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ISS Fender Bender
wjsteele writes "Seems that the Space Station has had a minor fender bender. Sounds kind of scary... being in a space craft and hearing metal crunching (like an aluminum can.) Apparently some 'Minor' space debris struck the station around 2:30am this morning, while the astronauts were eating their wheaties." Update: 11/27 16:31 GMT by M : Looks like an experiment may be to blame.
Minor? If I was floating about in space in something with walls as thick as a tin can, I would be rather worried by now.
According to This article on BBC News Michael Foale is no stranger to this: "He was onboard the Mir space station in 1987 when a Progress supply tanker crashed into it - one of the most dangerous incidents to have ever taken place in space."
I'd still be crapping my pants though. There's no jumping off this one.
This is one of the weirdest things I have heard of -
- Both astronauts heard it
- By this point they should be pretty familar with the noises the station makes - for example, the thermal expansion / contraction as you go through the terminator.
- It did not sound like an explosion (typical velocities of space debris impacts is 5 kilometers per second or so - and meteorites impact at even higher velocities), so it probably wasn't a piece of random junk.
- They got out the mobile camera and couldn't see anything damaged.
So what was it ? Let's hope it wasn't some valve or other part failing, but I suspect we will hear more of this.
Well, the most logical timezone to apply in space, I believe, would be GMT, kind of standard.
The military people use it when they talk about zulu time, right?, That would be common sense. But, maybe what people at NASA, ESA, or the russian agency think might the other way around!
Except that the body in Armageddon didnt move with 30000 km/h compared to the shuttle, as it had fallen out of a spaceship with the same speed and direction of the first craft
I don't have any idea what could have caused this, but it wasn't something randomly floating around that just bumped the station. What disturbs me more than the accident itself is that professionals who should know better are floating this idea that it might be like a shopping cart hitting your car. It makes no sense at all.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
That would also explain why they were eating their wheaties at 2:30 am. 2:30gmt == 7:30 est.
Anything hitting the space station at that speed (1/10 the speed of light) would cause enormous damage. Did you mean 30 000km/h?
"That body could never have hit the second shuttle in the first place. It has the same speed as the first shuttle, and since there is no atmosphere to slow him down, it should float alongside it."
If memory serves from the movie, there was an awful lot of stuff floating around on the approach to the asteroid that could have slowed the body down quicker than a shuttle. A couple of strikes from those basketball-sized stones you mention could easily have kicked the body back a little.
That said, there's little point trying to analyse a movie that's clearly not intended to be scientifically accurate.
Except...
a) the stations is designed to withstand mictometeor hits.
b) there is a capsule parked there permanantly for escape
c) in the event of a puncture, they can move to either the capsule or just out of the effected compartment, and seal off that area. decompression isn't very fast through a 1cm hole.
that you could see. with detail, the body coming pretty much meant that the relative speed differential wasn't 30,000km/s. Or even 30,000km/h. Or even 300km/h. Ever seen a car drive towards you at 300km/h? Even without flalling arms, even with sharp, slick edges, its more blurry than that body was.
Just because something is in space doesn't mean that its relative speed to you is instantly 1/10 the speed of light - you realize that you're just one zero away, right? Additionally, just because you're in space and you hit something, doesn't mean your relative speed was all that high. I mean, if your relative speed is 1m/h different, and you're only 1m away...well, in 1h, you'll hit it.
Has no one heard of relativity here?
Just a face spider crawling through those pipes. Nothing to worry about folks.
At least until astronauts return to Earth...
*creepy music*
Isn't this what caused the Chernobyl meltdown? IIRC, the technical staff were being inventive and improvising around some safety tests.
How many more people must die in useless space experiments before people realize NASA is a useless money-pit stealing funds from desperately underfunded reforms here on Planet Earth? We need to dismantle NASA now before it's too late - Imagine what would happen if one of these space installations should come down over a populated area?
If that had read read "you mean there are americans up there" it would have been modded as flamebait.
Hardly fair to us Europeans is it ?
Oh and yes, there are 2 europeans up there and no septics.
However, the station is also moving at high speeds around the earth. If it moves in the same direction as the debris, they can move side by side without harm (or at least you don't get collisions in the km/s range).
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey