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Here is an interesting story about the Saturn V blueprints and why NASA doesn't want to rebuild from them.

The Saturn V is (was) built from what is now antiquated technology. I'd rather see then implement Jupiter.

I remember hearing that proposed lunar bases would shield themselves from cosmic rays by burying the modules in a thick coating of lunar soil.

The same could be done with anything sent to mars.

No need to do that, Mars has caves! See http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070402_mm_mars_caves.html for details.

What the hell is this? Or this? Or this? Or this?

Get the picture? These are all NASA robots with legs. Just because they haven't used one yet doesn't mean they aren't looking at them.

Just a little longer...

http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/081001-tw-phoenix-microphone.html

i don't know the exact details, but apparently others have given it some thought and seem to have arrived at various solutions to the problem.

An interesting article, that in my honest opinion, makes far more sense explaining the current global temperature changes.

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/sun_output_030320.html

I thought I'd make a bundle coming up with the idea of giving cruise-control systems awareness of hills and allowing them to back off near the crest of a hill and accelerate a bit before the base a hill, but it's already been patented. The idea has been introduced, but I'm not aware of it ever catching on.

I suspect a major drawback to a company interested in promoting this system is that by design, it would introduce speed variances between equipped cars and non-equipped cars, which opens the door for accidents and litigation.

Supercavitation would allow submarines to move at supersonic (with reference to water) speeds while submerged, and dogfight underwater like WWI aircraft did in the air. If they can come to a complete stop they'd be silent and invisible, just floating there, then fire up the engines and go back to moving faster than ship-based sonar would be able to detect them. There's already a supercavitating torpedo. People who design targets -- I mean aircraft carriers and destroyers -- must be worrying about this.

#3 was the first thing that came to my mind when i read it was a PTP wireless beam. the article doesn't really discuss the issue, but i would imagine snow/rain/fog/humidity/(hail?) could be potential problems.

however, when people generally speak of mm-wave, aren't they talking about non-directional radio waves? since this is a directional beam produced by two lasers, couldn't it have different properties from conventional mm-waves? from what i can gather, mm-waves around the ~60 GHz range are the most prone to oxygen attenuation. so using a 100 GHz mm-wave should protect from atmospheric attenuation.

this space.com article talks about data transmission in space using lasers (sent from earth). in this instance, they're using laser pulses to communicate, so it may be different to what's being applied here, but it does show that a laser beam can be received at great distances. i mean, isn't coherent light a distinctive characteristic of all lasers? so perhaps it wouldn't be as affected by atmospheric conditions.

While not, strictly speaking, *space* (it was filmed on a vomit comet), microgravity porn HAS been produced already:

http://www.space.com/sciencefiction/movies/uranus_experiment_000516.html

The Uranus Experiment series was filmed using the Vomit Comet, and even had music from members of the Prodigy and Massive Attack.

"Air friction" does not cause the heat up during reentry - that's a myth. http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/top5_myths_020903-4.html It is the air pressure created in front of the object as it pushes against the atmosphere.

Huh? Of course we know how heavy metals are formed. Stars explode.

Or, for a more detailed explanation: "Stars Make Heavy Metal in Slow Burn" http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/astronomy/heavy_metal_010823.html

TO: darth MALL, et al.
RE: The Great Flood

Sorry to disappoint you, but they've found a smoking gun about this matter: an impact crater near the mouth of the Euphrates River.

HERE IS THE LINK....

Regards,

Chuck(le)

They said it would be open, honest, and transparent so as to let everyone get a glimpse into this historic achievement as a gesture of kindness toward the world. I actually thought about watching it for a few seconds, because there is only so much I thought they could think they could get away with. I guess I needed another reminder.

Patches of matter in the universe seem to be moving at very high speeds and in a uniform direction that can't be explained by any of the known gravitational forces in the observable universe. Astronomers are calling the phenomenon "dark flow." Mysterious New 'Dark Flow' Discovered in Space

The whole article is about a structure inside our light cone being affected by a structure outside our light cone

Good luck to them! Space-X has already won the stick-to-it award for persistence-- now let's hope they win the "great-success-after-hard-work" award.

Indeed. The U.S. hasn't been pursuing space elevators at all

Perhaps by "easy" you meant "facile".

Bidding process has been over for a while ... but there was a cost increase of $10mil because of delays related to some sort of conflict of interest.

(and what the hell's up with the Lockheed spin? CU-Boulder is the ones who won the proposal ... Lockheed's a subcontractor at most)

Even if my health was perfect and I was properly trained, I don't see how a 'manned' mission to Mars will happen anytime soon. Primarily due to the issues of space radiation

I don't think the radiation issue is that bad but I am in favor of it because it is a good reason to send old people.

Even if my health was perfect and I was properly trained, I don't see how a 'manned' mission to Mars will happen anytime soon. Primarily due to the issues of space radiation

See data and reports on Solar Probe Plus

I suspect that not every object's info is made available, rather only the objects that USSTRATCOM deems appropriate for public consumption. Spy Sats, classified objects, and other items that they classify as not appropriate certainly doesn't show up in this KML.

Or do they? ;-)

They don't.
Last year the French "negotiated" with the USA to remove "secret" French satellites from the list.
And by "negotiated" I mean "threatened to reveal unpublished USA satellites".
http://www.space.com/news/060707_graves_web.html

That isn't to say the satellites aren't trackable, they just aren't published publicly by any governments AFAIK.

Besides the conspiracy side of things, there are number of objects that are just simply too small to track. So when satellites have been shot down, or an astronaut drops a bolt, it's out there, but it might not be tracked. The last number I heard was 110k objects over 1cm ... and that number's 8 years old.

It would be 700 quadrillion.

I believe the Malaysians have already dealt with this issue.

The planned shock absorbing system's passive spring and damper component is designed to sit at the top of the first stage and reduce vibrations from thrust oscillations from a peak 6 Gs to about 1 G. The addition of 16 tuned mass absorbers, cylindrical shock absorbers that use motors to sense vibrations and nullify them using spring-mounted weights, would further limit the shaking to about 0.25 Gs, engineers said.

By trying to essentially throw together a rocket from spare parts, they are now costing more money making it work than if they had just built a launcher with a free hand.

I thought the Ares was being built with a free hand, and that the Jupiter system was the one thrown together from spare parts.

Altogether, the added equipment would reduce the lift capacity of the Ares I rocket's first stage by up to 1,400 pounds (625 kg), though the booster segment currently has a margin of about 8,000 pounds (3,628 kg) to work with, Cook said.

There's a much more informative article on Space.com from yesterday: http://www.space.com/news/080819-nasa-ares1-vibration-update.html

"Considering Obama's shifting positions, he cannot be trusted to fully support NASA's mission to Mars," said the RNC's Conant. "The only thing Barack Obama knows about sending a man to the moon is that it's a good applause line."

Yes, because it's much better to tell people we're going to go to Mars, and then not give them sufficient money to do so, resulting in other programs getting cut. Even John Glenn referred to Bush's "Vision for Space Exploration" as an unfunded mandate.

And it's not like this is the only unfunded mandate shoved down NASA's throat -- how much is HSPD-12 costing all of the agencies?

Disclaimer : I've been a contractor at NASA, and one of my projects lost their funding for more than year because of the Mars program ... by the time we got funding again, we couldn't get the team back together, because they had been assigned to other projects.

Earth did have a second moon (first moon?).
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/second_moon_991029.html

  It grew up and moved out. Now it just visits once in a while.

It wasn't 20 years ago when we hadn't detected another planet yet and we didn't know if planets formed around other stars. Now we know they are common, but the ones we detect are large and close to the sun. There's a reason for this: the method we use to detect extrasolar planets works by detecting the gravitational tug between the planet and star by the changing of the star's luminosity over time. If there's a 72 hour cycle where the star dims and brightens, then we know there is a planet in a 3-day orbit around the star. We know how far from the star it is by using the orbital period and the mass of the star. We know the mass by how much the star's luminosity is affected.

There is noise in the observations caused by regular luminosity changes in the star, like from sunspots. The larger and closer the planet to the star, the bigger the change in luminosity and the easier it is to separate that signal from the noise. Also the closer planets give more data to work with. If the star has a 72 hour orbit, you will be able to see a complete cycle every three days. If the planet is like Jupiter, it could be 5 AU from the sun and have an orbital period of 12 years.

Their entire reasoning appears to be based on the assumption that a body the size of these 'hot Jupiters' couldn't form that close to the star because the solar wind would drive the gas away. If that were truly the case, then a star couldn't form at all because the solar wind would drive all of its gases away. If the main gas for the planet accumulates prior to solar ignition then there isn't a problem. This new survey only looked for super-Jupiters that are 5 or more times the size of Jupiter, and that are twice as far away from their star as Jupiter is from Sol. The thing is that if a planet gets to be about 13 times the size of Jupiter then it starts to fuse deuterium and becomes a star. We have found many binary stars that would meet the criteria sought, but that don't count because the mass of the "planet" was too big and it became a star.

These are great questions to ask, but I don't know why the media portrays it as such a surprise that things can be like our solar system. Is anyone really surprised that we found water on Mars? Earth has plentiful water, comets are mostly water, Cassini observed water geysers on Saturn's moon Enceladus. Water is simply the combination of the first and third most plentiful elements in our universe, and the second most plentiful element doesn't chemically bond. Water should be the most abundant molecule in the universe after H2.

This article is a good example. It seems to claim that a solar system would need a planet like Jupiter for there to be life. In one paragraph they say that Jupiter prevents the inner planets from being bombarded by too many space rocks, and in the very next paragraph it says Jupiter perturbs the orbit of space rocks to make them hit Earth, seeding it with water and organic molecules. We don't know enough about formation of planetary systems to say that one would need a Jupiter-like planet for life to form. It sounds like the people that claimed 20 years ago that planetary systems would be very rare before we found our first extrasolar planet (we've found hundreds now).

I'd like to see the whole paper and look at their models. I'd like to know what would cause a planet that formed over millions of years in the outer solar system to move in closer to the star. When it forms, it has an orbital velocity relative to the center of gravity of the system. In order to migrate closer to the star, some other massive object would have to slow it down, wouldn't it?

no one can open a window

Source? Space.com says that a Proton is "more than $100 million" http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/proton_launch_011201.html But if you have a source with a different price, I would be very interested to see it.

No, but some told him he'd be daft to launch from a high-corrosion environment ;) That said, they seem to have dealt with the corrosion problems from the first flight well.

http://www.space.com/news/spacehistory/viking_life_010728-1.html

Mostly it has to do with date that shows the gas exhibited circadian rhythm, and the presence of ferris metals that should not be there. Only one test has yet showed the oxidizer so no actual chance of certainty on the life question yet.
If they do prove the oxidizer, would that rule out all life on mars? or only recent and continuous life?

Yeah, me neither.

I don't know, but I suspect it has something to do with the earlier Viking Labelled Release (LR) experiments, as mentioned in this post.

According to that link, the LR experiment gave a positive result for life. But since a complementary experiment gave a negative result, an alternative explanation posited for the LR data was that there was an oxidising agent in the soil that created a false positive. Since perchlorate is an oxidant, perhaps these latest data represent a conclusive explanation of the Viking LR results as a false positive?

In other words, the data would point to the non-existence of life on Mars. (But that's just a wild guess, I should add.)

Or maybe not, based on data from the Viking missions:

http://www.space.com/news/spacehistory/viking_life_010728-1.html

"Photos taken on Mars' surface of a Viking magnetic experiment on both landers show material clinging to the magnets. That suggests to Levin that whatever the surface processes are on Mars, they are not innately highly oxidizing. A highly oxidizing soil would convert magnetized materials to oxidized forms. Therefore, the magnet would be free of such particles.

"Similarly, the Mars Pathfinder mission in 1997, Levin added, also had significant amounts of magnetic material adhering to magnets attached to the spacecraft.

"Levin said that the paradigm of a Mars sterilized by a highly oxidizing surface is "too embedded in our scientific fabric to be set aside even by demonstrated proofs. He points to a John F. Kennedy quote that says 'the great enemy of truth is often not the lie --deliberate, contrived and dishonest -- but the myth -- persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.'"

Seriously, why the run around. Did they go to the president when the viking Labeled Release results ended up positive?

Well, according to the article you linked to, one experiment on the Viking missions indicated a possible presence of life; another indicated an absence of life. Furthermore, it is possible (again, according to the article you linked to) to explain the positive result as a false-positive. As such, the results were inconclusive, and to suggest that these indicate that there is life on Mars is crazy.

However, it's possible that the current results show the existence of organic compounds after all -- in other words, demonstrating that the negative Viking result was incorrect, and supporting the Viking LR data. Obviously, this would be a very important finding, and together the data from the two missions would provide strong evidence for the presence of life.

(And that, of course, is going to seriously upset the creationists. Although really I think it's pretty obvious that Mars was just a sandbox for God's first attempt at life ...)

Seriously, why the run around. Did they go to the president when the viking Labeled Release results ended up positive? Maybe the life forms are some sort of stem cells and they're checking on the legality of bringing back samples?

They might have to send this experiment again, this time to the north pole in two years time. I wonder if they can cook up another phoenix fast enough?

Seriously, why the run around. Did they go to the president when the viking Labeled Release results ended up positive?

Maybe the life forms are some sort of stem cells and they're checking on the legality of bringing back samples?

..."first, the sun is a 'light in the dome of the sky' for one thing, and also the moon was probably there before water formed on the earth.

Actually, there's at least one way that the order in Genesis for even the 'lights in the dome of the sky' phrase would agree with our current scientific understanding of the creation process. In Genesis, the sun appears to be created twice, first with 'let there be light' and second as a 'light in the dome of the sky.' However, it's possible that the second 'lights in the dome of the sky' reference refers to the impact that created the current moon and caused the earth to begin its current fast rotations (although it's slowed a little over the billions of years.) We don't know what the original fledgling-earth might have been like before that huge impact but it's probable that it had water and could have supported life, based on its distance from the sun.

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/moon_making_010815-1.html

Unless some country takes someone putting nukes in orbit as threat to their national security and shoot them down.
Such moves have been seen before.

It was a nefarious excuse to put nuclear weapons in space.

Unfortunately, it looks like a hidden agenda is behind quite a bit of space policy.

Space solar power (now abandoned) was another attempt at getting weapons into space: collecting solar energy in space makes no economic sense, but it does make sense as an excuse to get a giant, city busting energy weapon into space.

Nuclear propulsion is another such attempt: it makes no sense for solar system exploration, but it does make sense as an excuse to get atom bombs into space.

You're comparison with the most powerful laser is misleading. The power density of many ordinary lasers exceeds the luminosity per unit surface area of many ordinary non-supernovae stars. You don't need a very powerful laser. Take the Sun, which has an areal luminosity of 60MW/m^2; that's beaten by an ordinary 3kW 200um CO2 beam, which has a power density of 75GW/m^2.

Now, let's move up a gear on both sides. The brightest star ever found has an areal luminosity of only 85TW/m^2 (40*10^6 * (solar luminosity 3.846*10^26)/(surface area 4*PI*(3.75*10^9)^2)). However, the power density of the brightest laser is 200YW/m^2 (YW is Yotta Watts, 2*10^22*10^4W/m^2), which is 12 orders of magnitude brighter than the brightest star, so laser massively beats star again.

Pulse duration makes no real difference to the visibility of the pulse. Small cross-section is ideal for aiming.

According this 2005 article the Delta IV or Atlas V EELVs could have been upgraded relatively easily to lift a 25 to 30 ton Orion CEV compared to designing a whole new launch system. Both Boeing and Lockheed were chomping at the bit for the CEV launch business on an EELV-derived design, but knew it was politically expedient to not raise a fuss once Griffin announced the Ares program.

The other question to ask is why must the CEV be so large? It's over designed for LEO and potentially under-designed for a moon mission. NASA may have been better off resurrecting a smaller 5 capable Apollo-style capsule rather than the 7 person CEV.

With a corrected link directly to the story of the alternate program idea. What's annoying to me is this guy can't seem to make up his mind. FTLA:

But Cook said he is familiar with the Jupiter project, and he's not impressed. NASA informally reviewed plans for the rocket last fall and determined the idea to be a flawed scheme based on shaky numbers.

"It's not feasible. We said, 'It doesn't work' and moved on,'" Cook said.

Meanwhile, he said, work on the Ares I rocket is so far along that the first test flight is less than a year away.

So which is it? Is Ares doing jus' ducky, or should he start taking a closer look at Jupiter? Is this just another example of NASA bureaucracy at its worst?

Film at 11....

Damn it, I *JUST YESTERDAY* posted to correct this fallacy. When will the Internet learn?

The blueprints for everything, down to the last nut and bolt, are on file at MSFC. Source.

Further, rebuilding a Saturn from them won't work. You can't get the parts made any more, nor would you want to. You can't duplicate IBM's work and make another Instrument Unit--two tons of 1960s-vintage analog computers and gyroscopes, including equipment designed to determine the rocket's launch azimuth based on star sightings, not GPS like we'd use today. Then there's all the other analog and early digital equipment that's integral to the design. Remember, it's not just a giant fuel tank and some engines--it's a launch vehicle. It's got a flight manual, and it's designed to be used in conjunction with an Apollo command and service module pair flying it.

Re-design the rocket to use new technology? By the time you've de-Apollo'd Saturn, you've made a whole new launch vehicle. Which is exactly what Ares is.

The Saturn V is an awesome piece of technology, yes. An awesome piece of 1960s technology. Rebuilding it today would not work, period, no matter how cool it might be.

This comment is nothing to do with the Tsunami, but then neither are most of the others, so I'll risk going Offtopic.
Firstly, (I'm a Brit by the way) /. is US-centric and as it is American I guess that's fair enough, but as some 40% of /.ers are not, I think a bit of international understanding is called for to stop all this bickering. We all like the same thing (/.) after all.
Secondly, re measurement, the article, based largely on contemporaneous accounts, used Imperial measures, not metric, so learn to live with it. I grew up with metric and imperial measures and am fortunate enough to be able to switch between them quite easily, and even use them together which can be confusing!
Nasa, on the other hand...