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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."
.. where are they when you need them?
"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
Is the team usually this small or have most of them buggered off for Christmas?
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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.
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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?
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.
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.
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...........!
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
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.
just change the gravitational constant of the universe!
finish your food kiddo... there are hungry astronauts in space.
I don't want to read
having extra muscle requires a lot more calories to support than fat (or than nothing) even when it's doing nothing. for most of our evolution food was scare and getting rid of that metabolic cost when it wasn't being used was beneficial and a good thing.
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.
... 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.