Astronaut Wants Space Program With No Frills 360
colonist writes "A veteran astronaut wants less comfort and more exploration for future missions. British-born astrophysicist Michael Foale has clocked up 374 days in space, more than any other American astronaut. Foale said, 'We need lean and mean spaceships with no frills', such as toilets or kitchen. However, he would like better oxygen-producing systems for the space station. Foale also talked about the Russians: they played 'some sort of Russian folk song. I'm not so sure it calmed me a lot.' As Foale boarded the Soyuz, an official kicked him in the back: a Russian launch tradition. From space, Foale saw a large black cloud over the Middle East: smoke from a bombed oil pipeline in Iraq."
unsure (Score:4, Funny)
-nB
Re:unsure (Score:3, Funny)
Re:unsure (Score:3, Funny)
Re:unsure (Score:4, Funny)
Might explain the need for better oxygen producers!
_______________
Re:unsure (Score:5, Funny)
Re:unsure (Score:3)
Re:unsure (Score:5, Funny)
Re:unsure (Score:5, Informative)
Re:unsure (Score:5, Funny)
Can I get one for my computer chair?
Re:unsure (Score:2)
Re:unsure (Score:3, Funny)
RTFA for some context (Score:5, Informative)
"I think we are already good enough on ISS, even for a crew of six," Foale said
"The line for the toilet is never that bad," he laughed.
I assume he isn't against toilets in general!
Re:RTFA for some context (Score:3, Insightful)
Well? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Well? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Well? (Score:5, Informative)
For a change, a"Back in my day..."comment is actually accurate. Alan Shepard [thespaceplace.com] had to do it in his suit!
Re:Well? (Score:5, Informative)
Alan Shepard didn't... Here [spacetoday.org] is an interesting page about "creature comforts" in space.
Re:Well? (Score:3, Funny)
I guess there is more truth to it than I thought
A kick in the back? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:A kick in the back? (Score:5, Informative)
Except he is British (Score:3, Informative)
e.g. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/3298031.stm
Re:Except he is British (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Except he is British (Score:2)
Re:Except he is British (Score:5, Informative)
Notice the difference between: British-born and British
From the BBC:
The US-flag on his uniform could also be taken as a pointer.
H1-B astronauts? (Score:5, Funny)
CC: Hello, this is Sri. How are you this evening?
SM: Not too good. The oxygen generator has stopped working.
CC:Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. I see you have a Acme SpaceOx Mk IV oxygen generator. Let's try a few things. Are you by the unit? I'm going to ask you to turn the power off and back on again? The power switch is the red one in the lower left corner. Can you see it?
SM:I got it.
CC:Now push down on it. The unit should be off now. Is it off?
Re:H1-B astronauts? (Score:3, Funny)
Customer Service: Hi, my name is Ravi. What is the needful for which I may do you today?
Spaceman: My oxygen generator has stopped working.
Customer Service: Ah yes, your oxygen is not working. Hence, kindly turn the unit off and then back on to do the needful.
*silence*
Customer Service: Hello, spaceman? Did you kindly do the needful? Hello?
Re:Except he is British (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Except he is British (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Except he is British (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Except he is British (Score:2)
Re:Except he is British (Score:2)
page [216.239.59.104]
a very intresting article! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:a very intresting article! (Score:5, Funny)
Russian traditions? (Score:5, Funny)
What? Kicking ass is a proud American tradition with a long history. This is just an example of the westernization of Russia.
No toilets? Wouldn't that make for a really shitty space program?
Re:Russian traditions? (Score:2)
After seeing public restrooms in back-woods russia, I'd say they're just trying to make the place feel like home.
Future thinking (Score:2, Interesting)
Leaving the Garden of Eden (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't neccesarily mean that there will have to be some sort of global catastrophe, just that there will be no real exploration until a group of humans blasts off from Earth with no prospects to return. Ideally, they would be volunteers, but I don't think they can be the perfect psychological and physical specimens we're used to sending into space.
Space simply won't be a "real" place until we have a real human presence, and that means the bad as well as the good. Expanding into the new world takes more than just tilling the land and never moving on. To extend the Eden analogy further: Man didn't really start his journey until Cain's jealousy reached its breaking point. I don't think that's a story of one guy who got mad at his brother -- it's an allegory about mankind's darker side, and how it's an integral part of our experience.
To take a more recent example: when the US lost a dozen-plus troops in Somalia, we left with our tail tucked between our legs. Same thing a few years earlier in Beirut, when a few hundred troops were killed. But now, after losing several thousand lives in 9/11, we're able to bear the loss of hundreds in Iraq and Afghanistan... instead of turning tail, we're actually debating the issue.
We won't reach space in any meaningful way until all of humanity is represented -- both good and bad. That's why we're just spinning our wheels at the moment, playing on the outskirts of Eden. It won't be until Cain shows up -- until someone walks out the airlock in despair, someone fights over resources or a mate, or until there's a war over some metal-rich asteroid -- that humans will truly be able to call themselves citizens of space.
Re:Leaving the Garden of Eden (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Leaving the Garden of Eden (Score:2)
I wish you were not right about the "flaiming sword" point, but you are.
It's just that this (not so) perfect psychological and physical specimen really would like some basics if I "ain't comin back".
As to the article: I really liked the concept of using the space station as a base for Lunar exploration and, in turn using the Moon as a base of operations for a Mars expidition.
-nB
Re:Leaving the Garden of Eden (Score:2)
Well you can't throwing money and people at space either. If certain safty procautions aren't met you'
Re:Leaving the Garden of Eden (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Leaving the Garden of Eden (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Leaving the Garden of Eden (Score:5, Insightful)
If there was some sort of actual incentive to go to space, like Earth being growingly uninhabitable or some sort of extremely rare material only available on an asteroid, then yes, space "exploration" would increase. That's what you seem to be saying - but that's really quite obvious, isn't it? But for now the only incentive is academic, and most of the actual exploring is better done from Earth itself.
Re:Leaving the Garden of Eden (Score:4, Insightful)
Almost there.
some sort of extremely rare material only available on an asteroid
Helium 3. Gold nuggets the size of your head. mountains of pure iron. All in a place with no zoning regulations or air quality standards.
How's that for incentive?
Re:Leaving the Garden of Eden (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Leaving the Garden of Eden (Score:3, Insightful)
Space exploration is about man reaching out and wonderment, not about man being nagged to get off the couch and get the groceries from the car.
>Space simply won't be a "real" place until we have a real human presence
And why do we need to have space become "real" as opposed to what it is now. ("non-real"?)
Re:Leaving the Garden of Eden (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Leaving the Garden of Eden (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Leaving the Garden of Eden (Score:4, Insightful)
I recall one South Asian country pulled from Iraq after a few of their hostages were killed, but America still are there after over a thousand military deaths.
>It's no coincidence in my opinion that Americans have no real heroes because nobody lays their life on the line for big ideas.
When did a hero become someone who throws their life away like yesterday's newspaper? A life-long dedication I can see, but not if the life isn't that long.
>You don't see Foale or Benjamin Harris saying "Fuck it all. Today is a good day to die."
Maybe because its a dumb thing to say except when you are showing-off?
Re:Leaving the Garden of Eden (Score:4, Insightful)
>You don't see Foale or Benjamin Harris saying "Fuck it all. Today is a good day to die."
Maybe because its a dumb thing to say except when you are showing-off?
I say it every day. It has nothing to do with "showing off." In has to do with attitude. Fear tends to find it's way into everything in the U.S. We have a culture of fear. We buy stuff to fight fear and we declare War on whatever we fear when we can't just throw money at it so it goes away.
Accepting death is the only way to make sure you live without regret.
Yes, I'm karma whoring... (Score:3, Insightful)
"The object of war is not to die for your country, but to make the other bastard die for his." -- George Patton
Re:Leaving the Garden of Eden (Score:2)
. . . but if you relax that constraint, think of the possibilities! Example: isn't it an election year in the U.S.? I can think of several candidates (so to speak) for a one-way trip into space.
Re:Leaving the Garden of Eden (Score:2)
Life in space would be hard for a few years, but it could be a lot better with time.
Cost cutting (Score:4, Funny)
3 1/2' of 3/4 PVC tubing could replace both of them.
That will stop all those people joining the space program just for the free feed, right!
When *I* was your age (Score:5, Funny)
Re:When *I* was your age (Score:4, Funny)
Re:When *I* was your age (Score:5, Funny)
strange imagery (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:strange imagery (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:strange imagery (Score:2, Insightful)
A Russian Tradition? (Score:5, Funny)
I doubt that this is a Russian tradition. It's what my last boss did when he showed me my cube.
In Soviet Russia... (Score:4, Funny)
ass kicks YOU!
The truth about our near term space future (Score:5, Informative)
The money is already there (Score:5, Insightful)
NASA gets around $16 billion a year. With the new plan of scrapping the shuttle and abandoning the ISS, that' frees up about $6 billion. If we have a timescale of say 20 years to get a presence on Mars, that's $120 billion. If you're a member of the church of the $1 trillion mars mission, that's not enough. However, if you use Mars Direct or the NASA Mars reference mission plan, that's plenty of money.
As long as the American people are willing to pay 1 cent on the dollar for NASA as they currently do, the money to get to Mars will be there. It's just a matter of maintaining the political will to do it.
Re:The money is already there (Score:2)
Where is there a plan to abandon ISS?
Re:The money is already there (Score:2)
in a nutshell: get shuttles flying again, finish building ISS to fulfill commitments, ground shuttles, stop burning money on building/maintaining ISS.
Re:The money is already there (Score:2)
Our first goal is to complete the International Space Station by 2010
another quote:
To meet this goal, we will return the Space Shuttle to flight as soon as possible
This doesn't tell me anything is changing in the next decade. ISS will take until 2015. 2010 is a pipe dream. Add another five years of maintainence. The shuttle replacements have apparently been right around the corner for a decade or more. I will believe it when I see Congress pass funding for a specific design.
Unt
Re:The money is already there (Score:2)
Retire the Space Shuttle as soon as assembly of the International Space Station is completed, planned for the end of this decade;
If you want to talk about quagmires, the Shuttle and ISS are poster children. Planning to disengage from it ASAP is the best thing that NASA could do.
Re:The money is already there (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm a proud, card-carrying member of the church of the $1T mars mission.
It cost almost $1B to put two measly 200kg robots on mars. No matter how you slice it, it's going to easily cost 1000X that to design, test, certify and launch enough infrastructure to Mars to support humans for ~2 years and then bring them back with reasonable margins of safety.
I don't care how many authors and futurists claim that it's only goi
Re:The money is already there (Score:3, Informative)
How about NASA and the ESA saying that it will cost tens of billions [marssociety.org]? Do the analyses of rocket scientists and nuclear physicists carry any sway with you?
Of course, I could always trust estimates that work like this: "It costs $X to do something easy. Therefore, it will cost 1000 times that to do something harder".
Re:The money is already there (Score:3, Informative)
Rocket scientists also made wildly estimates for the costs of the space shuttle and the ISS that were off by factors of 10 to 100.
We'll never know if their estimates were right or not, since congress made them build a different system than the one they estimated for. The main reason the estimates were off is that what they were calling "The Space Shuttle" and what we today call "The Space Shuttle" are completely different things with nothing similar between them other than the name. They advocated a
eXtreme space exploration (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The truth about our near term space future (Score:2, Funny)
Humans Need Confort (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Humans Need Confort (Score:5, Funny)
Speak for yourself, but I'd pay to hear Dan Rather open a show with "The recent space exploration project has been called off, after one of the austronauts had his anus sucked too fast"
Re:Humans Need Confort (Score:5, Insightful)
What history class did you sit through? It took about 60 days for the pilgrims to get to America. Imagine 102 people on a 90 foot boat [rr.com] with no shower facilities, rampant seasickness, scurvy and dysentery, and the only toilet facilities being the open sea. And when they get to where they're going, they have to start by building their friggin' houses so they don't freeze to death.
Now imagine walking 2,000 miles across harsh wilderness populated by people who will kill you as soon as trade with you, knowing that 10% of your party will die along the way. Surely nobody will want to go, right?
As for food, any long-term space trip will involve growing food, particularly a Mars mission. You *do* know that we grow food out of the dirt. It doesn't just appear on supermarket shelves. People will have to learn how to grow their food or they will *die.*
Also, any human presence in space will require that all people have a working knowledge of almost every system as well as how to make tools from local materials.
So, yeah, people now are lazy pigs who want to sit around all day and complain. But I, and I'm sure many other people, are willing to go and face the hardships. Some want to get away from people, others want religious freedom.
Sidenote: I don't think Al Qaeda would be trying to kill people if they had a way to move away from the influences they dislike.
splat (Score:3, Funny)
Ah, the nature-loving Russians, simulating the snap of surface tension felt by a raindrop departing its childhood cloud, precipitating away from its teeming comrades, hurtling towards the planet it could before have only stared at in wonder.
Re:splat (Score:2)
Re:splat (Score:2)
No frills eh? (Score:3, Funny)
I'd say we attach a big bucket (made of a potato chip) to a hot air ballon, and float the astronauts into space!
They can also eat the bucket when they are going up too. By the time they reach the zero gravity zone they won't need the bucket anyway! Then for reentry they just use the ballon as a parachute!
The ultimate no-frills space travel!
He forgot something (Score:2)
Well, sure. He forgot to eat plain yogurt while listening to it.
Mountain of madness (Score:2, Funny)
Lincoln would like some more dehydrated yams, and tell Hitler over there to stop staring at me.
Re:Mountain of madness (Score:2)
Blurring the line between merriness -- and MADNESS!
But does he have the right stuff? (Score:3, Funny)
Nothing will further space exploration more than.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Even a simple one, little more than a winch that can lower payloads to space and back safely, would bring cheap solar power and a station on the moon within easy reach.
Anyone in the white house listening?
Re:Nothing will further space exploration more tha (Score:4, Insightful)
Not for leaving the planet. Even exotic-energy bubbles of collapsing and expaning space won't help with that; they're space-only, like Ion drives.
Or maybe transporters.
The only theoretical mechanism for "transporters" requires a significant infrastructure at both ends.
Just as feasible too.
Not really. We have materials that are theoretically usable for a space elevator. It doesn't break any extant laws of physics.
And it was thought up by engineers, not TV scriptwriters.
Re:Nothing will further space exploration more tha (Score:3, Informative)
Interesting contrast (Score:4, Insightful)
So obviously this is a guy who knows about the dangers and travails of space exploration, but at the same time it's interesting to contrast how this new opinion conflicts -in some ways- with his earlier statements.
Mental health (Score:5, Funny)
[...] the prospect of a Christmas feast for two was depressing until the two astronauts found a solution: Invite some guests. The memorable feast was captured in a photograph showing the two men with their guests, two empty spacesuits carefully propped in dining position.
Yeah, they were a few weeks away from dressing up as their mothers.
Maybe they need a few more people up there.
Best line from the article (Score:2)
RP
Speaking of comforts (Score:3, Funny)
I bet it's NASA dirty little secret:)
Re:Speaking of comforts (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, it would be the 200 Mile High Club (station orbits at about 350 km [nasa.gov]).
I highly doubt that the astronauts have. The only time it would be likely is during a long-term Space Station stay, since shuttle missions are too short. And considering the psychology of three people crammed into a tiny space for months at a time, I seriously doubt that anybody would be feeling particularly excited. Astronauts by nature are not very impulsive people (at least the ones we have now; not true for the Mercury/Gemini/Apollo crews) and would understand the impact of such an encounter on their ability to work together professionally.
Although, I think I feel a reality series coming on...
Coming this Fall to Fox:
We took 8 people and stranded them 200 hundred miles above the ground. Watch as they struggle with life, love and the vaccuum of outer space on...
SPACE STATION SURVIVOR.
The losers get the airlock...
I'd pay money... (Score:4, Funny)
"Oh, I'm sorry, Carrottop. You've been voted off the station. The crew has spoken."
Oh... I salivate at the very thought.
-Jellisky
-enjoying morbidly fun thoughts since 1978.
Re:Speaking of comforts (Score:5, Insightful)
NASA pretty much has said it's never happened on one of their missions, even with the best possibility being a 1992 shuttle mission with a husband and wife on the same crew, but they had opposite shifts and reports were also that nothing happened.
Anyway, I'd bet the answer is yes, and that it was the old-era Soviets who did it first.
Space is really lonely (Score:5, Funny)
"Hey, we wanted company," Foale deadpanned. [/i]
- Some of our unnamed sources also report that on the sound records from the space station they could heard the following:
-Wilson. WILSON! Don't go, Wilson, don't go.
Re:WE DONT NEED SPACE EXPLORATION! (Score:2, Insightful)
in fact lets just do away with all nonessential services.
yeah thats the best idea, lets put 40-50 million people out of work.
Re:WE DONT NEED SPACE EXPLORATION! (Score:5, Insightful)
Space exploration gives us knowledge. War is unfortunate, but sometimes necessary. I wish we didn't have to spend money on war. But humans are vile creatures when it comes down to it, and so we need to spend money to kill and prevent being killed.
Re:WE DONT NEED SPACE EXPLORATION! (Score:2)
This election is a loser? Next you'll be saying you eat pieces of shit for breakfast.
Or Dubya: "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." [whitehouse.gov]
Re:Money (Score:2)
Yes, giving to the poor is nice. It would be even nicer to fix the infrastructure of poor countries so that they can supply themselves though. And quickly looking at your page, you seem to agree!
Re:I'll just use them all up here... (Score:2)