Yes, but I'm still not clear whether that was due to a malfunction on the
craft, or human error. It would be best one supposes not to let folk control
vehicles close to the station without some kind of failsafe retreat from
area system on board.



Incidentally, have they still got viable spare gyros for the iSS? and what
of the race ring issue. I heard a rumour that the damage was basically due
to the thrust being set wrongly on that side in the first place, However
with that and the no doubt embarrassing problem with the boosting of the
station when it started to vibrate and bend, one wonders if they want to
keep it going, will they be able to avoid this sort of error?
It was interesting On UK TV two days ago, Mr Hadfield suggested that just
as twe expect fatalities when exploring Earth in the past, we really should
accept them when we start to go into deep space, as nothing can be totally
safe.
I do think there is a lot of truth in this, and as long as the gung ho
merchants are controlled, and make competent decisions on the known data, I
do not think we can not do something just bec ause its dangerous. We
accept that in a lot of sports, but politicians seem to be very twitchy
when we start to talk about space flight. Perhaps it is an attitude that
will change as commercial interests get involved in the same way it has in
Farming and Fishing etc.
Brian

--
From the Sofa of Brian Gaff Reply address is active
"Greg (Strider) Moore" wrote in message
...
"Jeff Findley" wrote in message
...

In article ,
says...

Provided some catastrophe does not occur. Listening to Mr Hadfield on TV
here in the UK last night he said that in the quieter parts of the
statiion
you could hear things impacting the outside quite a lit and of course
as
they were pretty small it did not cause any problems, but sooner or
later
one supposed something a little bigger might come along despite all the
tracking.

It's a possibility, to be sure, but so far it's not been an issue for
ISS or any prior LEO space station.


Well, not entirely true. We do have at least one space station that was
definitely hit by something.

Of course it was manmade, but still was a very real issue.


Jeff

--
Greg D. Moore
http://greenmountainsoftware.wordpress.com/
CEO QuiCR: Quick, Crowdsourced Responses. http://www.quicr.net