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Russia's Unmanned Capsule Misses Space Station
mikesd81 writes "Russia's unmanned cargo ship Progress 38 missed docking with the ISS and sailed right on by it instead of docking on autopilot. A telemetry lock between the Russian-made Progress module and the space station was lost and the module flew past at a safe distance. NASA said the crew was never in danger and that the supplies are not critical and will not affect station operations. There will be no other attempts at docking today, and the orbit of the module raises questions of any other attempts again. Packed aboard the spacecraft are 1,918 pounds of propellant for the station, 110 pounds of oxygen, 220 pounds of water and 2,667 pounds of dry cargo — which includes spare parts, science equipment and other supplies."
But nobody said it would be easy.
The fuck?
The stories and info posted here are artistic works of fiction and falsehood.
Only fools would take it as fact.
the supplies are not critical
In other words, it had everything worth living for in it. You don't *need* tasty food or new videos to survive.
Is there no vehicle for the people on the space station to use so that they can nip out and catch the errant missile? Jeepers, that would have been the first thing that I would deliver. Surely, they had anticipated this happening and considered what to do about it.
It's not clear to me why we're doing this whole space station thing in such a half-assed manner. Why not think in terms of a permanent space station, and all that entails?
Best regards.
What is this, the middle ages?
So, next up on the agenda: the ISS.
arrarrarrarrrarr
So while trying to resupply it, the 'RUSSIAN' components failed to deliver its payload. It's now a possible danger to our gov't/mil satellites.
arrrarrarrarr
What do you propose we do?
arrarrarrrarr
Well, the public isn't going to like this. Can't we use our own rockets for this? Oh, so the Russians have superior rockets. How much money are we spending on this? Oh, that's not good. Didn't we already cut the Space Shuttle program out? Oh, so we can't even get our own people or supplies up to the ISS? Well WTF CAN WE DO!???????????
arrrarrrarrrarrr
get me Bruce Willis and Steve Buschemi!
My abilities are only limited by my imagination
26 Gallons of water??? Hardly missed!
Packed aboard the spacecraft are 1,918 pounds of propellant for the station, 110 pounds of oxygen, 220 pounds of water and 2,667 pounds of dry cargo
More like 0 pounds. Surely slugs would be a more useful measurement in a weightless environment. Or better yet: kilograms.
Even Hollywood had this one figured out.
Manual override.
Why didn't they have some sort of override for the Astronauts/Cosmonauts on board the station to correct trajectory in the last few moments? After all, they are the only ones that actually have a real eye on the situation and can react the fastest.
That must have been frustrating watching Mom's chocolate chip cookies and the latest issue of "High Times" go sailing past and not be able to do anything about it.
Russians, "We are 15 centimeters from docking".
Nasa, "15 meters, rodger".
Russians, "No! 15 centimeters!"
Nasa, "How many feet is ...."
Crash!
Nasa, "Never mind".
This is NASA's way of pulling a USS Liberty incident on Russia's Aeronautical Space Ship (hereinafter A.S.S.)
I bet those asstronaughts were up there saying:
In a few thousand years, a craft from some distant advanced civilization will arrive in our solar system loaded with their interpretation of Russian porn.
Have gnu, will travel.
This is what passes for "Progress" in space these days?
Never send a robot to do a man's job.
...folks on /. like to say "Who needs airline pilots? Those planes fly themselves."
rj
And with that, the space salvage industry was born in a rush to be the first to recover this massive payload.
Carmack - go get 'em!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Back under your bridge, little troll.
No he isn't.
How is giving NASA more money, better goals, and scrapping parts of a program that could not work 'getting out of the space business'?
Why don't you try using the brain you probably have to look at facts instead of repeating what liars tell you?
Moron.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Let me guess: it happened because it all was in pounds?..
Sailing right by is much better than sailing right into the space station.
4) congress is filled with stupid fuckups who can't allocate the cash to do something right...
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
At least it didn't hit the station - didn't they have that sort of problem with the Mir
It is a deeply engrained Russian principle that dropoffs of materials must be cryptically authenticated. Probably something like, "After the mission is over, I look forward to hitting the beaches at Sochi". The bozo American at the mike probably forgot the second part and improvised "the gaming tables at Vegas". FAIL.
Actually, his proposed budget for NASA involves increasing its budget slower than inflation. Which, technically, makes it "giving NASA less money".
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
You talking about the poster or Obama?
Or wait its both!
unless of course, it is only the fourth most common. Wikipedia, like statistics, can be manipulated enough to prove any side of any argument -- which makes pendantries double the fun.
Most americans who _need_ to know the difference between weight and mass use kilograms to distinguish the two. (despite the french) - Mainly because explaining the difference between ft-ibs. and ibs-ft to someone who doesn't is exasperating and futile. Besides the fact that saying pounds-feet in english makes you sound like an idiot just because it is awkward.
Even "The Bad Astronomer" agrees with Obamas space policy. Now go away Glenn beck watcher or I will pull out a cross and onion!
http://wwww.zerospeaks.com
That's 27 gallons / 100 liters. I don't know how the water recycling works on the IIS, but I find it interesting that they send up a seemingly small amount...
They have free towing in 10 miles range so the 2 mile miss should not be a problem, right?
In soviet Russia, a space station misses you.
ISS: Ground control, you need to go left by 50.
GC: Rodger that ISS. 50 what?
ISS: No time to explain, just do it!
GC: Ok. Engaging manuevering thrusters for correction on mark. Mark.
ISS: Shoot! Damn it! What the hell!?
GC: What's the problem?
ISS: Too late now, it went veering waaay off. May as well call it gone now.
GC: *static followed by silence*
ISS: *static followed by silence*
Actually, his proposed budget for NASA involves increasing its budget slower than inflation. Which, technically, makes it "giving NASA less money".
Exactly. You have to look at "Constant Dollars" - He's cutting NASA's budget by X constant dollars, where X is some number greater than zero.
http://www.angryflower.com/bobsqu.gif
But nobody explains the difference between ft-ibs. and ibs-ft for a number of reasons, including that the abbreviation of pounds has a lowercase L, not an i. Besides, there is no difference*, and if there was, it would not pertain to force vs. mass. The distinction you're looking for is (for force/mass) lbf/lbm, lb/slug, or lb/slinch. (Of course, some people will use lbf/lb or lb/lbm, confusing the issue -- usually lb alone means force, but I prefer to avoid the ambiguity. You can always tell from context, of course...)
*Well, unless one's dealing with torque/moment (i.e. cross product of length and force), in which case I suppose it's technically a sign error to use lbf×ft -- but I'm the only guy I know who makes a consistent effort to use ft×lbf for moment and ft*lbf for energy, so I don't think anyone would actually read them non-commutatively...
Note that "ft*lbf" above is supposed to have a dot, not an asterisk, but /. won't take it... News for nerds with restricted typographical needs, Stuff that matters unlike complete HTML4 entity support, let alone Unicode! >:[
I can see it now....Russian supply vessel goes off course and gets stuck in an eccentric orbit. Some future post apocalyptic race of humans or visiting aliens finds the pod and assumes it's a type of time capsule filled with holy relics. Theologians / scientists study it day and night for generations trying to figure out what it all means, and how it applies to the looming disaster that threatens their race...
... a definition of kilogram that was abandoned in the 19th century! That was many, many, many dog-years ago, dude!
Not to mention your quaint definition of meter: the meter is actually defined in terms of the distance light travels in vacuum.
On board are:
And suddenly, those numbers have lost their fake precision. Nice, hm?
Did anybody think of that possibility? A perfect chance to obtain fresh earthling artifacts w/o disturbing the population with the loss of a human - they just targeted the tractor beam on it and diverted it off course.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Seriously.
Assuming, of course, that we get the automated docking working, this could be a significant step forward. Launching people into space just to bring up supplies is very expensive and risky. If we can do it auto-magically with robots and computers instead, we would be wise to do so. We will certainly need to still bring people up and back often, but this could be a significant cost (and life) saving change.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
There must have been an enormous amount of them, given those weights in near-zero G! Seems like they should really be trying to dock on its next orbit.
Sure, they're not used, but by simple means give values close enough for almost anything in daily life. In contrast, the only way to get decent imperial units is by...deriving SI units first and hoping to remember some weird ratios (that's really arbitrary), because that's how they are defined for some time now; objects around being mostly useless as a reference (except via the SI route) - see how long it will last before you'll find anybody, out of random group of people, with feet even close to 1 foot.
One that hath name thou can not otter
Docking was successful on the second attempt made today. Guess everyone is so busy on their respective soapboxen to notice.
Mostly because it was realized that using a tug to recover cargo was an expensive, difficult, and dangerous process. It was much simpler to deliver the cargo directly.
With a Saturn V class launcher, we'd have a station at... roughly the same altitude and would still require regular reboosts. (E.G. Skylab.) A Saturn V could place a space station at an altitude that would (for all intents and purposes) not require any reboost... but that 'station' would be roughly the size of a single ISS module. (I.E. essentially useless.) Such a station would also be horrendously expensive, not only because of the vast expense of the launch but also because of the vast expense of keeping the Saturn V infrastructure alive during the years between launches.
Yeah, that's why we keep losing comsats to collisions with space junk. Oh, wait - we don't.
Most of the area between LEO and GEO is also a high radiation area.