SCI/TECH: Crew May have to Abandon Space Station

With no shuttle flights happening, worries of Russian Soyuz support mounting, and an oxygen-supply problem that the crew can't fix, the odds of the International Space Station being abandoned are increasing. Though any abandonment is being referred to as "a long way" off, NASA is now assessing it in its flight readiness reviews.

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The current two-man crew of U.S. astronaut Mike Fincke and cosmonaut Gennady Padalka are scheduled to be replaced on October 10th by U.S. astronaut Leroy Chiao and cosmonaut Salizan Sharipov. The abandonment scenario currently being discussed has Chiao and Sharipov spending approximately one month prior to the end of the year preparing the ISS so that it could be controlled by flight controllers in Houston and Moscow Mission Control Centers.


[edit on 25-9-2004 by John bull 1]

errrr i know Aussie Bloke is a fraud but didnt he say if the ISS is abandoned the Earth WILL be hit by these asteroids?

This is the signal for the impacts...???

I bet ya Windows Autoupdate was running on the controller of the oxigen generator and it downloaded Windows XP Service Pack 2!!! English version!!! on the Russian Windows XP Home edition version running on it.

:p

I hope they get to fix it. Its not like Russian tech letting down for no good reason. Their tech might not be state of the art, but Soyuz proves imho that the tech is damn solid.

yeah, the

Word Paper Clip....

would you like me to,

fix the oxygen,
blow up the shuttle,
jam all the hatches,
call a service engineer at 1.50 a minuite

ok.

AussieBloke is both a fraud and an idiot. The asteroids will NOT hit the space station. If it's not maintained, it will eventually fall out of orbit (and this will be another problem for us.)

Depressing bit of news. Bush could have done a lot more for the economy if he'd spent those trillions of dollars for his private little war on the space program and other science programs, instead.

The ISS isn't Russian, that's why it's the __International__ Space Station. France, Britain, Russia, Canada, the US, China, Germany, and a bunch of others coming to a grand total of 26 countries make up the station.

Of course, I agree. It doesn't seem right for this stuff to just go flompey.

Yes, but the Oxygen generator that consistently fails and is the reason that the station may be abandoned is entirely Russian made.

I thought the same thing about Aussie Bloke as soon as I saw this article. I still think he's a fraud but it came to mind nonetheless. I wonder if this is a ploy by the US and NASA therefore to get out of their commitment to the ISS since they're picking up most of the tab for the Russians anyways. I saw a documentary about this and it was done to keep Russian scientists off of the black market.