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Space Science

Russian Supply Ship Docks At ISS 196

Posted by timothy from the nutella-duct-tape-and-string-cheese dept.
CryptoJoe writes "Space.com and CNN report a successful docking between the Russian-built cargo ship Progress 16 and the International Space Station (ISS). NASA had indicated that a failure of Progress 16 would lead to the evacuation of the ISS because food supplies are critically low."
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Russian Supply Ship Docks At ISS More

Russian Supply Ship Docks At ISS

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  • The truth (Score:4, Funny)

    by gulfan ( 524955 ) on Sunday December 26, 2004 @12:41AM (#11183614)
    The real truth is that all the members of the ISS team are actually on a weight loss program and are currently fasting.

  • Priorities (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    If this is how we are going to do it, we should not be doing it. We should either commit the resources to do the project correctly or we move on to other needs.

    • Re:Priorities (Score:2, Insightful)

      by traveyes ( 262759 )
      well... they got the food there. they must've done something right.

      .

    • Re:Priorities (Score:5, Insightful)

      by DM9290 ( 797337 ) on Sunday December 26, 2004 @02:13AM (#11183825) Journal
      If this is how we are going to do it, we should not be doing it. We should either commit the resources to do the project correctly or we move on to other needs.

      Are you talking about the ISS or are you talking about the space shuttle?

      Because the critical design flaw in the space shuttle, which has resulted in the grounding of the fleet, was NOT part of the plan.

      But in the real world you overcome problems when they occur. If everyone always gave up and moved on to "other needs" at the slightest hickup, we would always be moving on the other needs without ever satisfying any of them.

      Space travel is dangerous. No one is putting a gun to those astronauts' heads.

    • Re:Priorities (Score:3, Interesting)

      by tftp ( 111690 )
      commit the resources to do the project correctly

      This never happened before in humanity's recorded history :-)

      And besides, how do you apply the word "correctly" to the art of spaceflight? There is no single correct way to do things. There is no even a single correct way to cross the street, as far as I know. If you require perfection then I guess you should remain dirtside until some [supposedly] benevolent extraterrestrials, like Qax [york.ac.uk], offer you a free ride in one of their ships. Anything else invol

  • Man... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Icarus1919 ( 802533 ) on Sunday December 26, 2004 @12:46AM (#11183622)
    Man, it's a slow news day. Next headline: Man eats christmas dinner, says it's pretty good.

  • Not to sound like an ass (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 26, 2004 @12:53AM (#11183647)
    Not to sound like an ass but how could food supplies ever get that low.

    Every detail/mission about the ISS is planned from start to finish. Including food stocks. Was there not a red flag somewhere that said "okay, we are going to be there for x days but have y amount of food?" No stays are "overextended" moreso that their food stores should be able to cover them in the event they can't make it back to earth (weather or other prohibiting factors)

    Sure they've remedy'd it now but I'm scared at what could go wrong with something like a Mars mission where you can't just send up a supply ship...

    • Re:Not to sound like an ass (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Phil246 ( 803464 ) on Sunday December 26, 2004 @12:56AM (#11183657)
      remember the shuttle burning up? Thats a major cause to why the supplies ever got that low in the first place.
      nasa grounded all shuttle flights if you remember, and relied on the russians to send things up there.
      • Well at least the crew had plenty of alcohol. Remind me what the problem was?

    • Re:Not to sound like an ass (Score:5, Interesting)

      by cyclone96 ( 129449 ) on Sunday December 26, 2004 @01:10AM (#11183708)
      Caveat: I work for NASA.

      Actually, you don't sound like an ass at all. It's a good question.

      Yes, things are planned to great detail on ISS. However, the devil is always in the details. Assumptions are made (sometimes over a year in advance)on how much the crew eats, when resupply comes up, when the shuttle is going to fly, and how to parcel out limited upmass between food, water, and spare parts, etc. It's tough when you only have Progress for resupply. This time, we got bit.

      And yeah, we gotta figure this sort of stuff out before we can go to Mars. Which ISS is useful for. Forgetting about the pure science for a moment (which a lot of folks question), ISS is a great engineering platform for how (or how not) to build things and manage humans in space. And we're learning from it.

      As time goes on, NASA is going to try to make ISS more automatic and less dependent on the ground. NASA is going to try to wring out hardware that could be used on the way to Mars in an environment on ISS where a breakdown won't lead to death of the crew. And NASA is going to try to find flaws in logistics and planning (like this) and not allow it to happen where the stakes are higher.

      • I have a few questions for you, since you work at NASA...if you could contact me on AIM...or e-mail me, or something(I also have MSN and ICQ if you want), I would like to talk to you. But, as we are on /., let me not make this post pointless. Let me ask you...why havn't we colonized the moon at all? In fact...why have a abandoned the moon? It would be far simpler and far more advantages then ISS, don't you think?
        • You're likely not going to get a reply on this. Your initial question was good but you flew off the handle there on your follow-up. How can a NASA engineer answer a question like that? The only person who can answer that is someone in charge.

          And unless you have a personal AIM link to George Bush and/or Sean O'Keefe, good luck buddy.

        • Re:Not to sound like an ass (Score:5, Interesting)

          by tftp ( 111690 ) on Sunday December 26, 2004 @03:15AM (#11183921) Homepage
          Well, I am not cyclone96, but why not to reply anyway... not that there is anything else to do :-)

          The Moon is not colonized because nobody was willing to pay for it. There are many places on Earth that are not colonized, and still are more comfortable to live in than Moon. Look at most of Canada, for example :-)

          The whole Moon exercise was only a competition between two countries. Once the finish line was crossed, it became apparent that there is nothing for humans on the Moon.

          With regard to "far simpler than ISS", you must be joking. Launch to LEO lasts 10 minutes; flight to the Moon takes three days. If your oxygen fails on LEO (or if you run out of food) you simply fire the engine and descend, even ballistically if need be; if anything fails on the way to the Moon, or while there, your chances of survival are minimal.

          A colony on the Moon is not practical now simply because there is nothing for colonists to do there. We do not have skintight spacesuits, we do not have portable fusion batteries, we don't have anything that would help the colony there. Imagine 10 people dumped on the surface, maybe with a portable tent. What are they going to do there? You can give them only so much of supplies, and what happens after they run out?

          A proper colony needs to build the base first, and for that they need very good tunneling equipment, sealants and plenty of machinery like airlocks. They need a source of energy, and nothing short of nuclear will do. They need a source of oxygen and water, and though that can be mined, they need to be given tools for such mining (some robots, most likely.) We are talking about hundreds (if not thousands) of tons of materials and supplies just to get started. Today's technology can deliver maybe half a ton, maybe more - but we are still two orders of magnitude below what's needed, and we don't have the payload anyway (where are those robots who would be mining the rocks for He(3) ?)

          So ISS is something that we can do, here and now. It is relatively safe, uses technology that is within our reach, and allows us to build and test new devices and new methods. Colonization of other planets will become possible only after some major advances in technology, primarily in propulsion and then in robotics. You just can not colonize a hostile world without robots, and our existing robots are not even close to what is needed.

      • Funny reasoning here (Score:2, Interesting)

        by melted ( 227442 )
        OK, so you're saying Russians are guilty because NASA fucked up the Shuttle program. Is it just me or someone else thinks this reasoning is funny?

        Let's not forget that the sole reason why ANYONE is still up there is because Russians have more reliable transport spacecraft.

        "NASA is going to try, blah blah blah..." Try to fix your shuttle program first, then move on to Mars program. Until then, outsourse the Mars program to Russia. They've already done much of the "isolated ecosystem" work, here on Earth.

  • More accurate headline (Score:5, Funny)

    by Zenmonkeycat ( 749580 ) on Sunday December 26, 2004 @01:19AM (#11183732)
    "Russian ICBM Accidentally Fails to Destroy Space Station: Next Attempt Will Carry Live Warhead Instead of Food."
    • About 105 years ago during the Anglo South African War, the ZAR forces fired a single bomb into the besieged town of Maffeking on Christmas day. This was odd, since the Brits and Boers never fought on religious days - never on Sundays and Christmas was unthinkable. When the British soldiers went to investigate and defuse the apparently dud bomb, they found that the shell had a traditional English Christmas pudding in its casing.

      • Re:More accurate headline (Score:3, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Having tried English pudding, the true evil of this plot by the ZAR is exposed...

        That is one of the most inhuman war stories I've ever heard. A moment of silence for their tastebuds......

  • Russian-built? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "A Russian-built cargo ship has successfully docked with the International Space Station"

    Russian-built? What does that mean? It was built by Russians but was designed by someone else? Assembled in Russia from imported parts?

    I don't get it.
    • Russian-built? What does that mean?

      It means that the Russians built it with 1/2 to 1/3 of the manhours that it would have taken in America, for 1/20 to 1/30 the price that it would have taken in America, and probably is a lot simpler and overall more reliable than it would have been if had been if it had been designed and built in America.

      :-)

  • Systems setup in 7-11s in Japan actually do the ordering itself? and not only mundane repeat orders. It actually orders depending on weather, temperature and date/time of year. E.g +3 degrees change in temperature and it orders more beer, etc.

    Cool system, maybe Nasa could learn something from them.

  • Embarrassment for the US (Score:3, Insightful)

    by EzInKy ( 115248 ) on Sunday December 26, 2004 @05:56AM (#11184198)
    It shouldn't have fallen on Russia, Europe, or even China to be the "space rescuers", it should have been the US. It is really sad how far America has backslid in space exploration since the '80s.
    • Yeah, you're a bit slow on the concept of 'international', aren't you. Too used to the US paying all the bills for the UN?

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