Slashdot Mirror
Space Station Slowly Falling Apart?
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."
For those of you who can't get to it, don't worry--you didn't miss much. It's just a compilation of Scotty quotes, and contrary to the submitter's assertion, hardly any of them apply to the current situation.
Unless, of course, the ISS has warp drives.
Or is in the midst of battle with Klingons.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
So what we're saying is, Mir was actually pretty damn good.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
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.
... if the Enterprise were ever let to run down to such a state?!
It wouldn't be pretty...
Is this a nice way of saying that a slothful astronaut got sucked out into space?
True story.
Race: Payload checklist. IRS surveillance satellite --
Buzz: Check.
Race: Ant farm --
Buzz: Check.
Race: Children's letters to God --
Buzz: Check.
--- Deep Space Homer
include fragments of insulation, labels and possibly important components
Labels? Like "Canadarm" or "U.S.A." ? Please don't tell me there's a Taco Bell billboard up there too!
Remebers me of the "Armageddon" movie - the "russian" kind of repair-method
*kick*slam* hey ! it works !
The line between trolling and humor is thin.
Spelling mistakes: My is english spoken not tongue of mother.
There goes the $10,000 wrench. There goes the $20,000 hammer...
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
America pays all the bills!
"This jurry-rigging won't last for long..." -- Scotty
Got that right Scotty! - What's the world coming to?
"Yesterday, the crew observed another small piece of debris floating away from the ISS, apparently of Russian origin."
Looks again like Scotty's got the answer! "She won't take much more of this." -- Scotty
Perhaps, we should just let Scotty fix her..."The warp drive is a hopeless pile of junk." -- Scotty
Then again, here's what NASA's thinking....
"Just a minute, Exec, we're picking up the pieces down here."
*Please note all quotes taken from the articles
This clearly has to be the bottle of finegrain Wodka I lost just the other day !
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
Here is a mirror of the Geocities-hosted Scotty quotes when/if the bandwidth overflows or whatever.
Just, uh, be gentle.
The Human Cow - bringing you scrumtrelescence since 1995
Cosmonaut
Astronaut
Cosmonaut
Astronaut
Cosmonaut
21908uje12~~!~~~
[END TRANSMISSION]
Trolling is a art,
Did anyone else read that as "the crew was floating away from the space station"? I thought "Damn, things *are* getting bad..."
I wonder if it is all coming from the space station. There must be a lot of crap up there now... unless decaying orbits take care of that sort of thing?
Perhaps it is a sneaky astronaut out there snapping pieces off to frighten the others... All in good fun.
That's what happens when you outsource skilled labor to the Martians!
The article clearly states the piece was from the Progress or Soyuz spacecraft docked to the Space Station. It is a part that locks down the solar panels on these craft.
HCG 50a = 2MASX J11170638+5455016
11h17m06.4s +54d55m02s
Abort the mission.
Yeah, they should have just let the British build it.
Nah, all that leaking oil floating around in low orbit would pose a threat to other spacecraft.
Trolling is a art,
faster than an old rusty valiant. We need to send some duct tape up there pronto!
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
Maybe someone was smuggling a little something extra into orbit and forgot to extract it from its hiding place and bring it in before they unpacked the solar panel.
"Can there be a Klein bottle that is an efficient and effective beer pitcher?"
1) I always knew that such an international collaboration is succeptible to fragmenting.
2) Someone send in Tom Ridge with plastic wrap and duct tape.
3) In ISS, the computers defrag you!
4) The ISS -- Modular programming at its finest.
5) ISS -- I could have sworn it was Apache Station
6) NASA is waiting for an official patch for ISS
7) Aussie quoted: "pull yourself together, mate! Yer fallin apart!"
8) ISS -- where do you want to fragment today?
My brother once tried to convince me and my dad that his 13 year old JAG was designed to leak oil. Suppose to keep the frame rust free....
the article says the piece was Russian, and is most likely part of one of the explosive bolt assemblies that holds the solar panels in the stowed position during launch.
They're going to move the Canadarm into position to take a look at the solar panels on the Progress that recently docked, to see if the part is missing.
...in soviet russia space station breaks you! seriously, there is a ring of junk around the earth, it could be anything.
It isn't "American made" you fool!!!!
That metal thing is clearly a very tiny alien spaceship.
http://mediagoblin.org/
And, by the way, falling??? That baby is on the orbit! If something goes one way, something else (presumably the ISS) pushed it. There are some funny things here: 1. the ISS is loosing parts; 2. It's likely that those parts will return (orbit, remember), maybe with some velocity; 3. I'll be delighted when some fancy top secret military satelite will get a nice russian bolt right in it's precisely calibrated lens. THAT hopefully will be the closest thing to star wars, or whatever was the hyphen some decades ago.
Mr. President, postphone a little the Mars trip, the station is about to fall on your empty suit, sir, mr. President, sir.
INCOMING!!!!
Bite my shiny metal... oops... Nevermind!
Yes, it is station debris. The odds of anything passing within view of the crew is very, very small unless it came from the vehicle they are in. The kind of debris that is being talked about here (possibly launch stow clamps for Progress/Soyuz solar panels) is quite small and would be extremely difficult to see from greater distances. These parts are used to hold the solar panels in the folded position during ascent and are no longer needed once the spacecraft is in orbit and the panels unfold.
The station normally has a Soyuz docked (for crew escape) and a Progress docked (for resupply and refuelling and trash stowage.) That's four solar panels right there. In addition, the Russian station modules (except for the Pirs airlock) have their own solar panels, as they operated autonomously at first, and provided power to the US modules earlier in the assembly sequence before the larger US array was added.
The biggest worry is that one of these pieces could impact the station and damage it.
i am a soviet space shuttle
On MIR, when this happened, they just shipped up more vodka from the gravity well.
Pretty soon, no-one cared that they were floating in a tin-can far above the world.
Problem solved.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
American, Russian.... it's all made in China nowadays
It must be cold in space for that to happen. But when you gotta go, you gotta go!
Objects in Mir are closer than they appear.
Ooops. Wrong station.
Just another day on the ISS when...
(Carl) Hey, Herb - there's something floating outside
(Herb) Well, take a picture of it with the camera on the robotic arm, for goodness sake!
(Carl) Uh, Herb, we have a problem. It *IS* the robotic arm.
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.
part of the explosive restraining bolt assembly, that keeps the solar panel stowed during launch. Once it get's into orbit, the bolt's are blown apart, and the solar panel's deploy, so they're not needed once the Progress is in orbit.
The pieces of the bolt are supposed to stay secured to the spacecraft with restraining wire (so that you don't have bolts and stuff tumbling around in the same orbit with you). The article says they're going to move the Canadarm into position to check to see if one of these restraining bolts is missing.
MSNBC discusses debris apparently seen by the crew floating away from the International Space Station.
The crew saw debris as they were floating away from the ISS!? It sounds like the more alarming story is the fact that the ISS is losing crewmen! :)
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
In the article In this case, the best guess is that the bits of debris were a bolt and a washer from a Russian-built solar panel..
I think for any future international effort, things should be built together instead of modularly built.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
everything these days is built to the minumum specifications by the lowest bidder...
Now who's up for that one-way trip to Mars???
A long while ago, somebody* called Mir "The Orbiting Space Barge of Death." Perhaps the ISS could be renamed "The International Space Barge of Death."
/. poll, but I couldn't locate the source.)
*(I wanna say it was from an old
The Space Station...what's it all about? Is it good or is it whack?
C'mere you!
*smack* "Falling apart" is just a saying. *smack* Now say it! *smack* Say it! *SLAP* That's right. *biff* Now who's yer daddy? *pow* Yeah, I thought so. *wham* Now, get back to work. *bonk*
--- Ban humanity.
Wow and I thought I was the only person in the world who remembered scrumtrelescence.
While true, 1 bolt probably won't do much, its the remaining bolts around the do-hicky that need to tightened or checked. I remember missing a lugnut to my wheel on my truck, and I wasn't to concerned since there were 4 more, but I did replace it after I found it missing.
"This is you left and that's your left. This is your right and that's your right. You're gonna die!
We have a hard enough time tracking the breakup of stuff we left up there in the past.
... even without the odd orbital debris. Just the odd paint chip can make for a very bad day.
Space travel is hazardous enough
The little guy just ain't getting it, is he?
What happens to spaceman poop? Is it jetisoned as 'debris' too?
From the article:
"Yesterday, the crew observed another small piece of debris floating away from the ISS, apparently of Russian origin."
"The bolts are secured with a nut and a locking wire, and apparently one of them came free."
that's not likely to give anyone the warm fuzzies. locking wire doesn't come off unless it's the wrong size or it was used wrong. (like a nick in it which'll become a crack, or if applied backwards or such like.) either way, it's the sort of error that if done once due to incompetence, it was possibly done several times by the incompetent.
or the wire might have been cut by impact, but it's pretty strong stuff. that sort of impact would have been noticed and logged, i'd think.
anyway, hopefully this scotty quote stuff will settle down and perhaps we can get some space hardware junkies to comment. dig through your drawings, guys (gals?). does this indeed look like the soyuz hardware descibed? and are russian bolts locked down with stardard locking wire practice, or is it more of a custom pin system in this case and something was lost in the translation from tech to layman?
Now I see why they want to build the next one on the moon. No parts lost in space, just collect and reassemble...
"the International Space Station. From the article, 'Such debris may include fragments of insulation, labels and possibly important components.'"
Anyone else curious why they would put LABELS on the outside of ISS? (THIS SIDE UP!)? I wonder how many UFO's have read them yet..
Mod +5 Drunk
Wah!
Slowly is definitely better than quickly.
Here are about the only ones I could find. He's not as funny as Scotty.r di.html
o tes.html
Tasha: They make love at the drop of a hat.
Geordi: Any hat. --Justice
Data: Sensors show nothing out there. Absolutely nothing.
Geordi: Sure is a damned ugly nothing! --Where Silence has Lease
"Like the rat said, keep the cheese, I just want out of the trap." --Where Silence Has Lease
"I never lie when I've got sand in my shoes." --The Enemy
After saving a Romulan: "Welcome to Galordon Core, where no good deed goes unpunished." --The Enemy
"At first I thought the catwalk was spinning. As it turns out, it was me." --Cause and Effect
"Is there a runaway cadet in here?" --Journey's End
"We seem to have more than one mystery here." --Emergence
http://tvsothertenpercent.tripod.com/startrek/geo
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Nebula/9038/tngqu
___________________________________
That first paragraph prented as the headline is a bit inaccurate. Basically the article goes on to explain that the part in question is part of an explosive bolt, read, disposable. The space station is not falling apart as out slashdot editors would have us believe.
Images of the object were sent to the Russians, and the boltlike object looked familiar. "Preliminary info from Moscow indicates that the eyebolt may be from the Soyuz solar arrays," the NASA report said. "Four of them are used to safe the [solar array] during launch with a hook mechanism, which is released via [explosive bolt] after insertion [into orbit]. The bolts are secured with a nut and a locking wire, and apparently one of them came free."
The same bolts are used both on the Soyuz crew transport spacecraft and on Progress, the Russian-built cargo-only ship. Both vehicles are currently docked at the station, and NASA sources said Tuesday the Russians now believe the piece actually came off the Progress, which arrived at the space station at the end of last month. In the past, during periods of strong rhythmic thumping on an exercise device, the solar arrays on docked Soyuz and Progress craft can be observed to jiggle.
From IMDB:
Lev Andropov: Excuse me, but I think I know how to fix this.
Watts: Move it! You don't know the components!
Lev Andropov: [annoyed] Components. American components, Russian Components, ALL MADE IN TAIWAN!!!
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
I think if we're going to start reshuffling money, the Superconducting Supercollider project should be given another chance. The space station always did seem like a PR move anyway. Not that the PR seems to be working. :)
-
Tech News, Reviews and Tutorials
Stay back 200 ft. Not responsible for broken windshield.
who are those slashdot people? they swept over like Mongol-Tartars.
It may be less romantic than you though ;-)
"Obviously, I'm not an IBM computer any more than I'm an ashtray" (Bob Dylan)
I'm sorry Dave, I can not do that. It fell off already.
...a grenade pin??
They are not going to close it and bring the crew home.
There is too much American pride wrapped up in this thing even if it servers not purpose, and that means it will stay up there no matter what.
Some have theorized that the entire moon/Mars thing is simply a glorified plan to wrap ISS in some purpose people can grasp.
In any case, the Boeing gravy train will continue to orbit for some time.
my head injury from Skylab just cleared up 3 days ago, now I have to worry about this.
Not even close.
The Human Cow - bringing you scrumtrelescence since 1995
A Russian piece? Sounds exciting. What does she look like?
I dont mean to be offtopic or seen as a flamebait, but where are all the slashdotters clamoring for the scrapping of the ISS program, in order to save the Hubble satellite?
I think a great way for NASA to get out of its current catch-22 would be to fake a disaster, get the astro/cosmonauts to evac in the soyuz, and de-orbit the station with a big bang and lots of sparks and contrails...
for all we know, that could be HUGE for an alien spaceship.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You mean Kunta Kinte?
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
Kapton tape, which is essentially used as space duct tape, erodes in the presence of atomic oxygen. Atomic oxygen (just a single O, not the usual stable O2) is quite reactive, and will eat away many materials on the leading edge of spacecraft. Atomic oxygen is found more in the lower orbits (i.e. ISS and space shuttle) rather than the higer orbits (geosynchronous). Here are some pictures from the experiment.
(yep, I'm a former rocket scientist)
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
Ahem.
Duct tape does not just "come off".
Thank you.
G
They could be useful while it's being constructed on Earth, when it's being maintained during space walks, while it's being checked by camera, etc, etc, etc.
Hope no one looks out the window and sees a gremlin ripping pieces off. (225.89 miles = ~ 1.2 million feet) (225.89 miles from this site: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/tracking/)
THINK
Based upon the evidence you have brought forth, I believe this must be the destroyer ship of the dreaded Microns. To arms! Prepare your tinfoil hats and laser pointers!
http://mediagoblin.org/
I dunno about UFOs, but maybe docking space craft from Earth might find it useful...
no comment
and if these pieces are coming to earth... I think it may be time for me to add an extra layer of protection to my tinfoil hat.
As a result, when you are in the station, you won't be able to find anything. This was a major issue with Mir and Skylab, probably it was with Salyuts as well. No one stows the experiment equipment once they use it, just straps it into a convenient location. If you do a space walk, the chances are it will be your first time outside of the space station and you will get lost, won't find what you are looking for and won't remember the training session you had a year ago in a boring, hot Texan day.
Labels are for convenience.
Yeah, you know, the "caution, reading this from outside the space station amy cause you to implode." and the "Unleaded Fuel Only." and of course the "Oxygen in use, avoid all sparks or open flames." Oh, and the bumper sticker"My other shit can doesn't orbit."
Any news is good PR. NASA will make to the headlines again, it will be mentioned and probably the positive spin about Bush's Mars program and ISS' place in it will be mentioned again and again. I think they're allright, they will say it is common, the piece is unimportant etc.
Am i the only one who misread the title as "SparcStation slowly falling apart" ?
The debris seen floating away from the ISS pales in comparison to the latest piece of ejecta.
Apparently, the communication module for the ISS broke away last week, and was large enough to survive re-entry to the earth's atmosphere.
Officials tracked the piece via radar until it impacted somehwere in NYC.
Officials now say they have located the piece, which is in the possession of a street rapper named J-pod. When asked if he would return the piece to scientists for further investigation, he replied, "No WAY, dog...this thing bumps so loud and picks some so many stations...I ain't givin' it back to NObody!"
(with apologies to SNL for their original piece on skylab way back when)
You know your in trouble when the window your looking out flys away...
Mir = NASCAR
ISS = Formula One
Still, it's amazing that Mir was so successful, givin the # of near disasters it had.
Methinks that Nasa is just a little over cautious with the ISS since losing a second shuttle. Probably not a bad idea though.
I am become Troll, destroyer of threads
Damn mods, I've never been modded +anything for funny. This was my best attempt. I'm a complete failure. MUST POST SOMETHING FUNNY!
Mod +5 Drunk
I gotta get me some of those bills!
--- Bwah?
The labels are mostly for spacewalking astronauts. The ISS (and other satellites, most famously the HST and Solar Max) were designed for on-orbit servicing, so instructions are printed on them for astronauts to follow while working.
i am a soviet space shuttle
Cosmonaut: Hey...what's all that stuff floating away from the space station over there?
Astronaut: Uh oh. That's not gonna to be good for business...
Jerry Seinfeld: --that's not gonna be good for anybody.
(Kramer floats by in a space suit, visibly upset.)
Thank you, thank you. Thank you all very much.
sev
but have you considered the following argument: shut up.
Does this mean that, since now, the labels are missing, there will be a crapload of lots soviet cosmonaut's?!
Mod +5 Drunk
:-) Don't think so. It's the americans who run the ISS. Russians only get paid as taxi drivers and delivery man. :-) Russians' involvement is all a nice PR show. They can hardly build two soyuz crafts and a couple of Progress every year. That's not enough for a serious space program (but still, compared to the rest of the world, they still have the best and safest space program in the world).
...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.
Mix the failings of Usenet with the shortcomings of the World Wide Web and the result is slashdot.
Yeah, I though the facility in Texas they built just for the SSC was pretty cool. Too bad they only half way finished the tunnel. Its now used to store styrofoam cups as I understand it.
Dangit man! Ya gotta warn people before ya post stuff like this. Do you know how hard it is to get Mountain Dew out of a notebook?
I don't quite understand how they just assume these are russian parts floating away? I certainly would find it a bit disturbing whatever it was though... maybe they should have used duct tape?
I'm surprised that nobody else noticed this (too busy making Scottie jokes) but read this paragraph from the end of the MSNBC article:
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?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
From what I've read, NASA (or maybe the White House) isn't as keen on the ISS as the Russians would like us to be, and they've expressed concern that we might be looking to back out of it in some way or another. Here's one link I dug up, but not the best: http://www.space.com/news/russia_iss_011106.html The upshot is, the US can afford to abandon the ISS if necessary, but it'll practically bankrupt Russia. Wouldn't be too good for relations.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
Maybe this is a sign that NASA doesn't have as much funding as we all thought. They must hire cheap labor to build things.
---
http://spaceruckus.web1000.com
These guys are putting together a free 3D action/adventure game.
Free Wii Points
I sure hope they don't lose the Blue Alert bulb.
While a space station is techincally falling contiuously, is it apt to say that it is "falling apart?" Why not "floating apart" or better "drifting apart". If there's one thing that that orbiting pile of junk can do for us that's worth anything, it's to rethink some of our terrestrial metaphors when applied to near-space conditions.
The next remark is false. The previous remark is true.
Maybe we should be abandoning the ISS instead of the Hubble.
Or maybe we should put the ISS in a big plastic bag to catch all the parts before they get away and cause serious harm later.
Or maybe there should be a little autonomous dog-bot to go out and fetch the parts thrown off by the ISS - assuming you could trust dogbot not to sneak away itself.
If push comes to shove, just find an inanimate carbon rod and all problems will be solved.
Yes, the sun is "falling towards Earth" in the sense that the Earth's gravity pulls the sun towards the earth... but the earth is also falling towards the sun, and since the sun is much more massive than the earth, the earth orbits the sun and not the other way around. Actually, the earth is pulling every other object in the universe toward it, but most of them have much stronger forces acting on them at the same time, so it doesn't make much difference.
Rank Presidents by th
Kid: Mommy, mommy, I think our space station is falling apart!
Mommy: Shutup and keep your finger plugging that hole in the hull!
No, it's the manufacturers who keep everything closed-source.
Debris was spotted flying away from dacarr's mouth as he coughed violently on the bus home from work. Some of this debris may be teeth, his soft palate, throat lozenges, his uvula, or altoids.
This sig no verb.
...if someone would finally notice that.
That is the geekiest, nerdiest sig I've seen on here. Straight from the AD&D DM's guide, I love it!
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I'm imagining yellow stickies.
Problem is, it's not the 60's, and von Braun and Korolev aren't around anymore. Where are the badass engineers?
and I for one welcome our new insectoid overlords.
"You lied to me! There is a Swansea!"
"MSNBC discusses debris apparently seen by the crew floating away from the International Space Station."
Why is everyone talking about debris when the crew is fucking floating away!
(Note: intentional (mis)placement of word "fucking")
Once again it costs billions to learn that...
design by committee sucks.
Would nuclear submarine technology apply here?
Tech Public Policy stuff
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.
Mir lasted 5 times longer than it was supposed to, the ISS lasted 5 times LESS longer than it was supposed to.
Understand there are differences between the way the Russians do space programs and the way Americans do.
Early on, for example, the Americans had trouble writing down notes while in space. Ball-point pens didn't work, as the ink, in zero-G, didn't flow. This made working the checklists of hundreds of items difficult.
Thus, NASA developed, at a cost of over a million dollars, a pen with a pressurized cartridge to force the ink out regardless of the position it's in. You've probably seen this pen in novelty stores and in staples as "The Pen That Writes Upisde-Down and Underwater"...
The Russians used a pencil.
This is WHY Mir lasted so long and the ISS is falling apart.
(sigh)
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Insightful?
Did somebody select the wrong option in the drop-down or something?
...and it's the first ever Last Post! I Rule!
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
After once hearing "HEY EVERYBODY!" and having to rip the power cord from my computer after someone send me a redirect to a infamous site. (trolls?)
..don't panic