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Astronauts In Florida For Space Station Mission
Michael Holve writes: "It seems the ISS (International Space Station) is slipping 1.5 miles per week closer to Earth. Seven astronauts are set to use the Atlantis to push it 19 miles back out into space until mid-July, when the Zvezda module arrives, which was meant to keep the ISS in orbit and provide living quarters for three astronauts."
This brings to mind one thing: why didn't they put the proper modules up to maintain orbit first?
;)
It would have saved them time and money (and would have avoided an extra launch to reposition it)
Will we see any more stuff like this on the International Space Station? Or will they start using solely the metric system to prevent what happened on Mars?
US businesses that currently accept chip and PIN/signature
lets hope this doesnt crash like skylab. it would be a shame, because the tehcnology has developed so much since then. it would be further proof that our government is consufed as hell though...
One Two Three
:)
PUSH!
Hope they brought enough people to push it back into orbit
I was browsing around the various Shuttle sites and pictures from SpaceImaging last night... Man, hours of fun. There's quite a bit of information out there, and kind of brought me back to the days where one could get lost for HOURS, just mindlessly surfing and going, "oooh."
I'm wondering because I'm trying to imagine pushing anything that large 19 miles on Earth, and I can't.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
This would a a cool place to advertise.....hopefully they have some sort of agreement not to allow this. Maybe just have the country flags on it. Oh well, it might be just a small spec anyways. Wonder how many hunters will try shooting at it.
OK....now something relavent. Why don't all the astrnonauts in it just count to 3 and all run to one side. It works for tilting a school bus. Maybe there's some sort of internation confusion with it. "Do we run on three? Or is it 1, 2, 3, run?"
Basically, all the screens have been updated to make it easier to deal with and reduce the load on astronauts for other tasks.
Wonder if someone will port Linux to the Shuttle... ;>
Another cool thing about this mission is that Atlantis will have a new cockpit. They're replacing the cathode ray tubes and the gaugues with flat panel monitors. Makes the cockpit 75 pounds lighter and uses less power. Sposed to make it easier for them to recognize key functions, like altitude, velocity, the fact the windows crashed, etc.. They're going to be doing a bunch of repairs, replacing batteries, fans, fire extinguishors, smoke detectors, and air filters. The batteries have been failing one by one since they've been up there.
Yeah, I know about mass, but we're not pushing a planet, after all. Heh.
It sounds like they threw this whole mission together rather "seat of pants" style; with quotes like While crews normally train together for a year or more before launch, this crew was only finalized in mid-February.
The question: What happens if this thing fails? How long do we have until the hunk-o-metal crashes down into my living room? Do they have a backup plan? Am I psychotic for wondering these things?
-Jer
or haven't you heard? That was a bid deal back in the old days (~1997) when almost no one had heard of Linux.
--Lenny
1. They need to put in a little more "What If?" scenarios into the planning for just such situations, when the project doesn't go quite the right way or in the right order, especially when you are dealing with resources (other countries) that may fall behind.
2. It seems that one of the overriding goal of the ISS is more of the nature of world peace/cooperation, symbolically. The symbolism of the mission may be almost as important as its success, and I guess in that case, more allowance is made for things like slipped schedules?
3. In some ways, this "improvisational" mission to help the ISS from falling back into earth is really good because it exercises the space program to be more flexible and alert, especially in relation to #1, having to deal with other countries. It also makes space flight seem more routine, making it that much easier to imagine that space flight will become widely available (to everyone) within our lifetime. That'd be cool.
A: You get out and give it a push!
Q: Whet do you do when your space-statioon falls?
A: You get up there and give it push!
Doesn't Taco Bell have some sort of arrangement to run an ad down the side of an orbiter or something? Or is this just urban legend?
The international space-station is turning into one fabulous hack. Us software geeks should pay serious attention to the developments on the space-station not because it's "cool" or anything but because it represents one of the largest projects humanity has ever undertaken next to the construction of Operating Systems.
//
An old prof. at my U. loves to point out that MS Windows, the Great Pyramids, and the Great Wall, all share approximately equivalent numbers of person hours in them. So, he asks... what makes the great wall and the pyramids stand for centuries and Windows crash almost daily?
The answer is (according to my prof.) that by the time of the pyramids and the great wall, construction was a technology that humans were very familiar with. The project was huge but the tech was well known. Software and space-stations are brand-new, and therefore a certain amount of instability will be inherent in the project.
(* microsoft flame & linux chest-beating omitted *)
What intrests me in the space-station aside from the coolness factor are "patches" like the one posted in this article. NASA is slapping together a mission to prevent catastrophic falure of the project... its a hack. A quick and dirty fix until other team members get their act together. I've seen this millions of times in software-engineering projects.
Open-Source is an intriguing way of dealing with enourmous projects. I think that NASA could stand to learn a few lessons from OS development... as well as OS building from NASA. I find this an intriguing problem set... enormous projects in a short time with huge unknowns... and no one pays attention unless you make a mistake and blow something up.
BTW:
Anybody got numbers for the person hours spent on any given linux distro?
--// Hartsock
Live to Code, Code to Live!
Now I'm free.... free fallin'
I gotta remind myself to look on the shuttle pics when they're up to see if they're running Napster up there. Is copyright law interplanetary?
...they were going to run Linux and Windows on laptops for Email or some such thing.
What you may not know is that I am on the International Space Station. They have placed me here to keep me safe from my half klingon/half brother who will soon hatch from his human shell and consume the earth in its entirety.
You needn't fear, as using my top-notch Cuban Communist education, I have placed the ISS on a targeted trajectory with Havana.
On Friday April 28, at 0400, I will crash into the Cuban Capital Building, killing Fidel Castro and liberating the oppressed people of the once-free nation.
On impact, Castro's Beowulf Cluster of Quad G4 Boards running Linux will be destoryed, releasing Hianny from the conspiratorial Cuban mind control machine, thereby neutralizing the treat and making the world safe again.
Thank you.
As Shuttle astronauts scramble to keep the International Space Station up, a team of Nasa navigation engineers came out with some new findings that brings new urgency to the shuttle launch.
``We're incredibly happy to be here,'' said mission commander James Halsell, a colonel in the U.S. Air Force. ``It's our understanding the vehicle is in fine shape, but if it drifts any lower in it's orbit, it'll be whacked by Iridium salelites.''
An unnamed source close to the project said that a team of hackers calling themselves "Team Slashdot" have hacked the trajectory of the Iridium satleites and put them into the International Space Stations path.
When asked for comment, an unidentified slashdot team member said only: "first..post..grits..pants..natalie..taco". Crypygraphic experts from around the world are working on decoding the message to find it's hiden meaning.
___
The ISS is going to be fraught with problems like this. What really scares me is that these pieces were never fit togther on Earth. They just send them up there without knowing what will happen. Things can get stuck, jam, or just plain not fit.
Then, it would be really screwed.
Personally, I can't wait till NASA is disbanded, and all of this is privatized. Private companies can't afford to fuck up, so you never have this kind of incompetance. We'll all be a lot better off when it happens, and it is happening.
Same goes for the post office. Grrr.....
No comment at this time
Hmmm, I seem to remember getting out and pushing my VW Bug a few times... Hopefully this isn't a sign of things to come... ;>
Since the Space Station was started as an American project, it used customary units. By the time it became international, enough lots-of-fractions-unit stuff was designed that it stuck that way.
~~~LXT~~~
Life is like a computer program: anything that can't happen, will.
> The delay also gave ground crews time to repair
> on-board problems found during tests conducted
> on the launch pad. Repairs were made to systems
> that control the shuttle's rudder, flaps and
> brakes
I can see it now...
"ok, everyone fasten there seatbelts. We're going to land on a 45 degree angle from the run-way, our flaps are busted, so we'll be landing at aproximatly 300MPH (which will instantly evaporate our tires) and as a kicker, we have no breaks, so we expect to come to a complete stop somewhere in the middle of Phenix"
You're pretty much wrong. Most on-board computers are still about 20-25 years behind today's bleeding edge simply because NASA (and its sister agencies elsewhere) is really hesitant to bring in anything but the old, "tried and true" technology. What you really heard was probably that NASA's ground control has been switching to Linux en masse. Yes, that's right (been there, seen it). Not for the on-board stuff though. At least not for most of it. There have been a few press releases as to the otherwise, but it's not nearly as widespread as you seem to imply.
// zyqqh
I seem to remember an old spec that said that the shuttle had five redundant computers, and that they were of the 80286 variety. Anyone know more about this?
Last year under the US passed a law that US space stations can have adds on the sides, but they must not be visible from earth with the naked eye. At least on the modules that NASA is putting up, we won't be going outside and seeing Coca-Cola and Microsoft comming up in the night sky, that's a strange thought, isn't it?
--Josh
There are exactly 42,935,718 letter sized sheets in a square mile.
Maybe Mir's commercialization will bring the needed money for Russia to continue participating in the ISS... or rather it might encourage them to forget the whole ISS business.
Seriously, what good are ads if only astronauts can see them? Space tourism is still a little ways away... (the recent Mir thing notwithstanding)
The phoenix is the "fire bird" after all... :>
hmmmm, happened again, NASA screwed up =/... nothing new really, remember the hubble? If i remember right, they put the lens on backwards? goes to show those intelligent NASA 'rocket scientists' Maybe they will get a clue, that we shouldnt be in space? Look at the apollo mission where during a practice or whatever, the guys inside died, because the 'rocket scientists' screwed the hatch up... What they need to do, when dealing with space 'living' is try and predict everything that can go wrong, even what they dont think can, like, aliens attacking, and have a back up plan, and have a back up for that, and so on.... so, they wont have to scramble up a crew and breifly train them, and call it 'improvising'
You're pretty much wrong.
n -announce/msg00043.html
Nope. I'm right. Check out:
Debian in Orbit on Space Shuttle!
http://www.debian.org/News/1997/19970708b
Debian Rides Space Shuttle!!
http://www.educ.umu.se/~bjorn/mhonarc-files/debia
Most on-board computers are still about 20-25 years behind today's bleeding edge
This I realize. I wasn't trying to imply that all of the space shuttle's computers are running Linux. They have, however, used linux on some of their experimental computers, as the above articles mention.
What you really heard was probably that NASA's ground control has been switching to Linux en masse.
Nope, I remember what I heard, and a 5 second search on Google will back me up. I recall the news stories from the time, and it was quite a big deal for the community. Back in 1997, Linux was still pretty starved for mainstream acceptance, so NASA adopting Debian in even a very limited capacity was cause for celebration.
Actually, it's funny to think back to those days. Headlines would read things like "Mid-sized company X says something vaguely positive about Linux", or "Small government agency uses Linux in a few of their firewalls". These days we have headlines like "SGI donating their ultra-high-end journalling filesystem to Linux...to release under GPL". My how things have changed...
--Lenny
I think in the long run it might prove less expensive for it to have been a U.S. Space Station. Those extra shuttle flights and delays add up.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Don't hammer them so fast. This is uncharted teritory. It's not like they can say: "You know, we learned from the *last* International Space Station we need to have more contingency plans." This is a first. With every firsts comes a lot of learning.
NASA even has another module (yet another back up plan) that they've been threatening to put up if the russians s delay much longer.
Regarding you comments:"we shouldnt be in space?"
and man should use tools. .
and man shouldn't walk upright.
and man shouldn't explore the oceans.
and man shouldn't fly .
ect..ect..
___
and man shouldn't walk upright
I think I walked upright a few times. The last time was about a month or two ago when Slashdot hadn't posted anything interesting and I got up to go to the refrigarator for some more raw cookie dough and cough syrup
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
A NASA spokesmodel is rumored to have said that "Elian's rapidly increasing knowledge of international relations will be a valuable asset to this mission. Besides, if we can get him off the damn planet for awhile, perhaps we can return to normal, run of the mill day to day lunacy."
It's scheduled to arrive in mid-July. Read the article. ;>
You mean real life orbit decay is not like the movies where as soon as the engines of an orbiting space ship fail they have something like 2 minutes to correct the problem or burn and crash.
Is there anyway we can convince the media to run with the story like disaster is imminent?
Pump the drama, run the news
"New international space station in failing orbit without engines"
"Umpteen billion dollar space station left without engines, already falling to earth"
"No Scotty on board to save international space station in decaying orbit"
Or is it just that real life is boring compared to the movies.
In the long run it would be stupid to make it a U.S. space station. As another poster pointed out, the Russians have a great deal of experience which we need. That's a major factor that lead up to the incarnation of the ISS and is also why the Russians are making a critical piece of it.
America is NOT number one everywhere. Get used to it.
Or why not have made the module a part of hte station itself? Everyone that modules are slow and inefficient compared to something compiled directly to the kernel. I mean, it IS an essential component of operation. Sheesh, these NASA boys must run windows or something.
-------
CAIMLAS
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
I realize that they're probably already over budget so I figured that the least we could do was to help. Every person should send 1 roll of duct tape to the ISS team. The sooner the better.
I know they'll appreciate it, you do too. After all, Apollo 13 would've either burned up in the sun or gone the way of Voyager without it!
Don't delay, send 'em a roll today!!!
...of touchy-feely politics getting in the way of science.
Why does this have to be an international space station? Because some idiots up on the Hill and the State Department thought that it would "foster better international relations" or "develop cooperation between cultures". As if running science experiments or lofting up multiton modules had anything to do with either goal.
What this really points to is that Someone (be it NASA administration, Congress, or the Executive Branch) needs to get their head out of the '70s protest movement. "Make Science Not War" sounds pretty fscking stupid when it's costing taxpayers tens of millions of dollars in overlapping work and delays.
Cost: Lots of lost money, time, and equipment.
Benefit: Putting in space some extranationals whose countries don't have the resources by themselves to build their own space station.
Is it just me, or is the US getting absolutely zip out of this deal? I mean, by letting these other countries in on the project, do we gain leverage in global trade disputes, the Security Council, strategic arms treaties, or conflict negotiations?
NASA needs to learn a lesson from the corporate world: never outsource for materiel you can produce unless your own resources are tied up elsewhere. The words "faster, better, cheaper" will never be associated with the word "international".
telnet://bbs.ufies.org
Trade Wars Lives
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
A code changes to Debian are submitted or accepted once every 13 seconds to 7 minutes. (depending on the time of day) Source: Debian Weekly News - March 28th
Linux kernel (version 2.2.13) has just under 2 million lines of code in it. And remember that each line of code has probably been changed at least once. Plus 2.4.x has lots of new code in it. And I'm not counting all of the software you would get with a average Linux distribution...
I think that the law was written that way so that space tourism wouldn't be restricted in the future. I'm not sure as to the actual wording of the law because I heard about it on Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell when Art was interviewing they guy from Space Island Group (see the link above) talking about plans to make a space station that could be a hotel in the short term.
--Josh
There are exactly 42,935,718 letter sized sheets in a square mile.
Past Russian 'expertise' in putting up living quarters was supposed to be tapped as a faster and cheaper way as opposed to just building the module ourselves. Gee, I guess that idea worked.
telnet://bbs.ufies.org
Trade Wars Lives
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
Free Elian? Free as in "Free Beer" or free as
in "Free Speech"?
If you haven't noticed Elian has been GPL'd for
months now. Everyone has been modifying Elian
to suit their own (political) needs and have been
distributing him Internationally.
BTW:
Is the Elian Distro being used in a DDoE
(Distributed Denial of Entertainment) attack?
I got up this morning and the Elian Channel
- All Elian! All the Time!! - was on every station.
I'm running Linux 2.2.0 on my TV. Is
there a patch out yet for this?
Disclaimer: I'm not an astronomy buff.
As much as I disagree with Perens in other areas, I don't think this is necessarily US centric. Russia may very well have the scientists and the engineering experience to design these things, but that is only one important element of the space program. They still need to manufacture. Unfortunately, manufacturing is largely a function of the economy. Not only does it cost billions, which Russia does not have, to produce these things under ideal conditions, but when Russia doesn't even have the stability or the economy for OTHER (as in the rest of the economy) production, it is going to be next to impossible to follow through on the plans. While Russia's economy under communist rule was piss poor, they were sufficiently stable and "wealthy" for such narrow objectives. Today, they are not. They lack to totalitarian rule to divert resources around arbitrarily. The limited infrastructures which they had built up are falling apart, or being torn down. For example, Moscow has had severe problems lately even keeping power lines up, because desperate people have been cutting down high power lines for the cabling (to sell presumably). Add to this problems with staffing, corruption, etc. It would be difficult to even build a modern automobile today (which is why you see very little investment of this kind in Russia), never mind spacecraft.
The bottom line is, that, if Russia can't follow through on their promises, it may very well cost as much much more be politic. That being said, there might be something to be said for this cooperation (e.g. promote pride amongst Russian people, promote mutual good will, etc.), even though it costs us more (in the short run?).
We all know why the government invaded that house...
What exactly would occur if this upcoming mission somehow fails to rectify the current situation? Maybe the space station would continue its rate of descent towards Earth and eventually collide with the planet or partially disintegrate, spreading its shards of metal alloys across the globe.
Hmm. Well, at least we will have a decent scapegoat if I am correct in my assumption of what shall take place.
Hint: Blame Canada!
Firstly, this is a project without a mission. Lets be realistic here - this project was mostly political - unite Russia and the US in a common scientific project. Instead, it has created divisions between the two nations as dollars and schedules slip.
Secondly, even most scientific reasons forst conjured up are no longer valid. Most experimentation regarding materials can no be done cheaper on earth, and less problematically.
Thirdly, hot since "Star Wars" in the eighties has any project wasted more money without any useful payoff. I regard payoff as being valid scientific progress and wonderment for the US public.
Now we come to the discouraging conclusion - our continued neglect of this boondoggle project is requiring expensive maintainence just to keep it at the status quo.
For these reasons and other I susect that they should simply let current segments burn up and maybe take another stab at this in twenty years or so, when it can be done cost-effectively (satellite launchings are pushing the envelope for lift technologies outside of the ISS effort), and with some valid purpose.
Getting Russia onboard in a meaningless, endless debacle of public spending is the best way to keep their rocket engineers from moving to the middle east or China.
Also, the Star Wars gravy train had dried up and left many military contractors hung out to dry, so the usual pork diet was lined up to keep them afloat too.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
The shuttle put them up there using the arm, it can just pluck them out of space and return with them the same way...
They can then be used for exhibit pieces at the Smithsonian. Heh.
Where's the green card!
But seriously, the childs father is responsible for ALL that happens to him.
It's a big word, 'RESPONSIBLE' but overlooked FAR too often.
Basic problem: space travel using chemical fuels just barely works. Nuclear-powered rockets are possible, but messy. That's why space travel hasn't progressed much in 30 years.
The ISS orbited us all
The ISS had a great fall
All the NASA Shuttles and all the NASA men,
couldn't put ISS together again.
Thank you,
Thank you very much.
You can't handle the truth.
This station behaves like Unix pipes behave
Long ago, Ken said:
"We should have some ways of connecting programs like garden hose--screw in another segment when it becomes when it becomes necessary to massage data in another way. This is the way of IO also."
Same thinking can be applied to other devices if they can be moduled, they should be able to be moduled in no matter what order, should be independent of each other but should be able to share (pass) information (and other mediums) to each other.
It makes perfect sence to build space stations in this manner, if you ever need extra module, just plug it in.
Too bad that the module responsible for supporting motion and control was not the first one up there.
You can't handle the truth.
If I wanted to spend $10 billion to "help out the rest of humanity", there are loads of charities desperately short of funds that would love a slice of the pie. As an intelligent, taxpaying US citizen, if I want to help people around the world, I'll write my representatives to allocate $10 billion to land mine removal (and believe me, the money is needed). If I wanted to employ some Russian nuclear physicists, I would spend $10 billion to build more particle accelerators and hire those scientists to work with them.
Being altruistic while meaning to be altruistic would be "noble". Being altruistic while trying (and doing a poor job because of it) to build a space station whose raison d'etre is to advance science and knowledge is getting your priorities mixed up. Putting extranationals in space does not help starving children in central Africa, it does not stop the civil conflict in Chechnya, and it does not help Chinese citizens fight repression of political and civil liberties. It's not "noble", "selfless", "far-sighted", or "cooperative" to waste money and effort making the space station international because nothing of substance gets done.
And just as a side topic, there have been nation-states in the past that have put away their self-interest for other causes. Nazi Germany genuinely believed it was doing humanity a favor by perpetuating genocide. The Vatican thought the Crusades was a humanitarian effort, too. Other nation-states have been less successful being "noble". Napoleon III indulged his nation in pursuing the moral authority of God; as a result, he led France in its decline from a superpower to being a sidenote in European affairs, as other nations (particularly Bismarck's Prussia) consistently victimized France and its "noble" worldview. If you want a more recent example of what happens when a nation sidesteps its own interest, see Exhibit A, US intervention in Somalia.
I am not arguing against helping other nations and states. What I am arguing for is for someone to get a head check and make sure that Helping Others and Our Interests coincide.
You speak as if this "culture of personal and national selfishness" is something new or unique to the US. Wake up and smell international politics, buddy. Or better yet, pick up a basic textbook in world history. It has never been and never will be otherwise, at least until fundamental human nature changes (which will be sometime after hell freezes over). That leaves the US with two choices - pretend it's otherwise, or deal with it.
telnet://bbs.ufies.org
Trade Wars Lives
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
If they had to boost it 1.5 miles for every week those russian's were late, they'd have to boost the damn thing what, 300+ miles?
I don't know if you meant to use the mailto: tag but the link doesn't seem to work anyways... So you should prolly learn how to use HTML "b4 you start posting dumbass crap."
nuff said biotch
We shouldn't be in space because of a mistake now and then? Then we shouldn't be driving cars, either, because you know how dangerous THAT is. Heck, I wish they had never invented the wheel.
Come on, surely you don't think that we should stay confined to this earth forever, when we have the ability to explore, just because it involves risks? And the astronauts KNOW the risks, and are willing to take them. And they go through a hell of a lot to prepare. Do you know how many people work to make each mission a success? Do you know the massive amount of simulations, training, software verification, etc., that goes into it? They DO "try and predict everything that can go wrong", and have a backup plan. But you can never know everything. They do the best they can, but they are only human, and mistakes will be made. That doesn't mean we should stop moving forward.
This thing was started in 1983 in Reagan's State of the Union Address. NASA quickly decided it was supposed to last for 30 years, create every kind of perfect crystal/drug/ball bearing/McGuffin possible, service satellites, be the gateway to Mars, have a crew of 8, 100 kilowatts of power and an equivalent amount of heat rejection (important and often overlooked by non-space geeks - space is the ultimate vacuum thermos that keeps heat in), a 300 foot truss that was going to have every kind of telescope pointed up and every kind of camera pointed down. It was supposed to be made from a couple of 42 foot modules (Lab and Hab (habitation)) linked in a racetrack via four corner nodes that were basically six sided docking ports. Supplies were going to be brought up (and trash down) in a 27 foot logistics module via the Shuttle. The thing was supposed to be in a 28 degree inclined orbit, where the shuttle can take a maximum amount of payload, and reboost was supposed to use excess water as propellant offloaded from the Shuttle's fuel cell system. The whole thing was to be inaugurated in 1992, Columbus' 500th anniversary for $8 billion dollars.
What a crock. And to think I got excited and wasted years of my life on this thing.
The "dream" has undergone reverse "mission creep" to where it isn't even worth doing anymore, but nobody has the guts to say that. Forget 4 nodes and two 47 foot modules and crew of 8 - they turned the 27 foot logistics module into a "lab" and are using one node (the one up there now) to hook it to Russian junk that couldn't pass a NASA safety review if its life depended on it. (Wait a minute - astronaut's lives DO depend on it!) With the 27 foot logistics module "reassigned" and the 47 foot modules "reconsidered", all supplies are to be delivered via Soyuz/Progress to the new 57 degree inclined orbit - max payload ability for Russian launches, but the Shuttle has to leave stuff at home and burn a hideous amount of extra fuel to get there. On the news they say "the shuttle delivered a ton of supplies" as if that were a big deal - the shuttle was supposed to deliver over TEN TONS of supplies per flight in the original orbit!!! Since resupply logistics are now the stranglehold on the project after the STUPID decision to move the station's orbit to allow Russian participation, there is going to be effectively NO science over the 10 (not 30) projected life.
And as far as reboost to overcome atmospheric drag goes, well gee, at the 57 degree orbit we can't afford to lift 100 KW of solar cells, so we can't support water electrolysis to obtain reboost propellant, so we can't use the Shuttle's fuel cell byproducts, so let's just take that water that cost $10,000 a pound to lift to this God-forsaken orbit, bring it all back to Earth, and open a spigot after landing to let it drain out on to a concrete runway at Kennedy Space Center. Instead, let's change the reboost fuel to hydrazine and fly it up as part of the resupply weight budget (already reduced by a factor of ten, remember)! Who cares if the highly toxic exhaust freezes all over the exterior of the space station and sticks to an astronaut's space suit during a space walk and kills the crew when it vaporizes back in the crew modules after the spacewalk? The crew is only 3 now, not 8.
NASA has been working on Space Station for almost 20 years now as an officially sanctioned project and it is a criminal embarassment as to how little engineering has been accomplished in the past and how little science will be accomplished in the future. The cost overrun is beyond comprehesion over the past 20 years and is deliberately obscured by NASA by always referring to the overrun from the last rebudget exercise, not the beginning of the project.
Worst of all, it bodes terribly for our future in space. This millstone around our neck will soak up all of our energies for the next decade until we deorbit the thing into the Pacific with a sigh of relief. Only then will we start thinking seriously about a moonbase / Mars mission that will stay put and grow with each pound we launch to it instead of continually slip down into a firey re-entry and destruction unless we send up an equal mass of reboost propellant every year to fart away.
When I was a kid, I watched Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon and thought I could set foot on Mars - or at least some American my age would. But if NASA manages a moonbase or Mars mission the same way they've done Space Station, I'll be in my grave before another human sets foot on another world again. And she probably won't even be American. D'oh!
Reading your post has been extremely educational. From time to time slashdot posts really are valuable - yours is one of those gems.
May I suggest you search for a different information source? Personally I've only listened to the guy for entertainment value. You might want to take anything you hear on the program with a grain of salt (so to speak).
Then again, if you haven't figured that out already...
I ate my sig.
I have yet to see a first post that contains anything worthwile to read. Perhaps the first post should invariably be omitted when these message boards are created.
...
Just my insane rambling for ya.
-- Bandit450...If-Else-Do-*TWITCH*!
NASA admits that 17,000mph is needed for space-travel around the earth! NASA admits that 15,000mph is - NOT YET - reached by a human being! So space-travel is- NOT YET - possible... http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Lab/1917/pr oof1.html
SpaceflightNow.com has tons of info on everything that flies into space. For example, you can also read about the status of a launch to place another GPS bird in orbit here. The link for that shuttle flight also has lots of info on the 'hack' they did to the shuttle while it was on the pad to replace a hydraulics unit (first time they've ever attempted that).
If I remember the storyline, it was CSM and his "pals" who saw to it that Kennedy was killed, and some other nasty stuff... The space program, it is real. For there to be some conspiracy, that means that throught the cold war, the USSR (these days Russia and all the former SSRs) and the USA would have had to be secretly in cahoots with each other, which I seriously doubt. But as it is right now, there is not enough funding for space travel and exploration. I suspect it's the same corruption in most public agencies (the people in charge using the budget on themselves). It's time to form an international space organization, whether or not under the UN banner. Anyways, maybe it's time to move towards a united world government... But first, we would have to bring down the corrupt and evil regimes that are in control right now.
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Is this sig off topic?
Chris 'coldacid' Charabaruk Meldstar Entertainment
Actually, there's been a TREMENDOUS amount of planning that has gone into this project. (After all, they had 20 years of space station plans laying around before they got greenlighted for ISS!)
... who cares? They CAN'T say anything.
... say ... probes to Mars that don't crash and burn.
The problem lies not with planning, not even with NASA, but in the fact that ISS is a foreign-policy tool intended to help the Russians keep their technical class employed and explicitly NOT selling nukes to Iraq. All other considerations are really secondary. As for your points:
1. What-Ifs? NASA has made detailed consideration of the what-ifs, but they are bound here not by the technically feasible but by the politically possible. It was suspected years ago that the Russians might fail to launch their module, but NASA was prevented again and again from doing anything about it by the political ramifications of embarrassing the Russians.
2. Slipped schedules are practically CAUSED by the diplomatic requirements of the mission. Since NASA delivered a plan that had the Russians as a critical mission component, which is exactly what Congress did NOT want but what the Clinton administration DID, the Russians were in the catbird seat as far as schedule. Slip slip slip
3. You're right about the improvisational nature here, except that the people going had already trained for a FULL 2A mission, now they will merely do part of what they had trained for. Space flight is less routine this year than in any year since Return to Flight, with just 4 or maybe 5 missions, mainly because post-Challenger, the shuttle was (sensibly) stripped of its satellite-launch mission; and now, with ISS, it has become pretty much the ISS van line. From a space science standpoint, this is an enormous waste of money and resources that could be better spent on
Don't look to NASA to provide that ride to space. Look at the new launch concepts being developed (www.rotaryrocket.com, www.kistler.com) and what they might achieve in reduced launch costs. This is the way that the average joe might get to space one day.
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