A Brief History of the Space Station

HyperbolicParabaloid writes "A story about the history of the International Space Station, and its utility or non-utility for space exploration. One interesting insight: after the Challenger explosion it became obvious that we would never refuel a rocket with volatile fuel at a space station because the threat to the station would be so great. And did you know that to accomodate the Russians, the space station is in an orbit that makes it almost useless as a jumping off point to anywhere?"

Comments

Terminal velocity

[rcs1000]

OK. I have a question, that is sort of related, to this space shuttle issue.

What is terminal velocity? I mean, what is the concept?

If I put up a very tall ladder that reached all the way too... ohhh... low earth orbit, and walked up it, then surely I would manage it without ever reaching terminal velocity.

Help required please!

An abridged brief history of the space station MIR

[brad-d]

Once upon a time there was a space station called MIR. Then one day a wise man said "What goes up must come down!"; and thus ends our brief history of the space station MIR.

Thanks for watching.

Re:Why work on GNOME when Motif was doing just fin

[ianezz]

Just s/GNOME/Gimp/g, and that's what's actually happened (except that The Gimp is quite useful).

Early versions of The Gimp were Motif-based (and useful enough to draw Tux), then people decided to write their own Motif replacement, and thus GTK was born.