An Error Has Occurred!

[Jasper]

Nobody caught the really funny part of that.

twice the housing!

(unless you're laughing at something different)

I thought the funny part was that there was a race of "pygmies" who were much like us, except short as heck.   They died out.

[Doktor Howl]

Nobody caught the really funny part of that.

twice the housing!

(unless you're laughing at something different)

This:

The administration wants to spend $6.1 billion over the next five years to encourage commercial firms to develop spacecraft that would launch astronauts and cargo into orbit to rendezvous with the orbiting space station after the shuttle retires at the end of this year.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Nobody caught the really funny part of that.

twice the housing!

(unless you're laughing at something different)

This:

The administration wants to spend $6.1 billion over the next five years to encourage commercial firms to develop spacecraft that would launch astronauts and cargo into orbit to rendezvous with the orbiting space station after the shuttle retires at the end of this year.

That makes sense to me... once the shuttle is out of commission, there will have to be other ways of accessing the space station.

But then, I just skimmed so I may have missed something.

[Doktor Howl]

Nobody caught the really funny part of that.

twice the housing!

(unless you're laughing at something different)

This:

The administration wants to spend $6.1 billion over the next five years to encourage commercial firms to develop spacecraft that would launch astronauts and cargo into orbit to rendezvous with the orbiting space station after the shuttle retires at the end of this year.

That makes sense to me... once the shuttle is out of commission, there will have to be other ways of accessing the space station.

But then, I just skimmed so I may have missed something.

The four year gap where there will be nothing?

[LMNO]

There is an implication that there may be at least a four-year gap between the retirement of the shuttle and the advent of commercial spaceflight.



[edit - the good doktor got there first.]

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Nobody caught the really funny part of that.

twice the housing!

(unless you're laughing at something different)

This:

The administration wants to spend $6.1 billion over the next five years to encourage commercial firms to develop spacecraft that would launch astronauts and cargo into orbit to rendezvous with the orbiting space station after the shuttle retires at the end of this year.

That makes sense to me... once the shuttle is out of commission, there will have to be other ways of accessing the space station.

But then, I just skimmed so I may have missed something.

The four year gap where there will be nothing?

Does there need to be anything? I mean, isn't it just going to keep orbiting the Earth whether we're sending shuttles to it or not?

I'm not a scientist, so I must be missing why that's a problem.

[Jasper]

It's a security risk.  We may need to send 5 miners with attitude into space with a bomb, in order to save mankind.

[Doktor Howl]

Nobody caught the really funny part of that.

twice the housing!

(unless you're laughing at something different)

This:

The administration wants to spend $6.1 billion over the next five years to encourage commercial firms to develop spacecraft that would launch astronauts and cargo into orbit to rendezvous with the orbiting space station after the shuttle retires at the end of this year.

That makes sense to me... once the shuttle is out of commission, there will have to be other ways of accessing the space station.

But then, I just skimmed so I may have missed something.

The four year gap where there will be nothing?

Does there need to be anything? I mean, isn't it just going to keep orbiting the Earth whether we're sending shuttles to it or not?

I'm not a scientist, so I must be missing why that's a problem.

Two things that I can think of:

1.  If you have a crew, they need to eat (and breathe), and Russian cargo drones have a demonstrated bad habit of slamming into the station.  Russian man-rated capsules are not big enough for any real amount of supplies, either.

2.  If you don't have a crew, you have a dead station.  One thing the crew does is stay on top of leaks caused by metal fatigue (in turn caused by constantly passing into and out of direct sunlight).  Nobody fixes the leaks, they get so bad that the station is essentially in vacuum, which means that moisture in the air is gonna freeze and fuck up the electronics (not to mention that it's easier to fix leaks one at a time than to plug up a collander).

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Huh. Well, there we go then.

[Doktor Howl]

Huh. Well, there we go then.

What can I say?  I'm a maintenance man.  We spend all day thinking of how any given thing can go wrong, and we're rarely disappointed.