(no subject)
For fuck's sake, why is the shuttle Atlantis landing today. There were plans to dock it with the ISS and to have the crew take a Soyuz back to Earth. The Soyuz, of course, being tiny and lacking gigantic fucking control surfaces.
All that fuel and money used up to drag Atlantis' wings, tail, engines, cargo compartment, and the massive heat shield all that needs is getting dropped back to Earth for no goddamned reason whatsoever.
I fucking hope the Russians bid on the ISS and keep it floating. As the station is scheduled to be deorbited at most a year after its completion, in 2013, it would be fantastic if the Cosmonauts - known the system over for their miracles with keeping space stations refurbished and maintained - could keep all that fuel and money and sweat and hope and, yes, lives from being wasted. Mir, in comparison, was kept running for 15 goddamned years and was only deorbited because Russia got tired of ponying up for replacement parts and modules for a space program they weren't entirely serious about after the Cold War ended. SkyLab, in comparison, was only up for 6 years and change.
Y'know, I get it. People are much more interested in fighting over tiny scraps of land in the desert with religious or monetary significance than exploring even just our solar system. It's sad, but I accept it. Some miserable scrap of polluted, war-torn land where one sacred prophet or another was purported to have once walked around acting crazy is more important to most people than a whole goddamned planet, Mars, which is wildly, lushly fertile so far as planets tend to go (it gets enough insolation to be Venuslike if it had the atmosphere, and it doesn't have a moon to remove that atmosphere), just a few dozen million miles away around twice a year. It's sad, but fine.
But we have all this structurally-sound material up in LEO that we went to enormous, ruinous fucking expense to put up there, AND NOBODY GIVES A SHIT.
Fuck this planet and everyone who dwells upon it. I'm not with these losers.
All that fuel and money used up to drag Atlantis' wings, tail, engines, cargo compartment, and the massive heat shield all that needs is getting dropped back to Earth for no goddamned reason whatsoever.
I fucking hope the Russians bid on the ISS and keep it floating. As the station is scheduled to be deorbited at most a year after its completion, in 2013, it would be fantastic if the Cosmonauts - known the system over for their miracles with keeping space stations refurbished and maintained - could keep all that fuel and money and sweat and hope and, yes, lives from being wasted. Mir, in comparison, was kept running for 15 goddamned years and was only deorbited because Russia got tired of ponying up for replacement parts and modules for a space program they weren't entirely serious about after the Cold War ended. SkyLab, in comparison, was only up for 6 years and change.
Y'know, I get it. People are much more interested in fighting over tiny scraps of land in the desert with religious or monetary significance than exploring even just our solar system. It's sad, but I accept it. Some miserable scrap of polluted, war-torn land where one sacred prophet or another was purported to have once walked around acting crazy is more important to most people than a whole goddamned planet, Mars, which is wildly, lushly fertile so far as planets tend to go (it gets enough insolation to be Venuslike if it had the atmosphere, and it doesn't have a moon to remove that atmosphere), just a few dozen million miles away around twice a year. It's sad, but fine.
But we have all this structurally-sound material up in LEO that we went to enormous, ruinous fucking expense to put up there, AND NOBODY GIVES A SHIT.
Fuck this planet and everyone who dwells upon it. I'm not with these losers.