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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."
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
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?
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
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
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
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
One word: Inertia.
Accelerate the 20 tonne payload to 5mph and then decelerate it. Where is that energy going to go? It just doesn't evaporate into space.
"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.
"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
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 they rounded off from 2.54, then this is exactly one inch/sec - I'm wondering whether the speed was calibrated to English units.
Three words. Monorail, MONORAIL, MONORAIL!
-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
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.
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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
(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!"
"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?
I can picture it now. . .
Yeah! All my life I've wanted to conquer Mount Everest and now I will finally. . .Twack!
It stands for "Australian dollars". Currently it's about $1.9 $A to the $US. So we're talking about $188 million (US dollars).
bigger than yours.
dominionrd.blogspot.com - Restaurants on
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