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ISS Orbit-Raising Attempt Fails
hpulley writes "ITAR-TASS reports that the Progress cargo ship currently docked at the ISS attempted an orbit raising burn this morning but the engine failed three minutes into the firing. Further burns are cancelled until they figure out the problem and meanwhile, the station continues to lose approximately a kilometer of altitude every week, with the rate increasing as the orbit decays. At present, the schedule says the next Progress, 20P, will be launched on December 21st, nearly 9 weeks from now. Normally the shuttle would also raise the orbit of ISS but it is not scheduled to launch until May 3rd at the earliest. Nominally the ISS orbits at 358km but if it drops to 300km, it may decay in a matter of days. It was down to 340km already on October 13th."
Put a little Keith Curtis on that bad boy!
Prepare for the Keith World Order
AmeriKKKans invented chewing gum to look just uglier. Propz to the Uncle "SS"am !
Smile, don't click...
Let it burn. Waste of money. Focus on the Moon.
Since I submitted the article, another report has said this morning's emergency is not a problem, and they may attempt another orbit raising burn today. There is lots of time to make a correction and the orbit is OK for now.
$#!^ happens, but why does it always have to happen to me???
The story gives the impression that the ISS is in some sort of dire predicament, however, upon doing the math, one can see that the ISS has roughly 9 months of orbit still in front of it.
Tempest, meet teacup.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
.....the engine fails you....whatever....
Seriously, whose idea is to use Russian engines for this task? When was the last time they produced a non-faling space technology? (N-1 Moon mission anyone??)
You'll need more than your tin foil hat if the ISS lands on you.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
for building an orbiting space station without any real scientific purpose, but I built it anyway. And then its orbit decayed and it burned up upon reentry, so I built another one . . . /message for you sir
This isn't a good situation, but barring future disasters I'm confident that they'll get a ship up there to boost the ISS to a level where it can be saved for many more decades.
If you want to see the graphical representation of the ISS's altitude, there's a nice chart at Heavens-above.com It's a free sign-up, and the bonus is you can find out when ISS flies over your house so you can see it or even take pictures like I do sometimes.
I had noticed just a few days ago that the orbit was at its lowest point, and was getting concerned about what they were going to do about it.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Nine months might sound like a long while. But consider the lead times for rockets. Can an unscheduled mission be planned, built, prepped, tested, rubberstamped and shot into orbit inside nine months?
The first burn will be performed at 5:09pm for 705 seconds, the second at 6:33pm for 700 sec, both with 2.94 m/s delta-V each. Main purpose of the reboost is to set up proper orbit phasing for Progress 20 launch. [The burns will be performed by eight DPO-BT thrusters of Progress 19, from the #1 manifold and will be controlled in attitude by Service Module MNFD thrusters from both manifolds. The 19P burns are steered by the SM motion control & navigation system (SUDN) via the US-21 matching unit (installed in 19P on 9/13). The propulsion systems were tested successfully on 9/15.]
They got 170 seconds out of 1405 seconds or about 12% of a burn. MOSCOW, October 19 (Itar-Tass) --A cargo ship docked at the International Space Station (ISS) fired its engine Wednesday to raise the space research platform into a higher orbit but in about three minutes the engine failed and the operation was canceled.
The correction was to boost the space station more than 10 kilometers further from Earth into an orbit that was to reach 356.8 kilometers on the average.
Normally, ISS goes down by 100-150 meters daily. That's about 3-5KM a month.
Also, there are no Shuttles ready that could boost the orbit either, so the Russians are the ONLY method right now. I'm not sure how fast the Russians can send up another Progess if the one currently docked can't get the job done. This IS a serious risk to the station and crew, but it's not panic time.
and landed in kansas...would it make a sound?
i don't care
That sucks, but I think someone is being a bit sensational. They have almost a year to correct this. They have a mission planned in two months, by that time it will still be at least 330km up. They have been that low before. Also, by your own link, it takes at least three weeks for the orbit to decay from 300km, I have seen others that say up to 3 months. Neither of those are "a matter of days".
I wonder who spaced out on the job and let this happen...
This isn't rocket science.
That's the shit that feds me up
Fed up with watching others make impact craters on Mars the international consortium building the ISS have decided to up the ante by making a crater on Earth. Since the only thing they have in space is the ISS it was odds on that they would chose this to crash into Earth. Reports say that it should be a spectacular show especially for the people it hits.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
These Russians have years of experience in the field. Heck, they had MIR for 15 years. That is, 3 times the time it was intendd to last. Sad that we as Americans can only sit and observe at least for now. Even aftr pumping billions into our space program, I will not be suuprised if things just do not work for us.
Will the same thing happen to ISS that happened to Skylab? A series of incidents (generally involving funding) that results in the space station sinking below a level that it could be lifted out.
Of course there are people in ISS, so it's perhaps a bit too early to wonder if funding would be delayed long enough for ISS to fall to Earth.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
So why haven't they put that tether experiment on the ISS that the shuttle ran a number of years ago. Basically it was able to turn orbital motion into electricity or electicity to motion. Next trip take them up a tether and a bunch of solar cell and Fagetaboutit.
I couldn't fail to disagree with you any less.
There are aproximately 4 scheduled Progress missions per year. 12 months divided by four = 3 months lead time.
-everphilski-
Finally, all that spam provides the answer:
Problems keeping it up?
Get v1ag.ra, x4na.x etc. mailed direct to your ISS and end your low-orbit problems with the ladies forever.
OK, jokes over.
--
__________
Pre|ension is in the eye of the beholder
"Isn't that the satellite that's raining debris all over Europe?"
"Some things have to be believed to be seen." - Ralph Hodgson
Manned space exploration inhibits space science and space exploration by wasting the lion's share of space funding on this glorified elitist amusement park ride and hypertrophied high school science fair project. The shuttle is equally worthless and should also be abandoned.
Here's a dumb idea: Hook a long coaxial cable with a sizable mass (how about a dead satellite?) onto the ISS. Then feed electrical power through the cable (up the center, down the outer jacket) so that the vector crossproduct of the current and the earth's magnetic field act to accelerate the ISS. How much power is required to keep the orbit from decaying, i.e. can this power be reasonably supplied by the existing or an additional solar array? A scheme like this would reduce or eliminate the dependence on periodic orbit boosts by cranky Russian rockets or once-in-whenever Space Shuttle flights.
Less is more.
4 missions per year does not mean 3 months lead time.
Astronauts train for over a year for their flights. Missions are being prepared for concurrently. I do not know what the required lead time is, but it's undoubtedly greater than 3 months.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
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IANARocketScientist, and for those other readers who aren't can someone please explain:
Why don't they have ISS in a higher orbit that won't decay as fast/often? And again, pardon my ignorance, but my (un)common sense tells me if they are at a high enough orbit, it shouldn't decay as readily - too high and you have the opposite problem of drifting farther away from Earth.
In other words, rather than having to make orbit adjustments so often, isn't it possible to push it to a high enough orbit that won't require a tweak for a longer period of time?
TIA for n00b-enlightenment.
Perhaps the thing will tumble from the sky into the middle of the ocean. That would accomplish what a lot of people would like to see done. (A government conspiracy to end it at work here? hmmmmmm.) There are many arguments on either side of this coin that are valid, but I for one am going with the school of thought that says that our commitment to this station is something that is impeding the progress of our space mission. I would hate to see all of the effort and money that has thus far been expended gone to waste, but I would also like to see future opportunities for exploration made available. If you want to save something, save Hubble for crying out loud.
Why does the ISS need to be boosted by external rockets rather then doing it itself? Shouldn't it have this type of stuff built in? Did they think about what would happen if we were unable to get into space? The simple fact that they had to go through all of this sounds pretty dumb to me
If man must go to the moon then yes, he will go there....
I hope that damn things comes flaming down. I will gladly roast marshmellows over the smouldering remains of this no-good, waste-of-money, pork-politic monstrousity. It and the shuttle have been an insane diversion driven by politics instead of science that has held back the US manned space program the last 30 years.
The crew will draw straws. Ben Affleck loses and Bruce Willis has to knock his punk ass out before sacrificing himself.
...So we'll be RID of the useless thing within a year.
A chicken ran by me today yelling, "The sky is falling!!!" I thought he was just delirious from the flu.
so that it can be serviced by both Russian Soyuz and Progress craft launched from Khazikstan, and the Shuttle from Florida.
Much like how the ISS is slowly decaying orbit over the next NINE months - which will end in atmospheric burnout, my life equally will slip into decay as my next nine months play out, and BAM! Fiery burnout!
Damn you defective condom, damn you! *shaking fist at sky* We should have put a condom on the shuttles!
Will tourism to the ISS go down because of the "impending doom" scenario, or will it go up because of the "let's see it before it's gone" mentality?
I'm not really a web designer, I just play one on the Internet.
As I recall, the US and Russia aren't the only ones with a space program anymore.
Couldn't we call in a favor from China and get 'em to send up another Shenzhou rocket? I know their docking ports don't fit into the one on ISS, but you don't technically have to dock with the station to boost it...
1. Shenzhou capsule maneuvers near station
2. Grappling arm grabs a piece of capsule
3. Shenzhou begins burn
4. Grappling arm holds on tight, station accelerates.
5. Problem solved. NASA breathes collective sigh of relief, thanks China for their help.
If it hits the target Taco Bell put out for MIR, do we all get free tacos?
They'll just reboost with the next scheduled Progress or Soyuz and be done with it. That's if they don't decide it's a big enough emergency and just use the rockets on the Zvedza Service Module to reboost.
See subject. No astronaut training required at all. Progress missions are robotic resupply and ISS-boosting missions.
-everphilski-
Chicken Little opens November 4th!
lexbaby
"Be Brave, Be Loyal, Be True." -- Hawkeye Pierce
Your sig is crap -- the coral cache doesn't work for everyone.
It's not like the ISS is of use to anyone, thanks to it being in its current orbit. Like the Shuttle itself, it was a bad idea poorly implemented. You don't design and implement a space station just so a gaggle of nations can proudly say they have a presence in space, and you don't build a shuttle just because a bunch of Air Force pilots insist on flying a space ship home like an airplane. You do both to accomplish a purpose in space. What is our current mission in space? Besides lining the pockets of the Aerospace Industry, that is. Form follows function. If you don't have a concrete goal to accomplish, you'll never reach it. We have no business being in space without such a goal.
My suggestion: decommission the space station and shuttle, close down NASA, and give the money we currently spend on it to private individuals and companies to do something (tourism, manufacturing, mining, whatever) worthwhile with it. That is the only way mankind will reach the "new frontier", the same way we reached the old one: monitize it.
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
All you need is sufficient tin foil to stop a megatonne object travelling at a few hundred miles per hour, and you should be fine.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
While the first thoughts are that both the astronauts and anyone on the ground will not be hurt, this could be positive news. This year NASA is spending $6.7 Billion on the ISS and the Shuttle program. This is a lot of money that could be far better invested in a new manned space programs that could give us a sustainable manned presence in space. The scientific rewards from the Shuttle and the ISS have been meager at best, certainly once you consider the amount of money that was spent, and have done very little to make it easier to access orbit. It's not an admission of failure or a rejection of manned space exploration to acknowledge that both the Shuttle and the ISS were ill-thought out programs, driven primarily by changing, flaky congressional mandates and pork politics. I doubt it will actually come down, but if it does, it is most likely a net positive for the US manned space program
Where's Superman when you need him?
This ad space for rent.
for each decline the rate of decline increases because there is an increase in drag.
There is no problems...even with a Progress engine failure there are several backups, one of which is the Service Module engines that can be fired after the Progress is undocked.
I never thought I would play Russian Roulette. Meteors do make good bullets but have missed so far. I've been hit by the odd car. All the same, I've never bagged a deer and I would like to experience this element of culture in case fate is against me.
Click.
Click. Click. Click.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
And how many rods to the hogs-head when the burn takes place?
As they spiral in, one of the ISS crew locks himself in the engine room. The other crew cut through the bulkheads in time but in order to keep from crashing into the planet they have do a cold restart of the warp engines. This of course will launch them back in time. Oh wait! That's a Star Trek episode I watched. Never mind.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
It should be a +5! I was going to post the same link but searched existing comments first, including low-rated ones ...
One simple rule for its versus it's
Taco Bell is already in the process of a "Hit here and win a free taco for every American" tarp that they plan on floating out to sea.
Do what I say, cuz I said it.
-Meatwad
It occurs to me that station-keeping engines would be an excellent application for ion engines. They don't have the power to push the thing into orbit, but certainly they could be built with enough thrust to counter the atmospheric drag at those altitudes. While it would take a bit of effort to bring the engines up on the rockets, it would probably be more than compensated by being able to shuttle up a small load of xenon every now and then instead of all of the fuel necessary to boost it back into its original orbit.
Maybe it's just convenient to have it ride lower every now and again, but I can't imagine that the fuel saved by the lower orbit compensates for having to push it back up there again. I haven't done the math, but it's possible that ion engines would allow it to stay at a lower altitude indefinitely, since there's no danger of decay.
And while we're at it, maybe we could design these things with just a tad bit of aerodynamic considerations. Ok, I'm truly talking out my backside right now, but it's fun to think about how to avoid this kind of thing.
Wake up - the future is arriving faster than you think.
...you mean we can't just reverse the polarity of the plasma conduits!?!??!?!?
We all know that ISS isn't up there anymore.
We obviously want the station properly decommissioned. But it needs to come down. What a waste.
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
Like at a geostationary orbit... what is the fucking big deal about low earth orbit shit???? Get out there!!!!
Reading the summary makes me think either the PR firm who wrote it doesn't understand acceleration, or expects us to be unable to. In order to convey the predicament of the ISS the article should mention altitude, downward velocity, and acceleration.
Or then the writer of the summary understands acceleration, and you fail to notice it: "a kilometer of altitude every week, with the rate increasing as the orbit decays"
Basically giving the altitude and speed is to give a first degree estimate of the space station altitude at a given point of time. Your suggestion to include acceleration would only increase the resolution to a second degree estimate - there still could (and probably are) higher degree components in the exact equation - like increasing influence of air resistance that in turn accelerates the acceleration.
Most of the readers are not looking for third, fourth or fifth degree Taylor estimate of the altitude as a function of time, they are satisfied with the knowledge that it is falling, and falling faster all the time. Your suggestion to include acceleration is not guaranteed to give a completely accurate image of what is happening any more than the current summary, which kind of makes your "doesn't understand acceleration" moot.
http://codeandlife.com
Oh no you don't. I've got a Disco Inferno joke and you're not going to stop me from using it. Ya bastard!
Could someone remind me what is the purpose of this orbitting boondoggle? Didn't the NASA administrator just say that it has no purpose?
I'm having a bad enough day already...now I have something else to worry about.
01/20/09
Let the ISS burn up, the money is burnt up any way... also, blow up all the very crappy shuttles. Update the Saturn V.
Yes. I would love to see a Saturn VI. Let's re-do the whole system, including nuclear upperstages. Even sdtaying totally conventional, just the fact we can use CAD and the procurement would be electronic would make it much easier to do with far fewer people.
If Allen/Rutan can go to space on $20 million, NASA can go anywhere in the solar system on their current budget. A Saturn IV to Saturn would be lovely.
I liked this movie better the first time, when they called it "Skylab".
"You want a toe? I can get you a toe by three o'clock... with nail polish."
Frankly the station is a great candidate for the addition of ion thruster engines to help maintain altitude.
Not only ion thrusters, but perhaps also 3 or 4 small conventional oxygen/hydrogen rocket engines strategically placed in case the station ever needs some higher amounts of thrust or steering manuvering capability for unforseen emergencies. The extra oxygen and hydrogen stored on board for those engines could also be diverted to fuel cells for emergency power needs and the oxygen for life support. (Scotty!!! we've got a breech of the outer hull from a meteor strike and shields have failed! Divert auxilary power from the thrusters to life support now!!!). The continuous low-level ion thrust could counter the additional drag from the extra weight to maintain orbital altitude, and the other engines would be there for "just-in-case", hoping you'd never really need them.
Of course, we'd need a ship big and reliable enough to get those engines, supplies and installation crew up there to install the stuff... but I digress...
Time to break out the oars. On the count of three...
...average Slashdotter's after-sex activities usually conclude with a mere 30 seconds-or-so of simple hand washing.
Sig cancelled due to lack of interest
As much as I loathe petty, exploitation-driven capitalism, I've seen enough NASA stupidity in the past 20 years to give up hope of a constructive, gov't run space program.
But leave it to a chimp to take a defective gov't boondoggle, and evolve it into another defective boondoggle. Kiddies, sending a sucessful manned mission to Mars will be quite a technological and cultural feat, but it won't accomplish jack for humanity or the US. AT BEST, it will be a baby step towards longterm sustainment of man in space, but it will be an expensive gesture. Frankly, I think it is being proposed so that Bush can cannibalize the productive sections of NASA (scientific, and unmanned probes) with little public outcry. Later on, the manned effort will die when the new administration comes in, due to the bills from Iraq. Put away the phasers and spaceship models and stop being childish.
But petty, exploitation-driven capitalism will not drive colonization/utilization of space. There has to be enough of a gold-mine to make the effort worthwhile. There's only four things that could drive it.
1) Zero-gravity manufacturing processes could be made profitable. Don't see it as of 2005.
2) There could be something worth mining on the moon to make it profitable. If you stuck U.S. taxpayers with the bill to do basic research (robotics and geological surveys), the capitalists would make sure the final step would be taken (provided its profitable). Given my cynicism, I really am in favor of putting the eggs here.
3) Energy collection from space. Ignoring the feasibility of H3 on the moon, putting up stadium sized solar concentrators and beaming down the energy in microwave form could make the Middle East irrelevant. But this is a case of the (oil) capitalists sabotaging a gov't research effort.
4) Militarization of space. Become militaristic butchers and flag waving assholes, you pointy eared freaks. Because this is the only credible way a manned space program is going to be funded.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
Sorry, my mistake. 140 metric tons = 140,000 kg. Please cut my estimate of power loss by a factor of 2.
:(
Sorry, I'm an American. I'm used to thinking ton = 2000 lbs, and I fucked it up because I was in a hurry.
When will America switch to metric?
Just a silly thought. Why didn't we plant it in a gravitationally "null" spot? Ie som place where the moon mojo and the earths mojo will work such that it doesn't need a 'orbital readjustment' in the first place.
You have to do a short story where the space science protagonists are working with these ridiculous measures...
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
It covers several major news items at one.
ISS Falling from sky: check
Upcoming Disney Movie: check
Avian Flu: check
Surely a hat trick like this deserves to be modded up more than just a 3.
I read Slashdot for the headlines, because the headlines, unlike the articles, are usually original and never duplicated
So the next russian rocket brings up 20k gross of Estes E9-0 and D12-0 engines and
the astronauts do a space walk to attach them to the ISS......
I say, "Burn, baby burn!"
Thanks for the great explanation Moofie. ;)
The problem is that the tethers get damaged by micrometeors. A small comparison graph of the degradation rate of single and interlinked tethers can be seen near the bottom of http://www.tethers.com/Hoytether.html. IMHO, this means that other (non-tethered) means of magnetic propulsion may be worth investigating, as there is nothing unique about the tethered geometry which makes it advantageous for magnetic propusion.
You must be new here. I'm seeing history repeating itself all over the map. Thank god the Russians are around to save our space station. I'm sure they could have done it with Skylab, but the US had too much pride and an arms race to attend to. I remember the lies that were told during Desert Storm. I got to see new lies all over again with Operation Iraqi Freedom. History seems to repeat itself on a cyclical basis. Sure, it is a little different on subsequent cycles, but it is the same over and over again. I think that a full scale nuclear war will change the cycle somewhat. Then again, it just may lengthen it.
My undergrad professor for feedback and control systems used to complain about the idiocy of the ISS design (before it was built), claiming that this configuration didn't take into consideration free molecular flow (the fact that there are still some atmospheric particles at that orbital altitude which cause drag) and solar pressure when creating the design. The result would be a very maintenance-intensive beast requiring constant RCS (reaction control system) and re-boosting.
I see that he was right.
A Space station at one of the La Grange points made better sense to me .
I have heard lots of reasons why it wasn't done, but I can't help but thinking
it really just came down to money .
I'd like anyone that "really" works at NASA/JPL or on par to explain why .
I also think Hubble should have been placed at one of the La Grange points
or put in near proximity to the space station for ease of repairs .
Thanks !
Ex-MislTech
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
Once the earth slows down enough gravitational waves might cause the system to decay over time but for now the moon's orbit is increasing.
We need to build millions of tidal generators now, to draw energy out of the system and stop the moon from flying off into space!
Save our moon!
The enemies of Democracy are
Sine fuel has mass, the earth would be sucked in to the infinitly large space staion, not the other way around. gah. :)
I wonder if they could have solar power ion drives that are always on?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I stuck to the topic, yet was banned, no dimpolacy lies within you. You worthless piece of shit, my patience is thin yet you remain on your face with but a grin. The day of the pearly white gates will be harsh, for you choose to judge like Him. You make me sad for I thought you could rise above, yet you stay in the ground like a slug. I liked that dyson topic I wrote it had quite of math in it for I hope. You are better than this so much. Why do you choose this way I don't know. All I want is a why yet your too shy. How do you keep it from collapsing. I'll tell you. Dyson's parents were Mildred Lucy Atkey and George Dyson. George was very talented, both as a teacher of music and as a writer on music. At the time of Freeman's birth George was teaching music at Wellington College in Berkshire. He had earlier taught at Marlborough College where he was a colleague and close friend of Mildred's brother Freeman Atkey. After the death of Freeman Atkey, who was killed in action during World War I, both George and Mildred were shattered. It brought them close together and they married in 1916. Their first child Alice was born in 1919, then their second child was Freeman who was named after Freeman Atkey. Shortly after Freeman was born, his father accepted the post of Master of Music at Winchester College, and so Freeman spent his early years in Winchester. He was closer to his mother than to his father, for she was the more serious of the two being extremely talented and well read. The family were well off and employed a cook, gardener, housemaid and nursemaid. Freeman attended a day school run by Miss Scott from the time he was five years old. Already he was showing exceptional talents for reading, writing and calculating. From the age of nine he was a boarder at Twyford College which was only three miles from his home. Despite the fact that the school was so close to his home, Freeman only went home in the school holidays and his parents never visited him in the school. In 1936 Dyson won first place in a scholarship examination to Winchester College; he was twelve. That first place indicated significant promise and for the first time in his life he began to realise how talented he was. He was an outstanding student across the curriculum, but proved to be brilliant at mathematics. Up until that time he had appeared as a very unusual pupil, very different from his fellow pupils. However he now gained respect from his fellow pupils and his parents were quite bowled over by their son's success. Winchester College was important for freeman for it gave him an outstanding mathematical education. Not only did he have one of the finest mathematics teachers in the country, namely C V Durell, but he was in the same class as James Lighthill and the two studied advanced mathematics together such as Jordan's Cours d'Analyse. Foreign languages came easily to Dyson and when he became interested in number theory in 1938 he decided to read An introduction to the theory of numbers by Vinogradov. The fact that the book was only available in Russian at that time was apparently no problem and he taught himself the language and translated the book into English. In the following year he read Eddington's The mathematical theory of relativity. Dyson gained a scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge in 1941. In his first year he studied physics under Dirac and pure mathematics under Hardy and Besicovitch. During his time there he wrote several papers that were not published until 1944. The first, written in 1941 (published in 1944) is A proof that every equation has a root. Dyson writes:- ... there are so many proofs of the theorem that every equation has a root that it seems almost criminal to produce another. I can however say two things in my defence; first, the proof I shall give is probably not a new one; second, if my proof is new it has a certain advantage over other proofs in using only the most elementary arguments.
Dyson had three papers published in 1943, Three identities in combinatory analysis and On the order of magni
Like Ed McMahon to laugh at my lame jokes... *sigh*
Flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
"Call us when the New age is old enough to drink" Beck
"She's built like a steak house; but handles like a bistro!! ....You win again gravity!!!"
insert witty comment here
Get them to p*ss and sh*t out the back of the station and down a bit. That'll help.
http://pcblues.com - Digits and Wood
I just wish they would let this stupid ISS crash and burn. Then, maybe NASA would finally bury the shuttle and get on with something more worthwile than continuing to feed this white elephant.
At least NASA have a proven track record in crashing space stations onto WA. It's a nice big target too.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/space/1283 056.html?page=1&c=y/
It's called an elephant's trunk whereas it is in fact, an elephant's nose, a nose by any other name would smell as sweet
"It wasn't built by Americans alone! Billions of roubles went into it!"