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Russian Space Controllers Lose Contact With Mir (UPDATED)
Ben De Luca pointed out that CNN has a headline story about losing contact with the unmanned Mir space station. Hmmmm. So much for a "controlled descent." Update: 12/26 06:37 PM by T : Contact has been regained (thanks, Nennon) -- so, no Skylabs worries, yet.
I submitted this before there was even a page on CNN. *grumble*
Comics:
Sluggy.com - Poing!
Schlock Mercenary.
I have no idea how space stuff works, but couldn't they send up some kind of missile to blow Mir to pieces? If it's done right, all the parts might be small enough to burn up in the atmostphere, no?
A highly unstable space probe is being decomissioned. On its controlled re-entry burnup, it loses contact with the world. After awhile, contact is regained....
It was supposed to brun up entering the atmosphere
It didn't
And now its brought something with it...
Expect to see The MIR Incident out in theatres this summer!
If you think you know what the hell is going on you're probably full of shit. -- Robert Anton Wilson
If you think you know what the hell is going on you're probably full of shit. -- Robert Anton Wilson
jdube is who
But just think, Australia could create a whole industry selling (tons upon tons of) genuine pieces of MIR just like we did with skylab all those years ago.
According to CNN they lost it again after 7 minutes =(
ShadoWolf
Right now it looks like they are aiming at right NZ (read the Age -- see that 2000km east bit). Now I know the Kiwis and Russia have had problems in the past but I can't understand why Russia is resorting to killing sheep from space. There just isn't any call for it. Talk about being protective of the wool industry.
Besides if it accidently hits Oz, who will know about it? I think all the TV cameras have gone home after the Olympics.
"HAL. HAL! HAL damnit will you answer me!"
ok.. please don't hurt me.. I'll do anything you want, anything.. just tell me what to do.. I want you to punish me.
How we know is more important than what we know.
So is THAT why we had the solar eclipse on xmas! I really thought it was too soon to have yet another solar eclipse that was visible here in the states. Actually, I didn't even notice it. And I was out driving during the peak time.
End Of Line
Temporal Violation by Cpt J. T. Kirk.
The man is a menace.
Bah, I think it was the martians who nabbed it or destroyed it. We are since a long time back, at war with the martians, don't you people know that?
Full Contact has been re-established. According to NBC News and the following CNN article: http://www.cnn.com/2000/TECH/space/12/26/mir.conta ct.04/index.html
Not long ago it seems we had a problem on linking to ISS during one of the major events there.
Could that be because MPAA confused ISS and DeCSS and ordered Houston to remove all links to ISS from it's operation site?
(Ducking after a corny joke)
If you open yourself to the foo, You and foo become one.
How does a space program "lose contact" with a space station? Wait, duh. Better question. How does a space program regain contact with a space station?! I don't mean to be a pessimist, but if this thing is coming down and we can't control it, um, who's gonna get hit?
:)
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mrBlond
CowboyNeal for president!
"Hit any user to continue."
...I'll carry an umbrella with me, just in case... this thing is falling to pieces!
Buran is extremely close to the Shuttle in general design, although quite a few details are different. It had exactly one flight (unmanned) before the USSR ran out of money, so all the hardware has been mothballed (at best). One of the testbed spacecraft is now in Gorky Park, used as an amusement ride...
So you're correct in a way: The Russians don't have an active shuttle at the moment. But they do indeed have one.
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Politics is about making compromises. Religion isn't. --Michael Horton
It's more like every 90 minutes: it's in low earth orbit.
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Politics is about making compromises. Religion isn't. --Michael Horton
Sounds like a secondary plot for the movie. Could it graduate into a multipart movie series?
:)
What's this Submit thingy do?
The Burning of Mir!
Mir Mir Mir
what have yee become?
lifeless, dormant, useless
much like Iridium
Reeking of sweat
wiped from a brow
designed for Russians,
and not those American sows
At first a triumph
followed by fear
then liability
and fourth a sneer
from those pesky Americans
and their giant wallets
I longed for some Cold War
and the restrictions on mullet
for then surely we could of got mir2 out of the closet
But woe, this is not to be!!
and like Nero in the flames of Rome
a tear graces my cheek
as I lay down to bed hoping it won't land on me
BJB
The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him. --Robert Benchley
Come on guys, this will just be an oppurtunity to rig up some junk to be identified as MIR to crash into the Pacific. The real MIR will undergo some modifications and will continue to circle the Earth, but under the control of whomever the Russians sold it to.
HA!
That is funny
Just proves that they are going to kill us all, be it by lost nuke-suitcases or falling space stations... I wouldnt mind seeing another headline: "San Francisco Destroyed!", "Finialy, I knew that space thing would pay off" said one russian. Not that I want to die, but its along the lines of the french getting to kill germans via the concord crash....
"Not my manner of thinking but the manner of thinking of others has been the source of my unhappiness." - M
They continued, "and look at the patterns, dude, they're like huge fractal webs spun by the great light-spider! And it's moving, man, check it out!!!!!
Sounds like they're having a very merry Christmas in mission control...
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If the good lord had meant me to live in Los Angeles
Guess the fungus got 'em, eh?
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
Of course, now they are at story 4, which says they have full contact restored. The first time it only lasted seven minutes.
Even Slashdot wants to hide some things
HEHEHE they already got the link to the robots on the front page! (or is that what you're pointing out? :)
"Ummmm..."
[mircorp@mir] $ nohup ping -c 1000000000000 -s 65507 russiacontrol.mir > /dev/null &
:P
[mircorp@mir] $
[russia@mir] $ telnet mir
Trying mir...
telnet: Unable to connect to remote host: No route to host
You never know
Do you like German cars?
I know. My phrase was meant to mean, less than once every hour. Sorry for the confusion.
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BDOS ERR ON A:>
Now there had been some debate about whether to launch the ISS to the same orbit as Mir, for that very purpose. The Russians wanted to use some of Mir's newer modules, such as Priroda, as extra modules for the ISS. As far as I understand it, NASA refused because they did not want the possibility that anybody might see the ISS as a Russian station with American modules rather than a joint project or maybe the reverse.
No, the Russians could send up a Soyuz as planned, maybe a little earlier. If they can dock with an uncontrolled station.
Now, of course, it's not serious yet, but that's what everybody said would happen when they left it unmanned last year.
I am guessed that it would be there ben de luca
There are weird bald heads and Alien embryos. I am not kidding. It's way strange. Check it out at http://ooze.bloomnet.com/scarecrow/faces/
Weird, Yahoonews has changed the image to a different shot, I wonder if they are trying to cover something up? ;)
Well it seems that it is not the first time for this thing to happen. But it seems that this one was the longest. As far as I know such things happen very frequently in Space due to a whole series of events. Not long ago it seems we had a problem on linking to ISS during one of the major events there.
/. should be careful on stating these "so much for "controlled descent"". First note that Russia has two emergency crews ready for any case. And a ship to jump ASAP to Mir if anything serious happens. Besides Russians had already to deal with a major glitch. Salyut 7 once broke all communications. Cosmonauts met the station spinning in a weird way and with absolutely no power at all. What happened next was enough for a blockbuster. The guys started to spin their own ship to get in. They had to hammer the door as everything was covered with ice (think about kicking something without gravity). And they had to enter the station fully equipped as even air froze inside. They managed to put things back working and the station lived a few monthes more.
Anyway
So better to hold your breath... If something real wrong happens, you may see something costing 100 Holywood cheap SF films...
I found this on Yahoo! before seeing the CNN reference here.
Interesting that there's no update...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Sort of right. Originally the Russians didn't want the stations to be near each other because of communication problems - it takes 2+ hours for them to configure their communications facilities for each station, hence the stations need to be at least that far apart with more being better...
Less then a month before the launch of the first element, 'Russia' asked if it could put it closer to MIR (probably to bring over some modules - it would be cheaper for them and they don't have much money). Of course, the Russians that asked for this were ignoring the communication problem (it hadn't gone away) and weren't from the group who knew what it really took to run both MIR and IIS. The Russian space program is really a whole bunch of minor agencies and commerical entities all trying to get a bigger slice of a shrinking pie.
At least here in the most populated parts of europe, the orbital tracks dont go directly over any major cities until, well, tomorrow. Plenty of time to get drunk enough to forget about this :-)
I don't find this news to be particularly newsworthy, except it is a slow news day. The timing sounds like a ploy to grab a little extra publicity, and possibly gain some more funding to keep the station going for another six months or more. Mir will stay up for at least another couple of years given its current orbital decay. The problem is what happens when the gyros stop. Once the gyros stop, the station will start a slow tumble, which will make it that much harder to predict when and where it might fall.
Fully expect this to become a non-event once they try all the alternative frequencies and command procedures and get some kind of response. Maybe this little incident will spur them onto bringing the station down in February as planned, while they still have some control, and not sell out to greedy television shows and ego-centric millionaires.
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
Oh now that's totally boring. I know it's christmas guys and you're busy drinking nog and watching reruns of It's a Wonderful Life, but just grabbing the headline off CNN and posting it on Slashdot is sad! Surely somewhere there is a fair use right being trampled or maybe you can do a summary of all the evil that corporations have pulled off over the holidays.
How we know is more important than what we know.
well according to a BBC report it seems that things are not completely horrible. According :)
to the report the options include waiting for
contact to be made (they say that its not the first time that contact was lost) OR send a shuttle up to bring the space station down in a more controlled manner. One thing that was not mentioned was WHO would be sending up the shuttle ? US or Russia.... well if it is the US i am sure the movie to follow will be pretty damn cool... heck even if russians bring it down well the movie will still be pretty cool (one more chance for Tom Hanks to show us his skill
Non-Deterministic Finite Automata
Or at least that's what they say. Anybody remember the Kursk?
But for many years, Mir has stayed together, stayed serviceable, and provided a wealth of information to the scientific community. US astronauts shaking hands with Russian cosmonauts in a Russian craft 20 years ago would've been unheard of. Its nice to see that people have come together with a common goal and worked together to achieve it. Hopefully this progress will continue into this century. But I could write a long essay about peace and greed, so I'll save that for another day.
Mir, I salute you.
Amigori
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Why are politics so corrupt?
"The quality of life is determined by its activites."--Aristotle
It's a good thing they lost control of it. I hope it crashes into someone, just to teach those godless heathens a lesson pertaining to the realms they should be mucking with.
What next, robots that build themselves???
-CoG
"And with HIS stripes we are healed"
-CoG
"And with HIS stripes we are healed"
Handel's "Messiah"
They say that the largest pieces are expected to weigh more than half a metric tonne. That would hurt!
Even Slashdot wants to hide some things
If so, you can hear it with a simple Radio Shack scanner: MIR passes overhead just less than once an hour for about a 10 minute period. Tune your radio to 145.985 MHz (FM) and listen for packet radio beeps.
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BDOS ERR ON A:>
Now the story at CNN says they are back in contact.