US shuttle program ends, continued manned space station occupation in doubt

D

doakpersoncat

New member
Yeah, it was an old system, but the Space Shuttle was the worlRAB best "Heavy Lifter" space vehicle out there. It typically carried 22700 kilograms (50000 lb) of cargo. So 3 tons of supplies was nothing.

Russian supply ship for space station crashes

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) ? The failed launch of a Russian supply ship may have ripple effects at the International Space Station.

A spacecraft carrying nearly 3 tons of supplies failed to reach orbit Wednesday and crashed into Siberia.

NASA's space station program manager, Mike Suffredini, says next month's planned launch of a new crew may be delayed. That's because the upper stage of the Soyuz rocket that failed is similar to the ones used to launch astronauts.

Suffredini says three of the six space station astronauts who are due to return to Earth in two weeks, might end up staying longer. NASA wants to keep the outpost fully staffed with six to keep research going.

As for supplies, the space station has plenty to last until spring.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

MOSCOW (AP) ? An unmanned Russian supply ship bound for the International Space Station failed to reach its planned orbit Wednesday, and pieces of it fell in Siberia amid a thunderous explosion, officials said.

A brief statement from Roscosmos, Russia's space agency, did not specify whether the Progress supply ship that was launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan had been lost. But the state news agency RIA Novosti quoted Alexander Borisov, head of a the Choisky region in Russia's Altai province, as saying pieces of the craft fell in his area some 1,500 kilometers (900 miles) northeast of the launch site.

"The explosion was so strong that for 100 kilometers (60 miles) glass almost flew out of the windows," he was quoted as saying. Borisov said there were no immediate reports of casualties.

The ITAR-Tass news agency quoted Choisky's Interior Ministry as saying the space ship crashed in a vast Siberian forest that contains small villages. Yuri Shmyrin, the chief of Karakoksha, one of those villages, told Interfax news agency that the search operation for the wreckage is not likely to start until Thursday morning.

The Russian Emergencies Ministry could not be reached for comment. A Roscosmos media officer who refused to be identified said the agency had no immediate comment.

Roscosmos said the third stage of the rocket firing the ship into space failed a few minutes into the launch. The ship was carrying more than 2.5 tons of supplies, including oxygen, food and fuel. Since the ending of the U.S. space shuttle program this summer, Russian spaceships are a main supply link to the space station. It was the 44th Progress to launch to the International Space Station.

Roscosmos said the accident "would have no negative influence" on the International Space Station crew because its existing supplies of food, water and oxygen are sufficient.

Interfax cited a Russian space analyst, Sergei Puzanov, as saying those supplies could last two to three months and that "the situation with the loss of the Progress cannot be called critical."

In the United States, NASA said the rocket appeared to function flawlessly at liftoff, which occurred right on time, but there was a loss of contact with the vehicle just over five minutes into the flight.

On NASA TV, Russian officials said the upper stage did not separate from the supply ship and that on two subsequent orbits controllers tried to contact the supply ship ? in vain. Two hours after the mishap, Russian Mission Control told the space station crew: "We'll try to figure it out."

NASA is counting on Russia as well as Japan and Europe to keep the orbiting outpost stocked, now that the space shuttles are no longer flying. The shuttle program ended in July with the Atlantis mission; a year's worth of food and other provisions were delivered.

Late this year, a commercial company in California plans to launch its own rocket and supply ship to the space station. NASA is encouraging private enterprise to make station deliveries.

There are six astronauts aboard the International Space Station, which orbits 350 kilometers (220 miles) above the Earth. They are Russians Andrei Borisenko, Alexander Samokuyayev and Sergei Volkov, Americans Michael Fossum and Ronald Garan and Satoshi Furukawa of Japan.

"The supplies aboard the space station are actually pretty fat" after the resupply mission by space shuttle Atlantis in July, NASA spokesman Kelly Humphries said from Houston. "So we don't anticipate any immediate impact to the crew."

Humphries stressed that NASA was waiting to get more details from Russian space officials on what actually happened.

In July of 2010, a Progress supply ship failed in its first automatic docking attempt due to equipment malfunction, but was connected with the orbiting laboratory two days later.
 
Funny they didn't mention in the article that there was an abundance of UFO like activity on that day in that same area, with what looked to be unfriendly streaks of light coming towarRAB the shuttle while on it's route to the space station, as if it was under enemy fire from an alien craft.
 
And a follow up story:

NASA's International Space Station May Be Abandoned in Noveraber

It looks like that just four months into "The Age of Soyuz" that 11 year "Age of the International Space Station" may come to an end, thanks to the recent loss of the Russian Progress and doubts about the safety of the Soyuz spacecraft.

The ISS, according to Spaceflight Now, may have to be entirely abandoned in Noveraber, pending reassurance that the Soyuz, now the sole vehicle that astronauts can fly into space, is safe to fly. While the ISS can be remotely controlled by both NASA and the Russian Space Agency, the 11 year constant occupation of the $100 billion space facility will come to an end. Medical research ongoing on the ISS, which requires constant supervision by astronauts, will be disrupted.

Somewhere in the hellish afterlife he must be experiencing, space program opponent William Proxmire must be smirking. Even if the interruption is brief, say a matter of a few weeks, the abandonment of the space station is bad as bad can be for President Obama and his space policy.

This situation is the result of a nuraber of decisions taken by two administrations going back seven years.

First, President George W. Bush announced the end of the space shuttle program in early 2004. The money that was saved would be used to finance the Constellation program which, among other things, would have provided an alternate method to access the ISS, essentially a space capsule called the Orion launched by a new rocket called the Ares 1. Some money was allocated to incentivize the creation of commercial space craft that might also serve the same purpose.

However, President Bush and the Congress did not adequately fund the Constellation program. Corabined with the inevitable technical challenges, this caused the schedule to slip, increase the costs, and widen what became known as "the space flight gap" between the time the shuttle program ended and the time a new vehicle would be ready to begin.

President Obama abruptly cancelled the Constellation program, thus ending the public option of the Orion/Ares 1, and to go all in with the commercial program by pouring billions of dollars in subsidies into it. But Obama's failure to sell the new policy to the Congress and the public, corabined with bad leadership on the part of his NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and Deputy Administrator Lori Garver, has placed the new policy in doubt. The House has cut funding for the commercial crew program. DemanRAB that the commercial crew subsidies be increased are being met with deaf ears. In any event, the new policy does not seem to have decreased the space flight gap by even a day.

HinRABight is 20/20. President Bush should have asked for enough money to keep the shuttles flying until a new vehicle was operational. He should have made sure that his new program was adequately funded and not let his NASA Administrator Mike Griffin fend for himself. President Obama should not have cancelled the Constellation program. He might have instead allocated tens of billions of his nearly $1 trillion stimulus program to getting the space program back on track.

In any event, this fiasco is happening on Obama's watch. Obama, his surrogates, and enablers will no doubt try to blame President Bush for the disaster that faces human space flight. But Obama is president now and the buck stops at the Oval Office, not Crawford, Texas. He neeRAB to address the problem, with the cooperation of the Congress. Otherwise Obama's successor will have a major job, among many others, cleaning up the mess.

Mark R. Whittington is the author of Children of Apollo and The Last Moonwalker . He has written on space subjects for a variety of periodicals, including The Houston Chronicle, The Washington Post, USA Today, the LA Times, and The Weekly Standard.
 
the crew of the space station spenRAB 85% of their time doing maintenance up there to keep it aloft. The thing is a pain in the ass to maintain.


Pulling out the crew and leaving it abandoned isn't a "temporary" measure, it's going to mean the end of the station and likely it's coming down like Skylab did.


Just find it very odd/convenient that right after we shut down our shuttle program and make the shuttles unflyable for museums, the Russian program (which has had a reliable track record) suddenly has 2 major failures in 1 week and will cause the current station crew to have to come home way ahead of schedule.
 
They don't want to waste money on the program. We have always been the "deep pockets" for the ISS ... hell for the United Nations, and a ton of other "World Programs".

It's amazing just how much the world can do without when THEY have to pay for it, not us.
 
wouldn't take much to just say "we are not going to pick up America's previous bills for this, let's just self destruct the supply rocket and say it's too dangerous to send anyone else up until next year"
 
Back
Top