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Science

Mir to be Abandoned Today 149

Posted by Roblimo from the stuck-on-the-surface-again dept.
Tom Rothamel writes, based on a story at FloridaToday.com, "Mir will be abandoned later today, ending a streak of permanent human habitation of space that began on September 6, 1989. There's a chance that one more crew will be sent before earth reclaims it sometime next year." I always hoped we (humans) would launch a better orbiting habitat by the time Mir became unliveable, but we didn't. Sad.
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Mir to be Abandoned Today More

Mir to be Abandoned Today

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  • It's always sad to lose an old friend. Farewell, Mir. May you rest in peace.
  • Ever use a microwave? Medicine has had a few advances. Of course, if I'm wrong, someone will say something . . . later
  • Get out some night and watch it
    fly over.

    or morning


    sorry, I don't have the link to the
    sighting list.
  • You know, my father has a theory right along those lines. :)

    The theory goes something like this:

    In geological terms, millions of years is a very small section. Few thousand years is a tiny speck. Couple hundred years is almost nothing. A few decades is almost too tiny to exist.

    Given that, consider our technological development - how it has exponentially increased to the point where you almost literally expect a new development every week.

    Now imagine what kind of impact this development would have on a geological record. Minimal at best.

    Sooo... isn't it obvious that dinosaurs had a technological boom, same as ourselves, decided to vacate the earth (possibly 'cos of an approaching plauge, or Ice Age, or whatever), leaving behind as little evidence as possible that would indicate intelligence?

    You decide...


    "I don't believe that there is one, single, perfect spiritual way and, in realizing that, obviously you become a lot more open."
  • Try the book of Revelation:

    And the star fell upon the third part of the river, and the star's name was wormwood, and many men died of the waters for they had been made bitter.

    The ukranian word for wormwood is chernobyl.
  • Actually, that's the problem with Mir, its skin is too corroded. In a few years, it would start leaking air like a sieve. Things put in space take a hell of a lot of sandblasting from micrometeorite impacts that there's no atmosphere to protect from. So it's not even good for parts.

    I suppose they could sell it too, but bridges seem to be the more popular model in that product line.
  • If you traveled at .5 c and ran into an asteroid the size of a small pebble... Blammo. Kinda a crap shoot, ain't it?
  • The computers in Mir use "old" technology in order to be more reliable. Since Mir is a space station it gets exposed to a lot of radiation. The effects of radiation on computer equipment are cumulative, and the Mir has been up a long time. Computers on earth don't have to operate in such conditions. Most of the radiation hitting the processor in your pc probably comes from radiactive decay of isotopes in the metal of the computer's case. Not so in space. Ever hear of cosmic rays? A good number of these particles beat the best speeds we can get in accelerators by a long shot. So, those modern chips you're touting as the best thing since electronic sausages, with their tiny, tiny little transistore and pathways and what have you, will be shot to pieces in no time. The older technology won't last forever either, but it'll last a heck of a lot longer. It has already been observed by plenty of astronauts that their laptops develop problems distressingly fast in space.
    Oh, and forget sheilding. Do you have any idea how much lead you'd need? Keeping lots of replacement parts on hand is a maybe, but don't forget that the replacement parts would be exposed the the same levels of radiation.
    I mean, really, what did you think? Did you think that the Russians were still banging rocks together to make tools?
    Sorry if I was long winded. I just felt that the notion that Mir's "outdated" computers were somehow inferior or unsafe for the job at hand was a misconception that needed correcting.
  • No chance! So 'mir mir' means 'world peace'. Cool.

    Yeah, or "Peace, world", like you're a hippy or something.
  • The computers in Mir use "old" technology in order to be more reliable.

    Well Actually, the ISS is going to use about 40 i386sx 16Mhz on board, that will act as the main electronic backbone. And the reason they chose that kind of technology, is that it producess a very small amount of heat, which is a huge problem in space.

    But the main interaction with the onboard computers will be done with IBM Thinkpads, and win95
  • Current plan is for it to re-enter over the east coast of Australia, run parallel to the coast, pass over New Zealand and finally splashdown somewhere in the South Pacific.
  • If MIR, by some strange happenstance, lands in my lawn, can I make a treehouse out of it?

    any thoughts? :)
  • For those who say so long and good riddance to Mir, remember that without Mir NASA would have had to find another (and probably less reliable method) of studying the long-term effects of living in space. Mir taught NASA a great deal about potential problems and how to deal with them quickly. Also Mir's inital design life was a mere 3 years. It has now reached the grand old age of 13, although its' usefulnes declined in around '97 with the spate of accidents. Even at 11 years, Mir lasted almost 3 times its' expected age which is something for Russia to be proud of in my book. Let us hope that the vastly overbudget ISS can at least outlive its' design life by a few years. So do not mock Mir and say 'good riddance' but wave farewell to a station that has aged well through all kinds of storms.
  • Your memory is awfully short. Mir has had several near-fatal accidents of late, including a fire in one of the backup oxygen generators. IIRC, they've also had leaks in coolant systems and other nasty stuff. Plus they keep having the "navigation" (actually, attitude-stabilization) computer fail, and without any way to maintain attitude the solar panels don't generate power (and they have no way to run the attitude-control system once the batteries run down). Even without a planned shutdown, Mir would soon suffer a loss of power leaving it unrecoverable.

    After 10 years in space, Mir is a creaking old hulk; the cosmonauts spend much of their time on maintenance, not science. It wasn't designed to last this long, and if the Russians still had a space program the thing to do would be to launch a new, up-to-date core incorporating the lessons learned from the original, and move over the modules which are still of use. The old core is not worth the fuel required to keep it in orbit. Perhaps it could be useful on the way down, for instance as a test of controlled re-entry using electrodynamic tethers, but in space it's already barely more than a hazard to navigation.

  • Why don't we buy Mir?

    It's a peice of crap yes, but some of us are used to taking such and turning it into something useful. It was useful once, mind you. The stakes may be a little higher, sure, but such is life.

  • Cool ! (Score:2)

    by Tsk ( 2863 )
    I've found this link which tells you every minute where MIR is in Space : http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/temp /StationLoc.html [nasa.gov]

  • The commerical name is Velcro

  • Re:If you haven't already... (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    sorry, I don't have the link to the sighting list

    I suggest the German Space Operations Centre's [gsoc.dlr.de].

    (And, if you enter your coordinates manually and you are in North America, remember that the longitude should be negative... See http://www2.gsoc.dlr.de/scrip ts/satvis/geodistrib.asp [gsoc.dlr.de])

  • Yeah, i like Europe, the women there are so open minded... =)
    Seriously, there's Mars and Europe, both have atmosphere and the high posibility of water presence (much likely in Jupiter's Moon).
    Just wonder the potential of a solar system economy, all these new
    resources. The case of Titan is very promising too
    though it wouldn't be so "kind" to human existence,
    but those hidrocarbure seas!
    Well, let's start by walking for a couple of days over Mars.
  • I really don't think speed light would be unavoidable for interstellar exodus.
    Counting on the development of genetics, engineering and "cosmic awareness"/ethics/rationality/not-just-technical-i ntelligence, an endurable self sustained (under a very simple system) craft with the genetic and chemical capability to make/start over the biological evolution of any environment reached an influence would make the deal. No need of persons to colonize. Just broadcasting our genetic heritage to the cosmos would be propagation, expansion. What if these autonomous seeds don't
    evolve as similar as us?, well... who knows how we
    will look in a couple of milleniums.
  • I really don't think light speed would be unavoidable for interstellar exodus.
    Counting on the development of genetics, engineering and "cosmic awareness"/ethics/rationality/not-just-technical-i ntelligence, an endurable self sustained (under a very simple system) craft with the genetic and chemical capability to make/start over the biological evolution of any environment reached an influence would make the deal. No need of persons to colonize. Just broadcasting our genetic heritage to the cosmos would be propagation, expansion. What if these autonomous seeds don't
    evolve as similar as us?, well... who knows how we
    will look in a couple of milleniums.

  • Nostradomus was right (Score:3)

    by bugg ( 65930 ) on Friday August 27, 1999 @06:06AM (#1721965) Homepage
    And Nostradomus, the European prophet, foretold of the Great Mars's fire coming down on the skies in the 7th month of 1999 (7th month can be interpreted as July or August, as August being the time after 7 months. People were weird back then).

    Nostradomus predectied the world to end.

    And as Mir means life in Russian, it also means world.

    So, all of the Nostradomus fans can say he was right again. Most of N's predictions were interpreted like this anyway, which is why he had such a high "sucess" rate.
  • I was under the impression that the question mir was built to answer was "can humans survive in space". As far as that goes it was an outstanding success.

  • MIR (Score:1)

    by techmage ( 72232 )
    Dateline 2000 - Mir to Hit Earth. I can see lots of T-shirts with targets on the back coming soon to a store near you. Anybody remember Skylab?

  • I read that they plan to deorbit it soon.

    It seems wasteful to send it back down the sink since it costs about $1000 a pound to put something in orbit.

    Why can't they push it to a higher orbit and park it there, maybe move it relatively close to the ISS and make it the first orbital junkyard? Maybe even the first Jamaican space station?

    Not too mention the kilojoules of heat that it will add to the atmosphere when it reenters, and the pollution it will spread. Wait!!!, I gotta call Greenpeace.

    George
  • Nice theory, but mir means 'peace' in Russian.

  • Moving out of Mir? (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Well let's be sure to clean up and vacuum. I want us to get our security deposit back.
  • And one they while mowing the lawn they will find it just sitting there, all forgoten...
  • I wouldn't worry about it, myself. It'd be the proveribal drop -- no, molecule -- in the bucket.
    Berlin-- http://www.berlin-consortium.org [berlin-consoritum.org]
  • WOW!

    What would shipping be on that?

    George
  • Fun at the office: Get a polar projection map of the earth and raffle off each 10 degrees of longitude for $1, $5, whatever. Whoever holds the slice where the biggest chunck of Mir lands wins the pot. (I did this for Skylab and it was a hoot.)
  • I'm too young to remember much about Skylab (born in '73) except for one particular thing. When Skylab was heading for its fiery ending, my mom made our family live in the basement for 2 or 3 days. Seems extremely excessive in retrospect, but it made perfect sense at the time (and age). Maybe we'll all look back on Y2K the same way in the 2010's.
  • I bet Bill Gates would pay for it.

    "Mr. Gates, we want to drop Mir into the sun."

    "On Sun? Kewl,let me get my checkbook."

    George
  • I think it is a crying shame that Mir is to be abandoned before the USA has any permanently-manned outpost in orbit. The ISS is way behind schedule, over budget, and depends on there not being any more problems with the aging fleet of Space Shuttles. Now, exactly how likely is that?

    The real crying shame is that we know how to build a space station that could be launched with one shot into orbit on an existing vehicle; we did it with Skylab, and LLNL [llnl.gov] proposed a while back that we build an inflatable space be a few $billion. Of course, this would not station and launch it on a Titan (up in one shot). Total cost, from design to launch, would have given enough money to the space contractors, nor would the State Department have been able to use it as a way to funnel money to Russia as a way of doing some foreign policy out of someone else's budget, so that idea went bust. (I tried searching LLNL's site for the "community space suit" paper, but the search engine doesn't seem to know where it is.)

    This leaves us in a state where the Senate is trying to kill all of NASA's non-Shuttle, non-ISS programs, keeping the boondoggles and nuking all the science. It's enough to make you sick.

  • How about a museum. I always assumed that Mir would become and international, protected, monument. Mir was one of the top 3 greatest achievements in space, moon landing and Voyager probe being the others. It should be boosted to a high orbit and should be kept far away from flying trash.

    Same with the moon landing sites. When we go back to put colonies there, it would be nice to have a little park around the landing sites. You could probably even have a billet for a trinket salesman "Get your Official LEM toys right here!".
  • Because the Sun has 99.86 percent of the mass of the solar system [explorezone.com] and we couldn't bother it even if we dropped Jupiter [nasa.gov] in. There's already more iron, plutonium, and everything else there than in the entire Earth. For that matter, a single asteroid has more metals than the Earth's upper crust [bbc.co.uk].
  • Of course, unless modern physics is wrong and faster-than-light space travel really is possible, a space program isn't going to be of much use in terms of saving the human race. Nothing in our solar system appears able to support a self-sufficient colony if the Earth became uninhabitable. It really looks like one planet is all we are going to be granted.
  • Mir has been in orbit years longer than it was originally designed for. There have been fires, life support failures and collisions. Crews living there spend all their time just trying to keep the thing running. There hasnt been any useful science come out of the platform for quite awhile. While it provided invaluable experience in long-term habitation in space, which our space program is now taking advantage of, its time has long since past.

    The main reason the Russians want to keep it going is that they built it by themselves and they, like everyone, want to keep their baby running as long as they can.

    As the Int'l Space Station becomes permanently habitable over the next few years, it will more than make up for the capability lost on Mir.

    An interesting point, I watch closely the Russians moves in the construction of the Int'l Space Station. They seem reluctant to put their money and expertise into this Int'l project. One might even call the Int'l Space station the Open-Source Space Station, everyone is going to contribute and see what everyone else is doing and use it. It will be very difficult for any one country to monopolize it since everyone has contributed. I think the Russians see this and are having, IMHO understandable, reservations about jumping in with both feet.

    I hope over time tho, that everyone sees the benefits that will present themselves as we all progress together.

    Later,
    FM
  • Say what you will..but on a shoe string budget, the Russians have managed to maintain, yes barely, but they have maintained the Mir. That says alot for their savvy. That is it self is an accomplishment worthy of admiration.
  • How much more fuel would it actually take to get it going towards the sun? 2x? 10x? Since it's in orbit, it's not completely out of the earth's gravity well, but it's a lot further along than stuff still on the surface, and there's not much if any atmosphere to provide drag.

    I know that it's a frequent suggestion of what to do with earth-based crap nobody wants, like hazardous waste. The amount of fuel necessary for that seems much, much greater (since it's still earth-bound) than something in orbit.
  • Yea! Ask your mom if I can come over and play. It can be the new secret /. club house. I'll bring cookies and my decoder ring and we can have a secret password to get it in! Just make sure you let it cool off for a day before you touch it.
  • y'all dont remember your physics classes do you ... prolly cutting class, to stay in the computer lab too huh huh ...admit it :)

    Basic Orbital Dynamics people ... MIR and the ISS are in two completly different orbits. Complete with different inclinations (due to lanuch sites) and assorted other orbital elements ... say apogee and perigee, and eccentricity just to start. While possible its not very likely or the RSA and NASA would have considered it, dontcha think?? I mean they do have staffs of rocket scientists, bright cookies them-uns :)

    The problem with boosting MIR higher in orbit ... the RSA actually flys MIR and without constant guidance (read *money* ) it will tumble and probably break up...no matter how high an orbit you place it in

    Bottom Line...to match MIR's orbit to the ISS's would cost way way more that it would be worth...safer just to land it in the drink than leave several 100 more tons of space junk waiting to clock someone at several meters per second
  • MIR and ISS have to be boosted to higher orbits periodically because various forces (mainly atmospheric and magnetic drag) slow them down. The MIR sponsors simply no longer want to keep paying to keep MIR in orbit. If MIR were put in a higher orbit and abandoned it would eventually come down through the altitude of ISS and be a threat to it. Clamping MIR to ISS would still require that someone send up fuel (or bring it down from the Moon) to keep them in orbit. And MIR/ISS have to be continually flown to keep their solar arrays turned toward the Sun.
  • You'll have to check with your Space Lawyer. If a ship at sea is abandoned then it can be salvaged. But if the owner sends the ship on a course toward a reef, can you salvage it before or after it hits the reef? A lot easier to buy it earlier...
  • Dude, that site rules, not only because of the ISS and Mir tracking, but the cool J-Track 3D satellite tracking thing.
  • Say, anyone have a pickle jar booked on a Shuttle flight? I'd like to fill it with Helium and glue it to MIR.

    Remember the recent story of research in using a plasma field as a solar sail? Would one of those generate enough force to offset the drag on MIR? Granted, it could only be turned on when the solar wind would push it away from the Earth (or in a forward direction in the orbit) so it would not slow the thing down...

  • I believe that the Microwave Oven was actually a byproduct of research into stealth warplane technology.

    I seem to recall that velcro was a space programme advance, though. About a month ago, there was an article [slashdot.org] on the history of the super soaker, which at least came out of NASA's JPL (which I believe is only loosely tied to the space programme, though I could be wrong)

    At the end of Robert A. Heinlein's Expanded Universe is a speech he gave to congress about why the space programme is a good place to put money. IIRC, he enumerates several other technologies which resulted from our space programme.

    -me
  • MIR and the ISS are in two completly different orbits. Complete with different inclinations (due to lanuch sites) and assorted other orbital elements.

    Actually, the're in similar orbits. Both are at 51.6 degrees inclination, for example, and most other differences are minor ones due to drag.

    However, the two stations are almost on other sides of the world... I see them right now as being about 140 degrees apart. This was intentional, so the two would never have to compete for limited Russian tracking resources. However, what this means is that it would take far to much fuel to line the two up. (It takes money to launch fuel, and a lack of money is what's causing Mir to be abandoned.)

  • This probably would only work in a solar orbit. Magnetic Tethers are probably a better choice for lofting Mir.

    However, the point is moot, unless someone can provide an economical solution by September 2000 [demon.co.uk].

  • Mir is, and will be a long lasting success (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    10 years longer than design life... Would you still want to be running on the hardware and software you cranked up 13 years ago? Consider all the valuable experiance with the unknown: collision in space, fire in space, leaks, bad equipment, lousy food, lousy air, short budgets, multi-national egos, etc. You couldn't script some of these events, nor would you want to in some cases. The so called 'problems' with MIR will stand as valuable examples for future engineers: How did they deal with that on MIR?
  • You're not looking at the bigger picture. Every day people throw millions of soda cans in the trash. The amount of energy that it takes to extract enough alluminum for a soda can from bauxite can power a TV set for 3 weeks straight. And most of that alluminum is going straight into land fills.

    At least this the materials/money wasted on Mir went to a good cause.

    Mir was in operation for 13 years.. It was only intended to be used for 5.
    ...
  • All they have to do is open the door.
  • You don't need many people at all in fact. Genetic material for millions of people can be kept on ice and you can send a population of several dozen to colonize a planet. There are other ways to solve the genetic diversity problems as well. If one generation clones itself to create the next there's no problem with inbreeding. With a better understanding of genetic engineering, it can also be used to insure that the even if the genetic pool is too small, none of the problems that generally associated with that actually become manifest.
  • 3 hours for the recycled can, not 3 weeks.

    And that's quite different from Mir. It costs ~$10K/pound to put stuff in orbit. If a single ton of Mir can be reused, that's ~$20M saved!

    Of course it might cost more to keep in in orbit than it would to send up materials we need. It depends on how much of Mir could be reused and how much it would cost to to the work in orbit to salvage it. I'm sure NASA and other involved parties have done the math.
  • The (possibly apocryphal) story I always heard was that an engineer was working on a radar system when he noticed that the candy bar in his shirt pocket had melted from the microwave radiation. It always made me wonder -- would you really want to work around something like that? If it melts a candy bar, what will it do to your spleen? =^)
    --
  • No, no, microwave ranges come from RADAR work done during and around WW2. People who walked in front of big radars with food (one story claims it was a candy bar) found that they heated up.

    Early, primitive ranges were sold for consumers in the 50's. They were as big as large refrigerators, but they really did work. They didn't shrink to a managable size and price until the late 70's and early 80's, however.

    And just to get this off of my chesst, I really hate microwaves. Conventional stoves and ovens work fine for me: there are few kinds of food that I make that can be zapped. More intracate preparation is usually required.
  • Even if the space program can't get you to another planet, it can teach you how to live in a "closed" system where you have no choice but to recycle and to respect your environment. IMHO not a bad lesson to learn.
  • Sorry! That should have been:

    ... we did it with Skylab, and LLNL proposed a while back that we build an inflatable space station and launch it on a Titan (up in one shot). Total cost, from design to launch, would be a few $billion. Of course, this would not have given enough money to the space contractors,

  • Not suprising (not that anyone will care!) (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Ya know, this doesn't suprise me in the least. The average shmuck doesn't have an iota of a clue what the potential signifigance of us (Humans) leaving the planet we evolved on is, and they're not likely to. It just doesn't affect their lives, and it's one of the flaws in Capitalism: If you live to acquire money, there's no incentive to look elsewhere _until all the resources are gone_. And it'll be too late then - not that there's anything wrong with Capitalism. Government exists to work around these (i.e. antitrust laws).

    Unfortunately, the power-hungry government in the US, elected by people that seek to have the man decide their every action, spends more on locking away potheads and busting drug addicts than it's space program. Is that a good idea? By all rights, we should at least be on the goddamn moon by now.

    What will change those opinions? I know what will, and it's the only thing short of Jesus appearing and telling people to go. It's a mid-sized asteroid taking out a large metropolitan center and/or a mid-sized country. Not big enough to screw the ecosystem, but enough to knock off a few million people and let Joe Schmuck understand that this pretty blue marble isn't indestructable. Far from it.

    Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think so. I hope that the Japaneese or maybe the Chinese stick it to the US and get bases on the moon running first - maybe that will deflate some American egos.

    Humanity must look elsewhere to live and prosper, or we're going to go the same way as the dinosaurs, and we'll be the next great big oil reserve for the second shot (or third) evolution has. Maybe someone will leave some more plaques around this time, but we're pretty cheap there, too. Maybe that's what those great big symbols in the deserts of asia are. :(

    Anyhow - just another mindless rant. Someday I'll write a book, if for no other reason than bragging rights if I live to see the firey end. *grin*

    Just another starry-eyed slashdotter
    Steve Manley
    smanley@nyx.net
  • Yep, and as far as I know, the Apollo program didn't accomplish anything either, besides the publicity stunt. And neither has the Space Shuttle, for that matter, besides some fancy pyrotechnics from one of them... And neither has Hubble, besides some cool wallpaper images, and Pathfinder was just another useless publicity stunt...

    Sheesh, some people...



  • Uh, how about microelectronics? Weather and communications and other ground observation satellites?


    ...phil
  • Right, or they could use it as parts/extra habitation space/what have you for the ISS. It could be just another module...


    "So here we have the lab module...over here is the storage module...life support's this way...here's the habitation module...oh yes, and this is the busted module."
    --
    "HORSE."
  • I don't know exactly how much more fuel, but you have to consider that the object is in solar orbit along with the earth, and you have to cancel that angular momentum to get it to drop into the sun. You could probably save some fuel by taking a gravitational boost from venus, but it's still a lot.

    I wonder if it would be possible to put junk at one of the L4/L5 points of the earth-sun system - it's a lot closer than the sun, and it would let us get the stuff back if we ever decide we need it again.

  • Re:How much more fuel? (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    How much more fuel would it actually take to get it going towards the sun? 2x? 10x? Since it's in orbit, it's not completely out of the earth's gravity well, but it's a lot further along than stuff still on the surface, and there's not much if any atmosphere to provide drag

    Yes and no. While it's a good way up the Earth's gravity well, it would still need to cancel out its orbital speed around the Sun to fall there directly. That's 30 km/s to add to the necessary 3 km/s delta-V to escape Earth.

    In terms of fuel, according to the rocket equation (delta-V = u . ln(1+mf/m) where u is the exhaust speed, m the dry mass and mf the fuel's mass), it would take more than 700 times as much fuel as Mir weighs to make it dive into the Sun with a chemical rocket (u ~ 5 km/s). Perhaps you can save some using planetary fly-bys but certainly not much. Or use an ion engine like Deep Space 1 [nasa.gov]'s; with a very optimistic u=15 km/s, the required mass of fuel would drop to 10 times as much, a mere 1400 tons, compared to a few tons for sending it into the Pacific...

    Anyway, if you have the resources and technology to send Mir out into the Sun, you can easily park it into high Earth orbit where it will stay for long, and build a brand new huge space dock there and bring in a small asteroid to manufacture interplanetary ships with. More interesting, I would say...

  • What are you talking about? MIR is 13 years old...

  • Of course, unless modern physics is wrong and faster-than-light space travel really is possible, a space program isn't going to be of much use in terms of saving the human race. Nothing in our solar system appears able to support a self-sufficient colony if the Earth became uninhabitable. It really looks like one planet is all we are going to be granted.

    Mars might be an option, though it's a bit of a fixer-upper. And there's always Europa...

    *wanders off, humming a Thomas Dolby song...*
    --
    "HORSE."

  • Mir is still liveable.. the only issue is the ISS, and Russia's ability to keep Mir in space while building parts for the ISS. The US is on Russia's ass to get rid of Mir every time they say there will be another delay in the next Space Station part..
  • Despite the fact that people have been living up there, it's really quite amazing to me that it managed to avoid the "big" disaster.

  • Yep, it's sad (Score:3)

    by Miguelito ( 13307 ) <mm-slashdot.miguelito@org> on Friday August 27, 1999 @06:13AM (#1722034) Homepage
    IMO, the biggest tragedy of the Challenger disaster was how far behind the US space program has been since it occured. People almost seemed shocked that spaceflight was dangerous... hello?

    I think those that died would've wanted the program to continue (fixing the problem obviously) but would not have wanted the program to fall so far behind. I think they would've been better honored by not only getting caught back up on the schedule, but perhaps learning lessons and moving ahead even faster.

    It also cracks me up when people say we've wasted so much on the space program without getting anything in return. They have no idea how many advancements in computers, medicine, science, etc we owe to the space program(s).

  • i agree with yarn. one of the biggest things that Mir was set up to determine was the best way for long-term human inhabitation of space. Russia's cosmonaut screening and training programs are the best thing to come out of Mir.. altho i haven't heard about any other scientific projects going on Mir.. but that doesnt mean there werent any..
  • Nearly 10 years of continuous habitation in space is not accomplishing anything? To my way of thinking that's accomplishing quite a lot. Not only that, but much of what was learned with Mir is being put to use in the new ISS.

    Here's to hoping it re-enters somewhere close by - should be one hell of a fireball.
  • Asimov: "The dinosaurs died out because they didn't have a space-program."
    Clarke: "If we die out we will have deserved it."
  • I agree. I wonder if it could be used as an "emergency habitat" for later missions of incase the ISS implodes or something. Not that Mir is a very safe place to be (cause of old age). But it's better than nothing.

  • The efforts and achievements of the Russians with respect to Mir deserve the highest praise.

    The data and experience on human survival in space that they have gained for the world will offer countless potentially life-saving insights to problems that will be encountered in ANY future space-habitation projects.

    The fact that their project did not have the polish and glitz of space projects in the US does nothing to detract from the value of their efforts. They kept men alive in orbit for a very long time, and they did it on a shoe string. The lower funding forced them to be creative and resourceful. We owe them our thanks, and will for a long time to come.

    SPACIBO!

  • I think that what makes the Russians reluctant is that they are sinking their money and experience in what is, to all intents and purposes, an American space station, "international" moniker notwithstanding.
  • >Complete with different inclinations (due to lanuch sites)

    The Zarya module (core of the ISS) was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, the same site that supports Mir.
  • How much more fuel would it actually take to get it going towards the sun? 2x? 10x?
    Depends on the fuel, but assuming the use of hypergolics at a specific impulse of around 250 seconds (exhaust velocity roughly 2500 m/sec)...

    Orbital velocity is around 8000 meters per second. Boosting to Earth escape velocity (roughly 11,000 m/sec) requires a delta-V of 3000 m/sec. By the rocket equation, the ratio of initial mass to final mass is e to the power of 1.2 (3000/2500), so you would need 3.32-1=2.32 times as much mass of fuel as Mir's mass. You could launch a couple new Mir's for that.

    To get to the Sun by the least-energy route requires a flight past Jupiter, which requires roughly as much delta-V as a solar escape burn. Call it a delta-V of about 12,500 meters per second. Using oxygen-hydrogen with an exhaust velocity of 4500 m/sec, the fuel required would be about 15 times the mass of Mir (and a hell of a lot bulkier; liquid hydrogen is about 1/14 the density of water).

    If you want to save Mir, I'm sure everybody would be happy to let you pay for this.

  • Don't forget that our own Shuttle fleet was designed over twenty years ago, and have recieved very little in the way of upgrades. Sure, the hardware is probably fairly new physically, but the designs are old, the computers are old, the software is really old. I think that the real future lies in private industry, government simply can't move or change nearly fast enough to keep up with technology.
  • Posted by Synsthe:

    Humanity must look elsewhere to live and prosper, or we're going to go the same way as the dinosaurs,

    Go the way of the dinosaurs? We'd be lucky to go the way of the dinosaurs, instead of the direction we're heading now.

    After all, they did live and rule the earth for millions upon millions of years. In comparison, our somewhere between a few thousand to 10,000+ years (depending on who you listen to) years here is nothing. We've been a blink of the eye compared to how long they lasted, and yet we're already doing a good job of making the place unlivable for ourselves.. and worrying that things are going to come to an end.. and this and that and the next thing.

    Pretty pathetic on our parts if you ask me, which you didn't.

    --
    Mark Waterous (mark@projectlinux.org)

  • Putting Mir into a higher orbit (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 27, 1999 @08:47AM (#1722047)
    Here are a few things to consider.

    First of all, Mir can't really be abandoned where it is. The low orbits that Mir, ISS, and the shuttle fly in are not stable. They decay due to minute amounts of atmospheric drag. You couldn't leave Mir where it is because it would have to be periodically re-occupied and boosted. If you did, who knows when and where it would re-enter. It could hit land and cause a lot of damage. If Mir was to be abandoned, it would have to be in a much higher orbit than even ISS.

    Second, if you put it into a high enough orbit so that orbital decay is no longer an issue, you won't be able to reach it with the shuttle or a Soyuz capsule anymore.

    Third, you can't put space vehicles into a higher orbit by just pushing up. They must be accelerated to the velocity corresponding to the higher orbit. To get Mir into a sufficiently high orbit, you would have to increase its current velocity quite a lot.

    Think for a minute how much energy (in other words fuel) was required to get Mir's various parts up to their current velocity. Even with the biggest rockets Russia had, Mir had to be lifted in parts. To speed Mir up sufficiently, you would need to transport an absolutely huge amount of fuel into space.

    Unfortunately, you can't just move Mir a little, then resupply it, then move it again, and so on. It wouldn't take long before the shuttle and Soyuz rockets wouldn't be able to reach it to bring more fuel. That means you need to bring all of the fuel up there and attach it to Mir before you start moving it. And that means that you have to accelerate the fuel too in addition to Mir, which dramatically increases the amount required.

    Getting that much fuel to Mir would be incredibly expensive. First you would need to build a very large container for it, send it up, and dock it to Mir. Then you need to send multiple rocket and/or shuttle launches to fill it up, with specially trained spacewalking crews to perform the fuel transfers.

    Fourth, even if you could get that much fuel into orbit, how would you go about boosting Mir? You couldn't just use Mir's propulsion system. It would take forever and you would need to perform some major modifications of Mir to attach and use a very large external fuel source. You would need to build a special purpose rocket module and bring it to Mir. Also, remember that some of the sensitive parts of Mir (like the solar array) aren't designed to hold up to forces of acceleration when deployed, so who knows whether the station would even survive such a burn.
  • Yeah, no doubt. I think they're going to deliberately de-orbit it (as opposed to just letting it decay until it re-enters), which implies that they have some control over where it comes down. So my guess is they'll try to steer it for the middle of the Pacific.

    Some enterprising cruise ship line could make some money - sort of like last year's eclipse cruise.

    In any case, I'll miss it. Watching Mir (and other satellite) passes gives me something to do out at the observatory while I'm waiting for it to get dark. I once saw Mir and the Shuttle come over separated by only a degree or two. The shuttle had just dropped somebody off and was heading back to Earth. What a sight! I had goosebumps for days.
  • Why are the BSD's shutting down their cairn?

    Or is this only to hide it better?

  • Being a Russian I just wanna put an end to this thread.

    No chance! So 'mir mir' means 'world peace'. Cool.
  • Mir has been in orbit years longer than it was originally designed for.
    There have been fires, life support failures and collisions.
    Crews living there spend all their time just trying to keep the thing running.


    Years of actual EXPERIENCE, warts and all, that no computer simulation could ever hope to impart. The simple fact that they ENDURED and KEPT GOING right through the failures and emergencies is EXACTLY what is so pricelessly valuable about the station's MANY contributions to science.

    Dollar for dollar, I think MIR has made by far one of the GREATEST contributions EVER to the advancement of mankind's knowledge of long-term survival in space.

    They didn't quit. They didn't give up when things got dangerous or unpredictable. They endured, they did the time and they deserve our praise.

  • Headline: RedHat to save MIR! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Perhaps we can convince RedHat to buy MIR with some of its new-found fortune. It can then convert it into the world's first Open Source Space Staion (OSSS)!
  • Just out of curiosity, what advancements were results of the space program?

    Andrew Gacek

  • The latest Mir mission was for its inhabitants to beat the record of days in space
    This last mission was funded mostly by the European Space Agnecy [esrin.esa.it].
    Another big part of the fund for this last mission came from France Space Center [www.cnes.fr]. Btw the name of this mission was perseus [www.cnes.fr] (many nice photos even if the site is in french)

  • Asimov: "The dinosaurs died out because they didn't have a space-program."


    Larson: The real reason the dinosaurs became extinct...

    George
  • You are probably right, it has been a decade since my last Aerospace class.

    Now, if only someone could build a rocket in their junkyard. maybe name it Salvage-1...

    George
  • I never understood why they don't just boost it up to a higher orbit and park it for a decade or so until we can bring it down cheaply.

    How much would it cost? To just have it burn up in reentry in a few months seems like a waste.

    Alternately instead of boosting it to a higher orbit, adjust its orbit to match the ISS, and rig up a clamp system to dock them together. It would just be a useless appendage for the ISS, but it would be a readily available enclosed space for storage or use for future manufacturing projects or a great attraction for future space tourists that we know are only years away.

    --Dave

  • You don't know much then...

    You might like to read 'The MIR Space Station: A Precursor to Space Colonization'(ISBN: 0471975877), it covers the scientific and engineering achievements in detail from the first Salyut upto very recent Mir missions.

  • Oh, I see... Yep, that's just fucked up.

    If Bill Gates bought MIR and retrofitted it, I may almost forgive him for his sins...
  • No, seriously, if you find a ship floating in international waters with no one on it, you can just take it. If you managed to get to the moon, you can legally make off with the lunar rover.

    International law basically goes with the idea if there is no one on a vessel, it's yours. (If there is someone, it's piracy.:) Now, I'm certain no one owns the sky...ergo, you can just waltz in and claim Mir, legally.

  • That should be impressive. I would like to have such an experience. I'm one of those contemporary people that love space but realized how few we look at the sky. The ancients took the sky as a reference thus enhancing their "awareness", our grounded culture doesn't have perspective to sight more than the abstract/artificial facts of "the world" (please not confuse with the planet).
  • I agree. What they oughtta do is keep MIR up there for parts, i mean what if nasa needs a new steel plate for the new space station after it gets hit by a meteor, they could always tear one off of mir instead of waiting for a supply ship that'll cost us millions of dollars to launch. Or they could sell it to the highest bidder, i mean whats cooler than your own space station?
  • If they're going to send up a full load of fuel so they can blast it into the atmosphere, why can't they push it the other direction and blast it into outer space or at the Sun or somewhere else?
  • LOL - I can see it now, Mir up on blocks in the front yard of the new space station. Guess we *are* all just abunch of rednecks at heart...
  • woops, temporary hole in memory.

    it means peace AND world. Gorbacheov said in a speech (in russian): I want peace and was interpreted as saying I want the world :)

    whatever. i think thats who it was.
  • Try boosting enough fuel up there to move the thing out of orbit- it'd cost as much as it did to put the thing there in the first place. It's cheaper to try to dump it into the ocean.

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