Aug 28, 2011

Posted by in current, featured

Empty space?

Continuous human habitation of space has been going on for some time. When the International Space Station really got going, it seemed to mark a special time in history: the time from which people would ALWAYS be in space. In fact, a least one human being has been in space since the end of October 2000.

That may be about to end.

A failed launch of a Russian cargo ship, meant to resupply that ISS, now endangers ANY new launches to the station. The system that failed on this unmanned launch was pretty much the same as one used on the manned Soyuz vehicle. And Soyuz, the only spacecraft in the world today capable of carrying passengers to the station, is for the time being, grounded.

The next scheduled crew to the ISS included Daniel Burbank, who would have been the first American to fly in the post-Shuttle era. That flight has been delayed. At best, it will launch in October. Another possibility: an unoccupied space station by November.

 

 

  • Volker

    The biggest problem the station faces is not (as many may think) a lack of supply, but the limited time, a Soyuz space craft can stay in space. After a while in zero gravity, the fuel components of the Soyuz craft start to segregate. I don’t know exactly what the limit is these days (it used to be three months in the glorious days of Salyut and Mir), but it definitely means the ISS inhabitants would have to return before their rides expire.

    An option would be to to test the Soyuz rocket by sending an unmanned replacement craft.

    That would not be without precedence: in April 1979, the engine of Soyuz 33 failed before docking with Salyut 6, leaving the cosmonauts on board stranded without a return craft. The Cosmonauts extended their stay and an unmanned replacement craft (Soyuz 34) was launched in June 1979, to test the spaceship’s engine and to get the stranded crew back home. They eventually returned in August, setting a new long time record of 175 days.

    Maybe, yet again, the ISS can profit from 30 years of Russian space station experience, during which anything that possible could go wrong did go wrong at one time or another, adding to the lessons learned on our way to the stars.