It's time to talk about sabotage: Where did the hole in the "Union" come from

An emergency in near-earth orbit is increasingly beginning to acquire a detective coloring. On the night of August 30, the ISS crew discovered an air leak on board the station. The search for traces of micrometeorite hit gave an unexpected result. Instead of "microcracks", the astronauts found a round hole in the side of one of the compartments, apparently made by a drill ...


As reported from the ISS, the hole in the hull was made and then covered with glue, which after shrunk and fell off, forming a hole through which air leakage from the orbital station began. It is estimated that for a complete loss of the atmosphere it would take about 18 days, i.e. for the international crew, the danger of immediate death was not an emergency. As if in a joke, the Russian astronaut guessed to plug a hole in his finger.



However, what are the image losses of our country from this incident? A hole in the case was discovered in the Soyuz MS-09 compartment of Russian manufacture. Consequently, the shadow of what happened falls on the domestic space industry. What are the most realistic versions at the moment? Officials said:



So, negligence?

In fact, given the critical state in which our industry is located, this is not surprising. Against the background of a decline in the authority of working professions in our country, it turned out that even in the most high-tech industries many young and inexperienced workers with a low working culture appeared. The country is partially saved from complete collapse by old specialists, people of pre-retirement age.

The result is logical. In 2013, the cargo Proton-M crashed with Glonass satellites on board. The country received damage of 5 billion rubles due to the fact that one "specialist" put the sensor upside down in the rocket, while the three controllers did not pay any attention to it. Fortunately, no one was hurt. In 2012, Deputy Prime Minister Rogozin called the situation in Russian space critical. Now he himself is the head of Roskosmos, but in fact the state of emergency of a cosmic scale continues. But there is a constant leapfrog with projects. Cosmonautics expert Ivan Moiseev calls a spade a spade:



In other words, the likelihood that a certain employee with a low production culture could make an unnecessary hole in the casing, and then, in order to avoid catching up with the boss, tried to hide his “jamb”, banally covering the hole with glue, is quite large. However, until the final conclusions of the expert commissions and investigators are received, the version of a possible sabotage has the right to exist.

What if the hole in the casing was specially made?

According to Dmitry Rogozin,



It turned out very “successfully” that the glue fell off, and depressurization occurred only two months after entering orbit. It is also “fortunate” that the size of the hole did not pose a danger to the death of the astronauts, however, the event became widely known throughout the world. In no way hinting at anything, it is worth recalling that the United States is now actively engaged in its own near-moon visited orbital station, giving it priority. The Donald Trump administration said that by 2025, Americans would cease funding the ISS at all. With a rich imagination, one can imagine how Uncle Sam orders a small hole in the ISS in order to discredit it as an effective international project, and Russia's role in it as an exclusive astronaut delivery on board.

However, the assumption of a low-skilled worker, whose hands grow out of the wrong place, and who tried to cover up his “jamb”, looks more plausible. In any case, an emergency at the ISS should prompt the authorities to reconsider their attitude to the domestic space industry.