A Brief History of the Space Station

HyperbolicParabaloid writes "A story about the history of the International Space Station, and its utility or non-utility for space exploration. One interesting insight: after the Challenger explosion it became obvious that we would never refuel a rocket with volatile fuel at a space station because the threat to the station would be so great. And did you know that to accomodate the Russians, the space station is in an orbit that makes it almost useless as a jumping off point to anywhere?"

Space Station

[essreenim]

Hmm, it's in near earth orbit to accomodate the Russians.

I thought they needed extra fans to accomodate the wind passed by the Russian cosmonots after eating all that dodgy Pizza hut grub.

Jump off - go nowhere fast.

[gus goose]

Jumping off the space station will not take you very far very fast. You will pretty much just stay in orbit with the ISS. By definition, it is in orbit. If per chance you DID jump off, in the direction of earth, then it would probably take about a year or so for your orbit to decay enough to re-enter earth's atmosphere.

gus

Had to be said...

[pointzero]

Russian parts, American parts... ALL MADE IN TAIWAN
Ok back to work.

Need another seven astronauts ?

[Anonymous Coward]

thats what NASA stands for no ?

Re:Bah, Russians

[N3WBI3]

This was a crap article, typical tin foil hat garbage. Not only did the Americans not land on the moon, but we also blew up an Atlas rocket in 65 to kill a couple of astronauts who would not 'go along with the program', oh and in 1967 we killed more ment by making sure the door would not open during a fire.

Now I am probably just missing the sarcasm in your post, if thats the case your right it was funny..

Re:High inclination

[FatAlb3rt]

No, it doesn't take a lot more energy to take the space shuttle to a 50 deg orbit... but it sharply reduces the payload. That is because the space shuttle, being a "1.5-stage" launcher, has an extreme mass ratio.

Huh?! Launching at low inclinations and to the east maximizes how much you take advantage of the Earth's rotation. Your argument didn't account for why there is a smaller payload capability at higher inclinations. It's due to the extra fuel needed to gain the extra speed you don't achieve by flying a lower incl. A heavier vehicle would need that much more prop.

*whisper* That's why we launch from the east coast, not the west --> we always launch to the east in the same direction as the earth's rotation, east, and it's over an unpopulated area, ie, the Atlantic Ocean.

Re:Built by a committee

[OriginalArlen]

In the beginning, the space station was created.

This has made a lot of people very angry, and has been widely regarded as a Bad Move.

Re:WTF? +3, Informative?

[PatrickThomson]

Dude, chill. I took so long finding out how to get the google referrer that all the other stories were posted; when I started looking the article was 0/4. I suppose that makes me a karma whore, but if you check my history you'll see i'm recovering from a time when I forgot to post anon on a big bunch of crap penis jokes.

Why work on GNOME when Motif was doing just fine?

[Chemisor]

Okay, Motif was, towards the end, practically falling apart. But... it worked. It has widgets, programmers who know it, stability, and attitude (or was that altitude? I forget...) control too. It also has mould, dents, leaks, and a shredded-looking user interface, but we're not that bothered about that.

Start building GNOME as a set of add-on modules to Motif. Take advantage of Motif's facilities until you get the chance to replace them. Run off the existing codebase until you get the replacement interface set up. Use Motif's technical support pool until the documentation recycler is installed. etc.

Eventually the new modules will be supplying all the functionality and the old parts of Motif will be unused. At which stage, you can either use them as scratch space, or depressurise them and mothball them. Maybe one day you can recycle the raw materials; even as scrap, those ancient electrons are ludicrously valuable.

But no, Motif went down in flames and GNOME went down in budget. All for annoying political reasons. IMO it's highly unlikely that GNOME will ever do anything useful. By the time it gets large enough (as if it isn't already), other commercial products will be eclipsing it.

it is our fault

[Tablizer]

to accomodate the Russians, the space station is in an orbit that makes it almost useless as a jumping off point to anywhere

If we let them have Afhganastan like they wanted during the cold war, then they would have a more equitorial launching point. Silly Americans :-P