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Inflatable Toys in Space
Alexey Goldin writes "An inflatable heatshield --- a new technology with a potential to make space access cheaper will be tested on Feb. 9 by Lavochkin Association (Russia) and DaimlerChrysler Aerospace (Germany). A new word in inflatable toys business :-). " This ranks up there with the Mars Pathfinder, where they just surrounded the lander in airbags and let it drop - elegant engineering at its finest.
If that section of the world is all part of Persia, why are they all Moslem?
They're not. The government says they are.
You can do experiments in any high school physics lab to prove Newton's laws.
Wrong. Newton's "laws" are nothing more than close approximations that happen to work on small scales (i.e., here on Earth.) They are useless on large scales (cosmological) and for that matter, so are the special and general theories of relativity. Reality check: scientific theories can never be "proven"; if you don't believe me, ask Stephen Hawking.
There was never any Racquetball Reform Bill.
Well, you won't find it in any modern history book, that's for sure.
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n ,n,n,n,n,n);
char *n="\n";
char *b="\\";
char *q="\"";
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{
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}
They're not. The government says they are.
I said I had been to Israel. You can't tell me otherwise.
They are useless on large scales (cosmological)
NASA isn't working on cosmological scales. They're working on much smaller, astronomical scales. Please get your terms right. And how would you happen to know this, anyway?
Reality check: scientific theories can never be "proven"
Stop it with the straw man arguments. Of course they can't - a scientific theory has to be disprovable. And I'd love to see you make a better case for your theories than the currently accepted ones.
Well, you won't find it in any modern history book, that's for sure.
What, because it was suppressed? Please. I suppose that since I haven't searched I don't know for sure, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't exist. And even if it did, what relevance does it have to anything?
how the hell did this get moderated up?? informative?
it seems we have a logic problem here...
I said I had been to Israel. You can't tell me otherwise.
.. you're the one who said you could "prove" Newton's laws in a high school physics lab! I was simply correcting your statement. For example, I could postulate that there is a 900-foot-tall rabbit named "Binky" that holds up objects with invisible, elastic strings that causes them to all fall at the same rate. I could then drop a 10 pound weight and a 100 pound weight from a tower to demonstrate that they do in fact fall at the same rate. What have I demonstrated? I have no more proved Newton's laws correct than I have proved the existence of Binky.
.. you might be surprised at what you find.
You think you've been to Israel. Can you be sure? You got on a plane at a government-controlled airport, and they took you to a location that they said was Israel. Were you awake for the whole flight? How can you be sure that you weren't taken to one of the Indoctrination Zones in Texas? The answer is that you cannot. If this sounds absurd to you, think again. The government has set up vast expanses of land to masquerade as foreign lands on several occasions (most notably for spy training during the Cold War.)
NASA isn't working on cosmological scales. They're working on much smaller, astronomical scales.
Point taken. "Cosmological" is not the right word in this context. Still, you cannot argue that the scales that NASA claims to work with (interplanetary) are even remotely close to the scales that one works with when one drops weights off of the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
Stop it with the straw man arguments.
Easy, there, workhorse
What, because it was suppressed?
You cannot possibly be this naive. Do you believe that the history books accurately reflect history, and do not exhibit any of the sociopolitical biases of the author? That they are balanced and fair? That there are not certain portions of history that the government would rather keep hidden from ordinary citizens? Really, you call me a "nutjob" but it seems to me that you're the one that is nutty. It's a dangerous world, and you simply cannot afford to take everything that you're spoon-fed at face value. Start looking around and asking questions
My penis is large and in charge.
Bam!
Love,
Rob Malda
You got on a plane at a government-controlled airport
I was born there. And lived there until I was 14. Believe me, it's not Texas.
I was simply correcting your statement.
Alright, I'm just as guilty of using incorrect terminology as you are. You can't prove Newton's laws in a high school physics lab, but you can establish that it's pretty damn unlikely that anything else is actually the case. I'd love to see what you're proposing as corrections to or replacements for Newton and Einstein, and how those are more justified than Newton and Einstein's theories.
You cannot possibly be this naive
"Maybe I is, and maybe I ain't." I know that the books are biased. But I'll cede the point for now, and instead ask a new question: what the hell does racquetball have to do with anything?
Really, you call me a "nutjob" but it seems to me that you're the one that is nutty.
So I overreacted and started out with some ad hominem arguments. I apologize. But it still seems to me that you're hypothesizing a lot of very complex explanations for things that are really very simple. Even if I were to believe that some unknown conspiracy would have been able to do these things, what motivation could they have possibly had? What you're saying is a lot of effort to go through for nothing.
This is hardly new technology. Several years back, U Maryland's famed Space Systems Laboratory developed a ceramic-fiber fabric heat-shield which opened like an umbrella. The opening mechanism is immaterial- the critical issue is developing material which is thin, light, collapsable, and able to withstand extreme temperatures. See The Space System Laboratory's web page, and be jealous of the undergraduates who work there. :-)
I wonder if they deflate when they get hit by, say, a micrometeorite, or a stray supply module...
he's just pissed off because he's a descendant of custer.
figured there would be a good Natalie Portman inflatable petrified love doll in space joke. Not even close. Better luck next time.
Not only is Linus Swedish, but he's black, too!
This is an excelent example of how true moral, Monotheistic contries are much better equiped by advanced higher education systems to produce significant scientific advacements, particularly in Astronomy, where Polytheisic Sky-based religious distort a mathematical perspective of planetary motion. Now, we all know that western thought had hickups (see Copernicus), but those not withstanding, western Monotheism allows true open science in the glory of God. As Carl Sagan told us:
Every wonder why we don't see any significant advacements coming out of contries like China? This, my friends, is the answer to your question. Their nonmonotheistic religious views have held them back for centuries. Only now have they realized their inferiority, and have taken to stealing advacements from more developed, monotheistic contries (examples: China and Satellites, China and Missiles). The time has come for God fearing Western nations to take action against heathen, knuckle-dragging polytheists. I call for full-scall nuclear war--it is the only way to fully wipe the earth of inferior life forms. This isn't racism, or ethnocentrism; it is evolution, a concept held in faith (that is right: belief without proof) by so many "logical" scientists. By removing the stain that is made of the non-Christian religions, we will be bettering the human race.
In conclusion, I hope you follow me in leading the Earth; as Christ reborn, I speak the word of God Almighty.
Peace in me.
FELLATABLE TOYS IN SPACE?? HOORAY!!
how about a beowulf cluster of these things?
Doncha love those critical AC's? Seriously, if you're gonna criticise someone, at least stand behind what you say.
the guy probably moderated in this discussion, and he doesn't want to lose the points he used by posting with his real name.
"Maybe I is, and maybe I ain't." I know that the books are biased. But I'll cede the point for now, and instead ask a new question: what the hell does racquetball have to do with anything?
:-)
This one caught my eye; clearly our AC friend here is at least partly trolling, but the "Racquetball Reform Bill" shows that he has at least some knowledge. Basically, it's a slang name for Strom Thurmond's "Foreign Policy Committee Reform Bill", which, IIRC, was circulated to committee members, but never brought to the floor. This Bill was notable because it contained a $2bn appropriation for "the construction of facilities" in Southern Utah. Hence the nickname -- a Washington staffer commented that the unclarity of this appropriation meant that Thrumond could, in principle, spend the money on building himself a racquetball court.
The weird thing about this bill is that it was widely discussed in committee, but none of the minutes of its discussion are available -- there is simply a gap in the sequential numbering of the archives. I seem to remember that the Bill died the death, but that Reagan (this was back in the 1980s) passed an Executive Order saving the "Racquetball Appropriation". Still with no discussion or clarification.
At the time, it was assumed that it had something to do with Iran/Contra, but the appropriations have gone on under Bush and Clinton. All anyone knows is that the US Government have been spending a lot of money in Utah for over ten years, with no discernible effect on the local economy. I'd add that it's all civilian money -- military appropriations are dealt with separately. So probably we're not talking about Area 51 here
If you ever look at those maps of radio transmissions, you can see Stron Thurmond's racquetball court in the Southern Utah Area -- it's a bright sopt the size of New York City, with no mapped conurbation nearby. I probably ought to be scared, but who cares?
will often lead to INNOVATION
innovation, huh? you one of those microsoft freaks?
Wow! Sounds like the ultimate X sport! The eXtreme re-entry slamom challange!
But would you want to strap one of these babies on, knowing you had one shot to get it right? I guess it would depend on the situation.
Hey!
I just saw this one and this one flying out behind my trailer stealing my cow!
shutup
i'm looking foreward to some of these things coming out in the states!!! Raul
too bad its communistic and reeks of linux zealotry
I'm posting this again because Slashdot deleted my subject line.
I can't believe somebody actually moderated this up as funny. This is the kind of offensive trash that detracts from the reasonable, serious discussion that makes Slashdot what it is. I sort to put high scores first in order to read some good insights relating to the story posted, and, more and more often these days, I'm finding this to be a useless tactic, because some worthless moderator has decided to moderate up a bunch of pithy comments into the top. All the serious comments are stuck down at 1 and 0 with the trolls and spam. This one in particular annoyed me because it makes a reference to inflatable sex toys -- could we try and be a little more offensive, please? Not all of us want to read these things.
So please think a little more before posting unfunny, offensive dreck, and moderators, use some discretion one of these days.
You capitalist pigs will be the first to go.
I want to have sex in the space shuttle, with a space protitute.
i want to use open source inflatable bowls to pour hot grits down my pants in space. thank you.
Details here
Thank you.
Those astral people should hook up with that guy who made the toy ball thing that expands so big that a child can fit inside. Imagine putting those two together, I bet he could provide them with a ton of information about what they're trying to do.
Mmmmm... I see what you mean.
Aside from being very pretty, she's obviously smart too, being fluent in four languages and all that. Interesting combination. Maybe she would like to be petra-fied?
Or are you a pussy?
You need a new prescription, you seem to be running out of Insanity and Profanity Blockers.
Or, perhaps you would like a more permanent solutuion - See "Psychologists" under the yellow pages.
I hope you follow me in leading the Earth; as Christ reborn, I speak
Good for you. If you're reborn Jesus, when did Christ die?
Nothing could be further from the truth. Those who are unconvinced might be interested in searching some of his quotes, reading some comments he had written relating to some of Heinlein's predictions, reading this excerpt, or checking the ultimate SF web guide for more information.
Close but it was the Russian ship Leonov. I think it was called a Baloot. GREAT book read it! Really. Even if you don't read 2001.
Yes, more documentation here.
Thank you.
Very comprehensive site here.
Thank you.
Are you some kind of nut or something? If that section of the world is all part of Persia, why are they all Moslem? The Persian empire hasn't existed for years. I've been to Israel, too, so you can't tell me otherwise.
I don't know how you manage to believe that you work in a government agency, but I have no idea how a nutjob like you ever got allowed near a computer. You can do experiments in any high school physics lab to prove Newton's laws.
And don't be stupid. There was never any Racquetball Reform Bill.
God.... I just can't understand how you manage to believe all this stuff. What is wrong with you, anyway? I don't mean to offend, but I think that institutionalization might be the right choice for you....
Seriously. Look outside sometime, and try to get some help.
Because . . . uh, just because, dammit!
Heh heh. Whatta maroon.
It can't find most of the rest of us anyway. It's (just barely) clever enough to click on a link that somebody shoves in its face, but that's as far as it goes.
What boggles my mind is how obsessive it is. Its whole life seems to be devoted to flaming a couple of people because he doesn't understand their posts. Ugh. It doesn't have much of a life, does it? It can't even come up with original or interesting flames.
Too bad yr a shithead, but the above is a damned brilliant post.
(terrified, NOT petrified)
:)
How.... how did you find us?
anyway, please remember to post anon here. Its probably ok, since you're not a 'known troll' but we don't want people to come acrost this place by chance. Thank you
--ell7
That's similar to what I used to have. Some people complained about the lack of formatting, and the type safety of the numbers, so I redid it to be "nicer" :-)
I read a thing in popular science like 1 year ago that they where thinking of making an inflateable space station made out of kevlar, and the atmospheric pressure inside is what kept it inflated....they actually found that with this setup, a giant airbag space station that it was like 4 times stronger when being hit by space debris... I thought this was a very cool idea, and the whole station when deflated could fit inside of the shuttles bay
> I have to believe the successfull use of airbags
r acone.htm
> on Mars Lander 'inspired' this crew to go ahead
> with their experiment. THANK GOD NOBODY PATENTED
> THE CONCEPT (I hope).
It's an old concept -- McDonald Douglas (among many others) played with it back in the 60's:
http://www.friends-partners.org/~mwade/craft/pa
There are patents, but you can look 'em up.
Not to take anything away from Pathfinder's Lander, but I don't think the airbag technology is going to be used again -- by the time the concept was implemented, it was clear that it was a pretty risky way to do the job (I worked on that project, BTW).
goddamnit... it was a joke, not offtopic (inflatable! get it YET?)! :P.
Soon to have -x karma... brought to you from humorless moderators!
geez... some people need to lighten up
Observe, reason, and experiment.
Observe, reason, and experiment.
(if you're too dumb, just pray)
Doncha love those critical AC's? Seriously, if you're gonna criticise someone, at least stand behind what you say.
:P.
I actually think that this unrestrained freedom to post whatever we want is what makes slashdot the great community that it is. I happen to find inflatable sex toys quite humorous (but not quite as much as annoying puritan AC's who bitch about it), so I posted my thoughts.
You'll find that, on occasion, you'll notice something that you just don't like for whatever reason you decide to procure. That's life... deal with it.
If these jokes offend you, you've probably never been to realdoll.com. You might like it! really
Observe, reason, and experiment.
Observe, reason, and experiment.
(if you're too dumb, just pray)
I can't believe somebody actually moderated this up as funny. This is the kind of offensive trash that detracts from the reasonable, serious discussion that makes Slashdot what it is. I sort to put high scores first in order to read some good insights relating to the story posted, and, more and more often these days, I'm finding this to be a useless tactic, because some worthless moderator has decided to moderate up a bunch of pithy comments into the top. All the serious comments are stuck down at 1 and 0 with the trolls and spam. This one in particular annoyed me because it makes a reference to inflatable sex toys -- could we try and be a little more offensive, please? Not all of us want to read these things.
So please think a little more before posting unfunny, offensive dreck, and moderators, use some discretion one of these days.
This is exactly the sort of sad experiment that everybody loves to get worked up about, but that almost always ends up being a dismal failure.
I looked through their (very flashy, nearly content-free) website, and the very little information I found made me extremely skeptical about this little experiment's chance of success. It's fairly self-evident that if you want to return anything successfully, you need a damn good heat shield. There have been experiments very similar to this one run before (by groups such as NASA and Boeing Aerospace), with very little fanfare -- and for a good reason. They've all been spectacular failures, with the heat shield losing integrity less than a minute into descent in the most successful one.
There doesn't appear to be anything much different about this one. Who knows, it just might work. But I'm not counting on it.
Gundam project, a sci-fi/fantasy site, has this to say:
Meanwhile, a less elaborate device is used to enable mobile suits to survive the intense heat and shock of atmospheric re-entry - an strap-on contraption called a ballute, which includes an inflatable heat shield and a set of parachute packs and braking thrusters to soften the landing.
AND 26 years before Aurthur Clarke's 2010 novel, there was a little outfit named NASA who had these ideas in 1959:
Memo, Leonard Rabb to Chief, Flight Systems Div., "Heat Shield Performance," Oct. 7, 1959. Bond, interview, Houston, Sept. 22, 1965 . See also "Results of Studies Made to Determine Required Retrorocket Capability," NASA Project Mercury working paper No. 102, Sept. 22, 1959. In addition, Alan B. Kehlet directed Dennis F.Hasson to investigate an inflatable sphere to accomplish the decrease in decay time for a retrofire failure and to stabilize the capsule in the event of a control system failure. This study was published as NASA Project Mercury working paper No. 113, "Preliminary Study Using Inflatable Spheres for Aerodynamic Stabilization During Reentry," Nov. 18, 1959.
So, its time has finally come. I suppose the Daimler balloon is going to be more sohpistocated than anything that could be built in '59.
And if it goes well, we could have commercial balluting expeditions. Go to the top of the atmosphere, jump out of space ship with personal ballute, land in a wheat field somewhere in Russia. Nice jump.
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I respect her,
...IDDG...?
~
Mind for engineering
Career ambitions (commercial pilot)
and her good looks.
She's got to be one of the coolest girls sounding girls I've seen on the web. How do they say it
I've actualy known only a few good looking female engineers. I don't know why that is, but I do know how uncool it is to be a smart girl. "It'll intimidate the guys" Cosmo says.
I can count four including this woman. Then all that about the super model of the 40's who helped invent spread spectrum technology.
If she is reading this, I'm one who is in her fan club. I respect any good looking woman who isn't afraid to use her mind.
^~~^~^^~~^~^~^~^^~^^~^~^~~^^^~^^~~^~~~^~~^
Nope. If that were the case you wouldn't use your common sense and you would do the same old things over and over again (with a few minor modifications like prettier graphics) and you'd just claim it was innovation.
Dang, it turned out to be another boring space technology story. I was really hoping for a follow to December's Sex In Space story...
I'd like to know if NASA looked at inflatables for use as ISS crew return vehicles. Some of the earliest applications of this technology were designs for single-man emergency reentry craft. Some designs were little more then a guy in a space suit with the shield strapped to his back and a retro back strapped to his chest.
I'd be willing to bet they dismissed it out of hand, if they even looked at it at all.
Yet another example of why brand new boosters shouldn't fly real payloads on their first launches. We seem to have forgotten this fact....
This (TransHab is what you're talking about) has been canceled by congress. The only way it will fly is if nasa can find private funds to pay for it.
As if that wern't bad enough, congress has now cut funding for the original ISS Hab module as well. So unless TransHab makes it, ISS will only be able to support a 3 person crew.
This is a serious bummer. TransHab is one of the few truly worthwhile elements of the whole ISS program.
This IS privately funded (as much as Russia can privately fund).
Well, the experiment is, but the launch isn't.
The ability to return/reuse spent first stages, instead of burning them up in the atmosphere, seems like one of the most interesting aspects.
Uh, first stanges generally don't burn up... they just don't survive impact very well. In this case they are trying to recover the upper stage. First stages can easily (well, as easy as anything ever is in spaceflight) be recovered with parachutes.
Every time they do that I can't help thinking it would have been cheaper to rent a boat and dump the spacecraft in the ocean.
Okay, I'll be the first to admit 'opensourceman' is, for the most part, a wanker, but I just had to laugh (even though it made little sense in context) at "cuosnpist: i was not elected to watch my people suffer and die while you discuss this in a comittee!" :)
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
Look here
sup
Didn't they use something like this in 2010 with the breaking thingie (that's a technical term) they used in Jupiters atmosphear?
---
--
If I actually could spell I'd have spelled it right in the first place.
Hmm... I submitted this one a couple of weeks ago...
My thought exactly as soon as I saw the post. 2010 device on the Russian spacecraft. Was never sure if he invented it or if he had heard about it and it sounded good for the plot.
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
An inflatable heat shield in an environment (entering the atmosphere) with changing pressure? Sounds like an expensive but fun test to watch.
But isn't the purpose of the Doomsday machine lost if you keep it a secret!
For those who didn't read the whole article:
A unique software developed by Dasa Bremen will enable every internet user to follow "Mission 2000" over the distance of more than 100.000 miles in real time. The website www.return-home.com is activated on January 21, and contains information about the mission. The flight simulation opens on the day of the launch at 6.p.m..
I went to http://www.return-home.com to see if what platforms are supported, and what license the software is released under, and found that the site won't run on win95 w/ IE 3.0 (my @work setup), I think because of Javascript. If there is any content that needs javascript, I would like to know, but it looks like they've used it because they were lazy.
With this in mind I don't see much chance of there being anything but Win95 and possibly Mac clients on the site... shame because while the idea of being able to pretend pilot the mission is gimicky, I would like to watch the mission through the net.
postmoderncore - art and creation are a higher purpose
Hey, don't bash Lander's Airbags...it's thru looking down the line from the other end that we will discover new ways to do things, things that were not possible before. Here's another crazy invention: you put people in it and go up in the sky and fly around. It's called an airplane, and yes I did rip that from Contact.
Blame it on whoever posted the story. Any headline with the word Inflatable will always generate jokes about sex toys.
Lighten up. Just because you are offended by jokes about sex toys, doesn't mean that everyone is. If you are really that humorless, just skip over posts with a rating of "Funny."
user@host 1% make love
main(){char q=34, n=10,*a="main() {char q=34,n=10,*a=%c%s%c;printf(a,q,a,q,n);}%c";printf( a,q,a,q,n);}
Apologies for lack of newlines -- this is the actual output. It's shorter because it takes advantage of using the ASCII numbers instead of quoting quotes, and the like. Yours is pretty cool too -- I hadn't seen one that just uses characters. Here's one more in Scheme/Lisp:
((lambda (x) (list x (list (quote quote) x))) (quote (lambda (x) (list x (list (quote quote) x)))))
What a load of crap! Everyone knows that:
- The Gulf War was filmed in Arizona and the Pathfinder Mission was filmed in Persia.
- Sissy Spacek wasn't in Taxi Driver 2. It was Tina Yothers.
- Martin Sheen is the current president. The whole Clinton thing is just to keep people from finding out who's really in control.
- William McKinley wasn't murdered. He's still alive and teaching ballet in Beruit.
- Strom Thurmond couldn't have had anything to do with the Racquetball Reform Bill. He was too busy faking the Spanish-American War.
Other than that, you've got it pretty much right. 7:^)
... is a babe! Still, it would be neato if the technology works. They seem to think it has a shot -- elsewise why offer to let 100k+ people follow it on the web?
I still think the roton is the coolest idea out there (www.rotaryrocket.com).
-- "Vote Democrat. Because the current crop of conservatives are just bugnut crazy."
If I'm not mistaken, this is part of the Cluster Satellite project, investigating "the Earth's magnetic field and its interaction with the solar wind."
Pablo Nevares, "the freshmaker".
Pablo Nevares, "the freshmaker".
Private industry can attempt to put old age homes and honeymoon places in space now. What is stopping them?
Ignore Alien Orders
These are not exactly new ideas. I worked on
inflatable aerobrake studies in
the early 1980s. It was a cover story in
Popular Science in the mid-80's, and my boss was
a technical consultant for the movie 2010, which
had the spacecraft aerobrake into Jupiter orbit.
Slow aerobraking, without special hardware for
the braking part, has been done by the Venus
Radar Mapper and more recently by the Mars
Global Surveyor.
Inflatables are even older. Somewhere in my files
is a report by Goodyear (of course) dating to the
1960's on inflatable space hardware, like space
station modules with a hard cylindrical core
with the life support equipment, surrounded by
a inflatable donut which became the living
space.
Daniel
I thought once you moderated, you couldn't add a comment anywhere in the story discussion, and vice-versa.
of course, I could be completely mistaken....
SaintAlex
Observe, reason, and experiment.
Observe, reason, and experiment.
(if you're too dumb, just pray)
redundant? how's that?
freaking idiot moderators.
yet - notice how the ACoward gets an "insightful", and no "redundant", despite his near carbon copy because "slashdot deleted my subject" or some irrevalent crap.
this makes me more and more a fan of anti moderation/and/or/AC posts.
Observe, reason, and experiment.
Observe, reason, and experiment.
(if you're too dumb, just pray)
realdoll isn't inflatable. It's like a big sillicon corpse... yum (erm, or not).
Observe, reason, and experiment.
Observe, reason, and experiment.
(if you're too dumb, just pray)
I'm not an expert on planetary re-entry or anything, but wouldn't the decreased density just change the parameters of a traditional air brake approach? Does the thin air make it so that you don't need much of a heat sheild? Instead of going straight in, maybe we go in on a trajectory that enters the "thick" part of the atmosphere at a tangent. Then you might get away with a sheild only big enough to bleed off speed to pop a chute and land...
Dunno if the sheild is smaller this way or not, but it seems like the thinner air is freeing in some ways..
Cheers!
Termi
Today is all we really have. We should all live it well: it is our stepping stone to all of our tomorrows.
WOW
I just finished watching 2010 on Space: The Imagination Station, and saw that inflatable Russian heat shield. Coincidence? I think not.
Note: No Microsoft programs were used in the creation or distribution of this message. If you are using a Microsoft program to view this message, be forewarned that I am not responsible for any harm you may encounter as a result.
Lars -
Consider this love (oh-whoah-whoah)
It is like a flower in thw inter, and a friar-tucking mother. But why wait, if the yingnews were to become one with the fruity noonoo and l;kjf bjjlklda asdfdsf870987_))))))))))))))
Start over:
I think this is a good idea, but obviously (see above) it can lead to some confusion if you don't state it in terms that everyone (birds, bees, men, women) can understand: common, plain, and decent English. Why not let us use this medium of communication? Because it is the secondary nomenclature that we enjoy.
Please, to be helping your neighbor
zeusjr
My personnal vote goes to Be. But I'm just a free software jerk.
.cig - what you do after winning a good flame war
Step right up Ladies and Gentlemen! Its new! Its wild! Its radically cheap! Be the first kid in our solar system to go splat against the face of the Earth at unbelievable velocities in the new amazing, phantasmagoric, too incredible to believe hypersonic Badminton shuttle.
Ok folks if this works I will admit that it is one of the coolest inflatable inventions since the real doll, however, lets not rush out and try it with any humans (ok Mr. Gates, go right ahead) just yet !:)
Prospecting Stinks. Stop Wasting Time on Cold Calling.
They're actually developing modules for the ISS that are inflatable, and come fully furnished. The Learning Channel recently (or was it Discovery?) did a piece showing it being deployed inside one of their giant vacuum chambers. Instead of constantly repairing and upgrading parts of the station, they could just discard an old module and launch another relatively cheaply.
Ahh....but due to the lesser air pressure, much less pressure is needed inside the balloon, so It can be much larger far easier. Anyway, the main point is just to bound a lot on the ground anyway.
Finally, someone who understands what I MEANT to say! (you wouldn't happen to be an unattached Penthouse centerfold who just won the Lotto, would ya??)
I was attempting to refer to the uppermost stage. [brainfade]
Is anybody else just all about cheap space travel? Unfortunately, i don't think things are much cheaper now than in '69, or am i mistaken? Oh sure, NASA is underfunded, but government isn't the best agency for creating new technology anyway, is it?
Why not privatize space travel, I'm sure that old age homes and honeymoon places will pop up almost overnight.
Actually I gave it a 3. 1 for "inflatable", 1 for "sex", and 1 for "toy". Put them all together that's definitely a 3.
Hehe, that was funny to watch. Three excellent mpeg movies. I loved the ending of the last one:)
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
Inflatable heat shield for aerobraking.
Science Fiction -> Science Fact.
(Or it could be totally different, but I can't read the referenced site; either it's slashdotted or it requires JavaScript.)
I hope Michael's comment about Mars Pathfinder was sarcasm. One of the largest problems is that engineers often forget to use their common sense in cases when it COULD be used to solve a problem. Allowing yourself to listen to your common sense and evaluating even the wackiest solutions will often lead to INNOVATION. Being able to do the above is one of the biggest steps you can take to thinking of creative and new solutions to a problem.
I personally am of the opinion that the solution to landing Mars Pathfinder was a brilliant one.
There are several designs described on Mark Wade's site:
e scue.htm
http://www.friends-partners.org/~mwade/craftfam/r
If I'm not mistaken, this is part of the Cluster Satellite project, investigating "the Earth?s magnetic field and its interaction with the solar wind."
I think you mean Cluster II. The first one ended up in a swamp when the French Ariane 5 rocket blew up on its maiden flight due to a software bug. Parts of the instrument were actually recovered and are being used in the new mission under the name "Phoenix", a particularly apt use of the name. I say this only because I was working as a sysadmin at the UNH Space Science Center at the time. The SCC was building one of the instruments for Cluster. I remember a lot of people's dreams went down with that rocket.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
This might be interesting, but I don't really think that it is insightful, inflatable protection was used on the Mars Pathfinder mission. It is not a question if it is practicle, it worked last year.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
At first I thought someone was testing rubber duckies in zero-gravity water puddles.
Actually, the TV show Voyager showed the extreme sport version of this: re-entry wearing only an armored space suit. None of this namby-pamby parachute-like heat shield. Just friction against your suit, varied based on how you choose to fly.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
I believe the word is "ballute", a mix between a balloon and a parachute.
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Some time ago, I ran into a fellow who was designing a pressure-fed upper stage. He was investigating an inflatable nozzle for the engine. According to him, the conditions well downstream from the nozzle throat are cool enough for current materials to handle, and the huge increase in expansion ratio possible with an inflatable nozzle could give a substantial boost in engine thrust with the same fuel burn. This translates to more payload. On top of this, the inflatable nozzle is very compact compared to a rigid nozzle bell. I wonder what became of this?
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
San Antonio, TX, uses inflatable emergency dams under several downtown buildings, in case of a flood problem along their narrow river-front.
Some ice-breaking ships use inflatable bladders to nudge themselves up onto the ice, if I recall correctly.
My last Dell computer (boo hiss blah blah) came in packaging materials that were bags of air, instead of foam, peanuts, or folded cardboard. Not a dynamic use, but still a continuing trend.
Airbags in cars use inflation for dynamic cushioning, of course.
[
Read The Fxxxxxx Article! This IS privately funded (as much as Russia can privately fund).
This looks like an interesting experiment. I hope they don't get beat up to bad if it doesn't work flawlessly on the first pass. The ability to return/reuse spent first stages, instead of burning them up in the atmosphere, seems like one of the most interesting aspects. Might also remove any future excuses for adding to our pile of orbiting 'space junk'.
I know NASA didn't have anything to do with this, but I have to believe the successfull use of airbags on Mars Lander 'inspired' this crew to go ahead with their experiment. THANK GOD NOBODY PATENTED THE CONCEPT (I hope).
The most interesting part of the project, IMHO, is that they are allowing on-line 'pilots' to attempt to pilot a simulator in real-time with the flight test, and the first 100 to successfully land get a free 'wing commander' souvenir that was in space on the actual test vehicle! Count me in! Talk about the ultimate in Space Geek collectibles!
Yes, but on that mission it was used as a cushion to make it bounce on impact, not to slow the impact. Part of what a heat shield does (abeit collaterally) is slow impact (usually greatly added by drag chutes, etc at a certain point).
If it can be used for both, great. And in a thick atmosphere, hey... it would be easy to engineer it to get more bang for your buck. I was just saying that Mars wasn't a good candidate for this, and Mars is our next probably target.
Using a gas to expand a solid such that surface area and pressurization meet certain criteria isn't a particularly ridiculous or childish notion. Those car tires you're driving on ain't exactly solid material!
The great thing about inflating something is that, until it's necessary, it can be almost invisible. Many materials can be inflated to many times their compressed size, and still maintain properties that a given situation requires. The fact that their expansion involves temporary forces that would be impossible to deliver under any predeployed material can be quite a blessing as well.
I always thought it'd be fascinating to have shipping material that operated is miniature airbags...whenever an excess shock was registered, the peanuts would pop and grow, absorbing the shockwave.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
Overheard near Area 51:
"Whadda mean there's an inflatable doll in orbit?"
"Well, sir, atleast the aliens have a sense of humor."
"Indeed, shoot another one down - we can't store these nukes forever."
"Yes sir!"
Check out BOSS an inlatible satillite. BOSS stands for Big Occulting Steerable Satillite. It will let you do things like directly view earth-like planets in orbit around stars from 5 Parsecs (18 lightyears) away.
A wealthy eccentric who marches to the beat of a different drum. But you may call me "Noodle Noggin."
Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati
I remember these inflatable cones were proposed decades ago for space station lifeboats. An astronaut in a suit would be able to do an emergency re-entry with this technology. I think NASA was not considering full lifeboats due to mass and complexity -- they already have human-qualified life support spacesuits.
next - one with fully articulatable joints and 3 orifaces! :)
Can't wait!!!
(resisting the urge to shout first post...)
Observe, reason, and experiment.
Observe, reason, and experiment.
(if you're too dumb, just pray)
The atmosphere of Mars is about 6 millibars (about 150x less than Earth). An inflatable heat shield might save space and reduce mass, but it would have to inflate out into something really large to slow down descent through increased drag.
Inflatable tech would work well as cushions to soften impact, and could save a lot of cash by reducing the weight of the probe, but this won't work well to slow impact, will it?
Sure, Mars only has 1/3 the gravity of earth, but that still makes (with the cheesy math of 1/3 of 150x thinner) a 50x hit in efficiency in drag vs tests on earth. Plus, the probe will probably still have some of its momentum left from the trip to get there.
Still, at a fraction of the cost, and super-compact, storage, it certainly couldn't hurt to pack along a few dozen cool inflatable extras on a probe. Go-Go-Gadget-Hand-Glider!
The stuff they use to make these things is flexible, yet extremely durable. Think about it. We already have spacesuits designed to protect astronauts from micrometeorites, balloons that can protect a spacecraft from impact without being punctured by hitting rocks after a fall from at least 400 feet, and if a stray supply module hits one of these things, it's most likely going to bounce off, rather than puncturing it. The result is going to be much better than if it hits a solid container, which will probably buckle under the stress and cause joints and connections to come apart.
Think about how much it takes to puncture and completely deflate a steel-belted radial tire, and then realize that tires are like paper balloons compared to the inflatable tools being designed for space.
NASA's been looking at inflatable technology for quite some time and I'm sure that this is just another application of new materials and ideas (the article must be Slashdotted).
If you think about it, inflation makes complete sense. Given the cargo limitations of today's launch vehicles, inflatable cargo takes up a lot less space. I saw NASA's 'architect', Constance Adams, speak at my school once and they've been designing an inflatable habitat for the space station for quite some time now. The great thing about an inflatable habitat is that it takes very little air in the vacuum of space for it to be structurally stable enough for construction habitation. Furthermore, inhabitable systems use an endoskeletal design for their interiors, rather than the exoskeletal designs of current tin cans, leading to a more flexible design. In addition, materials used for the skin are much lighter than their metallic counterparts, saving launch costs.
If you think about it, in space, most things are in tension because of the outward pressure of the required internal atmosphere. Why not use this force to your benefit, right?