Slashdot Mirror

You can watch NASA TV over the internet here. (The nice videos you saw on the news sites are taken from NASA TV - it's pretty interesting).

Here it is. That's the space.com article that started this "Dark Energy" story.

Observations made by the Hubble telescope have produced evidence that the universe is full of "dark energy", stuff that has mass but does not emit nor block light,

Your dark energy explaination is actually the definition of "Dark Matter". Dark energy is the repulsive force in space that accelerates the already spreading galaxies.
Another theory that supports this "Dark Energy" is the theory of a second sun Nemesis

Click on Reentry Video.

"We have already shown the world that we can build successful commercial satellites," he continues. "Now if we prove that we can launch it correctly, it would be the next step."

The article says they want to be able to deliver a complete solution, build a satellite and put it in orbit for the customer. Hope they have a better success than the Chinese Long March failures.

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Space.com has some pictures of MIR's re-entry. MIR hit the water at 05:58 GMT Mar 23.

It's mostly politics: JPL's Climate Orbiter failed, too, and JPL did one of the investigations into the two failures. Basically, they whitewashed their problems and crapped all over LockMart for what were very similar failings... not to excuse LockMart's bungling, just to point out another trait which NASA persistently exhibits.

If indeed the Young report's conclusions were correct, a line of code in the system controller's program would fix the problem: basically, when the legs deploy they tend to set the switches which tell the vehicle it's landed, thereby shutting down the landing motors as soon as they ignite -- simply reseting the registers after leg deployment does the job. In this case, LockMart wants to fix the code, and wants NASA to launch it (well, at least some of the LockMart employees want this).

If NIMA has found the MPL as described, however, then something else is wrong and there's no point in launching another (possibly fundamentally-defective) spacecraft. The Young report was pretty scathing: both JPL's MCO and LockMart's MPL were built for less than the wildly-successful Pathfinder lander, and both projects suffered from lack of supervision by experienced planetary spacecraft engineers, and from inadequate testing. It's not clear that all the potential problems have been identified, so NASA's decision to cancel the 2001 lander's launch may be a good call -- I have mixed feelings about it.

But in any case, NIMA's "discovery" is extremely tentative (despite the ridiculously misleading headline (for shame, /.!), and I wouldn't base any decision on it at the moment. Something tells me that NASA won't launch it under any circumstances, especially given the Bush administration's attitudes toward NASA in general... more's the pity.

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The article continues it's slide down the space.com list... :)

Under the rule of thumb mentioned, you wouldn't need 400 feet per second since air drag gets you once you're down to, say 50 nm. Call it 320 feet per second, or 10 g-seconds. If your rocket pack has a specific impulse of 250 seconds, then 15 pounds of rocket can de-orbit 375 pounds of ballsy/desparate astronaut, life support, heat shield, chute, etc.

One proposal presented to NASA included a line something like 'An emergency space rescue system does not have to be any safer than bailing out of a malfunctioning fighter plane.' Needless to say, NASA objected to such a statement (how can you even think of doing something that's not 100% safe?). An Air Force station would presumably have more realistic safety requirements than NASA.

Link it, man, link it:

The story questioning the ontological status of Pluto

And we haven't yet visited 2000 EB173, isn't 2000 EB173 good enough for you?

I don't know where you got your bogus figures from. Clinton increased NASA's budget by 4.8% for FY 2001, and Bush increased NASA's budget by 2% for FY 2002.

NASA's budget has remained approximately constant after adjusting for inflation since 1992; Clinton's budget increase for NASA in FY 01 was the first real budget for NASA since then.

See http://www.aaas.org/spp/dspp/rd/ca01ag.htm#nasa
and
http://www.space.com/news/spaceagencies/funding_20 02_010228.html

Who claims these really low figures but as of yet doesn't know how to overcome things like interplanetary radiation.. or the bone/muscle strength loss the astronauts would surely encounter from at least a 6month journey each way..

Well, I think we know how to deal with the radiation. As for the bone mass, check this out over at space.com. Some nut has figured out how to stimulate bone growth. He's even talked with NASA about it.

Who claims these really low figures but as of yet doesn't know how to overcome things like interplanetary radiation.. or the bone/muscle strength loss the astronauts would surely encounter from at least a 6month journey each way..

Well, I think we know how to deal with the radiation. As for the bone mass, check this out over at space.com. Some nut has figured out how to stimulate bone growth. He's even talked with NASA about it.

snip

Highlights of 2002 Funding

• Provides $14.5 billion for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), a 2-percent increase over 2001 and a 7-percent increase over 2000.
• Provides increased funding for International Space Station development and operations consistent with a strategy of constraining space station cost growth. ... NASA will be undertaking a number of management reforms to bring space station costs under control.
• Provides a 64-percent increase over 2001 for NASA's Space Launch Initiative. This increase continues NASA's commitment to provide commercial industry the opportunity to meet NASA's future launch needs and to dramatically reduce space transportation costs and improve space transportation safety and reliability.
• Funds a more robust Mars Exploration Program.
• Funds a science-driven program of prioritized follow-on missions for second-generation Earth Observing System measurements that will provide a greater understanding of how Earth and its climate are changing -- an increase of 5 percent over 2001.

snip

Did I read wrong, or is Bush actually INCREASING the budget for some majour programs? And privatizing space flight? There is strong support for the argument that privatizing space flight will send us forward by leaps and bounds, because of the increased funding, the increased safety requirements, and the increased interest (competition, etc).

Truth be told, NASA isn't getting enough. But when Bush actually increases their budget, rather than decreasing it like I feared he would, I think he deserves a little credit. True, some of the bazillion dollars given to military could have gone to NASA, but at least he increased spending on space stuff!

So don't be so quick to criticise Bush on this one; he seems to be doing NASA a favour this time.

Forager

To quote the document which the Slashdot reference refers to:

To support a potential, future sprint to the planet Pluto before 2020, additional funds will be directed to key propulsion technology investments.

I think this is an excellent idea: The Deep Space 1 probe has already pretty much proven that ion drive works, and more interesting propulsion technologies exist on the drawing board. Not only the Pluto-Kuiper program will benefit from this (the Kuiper belt will still be there) but other probe programs as well (except maybe Moon probes, but they ain't that interesting anyway).

The whole budget thing seems to me like GWB is shaking a stick at NASA, saying that they must start to think about the commercialization of space, and to build more reliable stuff.

It isn't all bad, IMHO. It could be a lot worse.

Nobody has ever irrefutably proved that it is impossible to travel faster than c. That it is why it is called the theory of relativity, not the fact of relativity. In fact, I have recently seen articles about scientists accelerating (admittedly massless) particles faster than the speed of light. And the speed of light may actually have a higher limit, check out this article. Hardly anything is ever proved, we just refine our theories by observation and hypothesis and we get closer and closer to the truth.


Enigma

Space.com has more on the subject here.

Here is space.com's coverage.

In case you want another source and forget about space.com Here is their coverage.

According to this Space.com article, there would have been a bigger mass exinction that happened 600 to 700 million years ago, or 350 to 450 million years before the collision described in the article above, which would have killed about 95% of all life forms on the planet. Here's a short version of the Space.com article:
In the 1960's, geologists were unable to explain the evidence of glacial deposits found in the rock strata of every continent, including those at sea level aroung the equator. Was it evidence that ice had covered the entire planet at one time (i.e. a "super ice age")? Continental drift could have been responsible as well. Plus, how could the Earth get so cold as to have ice sheets covering it entirely?
A recent theory suggested that for every drop in global temperature there is an increase in surface snow and ice. As more snow and ice builds, more heat is reflected away, and it gets colder and colder. If ice glaciers had progressed as far as 30 degrees to the equator, a runaway ice age would have frozen the Earth completely. The massive cold snap would easily triggered an extinction like no other. The theory only had one problem, though: how did the Earth eventually thaw?
According to modern-day geologists, the levels of CO2 in the air are directly related to volcanic activity (which puts it there) and global temperature. As volcanoes erupt, they give off CO2 which is washed back to the Earth via rain. In turn, this CO2 is deposited back into the oceans where it settles on the sea floor as carbonate sediment. It is reheated to liquid, then gas, and the process starts anew when it is ejected again by volcanic activity.
If a frozen Earth was still geologically active (tectonic and volcanic action), all the CO2 thrown off my erupting volcanoes would have nowhere to go. As the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere rises, the global temperature rises as well. A few million years later, ice begins to melt, the water vaporates into rain where some of the CO2 is redeposited back onto the ice where the process is repeated. Complete thaw would be quick, happening in less than a couple of hundred years due to the excessive amounts of CO2.
As with the Permian-Triassic Boundary event (the meteor/comet incident 250 million years ago) that triggered the evolutionary process of the rise of the dinosaurs, the great freeze of 600 million years ago also triggered its own evolutionary growth: the Cambrian explosion. The massive dip in population followed by millions of years of harsh environments would have favored the birth of many new forms of life.

ironic, since comets are also thought to be the source of the complex organic molecules that eventually assembled into life in the first place. See amara.com for a layman's introduction to the cosmic dust that comprise comets, and space.com for a discussion of the possible link to life.

Chairboy wrote:
3. Switch from toxic hydrazine to high energy cryogenics for the OMS. Hydrazine safing is part of the huge delay and costs in maintaining the shuttle. Insulative technology has progressed in the 30 years since Hydrazine was chosen to a point where LOX and Hydrogen (or higher temperature fuels) can be stored on orbit for the duration of a shuttle flight.

4. Remove the expensive to maintain and toxic fueled APUs that (among other things) run the hydraulics that power the control surfaces during gliding flight. Use electric pumps powered off of fuel cells instead. After this, Hydrazine would be limited to the RCS and much easier to safe.

I wrote:
Hydrazine replacement is being considered for Phase III of the ongoing Shuttle Upgrades program. It should be noted that the decision tree NASA uses for Shuttle upgrades places safety first, supportability second, reliability and maintainability third, and cost-reduction last.

That last remains true, but I was wrong about the upgrade status. The $1.6 billion upgrades program that Congress approved last fall includes $224M to eliminate hyrdrazine in the Shuttle APU and $208M for the SRB, though the OMS will apparently continue to use it.

Look for these upgrades to be incorporated into flying orbiters late in the coming decade.
----

Chairboy wrote:
3. Switch from toxic hydrazine to high energy cryogenics for the OMS. Hydrazine safing is part of the huge delay and costs in maintaining the shuttle. Insulative technology has progressed in the 30 years since Hydrazine was chosen to a point where LOX and Hydrogen (or higher temperature fuels) can be stored on orbit for the duration of a shuttle flight.

4. Remove the expensive to maintain and toxic fueled APUs that (among other things) run the hydraulics that power the control surfaces during gliding flight. Use electric pumps powered off of fuel cells instead. After this, Hydrazine would be limited to the RCS and much easier to safe.

I wrote:
Hydrazine replacement is being considered for Phase III of the ongoing Shuttle Upgrades program. It should be noted that the decision tree NASA uses for Shuttle upgrades places safety first, supportability second, reliability and maintainability third, and cost-reduction last.

That last remains true, but I was wrong about the upgrade status. The $1.6 billion upgrades program that Congress approved last fall includes $224M to eliminate hyrdrazine in the Shuttle APU and $208M for the SRB, though the OMS will apparently continue to use it.

Look for these upgrades to be incorporated into flying orbiters late in the coming decade.
----

Right now I think NASA is focusing on the unix method of "do one thing and do it well", with the added requirement of "do it cheaply". This mission was meant to go out to the asteroid and take pictures of it, run spectrographic analysis, etc. Your basic ranged sensing package.

I'm sure sending some sort of rover/sample return mission to an asteroid can be expected in the relatively near future. It wouldn't be too much different from the Stardust mission, which is currently on its way to collect material from the tail of the comet Wild-2 and return it to Earth (in 2006).

Right now, though, they're just playing with the last bit of functionality from a defunct piece of equipment. Recall the Lunar Prospector probe, which they crashed into the moon after its mission had been completed, on the off chance that the plume of debris it kicked up would show signs of water. It's a matter of, "we could leave this floating in space forever, or we could try this one last thing before we abandon it." I have to give them credit; they've done some pretty cool things with spacecraft that weren't meant to do them.

Right now I think NASA is focusing on the unix method of "do one thing and do it well", with the added requirement of "do it cheaply". This mission was meant to go out to the asteroid and take pictures of it, run spectrographic analysis, etc. Your basic ranged sensing package.

I'm sure sending some sort of rover/sample return mission to an asteroid can be expected in the relatively near future. It wouldn't be too much different from the Stardust mission, which is currently on its way to collect material from the tail of the comet Wild-2 and return it to Earth (in 2006).

Right now, though, they're just playing with the last bit of functionality from a defunct piece of equipment. Recall the Lunar Prospector probe, which they crashed into the moon after its mission had been completed, on the off chance that the plume of debris it kicked up would show signs of water. It's a matter of, "we could leave this floating in space forever, or we could try this one last thing before we abandon it." I have to give them credit; they've done some pretty cool things with spacecraft that weren't meant to do them.

if the probe is laying on it's side or on an angle, isn't it going to be difficult for it to blast off without it flopping around the surface?

Engineers at APL are looking at the prospects for relaunching the NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft from the surface of asteroid Eros. A command is already built into the probe as it rests upon the space rock's surface.

The liftoff from the asteroid is on tap for this Wednesday, roughly 2:00 p.m. Eastern time, according to David Dunham, NEAR's mission designer at APL. Dunham said the probe may rise upwards well over 1,300 feet (400 meters) above Eros. The spacecraft would then settle down to a new landing spot. "The whole thing is just more icing on the cake," Dunham said.

NEAR Shoemaker was not designed specifically for the touchdown, with the daring dive called for as the mission drew to a successful close on February 14. When the spacecraft was launched February 17, 1996, its fuel tanks were filled with 715 pounds (325 kilograms) of fuel. After five years, exactly how much propellant remains is unknown. Precious bursts of fuel were needed to prod NEAR Shoemaker lower and lower to the surface of Eros....

You can pack alot of communications gear into a 10cm cube. Provide propulsion with ion engines. With ~16 of these cubes, you could cover most of earth. Run your own spy network. Put harddisks on them and run GNUtella over the amature satellite band. With 64+ you can be a force in the satellite communications industry (beware the FCC). Cost: 64*50K = $3,200,000. Add 10 million more for R & D and ground stations. Everyone else in satellite communications paid billions and must charge high prices to get any ROI.

Those persons afraid of 'space junk' give Nerds a bad name. People on the ground are more likely to be hit by a meteor than by space junk. The dangerous (to spacecraft) junk is the stuff too small to detect on radar. Larger objects (such as the cube) can be detected and either avoided, deflected or destroyed as needed. See http://www.spaceviews.com/2000/08/20a.html for NASA's answer to space junk. I'm sure you can come up with something better, and mount it in a 10cm cube.

After building your cube empire in space, send up a 2 KW laser and carve your initials on the ISS!

Good luck with your data analysis!

Story about other USAF Sapce Battle Laboratories and fun things they're upto and thinking about.

AFAIK Ceres has never been seen clearly enough to determine whether it is a spheroidal shape or not. In fact it transitted a star a while ago and the results indicated that it was surprisingly irregular. But I wouldn't exactly cry if Ceres counted as a planet anyway.

I'm not aware of any spheroidal asteroid that is smaller than Ceres either. If you have proof to the contrary, I would like to see it.

As for all your other points about pluto- so what. Every single body in the solar system appears to be completely different to every other.

Time to start work on off-Earth power sources - a good first step is lunar-based solar... see Criswell's plans for example. A cure for global warming, power plant pollution, and more. And no need for nuke's.

Considering they didn't even tell us about their first mission until after it landed, it's not inconceivable that they have humans up there right now. If things go wrong, and they die, we won't hear about it

. If on the other hand they survive, China scores another propaganda point with "look how fast our space program is developing"

In the meantime, let's hope NASA can actually lauch the Destiny module - Friday's launch has been cancelled due to fears of a "criticality one" failure ( read: Big Boom )

"A goldfish was his muse, eternally amused"

Okay, Mr. Tito is paying his own way. Let's make sure it stays that way. Anyone know what a fFlight to space costs? i mean, the total costs of ground crew, rocket fFuel, training camp, gallons of coffee all around ... does $20 million cover it all? i dunno. but if it doesnt, guess who covers the charges.

not that I'm against such expeditions; on the contrary, i'm a fFervent supporter. People are often asking "why do we spend money on a space program, today?" This is why. Not necesarilly fFor another 50 years of oddball experiments (all perfectly valid, i'm sure) but ultimately, those experiments must have terminus, and fFruition. Specifically, We must start putting people into space on a more casual basis, whether nasa officials agree with me or not.

This however comes at a cost. which is my concern. Using a presnt day model, 20 people hop on a bus and pay 50 cents to go across twon. be assured, the bus costs more than $10 to staff, license, gas, maintain, and drive. but it works because lots of people do this, and the collective money goes into an account which covers costs. And as long as people use it, and the account continues to see gain, the system will continue to work. My concern then, is that we put ourselves in a position to where this program can accept some fFinancial losses, without tax payers catching a lot of the slack. (This goes ever-more-so fFor the fFinancially strapped Russian space agency!)

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Finally a space article that didn't come from cnn...

Kudo's

To bad Space Elevators are the Super Dense Optical Storage Devices of Space Industry. A Red Herring.

suggested Space News Site's spaceflightnow
SpaceDaily
NasaWatch
SpaceWeather
Nasa
It's ashame that SpaceOnline bit the dust and was absorbed by space.com, along with SpaceViews

If you want some real action become a Nasa click worker at http://clickworkers.arc.nasa.gov/top
Maybe Slashdot will even do a story on it...

I wait with herring baited breath

> I take exception to a statement in your point #3--
> that ours is a "relatively primitive culture," and how
> that is the reason that we "gobble up" bandwidth.

That's not my point. I submit that a more advanced culture would use far more bandwidth. However, you do make the good point of "primitive relative to what?" It's true there's no empirical data for what constitutes "more advanced." Although we can easily posit a more advanced civilization - even sans utopianism - we can't prove that it's realizable for our species or for any.

> Even if you believe the modern scientific dogma about
> evolution, why should any ET culture be further advanced
> than our own?

Don't get me started on the differences between science and dogma!

Is it possible to be further advanced than we are? Of course it is. We're still primitive in a lot of areas. I'll bet any /. reader can name at least 10 things We Do Crudely. Pick our leaders, for example. If we agree that it's possible, and given that we've only had RF capabilities for about a century, then it's overwhelmingly probable that any ET civilization we contact has had it longer than we have. Much longer. See a recent article by Seth Shostak on this.

As for the 50 LY, I was giving the ET radioastronomers the benefit of the doubt - that the early wireless transmissions were detectable.

>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

You most certainly are close minded.

Here's something to think about if you really don't think a BEAM bot can do anything useful.

Now on to your accusations..

A BEAM robot can walk into a volcano, it can drive (or walk) on mars, it can navigate a hospital. That's the whole point of BEAM... to make a robot that doesn't have to be watched all the time. One that doesn't rely on it's CPU to do anything, one that doesn't need a satellite uplink, one that doesn't need stinking GPS. One that adapts to its environment.

I'd like to see a traditional CPU driven robot survive outside (pick a place) for a month. It should be mobile. It should not be tethered. It shouldn't be so large that it's presence is obtrusive. Can you deliver?

BEAM already has.

Now, as far as retrieving a book from a library goes... well, yes, you'll need some digital logic most likely. And the point is? BEAM has never been about performing mundane tasks such as this. BEAM is about analog circuits that are as closely connected to their environment as possible. They aren't meant to be preprogrammed for a certain action. And hence, you'll never see anyone in BEAM try, because it would be a waste of time.

BTW, you seem to assume that BEAM roboticists are anti-CPU. That's incorrect. We just understand the best place to use a CPU. Unfortunately, most roboticists think that every little detail has to be programmed... I personally feel that that is the wrong view to have.

There is all ready an agreement buy NBC to show the proposed series Desination MIR. With the planned demise of MIR the focus has shifted to the planned Russian module on the new International Space station. I guess it will be a race to see which deep pocket can get the first Civilian to the Space station. Go here to register for the contest or try here for more details about the proposed show.

The salvation of Iridium will not reduce the odds of someone being clobbered by a deorbiting satellite in the future. There are still 87 birds up there (one recently deorbited without incident, see article). Every one of these will come down eventually. The odds of hitting someone will rise marginally as the human population increases.

About the movie

I don't know about a miniseries, but a movie is supposedly planned. According to a story last month in the Hollywood Reporter (as interpreted by Space.com), "Phil Tippett, Oscar-winning visual effects mastermind behind Star Wars, Starship Troopers and other FX-driven spectacles, will make his directorial debut with the project".

I'm not sure that I'd hold my breath, but it does sound intriguing.

About the movie

I don't know about a miniseries, but a movie is supposedly planned. According to a story last month in the Hollywood Reporter (as interpreted by Space.com), "Phil Tippett, Oscar-winning visual effects mastermind behind Star Wars, Starship Troopers and other FX-driven spectacles, will make his directorial debut with the project".

I'm not sure that I'd hold my breath, but it does sound intriguing.

I found a link off of www.space.com of pictures of some of the evidence of oceans on mars. It also has many more interesting pictures.

I found a link off of www.space.com of pictures of some of the evidence of oceans on mars. It also has many more interesting pictures.

Did you all notice the picture of the plaque that was included on Pioneer 10?
Click here if you missed it.
Very Euro-centric drawings of humans don't you think? The guy looks like an insurance salesman from Iowa.
I just hope the aliens don't land in China or Africa and think they must have made a wrong turn two light-years back. ;-)

not as cool as Pioneer 10. It is now 7 billion light years away, and the remote-est man-made object(!) http://www.space.com/news/pioneer_update.html and it's still active!
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From the publisher:

In a moving story of sacrifice and triumph, human scientists establish a relationship with intelligent lifeforms--the cheela--living on Dragon's Egg, a neutron star where one Earth hour is equivalent to hundreds of their years. The cheela culturally evolve from savagery to the discovery of science, and for a brief time, men are their diligent teachers . . .

The neutron star ventures close enough to Earth that we send a manned probe out to orbit it and study it. I know life on a neutron star sounds fantastic, but the author claims the science still holds up.

Definitely gets a thumbs up from me...