Slashdot Mirror
Cold War Standoff Over ISS Toilet
Hugh Pickens writes "The International Space Station, once a place where astronauts would share food and facilities, is said to be embroiled in a Cold War-like stand-off after a Russian cosmonaut complained he is no longer allowed to use a US toilet or the US gym machine. Gennady Padalka, a veteran Russian cosmonaut, says that space officials from Russia, the United States and other countries now require cosmonauts and astronauts to eat their own food and follow stringent rules on access to other facilities, including lavatories. Padalka, who will be the station's next commander, says the arguments date back to 2003, when Russia started charging other space agencies for the resources used by their astronauts and other partners in space station responded in kind. 'Cosmonauts are above the ongoing squabble, no matter what officials decide,' says Padalka. 'We are grown-up, well-educated and good-mannered people and can use our own brains to create normal relationship. It's politicians and bureaucrats who can't reach agreement, not us, cosmonauts and astronauts.' While sharing food in the past helped the crew feel like a team, the new rules oblige Russian cosmonauts and US astronauts to eat their own food. 'They also recommend us to only use national toilets,' says Padalka. 'What is going on has an adverse effect on our work.'"
If you even read the whole summary, you'd note that the Russians began it by charging to use "their" resources. U.S. astronauts can't use Russian facilities either without incurring a hefty bill. Both sides are being petty children.
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
Over is the proper fashion!
What day is it? Could you please tell me?
Whoooosh! (and that's not the sound of a toilet flushing)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057012/
No, this one is on the Russians. They started it. The Americans are just playing tit-for-tat (with random forgiveness, we presume), which is always an appropriate moral strategy.
This is not the first time the Russians, bankrupt, have pulled a stunt like this. Mir was full of junk because the Russians would lease space to whoever to run an experiment and would then refuse to bring the experiment's materials back to Earth. They kept them on board in order to continue charging the (exorbitant) rent for space aboard Mir. The cosmonauts complained about the piles of junk, though not publicly.
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
Not if you have cats. Unless you enjoy rewinding the roll every day. :-)
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
Gah... Get the quote right if you're going to quote something!
"Gentlemen! You can't fight in here! This is the war room!"
A host is a host from coast to coast...
Unless it's down, or slow, or fails to POST!
Not at all, it was a reference to a movie, Dr. Strangelove.
Things seem to have changed since I watched TV in 1992 when Mr. King got the long fucking end of the stick.
...that might be tasteful, but I'm replying to a post that is modded +5 Funny, even though it really isn't funny. On that note, I suggest I'll be modded +5 Informative.
A proud member of the Onion-in-Hand alliance
There's also a Japanese cargo vessel. A Japanese cargo ship is planned to fly to the ISS in the next couple of months, although it doesn't automatically dock, and needs to be grappled within 90 seconds by the ISS arm, or presumably it floats away.
No one really heard much about it till about '84 or so...and it wasn't widespread, and if you weren't an IV user or having male homosexual anal sex, you likely weren't at a risk back then... I *did* say a few years before '89. Really, till about '84-'85, you could pretty much fsck anything that moved (at least heterosexually) and not have to worry much about dying if you didn't put a helmet on your soldier.
Ryan White and Arthur Ashe send their love. (Go ahead, I double-dare you to suggest those are exceptional cases).
I'm just saying that how people treat each other, society in general, and how the govt. is working against us, was not as bad back then. I feel that life and the very minimun, was much more civil, polite and relaxed then.....and decades before.
Hey, remember that time the US government purposely gave 400 of its black citizens, hell, 400 of its MILITARY men, syphillis, then watched them die? I could be cynical and say "I guess *snicker* this is what cayenne8 considers the days when the government was better!," but I really doubt you think the gov't-sponsored-and-ordered execution of 400 black men was really a good thing. Really, you're just describing what one of the GPs accurately describes as gleeful remembrance of the "good ole days."