International Space Station upset more serious than first reported

Okay, the Russian module docks with the ISS, and one of its thrusters accidentally fires and runs until it's out of fuel. Now what? Does each thruster have its own dedicated fuel supply? Can fuel be transferred from other thrusters? If the thruster can't be refueled, what effect will the loss of power from that thruster have on the module's re-entry? More space junk or a spectacular, blazing re-entry?
 
Capngrog said:
Okay, the Russian module docks with the ISS, and one of its thrusters accidentally fires and runs until it's out of fuel. Now what? Does each thruster have its own dedicated fuel supply? Can fuel be transferred from other thrusters? If the thruster can't be refueled, what effect will the loss of power from that thruster have on the module's re-entry? More space junk or a spectacular, blazing re-entry?
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I assume the module has its own fuel supply, or one that the crew isolated when the problem started.

Not sure what was intended for it...whether it was intended to be a permanent addition, or detached and deorbited. I'm assuming it's permanent; otherwise, they'd have to have included autonomous flight control within it. If so, the fuel tanks are probably designed to be topped off. I don't know if the Station has a common propellant tank that is shared between the various modules. I kind of suspect not. But there probably is a system to add propellant to the various tanks.

An interesting issue is whether the thruster problem (supposedly software) can be corrected. Adding the module to the Station changed its center of mass, and I assume the thruster on the module was intended to compensate for that. Without the thruster, orbital control will be a tad less efficient.

Ron Wanttaja
 
I'm reading the Shuttle, Houston mission control book by Paul Dye and the thrusters are separate to make sure if one fails it doesn't take down the whole thing. At least on the Shuttle. The rear rockets could be cross fed, but those are important to get back home so that's an obvious decision. There was debate during the design stage to bring the fuel forward from the rear rockets to the thrusters in the nose, but they decided against the leak potential and weight. KISS principle.
 
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