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Mir to be Abandoned Today
Tom Rothamel writes, based on a story at FloridaToday.com, "Mir will be abandoned later today, ending a streak of permanent human habitation of space that began on September 6, 1989. There's a chance that one more crew will be sent before earth reclaims it sometime next year." I always hoped we (humans) would launch a better orbiting habitat by the time Mir became unliveable, but we didn't. Sad.
It's always sad to lose an old friend. Farewell, Mir. May you rest in peace.
Ever use a microwave? Medicine has had a few advances. Of course, if I'm wrong, someone will say something . . . later
Dan
Get out some night and watch it
fly over.
or morning
sorry, I don't have the link to the
sighting list.
You know, my father has a theory right along those lines. :)
The theory goes something like this:
In geological terms, millions of years is a very small section. Few thousand years is a tiny speck. Couple hundred years is almost nothing. A few decades is almost too tiny to exist.
Given that, consider our technological development - how it has exponentially increased to the point where you almost literally expect a new development every week.
Now imagine what kind of impact this development would have on a geological record. Minimal at best.
Sooo... isn't it obvious that dinosaurs had a technological boom, same as ourselves, decided to vacate the earth (possibly 'cos of an approaching plauge, or Ice Age, or whatever), leaving behind as little evidence as possible that would indicate intelligence?
You decide...
"I don't believe that there is one, single, perfect spiritual way and, in realizing that, obviously you become a lot more open."
If we do not change our direction we are likely to end up where we are headed.
Try the book of Revelation:
And the star fell upon the third part of the river, and the star's name was wormwood, and many men died of the waters for they had been made bitter.
The ukranian word for wormwood is chernobyl.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Actually, that's the problem with Mir, its skin is too corroded. In a few years, it would start leaking air like a sieve. Things put in space take a hell of a lot of sandblasting from micrometeorite impacts that there's no atmosphere to protect from. So it's not even good for parts.
I suppose they could sell it too, but bridges seem to be the more popular model in that product line.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
If you traveled at .5 c and ran into an asteroid the size of a small pebble... Blammo. Kinda a crap shoot, ain't it?
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
The computers in Mir use "old" technology in order to be more reliable. Since Mir is a space station it gets exposed to a lot of radiation. The effects of radiation on computer equipment are cumulative, and the Mir has been up a long time. Computers on earth don't have to operate in such conditions. Most of the radiation hitting the processor in your pc probably comes from radiactive decay of isotopes in the metal of the computer's case. Not so in space. Ever hear of cosmic rays? A good number of these particles beat the best speeds we can get in accelerators by a long shot. So, those modern chips you're touting as the best thing since electronic sausages, with their tiny, tiny little transistore and pathways and what have you, will be shot to pieces in no time. The older technology won't last forever either, but it'll last a heck of a lot longer. It has already been observed by plenty of astronauts that their laptops develop problems distressingly fast in space.
Oh, and forget sheilding. Do you have any idea how much lead you'd need? Keeping lots of replacement parts on hand is a maybe, but don't forget that the replacement parts would be exposed the the same levels of radiation.
I mean, really, what did you think? Did you think that the Russians were still banging rocks together to make tools?
Sorry if I was long winded. I just felt that the notion that Mir's "outdated" computers were somehow inferior or unsafe for the job at hand was a misconception that needed correcting.
My thoughts exactly, I saw a movie (great source for info!) That had the same premise, that if the vessle is abandoned it can be legally commandered. Is there international law pertaining to abandoned space vessles? If so some one could concievably take MIR?
You could always put one of them tere nuclear propulsion units on it?
No chance! So 'mir mir' means 'world peace'. Cool.
Yeah, or "Peace, world", like you're a hippy or something.
The computers in Mir use "old" technology in order to be more reliable.
Well Actually, the ISS is going to use about 40 i386sx 16Mhz on board, that will act as the main electronic backbone. And the reason they chose that kind of technology, is that it producess a very small amount of heat, which is a huge problem in space.
But the main interaction with the onboard computers will be done with IBM Thinkpads, and win95
Current plan is for it to re-enter over the east coast of Australia, run parallel to the coast, pass over New Zealand and finally splashdown somewhere in the South Pacific.
MrCreosote Meow!Thump!Meow!Thump!Meow!Thump! "You're right! There isn't enough room to swing a cat in here!"
If MIR, by some strange happenstance, lands in my lawn, can I make a treehouse out of it?
:)
any thoughts?
burn the computers. go back to the abacus.
For those who say so long and good riddance to Mir, remember that without Mir NASA would have had to find another (and probably less reliable method) of studying the long-term effects of living in space. Mir taught NASA a great deal about potential problems and how to deal with them quickly. Also Mir's inital design life was a mere 3 years. It has now reached the grand old age of 13, although its' usefulnes declined in around '97 with the spate of accidents. Even at 11 years, Mir lasted almost 3 times its' expected age which is something for Russia to be proud of in my book. Let us hope that the vastly overbudget ISS can at least outlive its' design life by a few years. So do not mock Mir and say 'good riddance' but wave farewell to a station that has aged well through all kinds of storms.
crap into the sun? the sun = good thing. Don't screw with a good thing. Let's NOT shoot crap into it to see what happens.
I don't know exactly how they call it, I'm Russian, but it's come from Apollo project. I'm talking about two little sticky pieces: one is hairy, one is hooky. Now they use it instead of buttons on some garment. And your radiation screen is probably attached to the monitor by these. :) Take care!
After 10 years in space, Mir is a creaking old hulk; the cosmonauts spend much of their time on maintenance, not science. It wasn't designed to last this long, and if the Russians still had a space program the thing to do would be to launch a new, up-to-date core incorporating the lessons learned from the original, and move over the modules which are still of use. The old core is not worth the fuel required to keep it in orbit. Perhaps it could be useful on the way down, for instance as a test of controlled re-entry using electrodynamic tethers, but in space it's already barely more than a hazard to navigation.
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Why don't we buy Mir?
It's a peice of crap yes, but some of us are used to taking such and turning it into something useful. It was useful once, mind you. The stakes may be a little higher, sure, but such is life.
Maybe they should put it up for bid on Ebay.
I've found this link which tells you every minute where MIR is in Space : http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/temp /StationLoc.html
none Yet.
The commerical name is Velcro
Good Lord, it seems that you know what you're talking about. Get off /. immediately - we don't want your type around here.
Yeah, i like Europe, the women there are so open minded... =)
Seriously, there's Mars and Europe, both have atmosphere and the high posibility of water presence (much likely in Jupiter's Moon).
Just wonder the potential of a solar system economy, all these new
resources. The case of Titan is very promising too
though it wouldn't be so "kind" to human existence,
but those hidrocarbure seas!
Well, let's start by walking for a couple of days over Mars.
I really don't think speed light would be unavoidable for interstellar exodus.i ntelligence, an endurable self sustained (under a very simple system) craft with the genetic and chemical capability to make/start over the biological evolution of any environment reached an influence would make the deal. No need of persons to colonize. Just broadcasting our genetic heritage to the cosmos would be propagation, expansion. What if these autonomous seeds don't
Counting on the development of genetics, engineering and "cosmic awareness"/ethics/rationality/not-just-technical-
evolve as similar as us?, well... who knows how we
will look in a couple of milleniums.
As Far As I Know, they didn't really accomplish anything on Mir? So it was great in theory, but in reality, Mir sucked. Well, thats what I think. (first post?)
,'s in e-mail address with .'s.
j-a-w-a-d------------------------------
replace
i dont display scores, and my threshhold is -1. post accordingly.
Discuss
I really don't think light speed would be unavoidable for interstellar exodus.i ntelligence, an endurable self sustained (under a very simple system) craft with the genetic and chemical capability to make/start over the biological evolution of any environment reached an influence would make the deal. No need of persons to colonize. Just broadcasting our genetic heritage to the cosmos would be propagation, expansion. What if these autonomous seeds don't
Counting on the development of genetics, engineering and "cosmic awareness"/ethics/rationality/not-just-technical-
evolve as similar as us?, well... who knows how we
will look in a couple of milleniums.
And Nostradomus, the European prophet, foretold of the Great Mars's fire coming down on the skies in the 7th month of 1999 (7th month can be interpreted as July or August, as August being the time after 7 months. People were weird back then).
Nostradomus predectied the world to end.
And as Mir means life in Russian, it also means world.
So, all of the Nostradomus fans can say he was right again. Most of N's predictions were interpreted like this anyway, which is why he had such a high "sucess" rate.
-bugg
Dateline 2000 - Mir to Hit Earth. I can see lots of T-shirts with targets on the back coming soon to a store near you. Anybody remember Skylab?
- We dream of the stars. Now let us return to them.
I read that they plan to deorbit it soon.
It seems wasteful to send it back down the sink since it costs about $1000 a pound to put something in orbit.
Why can't they push it to a higher orbit and park it there, maybe move it relatively close to the ISS and make it the first orbital junkyard? Maybe even the first Jamaican space station?
Not too mention the kilojoules of heat that it will add to the atmosphere when it reenters, and the pollution it will spread. Wait!!!, I gotta call Greenpeace.
George
Well let's be sure to clean up and vacuum. I want us to get our security deposit back.
I wouldn't worry about it, myself. It'd be the proveribal drop -- no, molecule -- in the bucket.
Berlin-- http://www.berlin-consortium.org
DNA just wants to be free...
I'm too young to remember much about Skylab (born in '73) except for one particular thing. When Skylab was heading for its fiery ending, my mom made our family live in the basement for 2 or 3 days. Seems extremely excessive in retrospect, but it made perfect sense at the time (and age). Maybe we'll all look back on Y2K the same way in the 2010's.
I bet Bill Gates would pay for it.
"Mr. Gates, we want to drop Mir into the sun."
"On Sun? Kewl,let me get my checkbook."
George
The Sun = Big Thing also. Seriously Big Thing, in fact.
Unless it actually hits someone, the Earth won't really notice Mir's reentry. The Sun is thousands of times more massive than the Earth - it wouldn't even know anything had hit it.
The real reason why dumping into the Sun isn't even considered is the large quantity of fuel you'd need to do it. As another poster has said, it's much simpler to drop it in the ocean.
Richard Edgar
rge21@cam.ac.uk
The real crying shame is that we know how to build a space station that could be launched with one shot into orbit on an existing vehicle; we did it with Skylab, and LLNL proposed a while back that we build an inflatable space be a few $billion. Of course, this would not station and launch it on a Titan (up in one shot). Total cost, from design to launch, would have given enough money to the space contractors, nor would the State Department have been able to use it as a way to funnel money to Russia as a way of doing some foreign policy out of someone else's budget, so that idea went bust. (I tried searching LLNL's site for the "community space suit" paper, but the search engine doesn't seem to know where it is.)
This leaves us in a state where the Senate is trying to kill all of NASA's non-Shuttle, non-ISS programs, keeping the boondoggles and nuking all the science. It's enough to make you sick.
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Of course, unless modern physics is wrong and faster-than-light space travel really is possible, a space program isn't going to be of much use in terms of saving the human race. Nothing in our solar system appears able to support a self-sufficient colony if the Earth became uninhabitable. It really looks like one planet is all we are going to be granted.
Mir has been in orbit years longer than it was originally designed for. There have been fires, life support failures and collisions. Crews living there spend all their time just trying to keep the thing running. There hasnt been any useful science come out of the platform for quite awhile. While it provided invaluable experience in long-term habitation in space, which our space program is now taking advantage of, its time has long since past.
The main reason the Russians want to keep it going is that they built it by themselves and they, like everyone, want to keep their baby running as long as they can.
As the Int'l Space Station becomes permanently habitable over the next few years, it will more than make up for the capability lost on Mir.
An interesting point, I watch closely the Russians moves in the construction of the Int'l Space Station. They seem reluctant to put their money and expertise into this Int'l project. One might even call the Int'l Space station the Open-Source Space Station, everyone is going to contribute and see what everyone else is doing and use it. It will be very difficult for any one country to monopolize it since everyone has contributed. I think the Russians see this and are having, IMHO understandable, reservations about jumping in with both feet.
I hope over time tho, that everyone sees the benefits that will present themselves as we all progress together.
Later,
FM
Frank W. Miller
Say what you will..but on a shoe string budget, the Russians have managed to maintain, yes barely, but they have maintained the Mir. That says alot for their savvy. That is it self is an accomplishment worthy of admiration.
How much more fuel would it actually take to get it going towards the sun? 2x? 10x? Since it's in orbit, it's not completely out of the earth's gravity well, but it's a lot further along than stuff still on the surface, and there's not much if any atmosphere to provide drag.
I know that it's a frequent suggestion of what to do with earth-based crap nobody wants, like hazardous waste. The amount of fuel necessary for that seems much, much greater (since it's still earth-bound) than something in orbit.
..another week or so and it would have been exactly ten years! You think they could've waited just a little while longer.
Oh well...
y'all dont remember your physics classes do you ... prolly cutting class, to stay in the computer lab too huh huh ...admit it :)
... MIR and the ISS are in two completly different orbits. Complete with different inclinations (due to lanuch sites) and assorted other orbital elements ... say apogee and perigee, and eccentricity just to start. While possible its not very likely or the RSA and NASA would have considered it, dontcha think?? I mean they do have staffs of rocket scientists, bright cookies them-uns :)
... the RSA actually flys MIR and without constant guidance (read *money* ) it will tumble and probably break up...no matter how high an orbit you place it in
Basic Orbital Dynamics people
The problem with boosting MIR higher in orbit
Bottom Line...to match MIR's orbit to the ISS's would cost way way more that it would be worth...safer just to land it in the drink than leave several 100 more tons of space junk waiting to clock someone at several meters per second
use Signature::Witty;
Don't forget Mylar and other non-lead based radiation shields for just about everything. Miniturized radar and all kinds of aerospace advancments.
MIR and ISS have to be boosted to higher orbits periodically because various forces (mainly atmospheric and magnetic drag) slow them down. The MIR sponsors simply no longer want to keep paying to keep MIR in orbit. If MIR were put in a higher orbit and abandoned it would eventually come down through the altitude of ISS and be a threat to it. Clamping MIR to ISS would still require that someone send up fuel (or bring it down from the Moon) to keep them in orbit. And MIR/ISS have to be continually flown to keep their solar arrays turned toward the Sun.
It's informative!
well, if you don't, then here are the links...
German Space Operstions Centre's
and
A reminder if you enter your coordinates manually and are in North America: longitude should be negative
censorship is a form of noise, which actively seeks to drown out content with silence - Crash Culligan
Remember the recent story of research in using a plasma field as a solar sail? Would one of those generate enough force to offset the drag on MIR? Granted, it could only be turned on when the solar wind would push it away from the Earth (or in a forward direction in the orbit) so it would not slow the thing down...
I believe that the Microwave Oven was actually a byproduct of research into stealth warplane technology.
I seem to recall that velcro was a space programme advance, though. About a month ago, there was an article on the history of the super soaker, which at least came out of NASA's JPL (which I believe is only loosely tied to the space programme, though I could be wrong)
At the end of Robert A. Heinlein's Expanded Universe is a speech he gave to congress about why the space programme is a good place to put money. IIRC, he enumerates several other technologies which resulted from our space programme.
-me
Trees can't go dancing
So do them a big favor
Pretend dancing stinks!
the Russian space program couldn't afford another launch and the current crew will have to hitchhike back to Earth before the deadline when Mir plummets into the atmosphere. :-)
10 years longer than design life... Would you still want to be running on the hardware and software you cranked up 13 years ago? Consider all the valuable experiance with the unknown: collision in space, fire in space, leaks, bad equipment, lousy food, lousy air, short budgets, multi-national egos, etc. You couldn't script some of these events, nor would you want to in some cases. The so called 'problems' with MIR will stand as valuable examples for future engineers: How did they deal with that on MIR?
Why not? You can find plenty of raw materials throughout the Solar System. Asteroids have carbon and metals, comets water and volatiles, from which you can make oxygen and hydrogen... Or you can extract them, as well as nitrogen, from Mars' and Titan's atmospheres... With the right technology, you can build whole ecosystems with that; just bring in what's needed some place from elsewhere, there's plenty to deal with.
Of course, all this would not save us when the Sun dies in a few billion years, but it would preserve us from a planetary catastrophe such as a huge meteoroid impacting (remember Shoemaker-Levy 9?). And give us enough time to develop world-ships to emigrate to other stars with, if not jump gates or warp drives...
You have a point, but guess what? Humans procreate rather well, and we shirk at population control. And we consume resources! No duh this screws the planet up. There are potentially an infinite number of worlds and a near infinite amount of energy and materials to explore. Comparing our existance to the dinosaurs isn't relevant. I don't live in a swamp, and I don't want to. I want to drive my fast car, program on my fast notebook, sucking energy all along the way. I don't have a problem with that, 'cause there's lots of energy out there, and in the grand scheme of things, with 6 billion people on the planet, it just doesn't matter. If I shot myself in the head, it wouldn't matter. Why? All those 6 billion people want to drink coke like everyone else, and you're kidding yourself to think otherwise. NOTHING WILL CHANGE THE FACT THERE ARE 6e9 people here and that'll be 20e9 in a few years! We should accept our fate to consume the planets resources and move on - unless you're in favour of mass genocide, 'cause with 6 billion people, that's the only thing that will cut down the populations, and that's all that matters. Heh - asteroids - nature's population control. Let's get on with exploring the universe instead of waiting for the inevitable here! Kudos, Steve Manley smanley@nyx.net
I think that travel fairly close to the speed of light would be all that is needed to make sending humans to remote star systems practical... not that this is easy to do. But, I think that with some huge advances it would be possobile within our current system of physics. Remember, you don't have to send the whole population, just enough to get good genetic diversity...
You don't need many people at all in fact. Genetic material for millions of people can be kept on ice and you can send a population of several dozen to colonize a planet. There are other ways to solve the genetic diversity problems as well. If one generation clones itself to create the next there's no problem with inbreeding. With a better understanding of genetic engineering, it can also be used to insure that the even if the genetic pool is too small, none of the problems that generally associated with that actually become manifest.
This space unintentionally left unblank.
Geeks understand that things become obsolete after awhile. Same reason we aren't using XT's anymore.
Even if the space program can't get you to another planet, it can teach you how to live in a "closed" system where you have no choice but to recycle and to respect your environment. IMHO not a bad lesson to learn.
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Ya know, this doesn't suprise me in the least. The average shmuck doesn't have an iota of a clue what the potential signifigance of us (Humans) leaving the planet we evolved on is, and they're not likely to. It just doesn't affect their lives, and it's one of the flaws in Capitalism: If you live to acquire money, there's no incentive to look elsewhere _until all the resources are gone_. And it'll be too late then - not that there's anything wrong with Capitalism. Government exists to work around these (i.e. antitrust laws).
:(
Unfortunately, the power-hungry government in the US, elected by people that seek to have the man decide their every action, spends more on locking away potheads and busting drug addicts than it's space program. Is that a good idea? By all rights, we should at least be on the goddamn moon by now.
What will change those opinions? I know what will, and it's the only thing short of Jesus appearing and telling people to go. It's a mid-sized asteroid taking out a large metropolitan center and/or a mid-sized country. Not big enough to screw the ecosystem, but enough to knock off a few million people and let Joe Schmuck understand that this pretty blue marble isn't indestructable. Far from it.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think so. I hope that the Japaneese or maybe the Chinese stick it to the US and get bases on the moon running first - maybe that will deflate some American egos.
Humanity must look elsewhere to live and prosper, or we're going to go the same way as the dinosaurs, and we'll be the next great big oil reserve for the second shot (or third) evolution has. Maybe someone will leave some more plaques around this time, but we're pretty cheap there, too. Maybe that's what those great big symbols in the deserts of asia are.
Anyhow - just another mindless rant. Someday I'll write a book, if for no other reason than bragging rights if I live to see the firey end. *grin*
Just another starry-eyed slashdotter
Steve Manley
smanley@nyx.net
Asimov didn't know what he was talking about. The dinosaurs are gone because they DID have a space program. They blasted off several million years ago and are right this minute having a giant T-Rex beach party on the blue sands of Alfa Centauri III.
Long before the space program. See this page for details.
I know, this sounds really pathetic... but if each of the (theoretical) 600,000 nerds reading this site donated $100 each, that would be 60 mil... of course I bet the number that read this site is probably more like 30k/day... assuming 10% shelled out $100, we would be left with... $300k. OK, so much for that idea...
Uh, how about microelectronics? Weather and communications and other ground observation satellites?
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
The best example of Russian simplicity is the (urban legend?) story about the space pen:
In the early days of the space program, NASA discovered that a normal ball-point pen doesn't work without gravity to pull the ink down onto the ball. So NASA contracted out to many different pen manufacturers to find a way to make a pen work in zero-g. Finally, after months of work, and millions of dollars in research, we get the pressurized "space pen."
What do the Russians do?
Use a pencil.
The moral of the story: Sometimes simplicity pays off.
Mars might be an option, though it's a bit of a fixer-upper. And there's always Europa...
*wanders off, humming a Thomas Dolby song...*
--
"HORSE."
"HORSE."
-Flaming Carrot
Sections already have been launched, and there are already people there, I'm sure.
A ten year anniversery party would have been cool.
Imagine how dependant on rather old computers the MIR project is... perhaps one factor in abandoning it now is to prevent any loss of life should problems occur.
They'll just drop in at your house.
Mir is still liveable.. the only issue is the ISS, and Russia's ability to keep Mir in space while building parts for the ISS. The US is on Russia's ass to get rid of Mir every time they say there will be another delay in the next Space Station part..
Good bye MIR, we will miss you! Ok, I at least will miss you. When is the unternational space station going to launch?
yes the cat got my tongue
(to fulfill your script's requirement)
Despite the fact that people have been living up there, it's really quite amazing to me that it managed to avoid the "big" disaster.
---
"Go Metallica. Die RIAA." -- Linus Torvalds
IMO, the biggest tragedy of the Challenger disaster was how far behind the US space program has been since it occured. People almost seemed shocked that spaceflight was dangerous... hello?
I think those that died would've wanted the program to continue (fixing the problem obviously) but would not have wanted the program to fall so far behind. I think they would've been better honored by not only getting caught back up on the schedule, but perhaps learning lessons and moving ahead even faster.
It also cracks me up when people say we've wasted so much on the space program without getting anything in return. They have no idea how many advancements in computers, medicine, science, etc we owe to the space program(s).
- My favorite error message: xscreensaver, running on an old Sparc 5 w/ 8bit color: bsod: Couldn't allocate color Blue
Asimov: "The dinosaurs died out because they didn't have a space-program."
Clarke: "If we die out we will have deserved it."
The efforts and achievements of the Russians with respect to Mir deserve the highest praise.
The data and experience on human survival in space that they have gained for the world will offer countless potentially life-saving insights to problems that will be encountered in ANY future space-habitation projects.
The fact that their project did not have the polish and glitz of space projects in the US does nothing to detract from the value of their efforts. They kept men alive in orbit for a very long time, and they did it on a shoe string. The lower funding forced them to be creative and resourceful. We owe them our thanks, and will for a long time to come.
SPACIBO!
**>>BELCH
I pledge $200.
Orbital velocity is around 8000 meters per second. Boosting to Earth escape velocity (roughly 11,000 m/sec) requires a delta-V of 3000 m/sec. By the rocket equation, the ratio of initial mass to final mass is e to the power of 1.2 (3000/2500), so you would need 3.32-1=2.32 times as much mass of fuel as Mir's mass. You could launch a couple new Mir's for that.
To get to the Sun by the least-energy route requires a flight past Jupiter, which requires roughly as much delta-V as a solar escape burn. Call it a delta-V of about 12,500 meters per second. Using oxygen-hydrogen with an exhaust velocity of 4500 m/sec, the fuel required would be about 15 times the mass of Mir (and a hell of a lot bulkier; liquid hydrogen is about 1/14 the density of water).
If you want to save Mir, I'm sure everybody would be happy to let you pay for this.
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
That was my first /. post, as an AC, with links I learned about here, and I still get a score of 2, wow! :-) I have to get moderated below 0 now...
Here are a few things to consider.
First of all, Mir can't really be abandoned where it is. The low orbits that Mir, ISS, and the shuttle fly in are not stable. They decay due to minute amounts of atmospheric drag. You couldn't leave Mir where it is because it would have to be periodically re-occupied and boosted. If you did, who knows when and where it would re-enter. It could hit land and cause a lot of damage. If Mir was to be abandoned, it would have to be in a much higher orbit than even ISS.
Second, if you put it into a high enough orbit so that orbital decay is no longer an issue, you won't be able to reach it with the shuttle or a Soyuz capsule anymore.
Third, you can't put space vehicles into a higher orbit by just pushing up. They must be accelerated to the velocity corresponding to the higher orbit. To get Mir into a sufficiently high orbit, you would have to increase its current velocity quite a lot.
Think for a minute how much energy (in other words fuel) was required to get Mir's various parts up to their current velocity. Even with the biggest rockets Russia had, Mir had to be lifted in parts. To speed Mir up sufficiently, you would need to transport an absolutely huge amount of fuel into space.
Unfortunately, you can't just move Mir a little, then resupply it, then move it again, and so on. It wouldn't take long before the shuttle and Soyuz rockets wouldn't be able to reach it to bring more fuel. That means you need to bring all of the fuel up there and attach it to Mir before you start moving it. And that means that you have to accelerate the fuel too in addition to Mir, which dramatically increases the amount required.
Getting that much fuel to Mir would be incredibly expensive. First you would need to build a very large container for it, send it up, and dock it to Mir. Then you need to send multiple rocket and/or shuttle launches to fill it up, with specially trained spacewalking crews to perform the fuel transfers.
Fourth, even if you could get that much fuel into orbit, how would you go about boosting Mir? You couldn't just use Mir's propulsion system. It would take forever and you would need to perform some major modifications of Mir to attach and use a very large external fuel source. You would need to build a special purpose rocket module and bring it to Mir. Also, remember that some of the sensitive parts of Mir (like the solar array) aren't designed to hold up to forces of acceleration when deployed, so who knows whether the station would even survive such a burn.
Or is this only to hide it better?
Well, considering that each shuttle mission costs on average around $1B, 60 mil wouldn't get you far.
Being a Russian I just wanna put an end to this thread.
No chance! So 'mir mir' means 'world peace'. Cool.
Admit nothing, deny everything and make counter-accusations.
You had better start caring about population control and preserving resources. The "I'll waste all I want to because I alone don't make a difference" is so obviously naive, I can't believe people still use it to appease their conscience. Nothing will change the fact that 6e9 people are on the earth, but we can change the rate that it grows and we should. There may be lots of energy out there, but energy sources aren't growing as fast as the demand for it. Eventually there will a major energy shortage unless we practice some conservation. Not to mention the fact that almost every source of energy is also a source of polution, so the human race is more likely to create some environmental catastrohpe or poison itself before it runs out of energy.
You suggest we consume the planet's resources and move on. Move on to where? We're limited by the laws of physics to sticking primarily in our own solar system, and there is no other inhabitable planet here besides the one we're on. So what is your plan? Keep increasing the population and its need for resources exponentially, and assume that we'll invent a warp drive or terraform Mars before it's too late?
Perhaps we can convince RedHat to buy MIR with some of its new-found fortune. It can then convert it into the world's first Open Source Space Staion (OSSS)!
In some ways, a more impressive one than landing on the moon... The Apollo program had all the money NASA could eat, whereas the Russians ran a space-station through many unfortunate disasters on a shoestring budget. On another note, while many satellites could be called 'space junk' when they are past their useful lives, Mir cannot. Surely it would be a better idea to somehow dock it to the new ISS? It did, after all, take rather a lot of effort to put it up there...
Actually....
The shuttle has been upgraded many times. First, the Challenger had improved hardware; then after the Challenger accident, all the shuttles underwent complete overhauls for safety. When the Endeavour came in to service, it introduced a new computer, and over the last couple of years, the whole fleet has been undergoing complete modernizations, including all new flight computers and a glass cockpit.
Much like your average airliner, the shuttle fleet has been kept up to date in small pieces. None of the shuttles use the original, 1972 computer or software anymore. And if you want to talk about old base designs, think about this the next time you fly to New York: The 737 and 747 airliners, the two most popular airliners ever built, were designed in the 1950s. And if you fly on a 727? The last one came off the assembly line in 1982, and the average age for them is 30 years old.
No it isn't easy at all. To accelerate a vehicle (large enough to transport a seed population) close to the speed of light, you would need a collosal amount of energy. The spacecraft MUST be self propelled and carry its own fuel, otherwise it won't be able to decellerate at its destination. That rules out some of the stupid ideas like being accelerated by a high power laser (no way to slow down) or a solar sail (accelerates so slow that that you'll be too far away from the Sun to use it before you get to any appreciable speed). It also means you have to accelerate the craft and its fuel. So the critical relationship becomes the ratio of the energy of the fuel to its mass. Unfortunately, that ratio has to be incredibly high to get anywhere, far higher than any current fuel we know of, even if we master fusion. Antimatter might be enough if we ever find out how to produce and handle it. But since we don't have any natural sources handy we would need to artificially create it, and it takes many orders of magnitude more energy to produce the fuel than we can get back out. So even if antimatter does have a high enough energy/mass ratio to propel a ship close to the speed of light, we would have a very hard time producing enough fusion energy on the earth to produce the required quantity of antimatter. Even if we could find a fuel and a propulsion system that could accelerate us to a significant fraction of the speed of light, would we want to risk it? Traveling at 0.1c, a collision with just a 1 gram object would be equivalent to a small nuclear explosion. I just don't see any way, in our current system of physics, to travel at any significant fraction of the speed of light. I think speeds of c/1000 are about as fast as you could hope for. To even reach that speed would require something on the order of 10e4 more energy than it took to get to the moon. That means we'll have to expect that the journey would take many hundreds or even thousands of years.
What I always loved about Mir was it's simplicity. I agree with other posts on here about the US space program going to hell after Chanllenger. Gee - it blows up in the cold - ie - don't launch in the cold. Problem solved - lets get on with it...
:)
The only thing the Russians ever lacked was $$. Too bad. I always thought the remote supply ships were cool. As was landing on the ground sans wheels.
I want to move to Mars dammit - but it looks like thats not going to happen in my lifetime. Did Al Gore invent Mars too?
jimp
The latest Mir mission was for its inhabitants to beat the record of days in space
This last mission was funded mostly by the European Space Agnecy.
Another big part of the fund for this last mission came from France Space Center. Btw the name of this mission was perseus (many nice photos even if the site is in french)
none Yet.
How much would it cost? To just have it burn up in reentry in a few months seems like a waste.
Alternately instead of boosting it to a higher orbit, adjust its orbit to match the ISS, and rig up a clamp system to dock them together. It would just be a useless appendage for the ISS, but it would be a readily available enclosed space for storage or use for future manufacturing projects or a great attraction for future space tourists that we know are only years away.
--Dave
You don't know much then...
You might like to read 'The MIR Space Station: A Precursor to Space Colonization'(ISBN: 0471975877), it covers the scientific and engineering achievements in detail from the first Salyut upto very recent Mir missions.
No it isn't easy at all. To accelerate a vehicle (large enough to transport a seed population) close to the speed of light, you would need a collosal amount of energy. The spacecraft MUST be self propelled and carry its own fuel, otherwise it won't be able to decellerate at its destination. That rules out some of the stupid ideas like being accelerated by a high power laser (no way to slow down) or a solar sail (accelerates so slow that that you'll be too far away from the Sun to use it before you get to any appreciable speed).
It also means you have to accelerate the craft and its fuel. So the critical relationship becomes the ratio of the energy of the fuel to its mass. Unfortunately, that ratio has to be incredibly high to get anywhere, far higher than any current fuel we know of, even if we master fusion.
Antimatter might be enough if we ever find out how to produce and handle it. But since we don't have any natural sources handy we would need to artificially create it, and it takes many orders of magnitude more energy to produce the fuel than we can get back out. So even if antimatter does have a high enough energy/mass ratio to propel a ship close to the speed of light, we would have a very hard time producing enough fusion energy on the earth to produce the required quantity of antimatter.
Even if we could find a fuel and a propulsion system that could accelerate us to a significant fraction of the speed of light, would we want to risk it? Traveling at 0.1c, a collision with just a 1 gram object would be equivalent to a small nuclear explosion.
I just don't see any way, in our current system of physics, to travel at any significant fraction of the speed of light. I think speeds of c/1000 are about as fast as you could hope for. To even reach that speed would require something on the order of 10e4 more energy than it took to get to the moon. That means we'll have to expect that the journey would take many hundreds or even thousands of years.
the MIR will be always in my heart. The only hope is that it don't fall on someone head, as the NATO bombs do every day.
Perhaps this idea is totally unworkable, but isn't the most expensive/heaviest part of Mir the physical infrastructure? Couldn't new computers and control equipment be sent up and retrofitted? If the Russians really are abandoning Mir couldn't anyone just go up and squat? Sort of like that short story "Red Star, Winter Orbit" (by Gibson I think).
Just think of the advances that those sort of systems have made in the decade (I shudder to think about what sort of computer gear is onboard Mir... or the space shuttle for that matter).
Imagine... Linux in space!
Guilt is a rope that wears thin - A. Rand
Please come to America and teach geeks how to write descriptively, spell and use grammar. Sure, they'll keep flipping ahead to the chapter on "hacker vs. cracker" but smack them on the head until they see reason (or stars).
I wonder now that mir is abandoned if it can be claimed by other persons? Whats the international law on abandoned space vehicles/habitats/tin cans?
If they're going to send up a full load of fuel so they can blast it into the atmosphere, why can't they push it the other direction and blast it into outer space or at the Sun or somewhere else?
Being a Russian I just wanna put an end to this thread. See subj. take care!
Try boosting enough fuel up there to move the thing out of orbit- it'd cost as much as it did to put the thing there in the first place. It's cheaper to try to dump it into the ocean.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
yes, indeed, thou speakest the truth.
for sooth! we have discovered it!
so, now that we know the reason that mir doesn't work is because of m$, let's forge on and solve the rest of the world's problems... (j/k! aack! don't shoot me down!)
-my $0.000000000001 worth-
Insert mind here.