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Ah but the great thing is there's a prob already on it's way to Titan to investigate this. It the Cassini: Voyage to Saturn Project. Nice site scientifically speaking. You should check it out.

Absolutely. This is NOT a Beowulf cluster.

Beowulf refers to the tools created at NASA Goddard CESDIS

This cluster uses MPI and tools developed by the University of Virginia's Legion Project

Beowulf has become, to some, a generic term for a Linux cluster, like Kleenex to tissues.

Mark Vernon HPTi

Of course, the most spectacular Voyager pix were those of Io (the one's with the volcanic plumes). And then there is the picture of Mimas, one of Saturn's moon. Take a look. Not a good sight to see when one comes out of hyperspace.

The mission plans to determine the thickness of Europa's Ice and determine the existence of water. There's also a link on that page about the mission being a precursor to "hydrobots", underwater submaries that would melt their way through the Europan ice to explore underneath... Very Cool.

According to this article at CNN, Scientists think they have liquid seas on Titan, a moon of Saturn. Not below ice like Europa, but above the surface. They hypothesize that the liquid are hydrocarbons.
This was also released 2 years ago (April 9, 1997)

Here's a few more europa links, for those who need something to do until quitting time on a friday afternoon.
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/ice_fire/europ ao.htm
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo/s tatus970718.html
http://cass.jsc.nasa.gov/researc h/outerp/euro.html
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo/

Here's a few more europa links, for those who need something to do until quitting time on a friday afternoon.
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/ice_fire/europ ao.htm
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo/s tatus970718.html
http://cass.jsc.nasa.gov/researc h/outerp/euro.html
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo/

Here's a few more europa links, for those who need something to do until quitting time on a friday afternoon.
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/ice_fire/europ ao.htm
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo/s tatus970718.html
http://cass.jsc.nasa.gov/researc h/outerp/euro.html
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo/

Here's a few more europa links, for those who need something to do until quitting time on a friday afternoon.
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/ice_fire/europ ao.htm
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo/s tatus970718.html
http://cass.jsc.nasa.gov/researc h/outerp/euro.html
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo/

http://www.sciam.com/

Unfortunately, you can't read current articles on-line. Subscribe! It's a great mag.

One of the interesting bits in the article was that the Russian Vostok [2] outpost in Antartica is right on top of an under-the-ice lake, al-la Europa. They are going to field-test the Europa explorer equipment on it -- satellites and robots. Two robots are proposed; a "cryobot: and "hydrobot". The cryobot would look at the ice and melt a hole down into the water. The hydrobot would look at the water.

There's also an article at Nasa about life on Europa.

http://www.sciam.com/

Unfortunately, you can't read current articles on-line. Subscribe! It's a great mag.

One of the interesting bits in the article was that the Russian Vostok [2] outpost in Antartica is right on top of an under-the-ice lake, al-la Europa. They are going to field-test the Europa explorer equipment on it -- satellites and robots. Two robots are proposed; a "cryobot: and "hydrobot". The cryobot would look at the ice and melt a hole down into the water. The hydrobot would look at the water.

There's also an article at Nasa about life on Europa.

What you're touching on is the essential problem of AI: nothing that AI does is easy to do for computers. In fact, most things that AI researchers do is ridiculously computationally expensive (you know, 2^100-state optimization problems and the like) and simply cannot be approached by traditional algorithms. What AI researchers give up, explicitly, are the guarantees that you're concerned about. They say, "Well, let's see how well we can do on this problem if we give up the guarantee of completeness." And lo and behold, your 2^100-state problem becomes a lot easier- you can either get the best answer in a trillion years (actually quite a bit longer than that, if I did my math right) or a very good answer in a week.

So the thing is: if you can't live without that guarantee, you probably can't solve your problem at all.

And incidentally, neural nets are, in practice, enormously profitable to use for systems in which there is no standard algorithmic solution. Face recognition, image processing, real-time traffic shaping- bunches of things. Not space-craft flying, though- NASA uses different AI techniques that have much better safety guarantees.

Teasing parallelism out of computer programs is a desperation move when you can't speed up the basic logic of the chip.

A 2X increase in clock speed (and associated I/O channels) really does mean a 2X increase in performance for all programs, but adding parallelism (extra execution units, VLIW, Vector Processors, etc) only wins for those programs which can be made parallel, and only a fraction of the computing world works that way.

Everything else is serial, and requires those clock rate increases to get more performance.

As for Intel "keeping up" with the PowerPC, a friend of mine who used to work for NASA is fond of quoting this aphorism:

With enough thrust, anything will fly.

With tens of billions in sales, and a 26% profit margin (see Yahoo's financial profile of Intel), they've got a whole lot of thrust to put under the obsolete, bloated IA-32 architecture.

Ah, if it were only as simple as the technical merits...

There are several problems with Numerical Recipes. Don't take my word for it; see what the people at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab have to say: http://math.jpl.nasa.gov/nr/ They also list several alternatives.

Last time I heard, they were prepping Discovery for launch and it was being moved to the vertical mating position to the external tank. I wonder if they proceded with that and if they did they are lowering it again.

Reading the current status report, it mentions that the Kennedy is a mere 9 feet above sea level. The storm surge of floyd is going to be well above that. This could seriously jepordize the US Space Program. Heck, it could cause repricussions world's Human Space Flight programs!


For more info...

Current Shuttle Status

I hope this thing moves on.

SP

I think it is kind of funny for millions of people to live on a sand bar that gets hit over and over again by hurricanes

Yeah, but when you can walk out of your house in the morning and be standing on a sandy beach with the sun shining and warm water 9 months out of the year (or all-year-round, if you're a true die-hard) ... well, it's worth the risks. Dealing with all the blue-hairs is a bit of a distraction, but you quickly learn not to stay behind cars that are larger than most boats.

And for people that will ignore an evacuation notice [...] Natural Selection

Actually, I think that most ppl who have lived here through a previous hurricane would agree with you. It's the non-natives who freak out the most. The beach-side hotels (on the barrier islands, at least) kicked everyone out Monday night, so even tourists have a fighting chance.

The radio this morning made a good point: the Sheriff's office is telling ppl to get out now because they won't be coming in to help them out later when it gets worse. If that's not a excellent case for your point then I don't know what is.

Man I hope KSC doesn't get damaged...all four Space Shuttles are there.

They actually have a few webcams up: http://www.ksc.nasa.gov/ shuttle/countdown/video/video.html.

Why is the Space Center in Florida again?

Because even rocket scientists need a little sun.

Man I hope KSC doesn't get damaged...all four Space Shuttles are there.


And the shelters (OPF-Orbiter Processor Facilities) that the STSes are in are only rated to 105mph sustained winds. The VAB is a little better, rated to 125mph sustained, but a direct hit by Floyd would be bad. KSC is currently at "HURCON II" (gotta love that name!), more info on what that means at KENNEDY SPACE CENTER HURRICANE PLAN SUMMARY

You'll be holding your breath for a long time considering we don't even have pictures of pluto's surface yet unless you count this. I have a lot more faith in a reputable scientists explanation for gravitational anomaly and such than what most people think they've seen with their eyes. To an astronomer this is seeing, though it may seem unconventional to some people. The human eye is just a sensor that happens to operate in the range of wavelengths we call visible light. A film used in an X-ray is a sensor that detects energy not visible to the human eye. Most people don't doubt doctors interpretations of X-rays. We even except more estoric sensing systems such as magnetic resonance imaging where things are mapped non-linearily into a range of colours. Given that the average doctor is much less rigorous than the average astronomer it shouldn't be much of a leap of faith to at least accept that there is a good chance that the object is a non-gas-giant planet orbiting a star.

Also, at the bottom of that page is a link to the Next Pictue. Is it me or does this look interestingly like mitosis (or was it meiosis)?

-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

• http://www.star.ucl.ac.uk/~apod/ apod/astropix.html, UK,(London)
• http://www.phy.mtu.edu/apod/astropix.html , US (Midwest)
• http://mirrors.inside.net/apod/, Switzerland
• http://www.sai.msu.su/apod/: Russia
• http://phyhp.phy. ncku.edu.tw/~astrolab/mirrors/apod/astropix.html Taiwan (Chinese)
• http://phyhp.ph y.ncku.edu.tw/~astrolab/mirrors/apod_e/astropix.ht ml: Taiwan (English)
• http://apod.aguianet.com.br/: Brazil
• http://www.astro.cz/apod/

These all point to the picture of the day (which is of Earth, though it doesn't look like it!), of course: you'll have to head to the archives to find the eclipse picture. They've been carrying loads of eclipse pictures recently, and they're beautiful.

My best friend also has a 3c905B. He was able to get it working with 2.0.35 by getting a test version of the driver. I think the address is http://cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov/l inux/drivers/vortex.html The driver in Linux 2.2 worked for him just fine, though.

Yes and no. While it's a good way up the Earth's gravity well, it would still need to cancel out its orbital speed around the Sun to fall there directly. That's 30 km/s to add to the necessary 3 km/s delta-V to escape Earth.

In terms of fuel, according to the rocket equation (delta-V = u . ln(1+mf/m) where u is the exhaust speed, m the dry mass and mf the fuel's mass), it would take more than 700 times as much fuel as Mir weighs to make it dive into the Sun with a chemical rocket (u ~ 5 km/s). Perhaps you can save some using planetary fly-bys but certainly not much. Or use an ion engine like Deep Space 1's; with a very optimistic u=15 km/s, the required mass of fuel would drop to 10 times as much, a mere 1400 tons, compared to a few tons for sending it into the Pacific...

Anyway, if you have the resources and technology to send Mir out into the Sun, you can easily park it into high Earth orbit where it will stay for long, and build a brand new huge space dock there and bring in a small asteroid to manufacture interplanetary ships with. More interesting, I would say...

Because the Sun has 99.86 percent of the mass of the solar system and we couldn't bother it even if we dropped Jupiter in. There's already more iron, plutonium, and everything else there than in the entire Earth. For that matter, a single asteroid has more metals than the Earth's upper crust.

I've found this link which tells you every minute where MIR is in Space : http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/temp /StationLoc.html

Theres a Chandra image of Cassiopia A on Astronomy Picture of the day (27/8/99) which is desktop sized. No doubt they'll have other ones over the next few days.

NASA's stock image gallery has pictures in thumbnail, medium, and large format up to 2k by 2k pixels. If you can get through while it is slashdotted.

Sigh... we need more military people in /.

Space Communications Protocol, what the author must have been talking about, first of all, is being headed by MITRE (the strap-on brain of DoD back east to help them with anything geek).

The main goal is to delelop a protocol that looks and feels to the user like TCP/IP, but handles the fact that the major reason for packet loss being.. well, lost or damaged packets, literally, out into space.

TCP/IP assumes that lostpackets are because of network congestion, and so a missing packet is requested to be retransmitted.. and this usualy does the trick.. since most terra-nets run on fiber or copper...

If you kept asking for retransmissions in space - you exasserbate the problem so that if the errors grow to only 10^-6, and you use plain ol TCP/IP, the overhead and loss drowns the network out.. and you get nothing.

10^-6 errors can be a good day around here in the space biz... so one of the major points of SCPS is to deal with high BERs differently than TCP/IP, the other, of course, is security (how can you get spy sat data to the ground and beam it with an RF signal that anyone can pick up?)

SCPS has standard ftp, and will encorporate http eventually.. but its not done yet AFAIK.

You can read all about it here...

http://bongo.jpl.nasa.gov/scps

Apparently you can even observe test firings, if you happen to find yourself in the middle of Mississippi nowhere with nothing better to do.

http://www.ssc.nasa.gov/lines/propulsion/

JPL is using Linux to host the instrument sequencer for both the Keck Interferometer and Space Interferometer Mission. Although the sequencer will eventually move to an on-board system for flight, the Keck Interferometer is likely to keep it on the Linux box indefinitely (and the Keck Interferometer is funded through 2027 at least). http://huey.jpl.nasa.gov/

One of the chaps here is evaluating PDL and is very impressed, I'll take a look at it myself sometime.

For another use of linux at NASA check out AirMSIR. Although it's not mentioned on the page, the instrument is controlled using linux with RT extensions. Still didn't stop it from missing the target on the fieldwork I was doing in Kansas last month though...:-(

Nick

Hey, thanks for the pointer. I did some checking and, yes, the Voyagers used an 1802 derivative, but Pioneer 10 turns out to not have an on board computer. The instruments just send out their data continuosly. Basically, Pioneer 10 is a very remote peripheral attached by a 9 light-hour link to a computer at Mission Control. Amazing.

Check out the minutes of the Pioneer 10 Virtual Conference for more details.

mike

Actually, Pioneer 10 is still functioning and returning data 27 years after launch! Amazing. The latest status can be seen here.

mike

Oops, Voyager is not being abandoned, actually Pioneer 10 being abandoned. It might have passed out of the heliopause in May, but further readings should be taken. They won't be.

As for rocket malfunction on launch, then the spacecraft would fall back on top of the Space center, or just drop into the sea just off the coast, where it would be easily retreivable.

Leo
--

I think that the Plutonium dioxide would hardly be detectable against all of the other radiation sources (most notably our Sun).

Anyone can look at this issue at the Cassini web site: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/cassi ni/rtg/rtginfoframes.htm

~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"

I'd sorta like to know whether or not there'll be a massive ecological disaster next week.

No need to wait, we can answer this question now: There won't be a *new* ecological disaster next week. But there will still be all the ecological disasters we already had.

If you want to see where Cassini is right now, look here: Where is Cassini Now?

aj

Latest subcommittee markup for NASA's budget can be found at:
http://spacescience.nasa.g ov/announce/housefull2000.html

Unfortunately, some of my potential work is on the list. Ugh.

Science isn't profitable in and of itself. It's the application of those sciences that creates the useful products we depend on today.


~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"

Latest subcommittee markup for NASA's budget can be found at:
http://spacescience.nasa.g ov/announce/housefull2000.html

Unfortunately, some of my potential work is on the list. Ugh.

Science isn't profitable in and of itself. It's the application of those sciences that creates the useful products we depend on today.


~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"

Latest subcommittee markup for NASA's budget can be found at:
http://spacescience.nasa.g ov/announce/housefull2000.html

Unfortunately, some of my potential work is on the list. Ugh.

Science isn't profitable in and of itself. It's the application of those sciences that creates the useful products we depend on today.


~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"

i remember reading an article in wired about a year ago abour the Lunar-Mars Life Support Test Project.

from the LMLSTP Phase III home page:

The Phase III 90-Day Human Test ended on December 19, 1997. The crew completed 91 days in the chamber, setting the record for the longest duration human closed chamber test in the United States. The Advanced Life Support System (ALSS) concept is that a human life support system, supplying food, water, and oxygen can operate indefinitely in space without resupply from Earth. This system is open with respect to energy but closed with respect to mass. This means regenerative or recycling technologies must be used.

As part of the overall technology development effort, a series of tests have been scheduled called the Lunar-Mars Life Support Test Project (LMLSTP), formerly known as the Early Human Testing Initiative (EHTI). The first test, EHTI Phase I, was performed in August, 1995, in the 10 foot chamber, known as the Variable Pressure Growth Chamber, located in building 7B at the Johnson Space Center (JSC). The second test, LMLSTP Phase II, was performed in June, 1996, in a 20 foot chamber, known as the Life Support Systems Integration Facility, located in building 7 at JSC.

The LMLSTP Phase IIA, begun on January 13, 1997, was the third human test to validate regenerative life support technologies. This test used hardware representative of International Space Station, scheduled for first launch in 1998.

wired article: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/6.06/mars.html

LMLSTP index page: http://pet.jsc.nasa.gov/lmlstp.html

rh

i remember reading an article in wired about a year ago abour the Lunar-Mars Life Support Test Project.

from the LMLSTP Phase III home page:

The Phase III 90-Day Human Test ended on December 19, 1997. The crew completed 91 days in the chamber, setting the record for the longest duration human closed chamber test in the United States. The Advanced Life Support System (ALSS) concept is that a human life support system, supplying food, water, and oxygen can operate indefinitely in space without resupply from Earth. This system is open with respect to energy but closed with respect to mass. This means regenerative or recycling technologies must be used.

As part of the overall technology development effort, a series of tests have been scheduled called the Lunar-Mars Life Support Test Project (LMLSTP), formerly known as the Early Human Testing Initiative (EHTI). The first test, EHTI Phase I, was performed in August, 1995, in the 10 foot chamber, known as the Variable Pressure Growth Chamber, located in building 7B at the Johnson Space Center (JSC). The second test, LMLSTP Phase II, was performed in June, 1996, in a 20 foot chamber, known as the Life Support Systems Integration Facility, located in building 7 at JSC.

The LMLSTP Phase IIA, begun on January 13, 1997, was the third human test to validate regenerative life support technologies. This test used hardware representative of International Space Station, scheduled for first launch in 1998.

wired article: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/6.06/mars.html

LMLSTP index page: http://pet.jsc.nasa.gov/lmlstp.html

Amateurs with scopes up to 31 inches saw nothing, other than 3 reports of a brief flash nearby. Such flashes have been reported at other times when mountains are illuminated as the Moon rotates, or assorted rocks hit. Even now at lunar noon we're viewing the south pole area at a low angle which increases the chances of reflections. Whatever the flash was, it is unusual enough that it's interesting.

• Map of Lunar private property.
• Map of Apollo landing sites.
• Moon Handbook, a travel guide.
• Robotic Exploration: LunaCorp, CMU Lunar Rover
• How to get there: The Artemis Project, GSC, Spacetopia
• What to do on the way there: Enjoy Low Earth Orbit
• What to do there:
  • Fun: Lunar golf and javelin throwing
  • Work: Mine oxygen

Or they could go get $20,000 Billion in precious metals from a single near-earth asteroid.

Here's a picture and QTVR movie of the spacecraft.

Okay. Let's think about this. Put aside for a moment the fact that no business in their right profit-seeking mind would spend the kind of money on basic research that NASA does, because most of NASA's payoffs are long-term or non-monetary. Forget for now that many of NASA's programs, such as the educational and highly-beneficial Quest project would have no place in a profit-oriented enterprise. Ignore the fact that no business would be able to raise enough money for certain exploration missions even if they wanted to...

Even then, what possible use does it serve to cripple NASA's space programs? The money saved by the budget cuts doesn't go to private space exploration! There is no logical reason to gut NASA in the name of building a Hilton on the moon. Even if some company wants to launch an orbital golf course, complete with casino and luxury hotel, there is nothing about NASA's existence or funding that prevents that! Think, people!

And another thing. Some posters above have complained that the linked articles merely whine about all the space exploration programs that will be killed off. They say that most of NASA's plans should still be feasible with only a 10% budget cut, and that NASA is simply trying to exaggerate the situation to stir up public sympathy.

To that, all I've got to say is: work on your reading comprehension. The article specifically mentions that the budget cuts are targetted at specific programs. The shuttle missions shouldn't be effected much, but the Mars exploration program is essentially dead.

And as far as I'm concerned, that's unquestionably obscene, for all the reasons others have already mentioned in greater detail: Just plain exploring our universe and learning, for all your idealists. Technological spinoffs that directly benefit our quality of life, for all you pragmatists. Who in their right mind would want to cut the funding for an organization that contributes directly to both of these goals?

These opinions are my own.

Dan

Here's a link to the details on where NASA spends its money. Lots of details. Look for charts midway through for a summary.

The PSA appears to be a descendent of AERCam Sprint ( http://station.nasa.gov/station/as sembly/sprint/). AERCam Sprint was pretty dumb, and flew around in the Shuttle cargo bay under remote control by an astronaut inside the shuttle. You can find video of AERCam in action at http://spaceflight .nasa.gov/shuttle/archives/sts-87/video/daily/.

[More info from NASA:]

The Autonomous EVA Robotic Camera/Sprint (AERCam/Sprint) is a small, unobtrusive, free-flying camera platform for use outside a spacecraft. The free-flyer has a self contained cold gas propulsion system giving it the capability to be propelled with a 6 degrees of freedom control system. On board the free-flyer are rate sensors to provide data for an automatic attitude hold capability. AERCam/Sprint is a spherical vehicle that moves slowly and is covered in a soft cushioning material to prevent damage in the event of an impact. The design philosophy is to keep the energy low by keeping the velocities and mass low while providing a mechanism to absorb any energy from an impact. The free-flyer platform is controlled from inside the Orbiter by using a small control station. The operator will input motion commands from a single, Aid For EVA Rescue (SAFER) device controller. The commands will be sent from the control station to he free-flyer via a Radio Frequency (RF) modem link operating in the Ultrahigh Frequency (UHF) range.

The PSA appears to be a descendent of AERCam Sprint ( http://station.nasa.gov/station/as sembly/sprint/). AERCam Sprint was pretty dumb, and flew around in the Shuttle cargo bay under remote control by an astronaut inside the shuttle. You can find video of AERCam in action at http://spaceflight .nasa.gov/shuttle/archives/sts-87/video/daily/.

[More info from NASA:]

The Autonomous EVA Robotic Camera/Sprint (AERCam/Sprint) is a small, unobtrusive, free-flying camera platform for use outside a spacecraft. The free-flyer has a self contained cold gas propulsion system giving it the capability to be propelled with a 6 degrees of freedom control system. On board the free-flyer are rate sensors to provide data for an automatic attitude hold capability. AERCam/Sprint is a spherical vehicle that moves slowly and is covered in a soft cushioning material to prevent damage in the event of an impact. The design philosophy is to keep the energy low by keeping the velocities and mass low while providing a mechanism to absorb any energy from an impact. The free-flyer platform is controlled from inside the Orbiter by using a small control station. The operator will input motion commands from a single, Aid For EVA Rescue (SAFER) device controller. The commands will be sent from the control station to he free-flyer via a Radio Frequency (RF) modem link operating in the Ultrahigh Frequency (UHF) range.