
Guess When Mir Will Splash 652
Guess When Mir Will Come Down
I've been irritated with Mir for a while. It's up. It's down. It's up. It's down. It's saved. It's dead. It's broken. It's fixed. It's broken again. It's fixed again. Weeks ago, I started putting notes on Mir story submissions that came in, which said, "No more Mir stories until pieces start falling!". I even promised that we wouldn't post any more about Mir's troubles. But here I am, breaking that promise. Mir needs to be put down.
Guess when Mir hits the water and win a t-shirt from yours truly. Here are the rules:
1) Use ISO format in a comment submitted to this story - don't e-mail me. ISO format is 'YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS'. Thus, a prediction for the afternoon of March 13 would be '2001-03-13 14:23:07'. All times are Eastern Standard Time in the United States, unless Mir makes it until we go on Daylight Savings Time. Your time prediction can be anywhere in a comment submitted to this story. Note that Slashdot stops allowing new comments on a story a few days after it is posted, so if you don't make your guess now, you won't get a chance later. Use ISO format so I can find it with my browser's find function later on. Closest guess wins.
2) Mir's splash time will be judged by reading the first reports submitted by the major fast-response news networks - CNN, AP and Reuters, in that order. I'm looking for a sentence like, "The first pieces of Mir hit the water at [time]." If none of them mentions a time when the first chunks of Mir hit the water (or land, as the case may be) I'll look for a time mentioned when Mir enters the atmosphere. If we still don't have a time (unlikely, I think) I'll resort to other major news sources, NASA, etc.
3) Cunning readers will note that Mir's ephemeris is publicly available and limits the likely splashdown times to various windows. You could probably substantially improve your chances of winning by doing a lot of research and calculations, not that that would be very time-efficient for a $15 t-shirt.
4) One entry per person, please. I'll contact you through the e-mail address you used when you signed up for an account.
5) Winners will be judged as soon as possible after Mir splashes. I'm the sole judge. There is no appeal. Void where prohibited. If you know me you can't win. However, if you have influence over Mir's trajectory and can influence the thing to come down at the time you picked, you win two t-shirts. No cash value. Contest prize consists of a t-shirt from Thinkgeek or Copyleft, winner's choice, provided by me and not Slashdot, VA Linux or anyone else.
My guess (Score:2)
2001-03-15 22:20:37
-jfedor
My B day, take the prize! (Score:1)
the lameness filter says I need to use fewer caps. I hate it when it tells me that. Note: lameness filter should not check the .sig...
here it is (Score:1)
Pleistocene Standard Time (Score:1)
Would you believe, too, that the Earth isn't flat? That's how Mir is able to actually be in orbit....
Hah! (Score:1)
We have a new one up in orbit so we don't care if you fry
All those Russkies are sure to let out a big sigh
On the day when old Mir say goodbye
The REAL jabber has the /. user id: 13196
my guess (Score:1)
and does anyone know if they plan on savaging it from the ocean afterwards? or will it just become a big nothing sitting in near the bottom?
Re:here it is (Score:1)
Contest Entry (Score:1)
2001-03-22 04:23:04 (Score:1)
bleh (Score:1)
2001-03-27 01:33:42
Kinda like a swedish contest (Score:1)
We fill an open area with numbered squares, and let a cow walk around until it shits. It's called Cow Bingo. This with MIR would be Russian Space Bingo. >;)
Oh BTW, my guess is 2001-03-17 7:57:13
Mir Crash (Score:1)
Re:Guessing (Score:1)
2001-03-14 06:33:22 (Score:1)
2000-03-15 14:08:16 (Score:1)
my guess (Score:1)
2000-03-14 01:59:26 (Score:1)
Death of a Spacestation (Score:1)
Re:Guessing (Score:1)
try again, should be 3.1415926. too bad there's only 60 seconds in a second...
To elaborate more... (Score:2)
not for a while yet - must waste bandwidth (Score:1)
My guess is: (Score:2)
Only a guess.
I wonder how the mechanism works if there's a little mistake and Mir starts coming down somewhere it wasn't expected. Considering how many planes are in the air over many parts of the world at any one time, how do all of the effected flights get redirected?
2001-03-18 11:34:00 (Score:1)
That's my guess. Right there. 11:34 is a scary time. (I don't worship the devil.)
/whois John Galt
I win again (Score:1)
2001:04:02:12:14:32
Oh wait, whats that i see going passed my window.
i'd change my answer, but that's entirely too many backspaces.
2001-04-09 13:05:07 (Score:2)
Strange, the stupid lamer filter accused me of using all caps with a post that's all numbers (which is why I'm adding this line). I'd fire off a bug report to the slash guys, but god (er, linus) knows if they'd ever get around to fixing it. . .
Shwiiiiiiiioooooooorrrrrrrrr..... (Score:1)
Well, technically that's part of Chili. Maybe it could fix Democracy in Fiji all in one blow by taking out that racist anti-Indian pseudo-nationalists with really his own interest at heart, George Speight, literally killing 2 birds with one stone!
>The TimeHorse has now been permanently banned from ever setting foot on Fiji<
May I Sumbit Two Dates? (Score:1)
2001-03-12 12:54:36 EST
First Listing in eBay of some piece of scrap metal that somebody is claiming is "Mir Debris":
2001-03-14 18:45:23 EST
2001-04-19 09:14:06 (Score:1)
My Guess (Score:1)
My youngest brother's birthday/time
2001-03-24 08:03:03 (Score:1)
2001-05-14 23:32:14 (Score:2)
2001-3-15 21:03:36 (Score:1)
The sad part is I spent 10 minutes figuring that out instead of doing my Calculus homework.
Luck O' the Irish (Score:1)
Re:Star Wars: The Return of Mir (Score:1)
T-shirt...it better be geeky... (Score:1)
2001-04-02 03-59-19
If you want my respect, give it first...
2001-03-20 07:14:57 (Score:2)
Tell me what makes you so afraid
Of all those people you say you hate
my guess (Score:1)
2001-03-16 06:43:30
2000-03-15 14:08:17 (Score:4)
Happy Easter! (Score:2)
Unfortunately, "between New Zealand and Chile" is where Easter Island is. Anyone put pillows on the Heads?
My prediction... (Score:4)
Mir will be brought down on: 2001-03-16 14:00:00 to commemorate the historical significance of:
The first man to give dreams of reaching the stars a glimpse of reality was Dr. Robert H. Goddard, who launched the first liquid-fueled rocket to an altitude of 41 feet on this day in 1926. The test occurred shortly before Charles Lindbergh's flight across the Atlantic and never received the headlines that Lindbergh did, but the historic significance was staggering.
Big splash in the pacific... (Score:2)
Well, it's a guess... The probability of winning that T-Shirt is extremely low, oh well it's the participating that counts anyway ;-)
blah blah (Score:2)
Here's my guess (Score:2)
Ad the only reason I picked this date is that it's my sister's b-day.
Since her mood has a tendency of crashing down... I thought... maybe...
Karma karma karma karma karmeleon: it comes and goes, it comes and goes.
green flash over the Pacific (Score:2)
I think a good Irish wake would be in order. Mir's already green, what with all the various fungi that's infecting it...
Mr. Ska
I slit a sheet
A sheet I slit
Re:What about airplanes? (Score:2)
I seriously hope so! I'll be returning from Oz in mid-march and would definatly disapprove of being torn apart in mid-air by a rotten, russian space station.
(Actually though, I'll be heading in the other direction.
2001-04-03 05:22:35 (Score:2)
(Um, why does Slashdot think a post with nothing but number is using too many caps?)
pi (Score:2)
So I had to throw in the 0 for effect.
Re:My prediction... (Score:2)
The first man to give dreams of reaching the stars a glimpse of reality was Dr. Robert H. Goddard, who launched the first liquid-fueled rocket to an altitude of 41 feet on this day in 1926. The test occurred shortly before Charles Lindbergh's flight across the Atlantic and never received the headlines that Lindbergh did but the historic significance was staggering.
Yes, only the Germans seemed to pay much attention to his work - and Werner von Braun went on to develop the V2 and move after WW2 with a lot of collegues to the US to kick off their space development program.
I'm guessing.... (Score:2)
Girlfriends birthday and her favourite number. And *no*, I did not just give away my password or PIN. ;-)
Date representation (Score:2)
Surely using the format described in RFC2550 [isi.edu] would be a more sensible way to represent the date? Particularly if they keep delaying it. :-)
The cycle (Score:2)
2001-11-31 - 12:00:03 :)
The problem with capped Karma is it only goes down...
Nu shto, ja dumaju... (Score:2)
January (nu, ja nie Russkij, ja Poliak...)
They will still be discussing... (Score:2)
2001-04-16 19:47:13
Rough guess on time - visibility estimated from parameters.
Re:What about airplanes? (Score:2)
I don't think its posible to fly an airliner more than 2 hrs without a NOTAM about *SOMETHING*.
Corruption Issue? (Score:2)
There is still some sort of corruption issue with the users table.
That might explain the weirdness that's been going on with my account today. Apparently, I've got a karma of 31337, and I've also got access to several other features I haven't seen before.
Could someone explain what happened, before I click on this 'promote Anonymous Coward posts to +5' button by accident?
Ford Prefect, posting at +1 (instead of +10) so as to remain inconspicuous.
What size T-Shirt? It must be XL, considering... (Score:2)
Size XLT or XL t-shirt please.
As if any
Re:My Guess 2001-04-04 07:15:07 (Score:2)
They're probably on different orbits, and I'm sure it would be a real pain in the butt to change one orbit to match another. That's why the shuttle launches for ISS have a 5-minute window. (I'm sure there are actually lots of 5-minute windows, spaced about 90 minutes apart.) Even then, the shuttle spends a whole day catching up. And ISS is probably in a higher orbit now that the shuttle has been boosting it. It would probably be easier to try to crash Mir on the moon than to have it dock with ISS.
Besides, I'm sure that Mir stinks inside. 15 years of sweaty astronauts has got to be as bad as an athlete's sweatsocks and jockstrap combined. And there's the nice toasty smell of burnt wire insulation from the fires they've had.
Re:Can we have a different contest? (Score:2)
I appreciate your being forthcoming here, Michael, but a reply posted to an offtopic post (no offense to the parent poster) in a story completely unrelated to the outages isn't exactly keeping us informed.
But as we've all heard before a million times, Slashdot is all Rob's, he'd continue to do it even if he and Jeff were the only ones to read it, he's not in it for the money (obviously [yahoo.com]), etc., so who are we to ask?
-tf
2001-03-16 12:34:56 (Score:2)
__
The Day The Music Died (?) (Score:2)
'Course I've never heard whether the MIR has a penchant for fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches...
"I'm not a bitch, I just play one on
I'm going to guess my 23rd Birthday... (Score:2)
A comment, and a guess. (Score:2)
Beware the Ides of March.
Also... I'd like to take ithis moment to meditate on the possibly deadly repurcussions of combining a) the home-video news-coverage craze, and b) A space station-cum-meteor-cum-meteorite. ;)
-Omar@I fall to pices (da da da) each time I enter your atmosphere...
2001-03-14 15:09:26 (Score:2)
As close to pi as I could render, ignoring the year and the inserted zero in the minutes column.
Entry (Score:2)
Gerv
My Guess (Score:2)
I guarantee a win on my part...
Why? We'll, let's just say I'm going to make sure it happens at that time. You see, back in the '60's I developed a satellite shooting machine, which was in essence a sophisticated heat beam which we called a "laser". Using these "lasers", we punch a hole in the protective layer around the Mir Space Station...
My Guess 2001-04-04 07:15:07 (Score:2)
Oh, I forgot... (Score:2)
Own a Piece of MIR! (Score:2)
Quoted from article:
Maybe the /. saga of MIR postings will stop once the leftover "chunks" (weighing up to 700kg/1500lb) hit the bottom of the ocean halfway between New Zealand and Chile
Okay. I'm taking orders right now.
Send me $50, and I'll send you a 1"x1" square of scorched iron and weird exotic alloys, cut from the side of a burned 1982 Ford F-150 that has already been through the car crusher.
For only $4000, you can have a "MIR guidance computer", made by putting a junked microwave oven timer board through a pottery kiln. Only two available.
Check out my other online sales: Used Berlin Wall chunks, recycled from the little precast concrete curbs that are put into parking lots. (Shhh! It's recycling!)
Limited quantity available. Act now.
Guessing (Score:2)
My guess... (Score:2)
I need a new sig...
MIR Guess (Score:2)
That is EXACTLY one month from now. Go team. =)
------------
CitizenC
2001-03-22 12:33:00 (Score:2)
I also guess...that it will never hit ground, and that Russia will somehow manage to bounce it off the atmosphere back into space.
Don't ask me how; it can't be that hard to slow something down enough to crash it...now, controlling the crash, that's a bitch.
It would be just their luck that the Progress would go haywire, spin the station around a bit, end up pushing it forward instead of down, speed it up enough to skim off the atmosphere, and suddenly we have our first habitable craft heading off into deep space...never mind that it remains unmanned, or that you couldn't get me into that thing, or that I doubt the Progress has enough fuel or power to speed up Mir enough, but with the luck Russia's had lately...
Latest MIR News from Russia (Score:5)
MIR Location (Score:4)
----------------------------
Sister's Birthdays.... (Score:2)
2001-03-18 07:34:21
CokeBear
(and whazzup with that lameness filter? it treats numbers as caps? now *thats* lameness.)
Re:Can we have a different contest? (Score:2)
1) The OP wasn't a question, it was a joke.
2) Your response was pleasant, but not especially helpful. Remember that the original joke wasn't just talking about last night's outage, but about outages in general. Your response then was too specific to be helpful.
3) I've read and re-read tristan's response and I fail to find anything even mildly insulting. On the contrary, he praises Rob and Jeff for continuing to run the site when they clearly aren't making much money for it. Are you insulted that you weren't included?
As for inflammatory--you may well be inflamed by the response, but that's a feature, not a bug. We (the readers) are pretty tired of unexplained (even unremarked on) outages and we are starting to ask WTF is going on. Can you blame us?
--
2001-03-17 06:23:21 (Score:3)
"I hope I don't make a mistake and manage to remain a virgin." - Britney Spears
2001-03-23 23:23:23 (Score:2)
Can we have a different contest? (Score:5)
I've got a couple of ideas for fun contests that we can all play, and they're relevent for the /. community as well!
Firstly, we have How long will /. stay up?. Each of us can guess exactly how long (in hours) /. will be up for before it inexplicably dies with no response from the site admins. For bonus points, guess how long it'll take them to get it running again.
Secondly, Why did it go down?. We can all have fun here guessing why /. went down again. Was it a DDoS? Corrupted database? Someone tripped and pulled the power cord out? My guess for the latest one is the fact that there's now over a billion [slashdot.org] user accounts here...
What the heck, I'll take a guess ... (Score:2)
2001-04-21 01:30:00
Beware the Ides of March (Score:2)
April Fools! (Score:2)
Exact^H^H^H^H^HEstimated Time of Impact (Score:2)
Of course this is just a guess. Its not like I have a working suborbital ascent vehicle that could forcibly eject that piece of floating refuse from the heavens or something. Right?
2001-03-26 13:14:00 (Score:2)
2001-03-14 12:52:29 (Score:2)
--
Anti mir sentiment (Score:2)
Real problems (Score:2)
The uncertainty in the Mir splashdown date is actually posing a fair problem for me.
I like Mir a lot, and have always been impressed with its performance and long life, and I want to properly honor its passing. How to do, how to do..
Of course! A wake!
But you've got to schedule parties. You've got to order the vodka (unless you want crap vodka) and other assorted things. These changing dates are making my life hell! :)
Re:Can we have a different contest? (Score:2)
To add to what the parent poster is saying, as I'm sure you guys know, many of your readers are experienced IT people and are asking what happened for a variety of reasons, like:
Experience IT people know that it is merely a question on when servers will fail, not if. As such, we're pretty understanding about them, in general. It is far more embarassing to say nothing or to obfuscate about an issue than it is to simply say what happened.
When
Most importantly, consider this: Most people who complain about the outages are doing so because they value
--
2001-04-04 21:41:31 (Score:2)
--
All browsers' default homepage should read: Don't Panic...
...is this contest 'The Price Is Right' style? (Score:2)
If so, I guess 0000-01-01 00:00:00!
First they ignore you.
Then they laugh at you.
2001-03-21 02:00:00 (Score:2)
Re:Can we have a different contest? (Score:2)
(Note to self, don't end posts with the sarcastic part from now on.)
Now, in all serious Michael, your inflammatory posts have brought me close to leaving Slashdot before (and no, I'm not another 300k+ bimbo; I recently lost the password to my original uid, which was obtained with an academic e-mail account I no longer have access to). Certainly I'm not the only one guilty of making posts that can be misconstrued. Perhaps we can both agree to be more civil?
Hell, I'm in (Score:2)
==
quick question... (Score:2)
Guess (Score:2)
Would be quite an april fool's joke, eh?
Re:Can we have a different contest? (Score:3)
Interesting Spin (pun intended) (Score:2)
He he (Score:2)
How ironic that it would be called a "lameness" filter--it can't tell numbers from caps.
--
(2001-03-31 01:56:64 UTC) Interesting note... (Score:2)
Anyways.. An interesting note I read in the Chicago Sun-Times a few days ago:
(Heavily edited)
"Is there anywhere safe from a potential MIR drop?"
A call was placed to the Russian Space Agency.
"Is there any city that's safe from an accidental MIR drop?"
"Moscow. There's no chance any MIR debris will hit Moscow."
How thoughtful.
The reason? The potential MIR drop point can be anywhere between 50 degrees north and 50 degrees south.
I thought it was funny.
Ruling The World, One Moron At A Time(tm)
"As Kosher As A Bacon-Cheeseburger"(tmp)
Russians Protest Mir Ditching (Score:2)