"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
dakotatelephone...


Jeff Findley wrote:

ISS currently had many redundant systems and modules. With the US and
Russian segments, you have completely separate systems for life support.
Even if something catastrophic happened, it's not very likely to take out
both sets of life support systems.


Unless they close airtight hatches as they move from one module to the
next, one meter hit that blew a foot-wide hole in the thing is going to
vacuumate it in short order.

In a situation like that, Soyuz isn't likely to save you anyway. The
discussion is about the lunacy of requiring a "lifeboat" which takes the ISS
astronauts all the way back to "port" on the ground as opposed to a
"lifeboat" which would allow the astronauts to survive until rescued by a
shuttle.

Even if you were in a sealed-off module, it had better have spacesuits in
it if you want to get to the escape Soyuz.
Even a rescue Shuttle EVA would be a real problem...you'd have to
repressurize the station before you opened the door to the module they
were trapped in, or detach the module with them in it and return it to
Earth.

If a safe haven were a politically acceptable option, it would be relatively
inexpensive to provide suits (or maybe a couple of suits and several of the
old rescue balls) inside the safe haven module to handle this sort of
evacuation once the shuttle arrives. Developing what amounts to a US Soyuz
is extremely expensive by comparison.

Jeff
--
A clever person solves a problem.
A wise person avoids it. -- Einstein