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Perimeter Railway for ISS; HETE-1 Comes Down
Quirk writes "The Sydney Morning Herald is touting the mission to start construction of an orbiting railway. Space Shuttle Atlantis will carry the astronauts who will initiate the planned 107 meter rail line along the outside of the International Space Station. The remote controlled train will move at speeds of 2.5 centimeters a second and be able to carry more than 20 tonnes of cargo. Construction is projected for completion in 2004." And B3avis followed up with news about the HETE re-entry: "The pieces of the HETE-1 spacecraft seem to have crashed somewhere in the Himalayas.
"The final notification from Space Command indicates that the debris re-entered at 31.5 degrees North and 92.4 degrees East." says NASA. And they should know."
There was a tunnel thing posted here earlier - an elevator from Earth to a space station above.
Wow i need a ticket.
In case anyone's wondering, 2.5 cm/s is about 1/20 mph...so it takes a while for this thing to get anywhere.
This is a self-referential sig
There's probably some people up in the Himalaya's that saw the thing come down and think its the end of the world....
...if only they knew.
Beer, now there's a temporary solution -- Homer Jay S.
The crushed remains of the legendary beast 'Yeti' were found today, near a recent crater of unspecified origin...
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
This is one time that I'll pass on sitting in the dining car.
I knew NASA had something up their sleeve. They've been talking about other means of propulsion for so long. So now will be able to cruise the final frontier at enormous speeds! Scheesh..
[insert random fortune here]
All abord the space mantrain!
Now that would be cool.
Yeah, I admit it, I have no clue what this posting
is about, but just saw railway and figured a stupid
comment like this would work.
A spokesman for NASA, Tom Farrell, said: "We've done a lot of work to make certain it can't jump the tracks."
Well I hope that's good enough. Even though its going pretty slow, I wouldnt want 20 tonnes 'popping off' a train track and heading for the space station.
I'll think of a funny sig later on
Although the whole idea of building an orbiting train is cool, the article fails to mention *why* they are building it. If the train track run 107 meters, and goes 2.5 cm/sec, without stopping, it will take 71 minutes to go from end to end. To do what? Carry 20 tons? What do they have up there that is 20 tons that they're moving? I don't remember how much of a cost NASA quoted before to carry something like a gallon of water into space on the shuttle, but if they're sending 20 tons of something up there, why?? The idea of the train is really cool, but beyond that, I really don't get it. Anyone have insight?
Since the national budget is a bit tight this year, what with the Bush tax cuts and economy not doing too hot, perhaps they should hire this guy: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/04/06/125123 2&mode=nested&tid=159 to build it. "The total cost of track, train and associated hardware was $4,070.07, which works out to be $13.57 per foot. One mile of this type of monorail would cost you $71,649.60, a bargain by today's standards!" Let's see NASA beat that!
--offtopic: adj. When a moderator does not get your joke.
Thats 90 metres per hour or 0.09km/hr! For those
of us who use ISO metrics. Hmm just over 1hr
going end-to-end on the rail line..
This is 2002 and NASA has a space station in space, but their 'bright' solution is a train? Trains are so... Industrial Revolution. You'd think they'd at least have some sort of rocket-propelled spacecraft with small engines used to make fine adjustments to its path and keep it in the proper orbit. Or maybe the NASA folks got jealous of that guy with the monorail in his backyard. ;-)
"You just better have a damn good conductor."
Interesting similarity, IIS and ISS both carry a huge load and move very, very slowly.
Brings a whole new meaning to the term "Space STATION" eh? :D
Tom Farrell, NASA spokesman, clarified his earlier remarks this afternoon: "Wait, that should be 2.5 inches/sec."
"Whoops!"
When finished in 2004 the line will stretch about 107 metres along the outside of the International Space Station, 400 kilometres above the planet.
/. comments in an effort to keep up on DMCA and tech issues is really getting frustrating...
It's just a robotic system for manipulating cargo outside the ISS without the need for someone to do a EVA. It's not like it's that hard to figure out from the article, if you'd actually read it.
Does anyone know a better site that has tech news with a higher signal to noise ratio? Because wading through the same tiresome uninformed
Word on the street is that funding for this project comes from Lionel Toy Trains in a massive effort to revive the interest in locomotive models. The first test run of this new train in space will sport an astronaut riding the front car of a gigantic toy train.
--I hate big sigs.
RUN! RUN! For the love of CowboyNeal, RUN!
Here are a few more links that provide greater detail.
0 2/02-58.html
n omylinks
http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/spacenews/releases/20
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/iss-02c.html?astro
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
Kuro5hin.org is generally pretty good for DMCA-type stuff, and has the added benefit of not being filled with Slashdotters. It has the downside of being filled with the odd foaming lunatic. =) More socially-minded news too, with much less Linux... if you want to stroke off over your OS, perhaps that's not the best place.
Basically this is to allow automated construction of the IIS as it grows in size. That site also mentions they are installing a new expansion hub,to which new modules are attached (maybe by the robotic arm)
--
What is the sound of this sentence?
... it's faster than the British rail network, and probably cheaper to build/run as well
"Life is like a sewer - what you get out of it depends on what you put into it" - Tom Lehrer
How long do you suppose it would take to bring 20 *tons* of material up to the ISS that's going to stay there? Not only that, but be in one place at one time, which just happens to be on a 1m by 3m cart.
Also...I see a lot of people complaining about the speed (or lack thereof) of this thing. If you have 20 tons of material moving, and you want it to stop, you have some serious momentum issues. The speed seems appropriate for this application, I would think.
-kwishot
this is to allow automated construction of the IIS as it grows in size. That site also mentions they are installing a new expansion hub,to which new modules are attached (maybe by the robotic arm)
will this be available on windows update, or do we have to wait for the next service pack?
"Although the $A357 million train..."
Is that "A" a typo, or are the numbers in hexadecimal to make it look cheaper?
There are 010 kinds of people. Those who understand octal, those who don't, and 06 other kinds of morons.
I thought cool there going to build a train ring around the station to provide artifical gravity but no, its so the arm can move around to help build the station. Maybe to much Red Mars for me :)
Damn slashdotting. here is a mirror.
Great!! Now I'm hungry. And where exactly am I supposed to get okra at 4:30 in the morning?
Someone hates these cans.
I know I shouldn't encourage you but, one, I really like Xmas carrols even out of season, two, mein mutter ist Deutsche, three, it's so damn silly it made me laugh.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
Yes man. Let's nuke the arabs, fuck all those NASA geeks who say that the world is not flat and those evil enviromentalist who say that burning oil is bad for our flat Earth.
"NASA Spacetrains (UK) regret to announce the late departure of the 17:48 'Dark Side of the Station' service. This is due to the wrong kind of sub-atomic particles bombarding the track. We apologise for any inconvenience caused."
"NASA Spacetrains (UK) regret to announce the cancellation of the 17:53 'Earthside' service. This is due to a shortage of rolling stock. We apologise for any inconvenience caused."
"NASA Spacetrains (UK) regret to announce that all anti-clockwise trains are running approximately three hours late. This is due to overrunning engineering works and signalling problems near Mars. We apologise for any inconvenience caused."
etc...
(Probably have to have experienced UK trains to find any of that funny. If you have experienced UK trains though, then you have my deepest sympathies.)
Cheers,
Ian
'The final notification from Space Command indicates that the debris re-entered at 31.5 degrees North and 92.4 degrees East.'
:)
+/- 180 degrees
The reason you want a train is that if you are moving 20 tons, you want it attached and under control. Even though there's no gravity, there's still inertia, and 20 tons is a lot of interia to have floating free. 20 tons wouldn't notice things like bulkheads let alone those soft squishy things.
Nice fellows. They know for years that that batteries will crash SOMEWHERE. They had enough time to pick their garbage up, but they decided to let the garbage crash.
What would have happened if it crached in a higher populated area than Nepal or Tibet?
I would say this is highly unresponsible behaviour.
Privacy is terrorism.
Great, more junk for those Everest-climbing do-gooders to clean up. "I found an oxygen canister, a dead guy and three attitude control thrusters"
Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
Edward Everett (1794 - 1865)
If the train moves at 2.5 cm/s in one direction carrying 20 tonnes then newtons laws dictate that
the space station will move in the opposite direction (at presumably a lower speed cos it
weights more). Won't this use up a lot of thruster fuel trying to counteract this?
"Aircraft pilots and lots of other people in Bavaria reported yellow glowing pieces falling from the sky in the night of April 7th. The incident is being investigated. Some of those pieces could even be recovered and are going to be analyzed."
7 55,00.ht ml
Looks like maybe NASA missed the Himalaya by 5000 miles?
Reference (sorry, german only):
http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/0,1518,190
If they rounded off from 2.54, then this is exactly one inch/sec - I'm wondering whether the speed was calibrated to English units.
Now that there will be a train track circling the space station, anyone else think it's high time they decorate the modules with garland and little colored lights? Space Tinsel (A$400/Strand) would really complete the effect.
Of course, the lights will have to flash VERY SLOWLY to be consistent with the glacial speed of the Space Lionel.
Justin
"Why would God give us a waist if we wasn't supposed to rest our pants on it?" - Rev. Roy McDaniels
Three words. Monorail, MONORAIL, MONORAIL!
-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
Get on a passenger train. Jump while the train is moving. Do you smack into the back wall of the compartment at 120km/h? No.
The reason for the 20 ton mass requirement is due to the fact that the train track will be expected to 'build itself'. As new sections of the truss are brought up in the shuttle payload bay (each massing about 14,000 kg), they need to be attached to the ends of the truss already in place. The shuttle robot arm won't be able to reach that far out, so the station's robot arm (with one end on the 'train') will chug out along the rails on top of the truss, then lock itself down, grab the payload from the shuttle, and swing it accros and attach it onto the end of the truss. Repeat eight times (with eight shuttle flights, and lots of spanner weilding astronouts to bolt it together), and the truss is completed by 2004 or so.
Also, a lot of very heavy equipment is mounted in/on the truss (things like storage batteries for example), and these need to be replaced every so often, so the train will be used for that also.
Regarding the water, the US considers it a waste product, and actually dumps quite a lot of it from the US lab on the station. (quite a lot of it builds as condensation from the people on board, several liters per person per day). The Russians on the other hand, consider it a resource, and pump the 'waste' water from their AirConditioner into a electrolosis unit which electrically splits off the oxygen for breathing purposes. In any case the condensed water would not be safe for drinking, but fresh drinking water is supplied by the shuttle, as a by-product of the shuttle fuel cells. (Cyrogenic H2 + 02 = lots of electricty + pure water) The shuttle actually produces a *lot* of water, but dosn't really carry much into orbit to start with!
-- We don't understand software, and sometimes we don't understand hardware, but we can *see* the blinking lights
Well, 1 inch=2.54 cm. But I suspect that the thing was spec'd in inches/second and the number just converted to cm/sec.
Best Slashdot Co
Don't forget exploits per second, too.
Wonder how many trainspotters will be be buying telescopes by 2004
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Voltaire
No...
For straight-up hardware news, tomshardware.com's news section (http://www.tomshardware.com/technews/index.html) is a good place to start.
dinner: it's what's for beer
...this is faster than the MBTA during rush hour.
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
Should they call "The Galaxy Express 999"?
(Found this in the press this morning. Wonder if it was HETE and the coordinates given by NASA where the first point of 'no longer in space'. If that is the case, I could imagine that the visible bits would occur hundreds of miles away. May be completely unrelated-- I'm fully willing to admit I did zero research beyond seeing the article and the /. article in a short enough period of time that both were still in short term memory.)
Strange lights in the sky baffle Bavarians
MUNICH, Germany, April 7 (Reuters) - Strange lights in the sky baffled Bavarians late on Saturday as hundreds of panicked callers jammed police telephone lines seeking an explanation for the phenomenon.
Reports of an unsettling late-night natural light show came from all over the southern German state as well as the neighbouring region of Baden-Wuerttemberg.
"It had nothing to do with the weather. But I don't think little green men from Mars have landed in Bavaria. It was something burning out in the atmosphere," a meteorologist said.
"It was like a huge firework," a Reuters TV correspondent in Munich said, describing the display. "You could even see it through half-closed blinds. It lasted around three seconds," she said.
Pilots flying into Munich airport radioed the control tower with reports of unusual lights in the sky.
The German police said NASA scientists initially thought the light was caused by space junk -- floating debris in the Earth's atmosphere -- but later said they were still unsure.
The German army reported no unusual movements on its radar.
Scientists said the lights may have the result of a meteor breaking through the Earth's atmosphere.
"There are no signs of impact or damage. We can't say what it was," a police spokesman said.
"..Houston we have a CodeRed!"
Have you ever done physics? No , didn't think so. If you push against something in space it will
move away from you in the opposite direction. It doesn't matter if its a space station , a rock or
a martian. If this train pushes against the space station to move the space station will move too.
Imbecile.
Have you ever done physics?
Yes. You obviously haven't.
If you push against something in space it will move away from you in the opposite direction.
Not if the two objects are connected. The reaction mass has to leave the spacecraft.
Imbecile.
Yes, you are.
"bing-bong. Brimish Rull regret that mumble maz bem dermumble a mir mumble
That sounds remarkably like the Chicago El.
[squeel] Welcome [screetch] mumble Passengers mumble no Radio Playing mumble [static] [static] mumble. The next stations [bzzt] [static] mumble muble [squeel]
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Hi,
/. story. Coordenates do not match.
Last Friday night (Apr, 5, ~ 22:45 Eastern) I saw a light in the sky, probably a meteor of some kind. It traveled South to North and it was visible (at least I saw it) for 4 seconds. Its light changed from red to green. This was in Central North Carolina.
Did anyone else see it? I doubt it was the Satellite from this
I am pretty interested to know if this was just a piece of rock, a satellite or a party at ISS.
So how did US Space Command track it over Asia? It's not like we have tracking stations out there... Or do we?
Bollocks.
So by your logic a train exerts no force on the tracks its sitting on because its physically
touching the track. So how does it move then genius?
If this thing is moving on tracks on the space station its exerting a force on that track (or
on some pully mechanism) or it wouldn't move. This
in turn will cause the station to move somehow,
most likely it'll induce a torque if its not mounted exactly dead centre and will cause the
station to spin very slightly until an opposite force is exerted to stop it either by thrusters or
by the train when it stops.
Go back to Physics 101 , you need a refresher course mate. Concentrate on the conservation of
momentum chapter.
1: the acceleration against the station will be cancelled by an opposite acceleration against the station when the 'train' stops. this will leave the station displaced from its orginal position. when you move the 'train' back to the start point, you'll displace the station the other way, getting the station back to where -it- started.
2: if you don't care about the small displacement of the station's orbit as you use the 'train', no need for thrusters. if you do care, you'll be counter-acting the train with thrusters.
i should think it wouldn't be a problem, practically speaking, unless a telescope is trying to point at a star, in which case just don't use the train until it's done. as far as keeping station on orbit i should think there are bigger problems than the displacements caused by the train.
that's boltar's real question: how tightly does the space station's orbit need to be controlled?
Kind of construction yard from Red Alert ? :)
Interesting how long it will take to produce Ore Refinery...
The device you are attempting to access is either read only or just another user.
it is NOT A TRAIN! it is a robotic AXIS OF MOTION!
and don't believe those commercials that claim a bagless vacuum is easier to deal with than the (now) old fashioned bags: it makes a MUCH smaller cloud of dust to drop a full dust bag in the garbage than to POUR OUT and SCRAPE OFF the dust from the bin and filter of a bagless!!!
I don't think so. Remember that some wise guys
at NASA thought a number to be miles and not
kilometres (NASA goes decimal, AFAIK), which
caused a probe to burn in the Martian atmosphere
:-)
Amtrak in space? God help us all!
Who else thinks this is even stupider than building a monorail in your backyard? I mean, the train doesn't even GO anywhere.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Will it go to the kingdom of make believe?
"Can you open the pod bay doors, trolley?; I knew that you could."
I can picture it now. . .
Yeah! All my life I've wanted to conquer Mount Everest and now I will finally. . .Twack!
"Ping PING pong ping ping. May I please have your attention. Due to a magnitude 6.0 moonquake on the Tycho main line, the supaa-hoshi express will be 23 seconds late. We sincerely and deeply apologize for the major inconvenience this may cause our honoured passengers."
The most I've been delayed on a regular Japanese train was 35 minutes due to a major quake.
On a subway it was a couple of hours, but that was due to some people tossing Sarin nerve gas around.
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
It stands for "Australian dollars". Currently it's about $1.9 $A to the $US. So we're talking about $188 million (US dollars).
You're right about angular momentum conservation but keep in mind the relative masses and speed of the objects in question (P=mv). The mass of the crane+train is negligible compared to the entire ISS. The length of the action of the train drive on the track is also tiny compared to the dimensions of the space station and the train moves veeerry sloowwly. What angular momentum is imparted to the station by the train moving will most likely be absorbed by the natural flex of the station itself.
Great example of this in action is in the IMAX film "Mission to Mir" where you see Mir's solar wings and other sections bounce noticeably when the shuttle docks.
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
ah...reminds me of the good old problem of what happen to the earth if everybody decided to run east....
Anyway, the essential idea is that the station wants to keep its center of mass with respect to the earth a constant. So when you move things around, you shift the center of mass so the station shifts with it.
Mode (3) smart-aleck mode. Press * to return to main menu.
Satellite enters atmosphere 100 miles up at 15,000mph over Bavaria resulting in pretty light show. Toasted remnants of said satellite hit Himalayas 5 minutes and 5,000 miles later.
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
bigger than yours.
dominionrd.blogspot.com - Restaurants on
station further under the sway of Earth's gravity.
They're still being used in U.S. Engineering disciplines... can anyone say mars orbiter crash... I knew you could.
h tm l
http://slashdot.org/articles/99/09/30/1437217.s
HETE: High Energy Transient Experiment.
it sounds to me like this was almost the perfect end for a satellite with this name. a high energy burnout then impact, ending its transient experiments with orbital flight.
almost like... they planned it this way.
- Entertaining Bits from the Ancient Kernel Tree
And we've got lots of them.
There's a huge amount of junk orbiting the Earth. The various space agencies of the world have done a beautiful job making sure there's no doubt as to which species lives here.
And while every piece of that junk does pose extreme danger to anything of a non-junk nature in orbit (Astronauts on EVAs, satellites, ISS..) it's still not economically feasible to go on a garbage collecting mission.
So yes, they let the batteries crash. Would you rather them spend several million tax dollars chasing it down? As you may recall, they've let far larger things fall out of the sky like, oh, Skylab.
I realise that is is very expensive to collect the spacegarbage, but hey, if I mess up my room I have to clean it up too ;)
The point I wanted to make wasn't that space agencies should clean up their mess.
The point I wanted to make is this: When you know large peaces of space-junk will fall on earth and you don't know WHERE is will fall down, you are knowingly endangering people.
With the Mir they more or less controlled the crash but with these batteries.....
Maybe they should clean up their garbage, but it IS way too expensive indeed. Will it ever be economically feasible to clean it up? Cleaning up nuclear waste isn't economically feasible.
Maybe one day there will be an other reason for the space agencies to clean up their mess. When too many satellites get damaged perhaps.
Privacy is terrorism.
Well, on Friday a clean-up expedition left for Mount Everest to tidy things up. Did NASA succeed in dropping this trash where they can pick it up?
So by your logic a train exerts no force on the tracks its sitting on because its physically touching the track.
Nope. That's not what I said.
Please tell me you don't work for NASA. Please.
so we can have a math problem that starts;
A train leaves the ISS at 12:00 EST traveling 1.5 cm per second....
So we can have a math problem that starts; A train leaves the ISS at 12:01 EST traveling 2 cm per second...
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
The thing in bavaria was a meteroite, they found it in some farmer's backyard.