Posted on 05/03/2015 12:52:04 AM PDT by WhiskeyX
A Russian spacecraft delivering supplies to the International Space Station (ISS) is out of control and will fall back to Earth, officials say.
The unmanned cargo ship was launched from Kazakhstan on Tuesday, but contact was lost with it soon afterwards.
Russia's space agency says Progress M-27M is now orbiting in an uncontrolled spin.
It cannot reach the ISS and is likely to break up on re-entering Earth's atmosphere.
The craft carried on to a higher orbit after contact was lost.
Igor Komarov, the head of Russia's space agency, Roscosmos, said: "The craft's continued flight and its docking with the ISS is not possible."
Two astronauts spending a year on the ISS, Scott Kelly and Mikhail Kornienko, told the Associated Press news agency that flight controllers had given up hope of controlling Progress again.
Progress is likely to re-enter Earth's atmosphere some time between 5 and 7 May.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
Progress is making progress all right, just in the wrong direction. Back to the drawing board.
Wasn’t this Space Cowboys with Clint Eastwood, and others?
The USA is now dependent on the USSR, ooops, I mean Russia in order to put men into space.
We need their boosters, their supplies, their...good will, ahem.
We are a former superpower.
Obama set us up for the kill by his “RESET” policy and his foolishness. He has destroyed our ability to lead not only is space but here, on Earth as well.
Oh, to relive the Apollo period!
Amazing what g0vt can do with the new lasers.
Progress is likely to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere some time between 5 and 7 May.
So what would have happened if it was a successful docking?
It becomes a garbage truck. They load it up with trash and hope it burns up over the south Pacific before crashing into the sea.
The stage was set for this under Clinton. Look up the DC-X project. Cheap, Single Stage To Orbit program that was wildly successful in hitting progress goals and was actually in early proof of concept flight tests. Clinton took the program from DARPA, gave it to NASA. NASA saw it as a threat to their precious shuttle, so after one mishap (caused by NASA idiocy) they canned the project; that was the end of our real next generation capability.
Long ago the Air Force wanted to put a satellite in orbit. They had 2 million and approached NASA. NASA reps laughed and said they couldn’t do the study for that. So, the Air Force did it on their own and had money left over.
I’ve worked on NASA programs. The agency is horribly inefficient and wasteful. It’s time to can the whole bunch and go commercial.
I prefer to look forward. Look at what Elon Musk is doing with the Dragon capsule - that will be man-rated. Private enterprise going into space.
Curley Howard
The Good 'Ol Days!!!
I was installing Car Alarms years decades ago and had a guy come in and wanted the "special" $39.00 unit that was on sale and he added all the options to it for a '65 Mustang. He came back 2 days later complaining that it was not working right. We told him that it was working properly.
Ended up with him on the phone to the Manufacturer trying to make him happy.
He gets off the call and turns to Me and says "I worked on the Redundancy Systems on the Saturn IV Rocket, this Alarm is a POS!"
I replied "Then why don't you build the perfect alarm for your car ?"
Ended up uninstalling the unit and refunding his $...
Question: Where would you like to see it crash into the earth?
Inside the fence...to keep peeps away?
Which fence? WH?
“So what would have happened if it was a successful docking?”
The supplies would have been unloaded onto the International Space Station, the trash would have been loaded onto the spacecraft, and the spacecraft with trash aboard would then have been deorbited to burn up in the atmosphere over an ocean.
SpaceX had a supply ship there just weeks ago, right?
SpaceX and others are getting billions in subsidies to put a new launch system into place. SpaceX had an unmanned supply ship there weeks ago.
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