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"1) Note every mission is labeled 'under review'.

Well, yah. They're not sure when they'll get the Shuttle back up and running. Thus, the date (y'know, that little header at the top) is under review.

"2) The ISS is not going to be completed. It costs too much for too little science."

Disagree. There's plenty of microgravity experiments which have been waiting for room on the space shuttle.

"ISS costs are not sustainable. Its going to be abandoned."

First, are you talking about building costs or support costs? There are many components of ISS which have already been built and are merely waiting for the Shuttle to return to flight. There's no real gain for abandoning those components already built.

Support costs will probably be considerably less once you're not depending on the Shuttle for supplies. Right now, the Shuttle is mainly being used to transport ISS components and extra people to install them. Don't get me wrong, I agree that the Shuttle is an incredible waste of money to supply ISS. Some Senator remarked that the Shuttle is like an SUV. Yes, it can do anything. But it's pretty wasteful to use it to haul groceries.

"3) Even if they wanted to complete the ISS, the payloads could be delivered with rockets."

Sure they could. But who's gonna attach them?

Keep in mind, when the Shuttle brings some big part up to ISS, who do you think actually installs the thing? Astronauts who have actually trained in simulators to do the job! So you'd also have to send up a few people to do the work. Or do you want to trust your multi-million dollar orbital habitat will be correctly installed by two guys who read the instruction manual?

"On the other hand, for some reason, garbage disposal seems to be a big deal, and the only thing the garbage scow Endeavor and Intrepid seem to be important for the ISS."

NASA likes to see the garbage in order to study it. For example, part of "garbage" of a Shuttle mission are parts that have failed. NASA tries to figure out why this happened so that they can make better parts. I suppose they can also test the garbage for radiation and other environmental factors and compare that with what the instruments told them. Remember that ISS is still new hardware under construction and NASA wants all the data it can get from wherever it can get it.

So, yes, when the Shuttle comes back to Earth, it carries trash for study. By the way, the Shuttle is the only vehicle that can return garbage for study. You can't fit a hell of a lot in a Soyuz.

There've been more than a few times, though, that the astronauts dump the trash into a Progress drone and burn it up in the atmosphere.

"[...] I'm surprised the ISS partners aren't designing payload delivery systems to move the garbage back to Earth."

You seem to be fixated on the garbage. Again, it's only NASA that cares about the garbage. And I'm sure they'll come up with something if they continue to really care about this after the ISS is complete.

Meanwhile, Russia has the Soyuz for manned missions and Progress for supplying the station and dumping trash. Japan's NASDA is developing the HTV for supplying the station and dumping trash. And ESA is developing the ATV for supplying the station and dumping trash. So I think the trash problem is pretty well solved.

And, of course, NASA's CEV will be able to carry astronauts to the station starting in 2014. In fact, supporting ISS is one of the goals for Stage 1 of the CEV. We tend to lose track of that.

So, if anything, Russia gets a four year exclusive for carrying people to ISS. I'm sure they'll be pretty psyched. Maybe they'll have their CEV operating by then.

By the way, to wander back on ta

Research on Large Membrane Furoshiki Satellite

FYI:
Furoshiki is traditional wrapping-cloth in Japan.
Often, old women use Furoshiki as a substitute of bag.
For example, when carrying a watermelon, Furoshiki is used as follows.
Suika-zustumi

Withan H-2a rocket built by the Japanese NASDA, from their dedicated launch facility....

http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/japan_h2a_021 213.html

for one example of the japanese launching an australian sat back in '02....

or http://www.nasda.go.jp/lib/nasda-news/1997/02/seri es_e.html

this series for a history of NASDA rocket development.

IIRC he complained a lot about the awful smell. Although I couldn't find anything directly related to that, in this report he talks about related problems (vomiting, waste disposal).

... from the desk of the reporter

Among other things, some of the instruments (I'm thinking of the NICMOS, don't remember whether any others require this) must be cooled by liquid nitrogen in order to prevent interference from IR emitted by the instruments themselves.

If you think that's bad, COBE had to be cooled by liquid helium.

You can read more about the instrumentation here.

More speculatively, I imagine occasional physical adjustment have to be made from time to time too, like replacing lubricants, servicing gyros, replacing batteries, and replenishing propellents - space is a fairly hostile environment and you can't expect something as complex as the Hubble to work for 20 years there without some TLC.

It's nice to see that at $20,000/pound, we're sending gozilla toys into orbit. The true irony would be if he were doing it from the Japanese Experiment Module

For reference: the Titan III that took Mars 1 into space vs. the BBC's picture of the Arianne 4. I think the Arianne 4 has 4 SRBs, not 2, though.

My understanding here is that an EVA can't go that far like going under the shuttle to take a look. They are limited to work on the cargo bay. And I don't think the Canadarm can reach that far.

There's no good reason to continue using the obsolete and dangerous shuttle technology forever.

I agree with you fully, however, keep in mind that NASA is under terrible pressure, both financially as wel as politically. They get less money, yet they have to keep up with things in order to maintain the flow of scraps they get. They simply cant afford to maintain a space program and a large scale research project like the Venture Star. But if I'm not mistaken, the Japanese space agency is working on a new kind of shuttle...

Thats perfectly possible, assuming you are in a powered craft. Its only not possible if you are in a free-fall (non-powered) orbit.

Hold on. Do me a favour. Take a look at this site.

Then can you tell me if you think using your 23rd Century space drive to hover over the south pole meets this definition of "orbit"?

Or you can use this definition . or this one , or this one , or this one , or this one .

We're getting a free ride along with the ADEOS II megasat (the Japanese get access to some of the data in return), but we're still talking significant money for development. And you're right re funding: it's no exaggeration to say that the future of Australia's space programme is at stake.

As regards Microsoft doing space/embedded systems, another quote from the original article:

"The system must be ductile - bending, not breaking - when things go wrong. In space no one can press Control/Alt/ Delete."

A. Brain, Rocket Scientist

---

Hiten (a.k.a. Muses-A)
Lunar Orbiter and Lander
Launch Period: 1980
Agency: ISAS - Japan

Hiten (originally called Muses-A) was an ISAS (Japanese Space Agency) Earth orbiting satellite designed primarily to test and verify technologies for future lunar and planetary missions. The spacecraft carried a small satellite named Hagoromo which was released into orbit around the Moon. Hiten itself was put into a highly elliptical Earth orbit which passed by the Moon ten times during the mission, which ended when Hiten was intentionally crashed into the Moon on 10 April 1993. The primary objectives of the mission were to: 1) test trajectory control utilizing gravity assist double lunar swingbys; 2) insert a sub-satellite into lunar orbit; 3) conduct optical navigation experiments on a spin-stabilized spacecraft; 4) test fault tolerant onboard computer and packet telemetry; 5) conduct cis-lunar aerobraking experiments; and 6) detect and measure mass and velocity of micro-meteorite particles. Three follow-on objectives were also added: excursion to the L4 and L5 Lagrangian points of the Earth-Moon system, orbit of the Hiten spacecraft around the Moon, and hard landing on the lunar surface. Hiten was named after a flying, music-playing Buddhist angel. Hagoromo was named for the veil worn by Hiten. This mission included Japan's first-ever lunar flyby, lunar orbiter, and lunar surface impact.

Selene (SELenological and ENgineering Explorer)
Lunar Orbiter and Lander
Launch Period: 2005
Agency: ISAS, NASDA - Japan

Selene will carry 13 instruments including imagers, a radar sounder, laser altimeter, X-ray fluorescence spectrometer and gamma-ray spectrometer to study the origin, evolution, and tectonics of the Moon from orbit. The 2000 kg launch-mass spacecraft will be carried by an H-2A rocket from the Tanegashima Space Center. The spacecraft consists of three separate units: the main orbiter, a small relay satellite, and a small VLBI (Very Long Baseline Interferometry) satellite. The orbiter is a rectangular box carrying the scientific instrumentation, measures about 2.1 m by 4.2 m, and has a mass of roughly 1600 kg. The relay satellite is an octagonal prism and will be used to transmit communications from the orbiter to Earth. The VLBI satellite is the same shape as the relay satellite and will be used to conduct precise investigations on the position and precession of the Moon.

Selene will take 5 days to reach the Moon, where it will be put into an initial 120 x 13000 km orbit at an inclination of 95 degrees. The relay satellite will be released into a 100 x 2400 km orbit and then the VLBI satellite will be released into a 100 x 800 km orbit. The orbiter will then be lowered to its nominal 100 km circular orbit. Selene will carry out observations for approximately one year.

---

The Japanese plan many more planetary missions, including a 2007 Venus orbiter called Planet-C. This will be extremely valuable to planetary scientists, providing the international community with a huge amount of novel data, including optical observations of the surface through the narrow 1 micron NIR window in the atmosphere. This should allow unambiguous identification of active volcanism, unlike all previous USSR/US attempts.

-Karl

Has Japan actually sent something moonward?

No, ever since that whole King Ghidorah and Planet X incident, Japan has been wary of sending anything beyond Earth's orbit. Every time they try something Gozilla ends up destroying Tokyo, so they've scaled back on these massive techology ventures.

Anyway, link to Japan's current lunar projects here

"Space" and the associated term "space environment" are used to mean various things, but we can define "space" (or "outer space") as beginning above the troposphere (altitude 10 km) and the environment of that region as the "space environment."
- from http://spaceboy.nasda.go.jp/qanda/qanda_e/qspaceen v_e.html

The Japenese Halca satellite, launched in 1997 had an 8 meter deployable dish, and it was supposed to be superceeded by something bigger (but funding got a bit tight of course)
The "Trumpet" SigInt (Signals Intellegence) satellites, of which the NSA has launched 4 or so, have an absolutly HUGE dish. See Pic here Size is said to be in the region of 150-200 meters in diameter, in a very high orbit (either Moylina, or Geosync)
(Of course, it needs to be that size to pick up your keystrokes and monitor radiation from orbit.)

Karma cap reached, so mod somebody else up.

This is some information on a treaty from 1983 which prohibits use of force against satellites and also prohibits using satellites to shoot at the earth.

These satellites usually follow a sun-synchronous orbit. Basically, this is a polar orbit (meaning that the satellites fly over the north pole, the equator, the south pole, the other side of the equator, and then back over the north pole). One of these rotations happens every 101-103 minutes. Now, the beauty of the whole thing is that during the orbit doesn't fly over the same spot of the equator every time... it moves a bit. This bit is almost equal to the distance that the earth has rotated in those 103 minutes... thus, the satellite always follows the sun as works its way around the earth.

This orbit strikes a good balance between maximum sun exposure (useful for taking pictures), global coverage, and revist time. Half the time it's in dark, the other half it's taking photos at noontime.

Being in the light all the time would require a much higher orbit (near geostationary) that would make the optics work much harder. Since the satellite would be moving much slower with respect to the earth, the revisit time would also greatly suffer.

Geez, take an anti-paranoia pill dude. If anything opening up the space program will reduce industry corruption. The only way you'd get a space monopoly is if the government mandates it.

What happens when someone gets a monopoly in space? Everytime you try to star gaze you have to distinguise the stars from the MS logos?

I'm sure the ESA and NASDA will have a good laugh at the attempt. They aren't going to stand idily by you know.

If we were to commericialize space, there will need to be some heavy duty restrictions.

WRONG! Aside from some restrictions on safety similar to the airline industry, you want to open it up as wide as possible. Openness and competition are the cure to corruption and monopoly, not the cause!

So, basically, the law hasn't really been set yet. Add in the fact that there's no generally accepted definition of 'outer space' and the situtation's pretty messed up.

To give a very rough idea of why Space stuff is both hard and expensive, here's a small article on what a satellite has to go through:

To give some idea of the environment a satellite has to work in, try this.

First, to simulate launch, attack a chain to your satellite-wannabe and drag it around behind your car on a rough road for 2 minutes at about 30 mph. It should be switched off throughout, then switched on immediately before the next bit.

Stick it in a tumble drier for a minute, to simulate the tumbling after separation. It should be able to right itself after you take it out if attitude control is important (like so you can point antennae towards earth....)

Stick it in the freezer, turned to max Cold. Then, while it's at -20F, take it out and stick it in an oven at about 250F. After a few cycles, half an hour of each, then put it in the microwave and set it on "high" for 10 minutes. Repeat continuously for the period it's supposed to operate, and it should work without a hitch throughout.

I can't think of an easy way to simulate vacuum (you get some interesting outgassing with many components, shorts, conductive glunk accumulating everywhere), but the above should be enough for a basic test. More complex and realistic ones are much tougher to pass.

(The above based upon personal observations at our clean room, and vibration, vacuum-and-heat torture chambers etc for FedSat-1, a Scientific research micro-satellite based on SIL components due to go up on a NASDA H-2A booster next year).

I'm just team-leading the software development BTW, I'm no hardware junkie. Programming for a 5-year life cycle where errant cosmic rays not just may but will randomly flip bits, and it's still gotta work, is non-trivial, but doable. Kinda neat and really interesting too.

In space, no-one can go up there to press CTRL-ALT-DEL.

>The US and France (not that France has any kind
>of space program) are not at the best of terms,
>Germany is still re-building the eastern half,
>the UK... what are they up to, and Japan.
>Actually, I'm surprised that Japan isn't
>involved... well, maybe they are, but if so, the
>newspeople are ignoring it.

>You can pretty much count out all of Africa, the
>Middle East, most of Asia, South America,and a
>fair chunk of Europe. No one really lives in
>Antarctica, so that really leaves the Aussies.
>Are they involved? If not, why not? (Probably
>because you couldn't convince an Aussie he'd
>need a spacesuit...)

Well while it is true Russia and the U.S. are doing the majority of the work and cost, there are a number of other countries that will contribute after the core of the station is built.

Some of the countries future contributions include:

U.S.:
-Truss and Photovoltaic Arrays
-U.S. Lab
-Centrifuge Accomodation Module
-Node 2
-Node 3
-Crew Return Vehicle (X-38)
-Habitation Module

Russia:
-Science Power Platform
-Universal Docking Module
-Research Module 1
-Research Module 2
-Docking Compartment

Japan:
-Kibo [JEM Experimental Logistics Module, JEM Remote Manipulator System, JEM Exposed Facility]

European Union:
-European Lab/Columbus Orbital Facility

Canada:
-CSA Remote Manipulator System (robot arm)

Italy:
-Multi-Purpose Logistics Module (A supply "van" for moving stuff from Earth to the station) Brazil: Express Express

Some excellent links:

• Diagram
• Timeline
• Progress

I'm a little amused by people asking for a comparison of the costs of a Cray SV2 compared with a Beowulf. For a certain class of applications, they remain dominant and some groups are willing to pay the extra premium for that niche, regardless of the absolute costs (and don't forget the cooling/storage/manpower multipliers). Much like a train (vector computers) is suited for different terrain than buses (shared-mem) or trucks (SMP), vector computers provide very cost effective REAL computing power, often obtaining 50-60% of peak performance whereas you'd be lucky to see beyond single digits for MMPs (and before I get roasted, I'd qualify that by noting decent compilers and reworking algorithms often overcome initial technical limitations).

As for the US support of Cray, well, jaded veterns of comp.sys.supercomputer and HPCC practitioners are well aware of the historical situation with federal funding, technical advantages and bang-for-buck comparisons with Fujitsu and NEC vector computers. For people interested in what the Japanese are doing, I believe NEC are planning on introducing a 1 Teraflop machine with the goal of hitting 5 Teraflops for their Whole Earth Simulator project . Some scientists' idea of heaven is a dedicated vector box and for their purpose and types of code, it is a valid desire.

The SV2 is a curious beast, effectively the first stage in the merging of the Origin cc-NUMA memory subsystem and vector chips. You can think of it as a hybrid box allowing various combination of graphics pipes, MIPS/Merced nodes and vector nodes. The gripe of some people is that they are looking for a successor to the top-end T90 and they are impatient. However, developing at the high end is always trickier than people expect (witness Merced) as you need to increase capabilities along a multitude of dimensions (memory latency, I/O subsystem, heat dissipation, networking) rather than relying from the automatic boost from Moore's Law. Unfortunately there are very few applications which demand absolute performance regardless of actual cost.

To paraphrase crass consumerism, if you have to ask about the price, you can't afford it :-).

LL