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Mir Likely To Be Deorbited [Updated]
Decibel writes: "It seems that Mir's fungal infection is soon to be the least of its problems. Unless $7-10 million can be raised in the next few days, Mir will be de-orbited some time after its 15-year anniversary in February 2001. MirCorp has been financing the operation of the outpost since the Russian government abandoned it last year, but they've run out of money as well. To make matters worse, unless the russian government (or someone else) comes up with $60 million to make two final missions to Mir, it will be an uncontrolled reentry. Of course, if any of that fungus survives reentry, it could be a moot point anyway. :)" But what about the Destination Mir teevee show?! Surely NBC has 7 or 10 million to toss in the pot, considering they've already paid more than that for rights to the show.
[Updated 3 Oct 2000 21:30 GMT by timothy] funk_phenomenon writes: "To add another story to the Mir fire, James Cameron (the man who directed Terminator 2 and Titanic) is planning to stay on the space station. He has already undergone medical tests at the Russian Institute for Medical and Biological Problems and received a go ahead. Cameron went to see the Titanic and he made a movie; maybe he plans the same?"
then there will soon be a lot of pregnant nympho-voluptuous amazon women from space.. it's all one big plot. 3 years ago there was a terrible tragedy on venus, eradicating all males. the women reverted to their fungal state to migrate to earth. arrived on earth the first thing they do is attack each and every rubber in sight: no more condoms. (the pope rejoices) having crippled a large part of humanity's anticonceptional measures, they will then proceed to fuck each and every geek on this planet, creating much offspring of their race. Earth will be overrun in 3 weeks.
or maybe not..
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
*Breathe*...
Comrade M and I will calm down and then proceed to blow the Kremlin to bits with our Ion Cannon.
From Mir with Love!
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Thus Spake ComradePenguin
How tragic that NASA had to be subjected to the humiliation of Russia's having an operational international space station for the last 15 years! Now, if only we can expunge all memory of MIR, might be able to bilk, er, appropriate even more money for NASA's one, true and ONLY International Space Station!
Seastead this.
I havn't read the book in years, but I thought the implication was that the government was intentionally retrieving organisms from the upper atmosphere/space that no human would have immunity to.
-B
Great, now the whole mir will be bombarded by mirs of mir...
Most likely.
But maybe not. It may be a super fungus worse than an airborne flesh eating Ebola virus. We gotta burn Mir in space... and maybe the Cosmonauts too.
If it takes 7-10 million just to maintain the Mir from earth, there still going to need 30 million to send someone there(60,000,000 for 2 trips).
So why would someone sink 7-10mil into something thats going to need 30 more mill for use PLUS who knows how much for onboard repairs.
I hope someone can find away to keep the mir, but It's probably time to say good bye.
I wonder if on one of our already planned shuttle launches, we can make the changes neccesary to allow them to controll re-entry, or push it up to a really high orbit, just to see what the really long term effects of space will have on it. It could let us know what the space station is in for, then we can put preventitive measures in place. Who would of guessed there would be this kind of fungus problem 10 years ago?
well, besides Chriton.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
One of the long-standing complaints of the ISS consortium is how Energia and the Russian space agency have continued to support Mir while they have allowed deadlines for the ISS to slip. It would perhaps be advisable for the ISS to come up with the funds to de-orbit the facility--if for no other reason than because it'd be a cheap (only $60 mil) way to rid the program of a major distraction, and doing so would probably save them money in the long run.
UBU
Heck, I've had more advanced lifeforms evolve in my fridge and I live alone. I'll clean it when they demand equal rights.
It's worse than that: if the Russians don't keep making payments to the Inertial Bank, Isaac Newton is going to foreclose on Mir's kinetic energy, and then he's going to use its potential energy to pay off all of the other investors.
That's "Mr. Soulless Automaton" to you, Bub.
And kill the bacteria with an industrial version? Or a series: Mr. Clean goes to Mir! Mynn the Museless
Face it, people are stupid, and the internet is the place where they all meet.
Then you'd get sued by the Russians for taking apart the piece of spaceship that crashed into your house and writing drivers for it.
come for the naked robots, stay for the zombies
Maybe this would be an excellent opportunity for Desenex to do some advertising! They could send up a guy to fumigate the place with spray powder and then put a big banner outside. "Desenex saved MIR!"
That would rock
I'm on a chair.
Why not scrounge up a couple million, and make some scientists come up with a quick and dirty way to set Mir down on the Moon without breaking it too much. If they can set it down without breaking it, they will have shelter on the surface of the moon for future missions.
Also, that way, a part of history gets preserved forever, even if it does end up in a few pieces.
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What color does fungi and rust burn?
Am I the only one reminded of The Andromeda Strain when I read the Mir articles?
I say that we don't de-orbit Mir. I say that we launch a Progress freighter with really powerful retro-rockets and enough C4 to blow the Empire State Building in half. When Mir is more than 1 AU away from Earth, we blow that building-sized petri dish to smithereens!
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
VA Linux should buy MIR and raffle it off to someone who joins OSDN. They could paint it green and Geeks in Space could truly be Geeks _IN_ Space.
OT, but do you think the mold on MIR is from a leftover piece of Pizza Hut pizza?
then it comes to be that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel is just a freight train coming your way
overlay the entire earth with a giant grid. Let people buy different grid coord. for money and wherever it lands, that person gets all the cash!
Just like a giant game of Cow Pie Bingo! You know where they section off a football field, turn the cow loose.......nevermind.
Why not de-orbit the thing staright at the sun, maybe get some more data as it goes in.
:)
Or crash it into Mars, then maybe we WILL find life there..
Is that fungi internal or external? How would they deal with it? Or is that the main mission the astronauts are training for?
"Comarade Miyagi, are you sure this is really astronaut training?"
"Tat tat! I promise teach spacemanship, you promise obedience. Now, once again. Spray Lysol, wipe off. Spray Lysol, wipe off."
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
Learning to fly, Pink Floyd.
The subject line says it all
That's not bad, considering that only eight years ago, 10 rubles was worth 8 cents.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
Michael Crichton was launched into space by the CIA (go the CIA!) to plant a fungus ("plant" a fungus?) on MIR.
Hopefully they'll deorbit Crichton and release him into the goddamn atmosphere.* I sure am sick of his movie novels that open with a good premise, become amazingly predictable within two chapters, and dare you to read them all the way through the same way your buddies in college dared you to drink an entire bottle of ketchup.
* Bonus points for reference-catching.
--
The shareholder is always right.
Which meaning of "MIR" do you mean?
Mir--peace
Mir--world
=P
I think the point is that if they can't meet the deadline for financing a take down, it'll just reenter on it's own. If they do have the money to plan a controlled reentry, then all is well in the world. It's not like it will die anytime soon, obviously they expect it to survive till 2001. Oh, wait. That aint too far off :)
treke
The objective is to be voted out before your entire body is eaten away, or you explode in a gigantic fireball, when Mir smashes into the Earth's atmosphere.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Here's an idea: have Mir take out an Iridium satellite or two on its way down. Sorta two birds (so to speak) with one stone.
Like you said -- read the article on the fungus. It was mutating and is no longer just terrestrial.
--
Infuriate left and right
Here's the link to sign-up and win your trip to the jolly green sattelite. NBCi Win a trip to Mir.
Network television leading the way for getting civilians in space.
Mir means both "world" and "peace" in Russian (hence "War and Peace" may have been better translated as "War and the World").
I have to hand it to them; nothing is more peaceful than the fiery enferno incurred by reentering the atmosphere of one's namesake.
-- Anne Marie
Instead of a show where the winner gets sent to Mir, how about having one (especially for those of us who hate these kinds of 'fad' shows) where people are stuck all over the world in Mir's projected descent ring, with the loser having to stand outside with a catcher's mitt?
Better yet, since they seem so concerned by the ratings, and most of us hate them, why not populate the projected path with executives from TV networks and advertising agencies? I'd sit down to watch, hell, I'd even *pay* good money to see *that*!
Basically, the atmosphere gets thinner the higher up you go, but it never disappears entirely. At Mir's altitude, it's nearly not there, but there's still enough drag to make a difference. We're not talking like an airplane, where the engine must go constantly, but more like a minor boost once a year or so.
Your physics professor was indeed talking about an ideal model. It's close enough to reality over a period of days or weeks, depending of course on how high you are (the recent Shuttle radar mapping mission was low enough that they had to boost every day!) but it doesn't hold forever.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
So why will not having cash in the bank tomorrow suddenly make it plunge into the atmosphere? Is someone going to unglug the extension cord to Earth? Are the space landlords going to evict them? Is galactic collections going to show up and reposses their oxy generation unit?
All spacecraft suffer orbital drag from gravitational and magnetic anomalies in the body they're orbiting, friction with the upper atmosphere/interstellar medium, solar flares...
Every "stable" orbit will eventually decay unless the orbiting body is captured by another one passing by. Skylab's orbit decayed in a relatively short time back in the 70s -- I think back then a lot of the mechanisms weren't well-understood. Many satellites carry maneuvering fuel to extend their orbital life, but they eventually run out of fuel and de-orbit as well. If a critical satellite is stranded in an orbit that's about to start reaching the fringes of the ionosphere, sometimes they send the Shuttle up to tow it back out.
Basically, Mir is out of gas and coasting to a stop, just as any vehicle would.
-- Old Man Kensey
They justified spending $240 million on a project to extend a 20 year old operating system just fine. What would be the problem with Mir? It does sound a lot like it's software counterpart..
.sig: Now legally binding!
Isn't anyone worried worried about the fungus mutating because of cosmic rays and causing a repeat of the blob when Mir crashes down. The blob was a documentary right?
- WeaselGod
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet turbines
I believe you're thinking of "A is for Andromeda"?
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
I'm much more concerned that the MIR will crash somewhere deep in the Florida swamps and that the vile space-fungus will mutate a harmless mild-mannered astronaut into a bloodthirsty, sinster guy-in-a-monster-suit, who will then embark on a killing rampage spreading death, destruction, and space-fungus all throughout the swamp. Because that's what happened in Dark Universe, the 1993 epic sci-fi classic whose gripping plot and breathtaking special effects give even Plan 9 from Outer Space a run for it's money. A chilling view of things to come....
========
Stephen C. VanDahm
Let's take a look:
MIR
Andromedia Strain
Makes you wonder just bit... :)
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Segmentation Fault ( core dumped )
Isn't there a bunch of space junk stuck in orbit? Why doesn't that drop through, too? Are those items further out?
I'm not trying to be a troll... I just never did "get it" w/orbital physics. A first semester physics teacher said the downward pull, plus the forward motion, translated to it staying up there forever. Was that an ideal model, not including drag, etc? Or is MIR in a fixed orbit, while those things are actually spinning about the Earth?
Episode 17 of that NBC show...
The winner is enjoying his days on MIR, eating stale freeze-dried sardines and tang.
Suddenly a face appears in the port on the door.
The door opens...
A gigantic fat man in a space suit enters. He removes his mask. And with a fake smile and a weary attempt at emphasis, the man yells:
"Boom! Tough-Actin' Tinactin!" followed by "Hey, are those sardines I smell?"
Eventually someone opens an air lock just to end it all in peace.
Fade to black.
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Let me give you the lowdown
Unlike the other stupid pap :)
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DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
1) Falling back to earth should kill any bacteria, fungus, virus or whatever else is on there. Perhaps a few prions or other proteines and organic matter might survive, forget about living organisms
2) The fungus was terrestrial anyway. How do you think it got there? Read the article on the fungus, they said most of it was penecillium and other common fungi.
The only reason that they are so much of a problem on mir is the enclosed atmosphere. They build up fast. remember....these are things that originally adapted to grow, and produce spores...enough spores to spread on earth. Now take all those spores from each generation of fungus...and keep them in a tight enclosed space....add some moisture in the air...very little competition for resources.
Of course, as a bonus....I wonder what the average inside temp is on the station...if its between 90-98F...the fungus will have a feild day.
Scientists here on earth believe that fungi are mutating into new species faster than they can be found and catergorized. After so many years in space, I would imagine their fungus have already mutated quite alot - add the excessive radiation - and it should be quite interesting.
I, for one, hope that they kept samples.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Astronauts visiting Mir de-swallowed their space-lunch when they smelled the Mir fungus.
They should use the last fuel in the thrusters to fly the mir to mars. This will go very slowly ofcourse. That's good, because the fungie will have time to slowly adapt to their coming habitat as the environtment on board will slowly change. And by the time humans will finally go to mars there will be a nice welcome of little martians that resemble Toad - that marioland guy.
"Enegia" -- the company that actually manages the MIR space station reported that they are NOT going to deorbit. Those with doubting minds and mad Russian skillz, check out http://www.gazeta.ru/lenta.shtml. Make sure you scroll down to 17:57 news.
Does that mean we all better go order large amounts of pillows from the internet? After all, if they can protect someone far out in Australia, then surely we can stop a giant flaming space station. :)
What... you mean that commercial WASN'T real? Darn, and I thought they wouldn't do that to us. Next you'll tell me that smoking and drinking really won't make me really cool and highly attractive...
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"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
A plane was de-flighted today, causing the de-functioning of over 100 passengers...
Sure, NBC has big bucks now, but when I'm a contestant on Destination Mir, the TV show,
and I come back and sue them for space-alien toe fungus disease, see how they laugh then!
(my company- provided insurance policy covers diseases I contract while traveling, but I wonder if they'd find a way out of that one!)
A host is a host from coast to coast, but no one uses a host that's close
Mission to Mir to kill fungus -- $25,000,000
Chemicals to kill fungus -- $100,000
Cost of services rendered to MirCorp for deorbiting Mir -- $250,000
Watching with insane joy as Mir falls from the sky and hits some unsuspecting person in the forehead, killing him instantly -- priceless.
For everything else, there's NASA.
Isn't there a bunch of space junk stuck in orbit? Why doesn't that drop through, too? Are those items further out?
There's all kinds of stuff out there, and a lot of it does drop to earth. Probably 99% of it burns up in the atmosphere (AHHH...The Atmosphere...AHHHH). Of the remaining stuff, most of it probably finds it's way into one of the oceans that make up 70% of the earths surface.
The problem with Mir is that it's of sufficient size that it probably would not totally burn up in the atmosphere, and an uncontrolled "de-orbit" would be just that: throw a dart to find out where it lands. Irony might suggest NBC studios as a possible crash site, but I digress...
Somebody had better warn Cameron before he visits next summer. Don't you hate it when you plan a vacation months in advance, and then your hotel gets deorbited?
MSK
Mir is not geostationary; it is at ~400 km; there is quite a bit of drag at such a low altitude.
So why will not having cash in the bank tomorrow suddenly make it plunge into the atmosphere? Is someone going to unglug the extension cord to Earth? Are the space landlords going to evict them? Is galactic collections going to show up and reposses their oxy generation unit?
So, instead of getting there by rocket, they'll get there by submarine. Though perhaps less glorious than space, the environments are equally dangerous. The slightest error will get you killed instantly.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
I mean, Mir crashing down onto Redmond, Washington, just has a strange sort of appeal to it, doesn't it?
Maybe we could hold a bake sale.
I'm glad to hear that thing will finally come down. Maybe now the Russian government will stop diverting US funds meant for building components of the ISS to keeping that floating rustbucket in orbit. I have no problem with them keeping Mir up except when they continually delayed putting up their part of the ISS because they were launching support missions for Mir. That's irresponsible and it pisses me off as a taxpayer to see money that went to the Russians for political reasons be wasted like that when the job would've been done on-time and on-budget if it had been picked up by a European or American aerospace company instead of being done as a Russian government operated project.
They should host a "Survivor" series on Mir. Imagine the consequences of being "expelled" from the "Island".....
Burn Hollywood Burn
You forgot that when Mir was first flown, the Russians were considered "enemy", so this may fall more under the act-of-war disclaimer. :)
What if MiR de-orbits, and the fungus survives, and attackes metals and plastics, and grows and adapts and eventually becomes nympho-vuluptuous naked amazon women?!?!?!
.sigs??
LET MIR DE-ORBIT!!!!
-- Don't you hate it when people comment on other people's
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
I don't understand why people are so concerned about MIR. Come on, it's old, it's been damaged, it's falling apart, and with this fungus thing it's probably a very unhealthy environment, too. So why not just "de-orbit" it? What is so great about it? Okay, it was the first somewhat permanent thing in "space" (ahem, earth orbit, barely outside of the atmosphere), but that doesn't mean it has to stay there forever and be used. We aren't using ENIACs any more at huge costs, just because it was the first ...
There is the ISS now, which is much more modern, bigger, better equipped, and it's operated by more than just one nation. So I really can't see the reason for keeping this old thing up there, wasting money and posing a threat to everybody working there.
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