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Mir SS, RIP

Started by Gorky Mar 23, 2001 at 1:37 PM 3 replies 500+ views

Original Post

Mar 23, 2001 at 1:37 PM

Anyone else feel letting the MIR space station come crashing into earth, was a tremendous waste? I personally feel it should have been used for something. Kick it into a high orbit and do something like these: It becomes a giant storage shed in space. (No cost!) It becomes an emergency life station. (Some cost, not much)Load it up with equipment, to keep people alive for a few days, just in case of a space emergency. e.g. the Space shuttle has a problem in space and cannot land. It just floats up there as a giant salvage yard. (Having spare parts in space is at a premium.) Think of all the bolts, screws, tubes, etc. that could be scavanged in case of emergency. It could be stripped out, and repackaged as part of the International space station. It could be filled with batteries, hooked to new solar panels. New auxillary power source for the ISS. I could go on. What a waste....

Roach

Mar 23, 2001 at 4:33 PM

Yeah your right, but watching a 18 ton, muti-million doller space craft come crashing down towards the earth at an insaine amount of speed while in flames is much more fun!!!

Roach

omegasyphon

Mar 23, 2001 at 7:07 PM

does anyone know where to get video clips of the station crashing into the ocean? i dont care about watching it fly through the sky like a firework gone bad and then cut off from the mountain, i want to know if i got afree taco!

nes8bit

Mar 23, 2001 at 7:51 PM

On the yahoo message boards some dude said it didn''t crash into it

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alexmoura

Mar 23, 2001 at 9:01 PM

The problem with keeping mir flying is that nowadays there was no way to be sure that it could be kept flying for much longer - the problem is that even the computers started failing, and we were risking an uncontrolled descent, since if the computers failed completely (as in stopping all communication with earth) no one could aproach the station to restart them again (To save fuel, they were allowing the station to spin freely - I don''t think anyone would allow an astronaut to go near it). The computers could be replaced of course, but that would cost money, and other parts might also fail - don''t forget that Mir is long past it''s expected longevity. And on the cinical side, just think of the salaries they''re saving by firing the guys at mission control.

The point is, I believe that maintaining mir up nowadays would be more a nostalgia issue than anything else - it certainly doesn''t seem that economic to me, unless you want to count that guy who wanted to go there for hollidays.

Someone had a nice suggestion though , to call the international space station Mir II - God knows that Nasa has been bumping it''s head on the wall for years trying to get it a half decent name.

You know, I never wanted to be a programmer...

Alexandre Moura

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