Docked! Soyuz Takes Shortcut to Space Station

[bananas]

Source: Discovery

A Russian Soyuz capsule arrived in record time at the International Space Station on Thursday, shaving the standard two-day flight down to less than six hours.

The shortcut required some very precisely timed steering maneuvers, all of which occurred without problems. That positioned NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy and his two Russian crewmates, Pavel Vinogradov and Alexander Misurkin, to reach the station at 10:28 p.m. EDT, just five hours and 45 minutes after liftoff from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

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All previous station crews, whether flying aboard NASA’s now-retired space shuttles or on Russian Soyuz capsules, took at least two days to reach the station, which flies about 250 miles above Earth.

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Meanwhile, Russian engineers already are looking into cutting the trip time to two orbits, Vinogradov said.

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Read more: http://news.discovery.com/space/new-crew-takes-express-lane-to-space-station-130329.htm

[MADem]

1. VERY cool!!

I wish we'd cough up a transport system, but in the meantime, that's a good close shave when it comes to transit time!

[PolitFreak]

2. Hey.....

anytime a Russian spacecraft doesn't kill its occupants = bonus!

[Bernardo de La Paz]

4. More Americans have died in American spacecraft than all people in Russian spacecraft.

Hey, ... anytime an American spacecraft doesn't kill its occupants = bonus.

[PolitFreak]

5. Yeah

That we know of. Hey, I might be a Gawdless Liberal, but I never have trusted the Russians.

[idwiyo]

8. You made that absolutely clear already. Though not sure what your point is.

[Posteritatis]

13. *facepalm* (nt)

[Bernardo de La Paz]

3. Result of free enterprise and capitalism:

Impending competition from the US space entrepreneurs, including one company that has already docked supplies at the space station, has cause the Russians to up their game preemptively and competitively to protect their franchise.

[RoccoR5955]

10. Meanwhile if we had a truly socialist space program

We would safely be sending people to Alpha Centauri safely, while we already had outposts on Mars, the Moon, and Ganymede (or another moon).
This capitalization of space will just make any technology that is gained from a space program more expensive, and transport will come down a bit before it goes up, as more corporate executives get greedy. It happens all the time within a capitalist system.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

11. A truly socialist space program is the Russian one. First in space and then out of gas. No thanks.

[RoccoR5955]

14. If Russia was a socialist country, that might be true.

But even under the USSR, it was not TRULY socialist, because only the rich got richer. All they did was to basically make slaves of most of the people, and let the rich run the country through a dictatorship. That is NOT socialism.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

16. Ok. The Swedish space program. nt

[RoccoR5955]

18. The Swedes don't have the money to put into their program.

Another fail.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

19. Exactly. Another failed socialist space program.

[RoccoR5955]

20. NO, another underfunded space program. n/t

[Bernardo de La Paz]

21. Exactly. Underfunded and failed:

Your dreams of "already safely sending people to Alpha Centauri," by now, ignores the vastness of the distance involved and the rule of democracy. Most importantly any socialist solution to that end would require either a communist dictatorship firmly dedicated to the task or a democratic socialist country perfectly aligned with your goals. Other socialists have other goals and they vote too and would vote against missions to Alpha Centauri in a heartbeat.

I'm all for space exploration because I believe it is our destiny and that it has benefits here on earth in the medium term.

However, I'm even more for realism, pragmatism, comprehension of the scientific facts involved, and democracy.

[RoccoR5955]

23. No it's not...

Because just as in what you believe as a totalitarian state, a majority of a democratic state would vote it down.

Only in a democratic socialist state, with some sort of coalition government would the type of space exploration have any sort of chance. It has to be a massive economy also, to do this. An economy of a small European country will never cut it to do this. Perhaps with a coalition of many countries worldwide, it may be possible, but there simply is too much greed with the capitalist system to accomplish this. I say this because corporations who might invest in space exploration will only be concerned with profits, and not the gains from the knowledge that we acquire from merely exploring our universe.

We must explore our universe if we are to gain more knowledge, and only a knowledge-based society can accomplish this. Probably regardless of the economic system. The priority has to be knowledge, not profit, not social good, or anything else.

[idwiyo]

22. Your knowledge of USSR is truly astounding. I am impressed.

That was sarcasm, btw

[Paulie]

6. That's pretty awesome!

Even in orbit there is a lot of space(room), and it's not like they are up there in synchronous orbit. Great job engineers!!!

[MannyGoldstein]

7. In th 1960s it only took a few hours to launch, rendezvous and dock

E.g., Gemini 8: http://www.spaceline.org/flightchron/gemini8.html

I wonder why it's so much longer now?

[Posteritatis]

12. They launched the spacecraft within a couple of hours of each other, for starters

The whole thing was designed to put them both in about the same orbit at the same time. It's a lot easier to rendezvous with that kind of setup.

As well, the ISS is in a considerably higher orbit.

[MannyGoldstein]

17. Of course, that makes sense.

Although it looks like Skylab was in an similarly-high orbit, and those missions also took only a few hours to reach their station. Maybe the orbits are much different in other ways?

[idwiyo]

9. Great results! Thumbs up for the space exploration and science!

[Historic NY]

15. Takes me longer to drive I-95 to DC.