Unsurprised Ink: Great. No shuttle to space station. Now taxi service also down for safety check
Those big space companies and smaller entrepreneurs with blueprints for people hauling services to the space station may merit more attention now. After the Aug. 24 loss of an unmanned Russian rocket carrying a Progress resupply vehicle, news is that the Soyuz ferry service for astronauts is down for a safety review. There is not a great deal of science aboard the space station – Sam Ting’s cosmic ray and 
dark matter detector aside – but all facets of space travel remain on journalism’s science beat.
Other than flights to the station to return crewmembers as their shifts expire, a possibly long suspension of flights to take fresh crews and supplies could mean a temporary mothballing of the huge assembly of pressurized habitats, trusswork, and solar panels. Some estimate costs of the program at roughly $100 billion over the last 20 years or so. That’s a lot of valuable surreal estate to leave unoccupied.
Stories:
- Florida Today – Todd Halvorson: Space Station Faces Temporary De-Staffing ;
- Wired – Mike Brown: Grounded Soyuz rockets could leave ISS abandoned ; Should mention how, if they are grounded, the crews there now will return. One can only assume they won’t use the back-up Soyus lifeboat.
- AP: Marcia Dunn: NASA: Space station may be evacuated by late November ;
- USA Today – Douglas Stanglin: Space station may be abandoned during probe of Soyuz failure ;
- Space.com – Clara Moskowitz: Report: Russia Identifies Cause of Rocket Launch Failure ;
- BBC – Jonathan Amos: November deadline for ISS crews ; He writes, “everyone knew this was a possibility; Few I suspect thought we’d be in such a position so soon…” He proposes that with the cause pinpointed by location, if not exact mechanism, in the third stage things may be back to regular business soon. One of the longer accounts but still does not explain how the six on board now would return. Only three at a time fit on a Soyuz capsule. They don’t have two of them up there, do they? If not, then this has to be a partial grounding for the vehicles.
- NPR – Eyder Peralta: NASA: International Space Station May Have to Go Unmanned: Hurrah. This report says that two Soyuz capsules are at the station. I should know this but do not. When a Soyuz delivers three people to the station, is it routinely kept there to return them? Apparently so. This says the Russians design the capsules to last at least 200 days in space in good working order – long enough for a work shift.
- NYTimes – Kenneth Chang: Astronauts May Have to Abandon Space Station ; More clarity on the Soyuz routine. Also, one learns here, loss of that Progress resupply mission last week leaves one member of the crew short on clothes and looking to borrow some from cabin mates.
Hardly related at all (except that it’s lurking in plain view, spotted while your tracker gathered tories for this post)
- Space.com - Benjamin Radford: UFO Found on Ocean Floor? ; Ah, the question mark hed. It has a built-in escape hatch. To the sane, it means no. But lots of less well-hinged readers will jump up and think, AT LAST! The story does say this is among the less likely explanations for a mysterious flat circular object the Swedish treasure hunters detected resting murkily in the Gulf of Bothnia. Radford is id’d as space.com’s “Life’s Little Mysteries Contributor.”
- Charlie Petit
