It wouldn’t have to face up, it would have to face retrograde from the ISS orbit to bleed off velocity and allow it to fall. According to my interpretation of Wikipedia’s description of the Hohmann transfer which is the most efficient way to change orbits, you need -2081m/s change to drop from 420km to 415km. We can ignore the circularizing burn which would only be like 5m/s.
Calculating gas exit velocity through a hole is tricky, but we can do it by momentum shift. The entire 1000m^3 pressurized volume of 1atm air at a cozy 70F has a mass of around 1000kg. If we assume 1000kg is small compared to 440,000kg of the entire space station, we can do a simple m1v1 = m2v2 equation.
For the 440,000kg station to decelerate by 2081m/s, it would need to eject its entire pressurized atmosphere at a velocity of 915km/s or 2,048,000mph or 0.3% the speed of light.
So yeah, I don’t think a pressure leak is enough to do it.
Not to mention that the ISS already loses 2km/month due to drag in the thin atmosphere.
ryedaft@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
It’s almost two months old. People would probably have noticed by now if the sky was falling. Like, you can look at ISS from Earth.