Slashdot Mirror
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."
The food and supplies arrive just in time for the current crew to leave in a few weeks...
:D
If I were them, I'd eat all the space ice-cream before I had to leave
For 2 million dollars I could buy a 100 floating Russian nuclear powerplants!
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.
Well, once he's up there they spring the "Oh, you want a RETURN trip? That's going to be $50 million." trick on him :)
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.
There was a saying that if the Russians had not participated in the ISS. I will never forget the day I came up-close to an Antonov-124. I have never seen a bigger aircraft.
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.
There is also this piece: When time came to retire the MIR, we put a spin on where its fragments would fall - mostly negative. But not only did MIR's fragments land in the correct spot, they landed with an accuracy we as Americans can only dream of for an un-manned craft. There is so much these guys can do. I wish we could emulate some of their achievements.
I don't know why you think this is so special. It would be silly for any decent space program not to have an unmanned vehicle that could dock with the sta... oh... nevermind.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
As any Tourist at DisneyWorld could tell you $33.06 per second "seems" about average these days.
*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.
"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
It's logo is a penguin, so I just assumed...