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Burn, Mir, Burn (Do You Like To Watch?) 77

Posted by timothy from the flies-through-the-air-with-the-greatest-disease dept.
Michael Stricklen writes: "The company I work for, NaviSite, Inc. is going to stream the Mir re-entry at http://www.mirreentry.com. I'm not sure what kind of view you'll have of it, but I figure with as many stories as /. has had on Mir, one more marking it's death couldn't hurt." And Kevin points to an article on Yahoo! which says that the mirreentry.com video will not be a live broadcast, "since 'the aircraft which will track the spacecraft's final descent will not have enough bandwidth to stream the footage as it occurs.' The film will be supposedly available on the Internet within two hours of reentry. The site currently target's Mir's 'latest probable deorbit date' as March 22." I wish I saw a link to other than "Windows Media Format" on that page, though.
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Burn, Mir, Burn (Do You Like To Watch?) More

Burn, Mir, Burn (Do You Like To Watch?)

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  • Before they burn Mir up... (Score:5)

    by Greyfox ( 87712 ) on Saturday March 17, 2001 @03:40PM (#356999) Homepage Journal
    They should dock with it one last time and fill it full of marshallows. Then when it falls on that guy in New Zealand, his family will at least get something to eat out of it...

    Any bets on whether the RIAA's trying to arrange for it to land on Sealand?

  • Most of us will probably just see it as a shooting star, if even that. Mir is quite small, and depending on its re-entry speed, I don't think we'll see a whole lot.
  • 1) Mir was built, maintained and repaired by a much poorer space agency than the US's, and they kept a functional station in space for over twice its projected lifespan.

    2) Over the years cosmonauts at Mir have gathered much unglamorous data about the most efficient and comfortable ways to live in space station conditions for an extended period of time. The physiology and psychology of this is not dramatic or technical but it is crucial.

    3) There are many groups trying to profit off of the station's demise, which i think is a bit callous. Is it thrillseeking or morbid interest? At least they could donate money to the Russian space program from these commercial ventures, without some funds the Russian ISS-Alpha committment may not be passed over by the budget-makers axe next time around.

  • What media format does Linux use and why can't it play all media formats? I'm a Windows user (yes, I admit it) and I've been considering running linux, but I have no compelling reason yet. I wouldn't want to be able to do _fewer_ things tho, so I hope this is either a non-issue or gets resolved in Linux before I take the dive.

  • Re:Shooting Star (Score:4)

    by qnonsense ( 12235 ) on Saturday March 17, 2001 @03:52PM (#357003)
    • Most of us will probably just see it as a shooting star, if even that. Mir is quite small, and depending on its re-entry speed, I don't think we'll see a whole lot.
    Unless you're in the South Pacific, you're not going to see it at all.

    Hint: The Earth is curved....
  • Hint: The Earth is curved...

    Columbo would beg to differ...
  • I still think it would be very appropriate for a Russian space station to land on the White House.

    Oops... what were the chances of that happening? ;-)
  • Linux can read pretty much every non-proprietary format there is (legally), and even a few proprietary formats (semi-legally).

    --
  • "We're going to deorbit it"
    "No, we aren't going to deorbit it"
    (repeat 12x)

    I'll believe that Mir is being deorbited when I see it. Oh, wait...

    (end comment) */ }

  • Bye bye MIR.. (Score:4)

    by To0n ( 256520 ) on Saturday March 17, 2001 @03:57PM (#357008) Homepage
    You were the cockroach of Space Stations. Ugly as hell, had it's major problems, and now is going to be watched burned for the enjoyment of Pre and Post adolescent american males.

    What a shame.
  • I'd rather have it land on Jean Chretien...

    Hey, I'm canadian!

  • Hey folks - why not aggregate some bandwith from Iridium [iridium.com] for applications like this one? Surely you could get some bandwidth from them for cheap with a little cross-promotion marketing deal.
  • Its a cryin shame when people be throwing away a perfectly good white boy -er space station like that.

    I know its getting old, and it costs a ton of money, but it just seems like it could still be usefull to us.

    Somehow...
    --Joe Nerd

  • Re:Before they burn Mir up... (Score:3)

    by tristan f. ( 259738 ) on Saturday March 17, 2001 @04:01PM (#357012)
    Of course you are. No one else knows who that is.
  • THere haven't been many space stations for Mir to be compared against, you know.
    ----
  • Funny that, I'm using Linux because it lets me do *more* things. Have you ever tried to recompile your Windows kernel? ;-)
  • >Any bets on whether the RIAA's trying to arrange for it to land on Sealand?
    I've got a better idea, land it in Iraq,
    "oooops, we're sorry we crushed your hidden nuclear bomb lab."
    --------
  • The video will be broadcast four hours after re-entry, not two. "The film will be broadcast within about two hours of the plane's landing and the landing will be about two hours after Mir's fall to earth."
  • If I had to choose between trying to read/write ext2, RiserFS and NFS data in windows and recompiling a Linux/*BSD kernel, guess which I would prefer...

    --
  • If there were no laziness in the US, several industries would collapse overnight.

    So being non-lazy is un-American!

    --

  • That's pretty close to tahiti! (Score:4)

    by agallagh42 ( 301559 ) on Saturday March 17, 2001 @04:28PM (#357019) Homepage
    "The latest information on the location of the center of the debris impact area is approximately 2,000 nm south of Tahiti and 2,400 nm east of New Zealand in an area that is completely free of islands and any human habitation."

    Wow, 2,000 nm, they're cutting it pretty close ;-)

  • Latest Probable Deorbit Date (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The site currently target's Mir's 'latest probable deorbit date' as March 22.

    Actually the site says "March 22st", so they will be correct for both March 21st and March 22nd, by claiming the appropriate typo. That's quite clever.

  • This week's Talk of the Nation: Science Friday [npr.org] on NPR (hosted by Ira Flatow -- does anyone else remember Ira as host of the great kid's science program Newton's Apple?) had a great retrospective on Mir in their first hour's segment. Among the guests were astronaut Norman Thagard [nasa.gov] (who did a stint aboard Mir), Russian space expert James Oberg [jamesoberg.com] and Brian Burrough, author of Dragonfly: NASA and the Crisis Aboard Mir [amazon.com].

    I highly recommend listening to this program for anyone interested in Mir, it's history and contribution to space science.

  • I wonder what are the odds of a radio from mir falling in my backyard, intact!! :)

    "Why can't we ever attempt to solve a problem in this country without having a 'war' on it?"
    -- Rich Thomson, talk.politics.misc

  • This will never work (Score:5)

    by Brento ( 26177 ) <brento.brentozar@com> on Saturday March 17, 2001 @05:03PM (#357023) Homepage
    Their site is Slashdotted right now, and Mir isn't even falling yet! They're not even delivering serious video bandwidth, and they're already crippled. Methinks I'll wait a couple of days after the Mir flameout before I try to pull up this site again.

    Then again, maybe this is their devious way of testing whether their server equipment is up to delivering the Mir reentry video. Note to Navisite: beef it up, baby.
  • also, the people who keep joking about Mir conveniently forget that Skylab burned up a long time ago.

    --

  • The "nm" they are referring to is not "nanometers" as we have grown to expect. The unit they are referring to in this context is "nautical miles". Even so, they're still cutting it pretty close, as there aren't that many places on Earth with no people for 2,000 nautical miles in every direction.
  • yeh it will be useful.... to melt it down and make CPUs! =P
  • Uh, no. Most visible meteorites are about the size of a grain of sand, and the really bright ones are usually no bigger than a pebble. I think a several ton fragment will be QUITE visible over toward Japan and Australia.

  • ... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    the mir, the mir, the mir is on fire, we don't need no water let the mother *er burn
  • Considering the site has already been slashdotted into oblivion, and presumably they aren't even streaming any video yet, I wouldn't count on this working within hours of MIR's re-entry.

    If I were AOL, Radio Shack, or another of mirrentry.com's sponsors, I'd be a little uneasy with this.
  • I'd better go to Yahoo and buy hundreds of pillows to cover up my trailer home, otherwise I'm fucked!
  • The changes of russians dropping mir on one of their friends/allies are just about zero..
  • You George Bush voting jingoistic moron. I swear the propaganda in the US is worse than it ever was in the USSR.
  • Yes Mir is quite small, compared to say a block of apartments. However your average shooting star is not much bigger than a grain of sand, compared to which Mir is quite large.
  • I was sure it wouldn't, and I just checked to prove it to myself, but shockingly. It worked.

    Now, it's clearly not the best solution, I'd like to see platform independent players for all the media formats, and lacking that I'd like to see people stop using formats that are platform specific.

    Also, My system is dual-boot, not sure how well it would work on a system where wine doesn't have a real c:\windows directory to call out to.

    When I discover stuff like this, I find myself having to reboot less and less......
  • Quite frankly, a lot of us would ratter not know him.

    Think of him as Canada's Al Gore, but on acids.

    Karma karma karma karma karmeleon: it comes and goes, it comes and goes.
  • My get rich quick scheme for Mir.

    FACT: The Russian Government has taken out a $200 Million insurance
    policy in case Mir comes down on somebody.

    CONCLUSION: Its up to us to be clever enough to win that policy.

    PLAN:

    1.) Buy, Rent, Charter or otherwise take posession of a small
    ocean-going cargo vessel in New Zealand. Hire your friends/relatives
    to be your crew/employees.

    2.) Conspicuously leave harbor w/ crew and "valuable cargo" of
    diamonds, etc.

    3.) A mile or two out to sea, put the ship on autopilot in the right
    direction, and jump ship, swim back or use zodiacs.

    4.) Using timer/remote control set off a distress beacon just after
    Mir re-enters, preferrably with a tape recording saying "help me!"
    Then set off an explosion in the fuel tank which will sink the ship.
    Be sure to leave lots of life jackets & other flotsam on the deck for
    the coast guard to find afterwards.

    5.) Now, as the president of the company that lost the ship,
    simply sue Russia for:

    ---$100 Million in lost diamonds
    ---$50 Million per lost crew/family member.

    Sure your buddies will have to hide out for a while (like the
    Great Train robbery guys) But is this foolproof or what?

  • I haven't found much material on people being so hopped up to watch Skylab take it's swan dive into the pacific 20 or so years ago. How should this be different?
  • The US spent $2 million designing a pen that will write in space, the russains used a pencil.

  • I saw a satellite re-entry (that's what it looked like, compared to known re-entries that have been filmed) over Nevada about a year and a half ago at Burning Man. Let me tell you, it did not look like just a shooting star. It looked like a tonne of shooting stars all spreading appart burning bright. Very cool. I'll envy whoever sees Mir's re-entry, because I'll bet it's a fair bit bigger than most satellite re-entrys that have been seen before.
  • I caught a small news bit on the radio [wrif.com] a couple days ago about a charter jet that will fly people out to the area where it is expected to land in the ocean.

    Better have some bucks though.
    It's gonna cost like $5000 per ticket.

    For that price, you can be damn sure that I'd be requesting a window seat!
  • I was thinking more along the lines of popcorn kernals. I can see it now: "Look ma, its raining popcorn!"
  • Think of him as Canada's Al Gore, but on acids.

    I think Dan Quayle would be more appropriate...
  • I may be wrong and I'm not in a position to confirm at this time, but I believe that the avifile libraries play back windows media format files. The Windows media file format is documented and playback can be implemented across platforms. Unlike Sorenson-encoded Quick Time files. (One of the reasons I consider Apple more hostile to open computing than Microsoft is.)
  • So wait. I pay $5000 for the privilege to be this landing zone of a huge cloud of fast-moving debris? Wow. The US government should bring back above ground nuclear weapons testing, and just sell tickets to be near ground-zero when the bomb goes off. You won't need to experiment on unsuspecting Army soldiers anymore, and you'll get money.
  • What we need is for some brilliant and enterprising Open Source type geek with connections at JPL to arrange for the fall to drop on a large corporate campus in a suburb of Seattle... you know, since the earthquake failed.

    Any takers?
  • Sorry to intrude on the popular /. topic of American bashing, but this isn't true. NASA used pencils until 1967, when Paul Fisher, on his own, decided to develop the space pen. The Russians have used this pen since 1968 as well. See http://www.snopes2.com/business/genius/spacepen.ht m
  • Instead of taking digs at Windows Media Player when posting articles, why doesn't the Unix community come up with something that is even half as useful for streaming video? True, realplayer is on Unix, but it's just not the best solution.
  • "Reportedly, only one person has been struck by debris from a reentering satellite in the history of our use of space--about 40 years. Fortunately, this person was hit by a lightweight object and was not injured. "

    Gee whiz guy, it isn't about size, it's about kinetic energy. At least that's what Mister Winchester told me.

    Here's NASA's real-time tracking site [nasa.gov].

    __________________

  • window seat is $10000 .. few mir cosmonauts + Edwin 'Buzz' Aldrin will also be in that plane. here's the link [mirreentry.com] and here's the application form [mirreentry.com] if you are really interested :-)
  • I can just see the news stories now... MIr completed it's decent into the atmosphere today in a flaming ball of fire. Before starting it's deorbit, however, Mir accidently hit the newly constructed International Space Station, destroying everything. There was only one surviving module: the Russian module. We can't win!!
  • According to this [cnn.com] article, mutant fungi has developed on Mir that is highly toxic and corrosive. You heard me, mutant fungi. Is it right for us to destroy Mir? By destroying Mir we are destroying a new life form. We are playing fungi-god.

    There may be uses for this fungi. The next big pizza topping? It may have good hallucinogenic properties? (i.e. mutant "shrooms"). Good in a chef salad?

    On a serious note, we should preserve some of it before it is burned up in reentry. It would allow us to study how organisms evolve in a completely isolated environment, and one that is free of predators. Apparently the fungi was really wreaking havoc on the station, destroying hosing and electrical components.

    We're going to be spending a lot of time in space from now on, we need to know about this sort of phenomenon so we can take steps to stop it. The only way man will be able to economically live in space for long periods of time is in a symbiotic relationship with oxygen producing plant life. If that plant life mutates out of control we have a big problem.
  • No no no! Let's make a race out of it. Iridium VS Mir - who burns faster ;)
  • I've never seen any answer to why the Mir space station hasn't been included in space station alpha instead of jetisonned. It would probably be cheaper to upgrade Mir and attach it to the new space station than it would be to build all kinds of new components that do what it does anyway. Does someone have an answer?

    (And what would a hybrid be called? Mir++?)
  • Instead of taking digs at Windows Media Player
    > when posting articles, why doesn't the Unix
    >community come up with something that is even
    >half as useful for streaming video? True, realplayer
    >is on Unix, but it's just not the best solution.

    Forgive me for feeding the troll, but actually... it's worse (and funnier) than just being a Microsoft-only format. It's a 'Win2000/98/ME-only' format. Microsoft have *deliberately* refused to port the latest version. of MediaPlayer to NT4 (which I'm lazy enough still to be using at home, (alongside BSD, Solaris & Linux). The file format for what might be a cool animation of the MIR re-entry (simulated) is .wmv, which doesn't play on the latest NT4-supported Media Player.

    #INCLUDE obvious comments about Free software being more useful / not driven by marketing or the need to grow sales and thus the stock price of proprietary ISVs...
    --
    If the good lord had meant me to live in Los Angeles

  • Actutally im glad that they turned into some minor competitor. The "think different!" campaign is the ultimate irony. It should read "Our way is right!", like in Eastgermany before reunion ;-) Lispy
  • ..to me why they still have their website advertising a service they cant no longer provide?? Isnt Iridium dead? Or is some madman planning on relaunching the idea? Yuk! Lispy
  • Good morning this is your captain speaking. At this time we would now request that all hitchhikers on board the Mir please evacuate or suffer the consequences. Thank you and enjoy your flight!
  • from the flies-through-the-air-with-the-greatest-disease dept.

    That is the funniest thing I've read in a good long while... Great job guys!

    JDW
  • Or maybe they'll be streaming using something like Akamai.
  • In the article "chronology" it is mentioned that lightweight trash and foam are among the items expected to survive. They quickly lose their momentum because they don't have much mass and flutter down like snow.
  • Because the equipment is physically deteriorating and wouldn't be useful for much more than storage. Of course, once that last little bit breaks, it becomes a serious liability - and danger - for Alpha.
  • > I've never seen any answer to why the Mir space
    > station hasn't been included in space station
    > alpha instead of jetisonned.

    I am not an aeronautical engineer (IANAAE), so I'll just be touching a couple of points that I can think of. The reality will be much worse.

    First, there is the question of orbit. Mir is in the wrong orbit. Mir's orbit is inclined so far that Atlantis is the only space shuttle that can get to it and carry the slightest bit of load. If we were to use Mir, we'd either have to change it's orbital inclination (using dozens of Russian progress tankers), or forget about the US being able to participate in any meaningful way.

    Secondly, Mir vibrates too much. ISS's biggest headache is to keep the station extremely still so that experiments like crystal growth can be cunducted. Bolting noisy old Mir onto the side of ISS would destroy your ability to do good science.

    Thirdly, you would loose Mir's zero-gravity lab. On a space station complex, only the module at the station's center of gravity has true zero-gravity. All other modules have a very slight gravity pulling the contents towards the outside of the station. The larger the station, the worse this gets. It is enough that crystal growth experiments can't be conducted anywhere but one place.

    Fourth, Mir doesn't meet ISS's safety code. The rules on ISS are that no single failure can endanger the mission objectives, no double failure can endanger the crew. Mir was built using a more economical philosophy whereby if duct tape would fix it, it was ok.

    Fifth, ISS was designed from the ground up to be maintained robotically. Up to now we've seen one (dangerous) space walk after another. This practice stops as of the next mission. That's when Canada's robotic arm gets installed. Every part of ISS is designed to be accessible to this arm. There are data grapples, optical markers, and other aids all over. Spacewalks will become extremely rare. Mir has no provision for external robotic maintenance.

    Sixth, Mir is way beyond the end of its life-span. Things are starting to break and wear out at an alarming rate. Much of the crew's time is spent just keeping the station alive. Starting from scratch means you can spend more time on science then fixing the ventalation system.

    As I said before, I am not an aeronautical engineer, and the preceeding would just be the tip of the iceberg. It is certainly simpler to start from scratch, having learned the lessons of Mir.
    --

  • >Gee whiz guy, it isn't about size, it's about kinetic energy.

    The item in question was a peice of wire mesh from a Delta rocket that hit a woman in Tulsa, Okla back in the 1960s.

    Terminal velocity for wire mesh is about 1m/s. You are absolutely correct that it's about kinetic energy, not size. But in this case the kinetic energy of 100g moving at 1m/s is not something one has to worry about.
    --

  • Could someone please tell me why Mir has to be destroyed? I grant that Mir is now obsolete, and that keeping it functional would cost more and more as the years go by. But instead of crashing it into the Pacific, why is it not feasible to use the same fuel to boost it into an orbit that will last for a century or so, then shut it down, vent the atmosphere, and leave it?

    Throughout history we are quick to destroy anything that is obsolete, without thinking that within a short period of time the offending object will become historic and priceless. "Colossus" the first computer, "Rocket" the first locomotive and all the great airships are just some examples of things that were destroyed without a thought to posterity.
    --

  • Mir is easily naked-eye visible from the surface of the Earth, even against city lights. If you've never seen it, well, it's getting awfully close to your last chance. Go to the excellently interesting Heavens Above [heavens-above.com], choose a location from the database (near enough is good enough), and click on "Mir", under the 10-day predictions. If you have any passes before the 22nd, click on the date for a sky chart.

    Visible passes are always in the couple of hours after sunset or before sunrise, when the sky is black but Mir is still in sunlight. Pass predictions are usually spot-on, except when the satellite in question has just changed its orbit. It sounds like Mir's orbit isn't gonna change until they go for the big burn on Thursday. When you spot it, it'll look like a red (how appropriate) star, moving though the sky. It'll cover half the sky or so in just five minutes or so.

  • Approximate time to reentry while posting this message:
    4 Days 02 Hours 26 Minutes

    Wanda Says:
    "The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who, in the times of moral crisis, preserved their neutrality."
    -- Dante
  • Another place to watch Mir falling in realtime is this VRML model [parallelgraphics.com]. The company itself makes Cortona VRML plugin for Windows-based browsers; can't say if this can be vieweed by any of Linux viewers, but one surely can give it a try.
  • Should we let it die in peace? I agree with the 3'd point and perhaps we shouldn't hype it like so many other things. But still it's such a well known station that you have to see it's final demise. If I remember correcly the station got damaged a few months back and that cut it's life short. To bad it's got to go because at least I'll miss having the station up there. // yendor
    --
    It could be coffe.... or it could just be some warm brown liquid containing lots of caffeen.
  • wow, how incredibly awe inspiring. pragmatism dictates that i use linux for my networking needs, and windows for my entertainment needs. I wouldn't use a windows box for rendering extreme graphics movies... I'd use a sgi. Does that mean that an sgi is better than windows or linux? Jesus Christ, you zealots all sound alike. "My OS Can kick Your OS's ass" "Nuh uh!".
  • Hint: The Earth is curved....

    Why, because Encarta says so? It also says that the NASA landed on the Moon in 1969.
    __
  • http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/realtime/JTrack/Space craft.html

    Really, really, cool stuff.
    --
  • I read an interview with a cosmonaut that spent more than 2 years there. He said that Mir's time was past. Some of the components were more expensive to repair than starting again. Though, he didn't understand why some of the equipment wasn't salvaged. It was very costly.

    He also missed some of his personal things (books, a computer) that he had to leave in the station. So if you are in the Pacific and want a Russian laptop, one could fall onto your hands.
    __
  • after lookin at the fairly extensive list of burn in push backs, i had to wonder, is this thing ever going to come down?
  • I think that we should just destroy mir while still in orbit. AND LET THE RUSSIANS HAVE NO HAND IN SO IT GET'S DONE RIGHT!

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