Slashdot Mirror

I saw this in a science magazine way back and just remebered it while crusising through this hate filled, biased thread.

"Sprinkling iron on the ocean may recreate the climate changes seen in Ocean scientists believe they have recreated one of the key processes that triggers the beginning and end of ice ages."

I'll let you read the rest of the article, but it also theorizes on how to prevent or stave off global warming effects. Have fun.

Gamma-Ray Burst Mystery Solved: Exploding Stars The Culprit

That link: The Moon And Plate Tectonics: Why We Are Alone

I don't know where you read your "information," unless you're extrapolating that assumptions in some sci-fi novels are scientific facts. Women do not show significantly different bone loss than men, in studies executed to date. They most certainly would be no more toothless or fragile than men. While there are many potential differences in the ways men and women cope with the stresses of a long duration spaceflight, none of these are confirmed, and to date it seems that individual responses vary much more than gender-differentiated responses.

Regardless of who is going, they are likely to suffer some damage unless some mechanism or mechanisms are in place to help them maintain their physical fittness. Don't dismiss women until you have a good reason to. In the meantime, NASA has done quite a bit of research into the matter of gender differentiated responses to long duration space travel, and they haven't found anything remotely conclusive.

Osama Bin Laden's brother, Sheikh Hasan bin Laden, is [or was] a director of Iridium LLC, the company that brought Iridium out of bankruptcy. Shortly after the September 11 attacks, there were numerous press reports that the White House felt that Bush's movements in the late morning and early afternoon of September 11 were known to Al Qaeda. I have often wondered if someone in the greater Bin Laden clan was monitoring the extensive DOD traffic on Iridium. I emailed this theory to the White House, and to the FBI, but I never heard back from them.

Well, it's either going to be the states or China that will colonize the moon first.

Perhaps, this senator realized that.

(This might also be an informative article)

Well, it's either going to be the states or China that will colonize the moon first.

Perhaps, this senator realized that.

(This might also be an informative article)

"The Lockheed Martin team is the winner of the Joint Strike Fighter program on the best value basis," US Air Force Secretary James Roche said.

It looks like there are a couple of people just crazy enough to try it!

One claims to be planned for "March 2002". Seeing as we haven't heard either splat or cheer, I don't know what the current status is.

The other appears to be currently scheduled for April 2003.

This sounds similar to this australian attempt: check this article and this (better) article.

Summary: 2 guys in spacesuits taking a giant helium balloon to 40km. In the vacum of space, they'll descend at 1600-1800 kph (994-1118 mph), becoming the first man to break the sound barrier unaided (that's cool!). Plenty of video taken for marketing opportunities.

The funny thing is that both of these ballons claim to be going to the "edge of space" at 40km, but the traditional definition (and the one used for the X-prize) is 100km. By that standard, I guess I have beach-front property!

According to the Space Daily article:

While onboard the ISS, he will conduct scientific experiments for South African universities to help combat AIDS and other diseases. In particular Shuttleworth plans to do research on HIV proteins...While in space, Shuttleworth will also study the development of rat and ewe stem cells in microgravity.

I'm not a chemist, but perhaps there are various chemical reactions that are difficult to pull off in gravity. It still sounds like it's 98% "Gee, I'm in space!" and 2% real science, but I hope something useful does come out of it.

They must have some major processing power on board - I should imagine that trying to fly something over a relatively high latency satellite link would be hard otherwise/ But they still have a lot of human intervention - it's probably more guidance than actual flying.

Here are a few more links that provide greater detail.

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/spacenews/releases/200 2/02-58.html

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/iss-02c.html?astron omylinks

This is a bit more concrete than the BS in this Boston.com article. There is also a more reasonable New Scientist article, at least it isn't riddled with the same awful logical fallacies as this Boston.com piece is, and Mallett doesn't come off as quite as much of an arrogant idiot, and the author doesn't come off sounding so worshipfully stupid. I found a copy of this here.

hmm.. actually i think the astronomy.com article is the one with the poor writeup

In the Spacedaily article which actually quotes from the Science article, the study's principal author argues that his calculations apply to smaller asteroids that are within a decade of colliding with the earth:

"Spitale said the proposed technique would be useless for a large asteroid or an asteroid less than decades away from Earth.
'This technique will work best on objects the size of Golevka or smaller (300 meters, about 1,000 feet, or smaller). An object that size could do damage to the better part of a country. Even a 100-meter or 50-meter object can take out a good part of a city.'

Doesn't sound like thats at all useful against 1950 DA to me..

Beneficent advances in nuclear fission are made all the time. Check this article out.

Seems like I've been reading about this for years. Glad to see it finally becoming reality.

I didn't get the impression that water was free flowing 10 million years ago. The last paragraph makes mention of an ice dam close to the surface, with the built up pressure exploding it outward to create the mesas. That, to me, indicates a surface too cold for water to cut any channels (maybe an ice flow, though -- just a thought). There's an older, interesting article (Nov 2001) that talks about this sort of thing, and refers to the meteriorite found with fossilized bacteria from Mars. Maybe it came from one of these geyser blowouts?

A couple of comments. First, this is an old idea - cyclers have been proposed for over 20 years and Aldrin's seminal addition to the concept was made in 1985 - see here for details. My question is, why is this meme back in the public consciousness NOW? It can't be because Aldrin thinks Bush will support the concept now that he's Prez; the new Bush NASA is going exactly the opposite route than cyclers with their sudden support of nuclear propulsion. Second question, where did the sudden push for NASA nukes come from? Especially at the expense of previously planned missions to Pluto and Europa? And my third question, why is space so passe to Slashdotters and by extension tech oriented fans in general? All the space articles on Slashdot get one-tenth to one-quarter the postings of just about any other topic; if even the geeks don't care about space that much any more, how can we ever hope to have a stable space program instead of this outer plane probes / no wait, nuke rockets / no wait, cyclers mass confusion?

There was an excelent ariticle at Scientific American on exactly that, with nice diagrams etc..
It is a slightly depressing for those star trek style optimists like me. :) But of course there is an infinate number of possibilities in the Universe! Have a look at Possible Solutions to get you thinking more..

There are so many considerations though, for instance Not all habitable zones equal. but one that really peaked my interest is an article about how our moon in many made our world. (sorry cant find the link) Basically the theorised formation of our moon, ie big planetoid crashing into proto-earth, ejecting large portion of earths crust into orbit with remains of other planetoid. Basically creating the plate-tectonic's we have on earth, which i might add do not exist on any other planet/moon observered.

Meaning that the plate tectonics are extremly rare, if you'll note a big factor in the creating on mountains, continents, etc is the continual movement of the plates. Getting to the point, if we didnt have a moon (and the results of its formation) and we still had water, then Earth would be a completly water world! Because without the continual movement, creation of continents / mountains etc, water would erode any land mass's in time.

I find that so interesting (even if it's all theoretical) as it's just another very rare factor that contributed to us being here. Rather than us being whales or some such. :)

So just maybe for the optimists (like me) most worlds out there which are habitable dont have inteligence because a huge portion of them are just water with no land. Then comes the argument of why would inteligence such as ours evolve on such a world?

Dr. Robert Zurbin, lockheed martin engineer and NASA affiliate, has actually designed a mars mission (for NASA through lockheed martin) that will only cost about US$10B and does only use (martian) air, gravity, and a small nuclear reactor.

As for pole stations that DO use only resources "naturally" available, he has established one and another is in the works.
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/mars-base-01h.html
Basically, the idea is to send an unmanned rocket to mars (no larger than conventional rockets used in large sattelite launches) with lots of hydrogen and a small nuclear reactor. The hydrogen can be combined with things in the martian atmosphere to produce methane, oxygen and water. The reaction has carbon monoxide leftover, which is vented to the atmosphere. After the unmanned rocket with the H2 completes, a manned rocket is sent to mars. The first rocket will have generated all the fuel to return home (something like 800 tons of methane from 40 tons of H2), water and oxygen for the arriving astronaughts.

There is also a discovery program about this. He has had good success using this method elsewhere.. and a full scale, self-contained simulation started this month. A plug for his book about this and some useful text on the subject can be found at http://www.nw.net/mars/


Wendell

Worryingly, the origin of the contamination is unknown

This actually was a big thing a few years ago. Thus you have goodies like the Sky and Telescope Impact Hazards website, along with this nifty cosmic impact calulator.

To be fair, there is this article about a scientist that thinks mass extinctions are a myth. ( I am skeptical of this.

And not that a ten mile wide asteroid would make a mess, but that an asteroid needed to wipe out and actually destroy the earth would likely be much much large, maybe 1,000 miles across or more.

10 miles across is like a bug on the windshield. Note that humans are living on the outside of the windshield.

So it sounds like you get to have fun researching impact craters on google, etc.

I submitted a story just recently about this story in SpaceDaily detailing a breakthrough in magnetic semiconductors, crucial to M-RAM technology. This group created a semiconductor that shows magnetic properties at room temperature and beyond. The excitement is palpable.

It appears I wasn't clear - whilst we do have lots of information on some microgravity scenarios, there's little available for the specific case that will be experience in a mars mission of several months micro-g followed by a short period of high-g (during landing/take-off at mars) followed by several more months at micro gravity.

I'm not sure I'd call Mars gravity "micro-g", since it's really about 1/3 g. But anyway, you might be interested in the Mars Society's upcoming Translife mission, which will test how well mice do in 1/3 g, hopefully indicating whether adult humans can not only survive 1/3 g but also reproduce after living on Mars for a while. The mice will be brought back to Earth, and during the fall to Earth, the mice will experience the high-g you're talking about.

the weight cost of a spun module is very high, and this I suspect would be crippling to the viability of a spun habitat module

You can use the spent upper stage of the rocket, which should already be going at about the same velocity as the hab. I'm not sure how much energy it takes to get the two spinning around each other, though.

I strongly support manned exploration of space, however long term desireability must be balanced against short term practicality - whilst we could initiate a manned mars mission program today it wouldn't be practical, and I doubt it will be practical for another 20-30 years.

I think it's practical today, and I don't think it will become more practical 20-30 years from now if all we do is wait.

From this article

"We've had to build all sorts of ancillary equipment, and do it on the cheap. For instance, one of things we had to do is ensure that the payload's spin was correct. To get the spin balance right we bought a second-hand car tyre balance from Bob Jane. It works beautifully!"

Tom.

Incidentally, some believe that Charon was formed when something struck Pluto in a similar fashion.

This article at spacedaily.com discusses options for cost effective remote unmanned drilling.

The discovery of extraterrestrial life of any size would likely be one of the most significant events in the history of humanity. Such a finding, particularly if within our own Solar System, would suggest that life is common throughout the universe and that the terrestrial biosphere is not a hopelessly rare phenomenon.

SpaceDaily's story

They explain some of the logistics, such as making the commercial station a stopover point for soyuz taxi flights to the ISS to save launch costs.

Jetliner - dual use the engines, or take off from a larger moving craft. Better yet, boost on the ground from a mag-sled like this.

Missiles - again, dual mode engine, or use a boost stage, sure.

Aero heating - Use plasma 'magic' to heat air in front of the vehicle and thin it out, like this . Rockets are expensive, why boost so high?
And yes, I am a current rocket scientist working on hypersonic drag reduction and plasma steering.

All about Buran:
http://dmoz.org/Science/Technology/Spa ce/Space_Shuttle/Buran,_Russian_Space_Shuttle/

And a *real* one for sale! (Er, my Russian is a little rusty, but it says "For Sale" in English...)
http://www.buran.ru/htm/forsale.htm

And apparently, the program isn't dead, anymore:
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/russia- space-general-01m.html

Also, there have bit hits on equipment such as the Leonardo module which do do damage. This article even mentions what would happen if the hit intersects a space-walker. Kind of like taking one for the team. Space Ref Interactive article on MPLM and some facts on what is up there in the way of protection

Kind of interesting. These are small, but apparently anything of even a few centimeters in size is tracked by radar now. And avoided. (Space shuttle article (pdf) on Nasa. Didn't keep the href. Do the search. :-) )

Now it's an attraction in a theme park near Moscow. Sorry, no link.

How about this one?

It looks like it also took a trip down to Sydney last August for the Olympics.

To lose one Martin orbiter may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose a second looks like carelessness. NASA's previous Mars mishap, the loss of the $1 billion Mars Observer in 1993, was instrumental in causing the switch to more frequent, cheaper missions. But some scientists wonder if the pendulum has swung too far.
"We've been saying all along they were going to lose one of these things," says one. "With 'faster, better, cheaper' you work your people to death," agrees Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, principal investigator for Mars Polar Lander.

CLATHRATES AND CARBON DIOXIDE ON A DRY COLD MARS

I can't believe it's not water (spaceviews.com)

1. rocket 2. camel 3. bring water

The experts have claimed that water has been responsible for a number of landforms on Mars (starting of course with the "rivers"). Oftentimes a new theory will present itself, landforms resembling those on Earth, etc. and a plausible theory based on (say) CO2 flows could account for it. So we shouldn't get all excited over this.

eg, http://www.spacedaily.com/news/lunarplanet-2001-01 a4.html

A couple of people have mentioned the UQ Scramjet project... I think the interesting thing is that UQ's budget is $1.25 million, as compared to NASA's somewhat more ($400 million?). And the UQ tests are coming along fairly well, see this story.
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/rlv-01k.html
Makes you wonder just how hard NASA are trying for the "cheaper" bit of their new motto.

Yes, the US does have destructive lasers. On June 7 of last year, the US Army shot down a missile using a laser. Here's a SpaceDaily.com story on the test. Here's a Slashdot story on equipping a 747 with a laser to shoot down missiles.

No, it looks like having a large moon may be essential to stabilize the orbit and climate of a planet - check out Not All Habitable Zones Are Created Equal from SpaceDaily

Basically, in 1993 someone looked closer at mars's orbit, and found its axial tilt isn't constant, but varies from 0-60 deg, over a period of 157,000 years!

Needless to say, an axial tilt of 60 degrees is going to royally screw up the climate. Turns out the moon is stabilizing earth's orbit, our axial tilt varies 2.5 degrees every 41,000 years. It has been calculated that without the moon, we would wobble between 0 and 85 deg tilt... lucky eh?
According to the article, Earth is actually at the inner edge of the habitable zone, and the only reason mars is so cold is it is too small to hold an insulating atmosphere.

SpaceDaily is reporting a scrub due to a fire on the pad.

TastesLikeHerringFlavoredChicken

SpaceDaily is reporting a scrub due to a fire on the pad.

TastesLikeHerringFlavoredChicken

Mars' "obliquity" -- the tilt of its spin axis -- is known to slowly increase and decrease between about 15 degrees and 35 degrees over a 124,000-year cycle (unlike Earth's tilt, which slowly rocks through a range of only 4 degrees thanks to the stabilizing tuggings of our large Moon).

Check the University of Surrey's info on nanosatellites. SNAP-1 has been doing very nicely by all accounts, breaking some records up there. More info at Space Daily.

There is a link here.

Sounds like they are building a free-floater that will co-orbit & can dock w/ ISS so it can use the same re-supply mechanisms as ISS but yet be completely independent so you don't have to fill out 7 kg of paperwork before you can dock w/ it.

It also seems as if Titov has approval to go on ISS in April. We'll see how it all works out though. Should be interesting.

-Jay Thomas

http://www.uiuc.edu/~jthomas2

It can carry two to three, perhaps four people, Clark said. "The Chinese are starting with what are 'second generation spacecraft' compared with the Soviets and the United States," he said. You gotta give them credit. Whether or not they benefited from existing technology (the US and Russian Space agencies) or developed this *cough* all on thier own this is a great acheivement for China. China is certainly not aiming low by building a craft for 3-4 people. This design is very workable and will save them the steps of building up to a craft this size vs. the way the us did Mercury and Gemini to build upto Apollo. The article was sparce on details so here are a few links for those interested: Shenzhou
Shenzhou Gallery
An older article on SpaceDaily.com
Shenzhou: A Model Program
China launches second unmanned space test flight Lucky for them the Russian Space program is not as picky about design 'borrowing' as say Apple is because the design is strikingly similar to Soyuz in many ways. It wouldn't surprise me if China becomes a major player in the space game. China has the money and infrastructure to make things happen and is not dependent on the rest of the world. (Personally, I think that is the real message they are sending by building this program.) They are geared towards building thier own space station which indicates some real sense of vision and they have a very cheap labor force (err forced labor?). If they get the program fully up and running it wouldn't be inconceiveable for them to build mass produced versions of thier craft. This design and the launch technology they are using may give them an edge similar to the Russian program: launching at a much lower average cost per kilo of payload than the US.

It can carry two to three, perhaps four people, Clark said. "The Chinese are starting with what are 'second generation spacecraft' compared with the Soviets and the United States," he said. You gotta give them credit. Whether or not they benefited from existing technology (the US and Russian Space agencies) or developed this *cough* all on thier own this is a great acheivement for China. China is certainly not aiming low by building a craft for 3-4 people. This design is very workable and will save them the steps of building up to a craft this size vs. the way the us did Mercury and Gemini to build upto Apollo. The article was sparce on details so here are a few links for those interested: Shenzhou
Shenzhou Gallery
An older article on SpaceDaily.com
Shenzhou: A Model Program
China launches second unmanned space test flight Lucky for them the Russian Space program is not as picky about design 'borrowing' as say Apple is because the design is strikingly similar to Soyuz in many ways. It wouldn't surprise me if China becomes a major player in the space game. China has the money and infrastructure to make things happen and is not dependent on the rest of the world. (Personally, I think that is the real message they are sending by building this program.) They are geared towards building thier own space station which indicates some real sense of vision and they have a very cheap labor force (err forced labor?). If they get the program fully up and running it wouldn't be inconceiveable for them to build mass produced versions of thier craft. This design and the launch technology they are using may give them an edge similar to the Russian program: launching at a much lower average cost per kilo of payload than the US.

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