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Comment by Magi604 | Hacker News Reader

Is this another potential OceanGate scenario (SpaceGate?), where one day the ISS just blasts apart suddenly and without warning and the occupants are ejected into the vacuum of space?

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There are of course potential failures, but not quite as violent as oceans gate. There is 1 atm of pressure difference between the inside and outside of the ISS. At titanic depths the pressure difference between inside and outside of the submarine was approximately 400 atm.

Thats why the ISS can have small leaks like this that are a problem but not catastrophic like they would be in a deep sea submarine.

The differences in engineers for space versus the ocean are fascinating. You'd think space stations and submarines would be interchangeable because they both deal with pressure differentials, right? Wrong. They'd fail in fascinatingly different ways within minutes or hours in the opposite environment

Professor Hubert Farnsworth: Dear Lord! That's over 150 atmospheres of pressure!

Fry: How many atmospheres can the ship withstand?

Professor Hubert Farnsworth: Well, it's a space ship, so I'd say anywhere between zero and one.

XKCD tackled that question in a video: https://youtu.be/EsUBRd1O2dU

There is 1 atm of pressure difference between the inside and outside of the ISS.

For comparison, a can of soda has around 2-3 atm depending on its temperature.

Zvezda has been leaking since 2019. That doesn't seem sudden and without warning to me. I imagine its going to continue to leak until the ISS is decommissioned.

The return of the leak was relatively sudden. They had done temporary fixes that brought stable pressure for a while, and when it reappeared, the leak jumped back to 1kg/day quickly.

OceansGate happened because they cut corners.

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