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 ...
Grow up. All you have is hate toward the program.
Do you have any concept of how big the universe is?
Yup. All the others forgot the verify part. I don’t believe RR would’ve entered into the ISS effort simply because verifying the quality of the Russian work would be impractical. They dragged their feet like crazy, resulting in a couple of lengthy delays, produced defective parts right and left, costing us tens of millions more than it should have, maybe a hundred million more. And now they’re about to abandon it and there isn’t a whole lot we can do about it except squawk. And Obama won’t even do that.
Explore space with a Conestoga wagon.
Calm down. Chill out. No hatred in any of my posts. Really, you have problem.
Yeah, if squatters move in, you’ll never get them out.
Agree 100%. We have a disturbing number of Luddites and ill-educated (on space) people on FR, though. No wonder NASA went down under Obama.
It's a great big universe/And we're all really puny/We're just tiny specks/'Bout the size of Mickey Rooney....
No, my FRiend, you came in with a bad attitude.
Obama doesn’t give a SHIT about this. He wanted to TEAR DOWN American Exceptionalism. He got it.
I have NEVER been sooooo pissed in my life. As a child, I wanted to be an astronaut. I went to Cape Canaveral before the ‘shoot to the moon’ took off to view the rocket on the landing pad. All the way back from trip.....”Man on the moon! Man on the moon!” It struck awe and wonder in me. Couple of weeks later.....watching the black and white images and hearing the “beeps” to “Houston”. We ran out in the front yard and took a Polaroid of the moon.
This area BOOMED after that. Filled with hope and promise. Now we have to ‘hitch a ride’, and NASA is used for ‘Muslim Outreach’.
I think you skewer that analogy pretty effectively.
So we should just stay home and forget about it?
How big did the unknown look to the ocean explorers of a thousand years ago?
Unless you have some practical idea how to traverse distances that are beyond our wildest imaginations......
You needed an analogy that you can understand.
NASA has never promised they could explore the universe.
So you’re one of those “Space exploration isn’t in God’s plan” people?
I’m totally disgusted by the way it unraveled. Now we’re going to have to wait for another Republican administration that’s not wet-behind-the-ears when it comes to understanding the ill will much of the rest of the world has for us, before we get another leg up in space again, and hope it remains in office long enough to get us off the ground. It’s hard to be optimistic.
It took months to cross oceans and continents as little as 200 years ago. With your attitude, it still would.
I’m betting they will evacuate, and let the thing die. The truth is probably we no longer want anything to do with it, and letting it go in such a way would be a way to politically save face, while making it look like a failure on the part of the Russkies. I doubt the Russians want anything to do with it either.
It's just sad.
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