Soyuz Capsule Lands Safely 38
An anonymous reader writes in with news that the astronauts who helped dock the first privately owned spacecraft with the ISS have returned safely to earth in a Russian Soyuz capsule. "A Russian Soyuz capsule landed on the Kazakh steppes on Sunday, safely delivering a trio of astronauts who helped to dock the first privately owned spacecraft during a six-month stint on the International Space Station. The descent capsule, carrying Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, NASA astronaut Don Pettit and European Space Agency astronaut Andre Kuipers, touched down with its parachute in a cloud of dust at 0814 GMT. The crew left the space station early on Sunday after serving 183 days in orbit, often sharing their experiences with the public via blogs and Twitter.
At the end of May, the crew released Space Exploration Technologies' unmanned Dragon cargo, which arrived as part of a test flight and was the first privately owned spaceship to reach the $100 billion orbital outpost, which is a 15-nation project.
Three other ISS crew members - Russia's Gennady Padalka and Sergei Revin and NASA astronaut Joe Acaba - will remain in orbit."
Re: (Score:1)
And it always gets me, when I see scientists not giving a fuck about the artificial separation into nations and instigation against each other, to work together like this.
Scientists don’t care if you are from China, Iran, USA, or Kongo. (And neither do I. All that matters is if you personally are nice to me, and hopefully a smart person.)
Re: (Score:1)
I'll have my assistent, mrs Alotta Fagina, contact you.
Don Pettit's Videos (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm going to miss Don Pettit's videos. 1lb instruction booklet on how to use legos for static electricity science video that cost $10,000 to put in space? Toss it off screen, because legos were meant to be built with creativity, not instructions! Gotta love that guy. Never too serious, always "holy shit! I'm in space!". Really brings some excitement and interest to spaceflight, which the rest of NASA seems to smother.
In case you missed it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0Ei6h3LVb0 [youtube.com]
Re: (Score:2)
+1
Brilliant find, I especially love the foam satellite and his comment "it reached escape velocity"
Re: (Score:2)
I wonder how much the Soyuz return trip cost? (Score:2)
Re:I wonder how much the Soyuz return trip cost? (Score:5, Informative)
Soyuz launch costs ~$70 million (which, so far as I can, see, includes any recovery costs - they'd be dwarfed by the launch, anyway). Wikipedia says that Falcon 9 launch to LEO is $50-55 million.
Re: (Score:1)
oblig? (Score:4, Funny)
Smoke me a Kuipers, I'll be back for breakfast.
Don Petit's Blog (Score:5, Interesting)
Don's blog started during training for this mission - it's been a great read.
Suggest you start at the beginning and take it a post or two at a time. If you never wanted to be an astronaut you will by the time you're done.
http://wiki.nasa.gov/cm/newui/blog/viewpostlist.jsp?blogname=letters
Flashback (Score:3)
Oleg Kononenko, Don Pettit, Andre Kuipers, Gennady Padalka ... Bill Severn and Tracey Morris. Team picked. Plasma rifles and stun rods - check. Auto-cannons and power suits - check. Skyranger fuelled and ready. Time to kick some sectoid ass!
resident artist (Score:5, Interesting)
I was impressed by Andre Kuiper's images - he really made space as grant as I ever imagined it.
His Flickr stream is the greatest way to waste time [flickr.com].
very cool (Score:3)
thanks for posting
Re: (Score:3)
Kuipers' the guy on the right. At least he's wearing a belt...
"Soyuz Capsule Lands Safely " (Score:1)
For a moment I thought slashdot went passive-aggressive on Soviet cosmonautics.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
For a moment I thought slashdot went passive-aggressive on Soviet cosmonautics.
The editors, and most contributors, are from a country that lacks a way to put a man in space and return him safely. Russia and China are the only players in the game at the moment, but this country (The USA -- just south of canada, used to be a great nation, now a snivelling shadow of it's former glory) used to be able to put people in space.
They've lost their former power and standing in the world, and some are bitter about it.
Re:"Soyuz Capsule Lands Safely " (Score:5, Funny)
>They've lost their former power
Being a metropolitan DC resident, I take that literally after this weekend :-)
Re: (Score:2)
People are too heavy, need to much food and oxygen.
I am to be proud, as I was born in Siberia, but I think we damage the planet with such huge rockets.
And it is the only planet suitable for life. We won't get another.
Re: (Score:2)
With current day technology it's already possible to terraform Mars into a livable environment for humans.
In a 100 years or so, providing humanity survived that time, i'm fairly sure there will be permanent colonies there with a few hundred, maybe thousand people.
If we want to survive as a species, we need to go into space.
I'm fairly sure those colonies won't work on the western notions of captialism and democracy either, and they'll be mostly far-eastern. China is expanding it's colonial ambitions dramatically, look at how much of Africa they own, setting up military bases in the Indian ocean etc.
Space is an obvious extension. Unless China reaches the point of collapsing like America did towards the end of the 80s, I see them on Mars with a mostly self sufficient colony as soon as 2050.
Re:"Soyuz Capsule Lands Safely " (Score:5, Insightful)
It turns out that the Russians won the space race when they realised that it was a marathon, not a sprint.
I just visited the USA and while I was there, I toured both Johnson (on the day their replica space shuttle arrived) and Kennedy space centers. The amount of bullshit that was spouted to tourists about the current US space programme honestly made me cry at one point.
We've stopped moving people to new places so that we have more money to kill brown people.
Re: (Score:1)
vastly superior option (SpaceX etc)
"vastly superior"? says who? Elon Musk? (the guy who claims ultra low cost out of one side of the mouth while losing his shirt (and your tax money) on Tesla).
SpaceX Dragon is a Soyuz/Progress wannabe with no automatic docking capability.
Re: (Score:2)
How many people has SpaceX successfully delivered to (and safely retrieved from) space? How many has the Soyuz ?
So for right now, the Soyuz is vastly superior for the simple reason that it's the only vehicle that can do the job.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of what SpaceX are doing and have done. I bought the dragon commemorative shirt on the vacation discussed above. But given that right now they still need to add seating, life support and other features to the dragon, you can bet that manned transpor
Andre's tour of ISS (Score:3, Interesting)
For those who understand Dutch, here is an awesome 70 minute tour around the ISS by Andre Kuipers:
http://nos.nl/artikel/390049-toer-met-kuipers-door-iss.html
Just think . . . . (Score:4, Insightful)
If all the countries in the world take their military budgets for one year and spend the money on space research and exploration, how much farther we could progress as a species.