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very technical interesting article just found, Lo interview, a 2002 NASA press release, another cool description with nice illustrations, and the wikipedia.

The main reason would that the Chinese parachute worked while the Genesis failed.

The other reason would be a weight budget -- the Genesis mission travelled much further, so the energy (and cost) to propel any additional weight would be much more than for the Chinese mission. Thus, it probably wasn't overbuilt.

The third reason is the mission. The Genesis mission had to open up to expose its collectors, while the chinese mission is a bit unknown. If it was a zero gravity research, its experiments probably didn't need exposure to space. If it produced a massive amount of data that couldn't be transmitted back, the data storage is usually easy to separate from the instruments (including film & camera). Anyone know what it was supposed to do?

I's sorry, but I think these pictures tell a hilarious story! Photo 1 with the helicopters overlooking the carnage is quite good!

I's sorry, but I think these pictures tell a hilarious story! Photo 1 with the helicopters overlooking the carnage is quite good!

I's sorry, but I think these pictures tell a hilarious story! Photo 1 with the helicopters overlooking the carnage is quite good!

I's sorry, but I think these pictures tell a hilarious story! Photo 1 with the helicopters overlooking the carnage is quite good!

From the recovery, from another poster: http://www.genesismission.org/images/gen_recovery_ fragments-browse.jpg
interesting... they appear to have collected shards of a large, shiny black object...
(queue the trumpet)

My god, it's full of sand!

I submitted the *exact* same story two days ago, BUT I'M NOT BITTER! Anyway, although the official web site originally had a bunch pictures of the recovery team with their unprotected hands all over the spacecraft remains, it seems they've moved it to a clean room...

I submitted the *exact* same story two days ago, BUT I'M NOT BITTER! Anyway, although the official web site originally had a bunch pictures of the recovery team with their unprotected hands all over the spacecraft remains, it seems they've moved it to a clean room...

From the beginning I didn't think this was quite as bad as people had feared. The worse case scenerio is that we can only detect particles that are unique to the study area.

No matter how much dirt you pour into that system, any particles that are not common on earth would still be a very interesting finding!

"It is amazing given the amount of breach in the canister just how clean it is inside" Sevilla said. "We're not talking about great clods of dirt."

As much as they were overestimating the initial amount of damage, I think they are underestimating now. No matter how little amount of dust has entered into that system, it still has contamination. Contamination is like pregnancy. Either it is, or it isn't. "Genesis brought back a tiny sampling of the raw material of the Sun, a sample weighing no more than a few grains of salt." Likely many particles that were captured in space are similiar the particles here on earth; however, with the contamination I am not sure how you can seperate the true origin of the particles... especially when such small amounts are involved. Earth dust >>> sun dust.

Can you tell which of these are covered with space particles and which are covered with space dirt?

From the beginning I didn't think this was quite as bad as people had feared. The worse case scenerio is that we can only detect particles that are unique to the study area.

No matter how much dirt you pour into that system, any particles that are not common on earth would still be a very interesting finding!

"It is amazing given the amount of breach in the canister just how clean it is inside" Sevilla said. "We're not talking about great clods of dirt."

As much as they were overestimating the initial amount of damage, I think they are underestimating now. No matter how little amount of dust has entered into that system, it still has contamination. Contamination is like pregnancy. Either it is, or it isn't. "Genesis brought back a tiny sampling of the raw material of the Sun, a sample weighing no more than a few grains of salt." Likely many particles that were captured in space are similiar the particles here on earth; however, with the contamination I am not sure how you can seperate the true origin of the particles... especially when such small amounts are involved. Earth dust >>> sun dust.

Can you tell which of these are covered with space particles and which are covered with space dirt?

I propose that the Air Force approach Darl and ask him to participate in a modified mid-air capture program. One that involves Darl out in the middle of the desert with a baseball glove.

Apparently, Vertigo. From the Genesis website:

Vertigo is a small business that specializes in the development and rapid prototyping of advanced aeronautical and civil structures from inflatable shelters to parachute delivery systems to spacecraft deceleration systems. Vertigo will provide two mid-air retrieval, winch-based systems to mount in two Genesis retrieval helicopters. Vertigo is lead on the mid-air recovery flight operations. Helicopter crew provided by Vertigo are: Roy Haggard - Lead Director of Flight Operations Myles Elsing - Wing Director of Flight Operations Brian Johnson - Lead Payload Master Lynn Fogleman - Wing Payload Master The Vertigo Program Manager is Brook Norton.

What ever happened to the science of simply exploring and learning about our solar system and how it formed instead of this quest of focusing on trying to find life on other planets

What are you talking about??

NASA have the capacity to run more than one mission at once. :-P

This link I gleaned and posted on Slashdot the last time we had an article about this. There are actually several interesting papers about this on the net, look for Lo in xarchiv and elsewhere I think. Downloaded a whole bunch last time.

If you have been following the recent articles about the "Interplanetary Superhighway" discovered by NASA researcher Martin Lo (I have been scouring the net for papers recently) you will realize that there may be a good case for early deflection. In fact NASA re-released the story about this with a little more data just this morning (jpl mailing list). This is hot stuff!

Lo is trying to map the low energy trajectories through the Solar System which result from calculating n-body gravitational problems for all the objects in the System. Apparently there are tube-like trails between the Sun and the Oort Belt along which objects can travel theoretically without thrust, and the dinosaur killer is thought to have come down an "offramp" to the Earth much like Shoemaker-Levy apparently did with Jupiter.

This technology was used in the Genesis Mission and chaos theory applies to the low-energy halo orbit around a Sun-Earth libration point. After orbitting around this point a few times the robot will (without thrust) return to a sample capture point in Earth orbit.

While I do not yet understand the math itself, it seems likely that this Rock is in a somewhat chaotic orbit and that small nudges can have very large effects on its trajectory down the way. A decade or two may not be long enough, or we might even set up a pattern which will smash us on a later orbit, but the technology is being developed right now.

Absolutely fascinating work by Martin Lo. If highway coordinates are publicized this might be the best place for spaceguard and amateur asteroid searchers to look. Currently amateurs are discovering asteroids very frequently.

I also wonder if this implies a similar superhighway among the stars which could determine where a stream of matter might be coming over the millenia from outside the solar system. (i.e. where are the off-ramps to our solar system?)

The interview with Lo is much more interesting; he believes we are on a cusp of where advanced theoretical mathematics is going to inform a new generation of engineering.

I would like to understand the math better, specifically to see if it might have applications to software. I'd also like to plot the superhighway, or understand how they are doing it. But only have a year of college math. Where is a good and free place to learn about it online? Been to Mathematica.

Go to the website here:

http://www.genesismission.org/

includes pictures, decent diagrams, etc.

Have you seen the orbit that this thing is going into? Now that's some freaky shit! It's been known probably since Newton that this kind of orbit is possible, at least in theory, but have we ever actually tried to attain such an orbit before?

In case you couldn't figure it out, the real site is here.

The correct link as some have no doubt figured is http://www.genesismission.org/ not .com. :-)


Geekizoid: The Small Shiny Things Network ©!

The correct link as some have no doubt figured is http://www.genesismission.org/ not .com. :-)


Geekizoid: The Small Shiny Things Network ©!