What's that white thing? (was Progress M-48 update, 25-08-2003)

In article , Reed
Snellenberger wrote:

[disclaimer - I'm probably wrong]

There's a white object in the background of the third picture on this page.
It's labeled, but I can only make out the first two characters (which
appear to be "Co" in Cyrillic). I'm guessing that it's a Soyuz that's been
shrink-wrapped for storage/protection. It appears to have the orbital
compartment at the left, with the re-entry module and service modules
further to the right. It also doesn't appear to have the solar arrays
installed, unless they conform very, very closely to the service module.
It's definitely not contained in a regular payload fairing, since it
conforms pretty closely to the shape of whatever's underneath.

Anyone else have a more informed guess?

Have a look at
http://spaceflightnow.com/station/so...go/index2.html - it
looks, to me at least, rather like the payload fairing itself. A picture
from the same angle would be useful, though.

--
-Andrew Gray

Andrew Gray wrote in
:

In article , Reed
Snellenberger wrote:

[disclaimer - I'm probably wrong]

There's a white object in the background of the third picture on this
page.

snipping the blah-blah

Anyone else have a more informed guess?

Have a look at
http://spaceflightnow.com/station/so...go/index2.html -
it looks, to me at least, rather like the payload fairing itself. A
picture from the same angle would be useful, though.


Yep, I think you're right -- your picture shows it from a better angle, and
there is a narrowing of the fairing that's similar.

I guess I'm so used to seeing houses under construction that are wrapped in
Tyvek that I just did an interpolation. Still, I wonder what kind of
siding they're going to put on it ;-)


--
Reed Snellenberger