Planned EVA for Space Station Expedition 6 Crew

Kathy Miles writes "The International Space Station was boosted into a 3 mile higher orbit in preparation for an April 26 launch of TMA-2. The Soyuz capsule will carry two new crew members to the ISS for Expedition 7. Expedition 6 will return in May. And on April 8, there is a planned EVA for Expedition 6 crew of Commander Ken Bowerson and Science Officer Don Pettit. The two will be continuing the ongoing outfitting of the International Space Station."

Comments

What we need?

[SuperBanana]

When will someone realise this[space elevator] is what we need? *sigh*.

Okay, this is gonna get me a flambait since you all love the space stuff, but whatever- I don't care. I'm so sick of hearing space this, space that. I'm THROUGH.

When are people going to realize that we need to spend money on educating, sheltering, clothing and feeding people, and giving them proper medical care...-and THEN- on the toys like space stations? We're putting the cart before the horse by working out all these galatic mysteries before we figure out how to run a responsble, effective, efficient society that co-exists with the planet it's located on. I am NOT suggesting we abandon scientific research- I just think that the government has no business funding research that does not benefit people/humanity in some tanigible way. Seeing pictures of a galaxy 10,000 lightyears away, or figuring out the earth's gravity does thus-and-such, does not feed the homeless guy in the cardboard box on the corner of Main Street and 5th.

Clothing, feeding, sheltering, and keeping healthy every person sounds pretty pie-in-the-sky, don't it? I bet going to the moon sounded pretty absurd too, once...and that should make you pause and think. The major difference is that the first actually accomplishes something useful- the second allows the very symbol of wealth(healthy, strong, well educated people) to play. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer.

Society seems to have gone the way of the 10 year old kid who just got home from school; do homework, or play with the Nintendo? Society seems to have checked out of handling the basic problems, and is instead playing with its useless toys. Look at the article recently about all the VC companies sitting around desperate for places to invest their money, which they're throwing at things like insanely useless things as WIFI.

If we can't find the money to feed people, why do we have piles of it lying around to throw at the most abusrd, useless things? You may be able to see the city lights from space, but you can't see the starving children.

Re:What we need?

[SuperBanana]

When are people going to realise we need to spend money on educating, sheltering, clothing and feeding people, and giving them proper medical care, before we send ships off into the Atlantic to see if theres a faster way to India?

I can't seriously believe this was originally modded 4/insightful. THank god it's been knocked down.

It's very simple. India was a known source of vast resources(and to counter the knee-jerk reaction- space may be full of resources, but unlike the resources in India, we have NO way to get TO them, extract them, and send them back, in any sort of reasonable way. There is nothing in space we can't find or make on earth cheaper than going out to get it). Exploration to figure out a 'better' way of reaching India had clear goals. Also, the amount of money PALES in comparison; we've flushed TRILLIONS of dollars into space exploration. The King of Spain gave columbus enough for a couple ships and supplies, and since ships(and supplies) were pretty common in those days, it didn't take a whole lot of money. It would be like Bush giving NASA a couple of cargo ships, today. Not hundreds of research centers, hundreds of aerospace contractors, two space stations, half a dozen billion-dollar space vehicles...etc.

Space? None of the above. NO clear goals(name one clear goal. "Scientific exploration"? Yeah, that's clear.) Prohibitively expensive equipment. Oh, you say "get to mars" is a clear goal? Look at the Moon, morons. What the HELL did going to the moon get us? ABSA-fucking-loutley NOTHING except a bunch of damn rocks sitting in a display case. How many hundreds of thousands of man-hours did we waste, not to mention the money- on a bunch of rocks? I see nothing different from Mars, or any of the other planets....and since it's physically impossible to break the speed of light(to cut another knee-jerk reaction, unlike 'the world is flat', we've got damn good collaborative evidence that the speed of light is the end of the speedometer), we have no chance of ever getting beyond our solar system. We might as well stick a label on the scale of the focusing knob of the world's telescopes, that reads "irrelevant.' Same thing goes for this moronic 'search for life'. I'm sure there IS life elsewhere in the galaxy. Will we ever find out or be able to do anything about it? Nope. Too far away. Who gives a crap? I don't want to meet most of the people on this planet, why would I want to meet someone from -another- planet?

However, your analogy is quite accurate in two regards- a)the king came under increasing pressure to explain the amount of money he was giving Columbus, who pretty much succeeded by dumb shit luck...and b)Columbus's discovery resulted in plauge, death, destruction, and war, the likes of which had never been seen before. We exterminated an entire continent of people as a result of his discoveries.

If tomorrow the space station finds a wormhole and we end up on some planet that's just like ours, has a bunch of nice resources, and people whose weapons aren't quite as cool as ours, are we going to repeat our history?

No space station or wormhole needed, we're already doing that juuuuust fine in Iraq, although the pricetag is pretty impressive- $80 billion. That's $330 per every man, woman and child in the US. We could end hunger in the US tomorrow if we distributed $80 billion to soup kitchens and homeless shelters. TOss some of it towards Habitat For Humanity, and we could put a serious dent in homelessness, too.