Slashdot Mirror
Space Station Crew Forced to Cut Calories
gollum123 writes "CNN and others are reporting that food is running so low aboard the international space station that both the crew members have been asked to cut their calories, at least until a Russian supply ship arrives in a little over two weeks. The situation is so bad that if a Russian cargo vessel scheduled to arrive on Dec. 25 has a mishap or is significantly delayed, the astronauts, one American and one Russian, will have to abandon the station and return home months ahead of schedule. An independent team is looking into how the food inventory ended up being tracked so poorly and how it can be improved in the future."
I think that would scare the hell out of me.
~D
.. where are they when you need them?
/me waits for:
In soviet russia food eats you
Wow, talk about strict dieting. Makes me wish I was up there, I know I could loose some of the weight gained from endless amounts of caffeinated drinks...
"a Russian cargo vessel scheduled to arrive on Dec. 25". So they won't me missing out on the brussel sprouts this year. Poor sods :)
Philip
Signatures are broken
[...] looking into how the food inventory ended up being tracked so poorly [...]
Hey, even astronauts can get the munchies!
This is probably a good choice for them then.
What about the Starbucks they built on the moon I'm always hearing about?
Possible Culprits: /me ducks before being kicked out!
- Lab Mice (Think Pinky & the Brain)
- Unofficial parties to celebrate holidays (pass me more beer from back there will ya?)
- Aliens (Hmm... we need to analyse those things humans eat!)
see its true
Is the team usually this small or have most of them buggered off for Christmas?
Slashdot: News for Nerds, Stuff that matters only to them
From the article:
"estimated there is enough food to last seven to 14 days beyond Christmas Day, after which there will be nothing left."
"they were put on restricted diets in hopes of trimming 5 percent to 10 percent of their daily intake of 3,000 calories."
"NASA and the Russian Space Agency were stunned to learn last week that the astronauts had begun digging into the 45-day food reserve -- which exists to protect against a delayed supply shipment -- in mid-November."
"The station's water supply is not nearly as dire and the two men have been encouraged to drink as much as they want."
And this is great: "Extra food and water has been packed into the supply ship that is scheduled to blast off from Kazakhstan on December 23, including some Asian delicacies -- dim sum dumplings for Chiao, a first-generation Chinese-American, and fried rice for Sharipov, who was born in what is now Kyrgyzstan in central Asia."
Space take-out. Who knew? Evidently it isn't guaranteed to be warm and fresh in thirty minutes or less...??? Looks like consumer space travel has one more bump to overcome.
Of blankness, I know nothing.
1. Normal menu: gruel, dried-out bread, spam
Reserve supply menu: caviar, salmon, steak, black forest gateau
2. "Alien"-style aliens. They have to eat for two as pregnant women say.
3. Food supplies were injected with water to make them weigh more. Water evaporated into space.
4. Astronouts have been playing target practice firing spuds at Rupert Murdoch's communications sattelites
5. Some relativistic thing
6. Some quantum thing
7. Something to do with SCO
posting anonymously due to grossness.
Before people start mocking Russians, and their food situation, just let me say that I ate more of, and better quality food when I was in Russia than I usually do in the UK. Salo though, is horrible stuff.
Get your own free personal location tracker
Hell, with the savings made they could probably upgrade the menus a bit, instead of eating paste three times a day they could afford to buy the astronauts some hot grits or something equally tasty once in a while.
Making the moon less necessary since 1998.
I like my toys as much, no possibly MORE then the next guy. And God knows aviation is my thing.
The Space Station should be a no brainer.
But there comes a time where you have to say, 'Look we gave it the good old college try. If it was meant to be it would be a success already, but alas it isn't working out.'.
For Gods sake deorbit it already.
Could there possibly be a more humiliating end to the space station then being abondend for lack of food?
Mod that fucker up!
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
....it beats the Atkins diet ;)
This could be the final straw for the ISS boondoggle. You can't do astronomy from the station that's even a tenth of the precision of Hubble. Why? All the vibrations from all the environmental gear. In fact, you can't do decent science experiments of any type. Why? Two people can't take time from just holding the place together to do the experiments, and we lack the budget (and now - the food!) to have a big enough crew to make the place something other than a multi-billion-dollar Astronaut Habitrail. Right now, it's no better than Mir was in its final days: astronauts spend all their time trying not to die. '"At present, the primary goal of the ISS is unclear," the NRC study observes.' I think it's dangerously close to changing from an investment to a sunk cost.
"Wow. Now THAT'S a lot of angry Indians." - Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer
...where finishing ahead of schedule is a bad thing!
Maybe the astronauts jus ate too much all year so that they can be back home for Christmas turkey.
Million dollar sig.
if that was me up there, i'd be pissed that the fastest they can come up with anything is 2 weeks away...and another 2 week away wait if the first one fails.
What if something serious happened up there?
*ding*
going up!
Spam Spam Spam
I know you like it.
There are no stupid questions, Just a lot of inquisitive idiots. (from a good friend)
The problem with living in microgravity is that the lack of acceleration results in the decalcification of bones and the atrophy of muscle tissue. Some exercise (like the much-mocked Soloflex) can help stave off this atrophy, but the real key to the whole solution is to keep calcium and protein levels in the body high.
Restricting food intake will result in some very serious physical damage to the astronauts. If you've ever seen footage of astronauts who have just returned to Earth after a long mission, they are hardly able to stand. That is with full nutrition. The poor astronauts up there now will have to deal with much lowered calcium and protein reserves in their blood and will likely suffer from advanced osteoporosis as well as general muscular atrophy.
I'd go ahead and blame Windows programmers for this mistake. But in all seriousness, this is probably a result of the reliance on the cooperation of multiple nations to do the right thing according to the schedule. It's hard enough getting cats into a pen, it's that much harder to get countries known for 'cutting corners' (like Russia) to do their job correctly.
Why not turn it into a new reality TV show, a la Survivor? This could easily provide a smidgen of the funding to keep the space station going. And instead of voting people off the space station, the person who loses a challenge gets eaten, so the food situation practically solves itself.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
You know, whatcha gonna do...
No shit, there I was, the International Space Station. Just me and my two friends, up in space like a bunch of regular dopeheads. But yaknow, there's not much up here to really DO, if you know what I mean... Sure, there's all kinds of expensive equipment and laboratory experiments, but when you're off your shift, there's not much to do except staring out in space or trying to sleep.
Have you ever tried sleeping in zero-gee? Well, it doesn't work for me, so I decided to hit the fridge instead.
I know, I know, I shouldn't have, but when you're all alone at night up there in space, those tubes of processed food start to taste really good. So, okay, maybe I did eat a few tubes too many, but hey, put yourself in my shoes. As I said, there's not much else for us to do up there but to eat.
Well, that's my confession anyway, I didn't mean to eat all that much, and I sure hope we will get some new flavors when the supply boat comes on the 25th!
Hey, they Nasa is such a wonderful organisation. They did : a poem (http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/artgallery/soto_po em.html/), some photo shoots with aerosmith (http://http//www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery /index.html) and so much more.
What can you say, i guess now is the time for serious issues, like food on space stations, lol.
Those who wonder at those who do wonder, while those who do, well, do. Unless, i do wonder?
This hurts me because in a few decades, when the majority of our manufacturing base has been outsourced, we'll have to depend on outside help for the very basics of our way of life. This is already happening if one considers the flu vaccine.
The Russians, though poor, seem to make better technical decisions. I remember a slashdotter mentioning here sometime ago that Russian helicopters can be fixed with the simplest of everyday materials and still deliver (read reliably fly)! Contrast that with American ones that require hours of maintenance for a few hours of flight. The Sea Kings (of Canada) require 30 hours of maintenance for every hour of flight, and they are unavailable for operations 40 per cent of the time. http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/cdnmilitary/seak ing.html.
Imagine...........!
...the creature's growing attraction to the humans makes it harder and harder for it to stay hidden. The cold, shrink-wrapped supplies it has been feeding from tastes like plastic, and something inside it slowly takes the form of a desire for warm, wet, red flesh...
- Sally Struther's stowed away!
- Somebody's got a... space tapeworm! (echo echo echo...)
- The astronauts threw all their carbs out the airlock during the Atkins diet fad
- They're actually low on fuel and are using the unpopular food as mass reaction mass for station-keeping.
- One of the astronauts is a mole whose mission is to inocuously sabotage the mission so that the ISS can be mothballed early and the funds diverted.
- They grew some chronic weed in the spare hydroponic bay... and... got the munchies (shhh!)
- Space Herpes! (nobody's seen Ice Pirates have they?)
- The food shortage was planned -- the astronauts are performing a life-extension experiment by going on a calorie-restricted diet IN SPACE (echo echo echo)
- The astronauts were secretly put on space-steroids, which vastly increased their appetites.
- In Korea, only old mission controllers count calories.
I'm all out of ideas... now I have to get back to work for Conan O'Brian's sad sad show.Told completely incorrectly. Q) Why does everyone at NASA drink Pepsi? A) Because they can't get 7-Up
TheHustler
http://www.elmarko.org/ - Useless bilge
http://www.asylum-games.co.uk/ - Co-Founder
"...the astronauts, one American and one Russian..." That's just ONE astronaut right?
- "They misunderestimated me."
Q: Why do they only drink Sprite at NASA?
A: Because they can't get 7-Up!
And the Challenger didn't go up, it went down. Fuck dude...get it straight. The Iraqi Information Minister's second cousin was more funny than you.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
I thought the only people that diet are the people that want to lose weight. For example people in Ethiopia were trying to achieve perfectness--getting back to their birth weight....but these astronauts , surely they have passed that stage.....they weight nothing....i'm confused.
To help those starving astronauts!
Just like the 80's when Ethopia needed food, or those Willy Nelson Farm-Aid concerts, we can get a group of singers to make a song about Xmas and feeding those in space!
"Feed the world! And Space Station guys too!"
Where's Michael Jackson when you need him?
The Alternate idea is to make Space Station Survior and turn it into a reality TV show. The problem is -- there aren't enough whackos on the station -- we need to add a few more "aggressive personalities" to liven up the show.
Although a few hot-babes wrestling with each other in Zero-Gee should be interesting TV, that's for sure.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
"An independent team is looking into how the food inventory ended up being tracked so poorly and how it can be improved in the future."
Looks like they have one Mr. H Simpson aboard!
Mmmmm space doughnuts... Woohoo! I've lost 95lbs! Woohoo! Mmmmm freeze dried christmas cake... mmm... Woohoo I'm still 0lbs!
Just don't let him get at the ant colony.
there is a bit lost as heat, e=mc^2 and all that, but the humans are converting edible food, into non edible waste. The weight of the food+humans+waste is constant. Apart from that the weight of an orbiting object is pretty irrelevant unless it is very very big. (like a twin planet system)
I know April is still quite far off, but just look at it:
``NASA and the Russian Space Agency were stunned to learn last week that the astronauts had begun digging into the 45-day food reserve -- which exists to protect against a delayed supply shipment -- in mid-November.''
Do they seriously mean that:
1. The astronauts weren't supplied with enough food
2. The situation was so bad they had to dig into the reserves
3. They didn't tell Earth about this?
If this is how seriously the people involved take their mission, I say we cut the funding right here, right now.
I've never been able to see space flight as anything but a waste of time, energy and money, but I've been okay with it; other people have lives and opinions too. But time and time again it turns out they don't do it properly. Exploding rockets and space shuttles, confusing metric and imperial units, failed Mars missions, and now this.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
i thought it imploded, not "blew up"
Is it true that more people vote for the winner of American Idol, than vote for the president? -Ali G.
Does this spacesuit make me look fat? I mean, seriously? Space travel always makes me feel soooooo bloated.
These are breasts; this is source code.
Why do you have a problem with those two things belonging to one person?
Where would you be without them?
I guess someone has been raiding the fridge at the ISS.
...when you can't sleep and raid the fridge every night ;)
Seriosly thought, What worries me the most isn't that they have started eating of the reserves - because thats why you have reserves - but that it took so long for people to notice.
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
Any possibilities of them reconstituting their own poop?
Must ... resist ... comment ... about English food.
I'm proud of myself, but the effort at self-restraint gave me a headache.
I'm sorry if I haven't offended anyone
Whey and flax oil powder? Maybe some vitimins too.
Maybe I'll try it myself. If my blog goes a bit quiet consider it failed
A blog I run for the wealth
No, what they really need is a Space Bar.
The previous crew has apparently eaten all the meat and tasties. All is left in abundance now is some confectionery and some juices if I recall correctly what I read yesterday. Now you see - when your mom was telling you to eat it all and not to pick your food she, in fact, was preparing you to be a spaceman one day.
I drew a cartoon of an astronaut falling with an explosion in the background with the caption "*tzzk Uh mission control ... that was a Bud Light."
That's like the British astronaut who was visiting the Mir space station and asked the resident Russian cosmonauts what they did for entertainment. "Oh, we have a bottle of vodka," said one of the Russkies. "Would you like a shot?" The Brit took a swig from the bottle. "It tastes a bit weak," he remarked, "I expected real Russian vodka to have a bit more kick!" "Well," said one of the Russians, "It's been through each of us six times already!"
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Hey I know the Iraqi Information Minister's second cousin. I mean, he's my second cousin. And he's fucking hilarious. Get it straight, man. Stop spreading disinformation on the Internet, the one place everyone can find tons of true, undisputed facts. The one place on earth (aside from Iraq of course) I am truly at home.
- Iraqi Information Minster
P.S. Iraq rules, long live Saddam! America will never defeat Iraq! Baghdad will never be taken! Death to the Infidels, and...
Shit, gotta go.
Can't we just beam them a new replicator or the parts needed to repair the one they have? Scotty could've fixed the problem in a couple of days.
The only thing crashing and burning around here is your non-hilarious sense of humor. Ever see the neighbor guy in "Raising Arizona" try to tell the Polish joke?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
"The executive board at NASA has *finally* agreed to screen manned space flight recruits for boulemia" "Russian scientists take a look at cannibalism as a viable option to sustain a manned mission to Mars"
...it's an airtight tin can with lots of heavy attachment points.
Heavy attachmnet points for what?
Original specs called for lots of solar panels.
Lots and lots.
As a test base for for a Solar Power Satellite.
Guess King Coal didn't want that.
The Singularity is closer than you think
Quant
They may have a food shortage providing that the cargo ship DOES NOT arrive before the middle of January. The chances of that are low, sending Russian cargo ships to ISS has been a routing procedure for a long time.
It good they have a backup plan in case if something extraordinary does happen but at this time there's nothing to worry about.
if a Russian cargo vessel scheduled to arrive on Dec. 25 has a mishap or is significantly delayed, the astronauts, one American and one Russian, will have to abandon the station and return home months ahead of schedule
"Abandon the station", yeah right! He means they'll be eaten by the other astronauts!
finish your food kiddo... there are hungry astronauts in space.
I don't want to read
Don't praise Russian technology unless you had to deal with it yourself. I had a russian car once, Moskvich, and it needed like 4 hours of maintenance each month to stay roadworthy. Of course that was ~8 years ago. Maybe they make their millitary stuff more reliable, but the all the stuff they made for civilians was utter and complete crap. Car salesmen here say 10 years old german car is better than a new russian car even now.
I got to work with some of old (70s-80s) russian computers too some ~15 years ago. They were 1:1 copies of some stuff americans used to make 5-10 years earlier. There was a joke that some engineers from USA went to computer exhibition to Moscow to see russian computers, and were able to log on to them with their own passwords (because software was 100% stolen).
--Coder
So the spaceshuttle Columbia walks into a bar.
bartender goes: Why so down?
"I just broke up with my crew"
"...including some Asian delicacies -- dim sum dumplings for Chiao ... and fried rice for Sharipov"
Ah, so they are both gastronauts!
Don't we all know by now it's the CARBS that count and not calories?
My best sig is this one.
That vodka was probably 500% better then any thing you get in England.
And there shots are *HALF* the size of Irish one's......
-----
"Clutch my testes, bloody squirrel humpers!!" -Happy Noodle Boy
NASA probably mixed up metric and imperial again, someone looked at a list and saw 50 100g packets of food and went 'oh look, 50 100oz packets of food no need to send any more'
What if Tetris was invented by Nazis?
Little green aliens stole it..just kidding..giggles..Isnt there a way to grow your own veggies n fruit in space?we age quicker up there right,so why cant food grow quicker there to....I dont know....sounds fishy to me like someone wants this station out of order..No one to run it leaves it unprotected..there could be a master plan to all of this..Im sure if I was in space Id make sure I had enough food to last me during my trip....
The Caloric Restriction Society discusses news and tips about this type of dieting.
This coming from a guy who corrects the jokes that teenagers tell? LMFAO, and not at any jokes.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Maybe the food shortage was caused by a serious
roach problem?
Please do not forget that not only in the space ship, but also in some regions of Africa, people are starving from hunger!
The costs for bringing those few in space some food could save millions of lives in Africa.
If Microsoft was mass, stupidity would be gravity.
"looking into how the food inventory ended up being tracked so poorly" Two words: Space Weed. Someone has been putting that hydroponics rig to use up there me thinks.
While the Fisher space pen did require a large sum of money to develop, NASA had nothing to do with the development. In fact, NASA also used pencils before the space pen was available.
This is just like the story of one of the very first modal imapact hammers. A modal impact hammer is used for vibration testing. It contains a force transducer in the head of the hammer so you can measure the excitation force applied to the structure you are hitting with it. Anyway, it one of these efforts to trim the fat on government spending (ie. $10,000 toilet seat type stuff), they were attacking the use of a $5,000 hammer. It turned out to be a $5 hammer and a $4,995 force transducer! So try getting the facts straight before you go spouting off so you don't end up with egg on your face like those guys.
Also, the Fisher space pen did not have a pump. It contains an ink that when at rest is too thick to squeeze around the roller ball of the pen. However, when the ball is in motion the shearing force applied to the ink allows the ink to flow and the user to write.
"An independent team is looking into how the food inventory ended up being tracked so poorly and how it can be improved in the future."
Was the food inventory kept on a MySQL database? Maybe even an Access one?
I can almost hear it...
- 140,000 rehydratable chickens.
- Check.
- 72 tons of reconstituted sausage pate.
- Check.
- 4,691 irradiated haggis.
- Oh, Commander, it's Saturday night. I've had enough!
- 4,691 irradiated haggis.
- Commander, it's Saturday night! I want to boogie on down!
- 4,691 irradiated haggis.
- We've been doing this for four hours! Let's have a break!
- 4,691 irradiated hag-g-gis.
- Commander, will you stop saying 4,981 irradiated haggis and speak to me!
- 4,691 irradiated haggis.
- Commander, I want to go for a *drink*!
- 4,691 irradiated haggis!
- I want to have some fun!
- This *is* fun! Are you mad?
[pedant]
This of course is a Challenger joke retreaded for the recent incident
[/pedant]
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
I wonder if it's some kind of units problem: "Hey Bud, sez here they wants us to load 75 Kg of rice. Kg's is the same as pounds ain't they?".
Only three things are certain; death, taxes, and apocryphal quotations - Ben Franklin.
If the astronauts are upset that NASA screwed up the food supply, they could always rebel and go on a hunger strike.
Uh, wait..That's what NASA wants them to do...
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
to be worked out before NASA is allowed back into space. I know all of these guys choose to take the risks; no one is drafted into the American space program. And I have no doubt there are competent engineers working for NASA.
I find it most likely it's the people with Business Administration degrees, and not the Mechanical Engineers, where the problem needs to be addressed.
Swap out the CEO. There's thousands more just like him, so pick a better breed.
He estimated there is enough food to last seven to 14 days beyond Christmas Day, after which there will be nothing left.
I know a high-level manager in the ISS operations contract, who tells me that the ISS crew has an onboard supply of "snack food" - twinkies and the like. What will run out in 14 days is the nutritious food that's designed, along with lots of exercise, to keep their bodies from wasting away. So "nothing left" is a bit of an exaggeration. The crew wouldn't starve to death in January, but their bodies would begin to lose muscle and bone mass at an accelerating rate. The plan is that if 16P - the next Progress mission - doesn't dock by the 30th of December, then they'll bring the crew home.
The cartoon of the people turning into food on a life boat come to mind.
In seriousness, I wonder when the first cannibalism will occur in space due to a stranded interstellar space vessel... You know it's going to happen some day.
Couldn't they call LoneStar and Barf to see if they can pick up some takeout from the planet Druidia?
I'm not a doctor, but I play one in bed.
Steamed with a little butter and salt is best. And if you can't take the big ones, buy the frozen baby brussel sprouts. They have less of the flavor compounds that many (particularly those weaned on baby food and sweets) find distasteful.
This has been another off-topic post.
You have two hands and one brain, so always code twice as much as you think!
Government projects never are misplanned. Never.
But since their own flight doctors are not spazzing about it, I think it's safe to say that they'll probably be ok for a few more weeks...
Hokey statistics and ancient misconceptions are no match for a good thought in your head, kid!
English is your second language, right?
Laws are for people with no friends.
"Dammit Vladimir, you forgot to go to the grocery store again!"
Hmm if I was one of the astronauts, I would seriously be cutting my calories even more to help avoid any chance of having to come back home... not that I have any problem with mother russia...i mean mother earth, but space is just too damn cool!
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
They should have hooked up the Golden Corral Space Pod on that thing.
God, Root, Whats the difference?
NO SOUP FOR YOU!
What's wrong with their food replicator?
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
"An independent team is looking into how the food inventory ended up being tracked so poorly and how it can be improved in the future."
;-)
Is it really poor food tracking or is it the fact that people eat alot more when they are bored?
... from many "news" outlets.
It is uniformly described as a "diet" or "cutback".
Will someone please explain to me why no one is willing to use the term "forced rationing"? As that certainly seems to be the most accurate description from the high peak of reason and sensibility where I reside...
Or maybe the "news" is not about presenting "accurate description"s.
since when was giving up EVER the right answer?
You're a failure in life. You might as well kill your self now.
- Open refrigerator doors, Hal.
- I'm sorry, Dave. I can't let you eat that.
The Russians have a six-seater in production.
The Chinese have leased the Soyuz design for their manned space program. Early remarks point to adding more functionality than capacity. It would be usefule if they installed ISS ports on their models.
They've spent almost $90 billion so far and cant even providing living resources for two people.
"Beds" are a figure of speech, because in micro-gravity astronauts sleep in pouches.
Can prions exist in space?
How long until one crew member goes crazy and eats the other one?
With food like haggis, it's no wonder the Scots came up with the worlds finest potable.
I wonder if there is a possibility of the food actually being on board the ISS, but nobody recalling where they stowed it.
"These were the emergency rations. Only to be used in a true emergency. They were for the last of the last resort!
All I want to know is, who took them."
"I wouldn't leave the box as evidence."
Mmm... maybe we could fry up some Welsi Corgi?
(Yeah, so it's an anime reference. But if you're going to refer to anime, refer to the best.)
Oh come on, they probably saved enough by now to visit Milliways... it's right around the corner.
Cozinha para as massas (e para geeks)
"These were the emergency rations. Only to be used in a true emergency. They were for the last of the last resort!
All I want to know is, who took them."
"I wouldn't leave the box as evidence."
Mmm... maybe we could fry up some Welsh Corgi?
(Yeah, so it's an anime reference. But if you're going to refer to anime, refer to the best.)
Upside: No drug laws in space.
Downside: You still get the munchies.
There are 01 kinds of cars in the world. The General Lee, and everything else.
30-40 years ago, people were fussing about spending all those billions of dollars to put men in space when there were people starving on earth. Now we face the possibility (hopefully remote) of men starving in space.
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
Russian space technology may be old, but its well-proven and gets the job done. The Russians have not had a single flight fatality in 30 years with Soyuz craft.
Space is a dangerous environment and there is much to be said for building spacecraft to be as tough as tanks. The other approach, to go all hi-tech, may appear more spectacular but leaves you with little room to hide when things go wrong (see various well-known Shuttle mishaps)
Take Mir - everyone laughed at how it broke down all the time. But no-one died and it lasted a heck of a lot longer than anyone expected. Not even when it was crashed into by a supply ship and lost air. I can only hope that the fancy ISS proves to be that robust, because it WILL be hit one day.
Also, astronauts on a diet? Hey, they could do with losing a little weight anyway. Get it? Get it? Ah, ferget it...
Soylent Green. In the immortal words of Charlton Heston: "Soylent green is people!"
The real mission for ISS is to keep a lot of smart Russian engineers who know how to build things like ICBMs from working for third world dictators. Nations other than Russia work on it only so they can maintain a fiction that it is an international effort.
If any science is done that is good, but the point is all politics. Considering what these guys can do if the choice comes down to building a bomb for some evil guy or not eating, I'd call ISS a good thing. Nothing to do with science though.
The only joy will be if those blubber bladders are unable to squeeze through the escape hatch and die as a result.
Hurray!
chips, if there's any way to get back the general publics in NASA it's putting an Average Joe in space.
I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords. I'd like to remind them that as a trusted TV personality I could be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves.
-Kent Brockman
The Simpsons
Truer words were never said Kent.
I mean, we've damn near deep-fried as many things as the Brits have.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
> After all, Mir was 10 years over its planned lifetime. Unlike the two space shuttles the US-Americans managed to crash. Not to mention that the Mir crew survived ...
OK, we're all getting annoyed at both of you. Yes, Mir was a good example of Russian technology. Sure, the crew survived, but that's a bad comparison to the shuttles that failed, due to their failures being accidents. If you want to argue that this means that Americans are behind Russians in space tech, I present that the U.S. never blew a big crater in Cape Canaveral like the Russians managed in Baikonur. Still, space travel has been relatively non-hazardous for both nations, and it doesn't really compare to aviation technology. When you're talking about planes, you should be considering Aeroflot, not Mir.
It's true that there are many Americans who look down their noses at Russian technology because it isn't the latest and greatest, and that's not always a good idea. Where high tech is necessary (Life-flight helicopters, military hardware and "hostile-zone" places like flying over forest fires and Arctic conditions), the U.S. shines pretty well. Where hard-down reliability is key, the simpler designs win out. As was said above, "the right tool for the job" is important, so there's a place for both.
Virg
If you count the kid-unfriendly messages, this looks like a close analogy to the ISS.
For two years, the crew lived inside the hermetically enclosed structure, farming for a living. Serendipitously, the crew could not grow enough plant food to support a calorically normal diet. I assume astronaut health is extremely closely monitored, could provide some good data on short term impact of calorie restriction.
He was sneaking extra rations again! And when confronted he'll just try to weasel out of responsibility like he did on all the previous episodes of Lost In Space!
I caught the NASA channel yesterday with the two of them answering questions live from school kids, and they did zero-g somersaults that were not complementary in their jumpsuits.
One kid's question was about height and weight to be an astronaut, and there was a limit on height, but not weight...
Is it a rule, that there's an exception to every rule?
It is about time that we start seriously questioning our cultural attitudes toward eating. I was watching a monkey yesterday, and his behavior was much more realistic.
I would like to see some community of thinkers analytically discuss what the dietary needs of a human really are.
I suggest that for most people a great deal of their calories may be used by parasitic organisms in their intestines including E. coli. Then they would require another portion of those calories to deal with those organisms. This could account for a significant percentage of total dietary intake.
I just can't help thinking I left something behind...the oven? Check...the lights? Check...hmm...oh well, I guess I've got everything. Let's go!
but have you considered the following argument: shut up.
Great...we can't keep food in someone's stomach two inches away because some idiot doesn't know how to manage inventory...how the hell are we supposed to goto mars when stupid things like this happen all the time?
robots don't eat. Another benefit of a robotic mission.
Well, if you want to get cranky about it, they aren't weightless, they're in free fall around the Earth. Just because their forward motion prevents them from pressing on a scale placed below them doesn't mean they have no representative "weight" while they're in the Earth's gravity well.
But yeah, mass makes the discussion easier.
Virg
I'll never forget the Mr. Boffo comic strip in the '80s.
He's in space talking with an alien.
alien: "On my planet, these are a delicacy."
Mr. Boffo eats it.
alien: "On my planet, 'delicacy' means poison."
>America will never defeat Iraq!
At least he got that part right.
They should just ask SpaceShipOne to deliver some food :)
In the future that may actually be possible
Did you know that "FTW" ("for the win") is a direct translation of "Sieg Heil"?
Oh, for the love of $deity, this is an administrative failure, not a software failure!
"Perhaps if the software were revamped, and open source software used instead the community could help out a little?"
It doesn't matter who makes the accounting software if humans don't act on the information. OSS does nothing to change this.
"Many eyes make for few bugs -- and when the bugs are as easy to spot as the "food" entry reading zero I see no reason to put up with badly written, unfree software."
Actually, if food=zero, and you haven't got a mission already in space, your astronauts are probably as good as dead. You obviously didn't consider the lead time to prepare a resupply mission; in failing to account for appropriate mission parameters, your proposal as stated could have killed two people. Think about that, then consider why OSS development isn't even in contention for aerospace software.
OSS is not a magic wand that solves all ills. It has a valuable place, but crying "use OSS" every time some problem even vaguely related to computers pops up is absurd, and just makes OSS advocates look like a bunch of obsessive zealots. Please stop.
So this is Christmas,
:-)
And what have we done,
American's in Space suits,
Look for Russians to come...
Feed the Astronaunts...Do they know its Christmas time at all?
Please give generously. In Soviet America no one can hear you starve.
Hmmm this is a bit of a turnaround. American's waiting on Russian food relief.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
I know everyone loves to joke on the former Iraqi Information Minister, but am I the only one that is reminded of Rumsfeld and the rest saying 'there is no organized gorilla resistance in Iraq'?
What do you want to do today Bob? I don't know Ivan, how about we eat and then float around.
If they recycle their waste water... why not their food?
With the American president worried about teaching creationism in school, denying global warming, and relying on badly designed voting machines what do you expect?
An investment in science with a nation that might be part of the axis of evil for buying Saddam's oil and not doing war on him?
By the way. Not much science is going on in the ISS but the "how astronauts degrade with no gravity and maybe cosmic rays we didn't discover yet". Perhaps the americans just planned it so Russia would waste more money than them on the ISS?
I worship Russian engineering. Competence in making low maintenance thingies actually counts to keep a job in Russia, not just lots of clean weekly reviews.
motherly order a the dining table:
"Now Johnny, finish your vegetables. Don't you know the astronauts on the space station don't have enought to eat?"
"Piter, too, is dead."
The astronauts are being asked to cut back 10% from their 3000 Calorie / day food intake. Now, remember, these people are weightless, so they are burning *less* Calories than they would on earth. So I wouldn't say they are in danger of starving or anything....
If anything, they are in danger of becoming lard-asses.
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We have centuries of management science to help us with problems like that.
Yes, and "Management Science" in practice mostly boils down to the art of dodging blame. The 'nauts got themselves into this mess by agreeing to this mission, and they will definitely get themselves out well before they have a chance to starve.
I've provisioned and sailed small boats several thousand miles at a stretch with a crew of 2. No long-range radio, no mission control, no layers of scientific managers to obscure the blame. When our water went bad on one occasion (yes it was our fault), we literally bet our lives on our limited backup rations and our next course of action.
It's not that complicated. Don't get in the vessel until you have verified it's adequately provisioned and you are ready to accept the consequences of any single point failure. Including getting your butt home intact once you're done being a "consummate professional" who "will do whatever is required and asked of" you by a scientifically managed NASA flight surgeon (quoted in the article).
If this situation worsens in any way, future crew members can look forward to each tracking the entire food inventory independently, with daily reconciliations and periodic video audits by ground control. And it will be their own damn fault. Some people will put up with anything to fly.
Given that most of the zoo animals in Iraq, especially the primates, suffered terribly due to the privations of the last decade or so, I suspect that any gorillas who may live in Iraq who survived until today would be pretty happy with the improved availability of food.
Given said hypothetical gorillas seeking the assistance of humans in Iraq, it's entirely possible that some of them would meet up with guerilla resistance forces, organized or not, and by joining them, institute a guerilla gorilla resistance.
But not likely.
One is the escape pod the other ye old trash bin. From my memory of the Orbiter simulator, there are three docking ports. With two escape craft attached you have a resupply nightmare, X% of cargo on the resupply being packing materials needing shunted to the trash pod before it's released. Thus causeing a loss of trash payload, or a personal hazard not having six seats available at any given moment.
Hmmm, let's see, a crash due to a conversion error. Now an addition problem that threatens to beat the heck out of the South Beach Diet (The "Orbiter's" diet?).
Not to mention a failed burn attempt to raise the ISS to a higher orbit.
http://www.spacetoday.net/Summary/2651
Maybe it's a good thing that we aren't all rocket scientists.
I dream in binary.
I remember Leroy Chiao well -- he was my stepdad's roommate at UCSB. Great guy. ^^; He seems to have put on some weight though.
I'd be interested in knowing who it was that ate too much. XD
Do you even have one?
Downside 2: You can't open the window even though you are doing 90,000 miles an hour and REALLY want to tilt your hand up and down in the wind.
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
I can just see the Russian cosmonaut, gliding along a corridor, clipboard clutched under his arm, "Okay, I haf new data to examine, comrade-" He then arrives at the storage hold, finding the American floating like the Goodyear blimp above a pawed at casement of space-doughnuts, cheeks smeared with chocolate... "Damning it, you are again eating all of supplies!! You will be death of me, American goat-pig!!" PS- Go ahead & flame me; I'm American! lol
You didn't know about the "Oil for Gorilla-food" scandal? Millions of dollars in oil was sold each year to feed the Iraqi's with bananas, but the bananas were instead funneled to zoos to feed the hungry gorillas. The gorillas loved living like silverback gorilla-kings during the Iraq sanctions, but now are said to be sadly depressed after the end of the "Oil for Gorilla-food" program.