[Dog Gone]

Good information. Thanks for posting it.

[billorites]

Ground Control to Major Tom. Ground Control to Major Tom.
Take your protein pills and put your helmet on.
Ground Control to Major Tom, commencing countdown, engines on.
Check ignition and may God's love be with you.

[ambrose]

Wouldn't it make sense to have some old fashioned rocket ships on standby to be used in a pinch?

[CROSSHIGHWAYMAN]

Today marks the end of manned spaceflight as we have known it.

The ISS will be abandoned.

The overwhelming cost of new safety precautions will preclude sending more people into space.

Technology and robotics will continue to outpace human adaptablity is space.

Androids, not humans, will eventually explore the outer planets.

Many Americans will demand that less money be devoted to space.

We have lots of work to do on the earth. We can make the good earth a place no one would want to leave.

There should be no rush to space. It won't go away.

[Alberta's Child]

Good post. The Soyuz "lifeboat" spacecraft was a wise addition to the space station as a means of emergency escape.

In my mind, this incident does not qualify as an "emergency" as it relates to the space station crew. There is no hurry to get them back ahead of schedule (i.e., it's not as if something disastrous is going on up there), so in my mind it would be best to go ahead with the next shuttle mission, using an experienced crew.

I know it sounds counter-intuitive, but I've got a sense that even after this last disaster a shuttle re-entry is safer than using an older Russian unit that comes down the old-fashioned way. There is always the potential for parachute failures, hard landings, etc.

[Badger1]

The problem with the ISS is that it has no on orbit boost capability to adjust its orbit. The orbital corrections were made by the shuttle when it was docked with the ISS. Without periodic adjustments, the ISS will eventually come back to Earth just as the Russian Space Station did.

The sad part is that my company submitted a proposal for a boost module for the ISS and NASA decided they did not need it.