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Why is this so odd?

Because a year on the Sun obviously is not the same as a year on the Earth, and scientist (as of yet) have not been able to pin down why solar activity seems to peak this time of year. At the moment (at least, last time I read up on it, which was during the big Auroral display in November of 2001) scientist were at a loss to explain a 12 month cycle in solar activity.

For more information, and very up to date info on the current situation with the storms, current solar wind patterns, and a gallery of GREAT pictures, try spaceweather or also
Spaceweather Now (NOAA)

Okay, typing that out made me feel stupid, so I went and re-read the article on seasonal variations, and found out I was somewhat wrong, there is a terrestrial reason dealing with OUR magnetic field that makes solar activity seem to affect us more. If you would like to read the article, it can be found Here

Anyways, keep looking up this week, (unless you live in Cincinnati like I do, and it will be cloudy most of the beginning of the week) and you might be suprised at what you see.

I weep, because because we seem utterly determined to reduce our history to a 15 seconds soundbite, confused with fiction. Skylab: America's first Space Station. Skynet: A fictional concept in a bunch of Arnie movies... Those who cannot remember history are condemned to repeats it, although apparently only on basic cable...

So is there a rush of vehicle thefts during periods of high sunspot activity and coronal mass ejections like now?

His comment alone made this collection worth reading.

While I have his link still in my cut and paste buffer, I'll go ahead and throw a href tag on it : http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA01496 .

( Finally! Somebody else out there who is probably puzzled beyond imagination over the number 137, and why it keeps popping up all over the place when studying physical parameters of the Universe. 137. Exactly 137. Not the tiniest bit more or less. Just a naked dimensionless 137.)

A ball of fire that lasts until it uses up all available oxygen?

Yup. That's about right.

A ball of fire that lasts until it uses up all available oxygen?

Yup. That's about right.

Yes

Artificial gravity for one would be the number 1 concern for actual permanent habitat yet we have little way of obtaining practical data no matter our inclination because of the weakness of depending upon porkbelly economics for funding. When nasa has done numerous studies about the cost of settlement why has no one bit the bullet and taken our species onward? People that grew up in the 70's had at their hands the oppurtunity to spurn the development of L5, lunar, and LEO habitat yet we see nothing. Why must this generation work it's ass off to pay for the mistakes of former ones? It is crucial beyond any doubt yet people console themselves with immediate profit and cheap tricks. Damn all of your 1970's cocaine binges look where the fuck we ended up!

Artificial gravity for one would be the number 1 concern for actual permanent habitat yet we have little way of obtaining practical data no matter our inclination because of the weakness of depending upon porkbelly economics for funding. When nasa has done numerous studies about the cost of settlement why has no one bit the bullet and taken our species onward? People that grew up in the 70's had at their hands the oppurtunity to spurn the development of L5, lunar, and LEO habitat yet we see nothing. Why must this generation work it's ass off to pay for the mistakes of former ones? It is crucial beyond any doubt yet people console themselves with immediate profit and cheap tricks. Damn all of your 1970's cocaine binges look where the fuck we ended up!

Although the space industry has developed countless technologies used in everyday (and not so everyday) life, Velcro and Tang are not among them.

Velcro history

To see real space based technologies hop over to a this NASA site.

That's one option.

Another might be to put the solar panels in orbit and to beam down the power to whereever you needed it.

Yes, it's fraught with danger, radiating concentrated power out of the skies.

The upside is that you could justify funding the whole thing for military purposes, but it could end up being practical, too.

It would make sense for stationary receiving stations; reliably hitting a vehicle undergoing unusual accelerations from LEO would be challenge.

I'm not here to make personal sex bots or anything. If anything I hope to become a miner or an explorer through my machines. Why are people so reluctant to acknowledge the impending future where we face critical economic realities when we lose most of the rote labor industries to robots?

Are there any conferences besides futurists ones advocating policy research into this?

Billions of dollars to spare? We must not be talking about the same NASA. NASA could never have enough money, and even if they could get a proper amount, they wouldn't know how to spend it properly. NASA is an agency that was created to solve problems by throwing money at them, which simply won't work for the US right now.
Their strategic plan doesn't leave much room for lawsuits. Sure, this is a stunt by Sci Fi, but the FOIA can be used to properly leverage information. At least in situations where the government sees it as more of a hassle to put up a fight.

I used to do embedded programming where it was really costly to fix in the field.

Here's a similar project's repair estimates (pdf). Mind you, this product cost 1000x our product, but since they were at similar customer sites, the repair cost wouldn't be significantly different.

Service trip #1 = $413 million
Service trip #2 = $497 million
Service trip #3 = $547 million
Service trip #4 = $400 million
(note: these prices don't include airfare)

In fact, it would be far cheaper to just toss out our old hardware and start from scratch ($13 million total costs) than it would be to try to fix it in the field.

Trick #2: Pick an your application so it is embarrassingly parallel.

Russian Tu-144 was flown a couple of months earlier then the Concorde, as it is stated here, thus proving that it probably was a parallely developed project. So unless you have more information about your bullshit, you are just pulling it out of your ass.

However, there is the method used in the Cassini probe, which basically converts the heat of the nuclear decay directly into electricity. Ah, which are called 'radioisotope thermoelectric generators' (according to here). I can't remember how these worked (I took a class in nuclear engineering ~6 years ago and at one point they explained it, but I'm forgetful), but I'm reasonably sure it's not something that could have been done 150 years ago (unlike nuclear reactors, which, as you say, just uses a new way of heating water).

If you have an ogg or mp3 player then these are two great sites:

• http://radio.cbc.ca/
  
• http://science.nasa.gov/

If you have RealPlayer then http://www.dw-world.de/english/ is worthy of a weekly visit. Their Tomorrow Today has some great material from time to time but no archive as far as I can tell.

If anyone else can recommend any other sites that provide archived multimedia documentary material, I'd be interested.

Cheers... Clark
--
This hand crafted, one of a kind .sig streamed live from C.Mills' keyboard.

Actually, it's interesting that no one has mentioned wildland firefighting in this discussion yet. Although I think you're right that the basic techniques of combatting wildfires hasn't changed very much--and probably won't in the foreseeable future--I think there have been tremendous technological changes in determining when and where wildfires are fought.

The most obvious change has been lightning detectors. There are very few fire lookouts staffed these days; automated detection systems plot where strikes hit, and planes can check out almost immediately if they have started a fire or not. Ground-based systems are still prevalent but there are now orbital imaging systems coming into play to do the same thing, with even greater accuracy.

Every leap in weather forecasting has helped wildland firefighters. Knowing when the wind and humidity are going to be on your side is a critical factor for deciding when to take on the fire and when to stay back. Being able to assess these factors in the field with smaller and better detection equipment has changed the nature of the game.

Helicopters, parachutes, air-drops... these are all fairly recent innovations that have dramatically expanded options for firebosses.

Then there are the more pedestrian advances, such as GPS and lightweight mountain gear, which benefit any backcountry traveler, but of course also make life easier for people who are not only having to fight a monstrous wildfire, but having to hike some of the most rugged terrain in the world to do so.

I'd say there have been more changes from technology in wildland firefighting in the last hundred years than there have been in structural firefighting--they're just not as obvious.

If the military are working on anything, it should be the ability to fight without sat-aid.

They are. This , this, and a number of other projects, are effectively satelite substitutes.

And of course, when all American's TV broadcasts suddenly stop, the US will turn into a postapocalyptic cityscape with dazed citizens wandering the streets not knowing what to do without TV...

Maybe Homeland Defense should encourage people to maintain a supply of taped TV shows just in case.

No offense, but I'll trust my professors, who have flown multiple spacecraft for NASA, over you're estimate of the failure rates. That 1 in 20 is the number we were given, and I believe them.

And I'm not handwaving, you're just refusing to comprehend: the Apollo 1 fire occured during a simulated launch. It was NOT a test of the equipment.

If they'd been testing the equipment, they wouldn't have had the crew on board in the first place.

(If you're trying to see if some equipment will go wrong, you don't want extra people in the way, potentially getting hurt.)

We're not here to speculate about where it could have failed, we're looking at data.

No offense, but I'll trust my professors, who have flown multiple spacecraft for NASA, over you're estimate of the failure rates. That 1 in 20 is the number we were given, and I believe them.

And I'm not handwaving, you're just refusing to comprehend: the Apollo 1 fire occured during a simulated launch. It was NOT a test of the equipment.

If they'd been testing the equipment, they wouldn't have had the crew on board in the first place.

(If you're trying to see if some equipment will go wrong, you don't want extra people in the way, potentially getting hurt.)

We're not here to speculate about where it could have failed, we're looking at data.

No offense, but I'll trust my professors, who have flown multiple spacecraft for NASA, over you're estimate of the failure rates. That 1 in 20 is the number we were given, and I believe them.

And I'm not handwaving, you're just refusing to comprehend: the Apollo 1 fire occured during a simulated launch. It was NOT a test of the equipment.

If they'd been testing the equipment, they wouldn't have had the crew on board in the first place.

(If you're trying to see if some equipment will go wrong, you don't want extra people in the way, potentially getting hurt.)

We're not here to speculate about where it could have failed, we're looking at data.

I had noticed that NASA had already revised their interpretation within a day or 2 of the original report. If you look here, you will see that they reinterpreted it as a contrail reflecting the sun.

Especially since the explanation underneath the original picture was quickly updated to include the airplane hypothesis.

[about the inventor of rockets being the American, Robert Goddard]

>> Well, I don't know much about that so I won't confirm nor deny,
>> but it sounds fishy to me. As far as I know, America hadn't even
>> tested a rocket motor during the time that Van Brown (spelling?)
>> was rolling V2's out onto the pad to launch at England.

and then Steve replied:

>> Goddard succesfully flew the first liquid fueled rocket in 1926.

Steve is correct. History records Goddard as inventing the rocket, and that Wernher Von Braun copied these designs, infringing upon Goddard patents. In fact, if we hadn't been at war, and if Goddard hadn't died during the war, Goddard may have prosecuted these patents. But one thing is for sure - Von Braun admits to basing his work after Goddard's.

versus

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/tg/stores/deta il/reviews/-/books/1560983868/202-9638315-4933460

Excerpted from Aiming for the Stars by Tom D. Crouch. Copyright \

(Robert) Goddard left Roswell in 1941 to work with U.S. Navy and Curtiss-Wright engineers on the development of jet-assisted-takeoff and variable-thrust, liquid-propellant rockets. By the spring of 1944 he was receiving detailed reports on a new German long-range rocket, the V-2. "The weapon is reported to be almost identical with the rocket we were working on in New Mexico at the time we changed over to war work," he wrote to Harry Guggenheim, "except that it is larger."

Goddard provided the editor of the National Geographic News Bulletin with a list of his own patents for almost every aspect of V-2 design. "So closely do the mechanical features of the V-2 parallel the American projectile [Goddard's rocket]," the News Bulletin announced in January 1945, "that some physicists think the Germans may have actually copied most of the design."

That, certainly, was the opinion of Robert Hutchings Goddard. On August 14, 1945, he died of throat cancer, convinced that his work had played a key role in the Germans' success. It simply was not true. The Germans had followed the same path as Goddard, quite unaware that he had been there before them. Under the inspired leadership of Wernher von Braun, they had surged past him without a backward glance, achieving Goddard's goal of sending a rocket to the edge of space.

versus

http://history.msfc.nasa.gov/goddard/history.html

versus

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/6303 26140X?v=glance

And so on...

I'm just saying the history's a little muddied as to whether von Braun actually copied the patents or if their designs were similar based on reading the same literature, doing similar experiments, etc. (c.f., Newton and Leibniz).

-l

I know how you feel. I was perusing through the Landsat data and I noticed some very clear differences in some images. NASA is up to something because this one picture they call "Green" is quite different than this other one they call "Thermal IR" even though they are of the same scene!!! I think NASA is covering something up with Photoshop---they've probably uncovered hidden nuke silos or something.

Too bad you had to retract your accusation this time, though I am confident that you'll be quick to whip it out in the future. We can all draw inspiration from vigilent watchdogs like you.

Well, excuse me, but it's a long way from a V2 rocket to a Mercury capsule.

Is it really? In one way you're right - just as there is a long way from the engine of your car to the seat you sit in while you drive. On the other hand... the first american in space rode in a Mercury capsule on top of a Redstone missile - slighty modified to manrate it.

I qoute from the website I linked to above: "Redstone was the first large liquid rocket developed in the US using German V-2 technology". In most respect, Redstone was naught but a A4 MkII - but mostly by the same people who built the A4 in the first place. In fact, those people, and the ideas behind the A4 and its derivatives, is behind almost every major american designed and built up to and including Saturn V.

And as other people on the tread has said; it makes good sence to learn of what others has done before. The soyus is pretty much the optimum shape for a spacevehicle - combining good aerodynamics with hich volumetric efficency - so it makes perfect sence in using that as a startingpoint for an enlarged capsule. Or would you rather that the chinese went for the cramped 'spam in can' approach that the US Mercury programe was before they moved on to bigger and more efficiant designs?

Well, excuse me, but it's a long way from a V2 rocket to a Mercury capsule.

Is it really? In one way you're right - just as there is a long way from the engine of your car to the seat you sit in while you drive. On the other hand... the first american in space rode in a Mercury capsule on top of a Redstone missile - slighty modified to manrate it.

I qoute from the website I linked to above: "Redstone was the first large liquid rocket developed in the US using German V-2 technology". In most respect, Redstone was naught but a A4 MkII - but mostly by the same people who built the A4 in the first place. In fact, those people, and the ideas behind the A4 and its derivatives, is behind almost every major american designed and built up to and including Saturn V.

And as other people on the tread has said; it makes good sence to learn of what others has done before. The soyus is pretty much the optimum shape for a spacevehicle - combining good aerodynamics with hich volumetric efficency - so it makes perfect sence in using that as a startingpoint for an enlarged capsule. Or would you rather that the chinese went for the cramped 'spam in can' approach that the US Mercury programe was before they moved on to bigger and more efficiant designs?

You would not want a major launch accident occurring over a more populated center.

Why not? For an accident to be really dangerous, the collateral targets would have to be extremely close.

The penisula of Florida is a populous area of the USA, but the rather major launch catastrophe that happened there in 1986 didn't come close to hurting anyone one the ground. Nor did NASA see any reason to move future launches further into the wilderness.

The distance from Orlando to Canaveral can easily be exceeded in many places near cities in southwest China. See this population map (TIFF), it's not that crowded there. And launching out over the ocean gives greater safety- insuring that no civilians are wandering beneath, and allowing splashdown recoveries.

The only downside I can imagine to a southeast coastal positioning is the increased scrutiny from outsiders. US spyplanes could get a better view of the launch activity, while places like Japan, Taiwan, or SK might worry about huge Chinese projectiles passing over them at sub-orbital altitudes (Could that be military? They won't know until it bombs on them!)

So maybe the Gobi desert was selected for privacy.

and I'm sure everybody else wants it too. NORAD has nothing, NASA has nothing, space.com has nothing, and I can't read Chinese.

Like it needs to be said, but if anybody stumbles across that information, totally post it.

As for becoming an astronaut, NASA takes applications. Fewer people want the job as the years go by. Starting salary for astronauts is grade GS-11, at $42,976 per year, and maxes out at GS-13 and $79,629. Anybody who can qualify can do better elsewhere.

Given what ISS crew really do, which is assemble and fix stuff, NASA should be hiring people with A&P (airframe and powerplant) training, licenses, and experience. NASA's had to give basic shop training to their fighter-jock astronauts.

In the end, it's a blue-collar job with some glamour.

This guy's really a goofball trying to make the argument against diversity as a tool to gain fault tolerance. NASA makes the argument for diversity in life-critical software systems and NIST studies show it's value in High Assurance Systems. KLabs has found the use of diverse and redundant systems on spacecraft offers high protection against failures due to design deficiencies and that it can offer lower cost where the backup system is used as a lifeboat for the primary system.

They made a ground laser powered prototype aircraft and tested it. There is no way this current one is the first laser powered aircraft.

Here is a picture of their incredibly sophisticated laser tracking device. Nice goggles. I'm assuming this is just a prototype...

• Google Search
• 1998 Article
• 1999 Article
• 2001 USA Today Article
• 2002 NYTimes Article

Here are two very pretty photographs of the analemma - composite photographs of the sun taken at the same time and place every few days for a year, and a simulated martian analemma

Here are two very pretty photographs of the analemma - composite photographs of the sun taken at the same time and place every few days for a year, and a simulated martian analemma

Here are two very pretty photographs of the analemma - composite photographs of the sun taken at the same time and place every few days for a year, and a simulated martian analemma

lightbenders nasa optics optical computer with crystal

Unfortunately, there was no information about protocols, encoding, or error correction schemes..

Well, I happen to work on MER as a software engineer, and I was consulted for an article on the Athena web site (athena.cornell.edu) on the communications system, but I'm certainly no expert.

The X-Band system uses Binary Phase Shift Keying, which is a lot like the modulation used in QPSK (Used sometimes to send data upstream over cable as it is more resistant to noise) and 64QAM (Used to send data downstream over cable, as it is more efficient and noise is not an issue).

There's a ton of papers out there on this sort of stuff... if you wish to get nitty-gritty with dsn, I reccommend some of the articles on this page

There's obviously a lot more to it... I know DSN uses MASERS for certain things, but not sure about this mission. To see how odyssey uses the DSN, read this pdf.

And if you wonder exactly what I do, check out this article.l

Cheers, Justin

Unfortunately, there was no information about protocols, encoding, or error correction schemes..

Well, I happen to work on MER as a software engineer, and I was consulted for an article on the Athena web site (athena.cornell.edu) on the communications system, but I'm certainly no expert.

The X-Band system uses Binary Phase Shift Keying, which is a lot like the modulation used in QPSK (Used sometimes to send data upstream over cable as it is more resistant to noise) and 64QAM (Used to send data downstream over cable, as it is more efficient and noise is not an issue).

There's a ton of papers out there on this sort of stuff... if you wish to get nitty-gritty with dsn, I reccommend some of the articles on this page

There's obviously a lot more to it... I know DSN uses MASERS for certain things, but not sure about this mission. To see how odyssey uses the DSN, read this pdf.

And if you wonder exactly what I do, check out this article.l

Cheers, Justin

I can see it now. When Judgment Day comes, it's all going to be because of a Slashdotter who thinks he knows a lot more about what computers can and can't do than he really does, and goes off to solve unsolvable problems without considering the thermodynamic consequences of his actions. Actually, I'm convinced Judgement Day will be the result of some yahoo using the SAE system instead of the Metric system.
NASA [nasa.gov]

Using mars-orbiting spacecraft (plural) for communication with earth is not a new thing: it's very efficient since the distance to the orbiter is small and the orbiter has big solar cells and can thus send a powerful signal back to earth.

NASA has extensive plans to develop this scheme much further, the eventual goal being the Mars Network that, through a number of orbiters, will/should enable a "downlink" speed Mars->Earth of about 3 Tbit/Sol in 2015 (which is slightly less than 100 Mbps).

This network is then of course shared by all Mars surface and orbital missions.

(And yes, I've commented on this before)

Using mars-orbiting spacecraft (plural) for communication with earth is not a new thing: it's very efficient since the distance to the orbiter is small and the orbiter has big solar cells and can thus send a powerful signal back to earth.

NASA has extensive plans to develop this scheme much further, the eventual goal being the Mars Network that, through a number of orbiters, will/should enable a "downlink" speed Mars->Earth of about 3 Tbit/Sol in 2015 (which is slightly less than 100 Mbps).

This network is then of course shared by all Mars surface and orbital missions.

(And yes, I've commented on this before)

I'm more excited about the use of these dials for photocalibration. Mars may or may not have a blue sky, but at least we can know for sure with these things on their way.

Following a few links from the mission site, I found the answer to a question I had about the communications capabilities of the rovers.

They can communicate directly back to Earth at a slow speed ( 3,500 to 12,000 bits/sec ) or they can communicate via the Mars orbiting spacecraft (Odyssey or Mars Global Surveyor) at a rate of 128,000 bits/sec. The orbiters are only 250 miles from the planet surface.

Unfortunately, there was no information about protocols, encoding, or error correction schemes..

Some good info is here: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mer/mission/communication s.html

Wow, you're gonna ride this sinking ship right to the bottom, huh?

Be sure to let NASA know about your little theory on the non-existence of rocket motors.

How much would an extra $16 billion help really with the amount already spent on welfare?

ANYTHING that reduce mass and volume for a spacecraft will make a big difference.