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Miles O'Brien: Mir's death plunge

 

(CNN) -- Space Correspondent Miles O'Brien is covering Russian preparations to bring down the 15-year-old Mir space station later this week. Pieces of the station that survive re-entry are expected to crash into the southwestern Pacific Ocean.

Q: Russia has put off the re-entry for a day, from March 22 to the 23rd. What's the thinking behind that?

O'Brien: Part of the reason is Mir is dropping on its own. It's running through the thinnest part of the upper atmosphere ... and as a result, Mir drops about a mile every day. So every mile they get, by the laws of Newton and Kepler, is a little bit of fuel saved when they bring it down.

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    The other consideration is the ground track of the final orbit -- the death orbit, if you will. The way the Earth spins and Mir spins, the ground track was more advantageous to do it in the early hours of Friday as opposed to the early hours of Thursday, giving them a little more margin to hit ocean rather than land.

    Q: Japan and New Zealand have issued warnings about the possibility of pieces of Mir hitting their territory. How likely is it that Mir will hit land anywhere?

    O'Brien: If everything goes according to plan -- if the engines fire when they should in the direction they should at the time they should -- the chances of hitting land are in the infinitesimal range. There are no islands in the drop zone the Russians are aiming for, and the South Pacific is a very big target.

    The problem is despite the fact that the Russians have sent in dozens of spacecraft in this manner in the past, they've never attempted to bring something in this big, this heavy and this complicated. ... When you're moving along at 17,500 miles an hour, the margin for error is very narrow indeed.

    Q: What will the view be like for observers in the region?

    O'Brien: If you could see Mir come in, it would be an incredible show. These pieces will be coming in at supersonic speed, so there will be tremendous sonic booms. We know there will be dozens of streaking meteors, which will be the significant pieces of Mir as they break apart, superheated and burning up. It will be a light show, a fireworks show, a meteor show all combined like no one has ever seen.

    If you're in perhaps French Polynesia, perhaps Fiji, Tonga, maybe New Zealand or on a cruise boat in the general region, you might have a tremendous opportunity on a clear night to see a man-made show that nature probably can't rival.

    Q: How much of Mir is expected to survive re-entry and actually hit the surface?

    O'Brien: Again, this is a bit of a shot in the dark, if you will, and I've heard conflicting numbers. At the low end, we expect about 20 tons of the 135- to 140-ton structure to live on -- I've heard other experts say as much as 20, 30, even 40 percent of Mir might survive re-entry.

    At the high end, let's just say 30 percent for the sake of argument, about 40 tons -- that's a lot. And it's not just a 40-ton clump, it's a lot of pieces over a very dispersed area -- larger than the state of Texas, almost as large as Alaska. Nevertheless, some rather big pieces will probably survive.

    Q: What's the mood among Russian space officials as they prepare to bring down what was once the pride of their fleet?

    O'Brien: It's a very sad day for these guys. Anyone who tells you that they see the international space station Alpha as a substitute is lying to you. It is the end of the independence of a very proud and accomplished space program.

    Their role in space station Alpha is still technically as a partner, and in fact the new commander of the international space station is a Russian, so their role is front and center. But the bottom line is, it is a NASA-led project. It is controlled out of Houston, it is funded primarily by the United States, and it was conceived of at the outset as a way to funnel hard currency into the Russian space program. Their sense of independence and ability to stage their own independent missions goes by the boards with the loss of Mir.

    Q: What happened to ideas like making Mir a destination for rich tourists?

    O'Brien: The short answer is the business model just wasn't working. The company, Mircorp, which was funded by American money based in Amsterdam, did for a time make lease payments to the Russians to lease Mir.

    They did successfully lure one person -- Dennis Tito, a California millionaire -- to participate as a tourist who would visit Mir on a Soyuz spacecraft. He paid $20 million. But Dennis Tito was a smart guy -- he put the $20 million into escrow and said it would be released once the Soyuz rocket motors lit up.

    They had lots of promises like that, but not enough cash flow. They didn't meet their payments to the Russians for three or four months, and the Russians decided it was going nowhere.



    RELATED STORIES:
    Mir demise causes international high anxiety
    March 6, 2001

    RELATED SITES:
    Mir Space Station
    International space station Alpha
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