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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: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday December 03 2016, @12:35AM
Even good people come up with bad ideas, or subscribe to them.
I wish the retarded idea of the space elevator would die already.
(Score: 2) by Sulla on Saturday December 03 2016, @01:03AM
Space elevators will need to be developed and deployed if we ever want a long term sustainable solution for the species not dying on this rock.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday December 03 2016, @07:21PM
Space Elevators would reduce the costs a lot more than any other approach, but there are lots of reasons why they aren't something reasonable for an early investment. It's probably a bit early for even a Pinwheel (heavy rotating mass in orbit with several flexible arms that reach a long way down into the atmosphere. Decreases the cost of ground to orbit by a bunch (not sure how much over 50%), but you've got to fly up and grab onto an arm. And momentum up needs to average the same as momentum down.
One thing that might help a lot would be a linear launcher, as that would reduce (or eliminate) first stage fuel, and possibly the entire first stage. But it would need to be HUGE, and even small railguns are having lots of problems ... of course, they're trying to get a much higher acceleration, but the things they're accelerating are relatively small. I do wish that they were being worked on as launchers, though, instead of as guns. You expect shells to not be reusable, but for this to ever be practical they can't be accelerating much above 4 G (unless it's strictly for freight).
OTOH, atmospheric friction probably means that a linear launcher would only reduce the needed size of the first stage. Even that would help a lot, but it vastly increases the needed size and power of the launcher, and it would be big anyway. Maybe someone could develop the launcher up the side of a mountain idea into something useful. Then you could have a long run over a level track to get up speed, but the vehicle would need to be strong enough to take sideways stresses, so it might be enough heavier to lose all the advantages.
I'm not sure that a space elevator will ever be practical on a world as heavy as Earth. it's operating too near the material limits, and you'd need a pretty hefty acceleration anyway, so the cable needs to be strong enough to lift, say, twice the weight of the things you are planning to lift. (I *think* a continual 2G acceleration would suffice to get you moving fast enough when you went through the radiation belts.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(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].