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Houston, We have a Space Station!
This submission just came in:
flufffy writes: "Another module, the Russian Zvezda ("Star"), has just joined the two existing ISS modules up in orbit. The station is now plenty big enough to be seen from the Earth's surface. But where exactly should you look? NASA's SkyWatch, available here, shows you. After you've download the small 300k app., it asks you for your Lat/Long and the satellite you're interested in (including shuttle re-entries), before calculating when and where you can see it next. You can print out the data as a sky chart, with constellations marked! As the ISS seems to be around the equator at the moment, it's low in the southern sky for U.S. skywatchers. Still, the program showed me where to look to the south of Sagitarrius, at about 1 a.m. on the morning of July 26th. This is really cool, and will only get more fun as the ISS gets larger and more visible."
ISS is useless as a base for a telescope, because of the vibrations induced by machinery and people moving around. Similarly, it is useless for zero gravity experiments, for the same reason. As for all that contemplative stuff, try thinking in any environment where you need ear plugs.
Last time I went through the Hab module mock-up, the steel tubes that the ceiling was attached to had edges so sharp that you would cut your scalp open if you bumped into them with more than minimal force. And then there were the covers over the electric lights. They had no holes for air circulation. Great for cauterizing that scalp wound.
Could these details be fixed? Sure. But they point to a critical lack of attention to practical details, and that is something else.
Somebody moderate this up. This is slightly on topic - of flying things destined to go down in flames! :)
It amazes me that so many allegedly "educated" people have fallen so quickly and so hard for a fraudulent fabrication of such laughable proportions. The very idea that a gigantic ball of rock happens to orbit our planet, showing itself in neat, four-week cycles -- with the same side facing us all the time -- is ludicrous. Furthermore, it is an insult to common sense and a damnable affront to intellectual honesty and integrity. That people actually believe it is evidence that the liberals have wrested the last vestiges of control of our public school system from decent, God-fearing Americans (as if any further evidence was needed! Daddy's Roommate? God Almighty!)
Documentaries such as Enemy of the State have accurately portrayed the elaborate, byzantine network of surveillance satellites that the liberals have sent into space to spy on law-abiding Americans. Equipped with technology developed by Handgun Control, Inc., these satellites have the ability to detect firearms from hundreds of kilometers up. That's right, neighbors .. the next time you're out in the backyard exercising your Second Amendment rights, the liberals will see it! These satellites are sensitive enough to tell the difference between a Colt .45 and a .38 Special! And when they detect you with a firearm, their computers cross-reference the address to figure out your name, and then an enormous database housed at Berkeley is updated with information about you.
Of course, this all works fine during the day, but what about at night? Even the liberals can't control the rotation of the Earth to prevent nightfall from setting in (only Joshua was able to ask for that particular favor!) That's where the "moon" comes in. Powered by nuclear reactors, the "moon" is nothing more than an enormous balloon, emitting trillions of candlepower of gun-revealing light. Piloted by key members of the liberal community, the "moon" is strategically moved across the country, pointing out those who dare to make use of their God-given rights at night!
Yes, I know this probably sounds paranoid and preposterous, but consider this. Despite what the revisionist historians tell you, there is no mention of the "moon" anywhere in literature or historical documents -- anywhere -- before 1950. That is when it was initially launched. When President Josef Kennedy, at the State of the Union address, proclaimed "We choose to go to the moon", he may as well have said "We choose to go to the weather balloon." The subsequent faking of a "moon" landing on national TV was the first step in a long history of the erosion of our constitutional rights by leftists in this country. No longer can we hide from our government when the sun goes down.
If it disagrees with the Slashdot Party Line, it gets a down-mod, right? Right. Predictable. As predictable as gravity.
NASA is a dinosaur. They achieved some small things decades ago, but now they're a hopeless mess. Even many of the scientists involved share this view, and they've seen it up close.
NASA must not be treated as a sacred cown, immune to criticism. The only hope for improvement is if we openly and honestly admit our failings and attempt to remedy them.
Censorship is not the answer. Censorship only hides the problem temporarily. Is that what Richard Feynman was trying to do when he was on the Challenger review board? No. No, Feynman had the guts to find the facts and make them public. And it may have hurt at first, but in the long run it was good for NASA and good for space exploration because the truth is always worth hearing. Problems were fixed because of what Feynman did. They wanted him to shut up, but he did the right thing.
Will you follow his example?
From Space Station User's Guide:
Zarya's jets controlled the final minutes of the approach for docking, as the ISS closed on Zvezda at a glacial rate of two-tenths of a meter per second.
Did anyone else realise that this is about 10 miles an hour? Who'd like to park their car at that speed...
This sig left unintentionally blank.
That's all fine and good, but... Elementary chaos theory tells us that all robots will eventually turn against their masters and run amok in an orgy of blood and kicking and the biting with the metal teeth and the hurting and shoving...
Robots in Space makes for a bad movie. As interesting as space exploration is for people like you and me, it's too hard to justify the funding if John Q. Public is not interested.
ENDUT! HOCH HECH!
Don't laugh at duct tape, it's vital to any space mission.
I've been holding my breath on this since about 1988. 8(
Even with the Zarya-FGB-Unity assembly, there is still tons of potential problems, accidents and funding issues that could prevent the station from being useful in any way. This is aside from the "usefulness" issues that the baselined (current) ISS would have for science uses at assembly complete, like the less-than-exemplary microgravity environment it will have.
gigantino.tv - Heavy but weighs nothing.
Whoops. In my haste, I misnamed the station components...
gigantino.tv - Heavy but weighs nothing.
BTW, you have no concept of how the DoD is suppose to do budgeting.
Do you know about the NRO? How did they pay for their facility near Dulles?
COTS is good. BTW, COTS means cats on the stove.:)
This reminds me of the silly question "If nothing sticks to teflon, how do they get it to stick to the pan?"
Surely you don't mean that friction tape literally sticks to nothing but itself...
Do you?
And where do we get this stuff?
Tweet, tweet.
Dude, you have to look at the big picture. Considering that our current relative rate of travel through space is that of a snail, we need to know whether geraniums can grow in microgravity. Actually any plant food source that would be needed in space travel. This information is critical if we ever want to have successful extra-solar travel. So stop worrying about your money; you could stop spending it on buying a tee-shirt with a fancy name on in and invest into something to profit the future of mankind.
-Leo
The space station has, among its objectives, to develop *in space* the technology necesary to carry on bigger missions, like... going to Mars. Although Mir has been of great help, we still need to figure out how to send humans on a 3-4(?) year long trip to our red neighbor.
:-)
Also, the space ship would be assembled there... or at least, we can make eperiments to determine which components/materials to use on it.
It's a great step, although it's just the beginning
Gerry -- #include "ea!.h"
I for one have been holding my breath since 1998.
I nominate michael to be one of the first astronauts on the station. He's been practicing since 1998!
Micro$oft(R) Windoze NT(TM)
(C) Copyright 1985-1996 Micro$oft Corp.
C:\>uptime
I espically love how it will be so loud in the thing, residents will have to wear earplugs! Great! Where do I sign up!
"Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion." - Jed Babbin
Actually, since most of this is overhead anyway, you wouldn't save anything by laying off half your staff--the cost of your employees would just go up to 700k$/employee or so.
9) obligatory "Civilization computer game coming to life" reference
7.) The "Description of what kind of Posts this article will be getting" karma-whore post.
Thank you, goodnight.
The best explanation I ever heard was the simplest.
When the gov buys a new airplane, ship, truck, whatever, they don't buy ten years worth of spare parts. Instead, they require that the supplier be able to produce same-quality spare parts for however long the original purchased item lasts.
To do this, vendors keep all of the manufacturing blueprints, documentation, assembly fixtures, test equipment etc., just so that ten years down the road, they can build a replacement left-handed widget thumper that is an absolute match for the original.
Problem is that to preserve all that documentation takes space. As in shelves and filing cabinets (capital equipment costs) in buildings (taxable real property) on land (taxable real estate) which must be monitored by security (employees). And all of these costs of keeping the part's documentation "alive" is a significant part of the high cost of spares.
It doesn't do any good to assume that, just because you can buy something today for $0.47, that you will be able to buy the identical part ten or fifteen years from now. And remember, the replacement parts must be identical. You can't go file-to-fit and paint-to-hide inside a nuclear submarine or a B-52.
Point is, it isn't so much that a hammer costs $45.00 as it is that an exact reproduction of a specially designed hammer of an exact weight with a specific length handle costs $45.00.
What is your alternative?
After World War II, we brought German rocket engineers to the US as much to keep them out of unfriendly hands as for any possible work they could do for us.
If the Russian rocket scientists weren't working toward the peaceful exploration of space (or at least paddling around the shallows), they would have to find work elsewhere. Do you expect that they would want to stop being rocket scientists and go learn to be men's room attendants or potato farmers? Much more likely that, if they couldn't work in a Russian rocket program, they would be working on enhancements to SCUDs in one of the deserts of the north Africa or the Middle East. Working for bosses who are comfortable with the idea of a significant portion of the planet earth glowing radioactively in the dark.
Let's be happy that they are practicing their profession in a peaceful and honorable manner.
It's not a matter of just letting Mir come down whenever it feels like. The planned is for a controlled lowering of orbit in stages followed by a deorbit burn. That way when it does come down, it'll be over a stretch of ocean which nobody uses.
" I'd rather have systematic (unmanned) infrastructure in space for exploration. "
Perhaps your ideal is somewhere closer to
the last two Mars landers that have never
been heard from....?
There is no point in exploring space for
robots.
Robots neither care nor need to go. We do.
At best robots are like the dog trotting beside the Conestoga wagon. Serveing no purpose EXCEPT
by accompaning humans.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
"And you know what, this sort of work doesn't need Billions of dollars worth of equipment to
do. Yet, in today's Russia, top notch scientists and mathemeticians are having a very hard time making a
decent living for their families.
A Billion dollars buys a lot of science if spent right."
Just what did you think the billion was spent on?
Less than $500 of scrap steel and plastic was
launched. The rest was spent here on earth.
Sometime science has to produce. This is production.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Im sorry, but your all wrong. ISS means It Still Sucks (too bad M$ named their server IIS). (*rimshot)
Mark Duell
The International Space Station is the first logical step in getting to mars and experimenting with better ways of space propulsion.
With that said, we need a "base station" where we can drop off boxes of Legos so the Lego Engineers won't have to bring fresh Legos everytime they go into space and experiment. :-)
By building a reusable infrastructure, this should reduce the cost of our space exploration.
actually gagarin was not the first man in space.
Russia put up alexander tupolev, son of 'the' tupolev who founded the tupolev design bureau about 3 days before gegarin. however, tupolev's orbiter landed in china, and the russians were embarrassed (this was at a time when china and russia were not getting along well. tupolev ended up spending several months in china.
the russians hurried up and popped gegarin up into space and when he landed in the right place, they publicized the hell out of it, while squashing the tupolev story.
this is all very nicely documented in a PBS documentary I saw about 3-4 months ago.
The difference between Theory and Practice is greater in Practice than in Theory.
gaffer's tape, (what we're talkig about here) is great for temporary things, it's great in fairly hot places, it's not so great for a good airtight seal, it's not good for leaving on for more then a month and DEFINITELY don't get corrosive chemicals near it. So in short, to be fully prepared for taping things you need both.
So source the raw materials from a moon based mining operation - it'd be a lot cheaper to get that into earth orbit - of course, then you have the cost of setting up a moon based mining operation but that would probably be a good end in itself ..
J
I am not a Frog. I am a Free Womble!
FIrst let me go into a bit about your thing against Russia: I should pioint out to you that we needed the soviets to help us with the aspects of space travel they simply do better and have more experience in. In fact that is why they had 2 components to build in this international project.
Ok now for unmanned space exploration: Maybe you never want to get off this rock and see the rest of the solar system/universe, but don't demand that everyone else has to like that idea (me included). I'd rather go out and see and explore myself, instead of being a couch patatao and watch a robot do it (espcailly when collecting that rock sample can take the robot an hour). It may make alot more financial sense right now, but in the future it will be much more efficent to simply do it ourselves...
we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
I just have one point to make. The ISS can be expanded to do some things that would greatly assist later space travel even of a robotic nature. Mostly because building space capable craft in space without any need for rocket assistance or need for the vheicle to be capable of travel in an atmosphere. Now admitedly until manufacturers of the parts build in orbit we do indeed need to ship the parts up one way or the otehr, but this doesn't have to continue if we have more permanent facilities in space in which to do so. The biggest gain is the second part about building a craft that doesn't need to enter an atmosphere.
The reason that is the case is because telepresence (aka robotic romote control) does nto work well at stellar ranges. For instance when we sent that probe to mars it took about 15 minutes for one instruction to be passed from earth to the robot. Now if we were to send a small 2 or 4 person crew and support vehicle to say mars that would hover overhead and allow the robots to be droped down form it to be our hands and feet this would reduce the majority of problems like having to have only one propulsion system for multiple probes of the surface and real time telepresence.
I see big gains form this, but not quite yet only because we haven't done enough from space. I blame this on one of the most well loved presidents in history for choosing to ignore the initial space station design and instead choosing to go to the moon immediately with no intermitent step.
we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
Actually, there were a *lot* of overpriced items being purchased by the military until fairly recently. Now the supply department(in the Navy, anyway) offers rewards to people who track down overpriced items in the system and find cost-effective replacements! My personal experience was a copper O-ring for a potable water valve. Because it was a potable water valve, the O-ring had to be certified lead-free. Thus the O-ring was about $45 for a 2" diameter copper ring. The exact same part (based on mfr part number, not MILSPEC and NSN/NIIN) for a fuel valve was $0.37.
Military procurement has advanced a long way recently since the government is consolidating, and also is allowing purchase of off-the-shelf equipment instead of writing 400-page MILSPECs and having all their crap custom-made just for them (and having a separate version for each branch of the service while they were at it).
gaff tape? never heard of it. Please enlighten us!
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Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
are you on crack?
2/10 meter = 20cm
20/2.54 = 7.87 inches per second
7.87*60*60 = 28332 inches per hour
28332/12/5280 = 0.447 approx. miles per hour
and no, I wouldn't park my car at that speed. about 5-7 mph is plenty.
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Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
hey, shut up and sit down you arrogant prick. rednecks like you make me ashamed to be an American.
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Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
You're right, socialism in and of itself doesn't work. But european governemnts are not socialist, either.
Have you ever even been to Europe, let alone lived there? I've lived in Germany for nearly a year, and while their government and society do have very liberal tendencies that might bother any good Republican, they are not socialist. Not as bad as Al Gore, at least.
As for Russia, I know and have spoken with many Russians about politics in the country. Overall, the country wants very much to have a working democratic free market society, however the transition from 80 years of communism is a *very* difficult one, and will take a very long time to complete. But believe me: they aren't dumb, and they are trying.
As for the computer systems in the space shuttle: give me one example of mid 70s computer technology that's modular? Furthermore, so what if the computers in the space shuttle are 20-25 years old? Why fix what's not broken?
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Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
yup, my favourite story was about the USA spending all that time and money developing a high tech non-leaky non gravity dependent ball point pen so their astronauts could write in space. Meanwhile the USSR gave their guys chinograph pencils and wipe clean tablets . teehee.
I think due to financial necessity as well as being smart the Russians are rather good at coming up with clever hacks rather than solving problems by throwing large amounts of money at their headaches. Anyhow, they've an awful lot more experience of long term space missions so it would be silly not to use that hard won wisdom.
Hey, we're all on the same planet so who gives a damn about this nationality nonsense anyway... I'm so glad we've got an international space station, let's just get the best people together and forget about checking their passports to see if they can come on board :-)
Someone's been waiting for this story to pop up for a while... :)
Is it just me, or do others also think that, every time a government gets anywhere further with manned exploration, they fumble the initiative? We could have been doing this sort of thing twenty years ago, but for the sudden lack of glamour that was driving Apollo. Then NASA spends billions and billions on the shuttle, which turned out not to fulfil any of the design objectives fully.
I'm not sure how we could have done better, though, since the alternative would be to open it up to private enterprise. Whoops - there goes public usefulness - they just want to screw you out of more money.
No, this is wrong, when you have to build a closed loop life support system to keep people on mars alive for 6 months, you learn alot about the environment here on earth, you learn alot about using nature for waste management. When you see that people in space undegro the same degradation that older people do on earth, you learn from that, and you learn that maybe theres a way to stop that degradation. manned spaceflight is important for spinoffs, you dont need a life support system for a robot. Ultimately people want to explore space because they want to go there themselvees and thats a good enough reason for me.
Watch if we don't get 400 comments on this one.
From the utterly-useless department:
Five days later, there's only 256 comments. (257, if you count this one.)
How many resources are wasted with completly useless things in the current "fun society" ? Nearly everything is useless (bungee jumping, talk shows, sex ;-) .... ) from a strictly logicaly view.
This is a troll right?
Right?
Wiwi
"I trust in my abilities,
Wiwi
"I trust in my abilities,
but I want more then they offer"
Until we take care of our problems on the ground, I don't understand why we're spending $60 billion on a space station.
Just my $0.02
You can tell how desparate they are by the number of time they use the word "innovate" in their press releases.
Actually, that brings up a question that I've been wondering about, but haven't known who to ask.
Granted, we've learned loads about the effects of microgravity from the sources you mention, but I've been wondering if that data tells the whole story. After all, Skylab and Mir weren't exactly palaces, so I wonder if the cramped quarters involved didn't skew the data just a little.
It can hardly be doubted that even here on Earth, living in small, cramped conditions with no access to wide open spaces, even if you do exercise, is hardly the same as having a fairly wide environment that you have to move about in, just look at your average /. poster. =)
But in all seriousness, does anyone believe that having some more space in, er, space would have some influence on the effects of microgravity? I'd really like to know.
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All generalizations are false.
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I like to watch.
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All generalizations are false.
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I like to watch.
I agree. Let us put our priorities straight and spend money on the things we really need: stealth fighters, air carriers, nuclear submarines, missile defence system. After all we need real world means to deal with real world problems. Who needs the Space Station, when American army is not yet ready to fight two wars at once!
" ...and the service missions account for only 2 or 3 out of the 80+ shuttle missions."
...political horse-trading that put John Glenn on the Space Shuttle... ...single septugenarian."
...I sincerely doubt we will learn anything truly new from the ISS in this [microgravity adaptation] regard."
what about all the knowledge gained by running a re-usable spacecraft program? what about all the commercial sattelites delivered, providing basic things like GPS, Long Distance telephone relays, DSS systems? I use all three of those examples nearly every day! with the exception of gps, which is only usefull when I go boating. The infrastructure of the US and the entire world has been developed wonderfully by those extra 80+ shuttle missions.
"
Space travel is not healthy. You dissolve in a matter of days, finding equilibrium with the forces on your body. muscle tone plummets, all the way down to your core, your heart. How many other septugenarians have we observed under those conditions? is that knowledge worthless? Besides the fact that mr. Glenn is a bonafide Hero, an accomplished statesman, and a leader amongst his peers, he is amazingly brave to have requested the mission. And so is Nasa, too, cause it would have been disasterous if he'd died up there.
"
Oh yeah? per my above mentioned comment, space travel is not healthy. but science and medicine research are healthy. There are years of tests, experimental treatments, equipment modifications and maturation left before space travel becomes even remotely tolerable for common folk.
And don't forget the zillions of zero-g experiments in medicine, material science, gravity/relativity, etc etc etc.
It's easy to be a skeptic.
Some astronauts visited my plant here at Boeing and guess what? They were giving out awards for outstanding engineers with little pieces of duct tape which were used on the Space Station. Pretty crazy, eh?
Hmmm...how can i really describe it? It's kinda fabric-ey, tears easily enough, it's really strong...It comes in a variety of colors, but black is the most common, since it's usually used to cover cables, either so that people don't trip, or to change the color of an otherwise very noticable cable onstage. Easy enough to get unstuck without WD-40.
We get to play with lots of cool stuff backstage...My latest discovery is friction tape, which sticks to nothing except itself...
--Colbey
I suppose it's not like Teflon, though. Nothing can stick to Teflon, they say. I'm just saying that friction tape can't stick to anything under its own power. That's not too special of a thing; neither can car keys, for instance.
Where do you get it? Theater supply stores, I suppose. I don't buy it, I just use the stuff.
--Colbey (who replies to his own threads too much)
The russians have the Metric System...when the English module get in orbit, that is really hard! ;) (sorry folks at Nasa you are doing a great job)
If I had those solar panels on my roof, I could tell the man to go shove his oil burning powerplant, ya know?
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
MoonOS ?
Actually, Americans *are* foreigners.
At least to 96% of the world's population.
I happen to agree with the original poster. The ISS is largely a waste of time and money. Here's an article that points out some of the gross mis-management of this project. I'm all for scientific research and expandning our knowledge of the universe but I would like to see it done more responsibly than NASA and it's contractors have done.
A bit off-topic here...
Skylab came down not too far from where I live and my dad has a piece of oxygen tank encased in perspex as a paperweight. Pretty cool souveneir I think. I was too young at the time to remember it.
If Skylab had of stayed up as long as Mir has, I wonder how much further ahead the space program would be...
--- Can i borrow your Clue-Stick(tm)? I need to go beat a few people with it...
Ok, I'll bite...
The Challenger disaster was a result of a management decision to save some money by removing the secondary o-ring on a seal. Although the primary o-ring had never failed before the engineers insisted that the secondary should stay.
A stupid decision was made by most likely a non-engineering type person, it killed 7 people and set the space program back by 5-10 years at least.
Most stupid decisions these days are all made to save money. Give NASA more money I say
--- Can i borrow your Clue-Stick(tm)? I need to go beat a few people with it...
That's just beacuse exploring the universe, and building a very ambitious project just doesn't capture eyeballs like yuppies on an island eating rats and being greedy, or Regis asking multiple-choice questions for insane ammounts of money...
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Soma: because a gramme is better than a damn.
One 'scientific benefit gained in the last 10 years of manned space flight' would be the knowledge of how to shape and prepare for the next 10 years of manned space flight. We can't just jump into space without experiencing it's difficulties, and knowing about what works and what doesn't.
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Soma: because a gramme is better than a damn.
That's kind of funny, but it's a good point. Most, if not all of the advancements in avation were the results of building a better weapon. Too bad we don't have a good cold war going to stimulate space programs ala the Apollo program.
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Soma: because a gramme is better than a damn.
Oh, I forgot one other thing. The US doesn't have a President with the balls to take the initiative with those sorts of programs.
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Soma: because a gramme is better than a damn.
Lemme guess...the russian word for 'shooting star' is 'MIR'?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Subj!
Every secretary using MSWord wastes enough resources
And yes, I've got to work in this !@#$ing Windows...
Every secretary using MSWord wastes enough resources
As it has been previously noted on Slashdot, Zvezda has a SPARC and NASA modules have 386. Can't tell much about NASA systems, but the Russian company MCST, which supplies SPARC systems for space and military needs, works closely with Sun and maintains SunOS source code. So on Zvezda it's probably some adapted version of SunOS. And on NASA I guess a QNX system. Can anyone clarify?
"And don't forget the ziilions of zero-g experiments in..."
I attended a conference discussing microgravity (note: not Zero-G; ISS experiences gravity ~10^-6 compared to Earth) and the scientists there had a very difficult time justifying the cost of ISS for microgravity experiments. It turns out that the gravity is not much better than they can get elsewhere. Elsewhere would be cheaper too if NASA wasn't subsidizing the hell out of ISS projects (For any people who want to put something into space, they should look into it...I believe the cheapest mission was on the order of $8000 for about a foot by foot by half foot box). Anyway, apparently ISS will have to manuever enough because of its orbit being so filled with crap and so close to other satellites that the gravity will not be very consistent. So I don't believe the zero-G experiments are worth the price on ISS.
"The infrastructure of the US and the entire world..."
I debate this point also. The shuttle is quite limited in its range and capacity. Launch vehicles of other sorts would likely have been much cheaper in most instances, if it had not been for NASA looking for other uses for the shuttle. They have subsidized many satellite launches; If they had not, any number of other launch vehicles probably would have offered cheaper access to space.
At least to most of the galaxy's population.
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Do ya feel happy-go-lucky, punk?
I still haven't heard a reasonable explanation as to what the space station is going to do. $20billion so far I've heard and nobody knows what to do with it.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
My brother is a programmer for TRW, and supposidly he was in a pool for people to go to the station once complete. He has gone through all the astronaut training, and is always at Cape Canaveral for a launch (if it deals with TRW). But this pool was created awhile ago. I don't know if NASA told all of its contractors to pick someone to go up as a "gift" for hard work, and then TRW has a pool for that person. Plus, my brother is getting up there in age, and I don't think that NASA is going to send "regular" people up anytime soon. So, I doubt that he is going to go. But it was great to tell people when I was younger!!! (Still didn't get chicks from it.)
Troy Davidson
"If I could wave my magic wand. I'd make everything alright."
Anyone else feel like they're playing Civilization?
- Justin
7) 10,000 lame trolls
8) 200 replies flaming vladinator
One future, two choices. Oppose them or let them destroy us.
Don't call people you don't know idiots. I'm Russian, I thought others could be interested in the translation. That's it.
http://dtum.livejournal.com
How come in the list of the most important achievements of the 20th century (American version) it has travel in space by American, and it completely ignores Uri Gagarin 1961? He was the first man in space, but no, Americans have to show their pride for nothing and try to bend the facts their way.
As for the money. Trust me, nobody in this world is giving money for free, and that money is not your money anyways, those are not your taxes. Don't you think America is getting something back out of this. How about having a cheap working force and an easy way to conduct/watch experiments, taking good ideas from others.
Go watch 'Gammo'
http://dtum.livejournal.com
Gagarin was no sham. What are you talking about? This whole thing happened, and it is a fact. It is unfortunate to see that Americans will try to come up with such ridiculous stuff rather then admit that somebody else could've done that better.
http://dtum.livejournal.com
-John
mir
Etymology: Russian
Date: 1877
: a village community in czarist Russia in which land was owned jointly but cultivated by individual families
zvezda
Translates directly to star.
Zarya
A city of north-central Nigeria south-southwest of Kano. It is a processing center in a cotton-growing region. Population, 267,300. This is not dawn as implied by our friend DigitalDragon.
Grammar nazi's conclusions:
If you search for zvezda at dictionary.com, then you will get over 2 MB of zip codes. That is not nice. DigitalDragon is also not nice for supplying false information.
Keeping
I was...thank you for the translation :-)
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
They need to find one young white-bred hick,
One hostile race-sensitive minority member,
A gay guy (or girl),
A successful male chauvinist young entrepreneur type,
And a wild and crazy bar chick.
Then we'll find out what happens when people stop being polite...and start being real. In space. With vaccuum toilets.
>but I bet landing humans on Mars would be an even
>bigger boost
Acctually this space station, and/or future space stations is a very important step towards putting men on Mars. It is far more efficent to launch the expedition to Mars from a space platform than from Cape Kennedy. Escaping the atmosphere costs alot of energy.
A probe to Venus would be very difficult to lift out of Earths gravity well. We'd almost have to build something that heavy in space - where could that take place? Why a space station, of course?
Not to nitpick, but the Soviet Union managed to send several Venera missions just fine without a space station. These probes had very limited lifetimes but I'm sure with todays technolgy we could probably do a lot better (the first one landed in 1970).
Why Space is Necessary - 1) Survival of the species. #1 potential cause of extinction is disease. Thus, we must send humans off into space, and far away, so that if Earth is wiped out, Humans continue. 2) Because we have to go there eventually. Best to get started as soon as possible, because there are so many things that experience can teach us. When we're faced with a real NEED for space in a few million years, having been there for a few million years instead of having been there for a few centuries will make all the difference.
Why hasn't anyone modded this up?
How sad, forutantly I know that most americans have a brain. Sorry, for responding to a troll, but I cant resist. IIRC the US government asked boeing to create a supersonic passanger airplane in the early 70's, they gave up a few years later. No other country in the world, apart from UK/France, and the ripped off concordski of the USSR, has broken the sound barrier with a passanger jet. Also in millions of miles over 30 years, concord has neevr had 1 accident, until yesterday. That *is* building a plane. I'm not going to mention US disasters (email me if you'd like a list, but clear out that hotmail account first) As for the internet, I am currently using something called the world wide web, invented by a brit, in switzerland, using a computer (which were developed by brits, in manchester - the real manchester), on a CRT developed by a brit. Oh, and you dont have to be rich to get an operation either.
No youre mistaken, you're mixing things up., The MOON landing was a sham, the space thing was real (and they orbited on the first go too)
I mean, so we have an international space station. Big freakin' deal. We've had space stations before -- remember the Skylab disaster? Okay, so this one is "international". That's nice; I suppose this can be a wonderful, useless symbol of how the world can come together and cooperate on building crap.
Seriously, what are we going to do with an international space station? NASA and Gremorg (sp) can conduct experiments to put on a show for the public, but I just don't see any good coming out of the ISS. Sure, it's a good PR boost for the space program, but I bet landing humans on Mars would be an even bigger boost. Let's put our tax dollars to work for something besides NASA's $200 doorknobs.
NO, Mir means "peace".
I'm in favor of space exploration as much as the next guy, but I can't believe that we're wasting so many resources on this useless thing. Robots are much more cost effective. I'd rather have systematic (unmanned) infrastructure in space for exploration.
Woo, that'll really stir up the populace. Manned spaceflight captures our imagination much more so than unmanned, even though unmanned is more scientifically effective. Also, continuing manned flight is the only way we'll ever get off of this rock.
It's one thing for the U.S.A. with its booming economy and basically working society, but Russia is a basket-case! Why are we wasting thousands of Russian minds on this inane task with absolutely no benefits to the Russian people or even to the state of human knowlege?
No benefits to human knowledge? Even with the Russian work on this, we don't know diddly crap about long-term spaceflight still. Sure, hanging around in low-earth orbit (LEO) ain't glorious, but there is much to be had.
And, when the science of this thing really gets going, I'm really geeked. I wish I could talk more about the payload we're helping to build, but I can't. (Gotta love those non-disclosure agreements.) Let me say that this could be pretty revolutionary, though . . .
--
<><
-- Geof F. Morris
mir means village community (this meaning is obsolete) or secular world (as opposed to clergy).
mir means peace.
mir and mir are homonyms (they weren't even homographs prior to 1918 spelling reform).
zarya means dawn in Russian, as DigitalDragon correctly states. It may mean something else in the language spoken in north-central Nigeria, whatever it is.
--
Please use Internet standards when posting to Internet forums. The standard encoding of Russian is KOI8-R, not this Windows shit.
--
Uhuh ... we've seen that with the recent "successes" of several Mars robots. There are inherent problems with both preprogramming or longdistance control of robots. At this moment in time we can't yet remove the human factor from the equation, so robots aren't a feasible option yet!
Reading your stuff gave me heart, perhaps you might like my stuff, if it seems to read a bit strange please understand I am only an amateur philosopher not a professional one. My work lives at. http://freespace.virgin.net/peter.turland/START.HT M
It's called an elephant's trunk whereas it is in fact, an elephant's nose, a nose by any other name would smell as sweet
It seems to me from reading your comment that you think that money is real, not a subjective manipulative technique to get human beings to do what ever they do not want to do.
Peter.
It's called an elephant's trunk whereas it is in fact, an elephant's nose, a nose by any other name would smell as sweet
Simple. The Russian economy is sucking ass right now. You've got a lot of hightly trained areospace engineers not being paid. The US is worried about ICBM technology falling into the hands of rogue nations. Now presented with the delimina of either paying the Russians to build a big orbiting can of people for no real purpose other than to furthering the "industry" of puting cans of people into orbit and some crap about "furthering international relations"; or have the Russians getting paid to put bombs on missles for everyone with 50 million dollars; which one do you the the US government would choose?
Fine, I'll grant you that that's a possible reason for all of this.
I fail to see why this is a bad thing? After all, as an American citizen (presumably), you'd be one of the recipients of said Russian-built, rogue-nation launched rockets.
So, ISS and Mir and whatnot keep this from happening. Cool. That's good science, and good effective use of public funds, imho. So what's the problem?
However, in this thread, I believe you may have missed my earlier point which is simply this:
Better men than you or I have argued *for* space, and we're going to space, and the ISS is being built, and it's happening. Any attempt at arguing against it is really just masturbation - economies will be built based on the science performed, experiments in human scientific endeavours will be conducted, and rogue terrorist anti-US nations will be prevented from using tired and hungry Russian space scientists to build missiles to attack the American heartland.
In which case, we should all be celebrating the long overdue launch and docking of Zvezda, and be happy that the ISS is under way.
The best minds of many nations have given us this gift, and we ought to be moderately appreciative...
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Well it's not really science now is it?
Umm, yes, it is.
Science exists to serve the needs of humanity, to allow continued growth and expansion, and to build a better world for future generations.
If science, at a banal level, in some way prevents wars from happening (and wars are, by their very nature, enhanced entropy of humanities efforts), then it is serving its purpose. It may not be glamorous, it may be very banal, but don't nag it. It's at the very *least* a rise, and one shouldn't argue about whether a rise is big enough or not.
As to your other point, I don't disagree that we, the common folks, should think about things that have already been decided for us, and you are 100% correct that it is extremely dangerous thinking, so I don't take it as a flame.
But there's a nuance to that, and that is fundamental human trust. In this particular context, extremely good minds have tackled the issues of human space exploration, from both a science/humanities perspective, as well as a political one (and in this case, that's a very important consideration), and decided that we should go ahead and build the ISS.
I simply request that my fellow peers here on Slashdot, those of us who have an interest in space, attempt to look further than the average knee-jerk reaction to space exploration would allow, and see that there are "greater good" considerations in the ISS space program that are not obvious when an analysis is done based on mass-media filtration of facts regarding the program...
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Good try, but in fact the govermetn did buy a $400 hammer. What the over hymp everything media never mentions is that this hammer is ment to be used in an explosive enviroment, and has to be made of a Gaurentied not to spark metal. Because of the nature of that particular enviroment $400 for the hammer is accually reasonable.
Just like the $200 toilet seat isn't what they use on most toilets, but there are a few toilets that need a special design (the space shuttle comes to mind - you need to fit men and women, be comfortable, keep waste in the toilet - all in zero g.)
However, I do think we need to be aware that it was a mistake.
Most of what we do in space is a mistake.
We need manned spaceflight - but we need MEANINGFUL manned spaceflight, planetary expeditions, colonies, that sort of thing, not just pointless shuttle flights designed to keep the budget for next year. I take that back - maybe we DO need to keep putting humans in space for no productive reason at all, because if we stop putting humans in space, the bureaucracy and apathy that drives (or fails to drive) our space program will pretty much guarantee that we will never return to space. Just like the moon.
~ radiographite: art by john shepard
The same could be said of *any* Slashdolt story, though.
:)
I shrug.
Heh.
No, I was thinking more along the lines of parabolas and figure-eights of the sort used to travel from one planetary body to another.
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" -Salvor Hardin
what about all the knowledge gained by running a re-usable spacecraft program? what about all the commercial sattelites delivered, providing basic things like GPS, Long Distance telephone relays, DSS systems? I use all three of those examples nearly every day! with the exception of gps, which is only usefull when I go boating. The infrastructure of the US and the entire world has been developed wonderfully by those extra 80+ shuttle missions.
I agree- our planetary satellite network is a wonderful thing. Imagine what it would have been like without the Space Shuttle getting in the way. Yes, you read that right. The Space Shuttle has been a tremendous detriment to the efficient deployment of satellite technology. The technology does exist, and has existed for quite some time, to put a satellite in orbit economically via unmanned booster rockets. NASA, however, made a definite descision to deliver payloads exclusively via the much more expensive and inefficient Space Shuttle, because they felt that only manned missions could command the necessary public support, despite the known economic and technological advantages of unmanned delivery. Thus, after the Challenger disaster, satellite and planetary probe launches just stopped, because there was no backup. Those wonderful systems you describe exist despite the Shuttle, not because of it.
Space travel is not healthy. You dissolve in a matter of days, finding equilibrium with the forces on your body. muscle tone plummets, all the way down to your core, your heart. How many other septugenarians have we observed under those conditions? is that knowledge worthless? Besides the fact that mr. Glenn is a bonafide Hero, an accomplished statesman, and a leader amongst his peers, he is amazingly brave to have requested the mission. And so is Nasa, too, cause it would have been disasterous if he'd died up there.
I am aware of the effects of microgravity on the human body. I am aware of the importance of understanding this phenomenon for the purposes of future space travel (note the word _travel_, as opposed to going in circles). However, I submit that, for the near future, the knowlegde gained from the Glenn mission is worthless, or nearly so- NASA has no plans to send septuaginarians to Mars, or indeed send them into space at all, unless they happen to be politically connected. The only worthwhile research in this area is on able-bodied adults of the sort likely to be engagin in space travel in the near future.
Even if you argue that the study of geriatric astonautics is worthwhile as pure science, which I can accept, the Glenn mission isn't science. Your question "How many other septugenarians have we observed under those conditions?" Is very apt. The answer, as you know, is "none." Even an 8th grader doing a science project can tell you that to be useful, an experiment must consist of more than one datum. Observations of a single subject are scientifically next to worthless. Your arguments as to the heroism and bravery of Glenn and NASA may or may not be true, but are entirely irrelevant.
And don't forget the zillions of zero-g experiments in medicine, material science, gravity/relativity, etc etc etc.
And never mind that most of them have earth-bound equivalents or are of dubious scientific import, or could be done just as well on the Shuttle. Again, I say show me the scientific results of the past 30 years of manned spaceflight, compared to the kinds of results similar amounts of money have produced in earthbound science. Ultimately, the clearest argument is the fact that no top-rate scientist in any field (who is not working on the ISS project) is willing to claim that the ISS is scientifically worthwhile, given the money spent.
It's easy to be a skeptic.
No, it's easy to be a believer. Take for example your claim about the "zillions of experiments" that could be done on ISS. Do you actually know of any, or did you just read that in the propaganda pieces NASA's been putting out (note, by the way, the lack of specific examples in their PR, because there are none). To be a skeptic you actually have to think for yourself. Until recently, I agreed with you, but the weight of evidence has forced me to take my new position. I would like to believe that the ISS is a scientific godsend and a triumph of the human spirit, but it just ain't so.
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" -Salvor Hardin
Let me preface this by saying that I am a huge fan of the space program in general terms.
The ISS is a huge waste of time, money, and national effort. After 3 decades of going in circles (literally) around the earth, the latest, greatest thing in space travel involves... going in more circles around the earth. The habitat is slightly larger, which I'm sure makes the astronauts very happy, and it's a nice, warm and fuzzy internationally cooperative project, but the fact is that it has no point, no purpose or meaning, from a scientific or even a human standpoint.
Everything that we could learn by going in circles, we have learned. Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Skylab, Soyuz, Mir, the Space Shuttle, and so on ad infinitum. Dozens of humans have orbited the earth thousands of times and spent countless man-hours on hundreds of projects and experiments, for decidedly marginal benefit. Early on, sure, we learned a lot, but the benefits have fallen off dramatically. Can you name one substantial scientific benefit gained in the last 10 years of manned space flight? The last 20? No fair citing something itself only relevant to space flight. No serious scientist argues that there will be more than marginal scientific benefit to the ISS, and most of what benefit there is could be realized by the Space Shuttle more cheaply.
Whereas many people see the glory of yet another semi-permanent human habitat in space, I see all the fleets of the Sojourners and Mars Rovers and planetary exploration robots (and perhaps manned flights) that could have been paid for with the billions being spent on this pointless propaganda piece. That one tiny battery-powered rover, the Sojourner, produced more meaningful science, and probably inspired more future scientists with the thrill of discovery, than 10 years of the Space Shuttle trips which the ISS is merely and elaboration of. And yet, NASA's Mars program is being substantially curtailed from its' already very limited budget, while billions of dollars are poured down the bottomless ISS pit.
The solar system is a spectacularly fascinating place. Any planetary scientist or astronomer could name a dozen extremely worthwhile space exploration projects that aren't getting worked on. How about taking a close look at Pluto, which we still know almost nothing about? How about a closer look at Europa, an excellent candidate for the presence of life? How about trying to land a probe on Venus capable of surviving more than a few hours?
With all of this astonishing diversity, and all of this incredible discovery waiting to happen, we are spending our time, energy, and money exploring the most throughoughly explored and utterly dull part of space- the part of it only a hundred miles above our heads.
For more info, I heartily reccomend Robert Park's excellent book, Voodoo Science.
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" -Salvor Hardin
So, ISS and Mir and whatnot keep [nuking the US] from happening. Cool. That's good science, and good effective use of public funds, imho. So what's the problem?
Well it's not really science now is it? And no I don't really have a problem with basically paying off Russian scientists. I just think we should be paying them to do something a little more constructive.
However, in this thread, I believe you may have missed my earlier point which is simply this:
Better men than you or I have argued *for* space, and we're going to space, and the ISS is being built, and it's happening. Any attempt at arguing against it is really just masturbation
Actually I did read that. I just decided to skip over it. But since you insist. I'll respond.
<flame>
That is EXTREMELY DANGEROUS thinking. Lots of things that are were either either incredibly Wrong or doomed for failure from the outset have been argued by "great minds". (I'll let you plug in your own favorite establishment supported debace/Generally_Acknolledged_Bad_Thing(tm).)
The fact that saying "someone else thought we should do it, so we should do it" illustrates a completely lack of critical thinking. All advances in civilization have their basis in questioning the status quo. The fact that you're arguing against questioning the reasoning, shows that you're not very strong in your convictions.
</flame>
There I said it.
Click Here. There is also some good information on when the other missions will take place, and what the other modules are going to be named.
"Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion." - Jed Babbin
What if, for instance, we used this as a platform to build a ship that didn't have to survive atmospheric contact? We could build something REALLY big from here, and use it to jog from here to Mars - or even to the asteroid belts. *I* for one would love to know what's out in those belts. They could be a PHENOMINAL source of raw materials for us. Just think how much water could be out there? We could latch onto a big big (think small moon sized) chunk of ice and slam it into Mars - viola! Instant water vapor for an atmosphere! There are other applications as well!
"Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion." - Jed Babbin
This reminds me of how the DOE labs do their accounting in terms of "Technical Staff Members" (TSMs). If I'm not mistaken, overhead costs are folded into the cost of an employee, so every employee winds up costing the organization ca. 300k$ to 400k$ irrespective of whether the employee is a journeyman welder or the leader of a nuclear weapons design team.
Space is probably about the only thing the Russians are good at, as an industrialized nation, right now....
You're forgetting oil and narcotics. But more importantly, unless a legitimate outlet is provided for all this rocket science, you'll start seeing more arms sales to rogue nations, and we don't need more of that at the moment.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
I'm in favor of space exploration as much as the next guy, but I can't believe that we're wasting so many resources on this useless thing.
How can you be for space exploration but against the ISS? This station could provide for an orbiting spacecraft manufacturing dock for possibly, *gasp* a manned mission to Mars.
Why are we wasting thousands of Russian minds on this inane task with absolutely no benefits to the Russian people or even to the state of human knowlege?
I'm looking at your mit.edu email address and shaking my head. While Russia isn't exactly one of the most ideal partners economically in this venture they have a lot of space program infrastructure, experience and knowledge that other countries simply do not. Thousands of experiemtns will be conducted on this ISS, are you going to tell me that every one of them will be useless and not bring us any valuable information about space at all? Also the afore-mentioned manufacturing capability, especially with the robotic arms the station will be equipt with. These will facillitate exploration (and I may be optimistic here, but even colonization) of the moon, mars, and other planets. With a viable orbiting space station these things just aren't possible.
-- iCEBaLM
Well, there's a lot of people saying "so what" to this news. Yes, the ISS is very late, and yes it's not a quantum leap, but it is the first steps towards permanent occupation of space.
It's good for the US, because we now have a permanent base in orbit. That means we can start testing the technologies for longer space flights that the shuttle couldn't. If we're going to go to Mars, we need to know more about reactions to weightlessness, micrometeroid protection, and other issues. The ISS also lets us increase the scientific workload in space - even a small telescope on the ISS would beat the best on Earth because of the freedom from atmospheric disortion and pollution. The ISS is the next logical step if we're to go anywhere in space.
Those who say that Russia is poor and shouldn't be in the space business - how many jobs does this create in the Russian aerospace field? You have engineers and scientists right down to toolmakers and welders who are employed because of this project. One of the few profitable things that the Russians have in their economy is aerospace. Energiya rocket boosters are very reliable and provide a considerable stream of income. The Russians are leading the charge in finding alternate sources of income, their lack of hard currency means that they have to search for outside investment. They're finding that by opening up things like Mir to commercial interests they may be able to keep it in orbit for a few years more. The Russians were the first to sell advertising in space - Pizza Hut had an ad on the booster that lifted Zvezda into orbit.
In the end, there are some very solid practical reasons why the ISS program is beneficial. Unlike most foreign aid we give to Russia, at least the ISS program creates jobs for Russians, as well as Americans. This attitude that anything related to scientific process steals resources away from the poor is completely wrong.
One NASA engineer from Houston said during the interview that NASA version of life support system would be big and expensive while Russian had some smart ways to achieve same results with less time and money.
As we all know the gamble didn't pan out so well due to the Russian economic crisis. Service Module was funded by Russian goverment instead of contracted by NASA (a.k.a. American Tax dollar), so when Russian economy hit bottom, Service Module got delayed by lack of fund (among other reasons).
Just contribute what I know since there are some people here a little uptight about Russian involvement, reminded me of certain Republican congressmen and senators.
--- You make things foolproof, and they'll find you a damn fool.
Two points here:
1 - HOW DARE YOU?! NASA is certainly not made up of useless engineers. They are world acknowledged leaders in several areas of space science. Rockwell and Boeing et al. are others in the states, and Ariane and all the others around also lead in some fields, but don't suggest that NASA engineers couldn't get jobs elsewhere.
2 - The Russian contribution to the ISS and space research in general isn't always in funds. They also have brains there (something that can't always be said of ACs) and Russian engineers can produce just as good technology as anyone else's. The atmospheric recycling tech that Russia has is waaay better than NASAs, simply because the Russians have been pushing extended stay space stations for so long. They know how to do that sort of thing.
....of the third millenium of mankind (give or take a few). Ten years after the Cold War. The ISS Project was a money hole given form. Its goal, to create a place where NASA could justify its budget and get on the nightly news while researching the effects of zero-G on Dandelions.
s tations.
It's a home away from home - for astronauts, cosmonauts and others who would be better off actually exploring.
Americans and Foreigners wrapped in two million, five hundred thousand tons of 386 workstations.
All Alone In The Night.
It can occasionally be a remotely interesting place, but it's our last, best hope for growing the most expensive geraniums the galaxy has ever seen.
This is the story of the first of the obsolete-by-the-time-they-are-done-10-years-late-
The year is 2000. The name of the place...The ISS
This was a parody of Babylon 5 (if you hadn't guessed already) which is Copyright © 1997 Warner Bros., Inc. All Rights Reserved. The origional work parodied was written by J. Michael Straczynski and can be found before every first season episode of B5.
This was done in good fun and is not an attempt at infringing on anyone's trademark's, etc, etc, etc.
great... attach a 5km tether to that puppy and lets drag it around like a motorhome. ;)
First AutoCAD Virus Found!
heres a link for real time location stats on the
ISS, Shuttle and Mir...
http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/temp/StationLoc.ht
-Shack
We do? We know that everybody who can survive astronaut-type training can handle a few months of it. We know now that more than a few months of it is bad for you; bones deteriorate. The people who flew on Skylab and Mir established that long ago. More data is nice, but not worth billions of dollars.
Incidentally, it's worth noting that the pretty color pictures of the space station with the earth in the background are fake, although they're presented as real. There's nothing up there in position to take those pictures. Those are rendered 3D models. The real pictures from the spacecraft camera used during docking don't show much, and they're black and white, so for PR purposes, fake images are used. Does this bother anybody?
But enough quibbling over typos. Notice some interesting things:
1) The Japanese module with a vacuum-exposed platform and separate arm for playing space chess.
2) The Brazilian Window Observation Research Facility (WORF), and its associated modules, the Main Operational Gyroscope Housing (MOGH), Developmental Utility Research-Associated System (DURAS), and Greenhouse Over-watch Room and Optional Nacelle (GOWRON)
Freedom: "I won't!"
this post is a testament to futility since no one will read it by now, but i just have to spill my guts over this... has anyone noticed how CNN and the likes make all the noise in the world when the US launches as much as a pebble to sub-orbital altitude, but when the russians do something like the first comercial manned space flight, or the picture perfect docking of a space statin module that due to many delays and lack of money was more likely to burn in the atmosphere rather than actually accomplish ALL objectives, flawlessly, on time (once launched of course), they barely mention it? every single news article for the past year on CNN regarding the module had at least 4 paragraphs saying how the russians were late but were pouring money to mir (and that's not even true if you look at the timeline) and how, if it crashed, blah blah. well it didn't and they barely have 2-3 paragraphs worth of news and only deserved a mention in headline news, not even a full report!!!!
There are two kinds of people in the world: Those with good memory.
Here is an interesting website:
Russian Space
http://dtum.livejournal.com
If we are Pizza Hut, then yeah, we are.
--
--
The geeks shall inherit the earth.
- vl
There is so much for the future of Russian economy to be gained from the space program, its not even funny
Practically all the benefits (spinoffs and otherwise) you are talking about from the "Space Program" can come from unmanned exploration work as well. Much of the added cost and complexity of manned projects like the "Space Station" comes from the practical need to get failure probability down to near zero. None of us wants one of our comrades to lose his life up there. Yet this added cost and complexity *has few if any practical spinoffs* on Earth.
Space is probably about the only thing the Russians are good at, as an industrialized nation, right now
From a scientific perspective, this is truly sad. Russia has produced absolutely brilliant contributions to humanity in lots of fields. In my own area of research (probability and information theory) Russians like Kolmogorov, Dobrusin, and Pinsker have done seminal work which has advanced the frontiers of human knowledge. And you know what, this sort of work doesn't need Billions of dollars worth of equipment to do. Yet, in today's Russia, top notch scientists and mathemeticians are having a very hard time making a decent living for their families.
I would much rather that my country (the USA) support Russian science in more cost effective ways than this Space Station monstrosity. A Billion dollars buys a lot of science if spent right.
I'm in favor of space exploration as
much as the next guy, but I can't believe
that we're wasting so many resources on
this useless thing. Robots are much more
cost effective. I'd rather have systematic
(unmanned) infrastructure in space for
exploration.
It's one thing for the U.S.A. with its
booming economy and basically working
society, but Russia is a basket-case!
Why are we wasting thousands of Russian
minds on this inane task with absolutely
no benefits to the Russian people or even
to the state of human knowlege?
One: Skylab fulfilled all it's mission directives, despite a severe mishap at the station's launch, not bad for being built from Apollo's leftovers.
:)
The ISS promises a good deal more immediate benefits to humanity than some foolhardy manned stunt to Mars. As far as the rest of your diatribe, unfortunately science simply hasn't caught up to Trek special effects. As for AI, well, the work is being done at it's own pace in several different approaches by different people, there's no need of an Apollo project for AI. (Personally, the last thing I want are HAL's popping up all over the place until we tame the bloody ATMs.
The most important thing about the station is that it'll actually be a full time space settlement. I didn't fully approve of the way it's being done now, but now that we've spent the money and the time, we might as well start making use of it.
You also need to get a more expansive understanding of progress. Progress seldom happens in big dramatic steps, usually even the most important things go unnoticed until much later. Anyone remember the big hoorah when packet switching was invented? Didn't think so.
Let's spend our money wisely. Let's develop our cislunar presence, enlarge Spacewatch, and learn to manage the junk we're leaving in orbit. As for Mars, there's much to do with unmanned flights before we go to the dangerous and expensive route of sending people.
--Colbey
Comment removed based on user account deletion
If anyone is curious, 'Zvezda' means 'Star' in Russian, 'Zarya' means 'Dawn'.
just my .02$
http://dtum.livejournal.com
BAH! I subscribe to the "Independence Day" scenario.
It all feeds into a manufactured perception that the DOD is incompetent. That way everyone (including the foreign powers) underestimates them.
Hell the mob has been doing it for years. Do you really think the little Italian restaurant really needs to replace all their platess every 6 months.
They'll be basically 6 kinds of replies to this story:
1) I still don't know why we're wasting money on {tech} when people in {place} are {mode of suffering agreed to be bad}. We should be worrying about solving our problems here on Earth!
2) This is the coolest thing ever! The most magnificent achievement since {primitive yet crucial tech}. It's the first step towards {cosmic achievement}, just like {author} predicted.
3) Imagine a Beowolf cluster of these!
4) I shrug. I am so underwhelmed. Millions and millions of {currency} wasted so we could put more trash in space. It will last less than {hyperbole of brevity} and be as useless as {hyperbole of futility}.
5) Look up these links here. Yeah, I need the karma.
6) Not bad for a Pizza Hut flight.
Fill in the {blanks} and permute at will. Add Microsoft bashing, MPAA/RIAA cursing, RMS, ESR, OpenSource zealotry. Simmer to a boil. Watch if we don't get 400 comments on this one.
THS
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THS
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"Poor girl looks as confused as a blind lesbian in a fish market." - Simon R. Green
- Infoart - my favorite;
- Multilex - slower but larger.
Do not slashdot them - I need 'em for my work. Do not try to enter transliterations of russian words (like Zvezda from Çâåçäà) there - this would not work. You can try english words however.Here's some translations:
If you want to see russian graphics in this message, ensure you read it in Cyrillic Windows-1251 encoding so what Xx looks like Õõ. (If you've got correct fonts.)
Every secretary using MSWord wastes enough resources
I'm sick of seeing this "$200 for a doorknob, $435 for a hammer" crap people spout about the government.
This is where those numbers really come from:
The government often pays for things to be beuilt by contract. Instead of listing every item and price on invoices or work orders or whatever the hell they are, they take the price of the entire contract and divide it by however many items there are. Thus, though a computer system on an F-16 may cost $10,000 and the special gold tempered cockpit glass may cost $50,000 per bubble, a hammer used by Lockheed Martin or General Dynamics (aren't they the same company now or something?) still only costs $15 or $20.
So, in other words, while we're paying $435 for a hammer, we're also paying $435 for the highly special radar scanning tip in the nose of the aircraft.
The Space Station User's Guide is a terrific resource on the entire space station (written and assembled by one of the engineers who worked on it BTW), including the live NASA TV broadcast of the docking.
And yes, I submitted this link this morning to Slashdot but it got rejected in favour of the Space.com link in this story - go figure.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid