Perimeter Railway for ISS; HETE-1 Comes Down

Quirk writes "The Sydney Morning Herald is touting the mission to start construction of an orbiting railway. Space Shuttle Atlantis will carry the astronauts who will initiate the planned 107 meter rail line along the outside of the International Space Station. The remote controlled train will move at speeds of 2.5 centimeters a second and be able to carry more than 20 tonnes of cargo. Construction is projected for completion in 2004." And B3avis followed up with news about the HETE re-entry: "The pieces of the HETE-1 spacecraft seem to have crashed somewhere in the Himalayas. "The final notification from Space Command indicates that the debris re-entered at 31.5 degrees North and 92.4 degrees East." says NASA. And they should know."

Comments

A train? You've got to be kidding.

[cscx]

This is 2002 and NASA has a space station in space, but their 'bright' solution is a train? Trains are so... Industrial Revolution. You'd think they'd at least have some sort of rocket-propelled spacecraft with small engines used to make fine adjustments to its path and keep it in the proper orbit. Or maybe the NASA folks got jealous of that guy with the monorail in his backyard. ;-)

"You just better have a damn good conductor."

Followup:

[OpenGLFan]

Tom Farrell, NASA spokesman, clarified his earlier remarks this afternoon: "Wait, that should be 2.5 inches/sec."

"Whoops!"