Chris Hadfield said on twitter this morning that a normal reentry is around 4G, but a “ballistic” reentry is more like 8-9G 
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From what I’m hearing, there are four possibilities of how this could impact the ISS:
- Soyuz continues to launch on its normal schedule, with minimal impact to ISS crewing
- Soyuz continues to launch on its normal schedule, unmanned, with the current crew staying in space until the investigation completes and Soyuz is deemed safe to fly again
- The Commercial Crew programs (Boeing’s Starliner and SpaceX’s Crew Dragon) are fast-tracked.
- The current crew returns home and leaves the ISS unscrewed until manned flight can safely resume.
Option #1 is extremely unlikely. There’s just no way they’re going to send people up on a rocket without knowing why the last attempt failed.
Option #3 is possible, but only to the smallest extent. The current plan is to have SpaceX send a crewed mission up in June/July. They might dedicate some effort to holding that window more firmly, and maybe pushing it earlier, but I doubt that they’ll launch before April even given optimal conditions.
Option #2 is intriguing; the current Soyuz which is acting as a lifeboat is going to exceed its expected lifetime in December/January, and the crew can’t stay up there without a way down… but if it could be replaced with a fresh one, that could very well add another few months to the current crew’s mission: perhaps long enough to get Soyuz flying manned again, or maybe, maybe, to get Crew Dragon up to the station.
If Soyuz is grounded totally, though, they really have no choice but to bring the crew down. And, at that point, who knows what will happen to the ISS, with no firm date set for when it will be crewed again?
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“Okay, who the hell left the airlock open?”
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So, all over Ottawa, these signs have been appearing: on shelters, on billboards, on buses:
At first, I thought it was related to a campaign by a bookstore chain in Canada with a similar slogan:
But, no, it’s a campaign by, as self described: “a coalition of space companies in Canada hoping to secure a funded space strategy from our government.”
I think that message, and the list of companies, should be disclosed in the ads, but that’s not what bugged me most when I went to their website. That would be:
We need a funded long-term Canadian Space Strategy to guide our way forward, and we need it now, because decisions need to be made. The most pressing? Whether to participate, or not, in the Lunar Gateway Mission. If Canada does not step forward soon, another country will seize the opportunity.
The LOP-G might charitably be described as a boondoggle with the sole purpose of justifying the continued development of NASA’s Space Launch System rocket, which, in turn, might be described as a form of corporate welfare for those companies which would otherwise have failed after the cancellation of the Space Shuttle. Again, a charitable description.
I’m all for putting more funding into the Canadian space program: developing reusable rockets, LEO satellite internet, telescopes, a replacement for ISS, a lunar base, asteroid mining, a mission to Mars… Something visionary and useful. Instead, we’re being asked to leash ourselves to another F-35, another SLS, another government project that exists for no better reason than to exist and vacuum up government contracts.
Colour me disappointed.
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Tune in, if you can!
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Huh. I didn’t know InSight was a cat.
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When I first read that I thought it had something to do with the lander’s boring tool.
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All of us are looking at the stars, but some of our minds are in the gutter.
– apologies to Oscar Wilde
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Some how I don’t think he’d mind.
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Either he’d be cool with it, or he’d come back with a devastating putdown that would result in my name being remembered forever. Either way, I win. 
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I wouldn’t be too sure about that. Despite the technology not existing at the time, a lot of people in that weight class were quite adept at the:
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Ok, now I want to know what a “supertweet” is.
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Nightingale with a megaphone.
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https://blogs.nasa.gov/spacex/2018/12/03/spacex-crs-16-now-targeted-for-dec-5/
NASA and SpaceX are now targeting Wednesday, Dec. 5 for launch of the 16th SpaceX cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station. The launch was moved to Wednesday after mold was found on food bars for a rodent investigation prior to handover to SpaceX. Teams will use the extra day to replace the food bars. The launch time for Wednesday is 1:16 p.m. EST.
This marks (I assume) the first rocket delay due to moldy mouse food.
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I have to say that SpaceX really is following through with success on some really hard stuff.
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Another first for NASA!
(had to be done, sorry)
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