Burn, Mir, Burn (Do You Like To Watch?)

Michael Stricklen writes: "The company I work for, NaviSite, Inc. is going to stream the Mir re-entry at http://www.mirreentry.com. I'm not sure what kind of view you'll have of it, but I figure with as many stories as /. has had on Mir, one more marking it's death couldn't hurt." And Kevin points to an article on Yahoo! which says that the mirreentry.com video will not be a live broadcast, "since 'the aircraft which will track the spacecraft's final descent will not have enough bandwidth to stream the footage as it occurs.' The film will be supposedly available on the Internet within two hours of reentry. The site currently target's Mir's 'latest probable deorbit date' as March 22." I wish I saw a link to other than "Windows Media Format" on that page, though.

Comments

Before they burn Mir up...

[Greyfox]

They should dock with it one last time and fill it full of marshallows. Then when it falls on that guy in New Zealand, his family will at least get something to eat out of it...

Any bets on whether the RIAA's trying to arrange for it to land on Sealand?

Re:Before they burn Mir up...

[tristan f.]

Of course you are. No one else knows who that is.

Some final thoughts

[perdida]

1) Mir was built, maintained and repaired by a much poorer space agency than the US's, and they kept a functional station in space for over twice its projected lifespan.

2) Over the years cosmonauts at Mir have gathered much unglamorous data about the most efficient and comfortable ways to live in space station conditions for an extended period of time. The physiology and psychology of this is not dramatic or technical but it is crucial.

3) There are many groups trying to profit off of the station's demise, which i think is a bit callous. Is it thrillseeking or morbid interest? At least they could donate money to the Russian space program from these commercial ventures, without some funds the Russian ISS-Alpha committment may not be passed over by the budget-makers axe next time around.

Re:Shooting Star

[qnonsense]

• Most of us will probably just see it as a shooting star, if even that. Mir is quite small, and depending on its re-entry speed, I don't think we'll see a whole lot.

Unless you're in the South Pacific, you're not going to see it at all.

Hint: The Earth is curved....

Bye bye MIR..

[To0n]

You were the cockroach of Space Stations. Ugly as hell, had it's major problems, and now is going to be watched burned for the enjoyment of Pre and Post adolescent american males.

What a shame.

That's pretty close to tahiti!

[agallagh42]

"The latest information on the location of the center of the debris impact area is approximately 2,000 nm south of Tahiti and 2,400 nm east of New Zealand in an area that is completely free of islands and any human habitation."

Wow, 2,000 nm, they're cutting it pretty close ;-)

This will never work

[Brento]

Their site is Slashdotted right now, and Mir isn't even falling yet! They're not even delivering serious video bandwidth, and they're already crippled. Methinks I'll wait a couple of days after the Mir flameout before I try to pull up this site again.

Then again, maybe this is their devious way of testing whether their server equipment is up to delivering the Mir reentry video. Note to Navisite: beef it up, baby.

Re:Why not link Mir to ISS Alpha?

[FTL]

> I've never seen any answer to why the Mir space
> station hasn't been included in space station
> alpha instead of jetisonned.

I am not an aeronautical engineer (IANAAE), so I'll just be touching a couple of points that I can think of. The reality will be much worse.

First, there is the question of orbit. Mir is in the wrong orbit. Mir's orbit is inclined so far that Atlantis is the only space shuttle that can get to it and carry the slightest bit of load. If we were to use Mir, we'd either have to change it's orbital inclination (using dozens of Russian progress tankers), or forget about the US being able to participate in any meaningful way.

Secondly, Mir vibrates too much. ISS's biggest headache is to keep the station extremely still so that experiments like crystal growth can be cunducted. Bolting noisy old Mir onto the side of ISS would destroy your ability to do good science.

Thirdly, you would loose Mir's zero-gravity lab. On a space station complex, only the module at the station's center of gravity has true zero-gravity. All other modules have a very slight gravity pulling the contents towards the outside of the station. The larger the station, the worse this gets. It is enough that crystal growth experiments can't be conducted anywhere but one place.

Fourth, Mir doesn't meet ISS's safety code. The rules on ISS are that no single failure can endanger the mission objectives, no double failure can endanger the crew. Mir was built using a more economical philosophy whereby if duct tape would fix it, it was ok.

Fifth, ISS was designed from the ground up to be maintained robotically. Up to now we've seen one (dangerous) space walk after another. This practice stops as of the next mission. That's when Canada's robotic arm gets installed. Every part of ISS is designed to be accessible to this arm. There are data grapples, optical markers, and other aids all over. Spacewalks will become extremely rare. Mir has no provision for external robotic maintenance.

Sixth, Mir is way beyond the end of its life-span. Things are starting to break and wear out at an alarming rate. Much of the crew's time is spent just keeping the station alive. Starting from scratch means you can spend more time on science then fixing the ventalation system.

As I said before, I am not an aeronautical engineer, and the preceeding would just be the tip of the iceberg. It is certainly simpler to start from scratch, having learned the lessons of Mir.
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