Russian Ship Resupplies Space Station

nuke-alwin writes "The Kansas City Star is reporting that a Russian unmanned space ship has brought fresh supplies to the International Space Station. Since the grounding of the space shuttle fleet the ISS depends on the Russians to get supplies. The crew have also received satellite telephones for the first time."

CDs?

[jabberjaw]

Is it possible the Russian space agency is afraid of the DCMA,RIAA etc.. Seriously, wouldn't an iPod/Zen/whatever be more efficient than bringing CDs?

Re:KC Star?

[njchick]

Yes, it's weird, considering that Kansas City Star is just quoting an ITAR-TASS story [www.tass.ru].

Re:Junk the Shuttle -- and ISS while you're at it.

[njchick]

What's the point in scrapping the ISS and building another one in a higher orbit? Wouldn't in be better to boost the ISS into a higher orbit once we have the capability to get people there.

Actually, I remember reading that most space junk is located on the orbits just above the ISS, so boosting it could increase the risk of debris penetration.

It's also worth noting that the heavy lift rockets are not man-rated. Titan is quite unreliable, and the heavy versions of Atlas and Boeing are yet to fly. They will consist of 3 booster cores. If one of the 3 fails, the mission fails. The spacecraft would need to be able to separate and land safely if it happens.

It's a major limitation - either the spacecraft has wings or it cannot carry heavy payloads, so that parachutes or rockets could slow it down for an emergency landing.

The Space Program, kicking out the smart.

[annisette]

Some good old days stuff: Apollo 17 on it's way to the moon, the American SST program (like the Comcord it would of not been profitable but good food for smart minds) AND such things as Texas Inst. making billions off of the simple hand held calculator (a byproduct of the space program). The space program at the time was paying off 25 to 1 for every dollar invested, by marketing the results of their research. Then lets see the moon program was too expensive, the SST was wayyy too cool, so the end to it all. Within a year 270,000 very smart, veryyy smart people lost their jobs (thank the war gods for absorbing them all over time). Now thirty years later it cost 500,000,000 USD's just to get a man(s)/woman(s) into orbit. I am starting to trail on the point I wanted to make, something about the military so I will end by saying we could be making ice cream on the moon by now, selling it and making a profit. With room and money for our smart folks, their ideas, to groove with our future. Yes, I choose icecream because it goes great with schmokking.