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Space

Mir Likely To Be Deorbited [Updated] 238

Posted by timothy from the oh-this-cannot-be dept.
Decibel writes: "It seems that Mir's fungal infection is soon to be the least of its problems. Unless $7-10 million can be raised in the next few days, Mir will be de-orbited some time after its 15-year anniversary in February 2001. MirCorp has been financing the operation of the outpost since the Russian government abandoned it last year, but they've run out of money as well. To make matters worse, unless the russian government (or someone else) comes up with $60 million to make two final missions to Mir, it will be an uncontrolled reentry. Of course, if any of that fungus survives reentry, it could be a moot point anyway. :)" But what about the Destination Mir teevee show?! Surely NBC has 7 or 10 million to toss in the pot, considering they've already paid more than that for rights to the show.

[Updated 3 Oct 2000 21:30 GMT by timothy] funk_phenomenon writes: "To add another story to the Mir fire, James Cameron (the man who directed Terminator 2 and Titanic) is planning to stay on the space station. He has already undergone medical tests at the Russian Institute for Medical and Biological Problems and received a go ahead. Cameron went to see the Titanic and he made a movie; maybe he plans the same?"
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Mir Likely To Be Deorbited More

Mir Likely To Be Deorbited

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  • Let MIR host the next BigBrother or Robinson series - looks like the logical next step. Ill-suited candidates could then be expelled to outer space instead of just be sent to the back door exit...

  • Hope it lands in my back yard... Then I can sell the parts.

    Wait... no, I don't want it to land in my back yard. BAADDD Space Fungus. Back. BACK!!! *CHOMP*

  • then there will soon be a lot of pregnant nympho-voluptuous amazon women from space.. it's all one big plot. 3 years ago there was a terrible tragedy on venus, eradicating all males. the women reverted to their fungal state to migrate to earth. arrived on earth the first thing they do is attack each and every rubber in sight: no more condoms. (the pope rejoices) having crippled a large part of humanity's anticonceptional measures, they will then proceed to fuck each and every geek on this planet, creating much offspring of their race. Earth will be overrun in 3 weeks.

    or maybe not..

    //rdj
  • It currently costs $10,000 per pound to send material into space. Seems to me that the cost and time it would take to gradually (over the next few years) move the MIR into an orbit alongside the IIS would pay off greatly in the long run. With the use of solar furnace, the MIR could be melted into the raw materials of the next Mars missions. Seems a few $million to add a recyling plant to the IIS might pay off in the long run.
  • Since it is most likely to survive the reentry

    Now all I have to do if get them to drop it somewhere more convienient than the Atlantic ocean. Hmm, Africa might do...

  • Damn the Russians! They Sold me the rights to live here!! I'm renting the place...how dare they try to deorbit it while I'm still here!

    *Breathe*...

    Comrade M and I will calm down and then proceed to blow the Kremlin to bits with our Ion Cannon.

    From Mir with Love!
    ------------------------

  • How tragic that NASA had to be subjected to the humiliation of Russia's having an operational international space station for the last 15 years! Now, if only we can expunge all memory of MIR, might be able to bilk, er, appropriate even more money for NASA's one, true and ONLY International Space Station!
  • Surely this is chump-change for any government to come up with... sure russia is poor, but even our sad little country on the ass-end of the planet (New Zealand) can afford to throw away five times that amount on failed government IT projects.

    I have to admit i don't have $10 million sitting in my back pocket, but surely they could sell a couple of nukes to iraq or something to cover the shortfall?
  • Probably 99% of it burns up in the atmosphere (AHHH...The Atmosphere...AHHHH). thank you, I just spat beer all over my laptop.
  • It's really quite a shame that, while governments around the world can spend billions of dollars putting these things into orbit, they are unwilling to spend the money to bring them down. Don't you think Sputnik, or Skylab, even Mir deserve to be in the Smithsonian, or the Russian equivalent. These are historically relevant artifacts, but the first two have already been burnt up, and it seems the third is not far behind.
  • Here it is, approaching Halloween time. Does anyone know what will happen to the fungus if mixed with Worcestershire sauce? That episode of South Park is looming in my mind...
  • I havn't read the book in years, but I thought the implication was that the government was intentionally retrieving organisms from the upper atmosphere/space that no human would have immunity to.

    -B
  • That is two stories on MIR in one day. When is slashdot finally going to give MIR its own section and coresponding icon? MIR is more than just 'Space' and it deserves better.
  • damn, i knew i forgot something (hadn't seen that one in a while). the fungi on mir will cause as rampant epidemic of pink eye that will be blamed on a condiment company.
  • Yeah, if NBC really wanted ratings, why not shoot the cast of their worst new show of the fall into space and then de-orbit in the Mir? Or, to get Veronica's Closet off the air once and for all, their worst show of the season (by the ever-accurate Nielson ratings). Who the hell did Kirstie Alley sleep with to get the job-for-life at NBC?

    Personally, I'd love to be stuck on an island with Jenna and Colleen. Although watching stuff hatch out of her legs was a bit of a turnoff.
  • This may be slightly off topic, but is relevant to this story.

    Has anyone else noticed the lag Slashdot has in getting the news out lately? The fungus story was in New Scientist a month or more ago, and this latest update about James Cameron was posted to Space.com last week (which I found from the Space.com Slashbox on the front page).

    Jesus, you'd think that /. would pay attention to the common sources of information from which people submit stories. How irritating is it to tune in and see media stories that have been around for a month recapped on /. like they're something new? Does this mean the crew is working on a new software release, or just buried under the load of submitted stories? No news is better than old news.

  • Great, now the whole mir will be bombarded by mirs of mir...
  • We can't let this mutated fungus come back to Earth. Oh sure, most likely, after mutating/evolving isolated in space, it would be susceptable to something here on Earth that would eat it.

    Most likely.

    But maybe not. It may be a super fungus worse than an airborne flesh eating Ebola virus. We gotta burn Mir in space... and maybe the Cosmonauts too.

  • If it takes 7-10 million just to maintain the Mir from earth, there still going to need 30 million to send someone there(60,000,000 for 2 trips).
    So why would someone sink 7-10mil into something thats going to need 30 more mill for use PLUS who knows how much for onboard repairs.
    I hope someone can find away to keep the mir, but It's probably time to say good bye.
    I wonder if on one of our already planned shuttle launches, we can make the changes neccesary to allow them to controll re-entry, or push it up to a really high orbit, just to see what the really long term effects of space will have on it. It could let us know what the space station is in for, then we can put preventitive measures in place. Who would of guessed there would be this kind of fungus problem 10 years ago?
    well, besides Chriton.
  • about the next SST mission: ferrying a 150 gal container of Lysol disinfectant to mir, with the mission specialist being a janitor. "I told 'em 18 years ago this was going to happen unless they get some professional custodial services in there", said Ivan DuVal, top ranking member of the former Soviet Union Air Force's 97th building custodial squadron. "'Dem space heads is too busy wit dem space 'speriments to properly clean the toilets, and I'm sure the floors need a real good scrubbin' and waxin'". But Paul's long held dream of a space mission to 'do it right' looks like it may never come about, as the lack of a proper sanitation regime has lasted so long the only option is the incinerate the entire station in the earth's atmosphere.

    At least they don't have space-roaches in the galley.
  • the next location for Survivors!
  • And infect the moon with agressive fungi in the process?

    ----------------------------------------------

  • Nations involved in the ISS should fund de-orbit. (Score:3)

    by Claudius ( 32768 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2000 @09:24AM (#734174)
    One of the long-standing complaints of the ISS consortium is how Energia and the Russian space agency have continued to support Mir while they have allowed deadlines for the ISS to slip. It would perhaps be advisable for the ISS to come up with the funds to de-orbit the facility--if for no other reason than because it'd be a cheap (only $60 mil) way to rid the program of a major distraction, and doing so would probably save them money in the long run.

  • I can moderate my own AC postings! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I think this should not be a feature.

  • Re:OK, I'll demonstrate my ignorance... (Score:5)

    by Mad Hughagi ( 193374 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2000 @09:25AM (#734176) Homepage Journal
    The space station has to have it's orientation and position constantly regulated so that it maintains a proper orbit (it's orbit is constantly decaying due to drag, the dynamical gravitational potential it experiences from the moon/earth/sun system, and solar flux (albeit quite smaller than the others)). If there is no fuel left to fire the thrusters required to reposition it, it will slowly drift towards the earth. As it gets nearer, it experiences more and more drag from the atmosphere, which aids it's descent. So in the end it is a matter of not having enough fuel to keep it in place.

  • This situation kinda reminds me of this cartoon [userfriendly.org]. Substitute your favorite four letter acronym ending with "AA" at your leisure.
  • What is this irrational hatred toward fungus?. Fungi are our freinds, their cousins yeast make our beer, and the bioremediation possibilites of waste metal degrading bacteria are huge. Yeah Im a nasty genetic engineer and proud of it
  • That's when things started to get REALLY trippy.

    First you had the high... now you've got the Low-Earth-Orbit high. High enough for you?

  • Re:Slashdot Cruiser! Fsck that! Slashdot Station! (Score:4)

    by substrate ( 2628 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2000 @09:26AM (#734180)
    OT, but do you think the mold on MIR is from a leftover piece of Pizza Hut pizza?
    Nah, the answer is simpler than that. You've got a group of males living together in a confined space, much like a university dorm. Like any such arrangement it starts off with good intentions but devolves fast: "we'll take turns doing the dishes" quickly becomes "well, the smell isn't that bad and nobodies become physically ill. Well, so seriously physicall ill that they required a hospital stay".

    Heck, I've had more advanced lifeforms evolve in my fridge and I live alone. I'll clean it when they demand equal rights.

  • Can't NASA just send up an enormous vial of One-Step Canasten?

    --

  • The U.S. propaganda machine is certainly working overtime to discredit Mir.

    Notice how many drivel-bots here on slashdot mindlessly echo the pap they've been fed through major media outlets?

  • Built for astronauts, strong enough for Mir.

  • maybe because.....

    the ISS is US gov't pork-barrel at its best?? And it doesn't do anything? And it sucks?

  • Re:OK, I'll demonstrate my ignorance... (Score:4)

    by ENOENT ( 25325 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2000 @09:26AM (#734186) Homepage Journal
    It's worse than that: if the Russians don't keep making payments to the Inertial Bank, Isaac Newton is going to foreclose on Mir's kinetic energy, and then he's going to use its potential energy to pay off all of the other investors.

  • Why not scrounge up a couple million, and make some scientists come up with a quick and dirty way to set Mir down on the Moon without breaking it too much. If they can set it down without breaking it, they will have shelter on the surface of the moon for future missions.

    If it's going to cost $60 million to shove it a few hundred miles back to Earth (with a gravity assist even!). It's going to cost way more than that to move it a quarter of a million miles to the moon and soft-land it!


    Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wagn'nagl dominos.

  • Not a shield, a surfboard!!!

    Remember Dark Star?

    Hacker: A criminal who breaks into computer systems
  • Survivor part III - space.

    the survivor TV show had huge ratings, and the mere million they gave the winner is a tiny, tiny portion of ad revenues for that #1 rated show.

    a mir space survivor TV show, where you get to know the cosmonauts, and watch them take space challenges like drinking tang as it flies around the room in zero g, or spacewalk first around the station, then finally as they are ejected into space after being voted off, would be huge. :)

    ________

  • OK.... predicted is stretching it a tad... But in the movie Creepshow, a meteorite hits earth and a strange mold/fungus/something takes over his house (King was the actor in this segment). Creepy....
  • thank you, I just spat beer all over my laptop.

    Kids, let this be a lesson to you: drinking and computing don't mix. Well, unless it's been a REALLY long day.
  • Hmmm. Moldy space station about to be 'de-orbited'... maybe they should shoot the whole show on Mir, and let the winner leave right before the de-orbiting... Now -that- would be a show worthy of being called Survivor ;) -as
  • NAH !! Feeding to the fungus is TOO pedestrian. Give them a spacesuit with 28 hours of air, a Xena sized sheild covered with anti-ablatement tiles,
    and push them out of the airlock and see if they get back to earth.

    THAT would be surviving ! :>D
  • not quite - the next survivors is slated for texas. everyone gets a vw bug with a bumper sticker that reads: "I'm queer and here to take your guns"

    can't wait

  • Maybe they can get sponsorship from Lysol (Score:5)

    by Mynn ( 209621 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2000 @09:08AM (#734197)
    And kill the bacteria with an industrial version? Or a series: Mr. Clean goes to Mir! Mynn the Museless [museless.com]

  • Re:Hmm (Score:3)

    by spezz ( 150943 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2000 @12:14PM (#734199)
    Yeah but Gates has enough money (and presence on /., I suspect he's the penis bird guy) to pay the Russians $5 Million per piece of Mir and have it fall in a distributed fashion on all you Linux users.

    Then you'd get sued by the Russians for taking apart the piece of spaceship that crashed into your house and writing drivers for it.

  • Destination Mir (Score:5)

    by Geccoman ( 18319 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2000 @09:09AM (#734200) Homepage Journal
    Maybe this would be an excellent opportunity for Desenex to do some advertising! They could send up a guy to fumigate the place with spray powder and then put a big banner outside. "Desenex saved MIR!"

    That would rock

  • Comment removed (Score:3)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2000 @12:21PM (#734201)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Hmmmm (Score:5)

    by mholve ( 1101 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2000 @09:10AM (#734202)
    Maybe this can be the grand finale in the firework show when they burn up the Iridium satellites... :)

    What color does fungi and rust burn?

  • By what I've heard, they're going to let gravity take over and have Mir burn up in the atmosphere.

    Am I the only one reminded of The Andromeda Strain when I read the Mir articles?

    I say that we don't de-orbit Mir. I say that we launch a Progress freighter with really powerful retro-rockets and enough C4 to blow the Empire State Building in half. When Mir is more than 1 AU away from Earth, we blow that building-sized petri dish to smithereens!

  • VA Linux should buy MIR and raffle it off to someone who joins OSDN. They could paint it green and Geeks in Space could truly be Geeks _IN_ Space.

    OT, but do you think the mold on MIR is from a leftover piece of Pizza Hut pizza?
  • overlay the entire earth with a giant grid. Let people buy different grid coord. for money and wherever it lands, that person gets all the cash!

    Just like a giant game of Cow Pie Bingo! You know where they section off a football field, turn the cow loose.......nevermind.
  • Why not de-orbit the thing staright at the sun, maybe get some more data as it goes in.

    Or crash it into Mars, then maybe we WILL find life there.. :)
  • Is that fungi internal or external? How would they deal with it? Or is that the main mission the astronauts are training for?

    "Comarade Miyagi, are you sure this is really astronaut training?"
    "Tat tat! I promise teach spacemanship, you promise obedience. Now, once again. Spray Lysol, wipe off. Spray Lysol, wipe off."

  • "In the meantime, Russian Duma (parliament) proposed to allocate around 1.5 billion rubles (approximately $60 million) for Mir operations this year."

    That's not bad, considering that only eight years ago, 10 rubles was worth 8 cents.

  • Michael Crichton was launched into space by the CIA (go the CIA!) to plant a fungus ("plant" a fungus?) on MIR.

    Hopefully they'll deorbit Crichton and release him into the goddamn atmosphere.* I sure am sick of his movie novels that open with a good premise, become amazingly predictable within two chapters, and dare you to read them all the way through the same way your buddies in college dared you to drink an entire bottle of ketchup.

    * Bonus points for reference-catching.
  • Well fungi initially burns with a dull red/yellow flame, but then starts to cycle through an entire rainbow of colors. That's when things started to get REALLY trippy.

    --
  • Cameron is also directing [marsnews.com] an IMAX movie and TV series about Mars.

    --

  • Which meaning of "MIR" do you mean?

    Mir--peace

    Mir--world

    =P
  • I think the point is that if they can't meet the deadline for financing a take down, it'll just reenter on it's own. If they do have the money to plan a controlled reentry, then all is well in the world. It's not like it will die anytime soon, obviously they expect it to survive till 2001. Oh, wait. That aint too far off :)
    treke
  • The objective is to be voted out before your entire body is eaten away, or you explode in a gigantic fireball, when Mir smashes into the Earth's atmosphere.
  • Here's an idea: have Mir take out an Iridium satellite or two on its way down. Sorta two birds (so to speak) with one stone.
  • If you had enough money for fuel to lift Mir out of earth's gravity well and send it off to the Sun or Mars, you could just keep it in orbit around earth for another ten years instead.

    It's only 400 KM up. You'd have to lift it a lot higher before it would escape earth's gravity.

    Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
  • Like you said -- read the article on the fungus. It was mutating and is no longer just terrestrial.

    --
  • Here's the link to sign-up and win your trip to the jolly green sattelite. NBCi Win a trip to Mir [nbci.com].
    Network television leading the way for getting civilians in space.
  • Mir means both "world" and "peace" in Russian (hence "War and Peace" may have been better translated as "War and the World").

    I have to hand it to them; nothing is more peaceful than the fiery enferno incurred by reentering the atmosphere of one's namesake.

  • NBC's missing the potential here... (Score:3)

    by RGSharpe ( 225914 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2000 @09:36AM (#734277)
    Instead of a show where the winner gets sent to Mir, how about having one (especially for those of us who hate these kinds of 'fad' shows) where people are stuck all over the world in Mir's projected descent ring, with the loser having to stand outside with a catcher's mitt?

    Better yet, since they seem so concerned by the ratings, and most of us hate them, why not populate the projected path with executives from TV networks and advertising agencies? I'd sit down to watch, hell, I'd even *pay* good money to see *that*!
  • Basically, the atmosphere gets thinner the higher up you go, but it never disappears entirely. At Mir's altitude, it's nearly not there, but there's still enough drag to make a difference. We're not talking like an airplane, where the engine must go constantly, but more like a minor boost once a year or so.

    Your physics professor was indeed talking about an ideal model. It's close enough to reality over a period of days or weeks, depending of course on how high you are (the recent Shuttle radar mapping mission was low enough that they had to boost every day!) but it doesn't hold forever.

  • Re:OK, I'll demonstrate my ignorance... (Score:3)

    by Old Man Kensey ( 5209 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2000 @09:39AM (#734285) Homepage
    ryanr wrote:

    So why will not having cash in the bank tomorrow suddenly make it plunge into the atmosphere? Is someone going to unglug the extension cord to Earth? Are the space landlords going to evict them? Is galactic collections going to show up and reposses their oxy generation unit?

    All spacecraft suffer orbital drag from gravitational and magnetic anomalies in the body they're orbiting, friction with the upper atmosphere/interstellar medium, solar flares...

    Every "stable" orbit will eventually decay unless the orbiting body is captured by another one passing by. Skylab's orbit decayed in a relatively short time back in the 70s -- I think back then a lot of the mechanisms weren't well-understood. Many satellites carry maneuvering fuel to extend their orbital life, but they eventually run out of fuel and de-orbit as well. If a critical satellite is stranded in an orbit that's about to start reaching the fringes of the ionosphere, sometimes they send the Shuttle up to tow it back out.

    Basically, Mir is out of gas and coasting to a stop, just as any vehicle would.

  • They justified spending $240 million on a project to extend a 20 year old operating system just fine. What would be the problem with Mir? It does sound a lot like it's software counterpart..
  • Isn't anyone worried worried about the fungus mutating because of cosmic rays and causing a repeat of the blob when Mir crashes down. The blob was a documentary right?
  • I believe you're thinking of "A is for Andromeda"?
  • I'm much more concerned that the MIR will crash somewhere deep in the Florida swamps and that the vile space-fungus will mutate a harmless mild-mannered astronaut into a bloodthirsty, sinster guy-in-a-monster-suit, who will then embark on a killing rampage spreading death, destruction, and space-fungus all throughout the swamp. Because that's what happened in Dark Universe [imdb.com], the 1993 epic sci-fi classic whose gripping plot and breathtaking special effects give even Plan 9 from Outer Space [imdb.com] a run for it's money. A chilling view of things to come....


    ========
    Stephen C. VanDahm

  • Andromedia Strain? (Score:5)

    by CoreDump ( 1715 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2000 @09:43AM (#734306) Homepage Journal
    Anyone else remember the book _Andromedia_Strain_ by Michael Crichton? That was one of my favorite books growing up, so I couldn't help but notice some similarities to the current situation.

    Let's take a look:

    MIR

    • An unmanned space station returns uncontrolled to earth.
    • The space station is contaminated with a fungus.
    • The fungus weakens/destroys rubber and other materials.
    • ...

    Andromedia Strain

    • An unmanned satellite returns uncontrolled to earth.
    • The satellite is contaminated with a contagion.
    • The contagion weakens/destroys rubber and other materials.
    • ...

    Makes you wonder just bit... :)

    ------------------------------------------------ ------------

  • Isn't there a bunch of space junk stuck in orbit? Why doesn't that drop through, too? Are those items further out?

    I'm not trying to be a troll... I just never did "get it" w/orbital physics. A first semester physics teacher said the downward pull, plus the forward motion, translated to it staying up there forever. Was that an ideal model, not including drag, etc? Or is MIR in a fixed orbit, while those things are actually spinning about the Earth?
  • Episode 17 of that NBC show...

    The winner is enjoying his days on MIR, eating stale freeze-dried sardines and tang.

    Suddenly a face appears in the port on the door.

    The door opens...

    A gigantic fat man in a space suit enters. He removes his mask. And with a fake smile and a weary attempt at emphasis, the man yells:

    "Boom! Tough-Actin' Tinactin!" followed by "Hey, are those sardines I smell?"

    Eventually someone opens an air lock just to end it all in peace.

    Fade to black.

  • Unlike the other stupid pap :)
    ---

  • well not exactly an issue (Score:3)

    by TheCarp ( 96830 ) <sjc AT carpanet DOT net> on Tuesday October 03, 2000 @09:48AM (#734311) Homepage
    1) Falling back to earth should kill any bacteria, fungus, virus or whatever else is on there. Perhaps a few prions or other proteines and organic matter might survive, forget about living organisms

    2) The fungus was terrestrial anyway. How do you think it got there? Read the article on the fungus, they said most of it was penecillium and other common fungi.

    The only reason that they are so much of a problem on mir is the enclosed atmosphere. They build up fast. remember....these are things that originally adapted to grow, and produce spores...enough spores to spread on earth. Now take all those spores from each generation of fungus...and keep them in a tight enclosed space....add some moisture in the air...very little competition for resources.

    Of course, as a bonus....I wonder what the average inside temp is on the station...if its between 90-98F...the fungus will have a feild day.

    Scientists here on earth believe that fungi are mutating into new species faster than they can be found and catergorized. After so many years in space, I would imagine their fungus have already mutated quite alot - add the excessive radiation - and it should be quite interesting.

    I, for one, hope that they kept samples.

  • Re:"De-orbited?" (Score:3)

    by Mignon ( 34109 ) <satan@programmer.net> on Tuesday October 03, 2000 @09:49AM (#734313)
    Astronauts visiting Mir de-swallowed their space-lunch when they smelled the Mir fungus.
  • They should use the last fuel in the thrusters to fly the mir to mars. This will go very slowly ofcourse. That's good, because the fungie will have time to slowly adapt to their coming habitat as the environtment on board will slowly change. And by the time humans will finally go to mars there will be a nice welcome of little martians that resemble Toad - that marioland guy.
  • "Enegia" -- the company that actually manages the MIR space station reported that they are NOT going to deorbit. Those with doubting minds and mad Russian skillz, check out http://www.gazeta.ru/lenta.shtml. Make sure you scroll down to 17:57 news.
  • Does that mean we all better go order large amounts of pillows from the internet? After all, if they can protect someone far out in Australia, then surely we can stop a giant flaming space station. :)

    What... you mean that commercial WASN'T real? Darn, and I thought they wouldn't do that to us. Next you'll tell me that smoking and drinking really won't make me really cool and highly attractive...
    ---

  • Re:Andromedia Strain? (Score:3)

    by alienmole ( 15522 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2000 @02:02PM (#734330)
    Dude, you're insane!

    Great idea for a moderation option!

    (Score: -1, Insane Dude)

  • "De-orbited?" (Score:4)

    by karzan ( 132637 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2000 @09:13AM (#734331)
    Interesting choice of words.

    A plane was de-flighted today, causing the de-functioning of over 100 passengers...

  • NBC's millions go legal "bye bye" (Score:3)

    by firewort ( 180062 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2000 @11:08AM (#734341)
    Sure, NBC has big bucks now, but when I'm a contestant on Destination Mir, the TV show,
    and I come back and sue them for space-alien toe fungus disease, see how they laugh then!

    (my company- provided insurance policy covers diseases I contract while traveling, but I wonder if they'd find a way out of that one!)


    A host is a host from coast to coast, but no one uses a host that's close
  • Airplanes are so common these days that we actually have two terms for de-flighting. They are respectively a "landing" and a "crash". Spacecraft are new, so more common terms are yet to be invented. "De-orbit" is the standard term when you cause something in orbit to enter the atmosphere, whether to return it to earth (shuttle, etc.) or to get rid of it (Iridium, Mir, etc.).
  • Mission to Mir to kill fungus -- $25,000,000
    Chemicals to kill fungus -- $100,000
    Cost of services rendered to MirCorp for deorbiting Mir -- $250,000
    Watching with insane joy as Mir falls from the sky and hits some unsuspecting person in the forehead, killing him instantly -- priceless.

    For everything else, there's NASA.
  • Isn't there a bunch of space junk stuck in orbit? Why doesn't that drop through, too? Are those items further out?

    There's all kinds of stuff out there, and a lot of it does drop to earth. Probably 99% of it burns up in the atmosphere (AHHH...The Atmosphere...AHHHH). Of the remaining stuff, most of it probably finds it's way into one of the oceans that make up 70% of the earths surface.

    The problem with Mir is that it's of sufficient size that it probably would not totally burn up in the atmosphere, and an uncontrolled "de-orbit" would be just that: throw a dart to find out where it lands. Irony might suggest NBC studios as a possible crash site, but I digress...

  • Poor Titanic boy (Score:3)

    by kaphka ( 50736 ) <1nv7b001@sneakemail.com> on Tuesday October 03, 2000 @10:07AM (#734351)
    Somebody had better warn Cameron before he visits next summer [nypostonline.com]. Don't you hate it when you plan a vacation months in advance, and then your hotel gets deorbited?
  • Mir is not geostationary; it is at ~400 km; there is quite a bit of drag at such a low altitude.
  • So why will not having cash in the bank tomorrow suddenly make it plunge into the atmosphere? Is someone going to unglug the extension cord to Earth? Are the space landlords going to evict them? Is galactic collections going to show up and reposses their oxy generation unit?

  • Destination MIR (Score:5)

    by ewhac ( 5844 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2000 @09:17AM (#734367) Homepage Journal
    But what about the Destination MIR teevee show?

    So, instead of getting there by rocket, they'll get there by submarine. Though perhaps less glorious than space, the environments are equally dangerous. The slightest error will get you killed instantly.

    Schwab

  • Hmm (Score:4)

    by LNO ( 180595 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2000 @09:17AM (#734368)
    I doubt the /. community could get together $7-10 million to keep Mir in orbit, but Russia would probably accept $5 million and let us 'encourage' it to land in a specific spot.

    I mean, Mir crashing down onto Redmond, Washington, just has a strange sort of appeal to it, doesn't it?

    Maybe we could hold a bake sale.

  • Good riddance (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I'm glad to hear that thing will finally come down. Maybe now the Russian government will stop diverting US funds meant for building components of the ISS to keeping that floating rustbucket in orbit. I have no problem with them keeping Mir up except when they continually delayed putting up their part of the ISS because they were launching support missions for Mir. That's irresponsible and it pisses me off as a taxpayer to see money that went to the Russians for political reasons be wasted like that when the job would've been done on-time and on-budget if it had been picked up by a European or American aerospace company instead of being done as a Russian government operated project.

  • Re:OK, I'll demonstrate my ignorance... (Score:4)

    by Mad Hughagi ( 193374 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2000 @10:13AM (#734378) Homepage Journal
    In a perfect system the only things that are considered are the earths gravitational force (the downward pull) and the velocity of the object in orbit (forward motion). That is the model you will most likely deal with in first semester classes.

    It excludes things like drag, and other minimal effects. The main instability in the orbits results from the fact that not only the Earth is pulling on the satellite/station, but the moon, sun, and every other celestial body (to some degree) as well. This creates varying gravitational potentials which change depending on the positions of all the parties involved (Gravity is dependent on 1/r^2).

    Now, the space junk just happens to be stuff that is in a relatively stable orbit. It may stay up for weeks, months or years depending on it's velocity and position relative to the earth. After it's orbit decays to a certain point it will either plummet to the earth or take off into space depending on how far it's initial orbit was from the earth. It's kind of funny, there are actually telecommunication satellites that went haywire and are now whipping around in the geosynchronous orbit range, requiring everyone to be on the lookout for possible collisions (small probability however).

    There is actually an MIT lab that tracks most of the large debris using a radar telescope in conjunction with the defense department. Try tracking thousands of objects that are only a meter wide in the vast expanse of possible earth orbits!

    The real problem with all of this junk is that it is nigh impossible to propagate the orbits. Since all these factors are subtle and accumulate over time it makes it quite a task to make proper orbit integrators. After you include the difficult to model drag effect of re-entry, it makes finding out where MIR is going to land a shot in the dark.

    As for MIR's orbit, I believe it is in low earth orbit, and therefor it would also be moving around the Earth.

  • I have an idea (Score:3)

    by Auckerman ( 223266 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2000 @10:13AM (#734379)
    They should host a "Survivor" series on Mir. Imagine the consequences of being "expelled" from the "Island".....
  • My favorites are "controlled flight into terrain" and "uncontrolled flight into terrain". A "controlled flight into terrain" is where everything is working properly except that the pilot didn't notice the big mountain in his flight path.

  • You forgot that when Mir was first flown, the Russians were considered "enemy", so this may fall more under the act-of-war disclaimer. :)

  • What if... (Score:3)

    by FortKnox ( 169099 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2000 @09:21AM (#734385) Homepage Journal
    What if MiR de-orbits, and the fungus survives, and attackes metals and plastics, and grows and adapts and eventually becomes nympho-vuluptuous naked amazon women?!?!?!

    LET MIR DE-ORBIT!!!!


    -- Don't you hate it when people comment on other people's .sigs??
  • I don't understand why people are so concerned about MIR. Come on, it's old, it's been damaged, it's falling apart, and with this fungus thing it's probably a very unhealthy environment, too. So why not just "de-orbit" it? What is so great about it? Okay, it was the first somewhat permanent thing in "space" (ahem, earth orbit, barely outside of the atmosphere), but that doesn't mean it has to stay there forever and be used. We aren't using ENIACs any more at huge costs, just because it was the first ...

    There is the ISS now, which is much more modern, bigger, better equipped, and it's operated by more than just one nation. So I really can't see the reason for keeping this old thing up there, wasting money and posing a threat to everybody working there.

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