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In no way is this news or a scoop, but who can resist the tale of plucky cosmonauts calmly relaying such nuggets from a dead-in-the-water space station as:
Savinikh: "We're trying to turn on the light now. Command issued. No reaction, not even one little diode. If only something would light up..."
and
Savinikh: “I’ve gotten the Rodnik schematics. Pump connected. The valves aren’t opening. There’s an icicle sticking out of the air pipe.”
Yep — all the makings of a sci-fi straight to TV movie… icicles hanging out of air pipes indeed!
However, it is not. It is the tale of two cosmonauts sent to try to recover the dead in low earth orbit Salyut 7 back in 1985. The included cosmonaut to earth communication transcripts would be comedy genius had they been scripted, if only as a parody of calm professionalism in a seemingly absurd predicament.
Over to Ars Technica for the piece: http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/09/the-little-known-soviet-mission-to-rescue-a-dead-space-station/
(Score: 1) by WolvesOfTheNight on Thursday September 18 2014, @12:12AM
You need work on getting better titles summaries. As interesting of a note as the icicles might be, the title is misleading. This is not an article about icicles. It is an article about "The little-known Soviet mission to rescue a dead space station." Despite my having read that article before seeing it here, my first thought was "A problem on the ISS?" or maybe a discussion of the formation of icicle like objects in zero G and an explanation of how they form.
Oh, and the article does not give enough information to say how icicle like it was. All we know is that the russian word used to quickly describe it was translated as "icicle." Maybe it was just that. Or maybe it was a blob of ice, or a coating of ice, or something else. Given the zero G thing I suspect they just said icicle instead of trying to give an exact description.
Good article, very bad title & summery...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 18 2014, @04:54PM
I think you mean "summary" = )
This was clearly meant to be a lighter piece, the tone is fitting:
Sure, it could have had a more appropriate title, but lighten up a little.