The failure of a Soyuz rocket to send a supply ship into space last week may mean that the International Space Station will have to be temporarily abandoned for the first time since 2000, Florida Today reports.
Russian space vehicles are the only means of ferrying crews and supplies to the station now that the U.S. space shuttle program has ended.
Last week, the third-stage failure of a Soyuz rocket sent an unmanned Progress supply ship crashing into Siberia.
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In # 7 JimD said: we could RENT IT TO THE CHINESE.
If you can’t maintain a property, squatters who can get the rights.
If we abandon the space station and the Chinese want it, than can just loft someone up there and take it over, for free, without anybody being able to stop them.
They can set up camp while we argue and nickel and dime ourselves into a coma.
NASA chief Charles Bolden’s remarks caused a stir among commentators.”When I became the NASA administrator, (President Obama) charged me with three things,” Bolden said in the interview which aired last week. “One, he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math; he wanted me to expand our international relationships; and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math and engineering.”
MikeN. And that interview was with???
Guys like you are afraid of black cats.
Girls like Mike N. are afraid of their own shadows.
The point of diminishing returns has long past for human space travel. Telepresence technology is sufficient for just about anything we want to accomplish out there.
# 36 Olo Baggins of Bywater said
“The point of diminishing returns”
Isn’t that the point, in the ever wise words of Buzz Lightyear “To infinity … and beyond!”.
and let’s not forget JFK famous words ““We seek to go to the moon and do other things. Not because they are easy, but because they are hard…because that goal will measure the best of our abilities.” We have set this deadline to measure the best of ours.”
Ha, ha. Yes, JFK relied on and demonstrated the greatness of the USA by having us go to the moon.
45 Years later, BushtheRetard bullshitted his way and demonstrated the decay of the USA by declaring a manned mission to Mars.
What a tool. Good thing we are getting back to basics with President Perry. A good evangelical anti-science shyster like him doesn’t even believe we went to the moon.
Nothing but bright days ahead for the USA.
VOTE ALL “NO NEW TAXES” POLITICIANS OUT OF OFFICE.
This clearly shows the failure of conservative – or what has become known as conservative – politics in America today. Cuts to the space program and cuts to all worthwhile programs while simultaneously giving (money) tax breaks to the rich and big corporations have killed what was once histories most prosperous nation.
Clearly, what we need to do is make the rich pay, make big corporations pay, so, once again, we can lead the world in the space industry. Of course, stopping (funding for) a few wars and tackling overpopulation and global warming would help too. And we’d once again have the money to do it.
This failure can be laid at the feet of all the “conservative” politicians (who aren’t really conservative) and their ilk.
If the ISS is abandoned, will ANYBODY notice or care besides the people that get paid to support it?
ISS is nothing but an extremely expensive project without a specific purpose or benefits.
We got rid of half of the biggest impediment to space progress: the space shuttle. Now lets finish the job and give up on this complete waste of effort and resources called the International Space Station.
No wait! SELL IT TO CHINA! or someone else with cash… like an unnamed country in the Middle East!
Doah!!!!
I bet when China gets itself up and going into SPACE and become a major presents not only on the MOON, but above as well; these same “space is a waste” conservatives will be dumping Trillions into pentagon programs (defunding every domestic program to do so) to both defend us from this overhead threat of a Chinese damocles sword and regain the upper hand.
Alot of repukaton short sighted complete embolsoles here!
I don’t see how orbiting our planet with people does anything useful.
Robots in space seem to collect some new data once in a while.
However, I’m all in favor of sending MikeN into space so he can be free of the damage that Muslims are causing him every second.
I would have thought they would have done a worst case scenario planning and had a backup shuttle staged for flight prep.
Yes it would cost some money, but completely mothballing the fleet is stupid given the potential Russian rocket failures.
It certainly would be cheaper then loosing the trillions of dollars invested in the space station!
noname==typical bankruptcy scenario: keep investing money in a bad proposition because of the money previously invested.
Solution: look at each opportunity “fresh” as where one will get the best return. Cost of going forward certainly includes much of what has already been invested but without the emotional component you suggest.
Everything has its time and place. Sliderules are gone. Probably, I say PROBABLY, same with man in space. Sliderules have a nice feel to them and we have invested a lot of money into analogue technologies that don’t need to run on electricity, but TODAY===where is our better highest return on investment?
Maybe NASA should go into Pron or Maurijuana, for medical needs only of course.
What is the information desired? How to best secure it? How many times do we need to watch videos of people chasing water drops or strapping themselves down to take a shit?
There is NO mystery here..imagine, for one minute, if the USG was committed to being a “Space Faring” nation instead of a government whose entire “rason detre’ for the the last century has been an endless war on this , that, and the other thing, whose only world class manufacturing is bombs and bullets. We would have had bases on the Moon and Mars long ago. If people really want this country to improve, stop voting the same asswipes in office, over and over again, for a start….
#46, you relatively new here?
This blog is composed substantially of R and D voters; the very reason our country is in the shape it is in. (there are exceptions who see it your way).
These people, like sheep will go to the polls next time and continue the destruction of their country by voting D or R again. Too bad they can’t just ruin their own little patch of existence instead of also ruining it for everyone else too.
Considering all the scientific breakthroughs its developed (can anyone name one?), I’m sure we won’t miss out too bad if it were put on pause for a while.
#46–onion/or anyone else==what are the hypothetical benefits of having a manned station on the moon? The only benefit I have ever heard was that we could prove we could do it.
Distance, gravity, fuel, absolute vacuum, cold/hot temps, meteors, radiation.
Whatever is identified, can you explain why unmanned alternatives can’t do the same job for fractions of the money?
Curious. Got milk?
Wow. Just wow.
So much for the American spirit. Less than 1% of the US federal budget to explore a limitless frontier.
foobar–limitless frontier?? Yes and No. Isn’t the limitation money? Isn’t that the point you so poetically ignore?
Doesn’t Mother Earth also represent a limitless frontier?
If that is true, where do we get the better/higher return on money spent: unlimited space or unlimited earth?
It occurred to me the one thing I have heard about what the moon could be used for was to manufacture fuel for further rocket launches to other planets.
anybody think that represents a good investment in the unlimited possibilities of space?
foobar?
What we’ve been doing up there for 20 years is playing around at the edge of the frontier, not exploring it. That’s probably because that frontier is insanely hostile, literally endless, and mostly empty. Without a new propulsion system it takes far too long to get anywhere, and the human support systems are massively expensive, especially given their dubious value-add.
Maybe when the Chinese start moving past us we’ll have another Sputnik moment. Maybe.
“From now on, we live in a world where man has walked on the moon. It wasn’t a miracle, we just decided to go.”
Jim Lovell
NASA Astronaut aboard Apollo 13
—
Space is the only way to make sure humanity’s eggs aren’t all in the same basket, plus it gives us something big to do that isn’t directly aimed at killing each other.
Humanity’s Adventure in Space, So Far: We’ve hung a number of doodads on the porch. Fired a couple shots over the fence. Sent some robots to scope out the neighbors houses. We’ve pitched a puptent on the driveway. And, only half a dozen times, we’ve run across the yard and jumped about.
We need to get out there more, and get more of us out there, before we screw up big enough to burn this house down.
And space races are way more fun than wars.
ps – Insufficient investment always yields insufficient returns.
Yes, let’s just dig up the moon for fuel. I’m sure that won’t effect tidal waves.
Really, Mike?
Let’s see how great the private sector really is.
There should be a government X-prize (1 billion $) to save the space station.
To win, you must hurry up and save the space station!
Private ventures have been sad jokes of technology. The last one crashed. I can’t believe private space ventures still believe in SSTO (single stage to orbit). Even NASA realized awhile back that its just a stupid concept.