Slashdot Mirror

Here's a good Hubble picture. It even looks in color.

Nobody cares enough about Africa to listen in on them. The only thing Africa has is resources, and China already is buying them. Is the infrastructure subject to surveillance? Sure, but every infrastructure is, even heterogeneous ones like the US.

So, nothing to see in Africa? Just move along? I don't think so.

Just like Europe, South America, and Asia, Africa is an entire continent of nations, some of which have drawn considerable attention in the last couple of years. I assume you've heard of Libya? Egypt? Algeria? South Africa? There is a lot going on in Africa, and the Chinese are heavily involved. There are plenty of things they might want to listen to.

Africa has more mobile phone users than the U.S. or E.U.
How mobile phones are making cash obsolete in Africa
European Rocket Launches 2 African Satellites

China and Africa: What the U.S. doesn't understand

Seven out of the world's 10 fastest growing economies are African. According to a 2010 report by consulting firm McKinsey & Company, the rate of return on foreign investments in Africa was, in the first decade of this century, higher than in any other region. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) projected that Africa is now growing faster than Asia.

Sino-African trade volumes have grown accordingly. Negligible in 2000, trade hit $198.5 billion in 2012. By comparison, U.S.-Africa trade volume was $108.9 billon, and is slated to fall further behind: Research from Standard Chartered estimates that trade between China and Africa will hit $385 billion by 2015

MAP: Here Are All Of The Big Chinese Investments In Africa Since 2010
China’s Increasing Interest in Africa: Benign but Hardly Altruistic

South Africa Could Have a Spaceport

The Republic of South Africa has considered using Israel's Shavit space booster to send a satellite to orbit. The South Africans have tested the Israeli Jericho 2 intermediate-range ballistic missile which converts to the Shavit space rocket.

International Effort Seeks to Counter Jihadists in Africa

China To Establish A Naval Base Around Somalia

As the threat of piracy continues. And as Somali pirates continue with their awkward trade to kidnap foreign ships, a Chinese Admiral has revealed China’s proposal to establish a naval base in the region in its commitment to thwart piracy and finally end this tragedy in the gulf of Eden. The lazy pirates who have no intentions to pursue an education or employment see piracy as an easy way to make money. About 75% of piracy in the region is being masterminded by terror groups to finance their illegal activities.

Rear Admiral Yin Zhou’s, a senior Chinese naval officer has suggested that China will establish a permanent base in the Gulf of Aden to aid its anti-piracy operations. The proposal was posted on China’s Defence ministry website. The Admiral went on to say that supplying and maintaining the fleet off Somalia was challenging without such a base, and said other nations were unlikely to object. The Chinese navy curr

Wow. A week in an elevator.

Yeah, that didn't sound right to me either, and the article doesn't mention the reason why it needs to be 36,000 km. International Space Station is only 200-250 miles, or 320-400 km, so 36,000 km would zoom right past it. Why does it need to be 36,000 km?

Also the earth's radius is only 6,400 km, so 36,000 km is HUGE. It would be waaaaaay out into space. Closest easily visualized equivalent would be similar to a lolipop, with earth being the candy part and the elevator being the stick. That's ridiculous to the point of absurd, are we sure this is correct? Anything over 500 km really wouldn't make much sense.

Could they have meant 360 km? That would put it at the ISS which makes a whole lot more sense.

Are you aware of the more than 70 Amateur-Radio Satellites which have been launched since 1961?

see http://www.spacetoday.org/Satellites/Hamsats/HamsatsBasics.html

If Mars has been covered in a global sand storm as recently as 2001, why is it such a shock that there might be winds strong enough to ripple up some sand dunes?

"Given the generally accepted idea of how Earth got its big moon"... the exact manner in which we got our moon doesn't really have much bearing on whether or not a moon is needed for the development of life, although it may "impact" the continued existence of any life already present. Every planet further out than Earth has more moons than us (totaling 139 so far, http://www.spacetoday.org/SolSys/Moons/MoonsSolSys.html ) , and I can say with reasonable certainty that the moons of the gas planets were not created by collisions between those planets and unnamed impactors.

They address that in the summary, dude. The difference is that out of those 139 moons, none of them are like ours, and none of them would affect life in the same way as ours does.

Okay, taking the dates from here, I calculated the length of the cycles - and I still don't see a correlation to the temperature record:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=p7seVpGqgK5eM8_ovacAaQw

Yet another game where I can get ganked by Chinese budget farmers and their bots.

You know, almost all of those astronomical images are artificially colored and enhanced to maximize their ascetic appeal. Have a look at some of the various images of the cat's eye nebula to see. A quick Google turns up 5 different colorings:

http://www.daviddarling.info/images/Cats_Eye_Nebula.jpg
http://www.uni-sw.gwdg.de/~panders/Images/AstroImages/03_CatEyeNebula.jpg
http://www.spacetoday.org/images/Hubble/HubbleBeauty/CatsEyeNebulaNASA.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5a/NGC6543.jpg
http://www.daviddarling.info/images/Cats_Eye_Nebula_2.jpg

The interpretation of the horsehead nebula is at least consistent (most of the time), but there is still plenty of artistic license being taken.

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/52238main_MM_image_feature_89_jw4.jpg
http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/45506main_MM_Image_Feature_73_rs4.jpg
http://www.geocities.com/scott_metz/alternity/graphics/horsehead_nebula.jpg
http://www.sidewalk-astronomy-club.com/img/horsehead-nebula.jpg
http://www.fourthdimensionastroimaging.com/sitebuilder/images/horsehead-712x571.jpg

I was sort of disappointed when I found that out...

I'm not a specialist when it comes to transmitters and receivers, but I found a few more bits of information that you might find interesting:

"After launch, Pioneer 10 was capable of transmitting data at a maximum data rate of 2408 bits per second. Now the data rate is 16 bits per second. Reducing the bit rate compensates for the reduced signal strength; it is like speaking more slowly to enunciate more clearly. The signal strength from the craft's main transmitter is now about 7.8 watts; by the time it reaches the DSN antennas, the signal has diminished to less than a billionth of a trillionth (10-21) of a watt."

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg13318105.500 -pioneer-the-persistent-probe-pioneer-10-the-first spacecraft-to-head-for-jupiter-proved-that-probes- could-reach-the-outerplanets-of-our-solar-system-t wenty-years-on-it-is-sending-us-messagesfrominters tellar-space.html

Deep space tracking station - http://personal.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/D.Jefferi es/tidbin.html

"Successfully sending a DSN signal into Voyager-2's receiver is like throwing a baseball across thousands of miles of ocean into a porthole of a moving cruise ship."

http://www.spacetoday.org/SolSys/DeepSpaceNetwork/ DeepSpaceNetwork.html

I just cannot praise the people who made and make this project possible enough. The facts are jaw dropping!

Despite prevailing suspicions that a group of mutant little girls whizzed off with the rock to build their Help-the-Town-and-Make-It-a-Better-Place machine, don't forget that meteorite rock is pretty scarce, and can fetch a pretty penny/ounce.

Martian Meteorites have sold for $85k/ounce, and this source claims $3600/troy ounce for more garden variety space rocks. This is more valuable than gold, platinum, maybe comparable to Rhodium.

So, (3tonnes = 128,602.986troy ounces)*$3600/ounce = $467 Million, just sitting around in your backyard. No chain, or Kryptonite lock, or even post-it note saying "please don't steal." Just asking for trouble from the neighbor kids, they were.

I've read that a little piece of paint made a fairly noticeable "dent" in the Shuttle's windshield. Here's a website that mentions it: http://www.spacetoday.org/Satellites/SatBytes/Spac eJunk.html

Several other sites showed up on Google when I searched for shuttle, fleck of paint, windshield

Considering how small the mass of the paint must have been, I could easily see how a small pebble sized object could cause major damage, but I'm not a rocket scientist. I think there has also been some general concern about all of the debris from China's ASAT test earlier this year. I think they are tracking most of the thousands of pieces of debris, so they would hopefully have an idea if something was coming, but I'm sure that they can't track the smallest pieces of debris. There are some animations on the web that show how the debris spread out from that test - its really amazing.

When you're traveling at 7 km per second, hitting anything that is not traveling along with you on a similar orbit (they would have similar velocities and wouldn't be moving as fast relative to you) has got to be seriously bad news.

Read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AeroPeru_Flight_603 to see how a blocked pitot-static port caused the crash of Airoperu 603 and how the air traffic controller had no idea of the true altitude of the plane because the altitude that was being shown on air traffic control radar screen was being broadcast from the aircrafts transponder which was incorrect due to the blocked pitot-static port.

Enjoy while you can.

Developing and delivering probiotic's is serious science. People with a low IQ would mistake this story as a statement of "Yogurt contains live cultures" cause that's the point of the product. I don't have much faith in this one but it's serious stuff in the farming world (both terrestrial and aquatic). My favourite use of probiotic was in the Russian space program, I believe they marketed it to the public as being cosmonaut-good, a genius bit of marketing.... "Today there is a Russian yogurt cultured from bacteria in the saliva and guts of cosmonauts aboard Mir station. Spaceflight stress upset their immunity, according to the Moscow Institute of Biomedical Problems. That allowed bad bacteria to attack good bacteria. Microbiologists developed the yogurt in the 1980s as a remedy. Cosmonauts ate yogurt before blast-off. Today, it comes as fruit-flavored yogurt, cottage cheese and traditional Russian cheeses studded with garlic and herbs." http://www.spacetoday.org/History/SpaceFactoids/Sp aceFactoids2.html

So many problems. Lets see, where to start? Lets start with the word "cobbled" shall we. You NEVER just cobble together some rocket motors. When OSC (or others) use military rockets, there is an extensive retrofit to each motor: V-band separation instead of linear shape charges, replace liquid injection systems with thrust vector controllers, entirely new avionics, new safe and arm devices, new wiring, new raceway, batteries, etc. Plus, as the acticle CLEARLY stated, it was 2 military motors (Minuteman, probably SR-70 and M-55) and two motors from the Pegasus vehicle. Plus most of the re-used military rockets are re-poures with the cheapest ones I've seen being about $6 million (SR-19 motors). The Air Force didn't re-pay for these motors, but you can bet a civilian launch of the same vehicle would have to figure in the extra cost of the used military motors.

So what if it's a economically challened area, the STATE (and then states) funded the launch pad, NOT the feds. They are lifting themselves up for their own area, not looking for federal handouts. And ranges DON'T hire rocket scientists at all (unless the scientist is looking for a stiff pay cut). These are typical building maintenance and electronic types. Even if they could launch from their own port, it presents two problems. ALL federally controlled space ports are overpriced since their government jobs, and they want/need to have launch sites in different areas to allow different orbital insertion planes. The bottom line is the military likes having places like this or Spaceport Alaska to give them more options and lower overhead.

You should also point to this launch site, since it's a heck of a lot closer:
http://www.spacetoday.org/Rockets/Spaceports/Launc hSites.html#WallopsIsland

And no, most military launches aren't any more secure than civilian launches. EVERYBODY is concerned when there is a multi-million dollar highly-explosive vehicle sitting on the launchpad. Only some launches are under super tight security (and contained unlabelled/mis-labelled cargo).

The article states that the rocket used was cobbled together from unused military rockets. It also mentions that the area is depressed and is looking to bootstrap itself into economic health through this venture.

I see a fleecing of the taxpayer going on here, as the rocket used came from the military (all ready paid for by the taxpayer -- though its refurbishment for use with a satellite might not have been. I see the land being acquired at taxpayer expense and I see the first launch being paid for by the military who could have saved the taxpayer money by launching from their own spaceport or NASA's.

I do appreciate attempts to improve an area by building an industrial zone or a commercial zone to attract jobs and employ underemployed people in a particular locality but I don't see too many rocket scientists applying for unemployment compensation these days, and that is the kind of person a spaceport hires. Oh, yes, they'll need security personnel, ground maintenance personnel and construction workers to build the facility, but that's not the major thrust of a spaceport, and I'll just bet a military use for a spaceport would preclude the presence of a lot of civilians without security clearance..

No, this looks like a fiscal boondoggle to me. And with the recent change in the membership of the US House of Repesentatives and Senate, one wonders whether or not anything else will ever launch from there. A "commercial" site that is wholly dependant on the military is not viable on its own

In Norway, the launch platform comes to you

I wonder why a Canadian team is paying that much money to fly from Ohio ... it seems like the vast Canadian tundra would be a far cheaper alternative, and the Canadian government would probably even lend some of their military airports to support Canada's image worldwide (not that it really needs much support).

...everything is visible from space.

There's nothing orbitting lower than the ISS except a few spy sats and a few ham radio sats. Oh, and of course, the shuttle. All of the important birds are in higher orbits. Thus spake The Internet

Many countries, including China have reconnaissance satellites in orbit. In fact private companies do, too. And except for geosync, most useful orbits will and do cross over the US.

Many countries, including China have reconnaissance satellites in orbit. In fact private companies do, too. And except for geosync, most useful orbits will and do cross over the US.

Does the US or Europe offer a comparable "cheap" road to the sky?

The US military has also converted some of its old ICBMs into peaceful launch vehicles. I guess they are competing with NASA, because there's some regulation that these facilities can only be offered to US government or government-sponsored agencies.

Get used to it folks! What with the US anti-missile shield, in a couple of decades time there'll be thousands more missiles entering the second-hand market from such places as Russia, China, India, and North Korea.

It's not like India has Nuclear Weapons or a space program. I mean they all still live in stone huts. Why should they be seen as a modern nation?

Now there is one site out there that claims the universe is really a very small bubble (slightly larger than the solar system)

Yes, well.

I guess then that the Voyager mission will bump up against something in a few years. :-)

This sounds like great news to me. Solar cycle 24 should be just about beginning shortly after this thing gets operational. Try this RSS feed of solar weather from hfradio.org.

Check out: http://www.spacetoday.org/SpcStns/SoyuzTransport.h tml. None of TMA-1 or TMA3 or TMA-5 seemed life threatening.

chinese in space... what to eat... hmm... how about this? Or this?

the russians have unmanned cargo spacecraft? and one just docked successfully with the ISS? do i live under a rock?

Either you do - or you are trying to be sarcastic. Progress, Soviet space freighter is in use since late 1970's. Basically it's just a stripped-down version of the manned Soyuz. Both Soyuz and Progress fly to the ISS few times a year (you can check the timetable here). Unlike the US-made space shuttles, Soyuz and Progress are not reusable. Soviet shuttle project was not exactly succesful, but as it sometimes happens with stop-gap solutions, Soyuz and Progress proved to be a quite reliable workhorse for their orbital stations. And it looks like it's the best solution right now for the whole planet Earth.

The Dragon Storm

Megalightning at Saturn

Titan puzzles scientists

According to Nasa:
"Dozens of astronauts have used the Space Shuttle Amateur Radio Experiment, or SAREX, to talk to thousands of kids in school and to their families on Earth while they were in orbit. They have pioneered space radio experimentation, including television and text messaging as well as voice communication. The Russians have had a similar program for the cosmonauts aboard the Russian Space Station Mir. When U.S. astronauts were aboard Mir in preparation for the long duration missions of the International Space Station, they used amateur radio for communication, including emergency messaging while Mir was in distress."

According to Space Today, the U.S. space endurance record holder is former ISS commander Michael Foale, with a total of 375 days spent in space (note that it's the record for cumulative time spent in space. The longest time spent in space on a single mission is 438 days).

In WinXP I've made this a part of my desktop via active desktop. Here's how:

Open The Display properties (righ-click desktop, properties)
Click the Desktop Tab
Click customize desktop tab
Click WEB tab
Click "NEW"
Enter http://www.spacetoday.org/SolSys/Comets/DeepImpact CountdownSmall.html as the URL
Click OK
Click OK again to get out of the display properties

It's sitting on my desktop right now with the countdown. Nifty eh?

~z

Here it is

I hope it's correct :)

IIRC, the soviets hand launched a few satellites known as "Iskra" from the Salyut-7 manned station. They were relatively short lived, but gave 2-way communications to properly equipped stations.

http://www.spacetoday.org/Satellites/HandLaunchedS ats.htmlA quick synopsis of hand-launched sats

"There's always at least one Soyuz docked at the station in case its service is needed as an escape vehicle." www.spacetoday.org

If and when the Hubble is updated, could this type of gear be added, or orbited in tandem, to allow both visual and infared examination of space? (IANA astronaut, so if this sounds stupid...)

http://www.spacetoday.org/DeepSpace/Telescopes/Lov ellTelescopeJBO.html :)

dunno about photos of the landers taken from Earth-based telescopes, but the experiments with the laser targets ought to count for something...

India is also looking at lunar and manned programs and already has launched its own satellites, etc. Private entries from the US, Canada and the UK (and other countries) can perhaps be considered separately from the goverment operations. There are now many players, some major (some declining, some expanding) and some minor (some expanding, some perhaps will never get off the ground). Exciting times ahead, I hope.

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) calls the Moon flight project Chandrayan Pratham, which has been translated as First Journey to the Moon or Moonshot One.

My brother tells me about radioactive batteries used in space, specifically the Pluto probe due to go up in 2006 and arrive 2015.
More battery details here and here and here.
There's less and less solar power available as you move away from the Sun (which was abundant on the Mercury trip). Plus, you need power for 10+ years. Where do I get that battery? From nuclear material, of course. The battery is the last thing to go into the spaceship, and you do lots of testing without it. And you make sure all the materials in the spacecraft can function with a reasonably radioactive source (near the top, as I recall).
He told me all this because I didn't know that the pilot light in a gas heater heats a piece of metal which provides enough voltage to drive the thermostat (hey bro, why doesn't the water heater have an electric plug?) Radioactive materials are mixed with ceramics to keep a reasonably constant amount of heat. The voltage comes from the heat. Wow, appliance technology moved into the space program.

how very true. do not despair, tough,because some of the technology is used in the west as of now http://www.spacetoday.org/Rockets/BoeingSeaLaunch. html.

we simply had to hold it until we got back to Earth.

Alan Shepard didn't... Here is an interesting page about "creature comforts" in space.

The Viking landers of the 70s identified the unique chemical compostion of Mars rocks. Likewise, the earth, moon and meteorites have their own unique characteristics.

Read More

"Science data from the Voyagers is returned to Earth in real-time to NASA's 34-meter Deep Space Network antennas in California, Australia and Spain. Both spacecraft have enough electricity and attitude control propellant to continue operating until about the year 2020. It is estimated that electrical power produced by the RTGs then will no longer support science instrument operation. At that time, Voyager 1 will be 150 times farther from the Sun than the Earth is -- almost 14 billion miles away. "

Well, because TECHNICALLY he entered space. He IS an Astronaut.

NASA doesn't award Astronaut status until 50 miles. So it's possible to not enter space, which is defined as 100km(62.1 miles) but still be given the title of Astronaut.

Definitions found here

So what are we going to call these guys, Private Astronauts?

Perhaps even more important (earlier):

first Asian: Pham Tuan of Vietnam (1980)

first Saudi Arabian: s Prince Sultan Salman Abdel Aziz Al-Saud (1985).

first Cuban: Arnaldo Tamayo Mendez (1980)

first Czech: Vladimir Remek (1978)

French guy: Jean-Loup Chretien (1982)

first granola bar eater in space Scott Carpenter

first guy with a cold in space - Wally Schirra

I could go on, but then people would start voting flamebait instead of informative (note, AC, not karma whoring, though)....

Perhaps even more important (earlier):

first Asian: Pham Tuan of Vietnam (1980)

first Saudi Arabian: s Prince Sultan Salman Abdel Aziz Al-Saud (1985).

first Cuban: Arnaldo Tamayo Mendez (1980)

first Czech: Vladimir Remek (1978)

French guy: Jean-Loup Chretien (1982)

first granola bar eater in space Scott Carpenter

first guy with a cold in space - Wally Schirra

I could go on, but then people would start voting flamebait instead of informative (note, AC, not karma whoring, though)....