No ticket, we throw you out airlock!

GrandMasterTerwynn · Post by **GrandMasterTerwynn** » 2005-01-07 12:10pm

Says the Russian space agency to American astronauts.

Quick summary:

The Russians intend to stop giving free rides to American astronauts to the ISS starting in 2006. They say that something else, perhaps a barter system could be established.

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2005-01-07 12:46pm

Or perhaps the US could simply stop wasting money on the ISS and then sit back and watch as everyone else pulls out as well and the useless space going hulk joins Mir on the bottom of the southern Pacific.

Stofsk · Post by **Stofsk** » 2005-01-07 01:05pm

Sea Skimmer wrote:Or perhaps the US could simply stop wasting money on the ISS and then sit back and watch as everyone else pulls out as well and the useless space going hulk joins Mir on the bottom of the southern Pacific.

What have you got against the ISS?

No, seriously, I know nothing about the ISS program; you obviously think it's a waste, but in what ways? What else could NASA be doing with their time and effort?

Mayabird · Post by **Mayabird** » 2005-01-07 01:11pm

I expected this to happen sooner. The Russians are broke; how can they continue affording sending supplies and our astronauts up?

Ma Deuce · Post by **Ma Deuce** » 2005-01-07 01:22pm

Stofsk wrote:No, seriously, I know nothing about the ISS program; you obviously think it's a waste, but in what ways? What else could NASA be doing with their time and effort?

Quite simply, ISS has costed alot of money and it doesn't do anything useful, not even in the area of scientific experiments as was the goal of the project: as someone from NASA put it "The ISS is about as scientifically useful as Skylab was"*. Basically, all the astronauts do onboard ISS is maintain the damn thing..

*The much-publicized experiments conducted aboard the Skylab station in the '70s were a charade of no real scientific value, and were intended to conceal the true function of Skylab: espianage.

dragon · Post by **dragon** » 2005-01-07 02:22pm

Orginally the plan was good but due to serious cost over run, poor quality control its its falling apart. Plus they never even finished the thing. Its costly expericing power outages, envriomental control problems, leaks, swage problems, man power shortages and they spend all their time fixing these instead of doing experiments and manufactoring like the plan was.

Col. Crackpot · Post by **Col. Crackpot** » 2005-01-07 02:37pm

No ticket, we throw you out airlock!

In Soviet Russia, spacecraft launches, YOU!

That clusterfuck has been living on borrowed time since the Columbia crash. This is just another nail in the coffin. I can't say i blame the Russians though.

Durandal · Post by **Durandal** » 2005-01-07 05:11pm

In other news, Harrison Ford has just been contracted to work on the ISS and has trademarked the phrase "No ticket."

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2005-01-07 05:30pm

Stofsk wrote: What have you got against the ISS?

No, seriously, I know nothing about the ISS program; you obviously think it's a waste, but in what ways? What else could NASA be doing with their time and effort?

The ISS is a useless waste of money because it has only one possibul purpose, research. However because of cuts to the station (the result of its massive spiraling cost) it can only accommodate three people safely. And those three people are kept constantly busy performing routine maintenance. And even if it had a larger crew, there is relatively little we could learn that we couldn't also learn from launching unmanned systems into orbit for far less money.

What's really funny about the situation now though, is that the US congress has banned further financial dealings with the Russian goverment as punishment for its continued support of the Iranian nuclear program. So until and unless that is changed, NASA cannot legally buy rides from the Russians. But that's just fine by me.

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2005-01-07 05:53pm

Ma Deuce wrote: Quite simply, ISS has costed alot of money and it doesn't do anything useful, not even in the area of scientific experiments as was the goal of the project: as someone from NASA put it "The ISS is about as scientifically useful as Skylab was"*. Basically, all the astronauts do onboard ISS is maintain the damn thing..

*The much-publicized experiments conducted aboard the Skylab station in the '70s were a charade of no real scientific value, and were intended to conceal the true function of Skylab: espianage.

Okay, I've heard this here and there, but is there an actual source for this claim?