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From this answer I learned that the International Space Station has over 900m3 of pressurized volume. However, the same answer points out that the inhabitable volume is under 400m3. It seems odd to me that so much space is kept pressurized when there's no chance of crew being there, if I understand "inhabitable" correctly.

If these areas are pressurized, what makes them uninhabitable? If these areas are uninhabitable, why are they pressurized?

Kamil Drakari
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1 Answers1

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At least some of it is because of equipment against the walls that eats up space.

The modules (US side at least) are cylinders, round on the outside, but when you look at images from the station you will notice it looks very square on the inside.

From the inside of the module's walls there are racks on the various sides, that are round against the outside, flat on the front, for equipment, storage, experiments, etc.

Need to track down some good pictures to explain that. Commenter provided one for Columbus, the ESA module.

ESA Columbus cut away

A great document from a commenter about the design of the nodes and modules is in this PDF.

x29a
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geoffc
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    While this does explain a lot, I don't know if it's the whole story. Inscribing a square in a circle would result in uninhabitable volume being around 60% as much as inhabitable volume. However, the actual volume numbers show 140% instead. – Kamil Drakari Feb 20 '18 at 15:07
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    I agree it is not the whole story. Probably short answer is 'equipment inside habitable space' in total. I just offered the probably largest component of equipment. – geoffc Feb 20 '18 at 15:12
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    your estimate would be true if the corners of the square touched the circle, however that would make the depth of the racks ridiculously shallow at the edges. If instead you make the sides of the square about half the diameter, you get the racks and space to run ducts. http://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/2001/07/Cut-away_view_of_the_Columbus_Laboratory –  Feb 20 '18 at 15:55
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    The purpose of ISS is to maximize the volume of (/for) science - the living space (along with storage, life support and infrastructure) is just an overhead, a necessary sacrifice of volume better spent on scientific equipment, preferably minimized. Skylab had an excessive amount of useless living space - a huge empty middle that served no purpose, – SF. Feb 20 '18 at 17:03
  • Columbus uses the same rack specification as the American segments, and was launched in the same payload bay. Even if there had been no design collaboration those two constraints will have produced virtually the same design cross-section –  Feb 20 '18 at 17:21
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    Several elements of the different concepts were integrated by Man-Systems to develop the configuration that would ultimately be built. (fig 17) –  Feb 20 '18 at 17:29
  • @JCRM Added in both your contributions. You are welcome to edit it an as well if you find another good example. – geoffc Feb 20 '18 at 17:37
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    That cross-sectional diagram definitely helped me understand how the ratio happened, and @SF. made a good point that "large habitable area" is an unfortunate constraint rather than the inherent goal. – Kamil Drakari Feb 20 '18 at 19:40
  • @KamilDrakari on the image you can see that the free space is about 1/4 to 1/3 of the cylinder – J_rite Feb 21 '18 at 11:54