At around 10 pm Eastern Time on November 8th, which is around 11am Beijing time on November 9th, the four astronauts on the International Space Station were riding the Endeavor of the Space X company. It took eight hours for the spacecraft to return safely from the space station. These eight hours were thrilling for the technicians, because there was a malfunction in the spacecraft. What was the malfunction? The toilet is broken, and there is a leakage problem in the spacecraft toilet.
This glitch first occurred in September. At that time, the all-civilian space mission team composed of four civilians encountered this problem when they took off on the Inspiration 4 spacecraft. In fact, Isaacman once said that when the spacecraft was lifted off and throughout the flight, there was an alarm in the toilet fan system. The fan system of the toilet is used to create a vacuum environment. Because human excrement in a weightless environment cannot flow to the storage device by gravity, a fan must be used to create a negative pressure vacuum environment so that the excrement can be pumped out. into this storage container. The fan alarmed at that time, but no abnormality was found. Although the alarm sounded, no actual leakage in the cabin space was found by observing the toilet, so it was not taken seriously.
However, after the spacecraft returned to the ground, ground technicians discovered the essence of the problem when they dismantled the spacecraft for inspection. There was urine leakage under the cabin floor, which was ultimately attributed to a crack in the toilet urine collection pipe. It was found that the connection between the two sections of pipeline was debonded. We can understand that the two sections of pipeline are pasted with glue. There is no problem with the bonding itself. There are many good adhesives that can stick it together. , but I am afraid that there is a lack of consideration on whether this adhesive can still be reliable in the space environment and how long it can be reliable. This problem was later believed to exist on all Space
The first two times the Dragon spacecraft returned to Earth, one took more than ten hours and the other took six hours. In other words, it will probably take almost as long for the four astronauts on the International Space Station to return to Earth this time. So what should we do? The toilet must no longer be used, because if the urine is really leaking, there will be some equipment and electrical appliances under the floor. Once certain circuits are corroded, it may cause greater trouble, so the toilet must be Deactivate.
The space station has its own toilet. When astronauts are in the space station, they can still use the toilet to solve personal problems, but once they get on the spacecraft and prepare to return to the ground, what should they do if there is no toilet available for a few hours? The four astronauts could only use backup measures. Wearing diapers, from current baby diapers to adult diapers, can guarantee that you will have no problems for a few hours, but this is not a long-term solution after all. This time the four astronauts on the International Space Station adopted this method.
In fact, it is not an uncommon problem for toilets to malfunction, or for some technical malfunctions to occur on spacecraft, because human engineering technology is always likely to fail in certain environments. Sometimes we encounter some troubles, but the real problem is that as a commercial company like SpaceX becomes bigger and more prosperous in its aerospace business, it will inevitably encounter more technical challenges. For example, in the toilet we saw this time, it is not a big problem to connect the collection pipe with glue, but this connection is in a vacuum environment, under changes in temperature, pressure, and pressure. Can it still work effectively for a long time under the vibration environment caused by the vibration? This is a new topic faced by technicians, and as the business scope of Space Environmental practice to test. Only in this way can we ensure that human spacecraft systems are generally at a safe level. Therefore, although the toilet problem does not seem serious, it actually provides a small warning to human aerospace technology, that is, in aerospace , especially in the field of manned space engineering, no problem can be ignored.