NASA Astronaut Jeff Williams Sets New US Space Endurance Record With 521 Days (cbsnews.com) 44
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBS News: Space station commander Jeff Williams set a new U.S. space endurance record Wednesday, his 521st day in orbit over four missions, eclipsing the 520-day record set earlier this year by astronaut Scott Kelly at the end of his nearly one-year stay aboard the lab complex. Williams now moves up to 17th on the list of the world's most experienced astronauts and cosmonauts. The overall record is held by cosmonaut Gennady Padalka, who logged 878 days in orbit over five missions. Williams, Soyuz TMA-20M commander Alexey Ovchinin and flight engineer Oleg Skripochka were launched to the space station March 18. They plan to return to Earth Sept. 6 (U.S. time), landing in Kazakhstan to close out a 172-day mission. At landing, Williams will have logged 534 days aloft, moving him up to 14th on the space endurance list. Williams first flew in space in 2000 aboard the shuttle Atlantis, the third shuttle flight devoted to station assembly. He served as a flight engineer aboard the station in 2006 and completed a second long-duration stay in 2010, serving as a flight engineer and then commander of Expedition 22. "I wanted to congratulate you on passing me up here in total number of days in space," Kelly radioed Williams Wednesday. "It's great to see another record broken. [...] But I do have one question for you. And my question is, do you have another 190 days in you?" Kelly was referring to the time Williams' current mission would have to be extended to equal Kelly's U.S. single-flight record. Williams laughed, saying "190 days. That question's not for me, that's for my wife!"
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I thought the Russians were disqualified and banned for taking drugs
Re: (Score:2)
have to agree with ac.
the record that count is the is longest one, held by a russian who used russian spacecraft to do that.
now this says 'nasa astronaut' set a new us record. which in fact made him a pathetic 17th worldwide.
but even for that, he is in fact using non nasa russian rockets and support, going up from russia. if somali athlete who got most medals for great britian in this olympics is counted as british , then even this 17th ranker in record should count as russian.
Re: (Score:1)
And yet again the Russians did it first.
Seriously, the US can't do anything but copy everything Russia has already accomplished.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Says the Russian troll whose dear leader rigged the entire country so he will be leader for life with no one able to run against him because he decides who can stand for election.
Whatever happens in the U.S. is child's play compared to the vast and endemic corruption Putin has made an art form.
Re:not beat russia (Score:4, Funny)
All that proves is that Putin is more competent than both Hilary and Trump.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
By God men, we can't allow a time-in-space gap! (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, right, I forgot it wasn't 1982 anymore. And that despite all our disagreements, we and Russia are a team in this regard with each new record representing a victory for humanity in which we all share.
Damn good job Jeff, we're proud of you. Gennady, that is so mind mindbogglingly impressive! We're damn proud of you too!
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:not beat russia (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Actually, sending anything into the sun is very, very hard.
You have to decelerate the ship from the 108,000KM/h we're currently in so something the sun's gravity would pick, and that's a LOT of fuel, SPECIALLY if you're talking about sending 1 billion of people to space and then decelerating.
It's probably cheaper to just you know, give em jobs and actually good education, but that is just as politically incorrect as your suggestion sadly.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)
sed -e 's/niggers/muslims/g' | sed -e 's/muslims/jews/g' | sed -e 's/jews/chinks/g' | sed -e 's/chinks/other_ethnic_groups/g' > /dev/null
He'll definitely be an interesting test subject (Score:2)
Prolonged stays in space seem to cause our bodies to break down in all kinds of interesting ways. Eventually we're going to need to either find some way around that or some way to adapt to it.
Re: He'll definitely be an interesting test subjec (Score:5, Informative)
That is easier said than done. To actually make this work without getting the person subjected to it sick (due to differential gravity between head and toes, so to speak), that ring would have to be HUGE.
There were some experiments with artificial gravity done by Gemini 11, they attached a tether to their AGENA docking target and started rotating with it. The gravity generated was in the 0.0001g ballpark IIRC, though. This would probably be far more realistic to do, i.e. creating a capsule and a counterweight and spinning them about each other, because you need way less mass and you could easily put capsule and counterweight at a huge distance and rotate them slowly while still generating a reasonable amount of gravity. The problem is that the cable to connect them has to be made out of something that's better at not ripping than anything we can manufacture right now.
Artificial gravity by rotation look cool on paper, it's the little problems that keep it from happening.
Re: (Score:3)
The Gemini crew reported they couldn't actually feel any gravity, all they could observe was that objects in the capsule slowly moved towards the outside of the tether-system.
A full 1g is probably not necessary, but how much is, that's the big question. Unfortunately we're not really in any position to produce e.g. .8g for a prolonged (read: several months) time to see whether this has any negative effect on the test subject.
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly!!!
NASA should instead have thousands of people go through 3-6 hour stays in microgravity.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
space, meh (Score:1)
I have been in my parents' basement for much more than 521 days!
Wow, how long is a year in space? (Score:3)
"eclipsing the 520-day record set earlier this year by astronaut Scott Kelly at the end of his nearly one-year stay"
Down here on Earth, a year is, like, 356 or so days. Oh, yeah, this year it's 366 days.
It's different up there? Who knew?
Re: (Score:1)
In space, nobody can hear you run ntpdate!
An old song updated (Score:2)