Mission Accomplished.
Posted on 08/31/2011 1:28:08 PM PDT by Libloather
Russia considering unmanned space station
Russia's space agency Roskosmos is considering ending a permanent human presence in space, an agency official said on Wednesday following last week's crash of a supply ship delivering precious cargo to the ISS.
7:20PM BST 31 Aug 2011
"Perhaps in the future, we will not need a constant manned presence in the lower Earth orbit," Roskosmos deputy director Vitaly Davydov told journalists in Moscow.
"We don't exclude the possibility of returning to the concept of DOS (long-term orbital) stations that we had before stations with constant human presence," he said.
**SNIP**
Davydov's remarks came days after a failed launch left the International Space Station without a planned delivery of 2.9 tonnes of food, water, and fuel and delayed the next manned launch by at least a month.
Russia's space officials have for the first time warned that the current crew aboard the ISS could be evacuated, leaving the station, whose cost has been estimated at $100 billion, unmanned.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Because of the Aug. 24 failure of the Russian Progress 44 launch, Garan will return to Earth on Sept. 15 (Sept. 16 in Kazakhstan). He originally was scheduled to land on Sept. 8. Fossum will remain in space until mid November.
I like the Bigelow modules, I would love to see a station built using those.
Man, it’s too bad we don’t have some sort of reusable spacecraft that could make regular trips to service the ISS.
It could be made like a plane, and we’d launch it like a rocket and let it glide back to Earth.
A “Space Plane” or, even better a “Space Shuttle”!!
Wouldn’t that be cool!
Nah, it’d NEVER happen!
so we spend 100’s of billions of dollars and 20 some years building the space station and now they will abandon it...hey you have to love government planning or lack there of...
‘bots rock.
Or, we could have this thing that takes itself to orbit and back without losing parts of itself. We could call it the Delta Clipper.
Oh, wait, it was canned to fund that thing with wings.
There is something fishy about this whole thing, Russia always says how great their rockets/space craft are and now this. SpaceX is launching it’s Dragon cargo craft in couple of months and Europe and or Japanese also have some. Something going here .
[ Or, we could have this thing that takes itself to orbit and back without losing parts of itself. We could call it the Delta Clipper.
Oh, wait, it was canned to fund that thing with wings. ]
There are also plans on the drawing board for nuclear rockets that are feasible which would make a trip to mars take only a month or two......
Guess we need more climate science from NASA instead....
[ There is something fishy about this whole thing, Russia always says how great their rockets/space craft are and now this. SpaceX is launching it’s Dragon cargo craft in couple of months and Europe and or Japanese also have some. Something going here . ]
Maybe we will see busineses relocate to the moon to escape the Federal Government?
Unless you’ve got a flight assignment, it would be a bit of a drag being an astronaut now. The ISS has crew assignments through Soyuz TMA-11M in 2013. Beyond that, no crews have a ride on a rocket waiting. I’d go on a ride if offered. I wouldn’t look at it as a death sentence. More like something to be dealt with. The Russians have been using the Soyuz launch vehicle for decades and have had very few launch failures. They’ve had a couple of bad days lately but it wouldn’t keep me off one. Nothing is guarenteed 100% successful all the time.
[ ‘bots rock. ]
especially lunar mining and lunar construction robots.
Until the enviro wackoes demand they be shut down....
being a new astronaut right now is like being the third string backup quarterback in the nfl.
The Shuttle was not really man rated in practice.
Yet NASA just launched a solar powered craft to Jupiter, where only nuclear powered craft have gone before.
Guess we need more climate science from NASA instead....
Yep. I wouldn't count on anything nuclear powered out of them for manned spaceflight. NASA actually developed a successful nuclear upper stage 40 years ago, but Congress canned it.
Mission Accomplished.
Yeah, like being behind Peyton Manning, Drew Brees, or Aaron Rodgers. The likelyhood of getting in the game is remote.
Seems to me the moon should be the manned space station.
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