Europe's Automated Cargo Shuttle Docks With Space Station

An anonymous reader writes "A successful docking of the Automated Transfer Vehicle dubbed 'Jules Verne' occurred earlier this week. The first of its kind, the crewless ship reached orbit and lightly touched up against the international space station on Thursday. By now astronauts on the ISS will have opened its doors and begun air circulation in preparation of offloading the nearly 7.5 tons of fuel, oxygen, food, clothing and equipment they need to survive. The EU Space Agency sees this as a historic journey for the program: 'The Jules Verne, named after the visionary French science fiction author, is the first of a new class of station supply ships called Automatic Transfer Vehicles. The craft was built by the nations of the European Space Agency as one of Europe's major contributions to the international station. "The docking of the A.T.V. is a new and spectacular step in the demonstration of European capabilities on the international scene of space exploration," said Jean-Jacques Dordain, director general of the European Space Agency.'"

Comments

The important question

[Scrameustache]

Which would win in a fight? The European robot transport or the Canadian robot manipulator?

Re:The important question

[AikonMGB]

The Canadian robot manipulators! We've got tons of them! The arms on the space shuttles, the twin-armed contraption on the space station, numerous smaller manipulators on many rovers...

It's too bad any new ones won't be Canadian anymore with MDA selling out =( Not that MDA Space Missions / MD Robotics / Dynacs / SPAR were "all Canadian" to start with, but at least it had that "built here!" feeling to it.

Aikon-

Re:The important question

[Anonymous Coward]

The question of Chuck Norris's ISO compliance simply never comes up... the standards bodies are afraid they would become just that if they dared to raise the issue.

Re:Video?

[Breakfast Pants]

As always, it can be found on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AdFA6WWJ7E

7.5 Tons

[cwraig]

They must be some strong astronauts to carry all that in zero gravity

Parent link is Rick Roll Muppets Version

[tomhudson]

Rick Roll - the new MyMiniCity. Gah!

Re:Video?

[Spacejock]

It's still in post-production - they're busy adding a 'Blue Danube' soundtrack.

Thats an expensive, and not very efficient...

[3seas]

...toilet. Beware of the brown rain.

Seems to me they could use human waste propulsion to offset atmospheric drag, so long as its directed at the earth.
put the waste under pressure and release it in a directed manner.

Ok, so that's a shitty idea.

Re:ATV?

[Anonymous Cowpat]

Ulster TeleVision, among other things.

Face it, every reasonable length acronym has been used at least once by now