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Russian Cargo Ship Docks At ISS, Preps For Tourist
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."
I wonder how much it actually cost the Russian space agency to put him there and bring him back (safely) a week later. Could it be that the Russian space agency has established a decent tourism business for space where they are actually turning a decent profit?
the USSR did not fell because of a lack of money(think of corruption first and revival of national movments of some of the now formerly soviet republics), and even if it would have - $20 mil. per flight is not that significat to a country the size of the former Soviet Union
I never really understood the point of the stealth fighter. There are four major ways of detecting an aircraft; optical, sonic, IR and RADAR. The stealth fighter is invisible on one of these, and has a huge profile on two of them. Coincidentally, the one it is invisible to is the one it costs the most to build sensors for.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
But there are many other ways. You know, for example, that there is a radio relay technology that sends microwave signals over the horizon by scattering them off of just atmospheric irregularities? It's only a matter of power.
To do better than that you need to make the airplane transparent to whatever frequency you are using.
There was a saying that if the Russians had not participated in the ISS.
There was a saying that if the Russians had not participated in the ISS, what?
The F-117 lost in the Balkans was purely luck; they knew the plane was overhead, but couldn't detect it, so they just started throwing everything they had into the air, much like over Baghdad during the Gulf War.
;-)
It was not _pure_ luck, from what I've heard -- US pilots and mission planners were so SURE that it is "invisible" that it ran the same route day after day. And, of course, given enough time even very small signals can be detected over averaged-out noise... They knew when and where it was coming and were shooting for it.
Of course it does not beat using $100 microwave ovens with broken door block to lure $1,000,000 anti radar station missiles...
Why, yes, I WAS trained as a Soviet air-defence officer!
Paul B.
"There was a saying that if the Russians had not participated in the ISS, what?"
If the Russian had not participated in the ISS it probably would have never flown, and if it had flown it would have been abandoned when the Columbia broke up.
The Russians Soyuz and Progress flights are the only thing thats kept it manned and supplied for the last 2 1/2 going on 3+ years, while the Shuttle has been grounded since the U.S. has no backup. Russia has been doing this at their own expense since the Congress prohibited NASA from paying Russia for its services over Russia's support for Iran's nuclear program. NASA has been freeloading off Russia for the duration of the Shuttle grounding. I thought the Russian's had said enough is enough and was going to refuse to fly any more missions with NASA astronauts or supplies though it appears they are throwing NASA a bone with continued missions now that the Shuttle is indefinitely grounded again.
The Russians built the two key modules in the ISS, Zarya and Zvezda, using designs that were basically planned to be Mir-2. For a litany of reasons the U.S. squandered billions of dollars and more than a decade, creating nothing but artists conceptions. Its open to debate if NASA could have built a long duration space station that would have worked since the only experience they had was the relatively short duration Skylab missions 30 years ago. The Russians by comparison had decades of practical experience and proved working designs from Mir and Salyuts.
@de_machina
I think the Russians figgured out KISS while NASA figured out pork. Sometime we might get ourselved out of LEO and maybe some of those working Nuke rockets till then the Russians seem to have the best working technology lets use it and get things done.
No sir I dont like it.
I always prefer an explicit disagreement to an anonymous suppression - because I get a chance to learn something.
:) position. I appreciate your actually engaging in a disagreement. If you can convince me of your statement, that we're getting a fair deal from our Russian "partners" (not just a good offshore investment deal that cheats our ROI), I stand a chance to finally learn something new about the ISS operation.
I have not seen new numbers on any possible reversal of ISS expenses between US & Russian budgets since the Shuttle was grounded a few years ago. Until that time, the US had heavily subsidized the Russian efforts, paying not only for US work on the ISS, but also paying a great deal into Russian budgets. Which produced work that missed specs and schedules, bottlenecking the entire project. I'd like to see that the Russians have now taken the lead, while circumstances favor their positions. Some citations.
However, I won't be heartened if the numbers show the US is "saving money" by investing it in the Russian space industry rather than our own. Our space program spins off manifold its cost in benefit to our economy, not to mention our national pride. I don't mind producing science and engineering knowledge the rest of the world also gets secondhand. In fact, that's one of the benefits to the US: we're valuable to other countries. It's one of the social benefits from the essentially transnational scientific community that has been possibly the most civilizing force in our species for hundreds of years. But I don't want us getting it secondhand from other countries at our expense. I want us investing in our own space industry, which also grows our own commercial aerospace industry (those huge contracts go to aerospace corporations, not just relatively small NASA units). So we can stay competitive, even with the extremely experienced Russians and their cheaper economy.
So hopefully that clarifies my (nontroll
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make install -not war
From what I've read, the Russians did almost everthing automated and robotic. Cosmonauts were often just ballast or a cheap sophisticated computer to get the mission done. Now, no disrespect to those people, but that is how the systems were built. That is, to be mostly idiot proof. When they work, they work (Progress, Soyez).
Even the Russian shuttle, Burian, launched, orbited, and landed without onboard people controling it (was it fully automatic or remote controlled anyone?)
A lot of people say that the reliance on getting everything automated was what caused the Russians to fall behind in the space race. Whereas US asutronauts were often pilots, working with computer assistance. This insistance on control by people helped get things in the air/space fast, but in the long run may have hurt safety.
disclaimer: this is probably a little generalised, so take with some salt, lime and tequila...