New Analysis Video of the STS-75 Tether Incident , page 12

Originally posted by poet1b
reply to post by dragonridr

I tried to find more information about what happens to water in space, but there were always too many links talking about numerous other topics on the subject, that it was hard to find a link that describes what happens to water in outerspace. Here is the link with the best explanation I could find.

www.madsci.org...

I believe that your question really is -- If liquid water is suddenly
put into outer space, will it boil or freeze? The most correct answer is:
Both! If you check the scientific definitions of freezing and of boiling
you will find that what occurs can be interpreted as both. The
observations of the water released from the space shuttle show that it
both evaporates and freezes and that the resulting ice then quickly
sublimates (converts directly from the solid to the gas phase).

What this illustrates is that these ice crystals are very tiny. They are not droplet sized, they are molecular sized, and they form clouds. Most the space shuttles fuel is water, and every time it fires thrusters, it produces water vapor ice clouds, but those are being forced away from the shuttle. The water, dirt, and debri that was on the surface of the shuttle when it entered space is pulled away from the shuttle by the vacuum of space that wants to evenly distribute the molecules. This travels along with the shuttle for awhile, but as the shuttle accelerates to maintain orbit, and makes course corrections, this stuff falls away, and gets pulled back into the Earths gravity well. This means that after a few trips around the planet not much of this stuff is left, which is why you don't see it on the videos from the shuttle.

Thus, the water vapor crystal explanation really isn't valid at all.

Thanks for your independent research, that's the way to approach these puzzles. Kudos.

You have correctly noted that small particles of any size will drift away from the shuttle over a matter of minutes or tens of minutes. It has less to do with the shuttle firing its thrusters -- although that does happen and will cause the effect you suggest -- but with air drag. Tiny objects are more susceptible to drag and drop into lower, faster orbits very quickly -- like, tens of minutes.

Why the source says that only molecule-sized ice particles form is amystery to me. Videos of water dumps show snowflake-sized or even large sized pieces.

What you have overlooked is the episodic but continuous nature of fluid ejections from the shuttle, throughout its mission. This results in surges and dropoff of densities in its environment.

Also, it's not just water -- it also can be hydrazine, from rocket thruster leaks -- it freezes under conditions similar to H20.

It's also why it's important to know the timing of the 'NASA UFO' videos, to compare the event to potentially causitive activities that create higher-than-average particle feeds.

Note that posters of 'NASA UFO videos' almost NEVER provide the date/time of the source of the video. They thus make it next to impossible to develop prosaic explanations -- perhaps their intent in withholding this information.