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Russian Cargo Ship Docks At ISS, Preps For Tourist

Posted by Zonk on from the back-to-business dept.

christchurch writes "Russia unmanned cargo ship Progress M-54, carrying food and supplies, docked at the International Space Station safely yesterday. A two-man replacement crew is scheduled to head to the station on 1st of October, along with an American scientist-businessman, Gregory Olsen, who is paying the Russian space agency $20 million for a weeklong visit."

3 of 166 comments (clear)

  1. Re:20 million for a week? by Cruithne · · Score: 4, Informative

    I'm fairly certain the answer is yes - I believe one of the reasons for implementing the program was to offset some of the cost of missions.

  2. Re:UNMANNED? by Trurl's+Machine · · Score: 4, Informative

    the russians have unmanned cargo spacecraft? and one just docked successfully with the ISS? do i live under a rock?

    Either you do - or you are trying to be sarcastic. Progress, Soviet space freighter is in use since late 1970's. Basically it's just a stripped-down version of the manned Soyuz. Both Soyuz and Progress fly to the ISS few times a year (you can check the timetable here). Unlike the US-made space shuttles, Soyuz and Progress are not reusable. Soviet shuttle project was not exactly succesful, but as it sometimes happens with stop-gap solutions, Soyuz and Progress proved to be a quite reliable workhorse for their orbital stations. And it looks like it's the best solution right now for the whole planet Earth.

  3. Re:UNMANNED? by PPGMD · · Score: 5, Informative
    Years when the US air-force was trumpeting the stealth fighter as unstoppable, the Russians said there is nothing that takes in air and dissipates heat that cannot be detected. This was proven when one of our fighters was downed in the Balkan's war. The air-force attributed the downing to a technical fault. Of course this was not correct.

    *sigh* This is what the second time that I have corrected this myth on Slashdot. The F-117 and B-2 are not invincible, they are designed for low observability. They use multiple attack route, surprise, the vastly lower detectability to achieve their mission.

    With that being said what allowed the F-117 to be shot down was simple human stupidity. On normal missions the F-117 fly at over 10,000 ft AGL because that is the limit of ground based IR guided missiles, and AAA. It also doesn't normally fly below the clouds because it would stick out like a sore thumb. On top of that it never flies the same route twice.

    During the war in Bosnia they violated all three of those rules, thanks to "wonderful" European weather the F-117's were forced to fly below the clouds to hit their targets (GPS guided JDAMs were not in use then, they were using the laser guided Paveway III's which are not useable through most cloud layers). That forced them below 10,000 ft into the range of AAA. They also flew over the same route 3 times before the shoot down, so the Serbians were able to position AAA along the route and shoot the F-117 down, guided by the Mark I eyeball.

    The technology isn't at fault, when you fly outside it's envelope of protection. It would be like me blaming Linux because my computer failed, when I threw it in the pool.