Supply Mission to the ISS Lost

Oops.

Conveyer belt technology.

Oh yeah, relying solely on the Russians was such a good idea.

"What could go wro---"

KA-BOOOM!!!


"Oh."

Well, at least the astronauts can use gravity, in a worst case scenario, to return home.

Hopefully Muslims are watching the Russians fail and feeling good about themselves.

Mission accomplished, Obama!

If it was gonna fail better it crash back to earth than malfunction on final approach and hit the station at ramming speed.

Shit happens. This is hardly the end of the world. They're not gonna starve.

Who said space travel was safe and risk-free?

This will add extra impetus to the Falcon 9 / Dragon program. The first ISS docking is scheduled in the next couple of months. It's not man-rated yet but in the meantime it can still haul freight.

Bingo. Besides, it's not like NASA never fucked things up. At least no one died because of this mistake.

It is too bad something like this isn't enoughfor our government to get off its collective ass's to replace the shuttle fleet.

The poor, poor robot freighter.

What's the problem? If they get into trouble, NASA will just send up a .......... radio transmission, about all we can send up these days.

They have reentry vehicles attached to the station at all times, so they can come down any time if they really have to.

Those are Russian too.

This is one of the issues I raised when Bush decided to retire the shuttle without a replacement in place. What if a problem arises in the Soyuz/Progress systems? It happened with the shuttle.

The thing with the Russians is that they'll just keep sending faulty rockets up while they're working on figuring out what went wrong. We, on the other hand, will lose months and/or years if the soda machines lose carbonation.

Amen.

Remember what John Glenn said after the shuttle fleet was grounded after Challenger when the O-Rings failed after being exposed to cold weather?

Glenn- "Why not just launch it in warm weather?"

Isn't that kind of a stupid comment since going into space is pretty much the ultimate in "cold weather"?? Wouldn't those O-rings be exposed to cold no matter what?

No, because the O-rings on the SRBs never actually got into "space". The boosters dropped off before orbit was attained and parachuted back into the ocean to be recovered, refurbished, and re-used.

Yes, obviously a Russian rocket failing is Obama's fault.

You know what else is Obama's fault? Everything.

I'm glad you finally woke up and smelled the coffee.

Yes, but when will we see submarine dock with the ISS?

Russia has grounded the Soyuz fleet and pulled all future launches from the schedule on it's website.

This is the fifth launch failure in the last nine months, a horrid record. Putting all our eggs in a Russian basket is a bad idea becoming worse all the time.

As soon as we get enough otters trained on running the conveyor belt.

This is just another royal fuck up by the government.

Just remember: this in no way means Obama is incompetent for killing our manned space program.

Big deal. Can't you guys just send up a shuttle?

Oh, wait.

Then again, if Lockheed had kept to it's promises, the Venture Star would already be operational....