Russian space agency Roscosmos has confirmed that Progress cargo spacecraft burned up it the atmosphere and its debris fell in south Siberia's Tuva Republic.
"As a result of an abnormal situation, the loss of the Progress cargo ship took place at an altitude of 190 kilometers [some 118 miles] above an unpopulated mountainous area in Tuva; most of the fragments burned up in the [Earth's] atmosphere, according to preliminary data," Roscosmos press service said.
Earlier in the day, a source told RIA Novosti that the debris of the Progress cargo spacecraft supposedly fell in Russia's Republic of Tuva in south Siberia.
Roscosmos previously reported that Progress lost telemetry six minutes after launch on its mission to deliver several tons of consumables to the crew on the ISS. They stress that the accident "will not affect the routine operations of the ISS".
Sorry, guys, looks like it's borscht again tonight.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Saturday December 03 2016, @01:42AM
It's not as retarded as a way to send stuff out of the moon, courtesy of no atmosphere and lower gravity and space junk.
Any good reference having already done the math on how long the cable would have to be, given the different gravity vs rotation ratio?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 03 2016, @04:51AM
Because the Moon is tidally locked to the Earth, its synchronous "orbit" is at the Lagrange points L1 or L2. That's quite a bit farther than the Earth's synchronous orbital altitude. However, because the Moon is much less massive than the Earth, the elevator wouldn't have to be as strong.
Unfortunately the problem is that it would still be extremely massive. Since there's no plausible way it could be manufactured on the Moon, it would all have to be shipped from Earth. Moving that much mass from the Earth to the Moon would probably require a space elevator here first.
(Score: 2) by driven on Saturday December 03 2016, @07:45AM
The space elevator idea seems to have hinged strongly on using carbon nanotubes, but unless the nanotubes are produced perfectly (not to mention in staggeringly great numbers), the strength is very greatly reduced [newscientist.com].