Will it hit a fishing boat? The Taco Bell target? The x’s mowed in an Australian field?
But seriously, my Russian is rusty, and I really just want to know what Mir means.
According to babelfish, it means “Peace/world”.
A Russian co-worker of mine confirmed what gigi said. Depending on the context of the sentence, it can mean “peace” or “world.”
Zev Steinhardt
In fact “Peace on Earth” in Russian, is “Mir na Mir”.
Why do they have to crash it into the Pacific? Why not just give it a slight rocket burst and aim it either into deep space or into the sun? That seems easier and possibly safer than bringing it down to earth.
Gravity comes to mind as a reason.
Stephen wrote:
Close. It would be “mir na mire”, since the preposition “na” takes the locative, not the nominative case. But yah, they use the same word for “peace” and “world”. Not a big deal, in English the word for “collection” is the same as the word for “harden”.
-m
The preposition “na” can govern more than one case. It takes the accusative when there is a motion, or non-static idea being conveyed and takes the locative for static or motionless ideas. Wishing that peace be bestowed on the Earth is non-static. The accusative of a masculine inanimate noun has its accusative the same as the nominative. Hence “Mir na Mir” as I am certain I have seen on holiday cards.
As far as pushing it away somewhere else, it’s just not feasable. It masses 135-140 tons, which would require a lot of reaction mass to move it anywhere–a lot more than the Russians or the Americans can afford. In fact, the reason they’re dumping it is because the very small drag it experiences through the residual atmosphere is decaying its orbit, and it costs a lot of money just to keep Mir aloft. Might as well crash it where you want it to crash, because it’s coming down one way or the other.
This brings up something, however. I remember a David Brin short story where a large space station had its reaction mass supply cut and its orbit was in danger of decaying. The herogineer of the story devised a propulsive device that worked by dangling cables and somehow using electromagnetic force to keep the station aloft.
Can someone explain to me how such a thing would work, and if it was ever considered for Mir?
Sofa King, the “dangling cables” idea (better known as a tether) is really pretty cool, although I admit I don’t really understand all the details. The idea is that you can take advantage of the fact that a fast moving object moving through a magnetic field generates current.
Anything in orbit is fast-moving by definition, and the Earth has a handy magnetic field sitting out there for you to use. By deploying a long conducting tether from your spacecraft, you can magically generate electricity. But a side-effect is to lower your orbit, which is a bummer obviously.
So the really tricky part is to use a solar panel, which is free electricity, to feed a current INTO the tether. Viola, now your orbit is raised instead of lowered, and you avoid a calamitous reentry to Mother Earth. Beautiful applied use of physics.
I don’t think they’re ready to use them for real yet though. They tried one on the Space Shuttle a while back and it kinda sorta snapped on them.
Thanks, Smackfu. Haven’t I seen you over at Ars?
Stephen sed:
In the words of the master, no need to be so reasonable about it. 
-m
mir na mir - is “peace on earth”
but tonight its “Mir na mire” Mir is going to the earth
Sorry, but it was a motion towards Earth, so tonight with some excellent video from Fiji… Mir na Mir!
…Or, even more appropriately, “Mir na Okean” (okean being the Russian name for their ocean study satellites).
I would have preferred to find some way to save it… Not for use but for history. To keep it up in a 50 or 100 year orbit. Maybe in that time we could go back up there and have the ability to stabilize it or even turn it into some sort of museum.
I realize boosting it into a 100 year orbit (by that I mean an orbit that would not decay fatally for 100 years or so) would be expensive and use a ton of fuel, but the US could have helped in that end.
But hey, the US has never kept a manned station aloft for so long, so why ask for our help? We might just covert metric incorrectly and send the whole thing down on Cleveland.
SF
Thank you kindly.
And as for history, you can always see the other two Mir units that were built, but never made it up into space. One of them is in Wisconsin.
The pictures of Mir going over Fiji are spectacular!