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In Space, Still: 20 years since Russia hurled first bit of floating astronaut hostel into orbit
The International Space Station turned 20 this week as space agencies and 'nauts alike celebrated the anniversary of the launch of the first module of the ISS. The Functional Cargo Block (FGB) was launched on 20 November, 1998, signifying the start of ISS assembly. Also known as "Zarya" ("Dawn" in Russian) in reference to …
COMMENTS
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Thursday 22nd November 2018 12:07 GMT Spazturtle
Re: Lame duck.
The ISS is getting old, the temperature change from being in full sunlight to being in full shade takes its toll on the metal. The Trump administration* actually decided to push the date back one year in order to guarantee 100% that it would not occur during Trump's presidency.
*I doubt Trump actual makes decisions on things like this, some civil servant probably gave him a few option and he picked one at random Simpsons movie style
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Friday 23rd November 2018 09:10 GMT jmch
"I propose we wait until after Hillary..."
Wow, you really can't comprehend that anyone could not like Trump and also not like Clinton? Hilary Clinton would most likely not have made a good President. Trump, of course, is quite possibly the worst ever president the US has ever had. But that still doesn't mean I, or many others, like Hilary. In fact I am flabbergasted that a nation of 300 million people arrived at a point where they had to choose between those 2.
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Thursday 22nd November 2018 12:23 GMT Cem Ayin
"Floating"
Nitpick: The ISS is not "floating" (i.e. experiencing lift due to buoyancy). Quite the contrary, in fact: it is falling (as evidenced by the microgravity conditions aboard). The reason that it is not colliding with earth is not lift but the fact that it has been carefully accelerated to move "sideways" (to wit: in an orbit) just fast enough to avoid ever hitting Earth while falling towards, or rather: around, it.
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Thursday 22nd November 2018 13:13 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: "Floating"
Captain Pedantic here. Definitions for the "float" are not restricted to buoyant floating, but include definitions such as "not fixed in one position, place, or level". Since it is not anchored to another body in space, the ISS can indeed be said to be "floating in space".
I would suggest that in this day and age, few people would actually attribute the ISS' maintenance of its altitude to buoyancy, especially amongst El Reg readers, but if there are any such befuddled souls present, I'm sure they will have benefited greatly from your explanation of free-fall.
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Thursday 22nd November 2018 22:08 GMT John Brown (no body)
Re: "Floating"
"The reason that it is not colliding with earth is not lift but the fact that it has been carefully accelerated to move "sideways" (to wit: in an orbit) just fast enough to avoid ever hitting Earth while falling towards, or rather: around, it."
So, in reality, it's flying. The secret to flying, of course, is the art of falling while managing to miss the ground.
(With thanks to the late, great Douglas Adams)
Edit: Buggeration! I should have read on before replying! Beating by at least 4 others.
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Thursday 22nd November 2018 13:14 GMT ThatOne
Sic transit gloria mundi
> expressed a desire to end funding by 2025, effectively killing off the ISS
Thus effectively killing the last remains of human presence in space... :-(
A couple decades later the last remains of know-how to send a human in space will have been lost, and space will just be a commercial battlefield for clouds of cheap throw-away satellites offering increasingly pointless services.
"So what" you might ask, "I don't need no stinking space."
Well yes you do actually: The race to the moon has triggered technological progress we all profit from daily, in almost all aspects of our lives. When the only progress left is IoT-enabled flower pots we will know human civilization has gone into fatal decline.
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Thursday 22nd November 2018 13:35 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Sic transit gloria mundi
"Well yes you do actually: The race to the moon has triggered technological progress we all profit from daily"
Despite having been an enthusiastic follower of both space programmes in my teens and for a while afterwards, I don't really believe that. Physicists and chemists started to get everything they wanted after WW2 because of the nuclear weapons race. It was that which made the space programmes possible.
Teflon, often mentioned, was actually discovered before WW2. Aluminium and titanium alloys resulted from aircraft developments from about 1914 on.
Voyna mat izobreteniya/war is the mother of invention.
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Thursday 22nd November 2018 14:19 GMT phuzz
Re: Sic transit gloria mundi
"Teflon, often mentioned, was actually discovered before WW2."
It's first large scale use was in the Manhattan Project, to help stop all that nasty uranium hexafloride from leaking out of the gaseous diffusion plants.
Communications satellites and satellite positioning systems are both useful benefits of the space program, although not from the manned side.
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Thursday 22nd November 2018 15:29 GMT Brangdon
Re: last remains of know-how to send a human in space will have been lost
I take it you are not following NASA's plan to launch humans into space next year? Or SpaceX plan to put humans on Mars within 10 years?
ISS is ancient and falling apart. I'm all in favour of scrapping it and replacing it with something newer and in a more convenient orbit. By which I don't mean Lunar orbit like the Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway, but LEO. And cancel SLS and use the money to buy launches off SpaceX.
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Thursday 22nd November 2018 16:35 GMT A. Coatsworth
Re: Sic transit gloria mundi
A couple decades later the last remains of know-how to send a human in space will have been lost, and space will just be a commercial battlefield for clouds of cheap throw-away satellites offering increasingly pointless services.
As usual, a painfully relevant XKCD: xkcd.com/893
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Thursday 22nd November 2018 22:17 GMT Sandtitz
Re: Sic transit gloria mundi @ThatOne
"Thus effectively killing the last remains of human presence in space"
Not at all. There are 'remains'. And more are to come.
Wiki: Ashes of Clyde Tombaugh are travelling within New Horizons towards interstellar space and a small capsule of Eugene Shoemaker's ashes are in the Moon, probably buried.
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Thursday 22nd November 2018 13:18 GMT Michael H.F. Wilkinson
When stargazing, I am always amazed to see the ISS pass overhead, usually fairly early in the evening, when still illuminated by the sun sitting just below the horizon. With my big 16x80 binoculars, it shows some resolved structure, although it is hard to keep in the field of view as it moves along at quite a clip.
Whatever its problematic start, and doubtful future, it is an amazing achievement, and shows what we humans can achieve if we stop bickering for any length of time (or at least, bicker more productively). I'll raise a glass to all those who have contributed to this success.
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Thursday 22nd November 2018 14:36 GMT Tempest8008
5 of those with one BFR
Yeah, refusing to call it Starship. But a single SpaceX BFR would be able to loft the equivalent of 5.2 of those suckers at once.
We need big lifters and a bloody origami expert to fit it all into a neat unfold-able package.
Er....we also need the BFR to exist.
You! Yes, you! Get on that...
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Saturday 24th November 2018 01:25 GMT Aqua Marina
Re: 5 of those with one BFR
“The could have rolled out 5 saturn 5 rockets, and used those to launch the entire thing....”
Better still they could just roll out 5 of the Saturn 5s, send them up, dock them altogether and make a huge giant Skylab!
*for you young ones, the Saturn 5 was so powerful it was able to reach orbit without needing fully fuelling. So they converted part of the rocket unused fuel tank into a space station, that effectively launched itself into orbit becoming Skylab. Suggest you google the videos of it. It was so big they could fly around the inside with jet packs!
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Friday 23rd November 2018 11:27 GMT arctic_haze
We need ISS in orbit just to have an argument against the growing flat earth fallacy which claims there is no space. Now everybody can see it by naked eye and even see its silhouette using a small amateur-class telescope.
With no ISS, even more people will believe there is no gravity, stars hang on a glass firmament and the Earth pancake is surrounded by an impenetrable ice wall.