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I would imagine his opinion would remain unchanged by this new record...

This is the coldest known place in the universe: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap030220.html

... a manufacturer you have carefully researched and is known to make very good CD-Rs

...to this...

An object doesn't have to strike it to break up. If a comet or such come too close it can brake up just because of the gravitational forces. The Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet was a good example of this process.

In 296,000 years Voyager-2 will pass Sirius... Do you think the gold video disc on-board will still be readable? :-)

In 296,000 years Voyager-2 will pass Sirius... Do you think the gold video disc on-board will still be readable? :-)

Black holes rely on an assumption that gravity has no limits on its strength, and to some extent on it following a strict Newtonian curve.

Thinking of "curves" in space-time is an interesting analogy for gravity, but still doesn't address the mechanism - sure, the planet may be on a "45 degree" incline in spacetime, but what forces it down... and not up? You would nearly have to posit the existence of some constant stream of gravitons coming at 'right angles' to three-dimensional space in order to actually push things 'down the well'.

There are alternate corpuscular (i.e. caused by particles; "quantum") models of the mechanism of gravity. There's the LeSagian model, with modern reworks that range from the bizarre-yet-possible theories of Tom Van Flandern, to the more "moderate" theories of Paul Stowe explaining how the "drag" factor that detractors expect doesn't show up, in exactly the sort of way that Feynman expressed it for electromagnetism.

The LeSage-type theories are, in general, "push" theories, which operate in a medium filled with gravitons (just as space is filled with photons) that are deflected/absorbed near bodies and cast 'shadows' that create a low "pressure" area close to surfaces and, to a lesser extent, between bodies.

The formulae calculate out approximately to Newton's/GR's gravity equation, but with some interesting exceptions:

• There is a stronger fall-off at greater distances, which limits the effective range of gravity (surprisingly, this reduces the need for 'dark matter' to keep galaxies in the shape they're in)
• Inside denser and denser bodies, graviton absorption reaches a point where matter on the inside hardly contributes at all (a complete gravity "shadow")

This upper limit on the strength of gravity may prevent the ultimate collapse that black hole theory requires.

Black holes are still a theoretical construct. Even the jets, now often taken as a 'sign' of a black hole, are still a largely unexplained phenomenon, one that is also associated with accretion disks for newly-forming stars.

So if something's singing in that cloud, it may not be as dense as it's accused of being.

I apologize for all the jargon. I shall go read another thread on SCO as just punishment :)

I agree with your premise. That is precisely the problem with NASA. Although I'm sure there are individuals there with every bit as much vision as any of us. I'm impressed with some of their small research projects including ion propulsion. Unfortunately the most ambitious of all NASA research projects, the Breakthrough Propulsion Physics project is now completely out of funding.

What we need is the return of exciting space exploration that actually is exploration. After all, exploration is the whole justification for a space program in the first place. If you're not going to do that why even bother?. All these LEO missions are a joke. I guess NASA is too worried about being completely canceled to really plan ambitious projects to mars and the Jovian moons or even to Proxima Centauri, but that's exactly the kind of exciting, ambitious space program that we need. I'd rather see us have a manned mission to a Jovian moon every 10 years than a shuttle launch to LEO every few months.

And you're right about projects like Iraq. Bombing Arab countries may be fun, but it's not nearly as exciting as space exploration. Either project is simple entertainment, but I would argue that in the long run seeing video shots of great martian canyons and spouting Io volcanos is more exciting than a few mushroom clouds.

I agree with your premise. That is precisely the problem with NASA. Although I'm sure there are individuals there with every bit as much vision as any of us. I'm impressed with some of their small research projects including ion propulsion. Unfortunately the most ambitious of all NASA research projects, the Breakthrough Propulsion Physics project is now completely out of funding.

What we need is the return of exciting space exploration that actually is exploration. After all, exploration is the whole justification for a space program in the first place. If you're not going to do that why even bother?. All these LEO missions are a joke. I guess NASA is too worried about being completely canceled to really plan ambitious projects to mars and the Jovian moons or even to Proxima Centauri, but that's exactly the kind of exciting, ambitious space program that we need. I'd rather see us have a manned mission to a Jovian moon every 10 years than a shuttle launch to LEO every few months.

And you're right about projects like Iraq. Bombing Arab countries may be fun, but it's not nearly as exciting as space exploration. Either project is simple entertainment, but I would argue that in the long run seeing video shots of great martian canyons and spouting Io volcanos is more exciting than a few mushroom clouds.

I agree with your premise. That is precisely the problem with NASA. Although I'm sure there are individuals there with every bit as much vision as any of us. I'm impressed with some of their small research projects including ion propulsion. Unfortunately the most ambitious of all NASA research projects, the Breakthrough Propulsion Physics project is now completely out of funding.

What we need is the return of exciting space exploration that actually is exploration. After all, exploration is the whole justification for a space program in the first place. If you're not going to do that why even bother?. All these LEO missions are a joke. I guess NASA is too worried about being completely canceled to really plan ambitious projects to mars and the Jovian moons or even to Proxima Centauri, but that's exactly the kind of exciting, ambitious space program that we need. I'd rather see us have a manned mission to a Jovian moon every 10 years than a shuttle launch to LEO every few months.

And you're right about projects like Iraq. Bombing Arab countries may be fun, but it's not nearly as exciting as space exploration. Either project is simple entertainment, but I would argue that in the long run seeing video shots of great martian canyons and spouting Io volcanos is more exciting than a few mushroom clouds.

I agree with your premise. That is precisely the problem with NASA. Although I'm sure there are individuals there with every bit as much vision as any of us. I'm impressed with some of their small research projects including ion propulsion. Unfortunately the most ambitious of all NASA research projects, the Breakthrough Propulsion Physics project is now completely out of funding.

What we need is the return of exciting space exploration that actually is exploration. After all, exploration is the whole justification for a space program in the first place. If you're not going to do that why even bother?. All these LEO missions are a joke. I guess NASA is too worried about being completely canceled to really plan ambitious projects to mars and the Jovian moons or even to Proxima Centauri, but that's exactly the kind of exciting, ambitious space program that we need. I'd rather see us have a manned mission to a Jovian moon every 10 years than a shuttle launch to LEO every few months.

And you're right about projects like Iraq. Bombing Arab countries may be fun, but it's not nearly as exciting as space exploration. Either project is simple entertainment, but I would argue that in the long run seeing video shots of great martian canyons and spouting Io volcanos is more exciting than a few mushroom clouds.

As long as we're not referring to "Die Another Day", here's a reference to a Project Icarus.

Remember this?

The people here who bellyache about cost and danger and whether it should look like a plane or not, should look at this. It was a very serious contender for the X-33 program. It is a SSTO vehicle which is far more manueverable than the shuttle and far safer. And until an unfortuneate accident in 1997, the US had an actual working model. It is used to carry people into orbit. You want payload? Use a Detla V or an Arriane. You want a reusable work horse for people? Strongly consider reserecting this.

Oh and BTW
Space travel will be dangerous for the forseeable future. People will die. Maybe less people would die if we are more concerned about discovery and science and exploration than about cost. It's going to be expensive, but as one earlier poster pointed out, we are likely to get more out of a few billion spent on space exploration than we do out of the 8 Billion per MONTH spent in Iraq.

There. I feel better now.

>The Wikipedia has a "computer bug" entry that lists some other "famous bugs" including the fictional HAL 9000 bug.

Yeah, it lists them, but doesn't really link to good stories -- so...

An error in a single FORTRAN statement resulted in the loss of the first American probe to Venus.

Software reboot during the Apollo 11 landing forced Armstrong to manually land the lunar lander.

An Iraqi Scud missile hit Dhahran barracks, leaving 28 dead and 98 wounded. The incoming missile was not detected by the Patriot defenses, whose clock had drifted .36 seconds during the 4-day continuous siege, the error increasing with elapsed time since the system was turned on. This software flaw prevented real-time tracking. The specifications called for aircraft speeds, not Mach 6 missiles, for 14-hour continuous performance, not 100. Patched software arrived via air one day later.

The Ariane 5 satellite launcher malfunction was caused by a faulty software exception routine resulting from a bad 64-bit floating point to 16-bit integer conversion.

lots more here and here.

>The Wikipedia has a "computer bug" entry that lists some other "famous bugs" including the fictional HAL 9000 bug.

Yeah, it lists them, but doesn't really link to good stories -- so...

An error in a single FORTRAN statement resulted in the loss of the first American probe to Venus.

Software reboot during the Apollo 11 landing forced Armstrong to manually land the lunar lander.

An Iraqi Scud missile hit Dhahran barracks, leaving 28 dead and 98 wounded. The incoming missile was not detected by the Patriot defenses, whose clock had drifted .36 seconds during the 4-day continuous siege, the error increasing with elapsed time since the system was turned on. This software flaw prevented real-time tracking. The specifications called for aircraft speeds, not Mach 6 missiles, for 14-hour continuous performance, not 100. Patched software arrived via air one day later.

The Ariane 5 satellite launcher malfunction was caused by a faulty software exception routine resulting from a bad 64-bit floating point to 16-bit integer conversion.

lots more here and here.

I forget the name and am too lazy to look it up

This baby would still be up there if NASA hadn't let it fall to Earth due to orbital decay. There was talk at the time of sending up a booster rocket to raise Skylab's orbit, but due to Shuttle development sucking up every penny NASA had in the late 70's, it never got past the 'good idea' stage.

Luckily, due to random chance, Skylab's molten remains mostly impacted in the Indian Ocean and Australia, where no one lives. =).

I say resurrect the Saturn program lock, stock, and barrel, and leave the fancy schmancy space planes to the DoD, who can afford it.

Let's finally go back to space, damn it! I miss the future.

Cheers!

Found my own answer (Google is Great)
6.6 meters in diameter. Don't know the length (still looking for it). The reason why the diameter is important is making sure the payloads for the shuttle still fit.

Chip H.

Actually, comets are considered building blocks of the solar system. That's why there's a large push from NASA and the ESA to send spacecraft to comets and land on them and/or gather samples from them. Here are a few links:

Stardust

Contour (failed)

Rosetta (to be launched)

This could be bad news for the New Horizons (Pluto-Kuiper Belt) mission, which plans to visit some as-yet undiscovered Kuiper belt objects after swinging by Pluto - but if there are a lot fewer than first thought..

Discovering many fewer Kuiper Belt Objects than was predicted makes it difficult to understand how so many comets appear near Earth since many comets were thought to originate in the Kuiper Belt,..

• 2003-08-11 NSA's Statement on Cybersecurity (articles,security) (rejected)
• 2003-08-19 DNA based game playing computer (science,science) (rejected)
• 2003-09-06 Brown Dwarfs fingerprinted (radio,science) (rejected)
• 2003-09-06 Study Indicates Possible Surface Water on Mars (science,science) (rejected)
• 2003-09-07 GSM cellular phone encryption cracked (articles,security) (rejected)

It has been 14 years since two little-known electrochemists announced what sounded like the biggest physics breakthrough since Enrico Fermi produced a nuclear chain reaction on a squash court in Chicago. Using a tabletop setup, Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann, of the University of Utah, said they had induced deuterium nuclei to fuse inside metal electrodes, producing measurable quantities of heat. That was the opening bell for one of the craziest periods in science. Cold fusion, if real, promised to solve the world's energy problems forever. Scientists around the world dropped what they were doing to try to replicate the astounding claim. Full story

Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have discovered three of the faintest and smallest objects ever detected beyond Neptune. Each lump of ice and rock is roughly the size of Philadelphia and orbits just beyond Neptune and Pluto, where they may have rested since the formation of the solar system 4.5 billion years ago. The objects reside in a ring-shaped region called the Kuiper Belt, which houses a swarm of icy rocks that are leftover building blocks, or "planetesimals," from the solar system's creation. The results of the search were announced by a group led by Gary Bernstein of the University of Pennsylvania at a meeting of NASA's Division of Planetary Sciences in Monterey, Calif. Full article

Submited on september 6, 2003:

Northrop, working with the Pentagon and NASA sucessfully tested a "quiet" supersonic flight wednesday at California's Edwards Air Force Base. In the tests, an F-5E aircraft with a modified nose section flew supersonically through the test range, shortly thereafter, an unmodified F-5E flew supersonically through the same airspace, with the sensors showing a clear reduction in the intensity of the sonic boom produced by the F-5E modified fuselage.

A replica like this?

It's interesting to note that Galileo's successor (the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter) will use Ion propulsion powered by a nuclear reactor. I believe that this is a first time a spacecraft has been nuclear powered. The Deep Space 1 mission proved that Ion thusters (which operated off of electricity provided by solar panels) were a faster and more efficient method of propulsion, especially over very long distances such as for exploration outside of our solar system.

See the pdf on the fission technology

On that site, they have a link with countdown to impact. It has current simulated images etc, all very fascinating. The link is here.
My son wants to take the link into school and get the rest of the class involved - my god dont kids make u proud :)

Here's a good history of microwave ovens

Here's another article with info abt the electromagnetic spectrum

Most do speak mandarin, but most 1st language is Taiwanese. Look at President Chen. My mandarin (at least the pronounciation) is better than his, and I'm a whitey.

Again, most people 80% are Taiwanese origin

I just called your bluff, dogg

An article written about the idea, this year:

Space Elevators Maybe Closer To Reality Than Imagined

Much more info here:

The Space Elevator Reference

CB

It's not just visible light that gives beautiful pictures. Check out this gallery of Chandra X-ray images.

3. Canada's population is more concentrated than the US.

And as for the rural Canadian in the example, I propose that it's easier to wire one household 10 km away than 10 households 1 km away.

videophones have been around for a while in the UK and in other countries(seems to be broken?). The quality still isn't brilliant but Orange(I think) have started to offer Soccer highlights over the latest phones.

moon colonies, ok, we chose to put a space station up there first, and then realised it costs a lot of money for little (commercial or military) value. Moon colonies are sadly not as sexy as say a Mars colony, or even a Mars mission, which ESA has planned in 25 years, NASA tried and continues to test methods of producing enough food,air and water, other countries,notably India and China have planned Moon landings so we are going back. Space is unfortunately used as a pissing contest between nuclear neighbours, when this stops then some more science can get done(e.g. Hubble, Galileo, Beagle 2)

food in pills. You can get food in pills, just not the calories, vitamins will give you nearly all of the trace elements you need to live. Calories are a lot harder, to get 500 Calories into a pill means eating something with 40 times the energy concentration of sugar or twenty times the concentration of fats, I doubt the human body would have much success digesting such complicated food. You can however get protein and creatine supplements which are in tablet/powder form, and sugar sweets( those silly energy sweets which taste of really sour orange) have more calories than their equivalent weight in sugar. (The protein supplements also tend to taste bad and are fed to animals instead. )

cars that drive themselves; power steering has been around for a while, as has ABS and cruise control, that is about as much as the current laws will allow on the public roads. intelligent cars have been developed, which, when combined with other intelligent cars, are actually safe. It's the human drivers who freak out at the sight of a driverless car that's the problem :-)

jet packs; Jet packs appeared in Thunderball (James Bond). You can buy them if you have enough money, or you can build them if you want. They're not used much because, much like the Segway, there are easier and cheaper way of getting around.

moving sidewalk's are in most airports now, as well as some metro stations. There have also been "moving stairs" around for just as long.

This post brought to you by Google.com, paid for by Google For America, Inc.

videophones have been around for a while in the UK and in other countries(seems to be broken?). The quality still isn't brilliant but Orange(I think) have started to offer Soccer highlights over the latest phones.

moon colonies, ok, we chose to put a space station up there first, and then realised it costs a lot of money for little (commercial or military) value. Moon colonies are sadly not as sexy as say a Mars colony, or even a Mars mission, which ESA has planned in 25 years, NASA tried and continues to test methods of producing enough food,air and water, other countries,notably India and China have planned Moon landings so we are going back. Space is unfortunately used as a pissing contest between nuclear neighbours, when this stops then some more science can get done(e.g. Hubble, Galileo, Beagle 2)

food in pills. You can get food in pills, just not the calories, vitamins will give you nearly all of the trace elements you need to live. Calories are a lot harder, to get 500 Calories into a pill means eating something with 40 times the energy concentration of sugar or twenty times the concentration of fats, I doubt the human body would have much success digesting such complicated food. You can however get protein and creatine supplements which are in tablet/powder form, and sugar sweets( those silly energy sweets which taste of really sour orange) have more calories than their equivalent weight in sugar. (The protein supplements also tend to taste bad and are fed to animals instead. )

cars that drive themselves; power steering has been around for a while, as has ABS and cruise control, that is about as much as the current laws will allow on the public roads. intelligent cars have been developed, which, when combined with other intelligent cars, are actually safe. It's the human drivers who freak out at the sight of a driverless car that's the problem :-)

jet packs; Jet packs appeared in Thunderball (James Bond). You can buy them if you have enough money, or you can build them if you want. They're not used much because, much like the Segway, there are easier and cheaper way of getting around.

moving sidewalk's are in most airports now, as well as some metro stations. There have also been "moving stairs" around for just as long.

This post brought to you by Google.com, paid for by Google For America, Inc.

Grey goo

Big brother

Asteroid impact

Nuclear war

MS-Linux

No problem. Check out the NASA history on the subject; it's reasonably good.

Ed, one of the guys aboard the ISS currently, wrote his take on the future of spaceships, which i thought was a good read.

From my point of view, you seem to have hit the nail on the head. RLVs are something that our current energy sources just can't dream to achive. We could build the vehicle that could sustain it, but we currently have no way of powering that vehicle.

IIRC, this is the reason behind the space elevator. Thus, we can get into space and dock with something already in orbit. Then we can transfer to some other station where work on space only vehicles can take place. These vehicles can then take advantage of ION Propulsion since it provides a constant acceleration.

My degree isn't in aerospace engineering, neither i have i even attempted to read futher on either of the above concepts other than a quick glimpse, but it seems to me that we are going about things in the wrong direction. I wonder what it will take to bring that revelation that suddenly changes everything?

but the brits are playing it down here http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3200019.stm

Hmmmmmm now where did I put that Anderson shelter?

I'm putting the right link here in case people clicking don't know to try little URL-modification tactics like I did. orbit diagrams

see the close approach table here - note the the distances on this chart are typically in single digit earth radii.

See also this data on the NEODyS home page

It means that any space alien or mad scientist with a grudge could give it a nudge to do something nasty.

Note also that the orbit simulations link given above seems to be calculated with old data. showing no collision in 2014

see the close approach table here - note the the distances on this chart are typically in single digit earth radii.

See also this data on the NEODyS home page

It means that any space alien or mad scientist with a grudge could give it a nudge to do something nasty.

Note also that the orbit simulations link given above seems to be calculated with old data. showing no collision in 2014

Why wait? Worry now and avoid the rush! See this.

15 March 2005: The object will be .082 AU from earth.
24 September 2012: The object will pass within 0.098 AU of earth.

I also noticed (if I am reading the orbital diagrams correctly) that the points where the object is closest to the earth coincide with the points where the object passes through the plane of the ecliptic. Since these are the Acending / Decending nodes of a solar orbit, wouldn't this point be ideal for a change of orbital plane? I'm thinking these near-Earth encounters may change the object's orbit somewhat, since surely the earth encounters will impart some delta-v on the object.

Most importantly, this asteroid has a palermo scale rating of -1.25 This roughly translates to effectively say that we are 17 times more likely to get hit by a different asteroid the same size or larger than this one before this one hits us.

It's potential impacts down the line that have palermo values above zero that we need to be most concerned about. Look here to see the current highest risk known NEOs. Notice that this asteroid, QQ47 is the highest rated known threat (these asteroids are sorted by their cumulative palermo scale ratings).

In other words, at the moment, if we do get hit by anything, it's most likely not going to be one of the asteroids on that list.

Personally, I'll start worrying when the propability is more than 1% (Torino Scale 3) and increasing with time.

Personally, I'll start worrying when the propability is more than 1% (Torino Scale 3) and increasing with time.

so, according to your NASA link,

there's a 0.000057000% chance of Earth impact

or

1 in 1,754,000 chance

or

99.99994300% chance the asteroid will miss the Earth

in other words, move along folks; nothing to see here.

Hmm ... yes, I noticed that link (hint, hint ;-) ... HTML is your friend).

I also noticed some detailed information about the giant rock itself.

And, in the pretty graphics department, you can bring up a Java orbit simulation. It's interesting to see that the plane of this thing is almost perpendicular to the Earth's.

Hmm ... yes, I noticed that link (hint, hint ;-) ... HTML is your friend).

I also noticed some detailed information about the giant rock itself.

And, in the pretty graphics department, you can bring up a Java orbit simulation. It's interesting to see that the plane of this thing is almost perpendicular to the Earth's.

I'd be more worried about this one which is also rated 1 on the torino scale but has a 1 in 10,000 chance of hitting the earth.

Oh by the way, it's not due 'til 2101..

Obviously, you are not reading the article, nor have you gone through the NASA site.
When concieved X-33 was to cost 1.5 billion with 1 billion from NASA and .5 from LMart. Per your link, NASA contributed .912 Billion and LMart did 356 Million (int the end, IIRC, the feds spent 1.1 B).
The engines were built and undergoing testing at stennis Likewise, the airframe was basicaly competed.
The only real issue were the fuel tanks.
Those had been changed from composite to metal which forced a slightly slower speed. Not enough to change any charartistic.
The X-33 would have been ready this year for final testing
As to overruns, it was at 10% overrun, of which almost all military and NASA operations suffer incurable overrun of 100-1000%. Had this gotten done in 60% overrun (in fact, it was on tract for 30-40%), then it would have been impressive considering what it was doing.

But no sense letting real facts get in the way of more GWB campaigning.