The space shuttle Columbia broke up Saturday as it descended over central Texas toward a planned landing at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Seven crew members were aboard. Many believe that a debris that hit some shielding during take off might be the culprit for the explosion during the return of the shuttle. Our condolences go out to the families of the brave astronauts.Now the question is: who is going to bring back or take care of the three astronauts that are left in the space station (Soyuz can only carry one extra person at a time), as the last time NASA had a tragedy with Challenger in 1986, it took them 3 years to fly again. The last time the Russians left up there a person for a whole year because they didn’t had the money for a manned mission to bring him back, the guy got almost crazy (normal time to be left up there is 6 months, and you normally get visits). Assuming a rotation purely based on Soyuz, they’d each stay 18 months (one could change every 6 months) and they wouldn’t get visits. Plus, this means that the Russians couldn’t use tourists to help finance the flights (I hope NASA will though).
My thoughts and prayers are now mostly to the three astronauts that are still up there.
Actually none of the ‘Burons’ are sitting in a field; the two that were completed are in storage in Kazhastan, whom they both belong too, traded from Russia for rights to use the launch facilities there.
And the NASA could never use them, unlike US shuttles the Buron has no main engine, it was lifted fully into orbit by a rocket that fell to earth (fully reusable) after reaching orbit.
A test vehicle does sit in a park in Moscow as a restaurant.
“Why would they want to destroy russian satellites”
They certainly did during the cold war and even today russia represents competition to the US. Russia is also not the most stable nation in the world, lots of nukes not as much control as most would want.
I’m appalled that we–the global first-world society–spend billions and billions of dollars annually on astronomical aspirations, yet feel nothing (at least where money is concerned) about the thousands that die daily of starvation.
Speak for yourself. Millions of us do feel quite a deal of horror, and do speak with our wallets, in some cases to the point of jeopardizing our finances. We do this in spite of “good sense”; in spite of cynics who pretend we don’t exist; in spite of governments in Africa and Iraq and North Korea &c that deliberately starve their people for political reasons; in spite of warlords who are too busy playing “whose is bigger — mine or yours?” to let needed aid get through.
The space program has made the world a better place by giving us a goal which spurs on fantastic technological development. Your rotten cynicism won’t do a thing to lessen that radiance.
“Don’t forget one thing: you’re talking about ISS, not ASS (or USASS) you’re talking about a project that’s not only mantained by USA. Infact, the first, basic structure of station “comes” from MIR 2 project (and the other half from the “alpha” project). Not to mention that the station doesn’t really need shuttle to remain operational. Progress for resupply and soyuz for crew transport is enough (and maybe some heavy launch vehicles for station assembly)”
Actually there’s one thing the shuttle did do that’s important to the space station. When it was linked, it would use it’s boosters to push the station up to a higher orbit.
The solutz (hope I spelled that right) can’t do that.
Do some research on the number of dead Russians who were involved in their space program. It’s probably around 113. Competition is the WORST IDEA for anything SAFETY RELATED.
i can’t speak about russia’s safety record in space but i went to school with a Navy NUKE school grad and a know a few people that served on US subs.
At least in subs, and i think in general, russia paid a lot less attention to safety than the US did. It made their subs faster (less shielding in the reactor). A lot more Russian subs have been lost than those of the US though as a result.
Safety costs money. Moreover, i am sticking by my first thought which is that NASA’s budget probably reflects some of the DoD’s long standing efforts to militarize space
To all those who think this is not newsworthy… Move on- its just a header on the front page… if you got this far and posted a comment, you have already wasted more of your time on it than you had to.
As for the shuttle – it was and still IS the most advanced method for space travel. Yes, it is dangerous. Going into space IS dangerous. Yes the failure rate is high. A shuttle does not go to 7-11 for a slurpee. It is a space travel vehicle. We are still in the very early days of spaceflight, and this sort of thing, while tragic, is not going to be completely avoidable. One day we will travel the planets as easily as we go to the corner store for milk, but only after many have made sacrifices to make that possible. Many were lost crossing the great oceans, many ships sank to never be seen again. Many early attempts at flight ended in death because it was an untried and untested technology, yet now we fly with nary a thought. And so it will be one day with space travel.
Unfortunately as with any endeavor, we first have to pay our dues, and learn….
God bless those who are brave enough to do this for us!
If I remember right, the ISS has a Russian Soyuz capsule docked to it as a lifeboat re-entry vehicle. It’s supposedly swapped out every six months with another Soyuz craft.
Seems a few readers think that the military and Nasa funding is starving the world. Funny how things like Spy satellites being used to find the best places to grow food is bad. Funny how many test that the space shuttle has recorded in order to help all the humans of the earth. The computer is an example of how military spending and US federal spending has been used freely by all the people of the earth. What does GPS stand for? Can you name an everyday phrase of the technology world that is in Russian? Huh? Transistor? Funny how I have traveled the world and find that America is hated but everyone wants to live here! Why?
Freedom!
You can’t get that in your run of the mill crooked third world country who’s leaders don’t give a darn about their people.
A Vote!
Sure people die. I have heros and the space crew are one of my heros! They were American heros and thank God we call other countries our friends and they too are my heros. Hollywood doesn’t have the right stuff for me!
Yes, I’m really sad about this, but what does it have to do with operating systems, et al?…
Do this kind of news belong to this site, are they OS-related?
Why have all the comments that complain this article shouldn’t be on OSNews been modded down?
To all those who think this is not newsworthy… Move on- its just a header on the front page… if you got this far and posted a comment, you have already wasted more of your time on it than you had to. It’s not that I don’t think it’s newsworthy, it’s just that I already went to bbc.co.uk to read about this and didn’t expect it to be featured here.
I read this far trying to figure out why it was. Eugenia get’s some great stories for OSNews, but I don’t understand this posting.
I don’t want to. Don’t assume you know better then the rest of the world about what the rest of the world is thinking. That’s pretty naive.
“They certainly did during the cold war and even today russia represents competition to the US. Russia is also not the most stable nation in the world, lots of nukes not as much control as most would want.”
oh really? you just assume that. if they did, the cold war would be so cold anymore…
as for the rest of your coment: you read too much sack papers and watched goldeneye a few times too much.
Learn this: Maybe not allies completely, but usa and russia are definetely PARTNERS in present world.
“Actually there’s one thing the shuttle did do that’s important to the space station. When it was linked, it would use it’s boosters to push the station up to a higher orbit.
The solutz (hope I spelled that right) can’t do that.”
Not true. Progress would do it without a problem. Actually it did it for the mir – though recently not to push the station up, but down. And mir was heavier than ISS (at the time when ISS received this “push”). Besides ISS doesn’t need that anymore. Now it can fire it’s own engines (to compensate the lowering of its orbit due to aerodynamic drag), to wchich fuel is transported by progress btw.
mean, OS News, every now and then, will post a story like this simply so that we can comment about it (usually something big). I enjoy reading the comments of those whose only other comments I’ve seen have been OS related only. It sort of gives all of us a “face”. Sometimes they’ll post a story just for fun too.
There are some terrible things going on in the world right now. Here in the USA, we disgracefully consume so many resources. But, we are also a very generous country too. In recent years, one of the biggest problems in getting aid to people is that the countries they are in are in chaos…there is lawlessnes, warloads, strongmen ruling certain areas and the governments of these countries being so weak or so corrupt themselves, cannot guarantee the safety of relief workers or deliver on getting the aid to the actual people who need it.
> As for the shuttle – it was and still IS the most
> advanced method for space travel.
BEEEP, play again.
After the Challenger desaster, NASA officials were quoted that they actually would *like* to switch back to the Saturn V – cheaper per launch, more reliable, and higher payload (IIRC) – but they had *destroyed* the blueprints to make sure the Shuttle wasn’t facing opposition…
Note that after Challenger there were demands to retrofit an emergency evacuation system. The original Shuttle did not have one, because it was thought “too expensive”… and guess what, today the Shuttles *still* don’t have one…
As for costs per launch, *and* maximum payload, the Shuttle plainly sucks.
The only advantage it has is the ability to “catch” things and bring them back to earth / pressurize the cargo bay to relieve the astronauts of vac suits during repairs.
Hell, *every* US space craft had an emergency evac system. The Shuttle did not before Challenger, it did not before Columbia. 14 astronauts died. Make your own mind.
Oh, and yes, those 7 only made it into the news because third world deaths don’t make for so much publicity.
Those seven had a *choice*, thousands others that died that day did not.
The families and friends of those seven will get professional help to get over it; thousands of mothers that saw their children die that day won’t.
And it doesn’t have anything to do with OSNews.
“Learn this: Maybe not allies completely, but usa and russia are definetely PARTNERS in present world.”
I never doubted that russia and the US are friendly these days. Regardless, i’d be stunned to know that the US military did not develop or at least research means to knock out russian satellites during the cold war and the thaw afterwards, which are now probably mainly aimed at those of china.
Moreover, Russia still has one of if not the largest nuclear arsenals in the world. While the level of threat is low, US strategic command must watch russia carefully. the arsenal is too big to do otherwise.
Now on to the US military. Stop bashing it. I can’t stand bush or his ridiculous war on iraq and i am not a fan of building air carrier after aircraft carrier but military spending, particularly in the US, is ultimately a high risk technology incubator that no company would touch and the benefits to the world have been there. Thank military spending for helping commercialize helicopters, jet engines, transistors, satellites, integrated circuits, radar, digital signal processors, wireless communications, the internet, etc.
Has the US military also done a lot of wrong? yep. Do they also waste money? yep but it goes both ways. As is the case with just about everything else its not black and white. Its grey.
“they probably use all sorts of chips, but I distinctly remember reading that they use 80386s up there. I doubt a single 8086 would be powerful enough for all the mathematically calculations”
From what I know all core CPUs in the Shuttle are 8086/8088. Remember, the shuttle is 70’s technology, The construction of Columbia started ’75, way before the 386. mind you, Columbia had been refurbished twice in the 90’s IIRC, so they might have changed some thing, but i doubt it. When it comes to complex things like this you’re *very* reluctant to change things. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!” .
Also, Apollo did an even greater journey than the shuttles do with FAR less compuing power. Even if it was close they had to abort the first moonlanding because of one computer on the eagle not being able to keep up! 😉
That said, bless the crew and their families. Just hoping USA will give up it’s efforts in space now 🙁
wrong, Columbia in it’s early flights had catapults onboard. They were later removed due to the consideration that space shuttle is safe enough.
Besides, those catapults were mainly for launch – they would not help in the situation in wchich columbia were destroyed
Hi folks,
Read with interest the question of starving people vs. military budgets.
Of course, you note that to help out in most of the situations where people are being starved to death, you need to have a high military budget so that your army can alter the situation. Throughout the twentieth century and so far in the twenty-first, deaths due to famine have seldom simply “happened”. In most cases they are either engineered by impoverished dictatorships against political enemies or due to awful policies with refusal to admit wrongdoing. The Soviet Union in the thirties, China in the fifties, Cambodia in the seventies, Ethiopia in the eighties, North Korea and soon Zimbabwe now — these were not “natural” famines. Simply passing over large amounts of food aid would probably have had little consequences for the death toll. An army might. In Cambodia and Ethiopia, armies did.
Whether you buy my premise or not, if you are interested in the subject, there has actually been a lot of economic research by Indian economists lately. Amartya Sen won his nobel prize in economics for exploring the characterestics of famine — frequently, there’s not even a shortage of food in the area. For example, the grain exported from Ireland during the potato blight was not atypical. The tendency seems to be for a severe economic shock, often with one with primary effects on the poor agricultural laborers.
Another observation he made, more in line with my original argument, is that deaths due to famine in democracies are rare. Democratic governments have a stake in not having large numbers of people starving to death, as said governments would be voted out of office by angry starving people. Botswana, I think, came through its disasters in the early eighties unscathed, and India typically manages its famines without too much loss of life. In contrast, a million died in North Korea, and it looks like Zimbabwe is going to fall into very serious trouble.
From Sen: “The governmental response to acute suffering often depends on the pressure that is put on it, and this is where the exercise of political rights (voting, criticizing, protesting, and so on) can make a real difference. I have discussed (in these pages and in my book Resources, Values, and Development) the remarkable fact that, in the terrible history of famines in the world, no substantial famine has ever occurred in any independent and democratic country with a relatively free press. Whether we look at famines in Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, or other dictatorial regimes, or in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, or in China from 1958 to 1961 (at the failure of the Great Leap Forward, when between 23 and 30 million people died), or currently in North Korea, we do not find exceptions to this rule. (It is true that Ireland was part of democratic Britain during its famine of the 1840s, but the extent of London’s political dominance over the Irish was so strong–and the social distance so great and so old, as illustrated by Spenser’s severely unfriendly description of the Irish in the sixteenth century–that the English rule over Ireland was, for all practical purposes, a colonial rule.) ”
You can read the article from whence the above came right here:
http://www.brainsnchips.org/hr/sen.htm
Anyway, this is probably going to be moderated down as severely off topic, so if you’re interested in discussion or want pointers to other thrilling areas of economic research (e.g. effects of the abolition of the bride price on female education), feel free to e-mail me.
Yours truly,
Jeffrey Boulier
@ nowhere:
> wrong, Columbia in it’s early flights had catapults
> onboard.
Sources? I doubt this.
> They were later removed due to the consideration that
> space shuttle is safe enough.
As we saw twice already.
The original plans for the shuttle included a detachable cockpit, i.e. as an escape pod. It would have saved the Challenger crew for sure, and the Columbia crew perhaps. (Don’t know if they could have made the escape pod capable of standing up to reentry.)
Either way, this solution was not implemented because it would have been expensive. A decision that did cost seven lifes for sure and seven lives perhaps.
And it still stands that it is a sad fact that fourteen people dying in an accident should not be worth all the extra attention in our “perfect” world today.
Statistically, on that same day:
* 8 people were killed in car accidents in Florida.
* 115 people were killed in car accidents in the US.
* 11,000 children, and 13,000 adults died of starvation.
* 6,000 children died of diarrhea.
* 2,700 children died of measles.
* 1,400 women died during childbirth.0
* 1,400 people were killed in homicide.
Who the F*** cares about seven astronauts who *knew* they were taking a risk, and *decided* by their own free will to take it?
Solar, I don’t have time for looking for some sources for you. Believe me, I’m 100% sure of that.