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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?"
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.
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.
What color does fungi and rust burn?
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
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.
Let's take a look:
MIR
Andromedia Strain
Makes you wonder just bit... :)
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Segmentation Fault ( core dumped )
A plane was de-flighted today, causing the de-functioning of over 100 passengers...
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.
It excludes things like drag, and other minimal effects. The main instability in the orbits results from the fact that not only the Earth is pulling on the satellite/station, but the moon, sun, and every other celestial body (to some degree) as well. This creates varying gravitational potentials which change depending on the positions of all the parties involved (Gravity is dependent on 1/r^2).
Now, the space junk just happens to be stuff that is in a relatively stable orbit. It may stay up for weeks, months or years depending on it's velocity and position relative to the earth. After it's orbit decays to a certain point it will either plummet to the earth or take off into space depending on how far it's initial orbit was from the earth. It's kind of funny, there are actually telecommunication satellites that went haywire and are now whipping around in the geosynchronous orbit range, requiring everyone to be on the lookout for possible collisions (small probability however).
There is actually an MIT lab that tracks most of the large debris using a radar telescope in conjunction with the defense department. Try tracking thousands of objects that are only a meter wide in the vast expanse of possible earth orbits!
The real problem with all of this junk is that it is nigh impossible to propagate the orbits. Since all these factors are subtle and accumulate over time it makes it quite a task to make proper orbit integrators. After you include the difficult to model drag effect of re-entry, it makes finding out where MIR is going to land a shot in the dark.
As for MIR's orbit, I believe it is in low earth orbit, and therefor it would also be moving around the Earth.
UBU