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ISS Gyro Fixed Via Spacewalk
Teahouse writes "After a failed attempt last week, the ISS Astronauts finally got to fix the external gyroscope circut breaker in the station. Tests are being run today, but it looks like the ISS is back to having attitude stability with redundancy. This is particularly significant with the Shuttle being grounded for an extended period because the ISS would have had to use thruster fuel to keep the Station's solar panels pointed in the right direction without the gyroscopes, and no guarantee when more fuel would be arriving."
So... Mir died of Russian neglect, and so early into its mission the ISS seems to be dying of US neglect. Even if shuttle missions resume the importance of the ISS in US plans has been eclipsed by a moon base and a Mars mission. Lots of people criticize the ISS because it was largely conceived with politics in mind moreso than economics or science. Surely they hate the new US direction even more -- billions more will be blown, over the course of far more administrations who will always be gunning to kill it for more cash -- just to give the impression of superiority over the Chinese. I say either fund and finish the ISS or start a new economical, science-based space project from scratch. But moon bases? Please, ISS doesn't deserve to fall apart for this...
Specifically, the line "Why is this room here" when they're in thec hompers room. Note to self, when designing something where it is incredibly dangerous to go outside and fix, spring for the extra twenty feet of cable and put the circuit breaker INSIDE THE DAMN SHIP.
meh
They spend all their simply MAINTAINING the station. Not much actual science happens aboard the debacle called ISS.
It's supposed to comback online in 2005. Aside from that, safety concerns are a joke. These astronauts want to go to the space and the government, for political reasons is preventing them. What do you think test pilots, and the true explorers have been doing for ages? Sure, we don't want to needlessly die, but we're a bunch of water-meat-bags attached to a ball of rock -- if we're interested in the giant cosmos that supports us, and are willing to risk our lives to do so, isn't that a noble cause? My god. The USA will send thousands to their death to a country rich in oil, and yet, they won't even risk 5 or 10 people to explore the vast universe they live. What a short-sided pitiful view of the world. Right now, if I could fly in the shuttle, and they'd take me into space for some dangerous mission, I would go. No shit.
We are one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. Back to you with the weather, Bob!
The Shuttle costs around $1 bil each launch. If you figure that the average NASA or NASA contractor employee makes about $50k a year and has a working lifetime of about 40 years, that's about $2 mil per working lifetime in salary. Thus the equivalent of 500 people put their life's work into each launch. A person's life's work is not the same as his life, but it's in the ballpark. The shuttle's construction is far more complicated than just launching it once, so to say that the shuttle is more valuable than its crew is true. It is the life's work of thousands upon thousands of people. Something like the shuttle is one of the only artifacts we have that is comparable to, for instance, the cathedrals of Europe in its scale.