Slashdot Mirror

ACK. 23 years old and also waiting for the next manned space mission...

Did you read the mission logs for the Apollo missions?

They are *really* interesting. Just start reading, you'll read them to the end, I assure you :)

Even though they are just notes reconstructed from the radio traffic with some bits thrown in from other sources, they're addicting. And very thrilling (much more than all other travelogues, IMHO).

Yo can read them here:
Apollo 8 Flight Journal
and here
Apollo Lunar Surface Journal or
google: apollo journals.

I'd read them in this order, first the flight journal for an orbiter-only mission, then the apollo 11 surface journal :)

Nope, sorry, that story is untrue. See Official Nasa transcript, or Mr. Armstrong himself according to that site:"I understand that the joke is a year old [on November 28, 1995 - AC]. I first heard it in California delivered by (comedian) Buddy Hackett".

My favorite book on Apollo 11 was given to me by my grandmother. She was a journalist covering the launch for Florida Today (the local paper here on the Space Coast).

It's the Apollo 11 Press Kit.

I'm pretty lucky to have it. I loved looking through it when I was 13. I don't know where someone else could get a copy of one nowadays... hm, google...

Apparently someone just sold one for $200 dollars , so I guess you could buy one.

Or you could download the 9 MB .pdf file of it from the aforementioned Apollo Lunar Surface Journal (thanks for the informative link, snake_dad!)

cheers,
krysith

...it's in PowerPoint (TM)

On my Fedora Core 2 system, I clicked on the link, Mozilla 1.7 popped up a dialog box asking if I wanted to use the (default) OpenOffice.org to open the file, I said yes, and (after short delay) there it was. No PowerPoint (TM) required.

Hooptie

Dear NASA,

I'd love to download your presentation but it's in PowerPoint (TM). Thankyou.

A non-windows user

"The Apollo Lunar Surface Journal is a record of the lunar surface operations conducted by the six pairs of astronauts who landed on the Moon from 1969 through 1972. The Journal is intended as a resource for anyone wanting to know what happened during the missions and why. It includes a corrected transcript of all recorded conversations between the lunar surface crews and Houston. The Journal also contains extensive, interwoven commentary by the Editor and by ten of the twelve moonwalking astronauts."

New ideas for challenges should be sent to <ccideas@hq.nasa.gov>.
Challenges ? Buddy here's one for you, post your mail id at Slashdot and not get spammed ! Beat that and you get the prize!

... and particularly interesting, all regarding Apollo 11, in chronological order:

- Landing
- Post Landing Activities
- EVA Preparations
- One Small Step
- Mobility and Photography
- EASEP Deployment and Close-out
- Trying to Rest
- The Return to Orbit

These transcripts also have RealAudio (blergh, but better than nothing I guess :-P) clips if you really want to get into mood. :-)

... and particularly interesting, all regarding Apollo 11, in chronological order:

- Landing
- Post Landing Activities
- EVA Preparations
- One Small Step
- Mobility and Photography
- EASEP Deployment and Close-out
- Trying to Rest
- The Return to Orbit

These transcripts also have RealAudio (blergh, but better than nothing I guess :-P) clips if you really want to get into mood. :-)

... and particularly interesting, all regarding Apollo 11, in chronological order:

- Landing
- Post Landing Activities
- EVA Preparations
- One Small Step
- Mobility and Photography
- EASEP Deployment and Close-out
- Trying to Rest
- The Return to Orbit

These transcripts also have RealAudio (blergh, but better than nothing I guess :-P) clips if you really want to get into mood. :-)

... and particularly interesting, all regarding Apollo 11, in chronological order:

- Landing
- Post Landing Activities
- EVA Preparations
- One Small Step
- Mobility and Photography
- EASEP Deployment and Close-out
- Trying to Rest
- The Return to Orbit

These transcripts also have RealAudio (blergh, but better than nothing I guess :-P) clips if you really want to get into mood. :-)

... and particularly interesting, all regarding Apollo 11, in chronological order:

- Landing
- Post Landing Activities
- EVA Preparations
- One Small Step
- Mobility and Photography
- EASEP Deployment and Close-out
- Trying to Rest
- The Return to Orbit

These transcripts also have RealAudio (blergh, but better than nothing I guess :-P) clips if you really want to get into mood. :-)

... and particularly interesting, all regarding Apollo 11, in chronological order:

- Landing
- Post Landing Activities
- EVA Preparations
- One Small Step
- Mobility and Photography
- EASEP Deployment and Close-out
- Trying to Rest
- The Return to Orbit

These transcripts also have RealAudio (blergh, but better than nothing I guess :-P) clips if you really want to get into mood. :-)

... and particularly interesting, all regarding Apollo 11, in chronological order:

- Landing
- Post Landing Activities
- EVA Preparations
- One Small Step
- Mobility and Photography
- EASEP Deployment and Close-out
- Trying to Rest
- The Return to Orbit

These transcripts also have RealAudio (blergh, but better than nothing I guess :-P) clips if you really want to get into mood. :-)

... and particularly interesting, all regarding Apollo 11, in chronological order:

- Landing
- Post Landing Activities
- EVA Preparations
- One Small Step
- Mobility and Photography
- EASEP Deployment and Close-out
- Trying to Rest
- The Return to Orbit

These transcripts also have RealAudio (blergh, but better than nothing I guess :-P) clips if you really want to get into mood. :-)

... and particularly interesting, all regarding Apollo 11, in chronological order:

- Landing
- Post Landing Activities
- EVA Preparations
- One Small Step
- Mobility and Photography
- EASEP Deployment and Close-out
- Trying to Rest
- The Return to Orbit

These transcripts also have RealAudio (blergh, but better than nothing I guess :-P) clips if you really want to get into mood. :-)

On the subject of getting us out of Low Earth Orbit again, one month ago NASA organized a workshop to brainstorm and refine ideas for cash prizes, as part of the Centennial Challenges Program. I was on their web site, and noticed that a Post-Workshop Report is now available. There's quite a bit of good information there regarding possible prizes.

Here's a list of possible prize goals which were examined in detail (from TOC):
- Precision Lander
- Astronaut Glove
- Mobile Power Breakthrough
- Micro Reentry Vehicle
- Robot Triathlon
- Lunar Processing Demo
- Quantum Computer
- Lunar Landing
- Telerobotic Race
- General Aviation
- 3-Dimensional Detector
- Autonomous Earth Analog Sample Return
- Long-Duration Cryogenic Propellant Storage Tank
- Perpetual (30-Day) UAV
- Aircraft Engine
- Deployable Telescopes
- Aerocapture
- Autonomous UAV Cargo Hauler
- Human Radiation Shielding
- Solar Sail Race
- Rover Survivor
- Planetary Surface Power Transmission
- Extreme Environment Computer
- Mars Com/Nav Micromission
- Autonomous Drill
- Nanotube Tether
- In-Situ Life Detector
- Asteroid Mission
- Miniature Robotic Flyer
- Human Space Flight - Orbiter Technology
- Human Space Flight - Suborbital Flight
- Human Space Flight - PVT APOLLO 8
- Education
- Suborbital Flights for Scientific Payloads

Although the article above links to a portion of this site, the full Lunar Surface Journal offers an incredibly detailed look at the Apollo program, including audio, video, and high resolution images from the missions. Be warned, you will spend hours there :).

Here is a candidate for a lone black hole.

How absolutely sure are you that bacterial life is not in the upper atmosphere?

I've heard of bacterial capture as high as 50,000 feet. Do you mean higher than that? Like the 100 km altitude that Space Ship One went to?

And the same about Antarctica. How absolutely sure are you that you can't find some sort of bacterial remains or transport of some kind that can litterally be found in the middle of Antarctica? That is even ignoring the Antarctic research stations where I'm sure you can find bacteria in abundance. I've seen bacterial growth on alpine glaciers high on mountain tops, that live in conditions that are very similar to Antarctica. Antarctica is a big place, and to totally rule out anything living there is just too absolute.

Also, if you think boiling something for a few minutes in water at 100 C is going to kill bacteria, you really don't understand food science at all. What that normally does when you cook is kill bacteria and other organisms that are harmful to people. An autoclave does a much better job, but that is not normally something you would stick a chicken sandwich into.

One reason why it is suspected that bacteria could survive in space is because of Apollo-12, where the Surveyor probe, launched several years earlier, was "accidentally" contaminated before it was launched. Parts of this space probe were returned back to Earth in sealed bags, and it was detected that several bacterial cells survived not only the spaceflight to the moon, but "lived" on the moon for several years before coming back to the laboratories on the Earth. Nobody is claiming that they thrived and multiplied into huge numbers on the Moon, but they were able to survive and when put into a much more hospitable environment (like a petri dish full of agar in an Earth-based lab) they did thrive and begin to reproduce again.

Also, micrometeorites that are the size of a pin-head or even somewhat larger have been known to survive reentry without burning up from re-entry. It is not that difficult to bring things to the Earth that could survive, and certainly something the size of a bacterium could enter the Earth's atmosphere without heating up to several thousands of degrees C.

The only reason reentry is so difficult for spaceflight is because it is a cheap and easy way to reduce speed without having to fire rockets to reduce velocity for a safe landing. This has no relationship to small grains of sand that are orbiting the sun. Even a large rock will only get heated so much coming into the Earth's atmosphere, simply because the entry won't last that long. A very hard landing, but relatively quick transit time through the atmosphere. How many G's of force do you think a bacteria could take? I bet it is quite a bit more than a person could take, by about 1000x.

I agree with the fact that the jury is still out on the speed of gravitational waves, however most (including myself) expect it to be the speed of light. One can hope that LISA will not experience "budget troubles" as it will measure the arrival times of light and gravity from the same source, settling this question.

For a while I worked as a research programmer for one of the General Relative Groups working on the GEO600 Gravitational Wave Detector in both the UK and Germany. GEO600 is a UK and Germany co-project.

The interferometer is a typical Michaelson interferemoter using lasers with two orthogonal branches 600 metres in length. These gravitation events are small. Movements are ~10-E24 metres. It is expected that only one or two events a year will be detected. So it must run 24/7, 365 days a year.

Naturally you have to remove as much of the noise from the data as possible to detect an event. Mirrors are hung on glass threads as they are thermally inert. It runs in a vacuum. It is temperature controlled. Everything is monitored from air pressure to sisemology. The amount of data being produced is incredible. I assume LIGO is the same hence the distributed analysis.

GE0600 uses a microwave link to transmit data from the site to Hanover where it is backed up and fat pipes pass it on to partner universities. The 'head end' on site uses triple redundancy and enough bufferage for 24 hours back-up on site.

You are talking many gigabytes a day and many terabytes a year and some where in this lot will be an event. This is truely the domain of super computing or distributed processing.

Of course, even LIGO which is larger, is unlikely to spot many events if any and we will probably have to wait until LISA, the NASA/JPL/ESA spaced based interferometry project is up and running to get decent results.

NASA is trying to fund lots of things and its priorities have shifted in accordance with its history and funding.

Back in the 1960s Congress funded NASA programs because it was "necessary" to beat the Soviets in technology. And the Space Race was the technology showcase that the Soviets chose for us (they were the first in Space with both unmanned and manned vehicles). Congressional candidates translated that into politics: If you did not vote for NASA funding, you were "soft on Communism."

By the time of the moon landings, the rhetoric had changed from "red scare" and "red baiting" to The Great Society, basic human rights and whether or not one was for or against the war in Vietnam. Detante was in vogue because Nixon was winning the "unfought wars" against China and Russia with his trips there.

NASA's attitudes changed from an assumption that funding would always be there, which encouraged a "can do" attitude, to wondering how to save programs and which programs to save. NASA negotiated with people who wanted launch vehicles and found it had competition -- not from the Soviets, who were still unacceptable to the West but from the newly-minted European corporation, largely funded by those governments in Western Europe who needed access to Clarke orbit for geostationary communication satellites.

NASA's first proposal, which I remember from my World Book Encyclopedia, was to build a reusable manned vehicle that it could fit atop a Saturn rocket engine. NASA would use the Saturn V (which was used to launch the moon missions as well as Skylab) to construct an outpost in low Earth orbit and use these reusable vehicles to transfer men and cargo to a space station. The space station would, in turn, be a waypoint for launches to the moon and beyond.

But NASA had problems getting customers to buy into its new concept, because its reusable launch vehicle, or "shuttle" was too small. The military insisted that its cargo bay be of a certain size, so that they could launch large spy satellites. NASA, fearing that all satellite launches would go to Arianespace, kowtowed to the US military and built our present shuttle system. The delay in changing the program cost them ten years and billions of dollars. It cost them most of their "can do" managers. It also cost them support in Congress and among the American people. With no regular launches, media started asking NASA the questions previously reserved for congressmen and the President: "Is this a good use of taxpayer money?"

NASA administrators and PR people started talking about spinoffs from their scientific endeavors to answer many of these questions and even initiated the publication of a magazine in 1996 to help convince the public and corporations that NASA programs are relevant.

Then came the shuttle program. It was over budget, very, very late and hugely popular, until the launches became routine. And what made them routine was a consistent refusal, within top level managers to see that space flight is more dangerous than flying in a private plane. Also, there was no funding for a place for the shuttle to get to as before the first shuttle launched, Skylab fell from the sky. By the time of the Challenger accident in 1986, upper level managers were no longer listening to the scientists assembling and handling the equipment And I would argue that the recommendations in management behavior didn't change.

Nowadays, NASA is infected with a "can't do" attitude as the Columbia tragedy grounds NASA and the facts are reported that managers felt it was best to risk the lives of the astronauts and the shuttle because they

NASA is trying to fund lots of things and its priorities have shifted in accordance with its history and funding.

Back in the 1960s Congress funded NASA programs because it was "necessary" to beat the Soviets in technology. And the Space Race was the technology showcase that the Soviets chose for us (they were the first in Space with both unmanned and manned vehicles). Congressional candidates translated that into politics: If you did not vote for NASA funding, you were "soft on Communism."

By the time of the moon landings, the rhetoric had changed from "red scare" and "red baiting" to The Great Society, basic human rights and whether or not one was for or against the war in Vietnam. Detante was in vogue because Nixon was winning the "unfought wars" against China and Russia with his trips there.

NASA's attitudes changed from an assumption that funding would always be there, which encouraged a "can do" attitude, to wondering how to save programs and which programs to save. NASA negotiated with people who wanted launch vehicles and found it had competition -- not from the Soviets, who were still unacceptable to the West but from the newly-minted European corporation, largely funded by those governments in Western Europe who needed access to Clarke orbit for geostationary communication satellites.

NASA's first proposal, which I remember from my World Book Encyclopedia, was to build a reusable manned vehicle that it could fit atop a Saturn rocket engine. NASA would use the Saturn V (which was used to launch the moon missions as well as Skylab) to construct an outpost in low Earth orbit and use these reusable vehicles to transfer men and cargo to a space station. The space station would, in turn, be a waypoint for launches to the moon and beyond.

But NASA had problems getting customers to buy into its new concept, because its reusable launch vehicle, or "shuttle" was too small. The military insisted that its cargo bay be of a certain size, so that they could launch large spy satellites. NASA, fearing that all satellite launches would go to Arianespace, kowtowed to the US military and built our present shuttle system. The delay in changing the program cost them ten years and billions of dollars. It cost them most of their "can do" managers. It also cost them support in Congress and among the American people. With no regular launches, media started asking NASA the questions previously reserved for congressmen and the President: "Is this a good use of taxpayer money?"

NASA administrators and PR people started talking about spinoffs from their scientific endeavors to answer many of these questions and even initiated the publication of a magazine in 1996 to help convince the public and corporations that NASA programs are relevant.

Then came the shuttle program. It was over budget, very, very late and hugely popular, until the launches became routine. And what made them routine was a consistent refusal, within top level managers to see that space flight is more dangerous than flying in a private plane. Also, there was no funding for a place for the shuttle to get to as before the first shuttle launched, Skylab fell from the sky. By the time of the Challenger accident in 1986, upper level managers were no longer listening to the scientists assembling and handling the equipment And I would argue that the recommendations in management behavior didn't change.

Nowadays, NASA is infected with a "can't do" attitude as the Columbia tragedy grounds NASA and the facts are reported that managers felt it was best to risk the lives of the astronauts and the shuttle because they

NASA is trying to fund lots of things and its priorities have shifted in accordance with its history and funding.

Back in the 1960s Congress funded NASA programs because it was "necessary" to beat the Soviets in technology. And the Space Race was the technology showcase that the Soviets chose for us (they were the first in Space with both unmanned and manned vehicles). Congressional candidates translated that into politics: If you did not vote for NASA funding, you were "soft on Communism."

By the time of the moon landings, the rhetoric had changed from "red scare" and "red baiting" to The Great Society, basic human rights and whether or not one was for or against the war in Vietnam. Detante was in vogue because Nixon was winning the "unfought wars" against China and Russia with his trips there.

NASA's attitudes changed from an assumption that funding would always be there, which encouraged a "can do" attitude, to wondering how to save programs and which programs to save. NASA negotiated with people who wanted launch vehicles and found it had competition -- not from the Soviets, who were still unacceptable to the West but from the newly-minted European corporation, largely funded by those governments in Western Europe who needed access to Clarke orbit for geostationary communication satellites.

NASA's first proposal, which I remember from my World Book Encyclopedia, was to build a reusable manned vehicle that it could fit atop a Saturn rocket engine. NASA would use the Saturn V (which was used to launch the moon missions as well as Skylab) to construct an outpost in low Earth orbit and use these reusable vehicles to transfer men and cargo to a space station. The space station would, in turn, be a waypoint for launches to the moon and beyond.

But NASA had problems getting customers to buy into its new concept, because its reusable launch vehicle, or "shuttle" was too small. The military insisted that its cargo bay be of a certain size, so that they could launch large spy satellites. NASA, fearing that all satellite launches would go to Arianespace, kowtowed to the US military and built our present shuttle system. The delay in changing the program cost them ten years and billions of dollars. It cost them most of their "can do" managers. It also cost them support in Congress and among the American people. With no regular launches, media started asking NASA the questions previously reserved for congressmen and the President: "Is this a good use of taxpayer money?"

NASA administrators and PR people started talking about spinoffs from their scientific endeavors to answer many of these questions and even initiated the publication of a magazine in 1996 to help convince the public and corporations that NASA programs are relevant.

Then came the shuttle program. It was over budget, very, very late and hugely popular, until the launches became routine. And what made them routine was a consistent refusal, within top level managers to see that space flight is more dangerous than flying in a private plane. Also, there was no funding for a place for the shuttle to get to as before the first shuttle launched, Skylab fell from the sky. By the time of the Challenger accident in 1986, upper level managers were no longer listening to the scientists assembling and handling the equipment And I would argue that the recommendations in management behavior didn't change.

Nowadays, NASA is infected with a "can't do" attitude as the Columbia tragedy grounds NASA and the facts are reported that managers felt it was best to risk the lives of the astronauts and the shuttle because they

I also think it's well worth your while to understand SSH's more esoteric tunneling capabilities... Recently I had to support a research group who was doing a demo at JPL and they were behind a very restrictive firewall but needed to do control and image transfer from a robot framework here in Massachusetts, and the researchers who'd coded the software hadn't implemented any kind of authentication layer. We were able to do everything using SSH tunneling over one of the three ports allowed through JPL's firewall (and they could IMAP their mail from our servers as a side bonus) without exposing our servers or JPL to unencrypted protocols of any kind.

Ole

Some have observed that this analysis is flawed. This might well be, but it is the analysis I've conducted and the judgment I've reached based on a very close, regular review of the Return to Flight challenges currently underway. Others may reach a different conclusion and harbor a different opinion, but none who have offered opposing views will be responsible for the outcome. In that regard, several editorial opinions have been offered asserting that my judgment is risk averse. Journalists have written stories about other journalists and the empowered opinionated who are offering this view and describe the criticism as "withering." Actually, it's pretty much standard fare for commentary on just about everything around Washington these days.

As an individual who has participated in the RGSFOP program, I have seen a number of novel experiments, but this particular experiment is a retread that has been done many, many times. Last March, for example, Washington-St. Louis did a very interesting experiment involving zero-gravity orientation of a space vehicle. The typical RGSFOP experiment fails, however, although my University did experience a success this year.

A list of active RGSFOP teams

Of course, the cost of space missions hasn't gone down like computer hardware did, but still one wonders if a better and more advanced space telescope couldn't be built at the same price a maintenance mission to Hubble would cost.

Here is one relevant link: Life on Earth could have come from a Mars rock Also check out NASA's Astrobiology Institute. Parent may have overstated the concensus on this issue, but he/she was certainly not incorrect that such theories are believed by quite a few people.

And Hubble's second servicing mission cost $347 million plus another $448 million for the Shuttle flight - I believe that is in 1996 dollars.

So as a taxpayer, for all that dough, how 'bout some new satellite pictures of my house! ;-)

And Hubble's second servicing mission cost $347 million plus another $448 million for the Shuttle flight - I believe that is in 1996 dollars.

So as a taxpayer, for all that dough, how 'bout some new satellite pictures of my house! ;-)

Mary-Kate Olsen nipple pict

The list of games in the article is not complete. There was at least one other game in another version of Polyplay. I have to admit I forgot the name, but it was supposed to mean steering Buran through an asteroid belt. You evaded lumps that kept crossing the screen horizontally at increasing speeds. You could also shoot, but only one shot could be on the screen at any time and hitting amounted to having the asteroid reset to a position at the end of the screen. IIRC, it scrolled from left to right, not the common right-to-left way.

I'm not quite sure, but I think there also was an Asteroids clone. Perhaps I'm mixing this up with "Schiessbude" - after all, I played this machine 15 years ago and wasn't even in school then. But it is a pity I don't remember more of the Buran game - MAME doesn't have this one, and if none of the three machines left have it, it is probably lost.

In one of the few observed magnetic field reversals, it took only a few years for the Sun's magnetic field to reverse. Actually this appears to happen every 11 years, corresponding to the sunspot cycle. The Sun's magnetic poles are different than our Earth's, since they are located on the surface at sunspots.

Perhaps the earth could not flip-flop poles altogether. Instead, maybe we could have two north poles. NASA's Ulysses space probe observed the Sun with two north poles for a month during a flyby.

An interesting note for the 2012 crowd, the Sun's next magnetic field reversal is set to happen in none other than, 2012.

The Sun's magnetic poles will remain as they are now, with the north magnetic pole pointing through the Sun's southern hemisphere, until the year 2012 when they will reverse again.

In one of the few observed magnetic field reversals, it took only a few years for the Sun's magnetic field to reverse. Actually this appears to happen every 11 years, corresponding to the sunspot cycle. The Sun's magnetic poles are different than our Earth's, since they are located on the surface at sunspots.

Perhaps the earth could not flip-flop poles altogether. Instead, maybe we could have two north poles. NASA's Ulysses space probe observed the Sun with two north poles for a month during a flyby.

An interesting note for the 2012 crowd, the Sun's next magnetic field reversal is set to happen in none other than, 2012.

The Sun's magnetic poles will remain as they are now, with the north magnetic pole pointing through the Sun's southern hemisphere, until the year 2012 when they will reverse again.

In one of the few observed magnetic field reversals, it took only a few years for the Sun's magnetic field to reverse. Actually this appears to happen every 11 years, corresponding to the sunspot cycle. The Sun's magnetic poles are different than our Earth's, since they are located on the surface at sunspots.

Perhaps the earth could not flip-flop poles altogether. Instead, maybe we could have two north poles. NASA's Ulysses space probe observed the Sun with two north poles for a month during a flyby.

An interesting note for the 2012 crowd, the Sun's next magnetic field reversal is set to happen in none other than, 2012.

The Sun's magnetic poles will remain as they are now, with the north magnetic pole pointing through the Sun's southern hemisphere, until the year 2012 when they will reverse again.

Although the field is decaying much more slowly than described in the Slashdot story blurb, it is significant.

"the responsibility probably lies with changes in the turbulent flows of molten iron"

The really big change is the new flow pattern of the molten rock under the crust, accounting for the vast majority of the mass of the planet, 5155Km thick of the total Earth radius of 6370Km, or over 80%, flowing up against the under surface of the crust, which is only 35Km thick at the continents (0.5%) and 5Km under the oceans (0.08%). The friction and pressure of the thick magma against the channels its worn and melted into the crust's underside keeps the skin positioned relative to the rotation of that flowing (98% of the total mass. The waning, and possible reversal of the magnetic field reflects significant changes in the flows of the molten mass, which might drag the tiny crust (plus oceans and atmosphere, 0.5% of total mass) into a very different rotated position, with the continents/oceans spun around significantly, relative to the constant equator. And as the earth is about 14Km wider at the equator than tall at the poles, the 5-35Km thin, brittle crust will get bent across the bulge as it flows around. Earthquakes, volcanoes, tidal waves. The turtles that the articles frets about so much, with their shells, amphibious/omnivorous nature, and lack of numbing reassurance through ignoring the New York Times for millennia, might survive. While NYT reporters face much worse chances for survival, lacking fitness to an environment that's actually newsworthy.

slide
orbits
Schmidt_02

This isn't the first time NASA have had this idea -- they have tried to record actual sounds on Mars from wind blowing (and this wasn't supposed to be a simulation of the sound, like these effects are). However, the space craft with this equipment was unfortunately the Mars Polar Lander which crashed due to the infamous metric conversion mistake. :-(

Don't think ESA has done that yet. NASA, OTOH, landed the NEAR probe on the asteroid Eros after orbiting/studying it for several weeks.

It's in a simple binary matrix, easy enough to hack up something to import it whereever you want.

That is some really cool stuff. I had trouble with the link there, here's the article I think you are refering too:

i don't think so, i mean our magnetic field is much stronger than mars. Mag fields
I think the most risk we have is to loose a "few" satellites, and some increase in skin cancer..but nothing as drastic as loosing all the water and life on earth.

Unless of course you're talking about the end of the Sun and the solar system. When then the Sun will expand to the size of Vennus turning Earth into a new Mercury.
but then again not to worry that will not happen on the next 5 billion years from now and we will have extinct ourselve until there =P

The guy was Gerald Bull.

As you say, he was obsessed with the develpment of extreme long range cannon to launch packages into space/orbit, notably in the HARP Project.

When his research grants were cut he continued working, basically, for anyone who would fund him. South Africa, China and ultimately Iraq, where he developed the Iraqui Supergun, and more worryingly for Israel, a scud derivative with increased range and accuracy.

He was shot not once, but five times in the back of the head. No-one saw the killing, and no-one has been caught, but it's dollars to donuts that Israel/Mossad decided that if no-one else was going to do anything about this brainy menace, then they would.

... the first habitat depressurisation leads to an unpleasant death for everyone on board

While there are lots of potentially disastrous things that can happen with these habitats, being exposed to space for short periods of time is not as gruesome as movies might have us think. Assuming some part of the habitat could be repressurised and the people could be gotten there in a hurry.

This is most clearly evident with regard to the question of the program's original cost estimates and time frame. It is seldom acknowledged in the historical literature, but the X-15 program was a victim of what has become a fairly common occurrence in the U.S. space program, namely substantial delays and overruns. Three hundred million dollars does seem small in comparison to the cost of, say, Apollo or the shuttle, but it is still more than seven times the original estimate of $42 million. The final development costs of the engine alone were more than $68 million (plus a $6 million fee to Reaction Motors), a tenfold increase over what was expected when the project began. In addition, the complete vehicle, including the large engine, was ready for flight more than two years behind schedule. Despite all of this, development during the 1955-1957 period was never held up by a lack of funds, although in some years needed funding did not come through until the last minute.

Yes, but it had some interesting engine issuesSo far, I like SpaceshipOne's safety record is better than the X-15's. One X-15 pilot got three crushed vertebrae. Mike Melville played with candy and went to see Jay Leno.

I don't mean to dump on NASA, their guys had big old brass ones to fly a beast like the X-15. Also, I'd expect a more modern effort that has fun things like CAD/CAM and CFD systems to be safer and slicker.

Yes, Spaceship One is not a Spaceship, it's a Spaceplane, true. NASA confirms this in their article on their own space plane, which bested spaceship one's mark forty years ago for roughly the same amount of money (adjusted for inflation) but without all the near-death control problems.

But you're missing the point. Yes, they still need orders of magnitude more power to reach orbit, and YES, they haven't solved any of the major problems relating to actual spaceflight. And yes, all they have to do to solve their engineering problems is call NASA, because it's all been done before.

But what you're missing is, everyone has to start somewhere. And this is capitalism's first, impressive start.

Get a grip!