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Space

Mir Deathwatch 168

Posted by michael from the it's-the-final-countdown dept.
Well, everybody and his brother wants to let us know that Mir is coming down, really, they mean it this time. Pick your favorite site to track its descent: Yahoo | NY Times | United States Space Command | Heavens Above | BBC. But Frederic Freidel provides an oddly personal note: what goes up must come down.

Jacek Fedorynski took a look at Guess When Mir Will Splash and drew up this nice histogram of the guesses. He also notes that the median guess for Mir's return to Mother Earth was 2001-03-19 10:11:01, so the collective wisdom of slashdot was off by a few days.

Nowhere in this slashdot story do we mention either the stupid Taco Hell advertising campaign or the space fungus or the Crashing Mir Space Station Detecto-Hat.
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Mir Deathwatch More

Mir Deathwatch

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  • well now I know it's true (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Michael *is* rather hyperactive when it comes to modding down posts he doens't like.
  • The world watched in collective sadness as the largest orbiting space vehicle ended an astonishing 15 year mission in a pyrrhic show seen only by a single unseen reporter for CNN on a small island in the South Pacific. Pontoons could not be installed on a satellite truck quickly enough to allow for a live uplink (...or a delayed uplink for that matter) to be provided, thus missing a potential advertising ratings coup.....

    ticka...ticka....ticka...

    Taco Bell's famed US Taco bet may still be on! While experts found randomly on the street said that they were hungry for a taco but admitted odds were slim for being fed for free by Taco Bell. Sentiments were best stated by animal activist Sue Smith, "Like, who thinks that a floating taco flag 10 miles from Australia is a good bet?"
    Meanwhile, a touring boat in the area, filled with high dollar tourists and a few programming geeks protesting the Taco Bell publicity stunt were a bit closer to the action than even they imagined.
    Each protester wore official Taco Bell tee-shirts emblazoned with that annoying chatting chihuahua. The words "Kill the dog - eat a taco" were spray painted on the front and back of the shirts.

    However, John C. Code, age 43 from (where else) Silicon Valley, was a victim of the Mir space station, when a hot piece of metal punched through the dog emblem, seared a hole through his chest and embedded into the boat deck. Other boat passengers described the delayed reaction to the incident by stating that John complained of heart burn, sat down and passed out.

    Other passengers, traumatized by the incident, searched John's shirt for an official Taco Bell tag for use as ammunition in filing a class action lawsuit against Taco Bell for damages equal to the money projected for the Taco Bell promotion of one free taco to each American.

    Attorneys couldn't comment on the preliminary reports but asked, "We have suffered enough! Our chihuahua was cut down by an a horrible chunk of weaponry from space and we're being sued? We are the victims here!" They refused to comment further on pending litigation.

    Wall Street reacted to the irony in puzzlement, with Pepsico stock rising $50 in after hours trading. Analysts, ever ready with off-the-top answers, cited the relief that "the dog was dead, and people need an outlet to express themselves in a positive direction in this down market."

    ticka....ticka...ticka...

    Unveiled from a shroud of secrecy, Dawn Wells and others from the cast of Gilligan's Island admitted that Mir's coming down event provided a perfect backdrop for a sequel to the russian cosmonaut episode where the cast was foiled from escaping the island on a floating space capsule. Rumors had swirled for weeks that such an episode would film. Reacting to the news that Mir had an atomic reactor onboard, Wells let slip that Jim Baccus (Thurston Howell III) had been exhumed for a comedy sketch involving the reactor. "Residuals" (get it?) for the episode would go to Baccus' descendents. "Ginger" was excited about finally meeting a handsome, if aging, cosmonaut. She admitted that she wasn't the dish she used to be, and when told no cosmonaut would be onboard stated, "Well, maybe a good bottle of vodka will make it down. A few belts of that and "Gilligan" (Bob Denver) might start to look a bit attractive. I know I'll regret it in the morning, but what's a stranded movie star to do? Even I have needs..." Filming wraps up in 2 days.
  • Micah hopes Mir will hit the guerilla kidnappers in Ecuador.....
  • Wall Street reacted to the irony in puzzlement, with Pepsico stock rising $50 in after hours trading.

    Well, someone is a couple years behind the times. Pepsico, in 1999 (I think) spun off Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, and KFC into a new company, TriCon, with its own stock (YUM).
  • Posted by serpens:

    I looked through all the guesses and came to the conclusion that cowkiller was the winner of the Slashdot T-shirt. Anyone confirm this? I was only 10 hours and 20 or so minutes off.
    Only 7 or 8 people closer than me.

    :P

  • We should keep it up as a monument (Score:3)

    by alewando ( 854 ) on Thursday March 22, 2001 @09:50AM (#347537)
    Letting MIR crash into the Pacific isn't just irresponsible; it's unpatriotic. MIR was a monument to the great Socialist state. It was the last major project the Russian space agency participated in with any great fanfare or success.

    And now we just want to deorbit it? To erase it from our memories? If we do not learn from history, then we will be doomed to repeat it. Our children will live in a world without a Russian space station orbiting above their heads. When they look out into the night sky, they won't see the work of MAN shining back at them. They'll only see the light from stars exploded billions of years ago, awash in the effusing glow of decaying atomic matter.

    How much better it would've been for them to see the great Soviet empire whizzing overhead! Men died to build that great colossus. Countless dogs perished in orbit in order to test the effects of zero-g environments. Hundreds of manhours were spent in that endeavor, and we'll take it all down for what? So that we can free up a little bit more extraterrestrial realestate for a shiny new commercial satellite?

    It reinforces the idea that space is to be a commercial enterprise and no longer one engaged in the pursuit of the common weal. What would Captain Kirk say about our worship of the dollar? What would he say about how we refuse to let this waystation remain on the outskirts of our fair planet just waiting for a new spirit or being to arrive and peer gently and softly at our pulsating ecosystems? The one thing the Soviets had right was their decrying of capitalism and the dammages it's wreaked on our terrestrial and extraterrestrial environments. Now, MIR will be gone, and nothing will remain in its stay.

    This is a sad day.
  • Everyonce in a while someone comes in with clarity.


    ~^~~^~^^~~^
  • You can pick a site and watch a 160x120 thumbnail reload every half hour or watch the internet appliance that was already there, the TV set.
  • Well the target is not exactly near where it is going to hit, so its is a rather empty promise anyhow.

    I I can't eat at Taco Bell anyhow but I digress.

  • It is a monument to an insane totalitarian regime bent on using space as some kind of twisted pissing contest with the US.

    We want to de-orbit it so that the money spent on keeping it spaceworthy and safe can be spent on feeding starving people, or maybe killing Chechnyans, one or the other.

    Just because capitalism is nasty doesn't mean that those rubles saved can't go towards something a bit more constructive and urgent.
  • Just want to take the moment to gloat and be proud that the Company I work for, Analytical Graphics [stk.com], is playing a huge role in assisting in the deorbit. We also have a Mir De-Orbit Video [stk.com] that shows how Mir will most likely burn up upon re-entry.
  • If the Mir hits the large floating target Taco Bell has placed in the middle of the Pacific, everyone in the US will get a free taco from them! It won't happen, but I think it's funny! Here's the link:

    Taco Bell's South Pacific Target [4.18.84.31]

  • Yep, that's why I spend money on Gorditas, Mexican Pizzas, and Big Beef Burrito Supremes.

  • "Mir" is an actual word in Russian. It means "peace". It also means "world". It is a little scary to see words "peace" and "world" in combination with words "crash" and "burn". Is this the end of the world everyone was expecting ? Well, maybe. Who knows what that space-hardened fungus will do once it reaches earth. Will it thrive in the pacific ocean, or will it all burn up on re-entry?

    Anyway, I wish they had kept MIR in orbit, and made a museum of it or something. Why crash it into Earth ? Couldn't it be parked somewhere in between Earth and Moon where it would not be affected by the gravity of both bodies ? I think MIR should have been declared a national monument and kept intact somehow.

    Oh well, too late now. Maybe they will fish out a few pieces and make a museum out of that, at least that way one would not have to go into orbit to visit the "museum".

    Paul.
  • Its a sad day when decent references go un-noticed....
  • Not very likely - they've already got scads of publicity [tacobell.com], but the odds have already been calculated and the insurance purchased. You might have better chances with the local lottery.
  • Well not all Mir will burn up... Something will surely remain.
    So it is still probable that in a few tens of years someone will try to try to recover something from the bottom of the sea. Well, Americans put a big effort to recover that Mercury capsule they lost.
  • > In the same sense, do we keep the bodies of past
    > leaders just so that we remember their mistakes
    > and not repeat them?

    Well, Russia still has Lenin's body preserved and on display, AFAIK . . .
  • You honestly think that a taco costs 50 cents to make? Probably closer to three cents, considering that they buy in bulk and probably don't use all-natural ingredients.
    The end result is a tasty, if not entirely identifiable, mass-produced concoction that will cost them 9 million or so by my numbers if Mir hits the target.
    Of course, you're probably better off trying to win the lottery, because at least that is audited.

    Raptor

  • hrm (Score:1)

    by Jae ( 14657 )
    i guess some ppl have no sense of humor - i thought the taco bell story was pretty funny - and so did all the other geeks i work with.

    boy slashdot sucks as of late (btw : this isn't trolling, it's just my opinion - as stupid things like this used to make their way into quickies, which seem to only now make a rare guest apperance on the site).
  • dood.

    increase the size of the text font on your page. it looks like poop

    style sheets be damned
  • ...who won the contest??
  • Taco Bell [tacobell.com] is, I guess, offering free tacos for the world if Mir hits their floating target in the South Pacific. Details are on the website linked above, and the images are big below... if you want a desktop background like I did.

    See: Low Resolution Image Of The Target [tacobell.com]
    High Resolution Image Of The Target [tacobell.com]

    Scott Ruttencutter
  • Hmm, I wonder whether it would be worth creating a bug database for the ISS space station? It would be interesting to see which space station ends up 'living longer' and having the least, official, problems.
  • MirReentry.com [mirreentry.com]

    --

  • Not unless they move the UK half way round the world to the South Pacific Ocean.
  • http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/p/nm/20010322/ts/mdf2 6780.html [yahoo.com]

    Its only 40 feet by 40 feet so odds aren't good... But I'm hopeful. Hey free is free even if it is only a taco..

  • Will those of us in the rest of the world (UK, in my case) be able to see anything as Mir re-enters?
  • The problem with this is that the space fungus would make its way down the tunnel to the nearest Russian spy center.
  • Stupid question, but instead of spending all this time trying to get it to crash into the ocean why don't they just send this thing out towards the Sun? There would be less worries of it going of course and hitting land.
  • Thanks for mentioning that site, I wonder if it will actually show the station falling?.
  • I'll take a guess. MMMMMIIIIIIIIIRRRRRRRR!!
  • From the NYTimes article
    New Zealand maritime authorities have for days been sending repeated warnings to about 30 American Samoa-based tuna fishermen in the dump area. But most of the boats aren't leaving.

    ``The fish are biting in that area and it has been a tough year for them so far, so they are staying,'' Wayne Heikkila, general manager of the Western Fishboat Owners Association, said Thursday. ``I told the guys to have their video cameras ready.''

    Most of Mir is expected to burn up in the atmosphere during the fiery re-entry, but up to 27.5 tons of debris are expected to reach the Earth's surface, much of it scattered over a long swathe following the station's descent trajectory.


    I can just picture it:

    New on FOX!

    WHEN SPACE STATIONS ATTACK!

    See what happens when an aging Russian space station decides to go on a rampage. All caught on video by some hapless fisherman who just happened to be in the area.

  • Most of Mir is expected to burn up in the atmosphere during the fiery re-entry, but up to 27.5 tons of debris are expected to reach the Earth's surface, much of it scattered over a long swathe following the station's descent trajectory.

    (from the NYTimes article)

    I figure that means you have to watch out for more than just one impact point... something more akin to a lot of smaller, high impact hits.
  • http://www.msnbc.com/news/490797.asp?0nm=C16P [msnbc.com]

    Looks like Mir has the possibility of landing on a fishing fleet (man that would suck...)

  • Judging from the responses to the Guess the Splashdown Time contest, I expected a few clear spikes in the histogram. There's one on March 14th which is Pi Day (3-14). Another, sharper spike occurs later on April Fools' Day. My guess was the Ides of March on the 15th but it's drowned out by the major peak on the 17th. Anyone know what this corresponds to? Was it two weeks after the news article said "Mir will go down in about 2 weeks"?

    AlpineR

  • Fritz can't die alone -- abandoned in a space station!
  • 10 Million?

    it could be really bad for the bell. lets say each taco costs them 50 cents to make. now lets say that there are 300 million people in the us. lets say every one of us (man/woman/child) wants a taco. then it will cost them about 150 million. this is a worst case estimate, but it sure would be sweet if it happened.

    use LaTeX? want an online reference manager that
  • look at you.
    i guess their marketing people know what they're doing.
  • Her life ends quickly,
    To a lonely and dark grave...
    We'll miss you, old friend.
  • Bad form to follow up my own post I know, but it is mentioned briefly on the BBC Mir timeline here [bbc.co.uk]

    Chap's name is Dennis Tito and it was $20 million he's splashed out.
  • Not quite the world. Little (well, quite big actually given the size of the target!) "Valid for US residents only" disclaimer on the bottom of that target.

    No free Tacos for us Brits obviously :-(
  • There's at least one in London (or at least there was last time I was down there).
    Still looks like it missed [4.18.84.31] anyway, so it doesn't make much difference! :-)
  • Interesting bit on the news here this morning about how the Russians have been attempting to finance their future space-programme by selling trips out into space and, until recently obviously, seats on Mir itself.

    Can't find any links from a quick look round, but the gist of the story was an American millionaire had paid the Russians $20 million (figures from memory, so that may well not be the correct value) a few years ago for a trip out into space.

    Obviously he's not going to get out to Mir now, but they've been trying to get him onto the International Space Station as an alternative, but the other project partners have refused permission, saying it would be too dangerous to have a non astronaut floating around up there while it's still essentially a building site.

    The BBC reporter did suggest that there might also be a certain amount of clique-ism going on with the professional astronauts there too however, not wanting a civilian to get the chance to get up there. Final suggestion was that he might still make it up, but only be allowed to visit the Russian section of the ISS.

    Be interesting if this starts a trend for space-hopping tourists up there tho!
  • When people use their +2 bonus for a content-free post.

    siri

  • Contrary to Rumor (Score:3)

    by First Person ( 51018 ) on Thursday March 22, 2001 @10:49AM (#347580)

    I recognize that many Australians are concerned about where Mi is going to land. I've looked into the matter. Despite losing to CBS in the most recent Nielsen ratings [cnn.com], ABC does not intend to crash Mir into Australia to wipe out the cast of Survivor II. Any suggestions to the contrary are completely and utterly false.

    Actually, CNN is doing it to boost it's own ratings.

  • Is that @#%&@#^#$^& chihuahua going to be strapped to the target? I can't think of a single creature I'd rather drop a satellite on.

    "Yo quiero--" WHAM.

    --

  • The Staten Island dump is officially closing today, accepting it's last load of trash from the other boroughs. It's one of two man-made objects visible from space (the other being the great wall of China). Crash the MIR into the dump for a grand finale, on final piece of trash to imortalize the landfill...
  • The Great Wall of China can not be seen from space. Why do people keep perpetuating this myth?
  • I don't think anyone has mentioned it, so i will. I think my personal favorite is spaceref.com's mir page [spaceref.com].
  • I think almost the entire thing will burn up on re-entry and what is left will be no larger than the head of a chihuahua. If I'm wrong may we all be horribly crushed from above somehow.
  • Oops... Sorry, that was me... Signal of the end of times, I think...
    --
  • > Of course, you're probably better off trying to win the lottery, because at least that is audited.

    And you can survive a lottery, because it wouldn't fall over your head

    (Disclaimer: I've never saw that advertisement, as I don't live in the U.S. I live in one of the possible places where the Mir would fall, so if you don't see my homepage updated at least this tuesday...)
    --
  • Doesn't matter how small the target is, there's still a chance for Mir to hit it. An extremely small chance, maybe, but the probability is not 0.

    We're talking about free tacos here, man. Be an optimist.

    ***

    "ALL YOUR CODE ARE BELONG TO US!" -- Jim Allchin
  • At least I got the date right.

  • Australia's ABC News [abc.net.au] has a report [abc.net.au] that the first pieces have started splashing down in the Pacific Ocean.

  • 1) A taco does not cost 50 cents to make. A taco is sold for about that.

    2) A taco is not a meal. If they were to give out a free taco to everyone in the country, they would -make- money. People would go in to buy a taco and some other food and a drink.

  • Does anyone else think it ironic that a page charting an object crashing to Earth from space has "Technology sponsored by Iridium" on the right of the page?

    Phillip.
  • A few weeks back Slashdot had a contest to see if anyone could accurately guess the splashdown date of Mir... is anybody still in the running? If I'm not mistaken I'm already out (I picked Mar-20 sometime or other).

    Of course, I guess I can still hold out hope for the Mir hitting Taco Bell's floating target out in the middle of the Pacific. :)
  • Well, sorry to this NZOOM article [nzoom.com], of the 136 tons of the space station, an estimated 20 to 25 tons are expected to hit earth, the rest will burn into the atmosphere.
    Now I don't know about the heads of chihuaha in your place, but in mine they hardly weigh 25 tons! ;)
  • Realtime, you said ?

    I went on their site, on the Mir page I read :
    The End Is Mir - 3/21/01

    On the same page :
    Warning: Mir is approaching re-entry day. The closer to the re-entry burn the more rapidly our data will become inaccurate. This system is not designed for Re-entry tracking. At some point, we will just stop tracking.

    Well, that doesn't sound either real-time or accurate to me, thanks for the link anyway.

  • Mirpool.com - Guess where it lands (Score:3)

    by Chairboy ( 88841 ) on Thursday March 22, 2001 @09:48AM (#347596) Homepage
    Don't forget to visit http://mirpool.com [mirpool.com] to put your vote on which latitude and longitude Mir will land.

  • Didn't see this one in the other comments. Parallel Graphics are tracking Mir in 3D at http://www.parallelgraphics.com/vrml/mir/ [parallelgraphics.com]. Uses Cortona VRML browser though, so it's only available to those with access to a Windowsboxen aswell.

    Does look funky though!

    Waz

  • And what is your definition of socialism then?

    I guess you haven't read any of Marx's or Engel's works, then?

    Lenin of course had, but his implementation still didn't meet the specifications. And as we all know, Stalin changed the course of the ship more than a bit - socialism hasn't got anything to do with dictatorship, although both are valid and fine forms of government, IMHO.

    ______________

  • The site in my sig allows you (along with over 100 others, so far) the chance to pick where you think pieces will hit. Give it a shot!
  • Rather than when, you could try Where. At MirPool.com [mirpool.com], you can take a stab at where pieces will hit, by longitude and latitude.
  • Thanks for the plug! We're up to over 130 guesses so far, some of which are pretty disturbing (Wisconsin?). I think there are some folks out there who are hoping, not just guessing!
  • Fox News reported that a person's chance of being hit by Mir is 1 in 2 billion

    Given that there are about 6 billion people in the world...

    ---

  • the onion article on Mir... something about "Mir conducts 'how to scare the living shit out of astronauts' research" in reference to the decaying life support systems and leaks and such

  • how ironic, I guess they could be learning what it 's all about?
  • You can find the contest here [slashdot.org]

  • It looks like /. UID 118223 'cowkiller' will be the closest, if MIR comes down on time.

    cowkiller guessed '2001-03-23 02:02:02'

  • Maybe he was one of the people that submitted the story to begin with? I know it's far-fetched, but it's actually possible he wasn't whoring, just posting part of his story submission the eds had neglected...
  • Yo man, $100 says you pre-created this message since you knew there would be a Mir story. What a whore.
  • I heard a Taco Bell spokeswoman on the radio this morning say that they were all rooting for Mir to hit the target, because they have taken out insurance on the matter and are covered. Imagine what a boon it would be for Taco Bell to have every american showing up for their free taco and buying a chalupa and soda to boot!
  • Taco Bell is giving away free tacos to everyone in America if MIR hits their 40 foot square target. [tacobell.com]

    Now is that cool or what?

  • Why not shoot it up? I got this deorbiting-on-a-major-population-center part, but wouldn't it be sufficient to put a couple of Progresses on its behind and send it to where the Discovery should be right now?
    That way, we can pick it up in a few years/decades when we feel like it. It may even do a M'r on us to save us time.
  • Just a reminder that MIR has been in orbit for more than fifteen years. With all due respect to the International Space Station, NASA sucks by comparison.
    Anyway (and despite my comments above), for all you space tracking junkies, look at NASA's J-Track [nasa.gov]. Usefull for other satelites besides Mir.

    All software is flawed. All hardware is flawed. If you haven't learned that yet,

  • s/Forgot/Forget/
    s/ones/one/
  • And what is your definition of socialism then?

    Stalin just continued Lenin's plans.
    And Gorbachev... You're kidding about Gorbachev, probably. 'Glasnost' means freedom of speech and 'perestroika' means reconstruction. They have nothing to do with socialism at all. On contrary, vast majority of soviets hate Gorbachev because of his anti-socialist reforms.

  • a crash that doesn't involve Windows.
    --
  • I agree with you about the monument thing. But it's important to remember that the Soviet Union was *not* socialist. The economy of the USSR, from roughly Stalin on, was merely state capitalism. After Lenin, the USSR didn't have leaders with socialist aspirations til Gorbachev, and after decades of oppression his truly socialist reforms (glastnost, perestroika) tore apart a fragile state.

  • Heh.. (Score:3)

    by tcc ( 140386 ) on Thursday March 22, 2001 @09:41AM (#347621) Homepage Journal
    Watch out kenny! :)
  • There are conversations on rec.aviation type newsgroups about 'what are the chances...'

    We lived through skylab, we live through billions of metorites every day (most microscopic) and we have survived things falling from space since man began, this will be little different.

    I like the people who do the chicken little imitation. I also like the greenies who holler about all of this even though most of it will burn up and what doesn't should rust away before too long.

    This will be something to look at to see if we can see it fall, though.

    DanH
    Cav Pilot's Reference Page [cavalrypilot.com]
  • Space Shuttle Astronaut Jay Apt reported the following:

    "We look for the Great Wall of China. Although we can see things as small as airport runways, the Great Wall seems to be made largely of materials that have the same color as the surrounding soil. Despite persistent stories that it can be seen from the moon, the Great Wall is almost invisible from only 180 miles up!"

    notice he says _almost_ invisible!

    :-)

    ---

  • I saw that too, guess the fishing has been too good in that area for what otherwise has been a difficult season for those guys.

    But this got me wondering, how big a splash will this make? The chances of being hit have got to be incredibly small, but how close would you have to be to where it hits for the wave (or flying chunks of molten space station that go flying from the impact?) to be any kind of a problem? (don't have any idea how big/small these fishing boats would be, probably pretty big to operate on the open ocean, eh?)

    ---

  • Simply put, they would need a very big rocket. MIR natuaraly wants to fall in the the earth, gravity is pullying on it. to put it into the sun you would need to put a really big rocket on it and get it closer to the sun so that the pull would be grater. Note that the formula for gravity is (MASS)(GRAVITY CONSTANT)/(DISTANCE) I think, anyway the sun does have a very large mass so you would think that it waould have a stronger pull than the Earth. But Mir is only 100-200 miles at most from the earth, where as the sun is millions, So the pull of gravity from the sun on to Mir is very small comapred to the earth. A simple comparison would be to put a book on a desk. would it be easier to push it off the table to get it on to the ground? or would it be easier to lift it to the roof?

    Clearly a push is easier, A push right in to the pacific, and I hope, on to the Taco Bell target


    ________

  • What is the probability that someone could have hacked into MIR and retasked the thing to do something funky, maybe come down on the 4th of july, oooh that would really piss the old time soviets off... (using a symbol of pride for a corrupt government as a display of celebration for their adversary...) given of course a small sattelite tranciever. The security implemented back then couldn't have been that sophisticated...
    The possibilities are endless...
  • As several articles have mentioned, this region of ocean is routinely used for dumping old spacecraft. I remember reading that several Progress vehicles have been dropped there over the last couple decades. If anybody wanted some cool (if slightly singed) space junk, the ocean floor in that area would be the place to look. Too bad getting to the bottom would be a rather expensive proposition in itself, much less finding relatively tiny chunks of metal in several thousand square miles of sea floor.
  • Vladimir Solovyov was the first commander on board Mir. He is now mission control flight commander. Seeing it go down would be painful enough, let alone giving the order to begin the final deorbit burn.
  • Here am I sitting in a tin can
    [not so]Far above the world
    Planet Earth is blue, and there's nothing I can do...
  • Except that its orbit would decay naturally, and then it would crash in an uncontrolled manner, perhaps into a population center...
  • When Skylab went down in Australia, some of its larger bits emitted several sonic booms as they decelerated to subsonic speeds.

    This is now past tense, since Mir is apparently warming the minnows at this point, but could these sonic booms have been heard in the any of the nearby Pacific Islands? Easter Island, Hawaii, etc?

    Of course, I'm not really expecting something on a Krakatoa scale, and I doubt the sound wave would still be audible by the time it reaches me several hours late
  • mir$ uptime
    1:38pm up 11 years, 53 days, 14:01, 1 user, load averages: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00

    mir$ su
    Password: seineewserastsilatipac

    mir# halt
    Connection to mir closed.

  • MIR Stuff (Score:5)

    by ackthpt ( 218170 ) on Thursday March 22, 2001 @09:38AM (#347657) Homepage Journal
    Links:

    This article in Yahoo on the Countdown [yahoo.com] slates re-entry between 1:20 AM and 1:30 AM EST, Friday, March 23.

    A site with a real future, www.mirrentry.com [mirreentry.com]

    Heavens Above [heavens-above.com], which has charted the orbital decay [heavens-above.com].

    On the Marx-Spinning-In-His-Grave front:

    Leading up to the event have been word of passengers paying $5,000-10,000 a seat to fly around the area in hopes of catching a glimpse (of course, they'll have to be on the correct side of the plane.)

    Should the core of Mir hit a 40' square target, [tacobell.com] Taco Bell will give everyone in the USA a free Taco

    An alert eBayer, always right on the cutting edge of capitalism has offered up the Crashing MIR Space Station Detecto-Hat [ebay.com] Made of the best stainless steel double-handled colander five dollars could buy... (No word yet from Rambus on patent infringement.)

    Lastly I hope that the mutant space fungus [slashdot.org] will be burned up on re-entry. I don't want to wake up drooling [yahoo.com] beside a pod.

    --

  • MSNBC (and a few Greenpeace cranks) are probably the only ones who think so. Those assholes will publish anything if they think it will inspire enough fear to impel people to read more MSNBC "news" and get "informed".

    Feh.

    OK,
    - B
    --

  • One thing that seems to be missing from this whole Mir deal is the sprout-eatin' sandal wearer's complaining. I checked greenpeace.org, earthfirst.org, and yahoo's /environment/orginizations/hippies, and randomly clicked around and saw nothing.
    This seems somewhat odd, as I imagine a couple tons of stuff hitting the ocean at 17k m/h is going to kill a couple of fish. Plus, who knows what sort of nastiness is in the materiels of the ship, screaming out of the sky in a red hot rocket of pollution. I just thought that was wierd. Has anyone else seen anything from the greenies about this?


    Brant

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