Astronauts May Have to Abandon Space Station

[alp227]

Source: The New York Times

Astronauts will abandon the International Space Station, probably in mid-November, if rocket engine problems that doomed a Russian cargo ship last week are not diagnosed and fixed.

Even if unoccupied, the space station can be operated by controllers on the ground indefinitely and would not be in any immediate danger of falling out of orbit.

Three Russian, two American and a Japanese astronaut are currently living on the space station.

“We’re going to do what’s the safest for the crew and for the space station, which is a very big investment of our governments,” said Michael T. Suffredini, manager of the space station program for NASA, during a news conference on Monday. “Our job is, as stewards of the government, to protect that investment, and that’s exactly what we’re going to do.”

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/30/science/space/30nasa.html

[lib2DaBone]

1. Couldn't have seen that coming.. now that the Shuttle is shut down...

[onehandle]

2. Wow. Science is dead.

What's the fucking point of thinking of the future?

Let's just put President Bachmann in the White House now and 'rocket' us to the end times.

[Drale]

4. Wow jump out the window rather quickly there didn't we? /nt

[caraher]

8. Not much science happens at ISS

As http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30970659/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/space-station-boon-or-boondoggle/">Bob Park said of ISS (vs. Hubble),

"No one has any idea what to do with the space station. We know what to do with a telescope," Park told Discovery News. "The ISS is just a way of keeping human beings in space. It's flag-pole sitting."

The same 2009 article says of research to date at ISS, "The agency's Web site lists 172 station-related research papers — many of which were not published in peer-reviewed journals. References to Hubble-related published science results, in contrast, number more than 3,500."

Not worth the expense.

[joshcryer]

19. Most astronauts are military, the 2010 astronaut program introduced mostly scientists and teachers.

Obama has been trying to change it but there has been a lot of resistance. The thing just got completed, the scientists were coming soon.

[sudopod]

23. I love the Hubble as much as anyone

But there is a rivalry between people who work in manned and unmanned exploration, and the domains that the ISS investigates are vastly different from those investigated by Hubble. the focus of the ISS is on biological and engineering experiments, which have very long time scales that are limited by the growth rates of biological tissue and the development of new technologies. Hubble researchers, by contrast (especially since it's mirror was fixed), are mainly limited by available computational power, scope time, and the creativity of the researcher in finding new questions to ask.

Both are valuable, and it isn't an apples to oranges comparison.

I will not dwell on how it is ridiculous it is that scientists have to fight over shoestrings while we spend more money air conditioning Afghanistan than we do on NASA.

[KansDem]

3. Maybe Bank of America foreclosed on it?

Wouldn't be the first time BoA has foreclosed on a property it didn't own...

Alright, you Slackernauts...out now!!!

[sofa king]

5. That's it, I'm stealing it.

Six tons of xenon and a dozen ion rockets, and I'd have that fucker parked at Ceres in five years. Humans have finally leapt every major hurdle in the way of traveling anywhere they wish in the solar system, just in time to screw the pooch on reaching low earth orbit. Unbelievable.

[plumbob]

6. Gosh, who coulda predicted that putting all our eggs in one basket, one

we have no control over, would turn out badly?



I mean, besides me, who predicted it the moment I heard that after the shuttle, the US would be returning to covered wagon days.


It's thinking like this that makes a 1700 mile oil pipeline from Canada to Texas good, but a 600 miles water pipeline from the Mississippi to west Texas impossible, also solar energy impossible, also wind farming impossible, in fact, anything Dick Cheney hates impossible.

That was actually the day we chose Third World status. Now we have a trigger for the actual event. Gonna be some mad people when Punk'd stops coming over satellites that no longer function.

[Purveyor]

7. Russia is holding out for more money to send supplies and staff to the ISS.

No more, no less.

The 'capitalists' should be proud of Mother Russia over this supply and demand issue.

[uppityperson]

9. Aww, been having fun watching it glide by in the evening. Link here...

http://www.heavens-above.com
Put your location in and it tells you visible sightings for the next 10 days, if any.

Edited to add, click the link below to see where it is now. Going past in a couple minutes but too light out to see.

http://www2.heavens-above.com/orbitdisplay.aspx?icon=iss&width=300&height=300&satid=25544

[joshcryer]

14. Also NASA Sightings, ISS is brighter than Venus:

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings/

Put in your location and you'll have ISS sighting opportunities for a month out along with transit times.

Looks like I have a nice long transit Sept. 1st.

To think, the second brightest object in the night sky is a manmade object!

[The_Casual_Observer]

10. The law of unintended consequences.

[MineralMan]

11. delete

[Crowman1979]

12. Another case of outsourcing screwing america.

[unkachuck]

13. let the damn capitalists....

....create their own for profit rockets and stop using the fine 1965 Soviet technology....weren't the Commies the backward technologically challenged Russians that only stole superior capitalist technology?

....where's all that superior capitalist rocket technology we've heard tell about? Find it and use it.

[joshcryer]

18. Here you go:

Hopefully Russia's failure here will compel NASA to speed up commercial crew development with Falcon 9 + Dragon.

[Javaman]

15. if that happens, I will be very surprised if we ever go back. nt

[tawadi]

16. So grounding the space shuttle program wasn't such a good idea

Too bad we spent billions on endless wars.

[joshcryer]

17. Bush retired the Space Shuttle and Griffin wanted a paper napkin solid rocket...

...for crew carry that would not have been completed until 2017.

Yes, he literally designed the rocket on a paper napkin.

"We'll take one of the Space Shuttle's Solid Rocket Boosters, add another section to it to make it 5 sections instead of 4, and put people on it."

[tawadi]

24. What happened to plans to replace our shuttle fleet with private industry?

Doesn't seem to be happening. I realize it will "take time". How much time? Meanwhile...

http://www.spacedaily.com/dragonspace.html

[hunter]

20. Maybe we could build some little station-keeping robots...

Let's call up the folks who built the mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity.

We could build three robots, Huey, Dewey, and Louie...

[Art_from_Ark]

21. We could add three more robots later

named Larry, Moe and Curly.

[Psephos]

22. Sorry, but the movie Silent Running beat you to it. :)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067756/

Still a cool little movie, even though it's almost 40 years old.

[Crowman1979]

25. Just use one of the many ICBM missiles we have, then replace the warhead with a capsule.

BAM! Problem solved! NEXT!