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Sochi Olympic Torch Taken On Historic Spacewalk
rtoz writes "Two Russian cosmonauts have taken the torch for the Sochi Winter Olympics on its first historic spacewalk. Oleg Kotov and Sergei Ryazansky took the unlit version of the torch through the hatch of the International Space Station. The Olympic torch has been carried into space twice before – in 1996 and 2000 – but it has never left a spaceship. It was not lit aboard the space station as this would consume oxygen and pose a risk to the crew."
Keep that Olympic crap for...
Wait, did you say a spacewalk?
The Olympics have been hopelessly corrupt for decades now. There'd be more history in taking my fucking toilet plunger into space.
It is the flame which represents the continuity with the ancient games. An unlit torch doesn't qualify as anything but a gold plated unlit torch.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
There should be some kind of Bozo award given here for the silliest public relations stupidity ever created.
Seconded.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bozo_the_Clown
how does fire burn when there is no gravity? where do the flames go? does it become a big fireball?
You took an inanimate metal rod on a space walk. Yeah. That's great.
I think it's one of those "gotta have been there" things.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Actually, it couldn't be lit because you need gravity to have fire; Well, sort of. There's no heat column and thus fire is rather anemic in space. That nice big flaming torch would look really peculiar in space... it would puff out bubbles of plasma that would then float around and extinguish... spewing fine particulate matter and byproduct gas everywhere -- which is, as NASA indicated, dangerous to the crew and equipment.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
For a split-second after I read the headline, I thought it meant the torch had been taken, as in stolen, whilst out on it's space-walk.
So lets pretend that that's what it really meant because it makes for a more interesting topic!
So the thing that holds the part that is lit on fire for some sporting event very 4 years was carried around in space?
How is this anything other than some PR for the next Olympics and why is it on slashdot? There is nothing interesting about this. Now if they had designed some contraption to allow the flame to burn in space that would be something.
can't sleep slashdot will eat me
Just when I think adults can't act even more childish and silly, they go do something like this. Whatever symbolism it may have had is gone when they just stop the reaction and start it again-- why as well put the Olympic logo on cigarette lighters and let everybody start and stop the branded "special" flame.
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So, we have a rather expensive 'stick'. If it isn't lit, then it isn't a torch - it's a STICK
An unlit torch is a good symbol for a country where flaming is punishable by prison (at best) or being beaten to death by thugs (at worst).
Boycott Sochi until Putin figures out "human rights".
Design an add-on, a special mount or container, for the Olympic Torch that WOULD let it be lit and burn in orbit, even outside the space ship or satellite!
It can't be THAT hard, right? A sufficient flow of "air" (oxygen and whatever) to ensure burning and continued mixing of fuel and oxidizer.
via some kind of H2+O2 torch - wait for an orbit around the world, and you can say that the torch has been carried around the world. As it is it was just a piece of crap that they boosted up to LEO.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Did they have someone running on a treadmill, carrying the torch (lit or unlit) on the flight up? Will there be a runner carrying the torch on the way down?
If not, it's just a piece of cargo and a publicity stunt with absolutely no real meaning. It is the carrying of the (usually lit) torch that has meaning, not the torch itself.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
It's the same thing Soviet people were told about the United States.
Because nothing screams success like tweeting.