Posted on 08/30/2011 7:47:13 PM PDT by Nachum
WASHINGTON — The risk of an unprecedented evacuation of the International Space Station will spike if Russian craft cannot resume their missions and return by November, a senior NASA official has warned.
"There is a greater risk of losing the ISS when it's unmanned than if it were manned," Michael Suffredini, the ISS program manager for the US space agency, said in a conference call with Russian officials.
"The risk increase is not insignificant," he added.
Russia on Monday delayed its next manned mission to the ISS by at least a month after an unmanned cargo vessel crashed into Siberia instead of reaching orbit on August 24. The head of Russia's manned spaceflight programme also warned that a significantly longer delay would force the six people on board the station to abandon the orbiter due to fatigue and supply problems.
The station crew normally consists of six -- currently three Russians, two Americans and one Japanese -- working six-month rotations.
Staff safety and the "very big investment" that the Russian and US governments have made in the ISS would guide future decisions, Suffredini said during the call on Monday.
"We prefer not to operate in that condition without crew on board for an extended period of time just to make sure we end up in that situation.
(Excerpt) Read more at google.com ...
There are two Soyuz spacecraft docked.
They are all in various states of disassembly as we speak.
So man is to stay on Earth forever?
It was the best of years and it was the worst of years.
Otherwise I have several locations where I’d like them to drop the station if it is at all possible for NASA to control its decent.
A ton of it is corporate. My company considered it at one time.
Hardly a Commie conspiracy.
Raise your hand if you were lucky enough to have one of the “retired” shuttles come to your home town museum? Oh boy, oh boy! Aren't you lucky!
You ought to have a tear in your eye like the indian from the ‘70s PSA commercial looking at cigarette butts in the river next to his canoe.
Never deal with the Russians. They’re corrupt through and through, and given the choice between being successful at something themselves, or preventing America from being successful at it, they’ll choose the latter every time. They’re like Arabs/Muslims in that regard.
It seems like every time a new, wet-behind-the-ears president comes along, we have to learn that lesson all over again from scratch, at great harm to our national defense and scientific progress, and at great expense to the taxpayer. Veeeery discouraging. Ronald Reagan is the only president in recent memory to have known it: Don’t enter into any “cooperative” deals with the Russians.
wonder what this will do to muslim self esteem, though.
What Reagan said was "Trust, but verify."
Hardly a Commie conspiracy.
I don’t understand that comment. Could you expand on it?
Indeed. He had a space station project, "Freedom" ready to go at a fraction of the price. The 'Rat Congress and RINO GHWB killed it in the late '80s and threw our lot in with the Russians to build Alpha.
You mentioned "Industrial Central Planning" in post #37.
well, ain’t that a kick in the head for space exploration..
The replies I have heard to your comments sound like people in the 1500s saying why go to the new world? its expensive and its a long trip. what good is it to explore?
I wish we had a new fleet of shuttles making frequent trips into space and a new manned lunar exploration program.
Yea? You consider that grounds to smear me as a conspiracy theorist?
Where exactly do you think we are going to explore? And how does this contraption get is there?
It was sarcasm, Francis.
A smear? You're certainly paranoid enough to believe in conspiracies.
Oh, sarcasm. That makes it all better.
It's called "The Universe."
Forever I do not know, but man as a mortal in the present age and the one to come... yes. After that, I venture no guess.
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