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Inspection Microsat Tested In Orbit
727scotty writes " Aviation Week magazine reports (Feb 3, page 39) that a 70 lb microsatelite designed to inspect its "mother ship" was successfully tested in orbit on January 29. The XXS-10 was launched on a Boeing Delta II , piggybacked on a GPS IIR-8 payload. The Microsat was maneuvered around the orbiting Delta upper stage, using video cameras to inspect it from all angles and various distances. Would have been nice to have on the Columbia mission."
Would have been nice to have on the Columbia mission.
No, it wouldn't. Even if the astronauts had found the problem before they re-entered the atmosphere, there wasn't anything they could have done about it. They weren't set up for extended space walks, and they didn't have the equipment to repair the tiles anyway. And, they weren't in the right orbit to make it to the space station.
It wouldn't have made much of a difference.
Ed Wedig
Graphic design services
docbrown.net
My understanding (from a NY Times article if I recall right) is that NASA did not even try to inspect Columbia with several powerful ground-based telescopes (which had been used to inspect some earlier shuttles).
A better tool ain't no cure for "talked yourself out of bothering to try".
It's easy to make up & spread cool- and credible-sounding stuff. Finding & checking hard facts is hard work.
Yah, there's nothing like hindsight is there...
--"The perfect example of the man of action is the suicide." - William Carlos Williams
...that's what's suspicious to me as well, their failure to inspect from the ground, despite knowing that chunk 0 crap blew off and smacked into the wing. I don't think it was an oversight. Granted, I have a suspicious nature as well. The whole thing smells to me.
And I have zero confidence in any government "investigation", not after the OKC blast, the TWA 800 dog and pony show CIA cartoon "science", and especially the WTC 9-11 attacks. Especially those.
I originally started questioning government "reality" after kennedy (JFK) got whacked and the warren commission report. I was a teen then and it just stank, it was dismal, no idea why most adults back then swallowed that fairy tale tripe. Since then, I take government official pronouncements (tonkin gulf attack is another biggee) with several large handfuls of salt. For a lot of historical reality, it takes decades for any sort of "true facts" to come out, by then, it's on to new stuff, no one cares that much. The Pearl Harbor "sneak attack" is another one that if the reality of the situation was known back then, would have greatly changed history.
Anyone's MMV of course.
The Progress cargo vessel that docked with the ISS was sent up 1 day after the Shuttle crash with supplies.
If they had known a *week* beforehand that the shuttle was not going to survive re-entry, is there not a *POSSIBILITY* that an emergency cargo / docking ring change could have taken place, the launch recalculated and sent into a Columbia-compatible orbit? Bring at least some of the shuttle crew down in Progress (maybe all if possible) then attempt to bring the Shuttle in on autopilot?
The shuttle would have had enough supplies to last for another couple of days for this rendezvous to take place - landing delays are frequent events anyway because of bad weather.
Anyway, it's something to think about for the future - it's obvious that there is a need for emergency response options with any future space travel.
Also: WHY are all docking rings on manned spacecraft not compatible? Standards like that will save lives in future, dammit.
If it wouldn't have helped at all to have visuals of the damage in orbit, why on earth are we spending millions gathering debris to reconstruct what happened? A visual inspection, if it had been possible, could have potentially removed a lot of doubt about what really happened, even if it couldn't have saved the shuttle. It could have also given the astronauts a chance to assess their odds of survival and given them more time to say farewell to their families. Depressing maybe, but certainly pragmatic and humane.
OK, I've not seen the numbers on what sort of delta-v was required for a rendevous, and what was available, has anyone actually got hard number on this?
Secondly, docking isn't necessary to transfer crew, there's always 2 EVA suits on board and since challenger every crew member has an Advanced Crew Escape suit which is a partial pressure suit designed to work at 'up to 100,000 feet' - that's 1% of sea level pressure. In theory a fast transfer through a vacume could be made with the assistance of an astronaut in an EVA suit.... oxygen starvation is the main problem here.
So... if someone has a nice dynamic analysis which shows that the navigation for a rendezvous would be impossible then I'd be happy.
--that was the point of my post, to show that commonly held beliefs have oft times been proven to be quite wrong after a large amount of time has passed, effectively neutralising what effects the real data might have cuased had said data been available at the time. "thinking and knowing"-two different things. Like my reference to pearl harbor, I'd say well over 99.999% of the US people thought we had "no warning" and it was a "sneak attack" so we had to "go to war" based on that. Now that that "data" and "thinking" can be shown to be mostly false, you have to wonder what would have changed.
Similar to what is "terrorism" and who is responsible for what. You won't really know with more certainty until perhaps decades from now who was telling the truth and who wasn't, and how events really came about. You and I may "think" something now, or that event A is not in any way related to event B, or it is, no matter, but we won't KNOW for perhaps a long, long time.
When you are talking about global geopolitics,control over billions of people and trillions of dollars, merely telling lies and backing them up "officially" is the smallest act "governments" and large institutions do. The smallest. Obfuscations and linkages might not be evident at first, maybe only very small clues or hints.
I take a very broad and large view of history and politics and the continuuing struggle of humans and their domination over one another. I tend to think we are all a lot more "predatory" and "not good" then what people are comfortable admiting to, from a personal scale to a global scale.
History shows me that's a safe bet and viewpoint to take, it's so safe you can almost call it the default house odds.
I know that Slashdot is rife with conspiracy theorists but, I don't think I've seen a single one lay out quite so many conspiracies at once. It seems that you live in a frightening world. I for one would be paralyzed with fear.
Remember, just because you are paranoid doesn't mean that they aren't out to get you.
Seven brave, doomed astronauts orbiting the Earth, the trearful public farewells, the painful choices between risking near certain death in re-entry, eventual suffication in orbit, or volentary suicide. I can't imagine anything worse. At least they died happy.
Anybody ever see that show on Discovery three years ago, before they turned into the 'boring repeat channel'?
They had a one hour show on cold war technologies, one segment on powerful lasers for launching small devices. This laser had a square output beam, was focusable, and was used to launch this little metal top.
Anyways, I'm just rambling because I don't remember the name of the show, but one of the other things on that show was this *amazing* little device demonstrating an exotic propulsion system.
This device was about a foot long, and had little rocket nozzles all over it. It used some sort of engine that works in bursts. The device was in a net, and there was a countdown. Suddenly, the thing rises on tiny bursts of flame, stabilizes at some altitude. Just watching this thing rise with the tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch sound was amazing enough, but suddenly more jets activate, and the thing just ROLLS and floats sideways in the air.
This thing was the most maneuverable thing I'd ever seen. It had been designed to float in space and ram itself into enemy satelites.
It must have been very light. Just slap a camera on one of these and keep one on every Shuttle mission. I can't imagine anything being smaller and cheaper than this.
Oberg's idea of getting an astronaut out there, have the Shuttle maneuvre and have the astronaut basically in free-fall next to the Shuttle is last-ditch, IMHO.
Let's look at this on its own merits. This is really cool and could lead to great stuff. Imagine doing on-orbit inspection, repair, refueling and upgrades to other satellites!
What you saw was the Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle, developed for SDI ("Star Wars") as part of a concept called "Brilliant Pebbles".
orbit inclination
--if you will re read my post, you'll see that what was "theory" turned out to be "data" after historical inspection. That's why I used those examples. What you may make of that is your business. What's "freakier" is that so many people-yourself for example-refuse to learn from history, and refuse to consider that you might have an incorrect belief system that might be based on purposeful actions and manipulated media press releases and pronouncements. If the concept of the "big lie" didn't work, there wouldn't be so many examples of it in past history to reflect upon.
How the latest shuttle disaster might play out in the long run, I do not know, no idea whatsoever. But I reject the notion that you, or anyone else posting on this website, has all the data on which to base an immediate assumption as to "the facts" surrounding this case.. I don't, nor do you, other than there's dead people and a large craft smashed on the ground.
Like I said, my default position is that when it comes to matters of extreme importance, that governments more often than not will lie, and lie so quickly and casualy that it is an endemic and ingrained part of their "jobs". You or anyone else may go blithely along and "believe in" each and every official government pronouncement, I will remain content to wait and see how matters shake out, and add to the data mix and adjust my position accordingly as new data gets added. The only thing I hold as carved in stone is that nothing really IS carved in stone, especially on very recent occurrences such as this disaster. I learned my lesson on "trust" with government and the media and "popular opinion" a long time ago.
At the first quick glance, I though the title read "Microsoft Tested in Orbit"... Now there's a frightening thought, especially after what happened to the shuttle; Gives BSOD a whole new meaning -_-|||
"NASA did not attempt to examine Columbia's left wing with high-powered telescopes on the ground, 180 miles below, or with spy satellites. The last time NASA tried that, to check Discovery's drag-chute compartment during John Glenn's shuttle flight in 1998, the pictures were of little use, [shuttle program manager Ron] Dittemore said. Besides, he said, `'there was zero we could have done about it.' "
The article discusses other options and why they wouldn't have worked. Recommended reading....
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
Anyway, the problem was that Columbia wasn't fitted with the docking ring because there was no need to dock with the ISS.
It wouldn't have helped since that shuttle was already in orbit and had nowhere else to go.
Figuring out the cause of the problem allows NASA to fix any design or procedural problems which led to the crash BEFORE another shuttle goes up.
Doug
Venn ist das nurnstuck git und Slotermeyer? Ya! Beigerhund das oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!
they weren't in the right orbit to make it to the space station. colombia couldnt go to the space station, because its heavier then the later space shuttles it was deemed that comumbia couldnt and shouldnt go, it'd probably damage it or something, and i think also becuase it was never supposed to go there is no way of connecting to ISS but i could be wrong there. sorry but columbia was f%cked, and there is nothing a mini satilite could have done to stop it now is not the time for what if, it happend, 7 excellent human beings lost there lives in the shit scariest job going. hats off to them
dybia felly dwi a hampster (i think therefore i am a hampster)
> Figuring out the cause of the problem allows NASA to fix any design or procedural problems
Drumroll please, he got it. Now wouldn't it have been nice to have actual pictures of the wing damage, so that we can reduce the amount of speculation about whether it was the wing or the computer or whatever. No, it wouldn't have saved the shuttle or astronauts, but that's not what we're talking about here at all. As it is we may never know the cause, and chances of deducing anything from any remaining wing shards are pretty slim.
Here's a link to some SRB technical documentation, very good reading for the engineer types.
There is much more documentation available at this site pertaining to all of the shuttle's systems for the those interested.
...now NASA is developing pretty decent theories about what happened, but they anticipate that it may be impossible to get to the root cause. The pieces of debris they need most may be either burned up or hopelessly lost between Eastern California and Texas. So the shuttles are grounded awaiting a much more difficult root cause determination.
OTOH, had Space Station construction gone more according to plan...
* There were plans for a Hab module, so that they could accomodate more than the three people necessary for bare maintenance. They might've even been able to do some decent science work.
* There were plans for a crew rescue vehicle, to overcome Soyuz lifetime problems and get the larger crew down.
* There were plans for an 'orbital tug' that was meant to do short intra-orbital missions based from the space stations.
All were cut. The combination of all three just might have made a difference, in the current situation. To temper that, I don't know what schedule those three pieces were on. They might not have been in place by now, even with funding.
As-is, the space station is essentially useless. The only good we get out of it is that we are learning something about space construction and maintenance, and maybe someday we can send the goodies up and make the thing really useful. That future hasn't been ruled out, which it would be if we shut it down
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Actually, they probably died quite terrified and in agony as the temperature in the comparment flared to fatal levels, but you're right in that at least they didn't have to anticipate it.
OTOH, I'm sure they'd have liked a chance to make those tearful farewells to their families first.