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Good and Bad News
🕑 Added 2020-01-06 15:20:21 +0000 UTCGood news: The right hab module is 100% perfect. Tight as a drum, to where I'd even trust it at 1atm down to a depth of a couple feet. It's the nesting and recreation module. There's no food, water or litterbox in there, so it can remain permanently submerged. This is practice for the eventual permanent Megahab complex which is possible to disassemble and resurface if need be, but intended to remain on the bottom indefinitely, with only the small resupply module going to/from the surface periodially
Bad news: The left hab leaks from the gate valve. The bolts which hold the habitat shell to the ballast pods are now perfectly water tight so of course, a problem had to develop somewhere else. In this case because of two things: First, I used a 2 inch diameter hole saw to cut the hole in the habitat shell.
This is just slightly too large. The interior gasket which is suppose to seal the gate valve to the habitat shell just slips through. There's not enough of a "lip", This is a problem despite the generous silicone sealant I applied, since the gasket doesn't only seal against the habitat outer wall, it also seals in the other direction against the sliding gate valve door itself.
Without that pressure, water seeps in. It's a shame for such a small error to be so expensive to fix, but hamster safety comes first. I will not put a habitat I know to have problems into the water with an animal inside. It's curious that the left hab was perfectly watertight for so long and only manifested problems now, but I have an idea why that is.
This brings us to reason #2. There were long, deep horizontal scratches all along the sliding gate valve door. I believe them to be the result of silica gel granules becoming caught in the gate valve mechanism. I have mentioned this problem before as being one of many reasons why I would need to eliminate the silica gel as a general purpose substrate and replace it with coroplast floors.
I have since done so. The floors are now removable, hand washable coroplast pieces which easily pop out as needed. But it's too late for that gate valve, the damage was already done. Mark this down under "expensive lessons".
But necessary lessons, all the same. I needed to learn this now, with the aquarium habitats as a test bed, not with multiple Megahabs already in a lake, slowly taking on water, impossible to seal off from each other due to silica granules lodged in the gate valves.
Now is the time to make mistakes like that, so they don't happen later, when it's difficult or impossible to correct them. I am confident this approach is the one that will solve the problems. Coroplast floors and litter only in the litter box, which will be only in the easily removable resupply module.
I know I am trying your patience, but the Soviets rushed their space program with little concern for their pilots, and those pilots paid a steep price in many cases. NASA was comparatively as slow as a snail and, while it suffered a few tragic losses, they were far fewer compared even to the Soviet losses we know about. Imagine how many we never found out about because word never got to the west.
Everything will proceed at a pace which prioritizes the safety of the hamsters. Not to worry, I'll have the replacement habitat shell in the mail within a day or two. It should be short work affixing it to the salvaged ballast pods and the brand new replacement gate valve. Having finally perfected every last detail of the small format habitation module, knocking out a new one will be EZPZ.
With the silicone saturation method for sealing the hull penetrating bolts, and the correct hole diameter for the gate valve gasket this time (1.75 inches) this new left-side hab should be as perfect and rock-solid reliable as the right-side hab so far seems to be.
What's more, the lessons I learn here will make MegaHab and all future copies of it as safe and reliable as they possibly can be. You should settle for nothing less.
