Slashdot Mirror

That's the southern pole, the northern pole has much higher concentration of water ice. The latest theory on the reason is that the closest thing mars has to a jet stream runs from the south to the north, which evaporates the water ice and re-deposits it on the northern pole.

Here's the story:

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/ mars_poles_020320.html

"Peter Diamandis, originator of the Ansari X-Prize is now claiming private companies may beat NASA back to the Moon: "In the next five to eight years we will have the first private orbital flights occurring. When you're in orbit you are two-thirds of the way to anywhere. I predict that within about three years of private human orbital flights...you'll have the first private teams of people stockpiling fuel on orbit and making a bee-line for the Moon." If Diamandis's math is correct and Bigelow's $50M America's Space Prize is sufficient for orbit, NASA could set up an "Apollo Prize" for a lot less money than they'd spend themselves to return to the moon. Indeed, someone like Paul Allen could afford to endow such a prize if NASA gets too bogged down with funding cycle politics again."

"Peter Diamandis, originator of the Ansari X-Prize is now claiming private companies may beat NASA back to the Moon: "In the next five to eight years we will have the first private orbital flights occurring. When you're in orbit you are two-thirds of the way to anywhere. I predict that within about three years of private human orbital flights...you'll have the first private teams of people stockpiling fuel on orbit and making a bee-line for the Moon." If Diamandis's math is correct and Bigelow's $50M America's Space Prize is sufficient for orbit, NASA could set up an "Apollo Prize" for a lot less money than they'd spend themselves to return to the moon. Indeed, someone like Paul Allen could afford to endow such a prize if NASA gets too bogged down with funding cycle politics again."

"NASA has transferred its X-37 technology demonstration program to the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which plans to go ahead with atmospheric drop tests of the prototype space plane next year."

The B-52 aircraft that NASA normally uses for such drop tests would not be used, a decision made by the agency now in charge of the X-37 program, he said. "The cost analysis favored Scaled Composites," [NASA spokesman Michael] Braukus said.

The site is not slashdotted. Nevertheless the original space.com article.

Russia and Kazakhstan are set to complete construction on a new unmanned spacecraft launch complex by 2008-2009.link.

Cassini-Huygens? Launched 8 years ago and was the last of the big, well funded missions. Development work began in the 1980s. What's in the pipeline now? Mars Science lab is probably going to be delayed. JIMO is probably gone, the Pluto mission is probably gone. There will be a few little missions like Messenger, but nothing major.

Hubble? Horribly flawed development, launched in 1990 after being in development since the 1970s. Decaying as we speak. Rescue misson perhaps, perhaps not. James Webb is not a replacement, won't fly to 2011 at the earliest and has only a 4-year lifespan.

Chandra? Launched 5 years ago, development started in the 1980s.

Where are we now? There's almost nothing in the pipeline and NASA's sucking every dime out of science to feed the shuttle and ISS programs. We've got another decade of good stuff from existing probes, but after that we better hope ESA, Japan and China take up the slack.

Here's the link to the Space.com story published on the 19th.

Disaster a year away if ISS is abandoned

Numerous potentially fatal problems during construction

ISS Flying with 800 safety problems, some potentially fatal.

Disaster a year away if ISS is abandoned

Numerous potentially fatal problems during construction

ISS Flying with 800 safety problems, some potentially fatal.

Disaster a year away if ISS is abandoned

Numerous potentially fatal problems during construction

ISS Flying with 800 safety problems, some potentially fatal.

If you have the tech to build a space elevator, dispersing the Van Allen radiation belts is a cinch.

Even dispersing just the inner belt would be helpful: the Space Station could be then pushed into a higher orbit so it needs less frequent reboosting.

Every other post seems to be a joke, so I'll just put this here. What's with the artist's rendition? The article said the event was photographed, why not use that image instead of some swirly colors that may or may not have any relation to reality?

I read somewhere about workers at an Army ammunition plant. A newbie came on, and was being shown around his area of responsibility, when there was a loud metallic CLANG, as some object in the warehouse full of high explosives dropped to the floor. The newbie instinctively dove to the ground has his compatriots chuckled. As he stood back up, they told him, "If you hear it hit the floor, it didn't explode."

Looks like this one was a dud. Lucky much?

What, THIS Benny Peiser? Seems to be a bit of a media whore, what is his speciality again? http://www.space.com/astronotes/astronotes.html April 20

Russian Astrologist Sues NASA

NASA has been taken to court in Russia over its plans to crack open a comet.

Marina Bai, a Russian astrologist, filed a lawsuit last month with the Presnensky district court in Moscow, demanding that the U.S. space agency call off its $311 million Deep Impact mission. As reported in MosNews.com, Bai is also asking for 8.7 billion rubles ($311 million) in compensation for moral damages.

"The actions of NASA infringe upon my system of spiritual and life values, in particular on the values of every element of creation, upon the unacceptability of barbarically interfering with the natural life of the universe, and the violation of the natural balance of the Universe," Bai said in her claim.

Deep Impact, which is already in space, is scheduled to collide with Comet 9P/Tempel 1 on July 4th of this year. The spacecraft will be used to dig out a crater in the comet. Scientists will then hope to learn what a typical comet is made of.

The district court dismissed the Bai's case, but the Moscow City Court took up the appeal and will rule following a hearing scheduled for May 6.

Benny Peiser, a researcher at Liverpool John Moores University who follows asteroid science and the surrounding media and public attention, said even some Russian scientists have jumped on this court case, calling the space mission an act of "vandalism that cannot be justified."

"I can only hope that this irrational technophobia is not a sign of things to come in other parts of Europe, which is already falling worryingly behind internationally in science and technology, never mind space exploration," Peiser told SPACE.com.

Is this what you are referring to?

The blueprints for the Saturn V were not destroyed it is merely infeasable to build a 40 year old rocket design out of what we have availible today in terms of parts. A better article on the subject: http://www.space.com/news/spacehistory/saturn_five _000313.html

So, I was laying around lazily on a vacation here in San Diego, and an idea idly struck me while shooting the breeze with my accompanying teacher friend.

There have been plenty of schemes to use Solar Power Satellites to provide cheap, ecological power to earth-based consumers, but one big problem has always been transmission.

Lasers and microwaves have been proposed, but lasers are notoriously inefficient, and both lasers and satellites have other problems. (cooking birds, airplanes and pedestrians in the case of an alignment problem, etc)

How do you get that power down to earth?

Well, few recent articles lead me to believe that a space elevator made of 5,5 quantum wires might be the best!

1) Transmission of power over superconductors wouldn't be very "lossy".

2) Problem of getting power to the elevators themselves largely solved.

3) 5,5 "quantum wires" are single-walled nanotubes, the best kind for tension strength, and are thus a natural fit.

4) No "cooked birds and airplanes" problems with alignment.

5) Getting sufficient material into space to build an economically feasible solar power station is cheap - just put the stuff on the elevator!

Is there any reason why this wouldn't work? Can anybody shoot holes in this idea?

wouldn't it need to be deployed a bit more carefully than could be done through a rocket, i.e. that's why they used a Shuttle for Hubble itself?

http://www.space.com/entertainment/050429_hitchike r_review.html

Space.com says it was pretty good =) Althought I wouldnt trust their movie reviews too much.

Did someone say SUV?

http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology /mars_science_lab_040211.html

If you are talking about the shuttle, then we are currently running at 14 deaths from about 100 shuttle launches (rounding for simplicity), or over 100,000 per million shuttle launches. The shuttles are running a bit behind.

If you are talking about satellites, then I don't know what the numbers are, but they blow up all the time. The fact that they achieve 30 deaths per million launches is because they are unmanned and usually launched over the sea, not because of any inherant safety record.

"when you take a small mass of radioactive material that gives off lethal amounts of radiation and spread it over a large geographic area you cannot get a lethal exposure. "

It really doesn't work that way. Highly-radioactive chunks of metal of various sizes hit the ground after Cosmos 954 crashed. Several of them could have delivered a lethal dose to a person whio handled them without proper protection.

Here's one reference
And another reference
That talk about the potential lethality of some of the recovered fragments from the satellite. Keep in mind that nobody knows how many of the fragments that hit the ground were actually recovered.

Thanks for the link.

To clarify my position, I'm actually very much in favor of Project Prometheus, but I'm not so sure that JIMO is the best initial application for this. I'd prefer to see a prototype nuclear reactor on a much smaller and less complex test mission first, before sticking it on something massively complicated like JIMO.

Space.com had an article on possible alternatives a little while back. A snippet:

NASA is reviewing a list of fission-powered missions that could pre-empt the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter (JIMO) effort now being eyed for space travel no sooner than 2015.

A special study team has identified six potential candidate missions that could be done sooner, have shorter mission durations, and would be far less difficult to implement... The six ideas are:

* Technology Demonstration Mission to test fission power system in deep space with no specific science goal or destination.

* Lunar Geophysical Orbiter that in extended mission mode could serve as a telecom asset for future lunar missions.

* Next Generation Mars Telecommunications Station.

* Near Earth Object (NEO) Asteroid Mission that would involve stopovers at multiple objects, perhaps landing hardware on a NEO to assess the ability to modify the trajectory of a celestial body.

* Venus Orbiter, more like a Magellan II spacecraft that would carry out low altitude runs over the cloudy planet with state-of-the-art radar.

* Astrophysics Mission that would use high power levels from a fission power source, likely sending collected science information at very high data rates.

Because there ain't no way the Bush White House is paying for this.

Actually, the Bush administration explicitly gave the go-ahead and requested funding for Project Prometheus. I dislike most of what Bush does, but this was one of the few things he did that I supported.

Of course, this made anti-nuclear folks like Bruce Gagnon quite spastic.

Wait... you're claiming that a ship that handles all sorts of volatiles can't *combust* *hydrogen*? There was strong evidence in original galactica that the ship had fusion power, for YHVH's sake. They're dealing with dangerous 'tylium' and 'solium'... it's silly to think that they can't handle having a hydrogen torch inside a tank with cool walls.

that's just a theory

That is not a theory. The spectral signature of ice is all over the bloody place.

there's so little solid matter

Yeah... most ice is gasseous at near the background temperature. Suuuure ;) We know what's in the Oort cloud - when they get close to us, we call them "comets". Inwards from there, you get kupier belt objects, like Pluto and Quaoar. Inward still, you get ice on almost every moon in the outer solar system, some made almost entirely of ice.

The Kupier Belt is believed to be composed of rocky bodies

Saturn's moon Phoebe is the most studied kupier belt object thusfar, and it's mostly ice. The Kupier belt is bodies made of rock *and* ice, mostly ice. Heck, Uranus and Neptune are known as *ice giants*, because they have accumulated so much ice-laden material from the kupier belt that they have large icy cores. The icy worlds Pluto and Quaoar probably have the next best Kupier belt data.

Oh, and Saturn's rings are mostly ice. A good chunk of their moon's masses are ice - Enceladus being some of the most pure ice in the solar system. Ice is the dominant surface material in Saturn's moons, and once of the most dominant in Jupiter's moons

Please... get serious here.

Yeah... now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go land and take off from gravity wells as if they're nothing; first, though, I'll use energy from my tylium energizer to power up my laser blaster, in case my ship's ridiculously powerful ion engine gets disabled and I need protection.

Surely you were kidding about it being "modern tech". And I'll note that you've decided to ignore the fact that ice is *everywhere* in the galaxy. That's one of the main reasons why we use infrared telescopes - you get the water ice IR band. Water is the third most common molecule in the galaxy as a whole.

In Battlestar Galactica, they can land on atmosphere-covered huge gravity wells, and can find their proportionally tiny ships in deep space (and small objects on huge planets, etc), but they, of course, can't manage to find any of the trillions of icy bodies, some quite large, that surround almost every star, which even a modest modern observatory could find. It is preposterous.

Apollo was different. As you said, Apollo used a much lower working pressure, with a higher proportion of O2 to yield a normal O2 partial pressure. However, both ISS and Shuttle use sea-level normal atmospheric pressure.

References:

Indian newspaper, gives pressure in mmHg.
Random science site, gives pressure in psi.
Space.com article about the pressure leak that was experienced last year, gives the pressure in psi.

You're wrong, sorry. ISS and Shuttle use an oxy/nitro mix at full atmospheric pressure; not being a biomed person, I can't give you a good answer as to why, but I can confirm (both from publicly available information and personal experience working on Shuttle) that this is true.

I work for NASA on the manned programs and my experience is that hard drives are a headache on long term space missions.

The laptops onboard Space Station are primarily IBM laptops (many of which will soon be running Linux - yeah!). While the drives are easy to replace, they fail fairly often (compared to other space hardware) and new ones need to be launched. The software on the drives also becomes corrupted frequently (maybe once every few weeks), requiring the crew to waste time recopying the software from CD. While these COTS laptops and hard drives were cheap up front (almost zero development cost, custom stuff would have been tens of millions of dollars) we are paying for it now because we waste a lot of operational time fixing them.

The Honeywell Command and Control computers (the primary flight computers onboard, which are triple redundant and manages core systems in the US segment) used to have a 300 megabyte hard drive to store flight software.

In 2001 during a shuttle mission, hard drive problems caused ALL THREE of those computers to crash simultaneously in a massive cascading failure. While it never got a lot of press, recovering from that took several days and an effort reminiscent of Apollo 13. You can read a contemporary article on it here: http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/launches/soyu z_iss_010427.html

When we got the things back and did a post-mortem, it turned out that the hard drive had a design flaw where the arm was dragging across the disk during power down and scratching it, which eventually led to failure.

They were replaced with solid state units shortly thereafter (which were already in the development pipeline). No moving parts, and much less problematic.

We cannot make another saturn V because some of the paperwork has been lost.

This is incorrect. The Saturn V blueprints are safe and completely intact on microfilm at MSFC, where they have been since the 1960s. Nothing at all has been lost. From the link:

"The Federal Archives in East Point, Georgia, also has 2,900 cubic feet of Saturn documents," he said. "Rocketdyne has in its archives dozens of volumes from its Knowledge Retention Program. This effort was initiated in the late '60s to document every facet of F 1 and J 2 engine production to assist in any future restart."

...by putting the engineering plans and documentation on the Internet! Then we can build some and make a Beowulf cluster... oh wait.

DaGoodBoy

Hear, hear.

I've been quite surprised at the influx of "odd" observations over the past few years; I certainly wasn't expecting local pancake structures.

You raise a pretty good point, though, on the structure of disks, large and small, in the first place.

Plasma physicists jump up and down that the in-vogue theories treat large-scale magnetic fields and currents as non-existent, as though charge must cancel out on the large scale, therefore it has no effect. Sometimes, they make a good point - some of the disk systems do resemble dynamos.

Some of the papers I've read in passing on "push" gravity theories estimate that the force of gravity is proportional to 1/d**2 locally, but trends to 1/d on the outsides of the galaxy. Otherwise, there's a lot of unseen matter there (and we haven't seen anything resembling the high-velocity clouds gathering on the edges of the galaxy)... or, alternately, we're ignoring a dynamo effect.

Or... etc. (Assuming we stop before postulating that angels sit on the edge fanning galaxies with their wings ;)

It's the bank of poorly-explained pieces that will lead us to our next big theoretical breakthrough (or revolution) - but it takes some special vigilance to keep track of what hasn't actually been explained properly, and what's been merely papered over.

Too many tweaks. They should have realized something was wrong sometime between inflation theory, and dark-energy-requiring ever-increasing-acceleration theory. Plenty of duct tape on things already :)

By the way, speaking of aether... ;)

I can understand the establishment position somewhat... it's either duct tape or anarchy. There's got to be a standard to measure against, but if the explanations start stretching thin, they need an exit strategy.

If that day comes, they will need to exit to something, though. What's out there that can explain the pancakes at multiple scales of the universe and other phenomena as well?

Perhaps they need to take a page out of other research and development, and apportion some funds to "blue sky" research.

The biggest dividends will come from research that's reviewed for logic, self-consistency and explanation of phenomena without regard to how well it fits into prior patterns. Pro-Ams and people in fields with more easily measureable results (applied sciences, for one) realize these benefits, but being in a field where so many assumptions have to be made to interpret the results in the first place make this next to impossible for the theoreticians to condone dissent.

Everybody's MMV :)

-- Ritchie

• Bush is planning cuts in astronomy budgets.

You didn't read the f**king article, did you? You just saw the trigger word "Bush" and switched into "bush-bashing mode" immediately.

There is no mention of cuts. There is only lack of promise that they will grow. And there is an appeal for greater scrutiny in managing funding, and I don't see nothing wrong with that. Scientists should also think carefully about the ways they spend public money and at least consider less costly approaches where possible. Why should they be above this?

And there is lots of criticism of ISS program and the way it is managed - and you can hardly argue with that.

Bush is planning cuts in astronomy budgets.

TFA claims there are no constantly sunlit spots near the south pole, but remembering an article I saw a few years ago, I looked up Malapert Mountain, also in a space.com article. Same story..constantly lit, on a crater rim, and the inside of the crater is constantly dark, so it would be perfect for an optical telescope with a short cable run to the moon base at the crater rim. They even suspect strongly that there's water ice in the crater there. So, what gives? Is the previous article wrong or are the people in the current article suffering from amnesia/not-discovered-here? They seem to both be using data from Clementine. Here's another, more informative site on Malapert with lots of pretty pictures.

11 years for the data to be analyzed.

In another equally insightful phrase...

"That fits in neatly with the White House vision of using the Moon as a stepping stone to Mars."

No wonder.

I thought this was supposed to replace the Shuttle.

Except they cancelled that project in 2001.

Disclosure: collectSPACE Editor Robert Pearlman is among the collectors who unknowingly purchased items stolen from the Cosmosphere. In response to a request by NASA, he has surrendered the artifact - an Apollo spacesuit strap-on pocket - to NASA's Inspector General.

The story links to other sites' top reasons for going into space and Space.com's list inevitably includes mining.

In the same paragraph the article states "water is the most precious substance you can find in space" and "everywhere we look there is water." Well which is it? Is it rare or ubiquitous? It can't be both.

I remain unconvinced that space mining will ever make much sense. It's all but certain that molecular nanotechnology will revolutionize materials science in the first half of this century, obviating any conceivable need for space mining and eventually, perhaps, even some earth mining.

Following is a modified version of a submission from last month, relevant to this discussion. I believe Edwards' group is planning on competing in the competition. Hopefully congress will lift the $250K prize restriction, allowing NASA to award larger prizes and truly stimulate research in this area:

MSNBC, Space.com, and Wired report that NASA, in collaboration with the non-profit Spaceward Foundation, has announced its first two Centennial Challenges. The Centennial Challenges, inspired by the Ansari X Prize and DARPA Grand Challenge, are prize contests seeking to stimulate private industry development of technologies relevant to space exploration. One contest is the Tether Challenge, for building the sort of super-strong tether needed to make a space elevator feasible. The other is the Beam Power Challenge, for creating a wirelessly-powered ribbon-climbing robot capable of lifting as large a payload as possible within a limited timeframe. The initial set of challenges in 2005 will award $50K to the winners of each contest. A second set of challenges in 2006 will award first, second, and third place prizes worth $100K, $40K, and $10K. It's hoped that these contests will further space elevator technology and help eliminate the 'giggle factor' surrounding them. Additional contests will be announced in the coming weeks, although Congress currently restricts NASA from awarding prizes of more than $250K; the agency is lobbying to try to get this limit raised to $40 million for future prizes.

Hear, hear.

I've been quite surprised at the influx of "odd" observations over the past few years; I certainly wasn't expecting local pancake structures.

You raise a pretty good point, though, on the structure of disks, large and small, in the first place.

Plasma physicists jump up and down that the in-vogue theories treat large-scale magnetic fields and currents as non-existent, as though charge must cancel out on the large scale, therefore it has no effect. Sometimes, they make a good point - some of the disk systems do resemble dynamos.

Some of the papers I've read in passing on "push" gravity theories estimate that the force of gravity is proportional to 1/d**2 locally, but trends to 1/d on the outsides of the galaxy. Otherwise, there's a lot of unseen matter there (and we haven't seen anything resembling the high-velocity clouds gathering on the edges of the galaxy)... or, alternately, we're ignoring a dynamo effect.

Or... etc. (Assuming we stop before postulating that angels sit on the edge fanning galaxies with their wings ;)

It's the bank of poorly-explained pieces that will lead us to our next big theoretical breakthrough (or revolution) - but it takes some special vigilance to keep track of what hasn't actually been explained properly, and what's been merely papered over.

Too many tweaks. They should have realized something was wrong sometime between inflation theory, and dark-energy-requiring ever-increasing-acceleration theory. Plenty of duct tape on things already :)

By the way, speaking of aether... ;)

I can understand the establishment position somewhat... it's either duct tape or anarchy. There's got to be a standard to measure against, but if the explanations start stretching thin, they need an exit strategy.

If that day comes, they will need to exit to something, though. What's out there that can explain the pancakes at multiple scales of the universe and other phenomena as well?

Perhaps they need to take a page out of other research and development, and apportion some funds to "blue sky" research.

The biggest dividends will come from research that's reviewed for logic, self-consistency and explanation of phenomena without regard to how well it fits into prior patterns. Pro-Ams and people in fields with more easily measureable results (applied sciences, for one) realize these benefits, but being in a field where so many assumptions have to be made to interpret the results in the first place make this next to impossible for the theoreticians to condone dissent.

Everybody's MMV :)

-- Ritchie

Work is underway at JP Aerospace on the Ascender, a hybrid aircraft for flight at the upper most part of the atmosphere, as well as the Vee Airship. These type vehicles are of interest to the U.S. Air Force Space Battle Laboratory in Colorado Springs, Colorado. They are focused on perfecting a near-space maneuvering vehicle, Powell said. === end quote

Sorry to burst your bubble, but "real" space is pretty boring to look at. About 99% of the "Ooooh! Cool!" pictures you see have re-mapped the colors (shade of gray #253 -> HOT RED!), added in starbursts, etc. In a suprising turn of events, most of space is in grey. Not very exciting, and definitely not a good way to get funding, so you can't really blame them for touching up the photos. As a matter of fact, the Hubble doesn't even HAVE a color camera. All of those pretty colors are added to a B&W photo.
Learn the horrifying truth! ;-)
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/astronomy/co lor_universe_020625-1.html

Thing is, the Voyager probes have made so many attitude-contol maneuvers that any anomalous decelleration is essentially indiscernable (Turyshev, JPL). They're essentially useless for investigating that particular mystery. Short of watching it in case it gets eaten by a giant space goat, the Voyager probes are not a worthwhile subject of study. Their batteries are nearly dead, their sensors have nothing to look at, and they're nearly beyond communication range. They're done, man, let 'em go.

"These things have dramaticly outlived their projected lifetimes, while their british counterpart didn't even survive to the first day."

It's fairly incontrovertable that there *are* objects in the universe with gravity so intense that light can't escape them (at least visible light), but as for what actually happens at the 'event' horizon, it's all a guess. Gravastars, Dark Energy stars, and Black Holes all would look about the same in a radio telescope. There's no reason this can't be true.

Besides, uninformed dismissal based on previous works is what put Galileo in the pokey. Proper management of a paper like this would be to determine an experiment and examine the results.

Which means that all those gorgeous images the previous poster was talking about will no longer be available other than with false color.

Purely science fiction?

The Russians built and launched one (which failed due to technical problems). The concept is certainly within our reach.

Also, solar sails would work in low earth orbit. Photons of light impart force, not just the solar wind. That's how (as another example) those laser propelled spacecraft ideas would work, as well.

he _threw_ the satellite?

Russian space program must be really very cash strapped...

(for those who ask, http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/exp10_eva2_05 0328.html)
'He later deployed the small satellite by tossing it into space'