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.

Comments

Nostradomus was right

[bugg]

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.

Yep, it's sad

[Miguelito]

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).

Putting Mir into a higher orbit

[Anonymous Coward]

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.