Russian Progress Cargo Ship Docks With Space Station 47
An anonymous reader writes: An unmanned Russian cargo ship has successfully docked with the International Space Station. The successful launch, rendezvous and docking came after two resupply failures. A Progress launched in April spun out of control and a week ago, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket disintegrated, destroying a supply ship loaded with supplies and equipment. "Crew reports, 'feels like Christmas in July,'" the International Space Station tweeted.
Why? (Score:2)
Can't they 3D-print anything they need? /joke
Re: (Score:2)
It's a joke since their current 3D-printer can only print in plastic and even if they could 3D-print anything they need they'd still need to be supplied with print materials regularly.
Looks like we are making Progress (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Russian ship. (Score:1)
I'm imagining a zero-grav race for the control panel with the hidden bottle of vodka inside.
Re: (Score:1)
Just send them a sack of potatoes and they can make their own.
Re: (Score:2)
A microgravity still sounds like a fun thing to design. I can see a few possibilities - you could try a hydrophilic mesh to keep the liquid place, or a super-fine net relying on surface tension to keep liquids from passing through the holes.
Thank you Mr. Putin (Score:3, Interesting)
Our nation wants to thank you again for saving ISS and July 4th celebration.
Every year now, during 4th of July week we will salute strong Russia and will be forever grateful for your generosity.
Re: (Score:3)
It's hard to tell if you're being serious, or trying (vainly) to be sarcastic. Forgive me for that.
At any rate, one of the two segments is Russian; the other US and shared with Europe, Japan, and Canada. So it is basically as much a Russian asset as US. It is in the Russian interest to see to it that the thing doesn't come to grief prematurely. As a human of Earth, I'm not against being thankful and grateful to Russia for coming through in a pinch, and rescuing everyone's ass, but basically they are serving
Southern hemisphere... (Score:3)
Crew reports, 'feels like Christmas in July'
They must be orbiting over the southern hemisphere...
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Not as weird as celebrating Christmas in summer, to a northern type.
Re: (Score:2)
or as the Rocket Man himself said:
It's July but it's cold as Christmas In the middle of the year.
Oh, good! (Score:2)
Oh, good! They were almost out of toilet paper. :P
I seriously would like to know (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I seriously would like to know (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
That was largely the Air Force's doing, not NASA, which wanted a smaller ship, but the Air Force had to have something to carry their bus sized spy satellites into polar orbit or close to it. The thing is despite all that dumbness, we learned a lot about how to and how not to deal with reusable spacecraft from the shuttle program and we've done nothing useful with that knowledge. There should have been a second round of them in development a decade or more ago to replace what we had, and Congress did what
Re: (Score:2)
We learned a lot about how to and how not to deal with reusable spacecraft from the shuttle program and we've done nothing useful with that knowledge.
Exactly! It feels like we are starting from scratch. I know NASA is sharing knowledge with SpaceX, but a lot knowledge is also being lost for stupid-ass political reasons. It's sad that we can't even get a rocket to reliably deliver cargo to the International Space Station -- It's upsetting and depressing!
Re:I seriously would like to know (Score:5, Informative)
You'd almost think from reading this that the Russians could reliably deliver cargo to ISS...
Which might suggest that you're aware of the failure of the Dragon at the end of last month and the failure of Cygnus nine months ago, but unaware that in April the Russian resupply mission to ISS failed.
You also appear to be unaware that this was the second Russian failure to resupply the ISS (the first was in 2011).
For what it's worth, the EU and Japan haven't failed an ISS resupply mission yet. Of course, between them they've done about 10% of the ISS resupply flights.
On the other hand, NASA is the only agency that hasn't managed an ISS resupply mission at all. The US resupply missions have all been CRS (SpaceX and Cygnus)....
Re: I seriously would like to know (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
http://www.washingtonmonthly.c... [washingtonmonthly.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Politics. Same reason Skylab was thrown away when there were enough working bits of Saturn V to keep it up there. The people who didn't want the ISS in the first place are calling the shots.
Re: (Score:2)
NASA had a dependable spacecraft. Couldn't they have improved the Space Shuttle?
The Space Shuttle was far from dependable. Worst of all, when it failed, it failed catastrophically. The issues were due to its very basic design. One example being solid rocket boosters operating along side the crewed spacecraft. Once the boosters are lit, there is no turning back. They can't be turned off, and they can't be jettisoned.
The issues were much worse prior to Challenger. Structural changes were made to the stack to allow the spacecraft to continue to fly with main engine failures. [wikipedia.org] Fr
Re: I seriously would like to know (Score:1)
How much does it cost (Score:1)