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From NASA's web site:

"When the External Tank is empty, it separates from the Orbiter, too. It breaks apart, and its pieces fall in the ocean."

URL: http://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/k-4/feat ures/BO_index.html

hi all,

Direct from NASA-TV, retransmission of audio 145.585 in the south San Francisco bay area. Video is also retransmitted on the K6BEN-ATV video repeater.

For more info, see
http://hamradio.arc.nasa.gov/AARCatv.html

Mike

NASA TV transmited it live. They are replaying it now.
NAsa TV .asx

From the Mission Briefing

Several elements will be carried in Discovery's payload bay for delivery to the Station. These include the Multi-Purpose Logistics Module Raffaello, containing racks of supplies, food and water, and the Human Research Facility-2 rack. Also, the External Stowage Platform and a replacement Control Moment Gyroscope will be carried in Discovery's payload bay.

During Mission STS-114, mission specialists will perform spacewalks to install the External Stowage Platform and the Control Moment Gyroscope onto the Station. They will unberth the logistics module and attach it to the Station to transfer several tons of supplies and equipment, including food and water, for use by the Expedition 11 crew.

Eileen Collins, James Kelly, Charles Camarda, Wendy Lawrence, Soichi Noguchi, Steve Robinson, and Andrew Thomas.

Good luck and come back safe.

Eileen Collins, James Kelly, Charles Camarda, Wendy Lawrence, Soichi Noguchi, Steve Robinson, and Andrew Thomas.

Good luck and come back safe.

Eileen Collins, James Kelly, Charles Camarda, Wendy Lawrence, Soichi Noguchi, Steve Robinson, and Andrew Thomas.

Good luck and come back safe.

Eileen Collins, James Kelly, Charles Camarda, Wendy Lawrence, Soichi Noguchi, Steve Robinson, and Andrew Thomas.

Good luck and come back safe.

Eileen Collins, James Kelly, Charles Camarda, Wendy Lawrence, Soichi Noguchi, Steve Robinson, and Andrew Thomas.

Good luck and come back safe.

Eileen Collins, James Kelly, Charles Camarda, Wendy Lawrence, Soichi Noguchi, Steve Robinson, and Andrew Thomas.

Good luck and come back safe.

Eileen Collins, James Kelly, Charles Camarda, Wendy Lawrence, Soichi Noguchi, Steve Robinson, and Andrew Thomas.

Good luck and come back safe.

From the NASA TV page http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html

Real Player had much better audio but the MS Media Player had better sharpness and shadow detail in video. This was over Comcast broadband in Chicago.

I assume the video feed was the same from NASA.

Miles O'Brien's Launch Blog

Shuttle Details

Return to Flight

Miles O'Brien's Launch Blog

Shuttle Details

Return to Flight

I wrote:

A co-worker in my group two doors down from me did some work on Pioneer 7-track tape data recovery a few years ago; the main interest at that time was actual Science data, rather than the raw spacecraft Telemetry data that seems to be the focus of this Planetary Society inquest.

And, in fact, I believe the data referenced on this page:

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/database/MasterCatalog? ds=PSFP-00166

is from that very same task that my co-worker participated in.

Superconducting supercomputer. Too expensive but maybe need to build one to see how they work.
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/hpcc/insights/vol6/supercom .htm

Using 'general' processors is cheap but the wrong direction according to the best supercomputer expert from Stanford. He designed some cray computers.

http://content.techweb.com/wire/26802955

here's the link, working this time: Clicky

McGreevy ground-based VLF recordings

If anyone's interested in listening to the Earth natural radio broadcasts, NASA has a nice page set up (with kits for making your own VLF receiver)here. Other planets here.

As in another post,

Terraserver, which msn owns, uses 1m per pix resolution USGS areal photos where were done before the apple building was constructed. These are black and white images, but they cover the whole US.

Google uses .25m per pix rez USGS or satelite 'WHERE AVAILABLE' as they exist only in selected areas, otherwise Google uses (I believe) 8m per pix landsat images, which are color not black and white.

If you look in areas where google uses landsat vrs the B&W images, the B&W images are FAR sharper.

If you use the FREE software from NASA, World Wind, you can select between the various sources of images. HEre is the link http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/

The hockey stick graph doesn't show anything beyond a relationship between time and temperature. You are imposing your interpretation of a cause on the graph. "Hockey-stick" graphs are a dime a dozen in the geologic past (see http://igloo.gsfc.nasa.gov/wais/documentation/imag es/waisfig1.gif for a graph of sea-level (which *could* be a proxy for temperature via ice cap volume, although basin size is the most crucial factor[but not on that timescale]) versus time). There are many other factors to consider (orbital mechanics, solar radiation, plate motion, as well as changes in atmosphere, ice volume, vegetation, ocean, and land surface). It isn't as simple as saying "look, temperature went up when the Industrial Age started, we did it". The temperature has gone up and down many times in the last 4.5 Ga. Change is constant. Real science requires the examination and, if possible, testing of these other factors in addition to the study of greenhouse emissions.

I'll repeat it again, I personally think that greenhouse gases play a role in accelarating warming. But they aren't the only factor. And you need more than me "thinking" it is so to convince the corporate economy to switch gears and cut emissions. That's why this research is so important.

Sorry for the caps, but I wanted to get your attention ;)

I work at JPL, for the last 12 1/2 years in the Multi-mission Image Processing Lab. A co-worker in my group two doors down from me did some work on Pioneer 7-track tape data recovery a few years ago; the main interest at that time was actual Science data, rather than the raw spacecraft Telemetry data that seems to be the focus of this Planetary Society inquest.

A lot of the tapes were recovered back then. They were burned to CD-ROMs and 4 copies of each were made. One set is still here at JPL at the Regional Planetary Image Facility (see http://rpif.jpl.nasa.gov/locb_mission.asp?pioneerv enusorbiter - they've got some Pioneer data), one set is in the hands of the organization that was the precursor to our current Planetary Data System (PDS) - the NASA archiving organization (they create CD-ROMs and nowadays DVD-ROMs from mission data, if we own it). Go check out http://pds.jpl.nasa.gov/. I think the original researcher got copy #4, and I've forgotten who got copy #3. If we could find one of the CD-ROMs, we could look at the index file (each CD had an index file; it was updated as newer versions of the CD's were produced) and see if any of the files contained Telemetry data.

As for the equipment, I think the PS is blowing smoke - as far as we know, Ratheon has the old VAX equipment we used to read those old 7-track tapes onto, and I suspect they might also have the actual 7-track tape drives themselves that were used in the reclamation project (i.e. by my co-worker).

Anyway, the key thing is, the main thrust of this recovery project was to recover Science data, not Telemetry. So if someone really wants all the Telemetry from launch up to 2002 (last transmission received), they'll probably still need to get it off of those old rotting 7-track tapes. We probably only have some of it on the CD-ROMs that were made from the efforts here.

Sorry for the caps, but I wanted to get your attention ;)

I work at JPL, for the last 12 1/2 years in the Multi-mission Image Processing Lab. A co-worker in my group two doors down from me did some work on Pioneer 7-track tape data recovery a few years ago; the main interest at that time was actual Science data, rather than the raw spacecraft Telemetry data that seems to be the focus of this Planetary Society inquest.

A lot of the tapes were recovered back then. They were burned to CD-ROMs and 4 copies of each were made. One set is still here at JPL at the Regional Planetary Image Facility (see http://rpif.jpl.nasa.gov/locb_mission.asp?pioneerv enusorbiter - they've got some Pioneer data), one set is in the hands of the organization that was the precursor to our current Planetary Data System (PDS) - the NASA archiving organization (they create CD-ROMs and nowadays DVD-ROMs from mission data, if we own it). Go check out http://pds.jpl.nasa.gov/. I think the original researcher got copy #4, and I've forgotten who got copy #3. If we could find one of the CD-ROMs, we could look at the index file (each CD had an index file; it was updated as newer versions of the CD's were produced) and see if any of the files contained Telemetry data.

As for the equipment, I think the PS is blowing smoke - as far as we know, Ratheon has the old VAX equipment we used to read those old 7-track tapes onto, and I suspect they might also have the actual 7-track tape drives themselves that were used in the reclamation project (i.e. by my co-worker).

Anyway, the key thing is, the main thrust of this recovery project was to recover Science data, not Telemetry. So if someone really wants all the Telemetry from launch up to 2002 (last transmission received), they'll probably still need to get it off of those old rotting 7-track tapes. We probably only have some of it on the CD-ROMs that were made from the efforts here.

Here are some links published on another group about this same topic, and all data that NASA knows about is already saved.

> http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/database/MasterCatalog? sc=1972-012A&ds=*
> http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/database/MasterCatalog? sc=1973-019A&ds=*

>Well, well, well...it looks like every bit of Pioneer 10 and 11 has been saved already, and can be accessed thru the proper channels (on tape, but apparently they will burn a CDROM on request).

Here are some links published on another group about this same topic, and all data that NASA knows about is already saved.

> http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/database/MasterCatalog? sc=1972-012A&ds=*
> http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/database/MasterCatalog? sc=1973-019A&ds=*

>Well, well, well...it looks like every bit of Pioneer 10 and 11 has been saved already, and can be accessed thru the proper channels (on tape, but apparently they will burn a CDROM on request).

• The data used to be stored on magnetic tape. When the tape started deteriorating, all the data was archived off onto then state-of-the-art MO disks.
• The machine used was a MicroVAX with a DEC RWZ21 SCSI MO drive, which is apparently quite rare. The disks are 128MB each.
• For Pioneer 10, there are 155 disks, making 19840 MB of data.
• For Pioneer 11, there are 217 disks, making 27776 MB of data.
• Each disk takes about 10 minutes to read to the MicroVAX, and then more time to move across onto a real computer, of course.

I would have happily volunteered to spend a couple of days swapping disks in order to salvage all this lot, but alas, I'm the wrong side of the Atlantic. The guy in charge has recently been made redundant, and he was desperate to find someone to hand off all this to... but there's incredible beaurocracy. (I gather all the data was actually supposed to have been destroyed some years ago, but through some 'oversight' hadn't been.)

Alas, I don't have permission to publish his address, but I'll put him in touch with the Planetary Society on the off chance he doesn't know about this.

Interestingly, for years he ran the Pioneer spacecraft off a Mac Quadra 950! Check out the screen shots...

Why is there a big hoopla about Planetary society raising meager $250,000?

You need money to carry out research.
NASA obviously doesn't care much about basic sciences, and is quite busy wasting tax dollars in 'spectacular' but dumb and useless shuttle launches.

Planetary society is atleast trying to make some sense. Why not help them?

indeed, the biggest danger would be the bends and lung expansion.
Nasa got some info about it here

Unfoturnately, it's too early to make any plausible guess. Kepler will give some statistic, but you must wait so fucking long... 2008-2012. :(

Also, from what I remember of Apollo/Saturn 204, the Velco in the capsule exploded in addition to the spark causing the fire.

"The Apollo 204 Review Board determined that a silver-plated copper wire running through an environmental control unit near the command module pilot's couch had become stripped of its insulation and abraded by repeated opening and closing of an associated access door. This weak point in the wiring also happened to pass near a junction in a ethylene glycol / water cooling line, which had developed a leak. The electrolysis of ethylene glycol solution with the anode made of silver resulted in a violent exothermic reaction that ignited the ethylene glycol mixture, which in turn was able to burn in the atmosphere of pure pressurized oxygen."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_1
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/SP-4009/ v4p2b.htm

Yeah, but going from 10m to 0m is going from 2 atm to 1 atm. The scenario in the parent is going from 1 atm to 0 atm. If multiples matter instead of absolute pressure differential, things might behave pretty badly as your denominator approaches zero. In fact, this site http://www.sff.net/people/Geoffrey.Landis/vacuum.h tml says you lose consciousness in a vacuum in under 10 seconds and die in about 90 seconds.

Tangent: I don't think they pressurize space craft, or aircraft for that matter fully to 1 atm. For example, there's a need to pop equalize your ears as aircraft take off and land, just like when diving. The shuttle is pressurized to ~25% of pressure at sea level. For more, see this very informative page. http://ares.jsc.nasa.gov/HumanExplore/Exploration/ EXLibrary/DOCS/EIC017.HTML

Since I don't actually have all day to reply, here is a quick selection of 'reputable' links and a few recent (05) peer-reviewed journal article abstracts concerning global warming.

I wasn't implying that you should take MY word for it...just that I have experience in this topic and that my (informed) opinion is that GW is underway. Denying global warming is about as futile as denying evolution (I'm also a paleontologist). As I mentioned in the previous post, however, the causes of global warming are still up in the air (although I personally suspect that greenhouse gas emissions play a role in accelerating warming). Of course Fairbanks (Nature 342/89) demonstrated that there was a two meter per century rise in sea level around 14000 years ago, so rapid change can occur even without human influence.

Here are a few references:

Fairbanks, R.G., 1989, A 17,000-year glacio-eustatic sea level record; influence of glacial melting rates on the Younger Dryas event and deep-ocean circulation: Nature, v. 342, no. 6250, p. 637-642.

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Library/Aerosols/
http://www.aims.gov.au/pages/research/coral-bleach ing/scr2000/scr-00gcrmn-report.html
http://www4.nas.edu/onpi/webextra.nsf/44bf87db3095 63a0852566f2006d63bb/e4dcc6e935831fc885256a8400588 146?OpenDocument
http://climatechange.gc.ca/english/default.asp
____
From: Analysis of mean, maximum, and minimum temperature in Athens from 1897 to 2001 with emphasis on the last decade, trends, warm events, and cold events, Extreme climatic events

The 105-year (1897-2001) surface air temperature record of the National Observatory of Athens (NOA) has been analyzed to determine indications of significant deviations from long-term average features in the city of Athens. The analysis of the whole record reveals a tendency towards warmer years, with significantly warmer summer and spring periods and slightly warmer winters (an increase of 1.23 and 0.34 degrees C has been observed in the mean summer and mean winter temperature, respectively). The tendency is more pronounced for the summer and spring maximum temperature, but marginal for the minimum temperature of the cold season. On a monthly basis, a statistically significant (at the 95th confidence level) warming trend has been observed in the average maximum temperature of May and June. The trend analysis for the last decade of the record (1992-2001) revealed a significant increase for both warm and cold seasons, yet maximum and minimum temperature. Extreme temperatures (high/low temperatures above/below a certain threshold value) and extreme events (prolonged extreme temperatures) have also been studied. The number of hot days as well as the frequency of occurrence and duration of warm events have significantly increased during the last decade, while a negative trend is observed in the frequency of low temperatures and the duration of cold events especially after 1960.
_____
From: Recent trends from Canadian permafrost thermal monitoring network sites, Permafrost and Periglacial Processes, vol.16, no.1, pp.19-30, Mar 2005

The Geological Survey of Canada (GSC), in collaboration with other government partners, has been developing and maintaining a network of active-layer and permafrost thermal monitoring sites which contribute to the Canadian Permafrost Monitoring Network and the Global Terrestrial Network for Permafrost. Recent results from the thermal monitoring sites maintained by the GSC and other federal government agencies are presented. These results indicate that the response of permafrost temperature to rec

We play with lasers over on Mauna Kea, too... like this nice 20-watt sodium dye one. Which, for topicality, is located at the world's current largest optical telescope...

This Page Last Updated 12/13/95

Maybe a record for Slashdot: almost TEN YEARS.

http://exploration.grc.nasa.gov/balloon/HS.HTM

Has anyone done porn in zero-G? I'm thinking bukkake could be big in zero G or super-high speed format.

I have seen this setup when i was in India. The same problem as Fang posted existed, lightning does not have to hit the wire, it just has to hit close enough to induce a charge in the cable, which then fries anything connected.

The cheapest solution i found was this ..heh

By counting the seconds between the flash and the thunder and dividing by 5, an estimate of the distance to the strike (in miles) can be made.

(Source http://thunder.msfc.nasa.gov/primer/index.html)

SO if lightining is imminent yank out the cables and then plug back in when its crossed over. Not an automatic solution mind you but i did say cheapest ;)

The link for the next five years is the interesting one:
NASA's Current Five-Year Plan and Extended Budget Projection

About halfway down is a comparison of the 2004 and 2005 budgets. You can see that the increase is only $292 million, a small fraction of the overall budget. If you compare NASA's current funding with the funding from the Apollo Era (adjusting for inflation) you'll see that the funding levels are on a very similar footing. Of course in those days NASA's funding was about 4% of the federal budget, while today NASA is significantly less than 1%.

The point, however, is that this program is not increasing NASA's funding by much at all, which is its main selling point. That's why Bush Sr.'s plan failed miserably; it would have required about a 33% increase in NASA's funding. So yes, it's a very long range plan, but most analysts believe it has a very high chance of success.

What I, however, would most like to see, is a collaborative effort between NASA and the fledgeling private sector space initiatives.

It's called the Centennial Challenges Program:

http://exploration.nasa.gov/centennialchallenge/cc _index.html

Basically, NASA's been partnering up with private organizations to offer cash prizes for space-related achievements. Congress has unfortunately put a limit on how much of their budget they're allowed to devote to competitive prizes, but they've still been able to offer prizes for space tethers, beam power, and extracting oxygen from lunar regolith.

A while back I also tried submitting an article about NASA and its plans for commercial delivery of cargo and passengers to the ISS, but the story was rejected. Here's the text of it:

At a recent talk, Michael Griffin outlined NASA's plans for helping to generate a robust and competitive commercial market in orbital spaceflight. The speech and Q&A transcripts from the talk are available. In a move reminiscent of the US government kickstarting the early airline industry by purchasing airmail services, NASA plans on supplementing government-derived transport by purchasing cargo delivery services to the International Space Station from commercial providers, followed by crew transportation after the systems have proven themselves. Unlike traditional government contracts, sellers wouldn't see a profit before the services are delivered and the emphasis will be on actual performance instead of process and specifications. Aviation Week has some commentary on the announcement.

So what is happening for / to the long lost orphans of NASA's deep space program?

Retiring the space shuttle boondoggle and being done with the space station will provide more than enough money.

For future reference, here's NASA's budget:

http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/107486main_FY06_high.pdf

Throughout 40 years of manned space flight, there were no fatalaties.

Which 40 year period was this?

There was this tragedy in 1967, perhaps not often mentioned since it was an on-pad test and not part of an actual space flight:
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/Apollo20 4/

"For god's sake, how did it come to this, anyway?!? 30 years in and the STS program is still considered an experimental program with experimental vehicles." Because the shuttle, while a marvel of science*, is a bloated compromise of the original idea that tries to be a jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none. There's some interesing facts on the history of the design and selection of the shuttle in the CAIB report (vol 1) - check it out. *your opinion/definition of 'marvel' could be different from my own in this context.

Actually, it doesn't take all that analysis.

One just have to point a laser beam to the reflective surfaces the astronauts placed on the moon, and notice thaty our beam is reflected. They were placed there for this specific purpose.

Read more here.

Or for Earth: http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/ Open source, but not currently ported to linux.

It probably can't but for those who get the NASA science newsletter they covered this a couple of weeks ago.

"the smallest things Hubble can distinguish are about 60 meters wide. The biggest piece of left-behind Apollo equipment is only 9 meters across and thus smaller than a single pixel in a Hubble image."

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2005/11jul_lroc .htm?list154599

You cant zoom in as well, but this is still worth a visit if you interested....

World Wind (http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/) has had a moon add-on for a long time see - http://www.worldwindcentral.com/wiki/Moon they also have a simple Solar system add-on - http://www.worldwindcentral.com/wiki/The_Planets plus slightly off-topic they have a 3D glasses plugin (http://www.worldwindcentral.com/wiki/Anaglyph_3D_ (plugin)) for the upcoming 1.3.2 release.

Most people use the term incorrectly and unthinkingly.

See here:

http://www1.jsc.nasa.gov/bu2/learn.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_curve_effe cts

Hmm, interesting analogy. I would have used Mercury and Gemini for non-Earth operations. :-)

So let's take your list and see what we get:

1. long-term human physiology - done on Mir and Skylab. I believe that the current record is still held by a resident of Mir after his country disappeared while he was on orbit.
2. assembly of large components in orbit - Mir, and to some extent Skylab, ASTP, Apollo, Gemini and Hubble (admittedly with the help of the Shuttle). In my book, the single most important mission ever in the assembly of large scale systems was Gemini 9 where Gene Cernan learned what Newton knew all along - that for every action there is an opposite and equal reaction.
3. life support system design - done on Apollo, Skylab, and Mir. You should really read Sy Liebergot's book Apollo EECOM where he talks about helping to improve Shuttle environmental systems using feedback from Apollo designs and operation. (I should also note that he doesn't have much good to say about the current crop of NASA flight operators or directors.)
4. systems engineering - Initiated in Gemini, proven in Apollo, Skylab, and Mir.
5. robotics and autonomous systems - done on Mars going back to Viking, and of course my all-time favorite, the Voyager probes. Also Deep Space 1. Russia has also done a lot in this area with their automated Progress cargo ships and space probes to Venus, Mars, and the Moon. NASA's most recent successes were unmanned - Cassini, Mars Rovers, and Deep Impact.
6. orbital power systems - proven out countless times by hundreds of government and commercial satellites. I'd argue that we'd taken a big step backward in this area since we no longer regularly fly RTGs.
7. micrometeorite environment - Skylab, Mir. LDEF was arguably the most important experiment in this area, and while it was deployed and retrieved using the Shuttle, there were other options available for its flight.

Maybe I'm just nitpicking, but when we're spending billions on a system then I expect something more than small, incremental gains. I'm not sure that you'd call them gains anyway since the systems are no more reliable today then in previous years. (How many times have the oxygen generators failed on ISS this year? Sure, you can blame the Russians, but NASA approved them for manned spaceflight.)

NASA's current funding requests would be like Christopher Columbus coming back from the new world and telling the queen that he needed ten times the number of ships to get 150 miles out into the Atlantic. Magellan circumnavigated the globe with only 60% more resource than Columbus and traveled a lot further distance-wise. Shouldn't we be demanding more for our money than the systems that we currently have?

Not necessarily true. Even NASA admits that the Buran was a great achievement. (Ok, it was a direct shuttle ripoff, but it was still a different system.)

Any vehicle using cryogenics will have a similar system.

True. SS1 burned a modified rubber compound rather than a liquid fuel. I'm not sure that it will get you to orbit, but it will help you prove out a lot of other unproven systems. I can't wait to see what their final solution is for reaching orbit. Maybe it will be cryogenic. But cryogenic systems can be built a lot more safely than the Shuttle design. I find it interesting that all astronaut deaths to date are directly attributable to the design of the boosters, which is forced in part by the design of the spacecraft. If a Saturn V had blown in flight, at least you had a fighting chance with the ejection tower. And there was none of this foam nonsense. I love watching a Saturn V shed big chunks of ice on launch.

That's right -- the Shuttle provides unique capability.

I agree. But my original question still holds, which is "for what purpose?" Other than being a great jobs program, I can't think of a single advance that ISS or the Shuttle has given us since the inception of either program. Hubble and other great science programs could all have been launched on expendable systems. When Hubble was found to have a flaw, we could have built and flown a new one for a lot less than the Shuttle program has cost this nation.

For what it's worth, I'm not against manned spaceflight. I'm against manned spaceflight that could be done by other means for less money. The only lesson that we've learned from the Shuttle and ISS is that bigger is not necessarily better. Let's put together real missions back to the Moon and Mars and have the local junkyard dealer come pick up the remaining Shuttle fleet. Hopefully the value of the recyclables will offset the towing charge.