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Space Station Slowly Falling Apart?

Posted by michael on from the baling-wire-and-duct-tape dept.

Yoda2 writes "MSNBC discusses debris apparently seen by the crew floating away from the International Space Station. From the article, 'Such debris may include fragments of insulation, labels and possibly important components.' Yikes! Many of these quotes seem appropriate."

16 of 341 comments (clear)

  1. Uh, dude. by bad+enema · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's the INTERNATIONAL Space Station. So you can't go blaming the Americans even though they do contribute the bulk of the efforts towards the project.

    1. Re:Uh, dude. by Tumbleweed · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Indeed. Without stuff like Gigli, you wouldn't know a good movie from bad. Now you have an example. :)

      Keep in mind that as bad as Gigli was, it's still ten times better than 99% of the movies that come out of India or Iran.

  2. What would Scotty say... by Gil2796 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ... if the Enterprise were ever let to run down to such a state?!

    It wouldn't be pretty...

  3. Re:So... by foistboinder · · Score: 5, Insightful
    So what we're saying is, Mir was actually pretty damn good.

    No kidding. You could crash things into it and set it on fire and it was still usable!

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  4. Re:Well... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    American, Russian.... it's all made in China nowadays

  5. Re:Fix it fast by M1FCJ · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I think it would be a godsend to American space program. They would just cancel it and that would be it. No more budget black holes. Back to fixing Hubble and everything that really matters gets funding. It might be a conpiracy. These are not the bolts you are looking for.

  6. it's what you expect when... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    everything these days is built to the minumum specifications by the lowest bidder...

    Now who's up for that one-way trip to Mars???

  7. could be worse by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Slowly is definitely better than quickly.

  8. Re:So... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Or you could look at it on the positive side:

    He's been in two accidents in space. And he survived.

    I'd say he's pretty lucky!

  9. Re:get a clue... by geekoid · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Vehicals in orbit are falling, they just have enough forward velocity to miss.

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  10. And that's just... by LooseChanj · · Score: 2, Insightful

    ...the stuff we know about. We had a discussion about this at work recently, and noted that if you wanted to point a camera looking *forward* and *below* for any departing debris.

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  11. Re:Scotty quotes? by Jim+Starx · · Score: 2, Insightful

    and you found time to post.....??

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    The darkness... controls the music. The music... controls the soul.
  12. Re:Scotty quotes? by secolactico · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm supposed to be in the middle of a big project, typing away furiously, and suddenly my speakers burst out with "Hello, Computer"!

    Which is why I always keep my sound card in "mute" while at work, unless I need to use it for something specific.

    --
    No sig
  13. "Aggressive safety program" -- what happened? by Shakrai · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I'm surprised that nobody else noticed this (too busy making Scottie jokes) but read this paragraph from the end of the MSNBC article:

    During the Apollo missions, debris flaking off spacecraft became such a common occurrence that astronauts and ground controllers nicknamed them "moon pigeons." At that time, NASA created an aggressive safety program to detect and identify all such objects in case any were indicative of some unexpected failure mode of the space vehicles.

    So, what happened? Was this "aggressive safety program" discontinued after Apollo or just ignored when chunks of foam fell off the fuel tank and hit Columbia?

    --
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    We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
  14. Re:Scotty quotes? by pjt33 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Plug in some headphones, or isn't that allowed?

  15. Re:ISS is part of NASA long term ..maybe by Jarlsberg · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Be realistic. While the US backing out of the ISS project would have a catastrophic impact on Russia's space program, it wouldn't bankrupt Russia.