operation)

Accounting in high-profile USSR projects was often a joke and didn't represent the real cost.

It's just damn hard to evaluate how many hundreds of thousands people was working for aerospace industry and what would that cost in country with market economy. There also R&D costs that was at least partially included for ISS while they was almost secret in USSR and most of documents on it are still not declassified since it's all military R&D.

This make me think of story on why something like Saturn V can't be easily replicated as it's was work of so many engineers.

Speaking of Saturn V engineers, this may interest you,

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-04/16/f-1-moon-rock...

I readed it before, but thanks for posting it anyway since it's really interesting read. Decide to link sources I was referring to.

[1] http://amyshirateitel.com/2011/04/03/the-lost-art-of-the-sat...

[2] https://www.quora.com/How-did-we-lose-the-technology-to-go-t...

Peanuts! Not bad at all considering ISS cost of $35-$150 billion. NASA ISS budget is ~$1.5-3b per year.

It's hard to compare real costs considering huge part of USSR economy was working towards space projects and salaries aren't comparable.

If that's in 2016 dollars, that's the same as half of an Eastern Span of the (San Francisco) Bay Bridge.

> As the old Russian proverb goes: Арте́льный горшо́к гу́ще кипи́т, meaning the “an artel's pot boils denser.” The English equivalent is something along the lines of “many hands make light work.”

I'd translate it as "many hands lead to better result." Not easier to achieve, but better in quality.

Also, accent marks are never used with day-to-day words outside of primary school and dictionaries.

Most likely copy-paste from wikiquote or something similar.

Cool article. It also shows the abundance of problems potentially awaiting Mars settlers.

The whole thing sort of re-inforces by stereotype about Russians and Russian equipment. Though guys who build sturdy, robust and uncomfortable stuff with lots of small glitches. Russians seem very good at making practical, simple and cheap stuff that lasts a long time.

Americans always seem very good at making stuff comfy and sophisticated but American solutions often seem overly complicated and expensive. I like to think SpaceX took a lot of inspiration from the Russian way of doing things and combining it with American Silicon Valley spirit.

I read various articles about Mir and related topics on Wikipedia. The conclusion was that they had time to do far less experiments because of various problems. Because of the issues, some modules that were constructed for Mir, later formed the basis of ISS initial modules.

It's probably depends who writes such articles, someone born in the US, someone born in former Soviet Russia/CCCP or someone born in another country.

This is the most amazing Mir story I know. Dave Wolf and Anatoly Solovyev finished a spacewalk and were locked out by a faulty airlock. Radiolab has a tremendous recording of Dave Wolf recounting the experience.

http://www.radiolab.org/story/242184-dark-side-earth/

Just started reading Dragonfly: NASA And The Crisis Aboard Mir [http://www.amazon.com/Dragonfly-NASA-And-Crisis-Aboard/dp/08...]. It seems to be an interesting story about problems that plagued NASA and Russia in the 90s.

Cool. Inspired my to watch documents about Mir or ISS on TV (Youtube) this evening.

Can you recommend a good one about Mir? Thx

Sweet article :) But it doesn't mention that they made their own "vodka" (or whatever you'd call ethanol distilled from fermented mixed carbohydrates).

I enjoy reading articles like these for these reasons (in priority I might add): 1) I am and have been a space enthusiast since my first space shuttle Lego set 2) I am a big sci-fi fan 3) I am an Engineer 4) My dream is to go to / work in space and possibly other planets 5) I believe space and exploration can bring the human race together

What a useless HN link title

No, I think it summarizes the article rather well. What I'm not fully agreeing with is apparent emphasis on Mir shortcomings - a big part in the beginning of the article lists those problems which found during 15 years of service.

Mir was in large part for science - and it did that rather well. Along that, it also taught how humans can be working together, and how to build a long-term (from today's standpoint) station for space. And, teaching that, Mir shown a set of problems - fortunately without catastrophes.

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