Slashdot Mirror

I hate to tell everyone, but ummm you really can't see mir I mean even with a telescope ..
Actually it's pretty easy to see, looks like a fast moving, bright dot.

Every couple of weeks I grab the latest Orbital Elements, run some pass predictions, and see how it is doing. When it was manned, it was always cool to think how there were people living on that little dot in the sky. It gives me a thrill to think about it!

Nasa has a java applet which will do tracking and pass prediction, but you can find some normal software to do it as well.

I hate to tell everyone, but ummm you really can't see mir I mean even with a telescope ..
Actually it's pretty easy to see, looks like a fast moving, bright dot.

Every couple of weeks I grab the latest Orbital Elements, run some pass predictions, and see how it is doing. When it was manned, it was always cool to think how there were people living on that little dot in the sky. It gives me a thrill to think about it!

Nasa has a java applet which will do tracking and pass prediction, but you can find some normal software to do it as well.

I hate to tell everyone, but ummm you really can't see mir I mean even with a telescope ..
Actually it's pretty easy to see, looks like a fast moving, bright dot.

Every couple of weeks I grab the latest Orbital Elements, run some pass predictions, and see how it is doing. When it was manned, it was always cool to think how there were people living on that little dot in the sky. It gives me a thrill to think about it!

Nasa has a java applet which will do tracking and pass prediction, but you can find some normal software to do it as well.

Yep thats right. An A/UX home page has all you'd want to know about this 'Mac compatible' UNIX... Someday I'd love to try it out... The FAQ also mentions that MachTen (A UNIX running on top of the MacOS as opposed to Mac emulation on UNIX a la A/UX) utilized the Mach kernel, but it was published by Tenon not by Apple. Interesting. Well, to me anyway. :)

-y

But while I'm on the topic: the sun is something like 1050 Jovian masses, dwarfing Jupiter even more than Jupiter does Earth. This ratio is why detecting extrasolar planets smaller than Jupiter is so hard -- it's common to say that the planets orbit the sun, but actually a planet and its sun both orbit their common center of gravity. As it turns out, Jupiter orbits a bit more than 1100 times the sun's radius away from the sun's center, so the center of mass is just about at the sun's surface.

This means, to detect Jupiter at interstellar distances, we'd be looking for a Doppler shift based on a "wobble" about equal to the sun's radius (not quite 700 thousand kilometers) in half of Jupiter's orbital period (six years, since Jupiter's orbit takes 4433 days)... not much variation, over a very long time -- meaning the velocity is small, and therefore difficult to separate from measurement errors. The extrasolar planets we've been finding have mostly been larger than Jupiter, and have all orbited much closer to their stars -- barely a quarter of them have been as far out as Earth, while Jupiter is over five times that distance from Sol.

As I said, it's a difficult task.

---

--

And there are no orbital telescopes that can be tasked for planet searching? How pathetic is that.

Don't be so quick to judge. You can't just point the Hubble at a star and see if there are any planets going around it. First of all, since they are so faint and close to the disk of the star, no existing instrument can resolve planets optically.

Secondly, the major method used to find planets (doppler shift in stellar spectra to detect the star's wobble) works as well from the ground as from space, and there are more telescopes on the ground.

Thirdly, you can't find earth-like planets this way, so this won't help any when it comes time to look for other planets to move to. But the sun won't explode, either, so we're fine for quite some time. The gradual heating of the sun will, if anything, probably mean that, in 100 Myr, when the Earth is uninhabitably hot, Mars should be plenty warm enough to support liquid water (just add air).

Fourthly, to see earth-like planets, you need huge interferometers. Look at Deep Space 3 for an example of what NASA is trying to do in this direction. But interferometers are hard, so it'll be a while before the planet finder goes on line, or is even technically feasible, for that matter.

BTW for those who care, is there any realizable time pay off to computing in 0 gravity (I suppose Moore's law keeps relativity (which tells us time goes faster where there is less gravity) in perspective.)

Not really. From the perspective of a zero-g environment, calculations would seem to take longer on the surface of the earth than in space, but by such a miniscule amount that it doesn't matter. For the money spent to develop and orbit the thing, you can probably double many times over the number of processor nodes in your computing system.

And there are no orbital telescopes that can be tasked for planet searching? How pathetic is that.

Don't be so quick to judge. You can't just point the Hubble at a star and see if there are any planets going around it. First of all, since they are so faint and close to the disk of the star, no existing instrument can resolve planets optically.

Secondly, the major method used to find planets (doppler shift in stellar spectra to detect the star's wobble) works as well from the ground as from space, and there are more telescopes on the ground.

Thirdly, you can't find earth-like planets this way, so this won't help any when it comes time to look for other planets to move to. But the sun won't explode, either, so we're fine for quite some time. The gradual heating of the sun will, if anything, probably mean that, in 100 Myr, when the Earth is uninhabitably hot, Mars should be plenty warm enough to support liquid water (just add air).

Fourthly, to see earth-like planets, you need huge interferometers. Look at Deep Space 3 for an example of what NASA is trying to do in this direction. But interferometers are hard, so it'll be a while before the planet finder goes on line, or is even technically feasible, for that matter.

BTW for those who care, is there any realizable time pay off to computing in 0 gravity (I suppose Moore's law keeps relativity (which tells us time goes faster where there is less gravity) in perspective.)

Not really. From the perspective of a zero-g environment, calculations would seem to take longer on the surface of the earth than in space, but by such a miniscule amount that it doesn't matter. For the money spent to develop and orbit the thing, you can probably double many times over the number of processor nodes in your computing system.

--

THere are some interesting articles here along a similar line at Nasa's BPP. THey are trying to develop propulsion where you don't have to throw mass out the back end of your craft (i.e. rocket fuel).

Now throw in the fact that the ISS has developed a huge political momentum, which means that its money is sacrosanct - ISS allocations actually increased last year - which meant that the chunk of money that was supposed to be skimmed from NASA's budget almost all came from the planetary and earth science budgets. Remember when there was going to be a rover on the Polar Lander? That's where it went. These projects were cut to the bone, leaving too few engineers working too much unpaid overtime to finish the lander.

So to the people out there complaining that NASA just wants to return to the "good old days" of multi-billion dollar missions, think again. The press release put out by NASA even says that they're going to continue with the "better, faster, cheaper" philosophy, but "properly applied" this time. Essentially, all they really want is the breathing room to hire a few extra engineers, to retain the most experienced workers (think "institutional experience"), and do tests over when need be.

NASA has the complete reports on the Mars Polar lander incident and on recommendations for the Mars exploration program in general. They also have a press release (though the server seems to be down).

The basic summary is that "better, faster, cheaper" can work, but some management and structural changes have to be made in order to ensure the success of the Mars program.

\whine{Don't you hate it when you submit a story hours earlier, with better links, but it is rejected. }

NASA has the complete reports on the Mars Polar lander incident and on recommendations for the Mars exploration program in general. They also have a press release (though the server seems to be down).

The basic summary is that "better, faster, cheaper" can work, but some management and structural changes have to be made in order to ensure the success of the Mars program.

\whine{Don't you hate it when you submit a story hours earlier, with better links, but it is rejected. }

I like the one on quantum vacuum energy. That's a prediction of standard quantum electrodynamics, and historically, QED is always right, even when it makes wierd predictions. Every time standard quantum theory predicted something wierd, experimental work found the theory correct, and things like quantum cryptography and quantum computing emerged.

Also, remember that we still don't understand gravity at the quantum level. Some of the NASA work involves experiments which might provide some added insight in that area. One clear, reproducible non-Newtonian result in the quantum gravity area would provide direction for the gravity theorists, who currently are mostly using what vague data can be gleaned from cosmology.

__________

The famous 'Internet worm' created by Robert Morris Jr. in 1988 exploited a bug in the standard SENDMAIL program available on practically all *NIX machines. Granted, that was 12 years ago, and the points in the article are well taken, but the case of the Morris Worm should remind us that open source is not completely immune from very strong virus strains.

For a real-ime track of every little zippy thing cruising the planet, point your Java enabled browser at:http://liftoff.msfc.n asa.gov/RealTime/JTrack/3D/JTrack3D.html
_________________________

I can believe that an exoskeleton could be built with hydraulics and/or electric motors. The trick is coming up with a compact power source that will run the suit for some reasonable amount of time. Maybe they could use something like the APU used on the Space Shuttle. It weighs about 90 pounds and produces 135 horsepower. The downside is that it runs on hydrazine, which is very nasty stuff.

And if you're more of a hardware buff, there's the NASA Image Exchange. Searchable index, and if you waffle with the URL, you can force it into giving you the large copies of the image, suitable for use as desktop pictures.

To answer questions re: looking for smaller planets -- NASA has plans to launch the Planet Finder Array -- a cluster of telescopes designed to do optical inferometry -- in about 2005. It will go into an orbit around the sun at roughly the same distance as Jupiter, and be capable of seeing Earth-sized planets out to about 50 light-years. Further, plans call for the ability to analyze the spectrum of the planet, which will allow for atmospheric analysis.

A recent issue of Discover magazine had a "field guide" to all the new extra-solar planets that we've found up to now. 47 Ursa Majoris has a Jupiter-sized planet that orbits its star at about the same distance Mars is from ours... Given that 47Uma is a little brighter and a little larger, this planet could very well have habitable moons, and is actually one of the targets for a new radio search, so the science already has applications.

As for the Hubble issue, I suspect it will be handled like Mir and kept aloft for at least five years beyond its expected life. There are plans for a "Hubble II" that uses a segmented mirror like the Keck. (And whomever asked about the X-Ray observatory: no, it cannot take over Hubble's duties -- it is without optical capabilities.)

To answer questions re: looking for smaller planets -- NASA has plans to launch the Planet Finder Array -- a cluster of telescopes designed to do optical inferometry -- in about 2005. It will go into an orbit around the sun at roughly the same distance as Jupiter, and be capable of seeing Earth-sized planets out to about 50 light-years. Further, plans call for the ability to analyze the spectrum of the planet, which will allow for atmospheric analysis.

A recent issue of Discover magazine had a "field guide" to all the new extra-solar planets that we've found up to now. 47 Ursa Majoris has a Jupiter-sized planet that orbits its star at about the same distance Mars is from ours... Given that 47Uma is a little brighter and a little larger, this planet could very well have habitable moons, and is actually one of the targets for a new radio search, so the science already has applications.

As for the Hubble issue, I suspect it will be handled like Mir and kept aloft for at least five years beyond its expected life. There are plans for a "Hubble II" that uses a segmented mirror like the Keck. (And whomever asked about the X-Ray observatory: no, it cannot take over Hubble's duties -- it is without optical capabilities.)

Star life summary.
Summary of massive star/supernova reactions.

If you're fond of astronomy pictures, you should know this wonderful site : Astronomy Picture Of the Day. Every day, it presents a picture related to astronomy, along with a small paragraph that gives some explanation. All previous pictures are still available. This site is a must see ! :-)

Check out Origins.

and

Terrestrial Planet Finder

for more info on future directions in planet finding.

Just waiting for DS3 to get approved... :)

Check out Origins.

and

Terrestrial Planet Finder

for more info on future directions in planet finding.

Just waiting for DS3 to get approved... :)

Here's a link to a NASA press release replying to these allegations. Its a pretty thorough response to these issues. Seems like some conspiracy theorists going a little too far to me.

It's not easy engineering. Anyone can see some examples in the Space Mechanisms Lessons Learned Study. Miss one lesson, or discover a new one, and there's no way to fix what you already built...

Bureaucratic paranoia?

However, concerning the latest information about the engine temperature problem, it appears that they had developed and publicized a procedure to preheat the engine just before the landing attempt.

The Official Mars Polar Lander website:

Here

Mars Exploration Program.

Jainith Slashdot 4 Life

Yahoo (and the Slashdot story) has it wrong in that the helium is extraterristial NOT necessarily from outside the solar system. He3 is in fact found in the solar wind: the crust of the moon, for example, is thought to enriched in He3 from the solar wind.

He3 does exist on earth (and in the rest of the Solar System for that matter). What is different is the ratio of He4 to He3 on Earth and in most of the rest of the solar system. What the article should say is that

1) Helium is trapped inside Bucky-balls found in asteriod impact sites and 2) The He4 to He3 ratio is the same as the ratio in the rest of the solar system and is not the same as that on earth.

This implies that 1) Buckyballs formed in space 2) They can trap gases in them and 3) They can survive extremely violent impact.

Slashdot - please, please, please check the original sources for stories.

Yahoo (and the Slashdot story) has it wrong in that the helium is extraterristial NOT necessarily from outside the solar system. He3 is in fact found in the solar wind: the crust of the moon, for example, is thought to enriched in He3 from the solar wind.

He3 does exist on earth (and in the rest of the Solar System for that matter). What is different is the ratio of He4 to He3 on Earth and in most of the rest of the solar system. What the article should say is that

1) Helium is trapped inside Bucky-balls found in asteriod impact sites and 2) The He4 to He3 ratio is the same as the ratio in the rest of the solar system and is not the same as that on earth.

This implies that 1) Buckyballs formed in space 2) They can trap gases in them and 3) They can survive extremely violent impact.

Slashdot - please, please, please check the original sources for stories.

The press release can be found here: http://george.arc.na sa.gov/dx/basket/pressrelease/00_20AR.html

A preview of the article will be posted at: http://www.pnas.org

It is research so it should be peer reviewed. But the source seems good.

Is anyone out there actively lobbying the government to officially endorse OSS solutions rather than proprietary software? It seems to me as a taxpayer that I would like to see the vast number of government projects out there actively evaluate Linux as well as Solaris and NT as platforms.

Alot of us are trying, believe me. &nbsp Most of us have OSS snuck in the background but contributing none the less... &nbsp The more "public" uses are seen at NASA with their Beowulf cluster and at NIST.

There's a FOSE conference coming up next month and one of the seminar tracks includes a session on Linux. &nbsp However I wish that more on OSS was scheduled to be discussed at this. &nbsp The timing of FOSE is really good considering all that's going on right now, but seems no one in the D.C./MD/VA area appeared to push it for this year's conference...

According to this Nasa Document, the cost ,at the time, amounted to around $25 Billion -- or around $95 Billion in 1990 dollars.

According to this link, $95 is around $112 in 1998 dollars. Assuming 2% inflation for the last two years, that would put the cost around $116 Billion dollars.

Point of comparison, the Defense Department budget for 2000 is around $290 Billion.

One problem for NASA is the current demand for it to launch satellites. It's rocket science, which makes it a difficult and expensive mission. Currently NASA's manned vehicle program includes the Space Shuttle. For interplanetary space travel, NASA needs a new vehicle. Unfortunately this just isn't included in the current budgets. The demand for NASA to assist in sattelite launches and other earth bound tasks with the Space Shuttle is big. This costs NASA money, movey that could be spent elsewhere.

Hopefully some of the other companies that have been mentioned(Cerulean, Pioneer, Kistler) will help lift this burden. The other company mentioned, Kelly, is one that I think has the greatest chance for success. Their website demonstrates their towing concept. This has many great advantages over traditional launch methods. For one, the craft can carry a payload approximately 7 times greater than one carried in a rocket. The cost to get that same payload up in the air with the 747 isn't that expensive either. Kelly has realistic goals to be flying their first craft in a few years.(There are three crafts, each becoming progressivly larger.) I only glanced at the website, but I believe it fails to mention that this is a proven concept. They successfully modeled a test and then actually had several test flights. A C-141 towed an F-106. I was fortunate enough to see a video of this. It was pretty impressive.

Wigs
--Why do you press harder on a remote-control when you know the battery is dead?

I fear we don't; like a Mars landing, we've had the technology for decades but the political obstacles are insurmountable.

If you believe the most die-hard grassroots space advocates, the controversial question is no longer "Are expenditures on NASA programs more beneficial for space development than money going directly to tax breaks on orbital R&D and industry?" the controversial question is "Are expenditures on NASA programs more beneficial for space development than setting money on fire?"

It's horrifying that we're spending billions of dollars per year on Space Shuttle "operations", and a billion dollars on the worst submission (currently falling behind schedule, over weight, and over budget as you read this) for the X-33 project, while companies like Kistler Aerospace and Rotary Rocket are stalling on creating the world's first truely reusable orbital rockets because they can't raise a fraction of that money in investments.

It's shameful that they never bothered to even build a second DC-X rocket after NASA took over the program and crashed the first one.

On the one hand, NASA keeps lots of aerospace engineers employed doing something; on the other hand that something is arguably much less efficient than what they would be doing in more dynamic private companies.

On the one hand, NASA is a nice customer for the big commercial aerospace companies' rockets; on the other hand, the government is a hell of a competitor to explain to potential investors in aerospace start-up companies.

And now NASA says we don't have the technology to put an Earth Return Vehicle on Mars capable of lifting a few pounds of rocks, less than a month after Scientific American spent an article detailing plans (specifically Robert Zubrin's Mars Direct Plan outlined in The Case For Mars and NASA's Mars Semi-Direct modification) which would put humans on Mars (and leave infrastructure there, unlike Apollo) in this decade for less money than we spend on the Shuttle and ISS.

I fear we don't; like a Mars landing, we've had the technology for decades but the political obstacles are insurmountable.

If you believe the most die-hard grassroots space advocates, the controversial question is no longer "Are expenditures on NASA programs more beneficial for space development than money going directly to tax breaks on orbital R&D and industry?" the controversial question is "Are expenditures on NASA programs more beneficial for space development than setting money on fire?"

It's horrifying that we're spending billions of dollars per year on Space Shuttle "operations", and a billion dollars on the worst submission (currently falling behind schedule, over weight, and over budget as you read this) for the X-33 project, while companies like Kistler Aerospace and Rotary Rocket are stalling on creating the world's first truely reusable orbital rockets because they can't raise a fraction of that money in investments.

It's shameful that they never bothered to even build a second DC-X rocket after NASA took over the program and crashed the first one.

On the one hand, NASA keeps lots of aerospace engineers employed doing something; on the other hand that something is arguably much less efficient than what they would be doing in more dynamic private companies.

On the one hand, NASA is a nice customer for the big commercial aerospace companies' rockets; on the other hand, the government is a hell of a competitor to explain to potential investors in aerospace start-up companies.

And now NASA says we don't have the technology to put an Earth Return Vehicle on Mars capable of lifting a few pounds of rocks, less than a month after Scientific American spent an article detailing plans (specifically Robert Zubrin's Mars Direct Plan outlined in The Case For Mars and NASA's Mars Semi-Direct modification) which would put humans on Mars (and leave infrastructure there, unlike Apollo) in this decade for less money than we spend on the Shuttle and ISS.

I think we should first mine Eros (that's a near earth asteroid.) Estimates indicate that it has 20 TRILLION dollars of ore on it- its 3% metal! It has everything, gold, plutonium, platinum...

There's nothing wrong with money. Money makes the satellites go around, and the sort of capabilities that you need to mine Eros will help get to mars- and probably pay for it.

And besides we need need to be able to stop the next dinosaur killer asteroid... living on Mars won't help much with that. Chucking around lumps of asteroid will.

I had the name wrong. It was the West Ford project, back in 1961 and 1963.

For information on it, either do this google search, or visit the following direct reference.

There's a guy I knew over at Nasa who operates a program known as Cool Space who sure could put these birds to use. COOL SPACE is an acronym for Communications Over Obscure Locations / Special Purpose Advanced Communications Equipment. They do launch tracking and special-purpose communications support in exotic parts of the world where cell phones don't work.

I met them while I was working in Antarctica. Oddly enough while exploring their home page, I discovered a 1995 picture of myself in a helo on one of their experiments. (I'm the seated guy in the red parka in the helicopter at the bottom of the page).

There's a guy I knew over at Nasa who operates a program known as Cool Space who sure could put these birds to use. COOL SPACE is an acronym for Communications Over Obscure Locations / Special Purpose Advanced Communications Equipment. They do launch tracking and special-purpose communications support in exotic parts of the world where cell phones don't work.

I met them while I was working in Antarctica. Oddly enough while exploring their home page, I discovered a 1995 picture of myself in a helo on one of their experiments. (I'm the seated guy in the red parka in the helicopter at the bottom of the page).

It shows a 3d image of the earth's artificial satellites, and lets you select from lots of satellites. Gives you a real idea about how crowded our space really is. Also shows you how hard it must be to keep all those satellites from crashing... I don't know if Iridium's satellites are listed here, as I don't know their callnames...

Here is a time-lapse image, here is another, and here is a web site with several more images.

Typically, a flare lasts about ten seconds or so.

--

Here is a time-lapse image, here is another, and here is a web site with several more images.

Typically, a flare lasts about ten seconds or so.

--

But we've been in contact with Voyager for over 20 years now!

Check out the current mission status for some most interesting reading...

You can deform spacetime, at least in principle, but not using toys like antennae and such. see This little nasa page

A quote from De Palma from the website:
"I'd never directed science fiction before, so the problem of shooting outer space and shooting a planet nobody's ever seen before gave me a whole new canvas with which to work. I tried to avoid all the cliches of science fiction movies and to give a whole new look and approach to this fantastic story."

http://studio.go.com/m2m/html/genesis.html
I guess nobody told the poor schmuck. NASA probably made the whole thing up.


john

Of course, none of this water is likely vapor or liquid -- it's all solid water ice.