Astronauts May Have to Abandon Space Station

And Exactly How Does That Affect Anyone Here on Earth?

Orbiting in space is a manned space station, which The New York Times reports has cost about $100 billion, although that is probably an estimate that could be off by a billion or two, but with the space program a billion or two just doesn’t matter very much.

Now it turns out the space station may have to be abandoned.



A lot more fun for a lot
less money



Last Wednesday, an unmanned Russian cargo ship known as the Progress, which was carrying three tons of supplies to the space station, crashed in Siberia. Telemetry from the rocket indicated that a drop of fuel pressure led its computer to shut down the third-stage engine prematurely about five and a half minutes into flight.

The Soyuz rocket that lifts the Progress is similar to the Soyuz rocket that takes astronauts to the station, and officials want to make sure they understand what failed on last week’s launching and are confident it will not occur again.

So the astronauts need to come down, if for no other reason that one of them may be running out of clothes

The loss of the Progress is of little immediate impact. One of the Russian astronauts is running short of clothes and might have to borrow some from NASA, Mr. Suffredini said.

Not to worry, though the space station will be fine without astronauts, and maybe just maybe everyone will realize that we can get along with it.  And the best news of all

Not to worry, he won't let Dr. Evil get
the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer

Some experiments like the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, a large particle physics experiment installed last year, would continue operating without human oversight

So even though the space station may be unmanned we can still get the results of the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer. That will probably mean millions of jobs, a balancing of the Federal budget, elimination of most infectous diseases and happiness for all.

 But now that it will be unguarded  we have a new worry.  Isn’t that the thing Dr. Evil was after?