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Discovery Docks At International Space Station
tewl writes: "Saw this on CNN.
For all of those interested in the space program: 'The space shuttle Discovery gently latched onto the docking port of the International Space Station Friday afternoon (1:45 p.m. EDT) as the two spacecraft hurtled at 250 miles above Kazakhstan at a rate of 50 miles a second.
"Houston, Discovery, we have capture," radioed one crew member.
It was the fourth shuttle docking at the fledgling station. NASA is planning another 35 shuttle visits over the next five years to build the station, estimated to cost between $60 billion-$100 billion. When complete, in 2006, the 16-nation project will have the interior volume of a 747 jumbo jet and stretch the length of a football field.'"
Convincing the private sector or the general public would be much more effective
I would pay $1 extra (optional) at (morning caffine source of your choice)bucks
If it went to the space program.
Others might say What about my cause?
Well businesses could rotate causes periodically.
The dinosaurs went extinct because they didn't have a space programe.
We don't have an effective one yet.
The best source of a RP stream for the NASA channel is at Space.com. (URL: http://www.space.com/n ews /spaceagencies/nasatv_sched.html ) get you most of the way there.
They've got a cheesy JavaScript interface you've got to get through the first time, but from then on you should be able to just select it from the RP history menu.
Enjoy.
You mean like some sort of "space shuttle"? That's a cool idea. We should get to work on it immediately.
They're moving at 250 miles/sec way the hell up in the sky, the ground distance covered is probably a bit less. I don't think there is a Kazakhstan conspiracy.
I'm much more amused by the fact that astronauts have become so common, boring, and unrecognizable that the article refers to them simply as "an astronaut" instead of giving their name.
EOF
Whoosh ... there was the sound of my grade school geometry lessons flying out of my head. :-/
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Hmm ... at the exact moment of transmission, they were over Kazakhstan, or did they just throw that in just to enhance the "International" sound of the whole thing? At 250 miles/sec, they would fly over the whole country in about 5 seconds or so.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
This link gives all the ISS visibility info, PLUS information for Mir and dozens of bright naked eye satellites.
No matter where you live on earth, every evening just after twilight you can sit outside with a timetable and an accurate watch calibrated to the timelady's voice, and watch the "artificial moons" go by.
www.heavens-above.com
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
You americans really should switch to the metric system, like your neighbours to the north.
So how long, in hockey rinks, will the ISS be?
I think this is a fantastic common ground for nations to get together and do something.
Yes. Countries need something to keep them occupied and stop them from getting bored. When they get bored they start wars.
... leaving shuttle pilot Pamela Melroy to finish by herself ...
NASA's got a nice shuttle web site with updates during the mission (STS-92). There's also the mission press kit with all and more than you wanted to know.
I wonder if anyone has brought up the issue of expanding funding for the space program in the elections. With all these talks of surplus, it might be rather nice to use it on space exploration.....
Not only will it be "challenging" but it will be quite an "enterprise" that will likely result in the "discovery" that they are as likely to "find a path" to "Atlantis" as the money needed.
Indeed, it seems a hopeless "endeavor" for a has-been superpower that is now almost as poor as "Columbia".
(while groans are acceptable, a barrage of rotten turnips would be frowned upon by the management, and reckless discharge of a firearm within city limits is a serious felony)
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Have you ever spent a lot of time in one of those things (747, I mean)? Comfy is NOT the word I'd choose!
Try the 16+ hour LA -> Sydney flight some time. At least in cattle class (MOOOO!) It gets a little... close.
-- IANAEG - I am not an elder god.
In reality, there isn't a 'miles per hour' in space. On earth, it's measured in relation to the position from the earth's surface, and it's change from that position. In space, we don't really move in relation to the earth anymore.
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CAIMLAS
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Will there be any regulation in terms of time in orbit? Is there already? What I want to know is, if someone's up there with no gravity for a year, and they come down, they aren't going to be able to walk.
I had a knee injury one time that disabled me from using the leg for about a month and a half. It was a noodle when I recovered. It took me a while to walk correctly again (however, I was about 10 at the time, so I recovered quickly).
Another thing: Food. Will they have a hydropaunics lab or something? I've read they will be moderately self-sustaining. Not quite Star Trek: Voyager, though...
You seem to be misunderstanding keysian economics. Using this ideology the debt should only be accumulated during times of recession, and should be paid off during times of growth. Thus, when ression hits again, there should be little or no debt load. If the debt is paid off in the future there will be more money for the government, and the people to spend. Then again i live in canada where the debt per captia is higer.
Every modern country has debt. And all of those contributing to the international space station are included.
It's a fact of modern life, and nations have sophisticated methods of dealing with that. I'm not happy about it either, but that's the way it is.
But do you want to tell your children that you paid off your national debt, or that your country contributed to one of the most wondrous anomanalies in the sky? That you bargained, negotiated, created, innovated and had the balls to put together something that defies natural law, and provides scientific value to the entire human race? And how that process brought you to a deeper understanding of different cultures, the benefits of which will underwrite your childrens future?
Go on then. I think this is a fantastic common ground for nations to get together and do something.
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
And your claiming by inference a space shuttle never blew up?
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Now IIS is in the space. When are we launching Apache?
Ummmm NO! Escape velocity for earth is 11.2 km/s, or 6.8 mi/s. In fact if the shuttle were travelling this fast it would be the fastest man made object ever, the previous record holder being voyager 2 at 21 mi/s. What you probably meant to say was that they were travelling at 5 mi/s which is orbital velocity at that altitude. Off by an order of magnitude, oops!
NINE YEARS! You, too, can buy a space station for $3,168.81/SECOND for the next nine years (yes, that's $20,000/minute, $11,407,711.61/hour). Of course, ;Ma rs Direct would have cost around $30 Billion. Maybe if China goes to Mars first, we'll take notice that there is something there that we may be interested in.
This link tells of the ease of going to Mars. But I can't find the real link of interest. Telling of that the ISS is being built so that the shuttle has something to do. If we took the money from the ISS, and not even touch the money from the shuttle runs, we could colonize Mars in 20 years.
Oh, and I loath the idea of terraforming Mars. Let's rip out Yellowstone and pave it over while we're at it. We need to adapt to the other planet, not ruin it the second we get there.
You quitting proves that the karma kap worked. The most annoying of the whores shut up. --CmdrTaco
I was listening last night, and at least part of the problems were that they had to redirect dataflows because of the Ku antenna mishap.
Almost as annoying as not being able to watch the Z1 truss go up is that most feeds appear to be Windows mediaplayer. You have to dig for Real, and of course there's NOTHING non-proprietary at all.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Is it still really necesary for news agencies to make this stupid comment every time a shuttle goes up? it's speed relative to the earth is 5mi/sec but WHO CARES, that is almost totally irrelevant when it's orbiting/docking.
Traveling only a few miles an HOUR when it finally docs with ISS. I mean, I handed someone a piece of paper tooday while we "hurtled through space orbiting the sun at about 30km/sec" right? oooo..daring, you say? NO! Because your frame of refrence was EARTH not the solar system!
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
When complete, in 2006, the 16-nation project will have the interior volume of a 747 jumbo jet and stretch the length of a football field.'"
This is perfect. When the space station is finally completed, they can make some of their money back, by holding the superbowl there. They can use some of that space algae as makeshift astroturf. They'll of course, dress up one of the shuttles like the Goodyear blimp. We can get Roseanne to sing the National Anthem again, because after all, in space, no one can hear you scream.
From Ralph Nader.
"Social Security is a success story providing retirement income to 35 million people, and disability insurance and life insurance to almost all workers. Its sound financial base ensures solvency well into the future. But because politicians and investment firms use scare tactics for their own benefit, millions of Americans believe that Social Security is endangered.
According to the Social Security trustees' projections, if nothing is done to adjust benefits or revenues, the program would still pay every penny of scheduled benefits through 2037. (The trustees assume slow economic growth. If growth is at or near its historic rate, the program can pay all scheduled benefits for over sixty years.) After 2037, while the trust fund would be depleted, the program would still take enough annually to pay benefits in excess of what the average retiree receives today. So much for the widespread idea that baby-boomers may never see any benefits."
It's worth looking into, maybe he is right, the politicians have been using scare tactics to actually make everyone think that there is a "problem". I certainly hope so, I pay $35 into the social security fund every week...
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
as the two spacecraft hurtled at 250 miles above Kazakhstan at a rate of 50 miles a second
Not to pick nits (ok, yes to pick nits), orbital velocity is actually about 5 miles per second. Someone added an extra zero here.
For those of you who would like to see the Shuttle & ISS activities in Real Audio, the link on NASA's site points to: http://198.116.66.254:8080/ramge n/e ncoder/live.rm
I guess now that DS9's been cancelled, Miles O'Brien found himself a cushy job as space correspondent for CNN.
All NASA would have to do to open up space for humanity is guarantee to award $500/lb for anything that anyone puts into orbit up to $50 billion dollars. That would, with commercial participation, put 100 million pounds of stuff in orbit and spawn a competitive launch industry that has costs below $500/lb to LEO.
Jerry Pournelle and friends tried to get NASA to do that back in the early 80s when Reagan's folks pretended like they cared about space (due to Gen. Graham's promotion of SDI), but they failed to make inroads at that time.
Strange how Dan Goldin was able to convince Jerry that Jerry had input on NASA policy recently when, in fact, Goldin was not about to pursue anything akin to the launch incentives envisioned by Jerry's crew. Goldin even broke the Launch Services Purchase Act of 1990 that a bunch of us grassroots guys got passed when he launched the Advanced Communications Technology Satellite on the Shuttle, as well as failing to pursue the launch vouchers program we also got passed, so it is pretty clear Goldin doesn't give a rats ass about the law, let alone making space accessible.
But what happened to Jerry when Goldin had him running around thinking he was having input on NASA policy? Why didn't Jerry just rub Goldin's nose in NASA's failure to set up simple, dumb, launch incentives?
Why bother to do anything else?
Seastead this.
ISS is slowed down and thus loses altitude by atmospheric drag. It needs to be "reboosted" to a higher orbit every few months (which will ususally be done by visiting spacecraft). This is normal and it was designed that way. The upper limit of 400km altitude is due to the limited range of the visiting spacecraft (range depending on payload mass). The lower limit is due to the requirement that the ISS must not sink to a dangerously low orbit even if one reboost cycle is missed.
As they each describe directory paths, it's clear they're using Windows based machines. It also seems like they're using a human (on the ground) doing single-file-at-a-time transfer for e-mail rather than a proper MTA, and this can't happen when the machine is being used "in certain ways".
Bill McArthur has been spending a lot of time fighting with the systems so far, and this isn't the first time software problems have cropped up during flights -- a few back a software program refused to write log files until someone figured out the directory limit for files had been reached.
I have to wonder -- why the hell are they flying with such flaky systems? And why are all the systems running Windows? I'm not suggesting everything suddenly switch to Linux, but it would seem to make sense that the servers (at least) run something more stable than the ones currently flying have demonstrated themselves to be.
I don't know if this has been caused by the loss of the Ku-band (high-bandwidth), but regardless, perhaps it's time to form an Open Source project for space-flight software?
Why not just get a 747 and slap some huge rockets onto it and put it into orbit.
Then eveyone would have comfy seats too.
-- That which does not kill us has made its last mistake.
Er, I knew I shoulda stayed away from those oysters at the work party last night. =P
Free music from Jack Merlot.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Some of the development systems for this experiment run Debian.
Check out the rest of the album. I found the emergency escape drills and the "spacesuits" worn while fueling the satellite with hazardous chemicals most interesting, after pictures of people I know :-) .
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
For those around the world who would like to actually see the ISS in the night sky, as it soars past high above:
ISS Naked-Eye Visiblity Data
It isn't very bright yet, but will be in the future. Perhaps the docked shuttle will add to it as well.
- Also Sprach Doktor Merkwurdigliebe