Slashdot Mirror
Mir Deathwatch
Well, everybody and his brother wants to let us know that Mir is coming down, really, they mean it this time. Pick your favorite site to track its descent: Yahoo | NY Times | United States Space Command | Heavens Above | BBC. But Frederic Freidel provides an oddly personal note: what goes up must come down.
Jacek Fedorynski took a look at Guess When Mir Will Splash and drew up this nice histogram of the guesses. He also notes that the median guess for Mir's return to Mother Earth was 2001-03-19 10:11:01, so the collective wisdom of slashdot was off by a few days.
Nowhere in this slashdot story do we mention either the stupid Taco Hell advertising campaign or the space fungus or the Crashing Mir Space Station Detecto-Hat.
Michael *is* rather hyperactive when it comes to modding down posts he doens't like.
The world watched in collective sadness as the largest orbiting space vehicle ended an astonishing 15 year mission in a pyrrhic show seen only by a single unseen reporter for CNN on a small island in the South Pacific. Pontoons could not be installed on a satellite truck quickly enough to allow for a live uplink (...or a delayed uplink for that matter) to be provided, thus missing a potential advertising ratings coup.....
ticka...ticka....ticka...
Taco Bell's famed US Taco bet may still be on! While experts found randomly on the street said that they were hungry for a taco but admitted odds were slim for being fed for free by Taco Bell. Sentiments were best stated by animal activist Sue Smith, "Like, who thinks that a floating taco flag 10 miles from Australia is a good bet?"
Meanwhile, a touring boat in the area, filled with high dollar tourists and a few programming geeks protesting the Taco Bell publicity stunt were a bit closer to the action than even they imagined.
Each protester wore official Taco Bell tee-shirts emblazoned with that annoying chatting chihuahua. The words "Kill the dog - eat a taco" were spray painted on the front and back of the shirts.
However, John C. Code, age 43 from (where else) Silicon Valley, was a victim of the Mir space station, when a hot piece of metal punched through the dog emblem, seared a hole through his chest and embedded into the boat deck. Other boat passengers described the delayed reaction to the incident by stating that John complained of heart burn, sat down and passed out.
Other passengers, traumatized by the incident, searched John's shirt for an official Taco Bell tag for use as ammunition in filing a class action lawsuit against Taco Bell for damages equal to the money projected for the Taco Bell promotion of one free taco to each American.
Attorneys couldn't comment on the preliminary reports but asked, "We have suffered enough! Our chihuahua was cut down by an a horrible chunk of weaponry from space and we're being sued? We are the victims here!" They refused to comment further on pending litigation.
Wall Street reacted to the irony in puzzlement, with Pepsico stock rising $50 in after hours trading. Analysts, ever ready with off-the-top answers, cited the relief that "the dog was dead, and people need an outlet to express themselves in a positive direction in this down market."
ticka....ticka...ticka...
Unveiled from a shroud of secrecy, Dawn Wells and others from the cast of Gilligan's Island admitted that Mir's coming down event provided a perfect backdrop for a sequel to the russian cosmonaut episode where the cast was foiled from escaping the island on a floating space capsule. Rumors had swirled for weeks that such an episode would film. Reacting to the news that Mir had an atomic reactor onboard, Wells let slip that Jim Baccus (Thurston Howell III) had been exhumed for a comedy sketch involving the reactor. "Residuals" (get it?) for the episode would go to Baccus' descendents. "Ginger" was excited about finally meeting a handsome, if aging, cosmonaut. She admitted that she wasn't the dish she used to be, and when told no cosmonaut would be onboard stated, "Well, maybe a good bottle of vodka will make it down. A few belts of that and "Gilligan" (Bob Denver) might start to look a bit attractive. I know I'll regret it in the morning, but what's a stranded movie star to do? Even I have needs..." Filming wraps up in 2 days.
Micah hopes Mir will hit the guerilla kidnappers in Ecuador.....
Wall Street reacted to the irony in puzzlement, with Pepsico stock rising $50 in after hours trading.
Well, someone is a couple years behind the times. Pepsico, in 1999 (I think) spun off Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, and KFC into a new company, TriCon, with its own stock (YUM).
Posted by serpens:
:P
I looked through all the guesses and came to the conclusion that cowkiller was the winner of the Slashdot T-shirt. Anyone confirm this? I was only 10 hours and 20 or so minutes off.
Only 7 or 8 people closer than me.
Letting MIR crash into the Pacific isn't just irresponsible; it's unpatriotic. MIR was a monument to the great Socialist state. It was the last major project the Russian space agency participated in with any great fanfare or success.
And now we just want to deorbit it? To erase it from our memories? If we do not learn from history, then we will be doomed to repeat it. Our children will live in a world without a Russian space station orbiting above their heads. When they look out into the night sky, they won't see the work of MAN shining back at them. They'll only see the light from stars exploded billions of years ago, awash in the effusing glow of decaying atomic matter.
How much better it would've been for them to see the great Soviet empire whizzing overhead! Men died to build that great colossus. Countless dogs perished in orbit in order to test the effects of zero-g environments. Hundreds of manhours were spent in that endeavor, and we'll take it all down for what? So that we can free up a little bit more extraterrestrial realestate for a shiny new commercial satellite?
It reinforces the idea that space is to be a commercial enterprise and no longer one engaged in the pursuit of the common weal. What would Captain Kirk say about our worship of the dollar? What would he say about how we refuse to let this waystation remain on the outskirts of our fair planet just waiting for a new spirit or being to arrive and peer gently and softly at our pulsating ecosystems? The one thing the Soviets had right was their decrying of capitalism and the dammages it's wreaked on our terrestrial and extraterrestrial environments. Now, MIR will be gone, and nothing will remain in its stay.
This is a sad day.
Everyonce in a while someone comes in with clarity.
~^~~^~^^~~^
You can pick a site and watch a 160x120 thumbnail reload every half hour or watch the internet appliance that was already there, the TV set.
Well the target is not exactly near where it is going to hit, so its is a rather empty promise anyhow.
I I can't eat at Taco Bell anyhow but I digress.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
Just want to take the moment to gloat and be proud that the Company I work for, Analytical Graphics, is playing a huge role in assisting in the deorbit. We also have a Mir De-Orbit Video that shows how Mir will most likely burn up upon re-entry.
Taco Bell's South Pacific Target
We are the music makers. We are the dreamers of the dreams.
"Mir" is an actual word in Russian. It means "peace". It also means "world". It is a little scary to see words "peace" and "world" in combination with words "crash" and "burn". Is this the end of the world everyone was expecting ? Well, maybe. Who knows what that space-hardened fungus will do once it reaches earth. Will it thrive in the pacific ocean, or will it all burn up on re-entry?
Anyway, I wish they had kept MIR in orbit, and made a museum of it or something. Why crash it into Earth ? Couldn't it be parked somewhere in between Earth and Moon where it would not be affected by the gravity of both bodies ? I think MIR should have been declared a national monument and kept intact somehow.
Oh well, too late now. Maybe they will fish out a few pieces and make a museum out of that, at least that way one would not have to go into orbit to visit the "museum".
Paul.
Its a sad day when decent references go un-noticed....
Not very likely - they've already got scads of publicity, but the odds have already been calculated and the insurance purchased. You might have better chances with the local lottery.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Well not all Mir will burn up... Something will surely remain.
So it is still probable that in a few tens of years someone will try to try to recover something from the bottom of the sea. Well, Americans put a big effort to recover that Mercury capsule they lost.
You honestly think that a taco costs 50 cents to make? Probably closer to three cents, considering that they buy in bulk and probably don't use all-natural ingredients.
The end result is a tasty, if not entirely identifiable, mass-produced concoction that will cost them 9 million or so by my numbers if Mir hits the target.
Of course, you're probably better off trying to win the lottery, because at least that is audited.
Raptor
Raptor
"Procrastination is great. It gives me a lot more time to do things that I'm never going to do."
i guess some ppl have no sense of humor - i thought the taco bell story was pretty funny - and so did all the other geeks i work with.
boy slashdot sucks as of late (btw : this isn't trolling, it's just my opinion - as stupid things like this used to make their way into quickies, which seem to only now make a rare guest apperance on the site).
-Jae
dood.
increase the size of the text font on your page. it looks like poop
style sheets be damned
"Tension is the great integrity" -- R. Buckminster Fuller
Taco Bell is, I guess, offering free tacos for the world if Mir hits their floating target in the South Pacific. Details are on the website linked above, and the images are big below... if you want a desktop background like I did.
See: Low Resolution Image Of The Target
High Resolution Image Of The Target
Scott Ruttencutter
We Apprentice Developers and Designers
Hmm, I wonder whether it would be worth creating a bug database for the ISS space station? It would be interesting to see which space station ends up 'living longer' and having the least, official, problems.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
--
Not unless they move the UK half way round the world to the South Pacific Ocean.
Its only 40 feet by 40 feet so odds aren't good... But I'm hopeful. Hey free is free even if it is only a taco..
Will those of us in the rest of the world (UK, in my case) be able to see anything as Mir re-enters?
11.0010010000111111011010101000100010000101101000
The problem with this is that the space fungus would make its way down the tunnel to the nearest Russian spy center.
"It's overkill, of course. But you can never have too much overkill." - Anonymous Slashdot Coward
Stupid question, but instead of spending all this time trying to get it to crash into the ocean why don't they just send this thing out towards the Sun? There would be less worries of it going of course and hitting land.
Thanks for mentioning that site, I wonder if it will actually show the station falling?.
I'll take a guess. MMMMMIIIIIIIIIRRRRRRRR!!
From the NYTimes article
New Zealand maritime authorities have for days been sending repeated warnings to about 30 American Samoa-based tuna fishermen in the dump area. But most of the boats aren't leaving.
``The fish are biting in that area and it has been a tough year for them so far, so they are staying,'' Wayne Heikkila, general manager of the Western Fishboat Owners Association, said Thursday. ``I told the guys to have their video cameras ready.''
Most of Mir is expected to burn up in the atmosphere during the fiery re-entry, but up to 27.5 tons of debris are expected to reach the Earth's surface, much of it scattered over a long swathe following the station's descent trajectory.
I can just picture it:
New on FOX!
WHEN SPACE STATIONS ATTACK!
See what happens when an aging Russian space station decides to go on a rampage. All caught on video by some hapless fisherman who just happened to be in the area.
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
Most of Mir is expected to burn up in the atmosphere during the fiery re-entry, but up to 27.5 tons of debris are expected to reach the Earth's surface, much of it scattered over a long swathe following the station's descent trajectory.
(from the NYTimes article)
I figure that means you have to watch out for more than just one impact point... something more akin to a lot of smaller, high impact hits.
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
Looks like Mir has the possibility of landing on a fishing fleet (man that would suck...)
AlpineR
Fritz can't die alone -- abandoned in a space station!
-------------------------------------------------
10 Million?
it could be really bad for the bell. lets say each taco costs them 50 cents to make. now lets say that there are 300 million people in the us. lets say every one of us (man/woman/child) wants a taco. then it will cost them about 150 million. this is a worst case estimate, but it sure would be sweet if it happened.
use LaTeX? want an online reference manager that
-- john
Her life ends quickly,
To a lonely and dark grave...
We'll miss you, old friend.
Execute? [Y/N] _
fu!
Execute? [Y/N] _
fuaymmf!
Execute? [Y/N] _
Bad form to follow up my own post I know, but it is mentioned briefly on the BBC Mir timeline here
Chap's name is Dennis Tito and it was $20 million he's splashed out.
Interesting bit on the news here this morning about how the Russians have been attempting to finance their future space-programme by selling trips out into space and, until recently obviously, seats on Mir itself.
Can't find any links from a quick look round, but the gist of the story was an American millionaire had paid the Russians $20 million (figures from memory, so that may well not be the correct value) a few years ago for a trip out into space.
Obviously he's not going to get out to Mir now, but they've been trying to get him onto the International Space Station as an alternative, but the other project partners have refused permission, saying it would be too dangerous to have a non astronaut floating around up there while it's still essentially a building site.
The BBC reporter did suggest that there might also be a certain amount of clique-ism going on with the professional astronauts there too however, not wanting a civilian to get the chance to get up there. Final suggestion was that he might still make it up, but only be allowed to visit the Russian section of the ISS.
Be interesting if this starts a trend for space-hopping tourists up there tho!
siri
woohoo!
I recognize that many Australians are concerned about where Mi is going to land. I've looked into the matter. Despite losing to CBS in the most recent Nielsen ratings, ABC does not intend to crash Mir into Australia to wipe out the cast of Survivor II. Any suggestions to the contrary are completely and utterly false.
Actually, CNN is doing it to boost it's own ratings.
Given one hour to live, the student replied: "I'd spend it with professor FP who can make an hour seem like a lifetime."
"Yo quiero--" WHAM.
--
This is not my sandwich.
The Staten Island dump is officially closing today, accepting it's last load of trash from the other boroughs. It's one of two man-made objects visible from space (the other being the great wall of China). Crash the MIR into the dump for a grand finale, on final piece of trash to imortalize the landfill...
I don't think anyone has mentioned it, so i will. I think my personal favorite is spaceref.com's mir page.
I think almost the entire thing will burn up on re-entry and what is left will be no larger than the head of a chihuahua. If I'm wrong may we all be horribly crushed from above somehow.
Oops... Sorry, that was me... Signal of the end of times, I think...
--
--- Sueños del Sur - a webcomic about four young siblings
> Of course, you're probably better off trying to win the lottery, because at least that is audited.
And you can survive a lottery, because it wouldn't fall over your head
(Disclaimer: I've never saw that advertisement, as I don't live in the U.S. I live in one of the possible places where the Mir would fall, so if you don't see my homepage updated at least this tuesday...)
--
--- Sueños del Sur - a webcomic about four young siblings
Doesn't matter how small the target is, there's still a chance for Mir to hit it. An extremely small chance, maybe, but the probability is not 0.
We're talking about free tacos here, man. Be an optimist.
***
"ALL YOUR CODE ARE BELONG TO US!" -- Jim Allchin
At least I got the date right.
Ask Slashdot - google for stupid people.
Australia's ABC News has a report that the first pieces have started splashing down in the Pacific Ocean.
jmp
2) A taco is not a meal. If they were to give out a free taco to everyone in the country, they would -make- money. People would go in to buy a taco and some other food and a drink.
Does anyone else think it ironic that a page charting an object crashing to Earth from space has "Technology sponsored by Iridium" on the right of the page?
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
A few weeks back Slashdot had a contest to see if anyone could accurately guess the splashdown date of Mir... is anybody still in the running? If I'm not mistaken I'm already out (I picked Mar-20 sometime or other).
:)
Of course, I guess I can still hold out hope for the Mir hitting Taco Bell's floating target out in the middle of the Pacific.
Well, sorry to this NZOOM article, of the 136 tons of the space station, an estimated 20 to 25 tons are expected to hit earth, the rest will burn into the atmosphere. ;)
Now I don't know about the heads of chihuaha in your place, but in mine they hardly weigh 25 tons!
"Naughty, naughty, naughty, you filthy old soomka !"
Realtime, you said ?
I went on their site, on the Mir page I read :
The End Is Mir - 3/21/01
On the same page :
Warning: Mir is approaching re-entry day. The closer to the re-entry burn the more rapidly our data will become inaccurate. This system is not designed for Re-entry tracking. At some point, we will just stop tracking.
Well, that doesn't sound either real-time or accurate to me, thanks for the link anyway.
"Naughty, naughty, naughty, you filthy old soomka !"
Don't forget to visit http://mirpool.com to put your vote on which latitude and longitude Mir will land.
Didn't see this one in the other comments. Parallel Graphics are tracking Mir in 3D at http://www.parallelgraphics.com/vrml/mir/. Uses Cortona VRML browser though, so it's only available to those with access to a Windowsboxen aswell.
Does look funky though!
Waz
The site in my sig allows you (along with over 100 others, so far) the chance to pick where you think pieces will hit. Give it a shot!
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
Given that there are about 6 billion people in the world...
---
/bin/fortune | slashdotsig.sh
the onion article on Mir... something about "Mir conducts 'how to scare the living shit out of astronauts' research" in reference to the decaying life support systems and leaks and such
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
how ironic, I guess they could be learning what it 's all about?
It looks like /. UID 118223 'cowkiller' will be the closest, if MIR comes down on time.
cowkiller guessed '2001-03-23 02:02:02'
Technology is only a vehicle. People are the ones that drive it.
Maybe he was one of the people that submitted the story to begin with? I know it's far-fetched, but it's actually possible he wasn't whoring, just posting part of his story submission the eds had neglected...
If a corporation is a personhood, is owning stock slavery?
Yo man, $100 says you pre-created this message since you knew there would be a Mir story. What a whore.
I heard a Taco Bell spokeswoman on the radio this morning say that they were all rooting for Mir to hit the target, because they have taken out insurance on the matter and are covered. Imagine what a boon it would be for Taco Bell to have every american showing up for their free taco and buying a chalupa and soda to boot!
Now is that cool or what?
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Why not shoot it up? I got this deorbiting-on-a-major-population-center part, but wouldn't it be sufficient to put a couple of Progresses on its behind and send it to where the Discovery should be right now?
That way, we can pick it up in a few years/decades when we feel like it. It may even do a M'r on us to save us time.
Censorship on Slashdot
Anyway (and despite my comments above), for all you space tracking junkies, look at NASA's J-Track. Usefull for other satelites besides Mir.
All software is flawed. All hardware is flawed. If you haven't learned that yet,
s/Forgot/Forget/
s/ones/one/
a crash that doesn't involve Windows.
--
Je t'aime Stéphanie
If the other sites are a little um, sloooow;
liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov
This is Nasa's spacecraft tracking site, with either 2d or 3d Java-based tracking applets.
KOSMOGRAD, March 22-- After sending a final command to the Mir Space
Station, triggering its fiery descent, Russian Space Agency engineers
recieved an unexpected signal from the aging space station. A radio
message, in Russian, said, "Help me. I am stowaway. I thought this
would be fun, but now I come out of hiding. Please do not crash Mir!"
Russian officials were not sure what to make of the message, and were
frantically trying to contact Mir. However they admitted that at this
point the can see no way of boosting the ship to its proper
altititude.
As emails of support for the stowaway came pouring in, officials
seemed unwilling or unable to do anything. One suggested the message
was just a tape recording left by a disgruntled Cosmonaut. Another
dryly said that even if it is a real person no action should be taken.
"He vanted to be Kaptin of Mir. Vell, now the Kaptin must go down vith
de ship."
"Specialization is knowing more and more about less and less until you actually know nothing at all."
True, but on the bright side you'll be the world's leading authority about nothing at all.
As for the worrying sandal wearers, maybe just for once they've realised that this certainly beats leaving the great hulking thing up there for future missions to hit. I know I'd happily see the entirety of our orbital space junk hit the Pacific to get it out of the way.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
Watch out kenny! :)
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
There are conversations on rec.aviation type newsgroups about 'what are the chances...'
We lived through skylab, we live through billions of metorites every day (most microscopic) and we have survived things falling from space since man began, this will be little different.
I like the people who do the chicken little imitation. I also like the greenies who holler about all of this even though most of it will burn up and what doesn't should rust away before too long.
This will be something to look at to see if we can see it fall, though.
DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
UNIX - Not just for Vestal Virgins anymore
All it will cost them is the price of the $10,000,000 insuance policy. The insurance will cover their costs (and maybe a little profit) if they have to feed us.
Fight Spammers!
Actually I did a final interview with Fritz, just a few hour before the Mir was deorbited. Poignant, curious, interesting. I will be publishing it sometime next week at http://www.chessbase.com
Wouldn't this provide one excellent scenario for an AEGIS-class cruiser to test out their capabilities on random targets?
Rule #1 -- Politics always trumps technology.
But this got me wondering, how big a splash will this make? The chances of being hit have got to be incredibly small, but how close would you have to be to where it hits for the wave (or flying chunks of molten space station that go flying from the impact?) to be any kind of a problem? (don't have any idea how big/small these fishing boats would be, probably pretty big to operate on the open ocean, eh?)
---
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
If Mir's path fell westward of Fiji, one would have to be facing west in order to see it. Thus Mir would appear to travel from the right (north) to the left (south).
If I wanted my browser to make noise I'd lick my finger and rub it across my screen!!!! Is anyone else annoyed by people putting constant noise on their websites. I don't mind the occasional beep, or click, but music pisses me off!!
HEY!!!!! ok, I'm gonna spout some flames here... think about how much fuel it would take to move mir out of earth's gravitational pull. I think that would take at least as much fuel to make it budge than it took to put it up there in the first place!! Additionally, the thrusters on board aren't made for the sort of thrust necessary! Second: The thing is by no means going to stay together when you strap a huge booster to the side and light the candle!! It would fly into a million pieces, leaving much more probability of a module skipping through some unlucky sap's office building somewhere... Let's launch a nuke at the moon to give a show of force. (great ideas like these are going to be our demise...)
What is the probability that someone could have hacked into MIR and retasked the thing to do something funky, maybe come down on the 4th of july, oooh that would really piss the old time soviets off... (using a symbol of pride for a corrupt government as a display of celebration for their adversary...) given of course a small sattelite tranciever. The security implemented back then couldn't have been that sophisticated...
The possibilities are endless...
even if it does his the big floating 40'x40' advertisement in the middle of th esouth pacific, why do i get the feeling taco bell's gonna jerk me outta my free taco? corporate bastards! >=|
I think environmentalists are worried about a great deal more than this tiny drop in the bucket.
[pink beam of light]
We also issue a strong buy alert for that company which makes Lysol, and also for Clorox, as these have proven themselves useful in curing other types of fungal problems.
Any resemblance of this message to an actual piece of spam, which either exists or has been deleted is strictly intended.
As several articles have mentioned, this region of ocean is routinely used for dumping old spacecraft. I remember reading that several Progress vehicles have been dropped there over the last couple decades. If anybody wanted some cool (if slightly singed) space junk, the ocean floor in that area would be the place to look. Too bad getting to the bottom would be a rather expensive proposition in itself, much less finding relatively tiny chunks of metal in several thousand square miles of sea floor.
Bugrit! Millenium hand and shrimp!
Vladimir Solovyov was the first commander on board Mir. He is now mission control flight commander. Seeing it go down would be painful enough, let alone giving the order to begin the final deorbit burn.
Bugrit! Millenium hand and shrimp!
Here am I sitting in a tin can
[not so]Far above the world
Planet Earth is blue, and there's nothing I can do...
Bugrit! Millenium hand and shrimp!
we all know that mir is very large, but, why didn't they divide it up for re-entry. Small pieces would burn up on re-entry, while large pieces would make it to earth. Mir is in what, 10 pieces, all hooked together. Wouldn't it make sense to send each individual piece down seperately? When I was in high school, I was able to tour a rejected mir module, which a russian friend of mine helped engineer. They are not very large, about the size of a vw mini-bus or two for the longer sections.
Spring is here. Don't believe me, look outside!
When Skylab went down in Australia, some of its larger bits emitted several sonic booms as they decelerated to subsonic speeds.
This is now past tense, since Mir is apparently warming the minnows at this point, but could these sonic booms have been heard in the any of the nearby Pacific Islands? Easter Island, Hawaii, etc?
Of course, I'm not really expecting something on a Krakatoa scale, and I doubt the sound wave would still be audible by the time it reaches me several hours late
1:38pm up 11 years, 53 days, 14:01, 1 user, load averages: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
mir$ su
Password: seineewserastsilatipac
mir# halt
Connection to mir closed.
Mir hit a Taco Bell in Sydney and killed four people.
--
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
--
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
This article in Yahoo on the Countdown slates re-entry between 1:20 AM and 1:30 AM EST, Friday, March 23.
A site with a real future, www.mirrentry.com
Heavens Above, which has charted the orbital decay.
On the Marx-Spinning-In-His-Grave front:
Leading up to the event have been word of passengers paying $5,000-10,000 a seat to fly around the area in hopes of catching a glimpse (of course, they'll have to be on the correct side of the plane.)
Should the core of Mir hit a 40' square target, Taco Bell will give everyone in the USA a free Taco
An alert eBayer, always right on the cutting edge of capitalism has offered up the Crashing MIR Space Station Detecto-Hat Made of the best stainless steel double-handled colander five dollars could buy... (No word yet from Rambus on patent infringement.)
Lastly I hope that the mutant space fungus will be burned up on re-entry. I don't want to wake up drooling beside a pod.
--
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I'm going to miss Mir. The inhabitants broke all the space habitation records, and they kept it barely habitable with ingenuity on a shoestring, real seat of the pants flying.
Look on the bright side, it may finally end a long and prestigeous era for Russia when MIR comes down, but we might get a free taco out of it!
Burn Hollywood Burn
...all alone in the night.
----------
Technoli
24 hours? You think it will take that long?
----------
Technoli
Please.... ....
Two wrongs may not make a right, but three
rights make a left?
----------
Technoli
come to #mir on irc.kde.org! now!
--------- The 'gui' in 'penguin' is pronounced K-D-E .
If they are not planing on salvaging anything, and are so worried about re-entry, why don't they just make the thrusters push itself in a path away from earth?
They could even use it to gather information as it leaves like any other probe we send out.
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive
The 'Mir Tracker' application page refreshes once a minute. First time it was fine. The second time, CODE 500 - INTERNAL SERVER ERROR
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
They could easily take this opportunity to drop it on a United States embassy and say "Oopsy! Maybe it beink das outdated radar maps, yes?"
Anybody want to bet that within 24 hours of the crash landing of Mir, its on E-bay.
You stupid bastard, you don't have no arms left. It's just a flesh wound.
This free taco is definitely worth the cold war between US and Russia and the almost nuclear disasters that became from it.
You stupid bastard, you don't have no arms left. It's just a flesh wound.
One thing that seems to be missing from this whole Mir deal is the sprout-eatin' sandal wearer's complaining. I checked greenpeace.org, earthfirst.org, and yahoo's /environment/orginizations/hippies, and randomly clicked around and saw nothing.
This seems somewhat odd, as I imagine a couple tons of stuff hitting the ocean at 17k m/h is going to kill a couple of fish. Plus, who knows what sort of nastiness is in the materiels of the ship, screaming out of the sky in a red hot rocket of pollution. I just thought that was wierd. Has anyone else seen anything from the greenies about this?
Brant
Brant
Argle. Bargle.
I don't know why he said it, but it was funny.
Farewell, era; Farewell, Mir!
BTW, for those of us idiots who don't know, what are sweenies??
Killing Mir is like killing The First Moon Walk sit. Mir has a lot of historic Value and a peace of Mir could go for a good chunk of money on E-Bay(Maybe that's how taco bell is going to pay for all the free tacos, just joking they took out insurance to pay if Mir hits). I think it's very sad to see mir put down this way. It really belongs in a museum. I am sure we will be a able to see some replica of Mir in a museum.
Maybe Mir, should have gotten it's very own category and Icon. well I know it's a bit late.
almost abashedly, i thought the same thing when i first hovered over that link :P
I just want my free taco out of this whole thing. That's all I need.
-Keslin, the naked nerd girl
-Keslin, the naked nerd girl
Anyway, the Mir is pretty historically significant and I hope that some attempt will be made to salvage what we can of the remains of her.
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$ chown -R us:us yourbase
Of course, I guess you could just buy a helluvalotta pillows =3
If god had intended you to be naked, you would have been born that way.
The footage of the descent taken from Fiji ( see CNN ) showed the debris descending from the top right of the screen to the bottom left.
But surely if Mir descended to the east of Fiji, heading south, then it should have appeared to go from the left to the right?
Has anyone else found it amusing that the web broadcast from CNN continued, even when Miles wasn't speaking live to camera. It would have just been better to hear both ends of the conversation.
If you make a change of 1 m/sec in the speed of an object in low-earth orbit, the other side of the orbit changes in altitude by something over a mile (exactly how far I'm not willing to calculate at the moment). Taking Mir and dumping it into the Pacific requires changing its altitude from about 120 miles to 60 miles, so it needs maybe 60 meters per second of delta-V.
Kicking Mir out of Earth orbit to anywhere else requires about 3000 m/sec of delta-V (from ~8000 m/sec orbital speed to ~11000 m/sec escape velocity). That's about 50 times as much, and a lot more than 50 times as expensive. Sending it to the Sun requires cancelling Earth's orbital velocity around Sol, which is about 30,000 meters per second... you do the math.
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spam spam spam spam spam spam
No one expects the Spammish Repetition!
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
I just hope it doesn't fall on The Tick.
You know, it really strains me to bring a system down that's been running for so long. Can you imagine being one of the original mission control members who put it in the sky to begin with. It's gotta hurt to see this thing go down *sigh*.
Why bother.
I've been monitoring the orbit using Home Planet for a week or so now. If the final firing blows partly to the side, increasing Mir's inclination instead of braking it, so that it stays up longer than planned, and swings farther north and south, it could conceivably hit Chernobyl. It would only have to change course by about 150 km and stay up about 45 min too long. That is, if it doesn't hit east coastal South America, the Atlas Mountains, Italy or the Balkans first. If it stays up another whole orbit, it wouldn't even have to change course much.