Russia's Unmanned Capsule Misses Space Station 224
mikesd81 writes "Russia's unmanned cargo ship Progress 38 missed docking with the ISS and sailed right on by it instead of docking on autopilot. A telemetry lock between the Russian-made Progress module and the space station was lost and the module flew past at a safe distance. NASA said the crew was never in danger and that the supplies are not critical and will not affect station operations. There will be no other attempts at docking today, and the orbit of the module raises questions of any other attempts again. Packed aboard the spacecraft are 1,918 pounds of propellant for the station, 110 pounds of oxygen, 220 pounds of water and 2,667 pounds of dry cargo — which includes spare parts, science equipment and other supplies."
Re:Right... (Score:3, Informative)
Pretty much:
Known in Russia as Progress M-06M, the new Progress 38 spacecraft is packed with nearly 2.5 tons of fresh food, clothes, equipment and other supplies for the space station's six-person crew.
Packed aboard the spacecraft are 1,918 pounds (nearly 870 kilograms) of propellant for the station, 110 pounds (nearly 50 kilogram) of oxygen, 220 pounds (100 kilograms) of water and 2,667 pounds (1,209 kilograms) pounds of dry cargo including spare parts, science equipment and other supplies.
About 213 pounds (97 kilograms) of the delivery ship's cargo is earmarked as items for the station crew. Astronauts always look forward to fresh fruit and other foods that arrive on Progress spacecraft, NASA officials have said.
Some personal treats for the station astronauts are sometimes included, but NASA officials kept mum on anything unique riding on Progress 38. "Anything that would be of interest is probably a surprise," NASA spokesperson Kelly Humphries told Space.com from the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Re:It's time to deliver a space tug to the station (Score:1, Informative)
Re:It's time to deliver a space tug to the station (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Right... (Score:4, Informative)
you really don't need video's sent into space on any physical medium either.
Russia Today said after this first ever failure to dock that a second attempt will be made on Sunday.
pendantry (Score:2, Informative)
Packed aboard the spacecraft are 1,918 pounds of propellant for the station, 110 pounds of oxygen, 220 pounds of water and 2,667 pounds of dry cargo
More like 0 pounds. Surely slugs would be a more useful measurement in a weightless environment. Or better yet: kilograms.
Re:Even Hollywood... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Can't believe they still use pounds (Score:4, Informative)
It's not about the story behind the unit. If the definition is arbitrary or not doesn't matter at all. What does matter is the way it works. I can tell you exactly how many grams are in a kilogram, and how many grams in a Ton. And that makes perfect sense. It's 10-base. it's metric. It's logical.
Now, try that with the ridiculous conversion ratios between ounces, pounds, stones and all that crazy mumbo-jumbo that is the imperial system.
Re:It's time to deliver a space tug to the station (Score:5, Informative)
Trey Parker and Matt Stone were both born in the USA.
Skylab was a lab in space before the space shuttle. Salyut 1 was before that, but it had two missions that both failed. Soyuz 10 that could not board due to fire and Soyuz 11 that crew died on rentry do to a lab. Shuttles are pointless ISS could have been lifted by cheaper and safer rockets.
You seem to be wrong on all accounts.
Re:It's time to deliver a space tug to the station (Score:4, Informative)
It was not an exact copy at all. It looked similar, it performed a similar task and was designed as a response to our shuttle. It was not an exact copy, it was not parts compatible or anything like that. The Tu-4 was about as an exact Russian copy of the B-29 as was possible for them. Even that was not parts compatible in the engines an guns/mounts.
Re:I choose option 4 (Score:4, Informative)
Well the cash always seems to be there for the US to go to war.
Re:Can't believe they still use pounds (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, the Metre [wikipedia.org] was "Originally intended to be one ten-millionth of the distance from the Earth's equator to the North Pole"
The gram [wikipedia.org]: Originally defined as "the absolute weight of a volume of pure water equal to the cube of the hundredth part of a metre, and at the temperature of melting ice"
Compare this to some imperial units:
The foot [wikipedia.org]:
The popular belief is that the original standard was the length of a man's foot. [...] Some believe that the original measurement of the English foot was from King Henry I, who had a foot 12 inches long; he wished to standardize the unit of measurement in England.
The acre [wikipedia.org] was approximately the amount of land tillable by one man behind an ox in one day.
A grain [wikipedia.org] is a unit of measurement of mass that is based upon the mass of a single seed of a typical cereal.
My conclusion: SI units are based on less arbitrary (original) definitions than imperial units. The new definitions using "speed of light, properties of atoms, etc." didn't really change their magnitudes, they just reduced the tiny variations.
Re:Can't believe they still use pounds (Score:4, Informative)
I can see lots of things around me that would make very poor standards for measurement. :)
Re:220 lbs of water? (Score:3, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISS_ECLSS [wikipedia.org]
The ISS has two water recovery systems. Zvezda contains a water recovery system that processes waste water from showers, sinks, and other crew systems and water vapor from the atmosphere that could be used for drinking in an emergency but is normally fed to the Elektron system to produce oxygen. The American segment has a Water Recovery System installed during STS-126 in Destiny that can process water vapour collected from the atmosphere, waste water from showers, sinks, and other crew systems, and also urine into water that is intended for drinking.