LONDON: In space, no one can hear you scream. The clanging air conditioners, thumping compressors, overworked pumps and whining motors create so much noise that they drown out most of what an astronaut utters.

Spacemen cannot sleep or even hear commands as a result of this interplanetary cacophony. “What?” is the most common word spoken on the International Space Station. “It is not a healthy situation,” admitted Mike Engle, the orbiting laboratory’s acoustics integration manager. “Apart from astronauts losing precious sleep, there is now a real danger that one of them will mishear a colleague’s instruction and press an incorrect button — and that could have very unfortunate consequences.”

At its last review of the space station, Nasa officially rated its acoustic environment as “bad,” and warned that some astronauts are now suffering temporary deafness after their tours of duty. US and Russian engineers have launched a priority repair programme to find ways to bring some hush to the rumbling station and to dampen its 72-decibel roar: the equivalent of standing beside a busy motorway.

Or as Nasa engineer Jerry Goodman states in Scientific American, “Noise was one of those issues that never seemed to get much respect.”

The discovery that the space station is as noisy as a local council swimming pool on a bank holiday will shock many people. It is generally assumed that life 240 miles above Earth is a serene experience with astronauts floating around while gazing down on the planet to the sound of the “Blue Danube.” In fact, life in a ship that clangs like a tramp steamer is fairly miserable for astronauts. Most of their noise problems emanate from the very equipment needed to keep them alive.

The worst problems come from the craft’s Russian-built service module, where the pumps and motors are housed, and where sound soars over the 70 dB limit. Unfortunately, that is where two of the station’s three permanent astronauts have sleeping quarters. The third sleeps in the station’s American side, where life is closer to the 60 dB limit set by the US navy for its ships.

Russian and US engineers want to get the rest of the station as quiet as this. Acoustic dampers are being designed for each pump and motor in the Russian module and during the coming months these will be fitted by grateful astronauts.—Dawn/The Observer News Service.