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US to Pay to go to ISS
forgotten_my_nick writes "According to BBC News, Russia has announced that it will no longer ferry US astronauts to space for free (It has been doing so for two years). From 2006 the US will be expected to pay."
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Did they already repay us for the huge amount of money we spent to pay for their parts of the station? IIRC, they claimed a few times they couldn't finish their pieces because of lack of funding, so we footed the bill...
I had a sucky sig.
They aren't trying to profit they are trying to break even. If Russia had the budget NASA has I would be willing to bet they could create a reusable shuttle. How the hell does Bush think we can get to Mars when we need to borrow Russia's space fleet to get to ISS? What a joke.
I wouldn't be suprised if this is reteliation for the USA's interference in Ukrainian politics on Russia's back yard. It has appeared to many that the opposition has links to the US government and may have been heavily funded by the USA to despose the current government for a pro-USA neo-liberalist government.
The irony is that Russia is almost in a better position to pay for sending people into space right now. They may not have much money, but they're not at the serious risk of going bankrupt within that next decade that the USA is.
According to the article at first the US will pay in work already done on the ISS that the Russians didn't do.
Now if the US can get ONE space program working. This isn't too much to ask, is it?
I wonder if the next generation of the space program will look like commercial sector endorsements. It at least seams like thats where the technology is, or would this be setting up annother regulated industry that will fail as soos as it gets too expensive (like the airlines).
Diareah of words, constipation of thought.....
--Kei
In the beginning, the ISS was supposed to be a great international effort to promote science in orbit, among other things.
We all know the 'great' and 'international' part got scrapped (well, not entirely, but still)... what about the science? With a crew of 2 members and troubles with reapprovisionment, is there any (real) science getting done on the ISS? Or is it only kept up because we already invested too much in it?
Eureka Science News - automatically updated
Maybe this will finally get NASA to relaunch the shuttle, or a replacement shuttle. Cape Canaveral has been pretty much dead for the past two years. Or they could rent out spaceship 1.
As a US citizen, I'm curious if this is fallout from our wonderful public relations. Half the known world is pissed off at us, and it wouldn't surprise me if this isn't much more than Russia saying "You want to bum a ride? How much ya got for gas money? The price of rocket fuel isn't going down, ya know."
Hint to the current and future US Presidents: you may be the elected leader of a technological powerhouse, but you can't go it alone.
(it'll also pay for them to keep an eye out on Japan's technology, that the EU is becoming a collected economic force to bruise egos, and China's locomative-esque economy with about a third of the world's population, too, but who knows if they pay any attention)
Now they want to charge for something that should be bridging for international good will.
It appears to be a case of charge for it, or do not do it at all. The Russian Space Agency is facing financial difficulties and needs all the extra funds it can get.
Chris
aterr - an open source threaded discussion board.
Personally, I am not surprised by this revelation. I doubt that they would have done this if the shuttle fleet wasn't grounded. Right now, they see themselves as the only current way to get our astronauts into space, so they're going to take advantage of that. Besides, $20 million to the Russian space agency is a fraction of the cost of somehow getting a new shuttle out (if that's even possible anymore). I'm somewhat surprised that this wasnt thought of earlier.
They pretty much have us by the jubbles and they know it. You vant an astronaut in space, comrade? Ve're your only real solution right now. Ve're going to take advantage of that. Can't say that I blame them. Ah, the capitalist spirit hits the Russian space program!
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
Russia, the west isn't your enemy.
The conspiracy theorists have always thought that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a sham to get the west (Regan, Thatcher, JPII, et. al) off their backs and cut their economic losses. The recent business with Yukos makes it seem more likely. After all, a KGB man is running the country.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Congressional rules prevent the US from paying for the flights. I guess we'll have to charge the Ruskies for flights on our shuttles.
They lessened democracy right after the terrorist attack of their school.
The US lessened democracy right after 9/11 - VISITUS + PATRIOT Act anyone?
They regarded the Ukraine as problematic, and instead went to have military operations with China.
The US regarded Iraq as problematic and went into military operations with total disregard to international conventions and treatires.
Russia, the west isn't your enemy.
USA - The world is NOT your enemy!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I'm sure most the money will go to finance their space program, which is keeping the ISS alive while the shuttles are stranded. Given this fact, it seems only fair that NASA shares part of their budget... just my 2 cents...
Break even, profit. Loss, non-sale. Semantics, shmantics.
Wheel in the sky keeps on turnin'.
Just claim it as their own. What's the US going to do? Kick 'em out?
It'd make an awesome weapon platform. They could event rent it out to the Chinese to use as a stop-over on their way to the moon. Maybe even a step toward a Russian-Chinese joint-venture on an eventual moonbase.
The US no longer has any power in space, and Russia, true to its nature, is taking advantage of this.
Not surprising.
"This is totally insecure, but very convenient."
You were paying to keep missile specialists and other assorted weapons designers from going to work for dubious nations. That actually pretty much describes the entire purpose of Russian involvement: the US wanted to keep rocket scientists from going to Iran after the fall of the USSR, so it paid them to make space junk.
Do the astronauts get frequent flyer miles for this trip?
Money cannot buy happiness, but can buy something soo darn close, that you can't really tell the difference
What a bunch of nonsense. Sounds like it was spoken by someone who has no clue about Russian politics or say Russia's relations with China or Ukraine. Please go read up on those topic from a reputable source (note this might be a long read as you don't seem to know much).
on the pickup trucks with the gun racks:
"Gas, Grass, or Ass, Nobody Rides for Free!"
Ok Troll, I'll bite
#1 the computer you're using now -- space exploration pushed the microelectoronics revolution
#2 that fancy koolatron cooler that you bought last summer to keep your beer cold, again thank space exploration
#3 teflon, plastics, most modern alloys, etc.
ok, I'm done feeding the trolls, next!
"Every security scheme that is based on secrets eventually fails." - Steve Jobs
Uh. I believe this story is about Russia scoring a ``zinger'' in the eyes of Europeons and Bush-hating Americans. It's certainly not about how the USA is, to a first approximation, funding the ISS. -1, Offtopic!
And for the record, it's not really a bad thing that Russia is trying to recover some costs of shooting rockets into space. It's best to keep things fair, and by fair, I don't mean that Europeons and Russians are allowed to charge the USA for stuff, but not vice versa.
--
Sound out ``Europeons.'' I didn't make a typo.
Of course, all things considered, the CCCP or whatever they go by now, is a much cheaper ferry ticket, and unless I am mistaken on my numbers, far less fatal.
Here are some examples from the list
Air Quality Monitor
Virtual Reality
Municiple Water prurification (So your tap water doesn't kill you.)
Solar Energy
Fire resistant material
Digital Imagry Breast Biopsy
Voice controlled wheel chair
And here are a bunch from the above link that were easy to cut and paste:
Advanced keyboards, Customer Service Software, Database Management System, Laser Surveying, Aircraft controls, Lightweight Compact Disc, Expert System Software, Microcomputers, and Design Graphics. Dustbuster, shock-absorbing helmets, home security systems, smoke detectors, flat panel televisions, high-density batteries, trash compactors, food packaging and freeze-dried technology, cool sportswear, sports bras, hair styling appliances, fogless ski goggles, self-adjusting sunglasses, composite golf clubs, hang gliders, art preservation, and quartz crystal timing equipment. Whale identification method, environmental analysis, noise abatement, pollution measuring devices, pollution control devices, smokestack monitor, radioactive leak detector, earthquake prediction system, sewage treatment, energy saving air conditioning, and air purification. Arteriosclerosis detection, ultrasound scanners, automatic insulin pump, portable x-ray device, invisible braces, dental arch wire, palate surgery technology, clean room apparel, implantable heart aid, MRI, bone analyzer, and cataract surgery tools. Gasoline vapor recovery, self-locking fasteners, machine tool software, laser wire stripper, lubricant coating process, wireless communications, engine coatings, and engine design. Storm warning services (Doppler radar), firefighters' radios, lead poison detection, fire detector, flame detector, corrosion protection coating, protective clothing, and robotic hands. So yeah, I'd say mankind has gained something from going to space. And to think all of this would have been developed in the timeframe without NASA and its goals is laughable.
Addendum information class, 44535i
Topic: Manouver to effectivly gain ridership from an unknown source.
Step 1: Extend arm.
Step 2: Make fist, then extend thumb to full open position.
Step 3: Bend elbow to move hand from starting position to the side of the head. Count to two, return hand to starting position, count to two, and repeat.
Step 4: Optional step for female austronauts - pull up right leg covering to expose skin.
With any luck, you will attract the attention of passing space craft who will give you a ride to your destination of choice, preferably the International Space Station.
I haven't lost my mind!
It is backed up on disk...somewhere...
MOD Parent UP.. This is a great idea. Compair 500M for one shuttle launch to 20M per person on a russian launch. Sounds like a good investment to me. We could launch 10 americans per year and still have enough to fund an entire (real) science mission each year with money to spare.
"Truth is much too complicated to allow anything but approximations"
I say we tell the Russians to go screw off and not let them use the 90%+ of the space station that we funded. See, we can be just as childish. Thats, right. Any nation that wants to get "technical" about what they have given to the ISS, we can just remind them of _our_ contributions of the majority of the ISS. Just as they want to charge or take away from their "contributions", we should charge or take away from our contributions.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
wait.... MORE THAN $40 MILLION dollars for a damn fuel tank? wonder how much budget stuffing is in that...
:|
Then again, I guess that gold plated hardened pop rivets are damn expensive
Sendmail is like emacs: A nice operating system, but missing an editor and a MTA.
US space scientists are better paid in private industry these days.
Actually they DID create a reusable shuttle - the Buran. It only flew to orbit once, but did so perfectly, did a few earth orbits and landed perfectly without losing a single tile - all unmanned.
Then the ran out of money, so they scrapped the program!
"how excally does 'mankind' benifit from by going into space?"
Well, according to TV, most of the stuff I bought was a direct result of space travel.
"Derp de derp."
if they want it this way then let the Russians build thier own space station. America the powerful can do without others since the USA is the greatest nation ever to exist on the face of the planet.
:\
All naysayers can get stuffed!
And people wonder why planes crash into buildings with attitudes like this
It would be interesting to see how many people in the US could actually find Russia on the world map. I've been told of a friends days at school in the US where a number of people could only name 4-5 states in America - one couldn't even find the state he lived in!
To the rest of the world, it seems like "America - home of the brave.... and the stupid."
Sendmail is like emacs: A nice operating system, but missing an editor and a MTA.
No, no shuttles please. Paying the Russians would still no doubt be cheaper than shuttle missions.
For starters, the Russian boosters don't have to drag multi-ton wings into space. Wings that are useless in space.
BTM
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
I don't understand how especialy the american can be reacting so egoistic and selfcetered about the INTRENATIONAL spacestation.
Like they own the world, Actulay they own nothing they have big debts which only grow.
I wonder how long it will take before the rest of the world start realizing this sceme.
I am hoping i will see that day.
And americans become again sane people.
There are no stupid questions, Just a lot of inquisitive idiots. (from a good friend)
The U.S. space program today is a shadow of its past. It's primarily a holdover from a pissing match between the budding USA and the USSR.
The USSR has ceased to be a "superpower", and the USA has established clear, military dominance. What's the point of NASA today?
What's really interesting is the kickoff of the private/commercial space age begun with SpaceShipOne. The Ansari X-Prize wasn't the goal - it was the starting line.
Within the next 1-2 decades, we'll see the old-style national space agencies dwarfed as pure economics brings scale to the space industry.
Space today is basically a high-dollar, cottage industry. Everything is hand/custom made at high expense, and in painfully small volumes.
It'll start with the obvious - people paying $25,000/seat to fly into space for an hour. Technology will be refined, prices will drop, and by the time I'm an old guy (I'm 32 now) I expect to be able to spend a week in space at a price I could actually afford.
But that's not so big, as the reality that new uses for the reduced-cost space travel will be discovered - uses we have no way of predicting.
Just like Edison could never have predicted micro-electronics, the future holds possibilities we can only begin to imagine!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Perhaps we should rename the space station then. How does everyone like the acronym for American Space Station? Hmmm... Maybe not such a good idea.
1 seat on the Russian taxi sells commercially for $25 M US dollars, however that included several weeks of training, as the story goes.
I believe that the Soyuz is a 3-seater. Assuming all passengers are capable astronauts, It isn't unreasonable to still expect the astronauts can travel for the same price as a civilian tourist.
At that price, let's round up and say the seven-person Space Shuttle ride equivalent is $200 M US dollars. I believe that the cargo volume in the Soyuz is much smaller, so tack on $50-100 M US dollars for an additional supply-only launch.
It sure seems to me like no matter how you jiggle the numbers, there really isn't much fiscal sense to fire up the Space Shuttle, for routine, non-assembly missions. A billion-dollar Shuttle launch means 1/3rd to 1/4th the investment value.
Do you pay in dollars, rubles or galleons?
Good, inexpensive web hosting
Part of the Strategic Arms reduction treaty, Russia is scheduled to remove all 308 R-36M MIRV systems from active service. These are hoisted by Dnepr boosters. Since 1999 the Russians have been looking for a commercial application for the Dnepr launch system. They've had a few failures and a few problems, but who hasn't? (ESA Ariane-5 for example).
So the Russians seem to have found a good use for the Dnepr system. But the remaining problem for them is that the Russians want to stop using Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakstan and start using Svobodny 18 in Far Eastern Siberia. Problem is that Svobodny 18 isn't built for the Dnepr.
The bottom line is that Russians need money to sustain their skill levels in space technology by retaining the old and training the new engineers and scientists. Or else these talents may end up in the darker side of the think-tank market.
I am in favor of paying them off for the lift. Heck, I'm surprised that we hadn't been so far.
Actually, $20M is pretty close to what it costs to develop and build a reusable spacecraft from the ground up ... if you're the private sector, anyways.
"Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".
Oh wait, that's right, the US is building almost the entire thing... Informative!!?? Ehm... sources to support that???
You see, on the Internet there is this site called "google". Maybe you've heard of it? Try searching for "ISS russia funding lack" and pick a hit. Any hit.
The Russian gov't seriously ran low on funds and the choice was between the U.S. picking up the tab and abandoning the whole project. Since it *is* up in space, I suspect the former option was chosen.
Of course, there is nothing wrong with them charging for the flighs coming up. They don't have the funds otherwise.
-Charles
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Really the US can afford to pay Russia for space trips. The problem has always been that nobody can decide whose budget is going to pay for it. This forces the issue.
I'm not convinced that Russian boosters are any safer than US Shuttles. But whatever.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
...companies around the world are choosing to charge for services that they have determined would otherwise be a significant burden to continue to give for free.
Things are often offered with the understanding that they will only be lightly used. Once they become more heavily used, a different arrangement must be worked out. There is no clear division between the two, so the decision of transition is somewhat arbitrary.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. If every decision involving other countries is interpreted as having a hidden meaning, how can countries ever get along?
What else do you expect? NASA is wedded to running the Shuttle, because that keeps 20,000 people on its payroll, whether it flies or not. The Shuttle Fleet is badly outmoded, needs replacing, but as long as NASA is in charge, it's not going to happen.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
ok, so you listed all those things, thanks. How does that benifit mankind though? It's an advancement for those who can afford it. Tell me, how does kevlar help starving children?
If they would of taken all the money that they spent on NASA and NASA programs, and put it into agriculture development, or social welfare programs, mankind would of been better off.
So often mankind gets confused with people with money, and this seems to be one of those times.
/* No Comment */
like with business, i'm sorry to say, in international relations they do whatever they can get away with. both sides are strapped for cash and the business types on both sides look for ways to make some. its their job. dont bash them for doing it.
on the other hand, be sure to put things in perspective and realize that there are scientific types on both sides, who just want to advance the science. best science isnt done for money anyways. money is just a means, not the end.
i guess what i'm saying is, while on some level this is always going to be a pissing contest, lets on our level keep mutual admiration for great achievements out of it.
buy bombs not space shuttles -- motto of Bushism, ya know...
Regarding your sig, you moron:
Your own "FAQ" link from BBC says it all: "When will the volcano on La Palma collapse? [...] The collapse of the [...] volcano [...] is not going to happen tomorrow or next week. [...] What scientists are predicting is that the collapse is likely to happen any time within the next few thousand years. Scientists also know that a collapse will not happen without any warning."
As a society that favors athletes and entertainers over people that contribute to society in real ways (other than mental masterbation) we deserve to have to pay a formerly communist country to condescend to take us to space. We have a country full of universties where teaching is for foriegners by foreigners, where we've dumbed down the curiculum so that anyone can go and keep going for as long as possible to enrich the university rather than the student. We encourage immoral, unproductive behavior and arograntly promote this attitude to the rest of the world. We worship money above all. We now sow what we've reaped.
Shame on us all........
Could this be a cover for NASA to give money to the Russian space program without Congressional outcry to keep all those scientists employed instead of them drifting off to less than-honorable gigs to actually make money to keep their families fed?
1998 Report suggesting giving Russia Space Program bailout
There may be other lines of defense, but they are complicated and might confuse people - mudslinging is easy and appeals to people without the authors or readers having to do any work or actual thinking.
Of course appeal to emotion and mudsling are not the sole providence of lefties, many times I've seen criticisms of the US answered with criticisms of Russia or China or the EU with a hard right slant. Quite a few of the political bloggers left and right are very good at these deflection and misdirection tactics.
[Set Cain on fire and steal his lute.]
You mean the invention of Tang and Space Food Sticks aren't good enough for you?
http://www.retrofuture.com/spacefood.html
"dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no dope"
I'm just relaying what I've read about Russia in the news. You know the news can be biased and not draw the whole picture. I was simply trying to draw a picture from what was going on in the news. If you want to hook me up with some reads on the Russia-West relations, I'll be glad to read them.
God spoke to me
...for the shuttle. We hear today that the shuttle's fuel tanks are now safer, but that it may cost a bit more.
Now the pressure will start for resuming shuttle flights. At the same time the Russians say they'll charge money to ferry the astronauts.
Hmmm. I wonder when that phone call took place?
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
Just look at those sources you are suggesting...
Hit #1: 25 April 2002
Hit #2: January 25, 2000
Hit #3: September 27, 2002
Hit #4: November 24, 2003
I'm not even going to go further... Last time I checked, it was Deceber 2004...
As a matter of fact, the Europeans are expecting the US to hold up its end of the bargain. They spent millions of dollars on the ESA lab module for the ISS, and due to the grounding of the Shuttle fleet, it is on the ground gathering cobwebs. What is really angering the ESA is NASA toying with the idea of breaking their contract by permanently grounding the Shuttle fleet and never lofting the lab.
Without the Russian's heavy lift capacity for re-supply, the ISS would have to be abandoned, which entails a large risk that the station would undergo a catastrophic failure. NASA would actually like to pay the Russians and have the funds to do so. Unfortunately, there is a slight obstacle in the form of the Iran non-Proliferation Agreement of 2000.
Yeah, because we all know how bush has ceased the election of governors, and has consolidated the press and much of private industry under government control. And we've been attempting to interfere with soveriegn elections what disagreed wih Washington policy. Also, we have not been acting as if the world was our enemy, just terrorists, and their backers. meanwhile, Putin is distancing Russia further and further from democracy. but hey who the fuck cares right, BUSH=BAD.
Putin is leadng Russia towards fascism, deal with it. the US is not the greatest evil in the world. I can't see how Europeans can get so outraged over the patriot act and visit us, but claim that islamofascism is just the culture of the middle east and its their god given right to mutilate, stone, and otherwise oppress their women, ethnic minorities, and political dissidents. but hey, the US toppled Saddam, so we're worse than the Nazis.
Why do i even bother feeding the trolls?
if Russia had the amount of money period that nasa has in its budget, the soviet union might not have collapsed until more recently.
"Tell me, how does kevlar help starving children?"
I wonder how many people involved with law enforcement are frowning at that example.
Helping people live longer: Benefit to mankind.
Advancing medicine and the technology that is used to advance medicine: Benefit to mankind.
Making it possible to leave this planet in search of more resources: Benefit to mankind.
Turning off your imagination to discredit the space programs: No benefit to mankind.
"Derp de derp."
Here is a picture of which countries were supposed to supply what though many pieces on this picture will probably never make it in to space. Most of the important Russians parts did.
... gasp ... risking anyone's left on space exploration. He clearly should have been booted years ago. Fact is space exploration is dangerous, do your best to make it less so but don't give up just because you can't make it 100% safe. Astronauts aren't astronauts if they can't accept the risk they might get killed.
I assure you the Russians built the heart of the station that is there now, the Zarya Control Module and the Zvezda crew quarters. Zarya is called a U.S. component only because the U.S. paid for it through Boeing but it was built in Russia.
The U.S. was supposed to build the Crew Return Vehicle which would have allowed it to be fully manned but that was long ago cancelled. When it was the U.S. killed any prospect of the seven man crew which pretty much killed the ISS as ever being useful. The current crew can barely maintain it and don't do much research, not like its any good for any zero G research anyway.
The U.S. is building a lot of solar panels many of which are probably never going to fly and aren't the most challenging part of the station.
Russia had a full functional space station for like a decade called Mir. Most of their expertise is at the heart of the current ISS core. Not sure NASA could have successfully flown anything without them. If you recall during the years Russia was in Mir, NASA and Boeing was churning out one failed ISS design after another, none of which flew and all of which just filled Boeing's pork filled belly.
I imagine Russia is regretting they deorbited Mir as a condition of joining ISS. It was past its prime and on its last legs but at least it was all theirs. ISS is all shiny and new and flush with squandered U.S. tax dollars but its probably going to end being pathetic and doing anything useful. Russia was getting a whole lot more done with a whole lot less with Mir. I think the modules now forming the core of ISS would have gone in to Mir2 if they could have scraped together the cash for it. I imagine they have been a lot happier and got more done if they weren't bogged down in the political morasse that is ISS.
Maybe the shuttle will fly again and the ISS will get kind of on track again but I really doubt it. Its probably never going to get much beyond where it is today, and Russia will most probably have to keep it alive while NASA's manned space program finishes cratering. Maybe thing will improve at NASA with O'Keefe gone but I doubt it. Its pretty obvious his head was completely bent by the Columbia disaster and he was totally paralyzed at the prospect of
@de_machina
just one small thing to remind you, greedy but proud usa' patriots - soviet union built and operated for a very long period few space stations. the first station, salut, was on orbit since 7 june of 1971 (!). after that seven saluts were lauched before mir came on...
The entire Apollo program cost approximately as much as Queen Isabella spent to send Christopher Columbus to the new world.
In percentages, it's about 0.12% of our GDP at its peak.
Although I can't find substantiation online, I know that Robert Heinlein asserted that the DoD spends NASA's YEARLY budget every single day of the year.
All that money. *snort*
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.
"Every security scheme that is based on secrets eventually fails." - Steve Jobs
Every security scheme eventually fails. -- me.
What about the inanimate carbon rod.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Congratulations Mr. Coward!, I didn't think this was possible, but I think that you have actually managed to drag the whole soviet russia thing even further down into the pit of shame than it already is. That or I just didn't get it, but I've thought about it for a minute and I'm pretty sure it just blew.
One shuttle flight - $300M
One Russian flight - $20M
If the shuttle fleet weren't grounded, each US flight would cost as much as, what, 60 Russian launches. Forgive me if I got the numbers wrong; they should be in the ballpark, at least. It's way more cost effective for NASA to pay the Russians for the lift. Russian space tech is crappier than NASA's, but it's also way cheaper than it's crappier:-). Of course, it would be even cheaper to pay these guys, or even these guys, but they are not quite up to the task yet.
If the russians screwed off, then the space station would die. Being that the Americans are too chickenshit to even fly up there anymore. Thats what I hate about NASA, one (two) fricken accident and we chicken out out, and now we bitch about the How it is OUR space station, and the russians should give us rides. No. If we want to get there, we should get ourselves there, if not we could be said to be forfieting the prodject.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
these guys
The US Government cannot pay money to Russia for launch services due to an Act of Congress. This was passed to prevent any monies going to Russia (or the Soviet Union) after they supplied weapons to Iran.
This announcement by the RSA is nothing more than a rehash of an old argument - and one that will not be solved any time soon as it would require an Act of Congress.
The only way it can be resolved realistically is through a barter arrangement (which is what RSA is suggesting in some reports). Hence, not a lot of immediate use to the "cash-strapped Russian space program".
Maybe there is a bit of having NASA over a barrel in it.
But its also a fact that the Russian's have been completely carrying the ISS since Columbia mostly at their own expense and while NASA still wants to dictate how ISS though it hasn't shouldered any of the burden for nearly 2 years and probably 3 before the shuttle resumes any useful role. For example they tried to stop Russia from taking tourists to the ISS to raise cash and the Russian's gave them the finger.
Its also more than a little sickening to hear NASA and its minions talk about how they are "on schedule" to return to flight next year. Well they aren't even remotely "on schedule". After the accident report they said they were going to return to flight in March 11, 2004. NASA return to flight window doesn't even open until May of 2005 now and chances are slim they will stay on that schedule based on track record. I don't think this flight actually does anything other than fly to the ISS, inspect it for booboos and fly back again. Hopefully they will carry a few loaves of bread and bottles of water to the crew.
@de_machina
An astronaut and his associated equipment might mass at ..... 300 kilos (conservetive guess)? That comes to about $3,000,000.
To quote somebody's signature on here, "I'd hit it".
Where are we going and why am I in this handbasket?
The truely important part is cost, not the type of landing system.
The shuttle is far more expensive to operate than Russias system.
Let's see you land a shuttle on a field for that matter.
The comments so far seem to be a flamefest on Russia. Personally, I think that Russia is justified on asking for money to pay to send US astronauts into space. So what that the US is building most of the ISS personally? The Russians could care less, the US' money isn't going torwards them, but to the building. All the Russians see is that they're lugging an extra American and equipment into space at their expense. It should be common courtesy to pay back a bit for their services. You'd be pissed if that guy in the carpool who lives half an hour out of town didn't even say "Thanks" for picking him up every morning. The US should realize that they can't rely on other countries to be their taxis forever while they stall on the next generation of US spaceflight.
Gasoline money, cannabis, or sexual favours? Man, that doesn't sound much like the Texas of song and story.
Why the fuck is this flamebait?
Money to send to Iraq? Iraq was the biggest waste of man-hours and money this country has ever done. If invading Iraq was such a good thing, why are our soldiers still being killed even after their "Dictator" was taken out or power??? Far fewer people have been killed (worldwide) in space travel than soldiers (on both sides) in this stupid Iraqi war.
This sticker has been around for at least 30 years, probably much longer.
Scrap it.
Exactly. We _built_ almost the whole thing. Russia is allowed to say, well if you want _our_ resources, you need to pay for them. While we (USA) have to foot the bill for the majority of the project.
I say we tell the Russians to go screw off and not let them use the 90%+ of the space station that we funded. See, we can be just as childish. Thats, right. Any nation that wants to get "technical" about what they have given to the ISS, we can just remind them of _our_ contributions of the majority of the ISS. Just as they want to charge or take away from their "contributions", we should charge or take away from our contributions.
I think you're taking this the wrong way. You have to consider that the Russian space program is damn near broke. They aren't doing this out of spite, they seriously need to find some new sources of funding to keep their program afloat.
Likewise, we do need their services. It's in our interests to ensure they don't go bankrupt. Especially when you consider that Russians can get a Soyez to the ISS for a fraction of the cost we can get a shuttle there. Even being charged for the service, we're still getting a bargain.
Under the circumstances, I can't say I blame the Russians. What would you do if you were in their situation?
Could we use a heavy lift platform, like the Delta IV heavy instead?
I'd be the first to say that the prospect of breaking the contract by permanently grounding the shuttle fleet wouldn't be a concern. If the shuttle can't be made safe, then it's grounded. I would look for alternatives, but I still feel that the shuttle program is a white elephant.
I don't read AC A human right
Astronauts aren't astronauts if they can't accept the risk they might get killed.
I'm scared of transporters also... but that won't stop me. Coz Ive got faith of the heart. Im going where my heart will take me. Ive got faith to believe. I can do anything. Yes siree.
To my knowledge, Russia now has another space port, Plesetsk, and is actively developing it. Perhaps this is to minimise dependency on Kazakhstan and "their" Baikonur.
But Mars has WMDs!
I have a website. It's about Macs.
I was under the impression that municipal water systems predate NASA by several thousand years.
This is one of the reasons I think that we should really look at recycling up there. Power and heat, can be had at a relativly cheap level. Waste can be recycled, if as nothing more than additional shielding.
Why spend money taking wings up there? Why waste weight to make something "reusable"? Either make it so that it's useful up there, leave it up there for the solar smelter, or if it's necessary for the trip down for the astronaughts. Albative shielding is relativly cheap and easy to replace. It's also cheaper than the shuttle. Why have heavy wings and reusable engines? If the engines are worth recovering, could we get by putting a parachute system to recover the engines (using a light booster for the last stage) and not even haul them the whole way?
I know, alot of questions, but I think that they need to be examined.
I don't read AC A human right
Hell, if they're that broke, let's buy some of theirs.
How did we end up with such an expensive system, and how did Communists build such a cheap one? Wasn't their society supposed to be extremely wasteful, and ours the efficient one? What the hell happened?
I something think James P. Hogan was right in 'Leapfrog'.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Well, the ISS is a waste of money. Russia is probably just trying to get something positive out of the whole ordeal.
This reminded me.
Do you know how how they used to decide on the distance that was the border between "national waters" and "international waters"?
Really simple. It was the maximum range of coastal guns. If they could reasonably be expected to occasionally nail a craft from the shore at that distance, it was national waters. Otherwise, international.
I don't read AC A human right
how excally does 'mankind' benifit from by going into space?
So when you buy that expensive gadget and it turns out to be a piece of junk, you can "go to the moon."
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Whereas we're a bunch of idiots who don't know how to run a space program. We're spending all our money on the insane shuttles, which are 1970s technology and very crappy. Because of that our launches cost way too much. Oh, wait, they don't cost too much, because we've stopped doing them at all.
The Russians are driving a shitty car around, held together with duct tape, and we're operating a fucking hovercraft. Ooo, it can drive on water! Ooo, it's reusable!
Lucky for us, the gas money the Russians are asking for is still a good deal less than it takes to operate our hovercraft.
Somedays I think the best bet for the US space program would be to dismantle NASA and start over.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
How did we end up with such an expensive system, and how did Communists build such a cheap one?
They couldn't afford an expensive system. They tried, too, but had to stop for lack of funds. Then they had no choice but to keep updating their old Soyuz system. In the meanwhile we abandoned ours, because we had the shuttle.
The whole story shows that you shouldn't put all your eggs in one basket, even if you have a lot of eggs, which is a well known fact outside of the context of space programs:-).
Besides, the shuttle is a much bigger ship than Soyuz, and it can do a lot more than just take people in and out of orbit, so they are not really comparable. Just try to imagine a Soyuz-based mission to fix the Hubble.
Russian space tech is so crappy that even Boeing and Lockheed uses russian engines, specifically the Energomash RD120 (marketed by Pratt&Whitney - http://www.spaceandtech.com/spacedata/engines/rd12 0_sum.shtml ), used in the Boeing SeaLaunch, and the Energomash RD180 (http://www.spaceandtech.com/spacedata/engines/rd1 80_sum.shtml) used in the Lockheed Atlas III and Atlas V vehicle (on which the US AirForce is going to launch its latest spy satellite (http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0412/22atlas5 nro/ ). Also worth checking: http://www.friends-partners.org/partners/mwade/lvs /atlasv.htmn ergomash. htmld e/lvfa m/energia.htm
and some spefications and history
http://www.asi.org/adb/04/03/09/01/npo-e
http://www.friends-partners.ru/partners/mwa
i'm sure that if you google you'll find tables of comparision between western engines and russian engines, the specific impulse values of the russian engines are brutal, and as someone said in a earlier post, for what? 300 million USd for a shuttle launch, and 20 million USd for a soviet vehicle launch?
Altough western and russian design philosophies are quite different, the tight budget of the russians only forces them to be innovative (and sometimes to take unnecessary risks).
I still don't know where people got this idea of crappy russian space tech, they have closed cycle engines since their (canceled) lunar program, and the Mir lasted twice as much as it was designed to.
One shuttle flight - $300M
One Russian flight - $20M
If the shuttle fleet weren't grounded, each US flight would cost as much as, what, 60 Russian launches.
PLEASE tell me you don't work at NASA. 300 / 20 = 15... or maybe you're using metric?
Way to leave out the key word purification which i did spell incorrectly but I'm sure you could figure it out. And the large scale purification of water for say... a refugee camp is something that I'd say was a great scientific breakthrough that helps mankind (yes even the poor people)
"Something slime,"
some sort of bioship, I take it.
"easy to manuever,"
that is small and complex
"and doesn't blow up in space."
and magic.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
>"Gas, Grass, or Ass, Nobody Rides for Free!"
That's not Bushite! Texan, sure, but one of the good guys thought that one up!
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
The US should realize that we can't count on other countries. For anything. Take Russia for instance. We underwrite their space program by funding their portion of the ISS. Then, we pay for their Cosmonaut training. We foot the bill for tracking, logistical support, and rescue standby everytime they drop a capsule back down on Siberia.
Neither can we count on people like you to actually do your homework. What you fail to realise is that this is part of Russia putting the squeeze on to extort more money out of the US to build more spacecraft. Russia, meanwhile, is staring down the cash-spicket knowing it'll be shut off any second now because the Russian military can neither confirm nor deny it transferred missile technology to Iran.
And make no mistake, it's not simply the hundreds of millions that are going into the Baikonur Cosmodrome, but the potentially billions more that will be lost on sales of RSV Energiya products and booster sales when the US embargoes Russian space products. So kick back and giggle with glee that someone else is trying to shaft the US, but before you bliss out on schadenfreude, you might want to get a clue. Russia isn't doing us a favor. They're stiffing us like an immigrant taxi driver.
I mean it. Who the hell cares about reusable? The Russians don't. Their space program seems be running along smoothly with almost no funds without reusable space vehicles. They have a budget of only a quarter billion.
Granted, NASA does a lot besides get people to orbit...wait a minute, NASA doesn't get people to orbit, does it?
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Nasa is not about space exploration, it's about fundind the US high tech industry. Wasting money is what they do.
Votator.com implements a fair voting scheme (free
Won't work. The shuttle doesn't have an emergency vehicle, and unless you pare payload to the absolute minimum it doesn't have enough delta-v to boost up to the orbit of the ISS and rendevous. If they found something wrong, there's four choices: fix it on the spot out of on-board supplies, have a rescue ship sent up, re-enter and pray, or sit there until the air runs out. #2 usually isn't possible, there's nothing that can make the launch window, #3 isn't real attractive and #4 downright sucks.
What we need is a low-orbit supply depot where the shuttle can pick up fuel, O2, scrubber filters and the like if it needs to.
I agree with everything you say, except that the Russians regret reorbiting Mir.
Let's face it, the thing had become a virtual death-trap. There was mold and mildew inside the computers, the oxygen reactors caught on fire, the resupply vehicle crashed into it, they had cables jury-rigged into other modules, and there were performing fairly frequent spacewalks to keep replacing the failed parts.
I don't doubt that the Russians have superior experience at space stations, especially practical know-how and running one on a seriously meager budget. But I think another 6 months or year of Mir and someone would have died up there.
You tell them! We'll walk to the damn space station!
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Right. Social welfare programmes like the ones we've spent trillions on in the US -- and yet, we've got tons of poor folks at home and abroad.
Right. Agricultural development. Because crop yields would be so much higher without infrared imaging to spot diseased areas (or brush fires) in nearby areas, GPS to send him (or firefighters) out there to fix it, weather satellites to tell him whether or not it's going to rain this week, or other monitoring stations so that he can prepare a year or two in advance for an El Nino or La Nina event.
The reason you have a higher standard of living than Louis XIV could have dreamed of is because people decided to invest in technology rather than bandaid fixes to immediate problems.
At the turn of the century, people were worried that New York City was growing at a rate that would result in the streets being literally knee-deep in horseshit by the 50s.
There was even one chap who printed out handbills at a printing shop called Ink-blot Dot Org, saying "If they'd have taken all that money that people spent on Henry Ford's silly contraption, and put it into hiring the poor as street sweepers, New Yorkers would have been better off!"
I was under the impression that municipal water systems predate NASA by several thousand years.
I was under the impression american's were taught more then pre-historic information. Apprently you prove me wrong.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
"I've been told of a friends days at school in the US where a number of people could only name 4-5 states in America - one couldn't even find the state he lived in!"
I find that hard to believe. My son id six, and his clase can name the state they are in and surronding states. I would wager in a few years he will be able to name most, if not all the states.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
NASA has knows it needs to be changes.
NASA tries to change it.
Talk to congress.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
As opposed to us, who keep using the shuttles for no fucking reason at all. And piss in our pants and run away for half a decade when something bad happens to them.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
You guys...wtf does the ISS matter? Don't you know we have a war to fight? Freakin tree lovers. You should now that Iraq_NEEDS_democracy and the only way to give it to them is by occupying their country and making sure we help them "control" their oil. What the hell does the ISS have to do with brining the world democracy?
Weird isn't it Bush wants to spread Democracy like the pope (in medieval times) wanted to spread Christianity.
It's flamebait because I'm right, of course.
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Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
It can launch sattelites, it can put people and large payloads into orbit and it is magnitudes cheaper. Admit it - the Russian system is a lot more efficient than the NASA system, NASA is clinging to the shuttle. Oh - and I would like to see a reference to the Russian system being 'crappier'.
Just try to imagine a Soyuz-based mission to fix the Hubble.
The Russians would just build a Hubble that worked, a bit like the pencil story
He'd invade Syria in retaliation for Russia taking over the ISS.
Spend the money on private space projects, unmanned probes and the Mars mission. Who needs the ISS boondoggle anymore anyway?
Sigh.
As usual we get the slew of high moderated posts about how the americans built everything, and how the russians are now gouging them.
Some people blame the americans, others the russians. All didn't read the article.
Fact: The russians are currently ferrying everything to the station.
Fact: NASA is grounded.
Fact: The russians are very low on funds, and can't afford to keep doing this.
They've stated that they'll wait to see if NASA meets its May deadline to get their shuttles going again.
They've stated that they want to negotiate something to ease the burden (such as bartering for the man hours they currently owe for other work).
America's response hasn't been made clear yet.
Is this gouging? No. They haven't even entered negotiations yet.
Should they gouge? Some of you "capitalist or die" affictionados may think so, but that kind of thinking is what drives the CEOs who only look to the next quarter's earnings, and what they can get out of it before the thing collapses.
This doesn't work in world politics, as can be seen from the fallout of Iraq.
It's not really fair to compare it to a program like Soyuz, which was actually designed to take people into space.
This story?
Fictional stories are cool, but I prefer mine with wizards and dragons, or atleast a guy collecting 2 of an impossibly large amount of species all on a small arc.
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
Oh this isn't my area of knowledge. Why is our shuttle fleet grounded?
--fetch daddy's blue fright wig, i must be handsome when i release my rage
Bunch of nonsense and BS. Nothing in the ISS project is done for free. Russia was taking US astronauts to the station seemengly "for free" as a payment for certain debt it owed to the US side of the project (the full details are openly available on the Net). This debt is about to get repaid in full accordance with pervious mutual agreements between Russian and US sides of the project. There's nothing new in this announcement. That's how it was planned to be from the very beggining. And now american "journalists" are trying to represent it as if Russia suddenly made a cunning surprise decision about charging US for giving its astronauts a ride to ISS. Talk about primitive demagogy. The truth is that Russia didn't make any concrete decisions and/or announcements about future terms of collabortion with US that will take effect once US uses up all its "free rides". It's just that someone high in the chain of command on the US side needed a new cooked sensation (most likely - to divert public attention from something elese, as usual) and paid someone else some very good money to push it into mainstream mass media in the US. Your tax dollars at work, so to say. Typical Slashdot's morons, as always, swallowed the bait very quickly.
> NASA has knows it needs to be changes.
> NASA tries to change it.
> Talk to congress.
4. ???
5. Profit!!
"Twice half-assed makes an ass whole." --Solomon K. Chang
How many Canadian provinces can the average spaniard name? How many Peruvian districts can the average Chinaman name? It's irrelevant, it's trivia.
I think parent was talking about their own geography. I don't know about China/Spain, but in Russia (where I'm originally from), one cannot pass a high-school geography class without knowing every major country and every capital in the world (how many US citizens know the capitals of Canada and Mexico?)... Russian highschool geography classes also cover the geological and economic properties of East European, Middle Eastern, and Asian countries. That includes not only rivers and mountains, but coal, oil, and iron production... (how many US Citizens know the exports/imports to/from Canada/Mexico?).
Because of this lack of basic geographical knowledge of the world (one that statesmen and politicians understand infinitely more), how should we expect the American people to understand why our government does things like go to war with Iraq?
I kind of figured it was something like that. (Every once in a while a moderation just completely irks the shit out of me, and this one was one of those times, considering the other posts that definitely ARE flamebait in this thread that aren't getting the moderation. Being brainless and saying the same thing 50 people before have said is NOT insightful, mods. Nor is it interesting the 50th time through.)
But then, when all things are said and done, the US did pay for it. This isn't just about technology here. Both the Russians and US have the ability. But it seems that for both sides, available funding is an issue (albiet more so for the Russians than the US). And that provided part of the motivation for this venture. One party picking up the tab for the other is a very important point.
And previous to that, the US had a space station called Skylab that flew for a little over six years. So while the Mir was certainly an important achievement, it is not an entirely unique one. And while the Mir flew, NASA was tasked by Reagan with Spacestation Freedom. And then re-tasked continiously by Congress to produce a cheaper space station. No wonder there was continous churning of "failed" designs. That's where the Russians (among others) and the re-named International Space Station comes in.
How much of that really comes down to O'Keefe? Sure, leadership is important. But in a position such as O'Keefe's, I would have to question how much leeway one has.
And sure, spaceflight won't be 100% safe. Most accept that - though I have to agree that the general attitude of the public seems to suggest otherwise. But having said that, the Shuttle proved to have fundimental flaws that were either not addressed in the past or, upon discovery, must now be addressed.
One final comment. If you had access to the NASA astronauts' offices, you would find crews of people who fully understand the risk. And you would find people that have always accepted the risk of death. Even today.
This isn't about engineers and astronauts. It's about Government, the Public, and funding.
I have a solution!
1. Russia becomes the 51st U.S. state. Of course, we'll have to rename it to something more friendly, like say East Dakota. One advantage of this is that while Putin makes a really lousy president, he'll be about in the middle as governors go.
2. That interstate commerce thing, "Congress shall make no law" and all that. Now we can pay the Russ - sorry, East Dakotans to ferry us up to ISS.
3. Profit!
say we tell the Russians to go screw off and not let them use the 90%+ of the space station that we funded.
No problem, as they are seating themselves in the Soyez to go home, the cosmonauts turn to thier astronaut comrades and say, "Seeya later boys, hopefully that that shuttle thingee of yours won't be too long, we did leave some food for you, but you know it's a costly business sending progress deliverys up here and your govmnt doesn't seem to be too interested so I'd make it last if I were you."
Simple fact of that matter is, the US is saving a huge (UNFATHOMABLY HUGE) amount of money by catching a lift in Soyez rather than sending a shuttle, millions upon millions of dollars. Seems only fair that they cough up some petrol money.
NZ Electronics Enthusiasts: Check out my Trade Me Listings
How the hell you would rename it? You got no vehicle to get there and paint new name on the board?
Next time we fly Soyuz there, we would get some red paint with us and paint big letters MIR-2 there
Did you forget about Skylab. Mir was a cramped hamster tube in comparision. Skylab was roomy enough for astronauts to run laps in zero g. And we deorbited it because we wouldn't pay for a lowcost launch of an Agena booster to keep it in an appropriate orbit. Skylab would have made a wonderful base for an international space station. Skylab had invaluable information on aging spacestations that because of Shuttle program delays (the primary re-boost support plan) and failure to spend minor amounts of money (the Agena booster plan) to save Skylab, we allowed it to deorbit and become a total loss after only three missions in 1973 to 1974. Oh, and STS-114 is already scheduled so why do folks think the Shuttle will be permanently grounded. Those how forget history are doomed to repeat it. At deorbit there was water for 180 plus days and oxygen for 420 days on board. NASA had plans for the required technology overhaul needed to bring Skylab back to operational condition. Scientists were eager to see what the result of multiple years of orbit and space exposure would have had. If you'd like a piece of Skylab travel to western Australia and onward out to sea. Big. Roomy. A complete waste to deorbit without seeing what was up or garnering the practice of working in space on a space station to repair and renovate it in the early shuttle flights. Sad.
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
Well, when I worked in ISS payload processing for a few months, I did learn a little bit about it: namely, that we put up the lion's share of the funding and that the Russians put up next to nothing. Also saw the second of the two graphics about 8 million times, considering my boss had it mounted to the door to our office space. Hard to forget something you see everytime you come in to work, go to the bathroom, go to lunch, etc.
(As to moderation, I don't let it bother me. I take more satisfaction in savagely bitchslapping people with the truth, than with recognition of said savage bitchslapping.)
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Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
In Soviet Russia, they charge you!
And I apologize for making that joke, but it's absolutely true!
In soviet Russia, the astronauts pay you.
FFS! If anywhere is to be the 51st state then it should be Engle-land (The Scots, Welsh, Irish and NuLabour get to see England abolished. A dream come true for them). We have the baseball caps, the obesity and the fast food. All we are lacking is the 'Easy-to-tell-if-it-is-the-right-way-up' flag and some constitutional protection of our rights. And some rights. :-)
Come on guys, Put the American border 20 miles from France!
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
Just because something is labeled "space age" doesn't make it actually related to space research. (But then, space research has given us the Space Age Ant Habitat for our desktops, of course.)
As a state gets corrupt, its laws multiply; the most corrupt states have the most numerous laws. (Tacitus, Annales 3:27)
He's abesolutely right though. We paid for most of it (by far), we built the largest portions of it (by far) and now, if you read some of the other articles about this, they plan to ask NASA not for money, but to be excused from man-hours needed to construct more of the station. I could see it if they honestly wanted the space equivalent of "Gas Money", but they just want to be lazy.
- BBC stands for British Broadcasting Corporation.
- The article states clearly that the 2005 'freebies' were paying off the man-hour debt for the work on the station.
- The original interview, which states clearly: "Starting from 2006, we shall bring American astronauts to the ISS on a commercial basis" comes from Itar Tas - also not a US organisation.
Quit your pathetic whining about the evils of US journalism and learn to read the article before complaining about what you'd like to think it might say.++ Say to Elrond "Hello.".
Elrond says "No.". Elrond gives you some lunch.
I really think the US needs to hold up its end of the bargain. The LAST thing we need is a dioxin-laced freeze-dried ice cream bar.
Russia is back baby.
-- sometimes AND gates turn me on.
Just try to imagine a Soyuz-based mission to fix the Hubble.
I don't see any problems here at all. What specifically makes you say it can't be done? The Soyuz can be brought to the same orbital plane as Hubble. The Soyuz can maneuver in space - and if you think it doesn't have enough fuel, just send a Progress ship to dock with Soyuz. The Soyuz has airlock. The Soyuz can fly with two people onboard, and extra cargo, needed for repairs, can be taken along.
Best of all, all of that was already successfully tried. Soyuz-4 and Soyuz-5 have docked in space in 1969. Progress was used to boost the orbit of another ship, ISS in this case. The Soyuz' airlock is the orbital module. Soyuz have flown with two people on board. Soyuz was actually used to repair a station in space, when all the control was lost.
after IT gettting Bangalored......space programs are getting Bikanoured !!! :)
"how excally does 'mankind' benifit from by going into space?"
Errr, hello? It could save mankind from deadly diseases, asteriod crashes or nuclear strikes. It could be our ONLY ticket out if something ever goes wrong on earth. And, NO, this is not paranoid. Remember the dinosaurs?
Because the guy is wrong, or, more precisely, misleading. Where in his list is the Pirs module, funded, built and launched by Russia? And where is the experience for long-serving space laboratories, which only Russia had prior to ISS (Skylab has just three rather short, by today standards, missions)? Mind you, it is because that experience Russia spends around 2% of the cost of ISS, but has the rights to about 30% of that.
The current state of ISS is that of 6 modules - Zarya, Node 1, Zvezda, Destiny, Quest and Pirs - the half is built in Russia, and two f those three are funded by Russia. No, it's definitely not the american station.
Safety concerns following when the last one blew up during re-entry.
Stephen
"Don't write down to your readers, the only people less intelligent than you can't read" - Sign on Newspaper Office Wall
No problem, so long as you understand that I neither said nor implied the US paid for the entirety, simply that we paid for the majority of the station as currently built, and will have paid for the large majority at core-complete. I already did it once tonight, might as well just repeat the post (which, for the record, got modded 0 Flamebait.)
We are funding, if not building, nearly all of the station, even the limited core-complete version that was the plan immediately prior to Columbia's loss. The new core-complete plan, as shown here , shows launch methods. Items funded by other countries:
JEM (Japanese Experiment Module, Japan funded)
Columbus (European Research Module, EU funded)
Zvezda (Service module, Russia funded)
RRM (Russian Research Module, Russia funded if it ever launches)
This page has an accurate image showing who funded what; that exact image is hanging over the desk of one of the shuttle payload integration managers, last I knew - the guy responsible for making sure that once something is launched and attached to ISS, it works properly. Of course, looking at that image, SPP is unlikely to ever be built at this point due to lack of funding (according to the Russians), and RRM is unlikely as well (same reason), so shrink the Russian contribution considerably.
Russia funds/funded around 2 percent of ISS; the remainder comes from the US and other Western countries. Japan funds 13%. ESA funds roughly 9%. CSA funds another 2%. And guess who funds the rest? That's right. The US. Roughly 70-75%, depending on how you interpret the numbers, and what year it is.
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Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
Remember the dinosaurs?
No, that must have bit a few years before my time.
And given the common feelings expressed about Bush over here that's a few more electoral college votes for the Democrats. According to the US Census in 2000 the UK has the about the population of California, Texas and Nevada added together (UK Population is somewhere around 55million). Even England alone has over 50million so that's about the same as California and either Texas or New York. Should be worth a few Electoral college votes.
Stephen
"Don't write down to your readers, the only people less intelligent than you can't read" - Sign on Newspaper Office Wall
No, waitaminute...
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
If you'd like to nitpick modules, the current ISS is:
Name (Built-Funded)
Zarya (R-U)
Unity (U-U)
Zvezda (R-R)
Z1 Truss (U-U)
PMA1 (U-U)
PMA2 (U-U)
PMA3 (U-U)
Destiny (U-U)
Pirs (Russian Docking Compartment) (R-R)
S0 Truss (U-U) (includes Mobile Transporter)
S1 Truss (U-U)
Canadarm2 (C-C)
Mobile Base System (C-C)
P1 Truss (U-U)
P6 Truss (U-U)
Quest (U-U)
Node 1 (U-U)
My count gives me: 3 Russian-built, one of which was American funded, and 12 American built, all of which were American funded. And unlike the Euro-built Nodes, which are being built in exchange for NASA launching Columbus, FGB was bought by the Americans because the Russians couldn't.
By the way, Wikipedia isn't authoritative on this; I'd trust NASA's assembly drawings, which are publicly available at spaceflight.nasa.gov, quite a bit more.
Pirs is a docking module. The trusses, in addition to providing support structure, include photovoltaics to provide power and radiators to provide thermal control. Russian experience is certainly why they get away with relatively small amounts of contribution, but the truth is - they lied about what they could do, financially, and as a result have received significant loans and leeway. Between paying for Zarya and having to purchase a backup for Zvezda because the Russians couldn't/wouldn't, significant financial resources have been expended by the Americans to cover the Russians' asses.
Russia has the utilization rights to 100% of the Russian portion of the station, and no rights to the rest of the station (the NASA/NASDA/ESA/CSA section). Right now, that amounts to roughly zero, since there is zero experimental capability on the Russian side. Any resources they have are in exchange for the Russian crewmembers time.
I'm pretty correct on this; the funding is mainly American, and the distribution of resources reflects that. If and when Russia ever gets around to launching RRM and SPP, I'll be wrong, but it doesn't look like that's ever going to happen. Russia has as much up there are they're likely to ever have, while there's quite a bit of American, European, and Canadian segments still to be launched.
It isn't the American station; it is, however, a station funded mainly by the US.
---
Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
Without the Russian's heavy lift capacity for re-supply, the ISS would have to be abandoned,
I don't know. The French launched a 4+ ton military satellite just the other week. That's a lot of Cheetos. And it looks like they plan to increase payload size considerably. Maybe they could help out with some of the launch detail if the U.S. can't do it anymore.
http://fr.news.yahoo.com/041218/85/46rpb.html
I find that hard to believe. My son id six, and his clase can name the state they are in and surronding states. I would wager in a few years he will be able to name most, if not all the states.
:)
I should actually clarify - this was in high school - so they'd be about 17-18 years old... Not sure if the Americans use the term High School for that age, but it's what I've seen used in both the UK and Australia, so I guess it fits
Sendmail is like emacs: A nice operating system, but missing an editor and a MTA.
quote from article.
:)
>The sample Space Pens were thoroughly tested by NASA. They passed all the tests and have been used ever since on all manned space flights, American and Russian.
I bet it took more for NASA to test and approve the pen than it took to develop it.
>> In the beginning, the ISS was supposed to be a great international effort to promote science in orbit, among other things.
;-)
> Actually, in the beginning it was supposed to be an American space station.
Perhaps they didn't want to do it themselves after they figured out the acronymn for 'American Space Station'?
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
I think parent was talking about their own geography.
Exactly. If you can't even identify which part of a country you've spent 17+ years of your life living in, then how the hell are you going to get any respect from the rest of the world...
I live in Australia, and I know we have 8 states (actually 6 states and 2 territories) but I can at least name them, and point to where I live!
I think I'd have a better chance of guessing some of the US states than people that were in his class - and I've only ever visited the US once.
What is going to be the attitude towards the rest of the world from these guys who don't even know where they are? This is one of the many reasons a lot of people *really* dislike America.
Sendmail is like emacs: A nice operating system, but missing an editor and a MTA.
There was a great episode of SG-1 that commented on this. After destroying Apophis' ships, SG-1 was flying in stolen Goa'uld Death Gliders that had been disabled. They couldn't navigate and would soon crash into Earth's atmosphere and burn up. Bra'tak said to O'Neill "Do you not have a fleet of war ships that will come to rescue us?" (or something to that effect). O'Neill pauses, then says "We have... uh... some shuttles..." Of course, in the end it was one of those shuttles that saved them, but it was still funny.
Baikonur a.k.a. Tyuratam was leased to Russia by Kazakhstan in 1994 for a yearly lease of US-$ 115 million. The lease contract ran until 2014 initially and was prolonged to 2050 in 2004. The site is administered by the Russians and simultaneously under Russian and Kazakh law, an interesting situation legally. The difficult phase you describe was between 1991 and 1994; as of now, the situation is quite stable.
As a state gets corrupt, its laws multiply; the most corrupt states have the most numerous laws. (Tacitus, Annales 3:27)
All I know, is that this seems like an act of terrorism. This is an obvious attempt by "the enemy" to slow the adoption of democracy the world over. Alright, Bush time to deploy troops to MIR.
Occam's razor is the blind faith in the natural selection of least resistance and in universal oversimplification. -- EF
But don't take my word for it, take Putin's:That last quote just doesn't add up.
Oh yeah, that must have been the *other* France that wanted to test nukes in the South Pacific and bombed a Greenpeace boat in a New Zealand harbor.
I wonder if its the same France protecting French colonials, errm, "peacekeeping" in Ivory Coast?
And is it the same France that backed Michel Aoun's power grab during the Lebanese civil war that led to the destruction of Beruit?
This is just the beginning of a long and dirty laundry list of relatively recent French extracurricular activities.
One last joke at French expense:
Q: Why are the roads in France lined with trees?
A: So the German army can march in the shade.
"Use it" for what? Taking tourists on junkets? Nothing of any use has ever been done on the ISS (well, maybe something has, but nothing that couldn't have been done at 1% of the cost with a normal satellite). The ISS was a fun idea, until it went over budget by two orders of magnitude, but purely symbolic in value.
Thanks for the correction. You are totaly right.
The idea from the original post is however still remaining.
You can't solve a debt by printing more paper money.
At least one american does understand that, he is called greenspan.
There are no stupid questions, Just a lot of inquisitive idiots. (from a good friend)
I call bullshit. $20 Mil is what it would cost to put a plastic spacecraft w/ little utility 100 kilometers up. $20 Mil is NOTHING. You would have to look at hundreds of millions and perhaps even billions to develope a reusable spacecraft that actually serves a purpose. You do understand that I'm referring to SpaceShipOne, right?
A blog like any other.
What is going to be the attitude towards the rest of the world from these guys who don't even know where they are? This is one of the many reasons a lot of people *really* dislike America.
That's the problem: there will be no attitude. There won't be any reaction at all, except what the party advocates. They know no better than to accept rhetoric like "they hate us because we are free". How can you expect Americans to form opinions on these things when so many of them are so ignorant?
A lot of countries would have done far better without the loans that are given to their dictators, who buy tanks to oppress their people, to do in the mean time americas biddings. (More or less how the world bank worked for years). Then after they finaly got rid of their dictator, which flees to a country to live a rich life with the money that he stole and deposited in the foreign banks (luckely nobody wanted sadam) The world bank starts requesting a payback of their loaned money.
Please explain why any of those loans should be paid back.??
A lot of money the US is "giving" is to buy support for their point of view. (like if you vote in favor for kyoto, you will get no money or reduced medicine payment to fight aids.)
In europe we call something like that extorsion.
Anyway if you don't want to help others and have a lot of problems yourself. FINE. Please leave the rest of the world alone and solve your own problems first, we will understand.
If you would travel and explore the world you would see a lot of countries doing far better. And i am not only refering to european countries.
So if you see this, in my point of view this only shows how broken the american capitalistic system is. As was the communistic system. So please do not export it, it is rotten.
If you think other countries are not helping each other (without conditions, free as in beer), you are way wrong. I live in south amerika and here there are a lot of good schooling or other projects. But all these projects are supported by eithers japanes or europeans.
anyway, I hope i will see a better america in the future, but i definatly hope the current version go down like the USSR did.
greets a concerned world inhabitant
There are no stupid questions, Just a lot of inquisitive idiots. (from a good friend)
Actually, it only did two orbits (memory limitations) and it lost five tiles during that flight.
the artificial satellites.
This technology enables: storm tracking and weather prediction, remote sensing and satellite photography for land use management and environmental monitoring, GPS for naviation and surveying, and global telecommunications.
There is little doubt in my mind that the economic values of these applications easily justify the entire effort mankind has put into space exploration.
There is also to my mind a difference in perspective in being able to see the Earth for what it is: a big blue ball, not a patchwork of countries painted different colors. The future impact of this is hard quantify however.
In any case other technologies relationship to space exploration is somewhat more tenuous. It is possible they would have been developed anyways as part of a different effort. However, the relationship between space exploration and satellite technology is completely unambiguous.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
How did we end up with such an expensive system, and how did Communists build such a cheap one? Wasn't their society supposed to be extremely wasteful, and ours the efficient one? What the hell happened?
They just lied to you.
Communism is not inherently good or bad, as capitalism.
US capitalism has won (if the current state of affairs regarding the US can be called winning), but that doesn't mean it is better, or worse than its communist counterpart. The romans conquered the greek, the aztecas won to the mayans, the spanish defeated the aztecas. There are lots of examples of civilization that were succesful even being inferior to the ones they fought.
Efficiency is not tied to capitalism. You can see that some individuals can spoil the fun of everyone in the most capitalistic countries. And you can see lots of socialist ideas (not communist, but anti-capitalistic) gaining momentum in other parts of the world, and acheiving results.
Maybe the idea is not to think of yourselves as the best, and try to learn some things from the other side of the fence. For example, how not to over-engineer.
More info here.
NASA is re-naming the science module the American Space Station High Observation Laboratory Environment after its management team.
wtf is detiorate? isn't it deteriorate?
1. It's a drop in the ocean. As people have said all over this discussion, its $20million per launch versus $1 billion for the shuttle. It'd make more sense to scrap the shuttle completely, give up on it, and codevelop/comanufacture Soyuez with the Russians.
2. It's realistic. The Russian space program is extremely strapped for cash, yet we are RELYING on it to keep the ISS in space. Yes, the U.S. has probably paid more in this venture. At the same time, the U.S. has a great deal more funding avaliable. Not even the U.S. government at large, but NASA it self. NASA's budget is many, many times the size of the Russia space program.
Instead of thinking of Russia as some kind of nebulous partner, think about it this way: For launches, we are 'contracting' out to the Russian space program.
Doesn't sound so bad in that context, eh? Who would you rather pay? American contractors, to work on the shuttle, literally spending BILLIONS of dollars, 70% of which is pork? Or the Russian space program, which incidentially helps (slightly) our relationship with Russia, and who can do the job better, faster, and cheaper.
Screw the shuttle. They do it better, and we should learn from them. We American's need to pull our head's out of our collective anuses.
The Russians attempted to build a space shuttle in the 70s, and failed because of the cost (not techincal reasons). We should learn from that. It's just TOO DAMN EXPENSIVE.
3. There's no way around it. Russia doesn't have the money any more. That's a combination of our fault and their fault, by the way. Yes, communism was failing, because it was rotten. Their new economic system, shock-therapy capitalism, has so far been a disaster, as well. We planned it for them, eh? We set Russia up for this economic nightmare. They are, however, a competent people, with immense natural resources, so they will recover. At some point. But right now, there simply is no money in the Russian Space Agencies coffers.
For all you idiotic nae-sayers: THEY AREN'T TRYING TO GOUGE US! WHAT THEY ASK FOR IS NOTHING COMPARED TO WHAT BOEING WOULD ASK FOR! WE NEED THEM TO KEEP LAUNCHING SOYUEZ UNITS! THEY CAN'T DO IT WITHOUT FINANCIAL HELP!
Btw: I believe the number of Soyuez missions has stepped up because us, the U.S., can't get to space!
In comparison to our domestic contractors, or the ESA (European), or the JSA (Japanese), the Russians do a fine, cheap job.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
What if the ASS was hit by an asteroid?
You (the US) already tried to name it, we (the world) now call it the ISS instead of...whatever you wanted to call it.
One thing that always got me... if the powers that be had the same mentality now back a few hundred or thousand years ago, where would we be? America would not have been discovered (not to get into the "pros and cons of that / who discovered it first" type conversation) if we waited until it was safe until like the 1900s.
In fact, it seems pretty obvious to me that if you want to be on the frontier, you had better be willing to accept risks or to get out of the way for those that are. I have a lot more faith in corporations that are willing to think outside the box or countries with less lawyers then the US making it happen...
If anyone can ever make manned space travel more then a place for doing expensive research, I think you'd see a potential shift in the world powers
"the US did pay for it."
As I've said elsewhere the ability of NASA and Boeing to squander money doesn't prove much other than they had it to waste. Obviously Russia's space program needed the cash and they might not have fielded the Mir successor without it, but then again they might have eventually managed it and probably would have been happier than with the current quagmire that is ISS. The U.S. got a pretty sweet deal using all that experienced Russian engineering talent and a proven design at bargain basement prices. It was an early example of "outsourcing".
If you look at the current ISS design it is quite obviously a Mir2 core with the US strapping a bunch of trusses and solar panels on it.
"And previous to that, the US had a space station called Skylab that flew for a little over six years. So while the Mir was certainly an important achievement, it is not an entirely unique one."
Skylab "flew" for six years, it was occupied for a total of 6 months, not six years. The longest mission was 90 days. They U.S. record pales compared to Russia's. Russia routinely racked up 1 year missions and they kept Mir going inhabitated for years. By contrast Skylab was 30 years ago, crutching off the remnants of Apollo and the U.S. has completely failed at every space station design since at huge expense.
"How much of that really comes down to O'Keefe? Sure, leadership is important. But in a position such as O'Keefe's, I would have to question how much leeway one has."
I might not have said much until I heard him talk when he resigned. He was obviously completely paralyzed by the Columbia distaster. He had reached the point he pretty much wanted to abandon the manned space program if there was any chance more astronauts would get killed. He appears to have so constrained the shuttle that iis useless for anything but missions to the ISS and back and at the same time he is saying the ISS is a deadend, which means so is the shuttle. I can imagine its a real morale booster for all the people working on ISS to Shuttle to know they are working on dead end projects one of which isn't even closed to finished.
It appears he almost singlehandedly decided to first abandon Hubble, and then try to salvage it with a goofy robotic mission which everyone who knows says is going to cost a fortune, take forever and still have a high chance for failure.
@de_machina
See above. Skylab's longest mission was 90 days and it was 30 years ago. It was a shame it wasn't used to its potential but it wasn't. America's track record on space stations since has been pathetic. Skylab was kind of pathetic because it was so underutilized.
@de_machina
The economics of space flight have always seemed a bit dubious to me. The shuttle was palmed off on to us as an "economical" way to low earth orbit. We now know that, sadly, money was not the only thing it took from us. Now Russia--The Soviet Union--or whatever new republic, is asking for us to pay for our rides on their rockets. Seems like it is only fair. Maybe we did foot the bill for the ISS, but to my limited perspective, what we have asked of Russia would be like requiring airlines to give us free flights because taxpayers often pay a good majority of the cost to run airports and keep them in working order.
No argument it was a death trap and past its usable life span but I'm pretty sure the Russians would have much preferred doing Mir2 than getting involved in the ISS quagmire if they could have scraped together the funding for it. The Russian core of ISS is basicly Mir2.
@de_machina
And America's experience with our space station was much better. We couldn't even keep it in space!
You know, I thought we were doing France a favor by renaming French fries. I can't imagine a country with such pride in their cuisine would want those soggy and greasy potato things named after them.
a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)
Actually you could easily argue that capitalism is inherently inefficient and wasteful.
Capitalism only functions when people buy products and consume them. The more people buy, the healthier the economy is, therefore most products are made to not last very long. (Don't believe me? Think of what would happen to the automobile industry if every family had a vehicle that lasted forever?).
Since products are essentially made to be disposable, this is by definition wasteful.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
You're being far too harsh. Skylab was no Mir in terms of overall success. But it was unique for its time and flew a full decade before Mir was launched. Furthermore, Skylab did produce solar observation data as well as proving the ability and importance of long-term manned flight (and setting records in the process). Skylab was far from a complete failure.
Again, Mir was indeed much more successful than Skylab - albiet a decade later. And experience gained from Mir certainly makes the Russians an asset to the ISS partnership. But using Mir as a point of NASA's dependance on Russian technology is a stretch (although its probably a fair point that due to funding issues, neither the US nor Russians would currently have a space station without their mutual involvement).
Space exploration has a price. You can track that price with the history of NASA's failures (while completely ignoring it's successes). But you might also want to look at Russian failures (Soyuz 1, Salyut 1/Soyuz 11, Nedelin, etc.) less you get an incomplete tally.
It's not really the wings per se, the whole concept is inefficient.
The shuttle has the worst cost for weight payload lift of all cargo vehicles for the simple fact that you have to also carry all of this life support equipment around. Similar argument for crew only transport.
The only solution that does make sense is separate crew and cargo solutions. Being reusable or not is secondary.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
Why bother following the law..
It didnt seem to bother His holiness Ronald Reagan
when he sold aircraft and missile parts to Iran
to finance an illegal war in Nicaragua.
Sure the Democrats squeaked a little, but in the end
they did nothing about it.
Then why not sell F-14 parts to Israeli companies who route them to Iran while sending the profits to the Russian space agencies in questions?
Of course, Marx thought of this before.
The problem is that noone has found a way to handle people in a better way that a "free" market.
I was pointing out that even when most implementations of communism have crashed and burned, that doesn't prove anything.
As an example, China is gaining a lot of economic momentum. Of course, you could say that it is at the expense of oppressing chinese people. You could also say that the wealth of the west could not be possible in capitalism without exploiting the rest of the world.
The US system, for example, is better for the people in the US than the chinese for people in China. If you look at it from a global perspective, they are not much different. Well, we just have to wait and see how China behaves, but that's a different story.
But Mars has WMDs!
Damn! I just figured out why the CIA were so willing to pay me thousands of dollars for an old VHS copy of Flash Gordon.
Okay, I'll admit that scribbling out the title and replacing it with "secrEt martiaN terrorist footage" was a little disingenuous, but I hadn't expected them to believe me.
Expect news of an "Anti-Hot Hail Defence System" and "Unprecedented Solar Eclipse prediction network" to be coming from the US government some time soon.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Russia (as well as China) is not sort of a country, which can be accused of terrorism.
US goverment and press make quite a clear distiction in this area - if country has some nuclear missiles, it couldn't be blamed for terrorism.
Maximum crime is violation of human rights. And maximum punishment allowed is an embargo, not bombardments.
So, lets see if we would read that evil Russians violate a basic human right of american astronauts to ride to ISS free of charge.
or the Ronald Reagan Space Station
What about WD-40?
I've heard all kinds of mythology about how WD-40 was invented.
It's first use was in protecting Atlas Boosters from corrosion.
http://www.wd40.com/AboutUs/our_history.html
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I have a better idea. How about rename it the RSS (Russian Space Station), or the WTFWISLAIINUSS (Whoever The Fuck Wants It So Long As It Is Not Us Space Station).
I think the Russians are perfectly justified in making the US cough up more change to help support ISS operations. Russia has an economy that is weak at best and more important things to worry about then toys like the ISS. If they are going to keep supporting the damn thing, I don't think it should come as a surprise that they don't want to continue to pump so much of their own badly needed money at it.
The bigger issue is that as an American, I don't want the fucking thing. I could think of a million other things that I would much rather be spending money on rather then that pork barrel.
The US signed a contract to help build, support, and fund this ugly beast that is currently wasting away doing absolutely ZERO science. I personally wish that the US would just pay off its debts and let the rest of the world have the damned thing. Get everyone to agree on a figure that would absolve the US from having to support the damn thing and shell over the cash. The rest of the world is happy because they have cash, and the US is happy because it isn't feeding a whale every year.
I agree, however I would argue that no one has implemented a way rather than no one has found a way.
And the oppression of the Chinese people has nothing to do with them being communist. That's simple corruption of power that can happen with any kind of government.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
Although as a Europena I do take slight offense at the 2nd paragraph and do not aggree with the poster, I do not think that this should be moderated as troll.
I wished moderators would reserve this for posts that are clearly so hatefull that they are obviously only meant as provocation and insult.
The parent is clearly not hatespeech and I urge the moderators to therefore tolerate zors' opinion.
The 'm' is silent... :-)
I told you the 'm' was silent... :-)
So.. apart from the sewers, the education system, the roads, the system of government, and the voice controlled wheel chair, what have the Ro^H^H^H^H^H^H NASA done for us?
:)
Some of those seem a little dubious btw - I take it nobody's claiming NASA invented any of this stuff? I'm sure NASA had some contribution to make to all of them, but then Daewoo make cars and I'm not sure their contribution is a positive one...
Seriously though, was this the same water purification system that Coca Cola used on their bottled water "Dalsani" ? The water, it turned out was er.. tap water from Peckham. Indeed the whole scam was worthy of Peckham's most famous son, and 3 wheeled van driver. The purification system, which was indeed developed by NASA turned out to be introducing significant quantities of some compound known to cause cancer into the water. So, not only was it tap water, it was poisoned tap water. Makes you wonder what's in their other browner beverages. It's hard to hide shit in a clear liquid
Just try to imagine a Soyuz-based mission to fix the Hubble.
It's being estimated that Shuttle launches are going to cost in excess of $500 million a pop going forward. At that kind of money, it would probably be cheaper to skip servicing missions entirely and simply launch new-and-improved versions of the Hubble once a decade, including some kind of engine to allow for a properly-controlled deorbit or the ability to boost the scope into a stable parking orbit.
That having been said, I'm sure you could service the Hubble from a Soyuz, though it might be a more risky mission. Then again, given the track record of the Shuttles, it probably wouldn't be that much more of a risk - and you'd be risking fewer lives and spending $400 million less.
Let me offer you a bit of Eastern Eeuropean perspective.
Then Bush came and said that Iraq needed this invasion and that iraqis would welcome Americans.
They did. They do. There is no chance that the majority of Iraqis won't welcome Saddam's demise because he was supporting the minority (Sunnis) all the while torturing/killing off the opposition.
Of course they are pissed off about US failure to stop robberies and incursion of crazy Taliban/Al Qaeda remnants. But that's a minor piont.
even in the countries of "the coalition", most people were against the warWhich countries? In EE most people supported the idea to squash Saddam, because they've been living under totalitarianism themselves for almost half a century (which is way more serious than those few years the French were stuck with Hitler) and still have pretty fresh memories of that period. BTW Blair suggested to take that EE experience seriously while all Chirac was able to say was: "they've missed a perfect opportunity to keep their mouths shut"... which is a clear indication that history books printed inside France are in the need for renewal.
As for Germans... i'd say they've lost a perfect opportunity to fight against the hitler of Mid-East.
War is fucking bad, it should always be avoided at all costsSo ivading France to rescue it from oppression (as opposed to "only for self-defence") is OK, but invading Iraq to rescue it from oppression is a bad idea? What kind of logic is that?
This "pre emptive war" thing is the biggest amount of crap I have ever seen.If only someone was smart enough to squash Hitler as soon as he came to power...
I'd say the world needs a new doctrine: as soon as someone reaches a status of a dictator somewhere he gets squashed immediatelly. I suppose democracy would be at no risk world-wide then.
Oh, and yes, diplomacy WAS possible with Saddam.Oh yes, the French are used to craft deals with totalitarian bastards. Like the one signed with Hitler in 1938 (on Czechoslovakia) or all those little lucrative agreements with Saddam...
Oh, and about the "freedom fries" actWTF? You're against Operation Iraqi Freedom because you are for Freedom? I guess "French logic" is a phrase i'm looking for.
Who ever said here : "You may not remember but Russia was a complete basket case before 1917, it couldn't fight a war, was humiliated by the Japanese Navy in 1905 and lost every campaign in World War I. Its economy was a basket case, most of its people illiterate and dirt poor, health care nonexistent." ,Ilya Mechnikov ,Nikolai Semyonov, Pavel Cherenkov, Lev Landau, Nikolai Basov and Alexander Prokhorov (who by the way created lasor), Petr Kapitsa, Zhores Alfyorov....all of these dudes are "dirt poor people" with Nobel prize! ... to all what was said by others I just wanna add one thing. Do u know what bad area means? Bad ghetto place? Where everything is scary : buildings & faces & thoughts....where people don't know what a doctor or colledge means. Crack addicts & prostitutes are walking by stinky streets. Any body who lived in states knows what it is. Almost every body in South America lives in it...Well let me tell u something there was NO PLACES LIKE THIS in Soviet Union & there's still NO in Russia nowadays. So take u'r "illiterate and dirt poor" & stick it in to u'r A.
WEll guess what I'm happy u can remember - demachina (71715) to help u remember even better here's a noncommercial link for u http://som.yale.edu/~drey/rusbonds/rus_ms.htm where u can read some about russian history smart guy. I suggest u start from the Peter the Great & his educational reforms...
Well I guess Rachmaninoff was writing his music not for those illiterate and dirt poor people & of cause he wasn't one of them ! Neither was Lomonosov or Mendeleev.
Ivan Pavlov
And to continue with the "Soviet Union didn't work" line
Well, they could at least be productive while they do so. It is one thing I like about NASA, it is a way for senators and congress members to bring home the pork without having to kill anyone.
Where does my sig say "tomorrow or next week"? There will be warnings but they may only be understood in retrospect. We're not monitoring the landslide at this point and haven't been since 1997.
You implicitly admitted that in essense, your sig misleads people because it hides the fact that the mega-tsunami is not bound to happen very soon (which is something you blame on the reader to incorrectly miss, but in reality, you are fully aware that most people WILL be making the assumption if a precise time is not specified in your sig, you are actually RELYING on it to get people's attention).
The problem is that you don't have integrity.
If you are willing to mislead for one cause (irrespective of whether me or you believe it's a good cause), that tells me you will be willing to mislead for any cause that you see fit.
You might get your message across to the all-assuming masses, but you have a lot to learn if you ever want the more sophisticated audience to trust you.
I can't see any realistic scenario that would lead to the USA once again going to war with either of those now friendly neighbours, but they are land borders and situations do change.
"Nations are not like Mother Teresa or Sir Galahad; they act not out of altruism but out of selfish national interest." Charles de Gaulle