Slashdot Mirror
Software Bug Causes Soyuz To Land Way Off
howhardcanitbetocrea writes "A mysterious software fault in the new guidance computer of the Soyuz TMA-1 spacecraft was the cause of the high-anxiety off-course landing over the weekend, according to NASA sources.' Which is why I will never trust the Strategic Defence Initiative - the star wars project. It only takes one line of mistyped code in what will always be a beta release."
ahhh... it's just too obvious!
Software faults are not mysterious -- people are ignorant.
-kgj
Microsoft announced that a patch to "Windows XP for Spacecraft" will be available on Wednesday.
My journal has hot
Or any software. You might want to consider the software all the weapons systems that actually exist first, or anything in a safety-related environment. Take a look at Risks Digest.
It only takes one line of mistyped code in what will always be a beta release.
That's right. Better to have never tried at all than to try and fail, I always say.
Tried to browse pluto, and got back ""???
Slashdot is like Playboy: I read it for the articles
This sounds similar to the crash landing one of the mars spacecraft had when the operators forgot to convert English units to metric units.
You'd think that in such operations, where you only ever get one chance, they would have the most error free systems possible. I'm surprised they didn't feed the computer simulated data and found where it would take them.
-Ryan
AUWYHSTOT (Acronyms are Useless When You Have to Spell Them Out Too)
FUCK YOU!!! No I am not muslim but really thats out of line. Far worse than most trolls. I will not be a coward and post this under my name but please don't mod me down for this. Not asking to be modded up either but this guy deserved that.
"It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists." -Ludwig Wittgenstein
Now we have frikken astronauts beating up on poor anonymous software developpers... quoth the article
Yeah... right... if I had a nickle for every time I heard an end user say something similar to that ("I swear I didn't touch anything... it just... crashed..." or "The files just... disappeared! Gone! Disappeared! I didn't do anything!") I'd have...well...a lot of nickles...
/me mumbles bittlerly and goes back into his development hole :P
"Which is why I will never trust the Strategic Defence Initiative - the star wars project"
Strategic Defence Initiative = the star wars project
What was the thinking behind clarifying that to the Slashdot crowd?
Microprocessor, main processing unit of your computer...
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Talk about your flaming articles
Its fine to discuss a bug in a new Russian guidance system...but to immediately jump into a hot political topic like the SDI star wars system and then vastly overgeneralize it with "It'll never work, because it relies on computers" shouldn't have any place in this story.
"Which is why I will never trust the Strategic Defence Initiative - the star wars project. It only takes one line of mistyped code in what will always be a beta release."
Well, let's hope it stays in beta. Real world testing would be a major bummer!
With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter. -- William Lloyd
"...high-anxiety off-course landing..."
Any landing that you can walk away from is a good landing. Especially when you're talking about a manned re-entry vehicle.
Lest we forget, the last time an Earth-bound crew were returning from space their orbiter disintegrated and all seven astronauts were killed. Landing a couple of hundred miles off course and having to wait two hours for groundside assistance is a small price to pay for a safe return.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
TMA-1? (Must suppress Arthur C. Clarke-inspired giggle).
Maybe the problem was in that gigantic magnetic field wiping some data... (TMA stands for Tycho Magnetic Anomaly, aka the monolith in 2001)
I think the next spacecraft (TMA-2) should be nicknamed "big brother."
What we in the West call "bugs", the Japanese call "spoilage". I find this nomenclature honest and refreshing. "Bug" implies that the problem is some independent agent, when in fact the problem is the "spoiled" code itself.
-kgj
You should really ensure it is the right person. The comment looks like it belongs to the submitter, not Timothy.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
By your logic I will never drive my car again. It's got so many embedded controllers and runs so much code that I could never trust it. Plus, it was written by evil capitalists and isn't under the GPL, so it obviously can't be reliable.
What total bullshit!
The reason it went off-course is because it was trying to reach Jupiter, obviously. Why the hell else would it be called TMA-1? It seems to be a couple years behind schedule. :)
Good point Chuck.
Furthermore, since eericson's gripe is not relevant to my thread ("Mysterious?"), he/she should start another.
-kgj
"Which is why I will never trust the Strategic Defence Initiative - the star wars project. It only takes one line of mistyped code in what will always be a beta release."
Hey, Bob, how come every time I try to shoot that stupid skeet there's a bright flash and it just disapears?
The following http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~bart/736/papers/ariane5rep .html
provides great insight on how buggy software can screw up space vehicles. It is the result of the ARIANE 5 accident investigation. Before reading it one cannot really image what integer overflow can do!
You sit behind a computer and critisize other computer people. You say things like, "Oh. Programmers sent our space men hurtling toward their firey grave."
Look at the facts. Not one space man perished in this. Space men have only died in shuttle disasters, such as in 1986 and also a few months ago. Nobody died from this Russian misfortune. Every man is OK.
Don't critisize so quickly, lest YOU get the same treatment.
I suggest you read Slashdot
the dept. forgets to read YOU!
sulli
RTFJ.
Which is why I will never trust the Strategic Defence Initiative - the star wars project. It only takes one line of mistyped code in what will always be a beta release
Irrelevant. SDI, then and now, is a proven way to fund some basic research. The public is not that interested in science except to counter a perceived threat.
FWIW with your attitude we would not have the F16, F18 (?), F117, B2, and the various other aircraft with fly-by-wire control systems. The space shuttle too. Also do you think 'beta' mechanical devices are inherently safe and function properly? Again, the space shuttle, both disasters.
Sure thing, Captian Squiming Hatchblower. "It just blew." Could be, stranger things have happened. Wouldn't you know a software bug would be blamed when something unexpected happens on a capsule manned with one trained cosmonaut and two passengers who might be able to read Russian. Let's see them reproduce the error. Given the same inputs the computer will do the same thing everytime. M$NBC believes it, it must be true!
They walked away, it was a good landing button press or not button press.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Hey! Speak for yourself! I still am! :)
My journal has hot
And I'll keep calling them that until we have software recalls.
(I develop software.)
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
hmm...
[pink beam of light]
That they are using pirated copies of M$ XP that they bought in bulk from China for .99 cents a CD????
Or maybe they downloaded it with Kazaa!!
LOL!!!
...crashed while browsing the atmosphere? (By the way, software doesn't kill people, people kill people.)
Soyuz TMA-2 is currently docked at the International Space Station. The next one up will be TMA-3 and they will return in TMA-2. That way they always have the freshist one available for emergency escape.
Well, not always. In the 70's (or early 80's ... I think the 70's) all of the Eastern block countries sent their cosmonauts to the Salyut space station (that was before Mir). The Bulgarian cosmonaut Georgi Ivanov was very close to having a deadly accident because of the Soyuz. They could not dock for some reason, spent about 24h flying by the Salyut, and finally had to re-enter using auxiliary engines, and having precisely one try to fire them. They got lucky here, the engines worked and they entered the atmosphere in so called "ballistic trajectory" (how can it be non-ballistic?), with 9-10G overload.
I forgot to mention, there were two of them, the Russian Nikolay Rukavishnikov was the commander of the mission, G. Ivanov was the second guy.
This spring, several weeks after Columbia broke apart, there was an interview with G. Ivanov in a Bulgarian newspaper online, when he recalled how he himself was close to having a fatal accident back then. The reason was a malfunctioning fuel pump of their Soyuz.
Does the sawed-off shotgun in the Souyz capsule to fight off wolves violate the provisions that demiliterize space?
l an dings.ap/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/space/05/05/soyuz.
"In 1976, a Soyuz spacecraft came down in a freezing squall and splashed into a lake; the crew spent the night bobbing in the capsule.
Eleven years before that, two cosmonauts overshot their touchdown site by 2,000 miles and found themselves deep in a forest with hungry wolves. That's when Russian space officials decided to pack a sawed-off shotgun aboard every spacecraft."
If they can launch a shotgun hundreds of times, then why can't the US launch some lasers?
I'm confused.
In Soviet Russia, joke explanation reads YOU!
Will I retire or break 10K?
It's actually a clever piece of work. Basically, software has to make calculations in order to provide a "soft" entry, 5 Gs approximately. If there is an error, the module goes into a ballistic entry mode, and it is more like 7-8 Gs, rougher but survivable.
On (nearly) every manned spacecraft ever flown, every system has a hot-backup that kicks in if the first one fails. The exceptions are systems for which it is basically impractical to have a backup-- can't really have redundant heat shields, as the weight is too much. But for electronics and software, this is standard. This story would have gone practically unnoticed if Soyuz had notified Star City that they were doing a "ballistic" entry, in which case they would have been located much sooner.
This landing showed that the Soyuz has a robust design; if Endeavour enters the atmosphere at the wrong angle, could it recover? What if the flight landing computer failed? NASA has a lot of these things covered; for many problems it is probably more robust than Soyuz, for others it is less robust. Soyuz has the advantage of much more flight experience; I doubt that it's a coincidence that this anomaly happened on a flight with a newly upgraded Soyuz.
As everyone knows, SDI cannot stop terrorists from flying planes into buildings, using suitcase nuclear weapons, launching missiles from off-shore platforms, etc, etc.
But, SDI is really another way to spend billions on research (just like the space race used to be the research money hole). There is no doubt good things will come from it, but at a very high cost.
I mean, I'd hate to be shot in the face by a space laser.
It's funny to notice, that in Russian newspapers the reason for this lending trouble is stated as "the American cosmonaut pushed the wrong button so the capsule started acting up..." Obviously the guy did not receive any previous training in landing procedures on this capsule, so he pushed the first familiar button, I guess. Again, interesting why they say one thing in Russia and completely different thing here??? Any ideas???
In order to get a story submitted, it must have a snide remark or overgeneralization. Articles that aren't flamebait are boring, apparently. Especially with timothy and michael picking the stories. Those two horse's asses are the biggest trolls and FUDders on Slashdot. CmdrTaco is up there too, though he just likes to post duplicate stories (can't bother reading his own site) and whine about SPAM.
Defect is good. I can work with defect.
-kgj
Okay, granted, heisenbugs appear more mysterious than, say, bohr bugs.
But the same is true in both cases: nothing is mysterious if you know the facts.
The problem -- the cause of Mystery -- is that we may not have the capacity to get and understand the facts. Source code, compiler behavior, object code, operating system behavior -- the level of complexity may exceed our smarts.
-kgj
TMA-1 was the name of the obelisk found on the moon in the novel 2001. Tycho Magnetic Anomoly 1, if I recall correctly.
So here's a whole list from Google News.
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
The idea of originally calling them "bugs" because of an actual insect is incorrect.
l
People have been using the word "bug" long before computers to describe anomolies in system behavior. See http://www.cbc.ca/news/indepth/words/bugaboos.htm
The fact that somebody actually found a real bug sometime later on was kind of ironic, so that story is what people remember...
Actually, they don't know if it was a software bug. At this point that is pure (though somewhat educated) speculation.
The only thing known for certain, is that the backup guidance system took over and landed the craft safely.
It is possible that pilot error caused the switch to backup, or mechanical failure, or a software design error, or a software bug.
char *string = "seineew era sreenignE ASAN";
char foobar[10];
strcpy(foobar,string);
display();
Why is it all the news stories recently in the US press recently seem to have a dismissive, almost mocking, view of the Russian space programme? Words like primative, old technology, not as advanced as American keep coming up over and over again. The Russians have vastly more experience in manned space flight than the Americans and arguably a much better success ratio. It pisses me off the "American must be better" attitude you see in the western press these days. They should remember who it is keeping the whole ISS alive while the shuttle isn't around.
I saw an interview over the weekend with the space Tourist guy where the fact that this particular capsule was one of the first Soyuz with a "glass cockpit", similar to what has recently been installed on the shuttle fleet.
As a software QA guy, I know what kinds of havok a UI defect can cause in a software package. Is it possible that insufficient QA is going into the interface software for these "Glass Cockpits"? There's a time and place for everything, and at the moment, I'd feel a lot better with hardware switches for most spacecraft function (particularly with something as old as Soyuz) than with the kinds of UIs that I've seen in terrestrial software...
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
I guess the point wasa little subtle for you, but if we can't bring back a spacecraft successfully...do you really have faith in a software system's ability to shoot down an incoming missile...
Your point was an editorial opinion. This is Slashdot, "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters." Slashdot is a place for summaries and links to news stories...but not these politically left/right wing or ignorant opinions of news stories.
Really, would Slashdot be a great site if all you saw were stories like these?
Anthrax Genes Mapped
xeroxman writes "The BBC reports that scientists have mapped out the genes that make up anthrax. Personally, I find this scary. Mother Nature never intended for us to gain the knowledge of what makes diseases so deadly. This could easily fall into the wrong hands."
Georgia Plans For More Broadband
southener writes "According to the Atlanta journal, the state government is spending $500 million to lay fiber to more cities. Ya, great plan Georgia...what a waste of money. 20% of the state's population lives in poverty. I'll never vote for those Democrats again."
Linus Turns Up Dead
An anonymous coward writes "Sad news today. Linus Torvalds was found dead on the side of I-5 outside of Oakland. No other details as of yet. We can only hope that Christians won't make this more painful for us all by saying he's now living in this magical "heaven" place..."
The head of the Energiya Space Corporation Yury Semenov said that all possible causes of the inaccurate landing were being examined.
"We must examine all causes. ... There was a version (of events) that (flight commander) Nikolai Budarin pushed a button on the control panel," he told the ITAR-TASS news agency.
Go figger...the events to follow should be interesting.
db
Cig:
ôô
It's a long shot, but was anyone carrying a cell phone? "Hi honey! Yeah, I'm in the space capsule..." :^P
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
I remember seeing information in the early Iraq war days that cruise missiles don't actually fly in straight paths; they are capable and programmed to somewhat dart around while flying.
I know not many countries have cruise missiles they can launch at us, but I'd assume any country capable of launching nukes from a distance could setup the missiles to fly erratic flight plans.
For those loathing to click on msnbc, here is a less Microsoft-profiting and more insightful article at space daily:
Pushing "wrong button" may have caused Soyuz space landing error
It's just incompletely developed.
Who can argue that having an anti-ballistic missile system isn't a good thing? For pity sake, all you have to do is have a quick gander at the Korean Peninsula... makes me long for the Reagan SDI spending days. An insular, isolated, brainwashed and despotic regime like North Korea's (with nukes, BTW... and the ballistic missiles to deliver them) is all the reason I need to throw some tax dollars at the problem; bring it on. Deterrence only works if you are dealing with a reasonable adversary; north korea has proven to be anything but.
Will SDI have software problems? Undoubtedly... but that's what testing and retesting and retesting and retesting are for... Even if it's not perfect, it's a hell of a lot better than nothing. Let's choose; NO defense... or a semi-effective missile defense... hmmm... We live in an ugly, jealous, uneducated, demagogue-driven world, and unless some incredible global philosophical/religious epiphany occurs, peace will be achieved as it always has been; through diplomatic maneuvering backed up by superior firepower.
SDI... spend the money. Nuclear technology gets easier every year, and the US has plenty of enemies. Without some kind of missile defense, sooner or later, we're gonna need some pretty thick sunglasses.
They may get some of us, but personally, I'd like to survive long enough to deliver the counterpunch.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
You greedy moderators are all bastards. I wanted to mod this +funny, but selfish moderators before me already capped the post! CAPPED THE FUCKING POST!!!
It all goes downhill from first post
Flags aren't generally designed to be of a size to cover shame.
What the heck is 'covering shame' in the first place?
Howard Zinn's flavor of revisionist history gets laughed at these days. Face it: the 'New Left' is old and tired now.
How is a software fault "mysterious"? Is it like some moondust bounced off the side of the rocket and cause the hardware circuits to have some sort of spasm, causing the rocket to land several hundred miles off course?
Anyone who says a software fault is "mysterious" is probably like one of those people who say "well my program worked yesterday but it doesn't work now and I didn't change anything. In fact, that is _the most common excuse for someone's program not working.
Let's look at this scientifically, something is not scientifically and logically correct - let's leave the mysteries to the X-Files (when it was on).
Analytic & algebraic topology of locally Euclidean meterization of infinitely differentiable Riemmanian manifold
Not untill they can open the ship to the vacum of deep space, and even then I think it'll be more sucking than pressing.
Banaaaana!
Yeah, but Challenger had nothing to do with it being a plane design instead of a capsule; it was a launch failure that was related to a problem with the solids. And shuttle's death toll is higher because the program was a mess pre-Challenger, and there are 7 on board instead of 1-3. Even Columbia was largely a launch problem, although little noticed until re-entry. Of course, if the TPS of the capsule/ shuttle is not exposed at lift-off, then it can't be damaged.
And yeah, capsules are probably safer, although less versatile. Doesn't mean the approach of a space place should be abandoned. It has a lot of advantages. And note Soyuz is not perfect, as have been 2 re-entry failures, out of about 200, although that number may be off. But it's a similar rate compared to the shuttle re-entry experience.
Any other form of delivery can be stopped by conventional means.
I think there was one strategic weapon system that really scared the Soviets: the AGM-129A Advanced Cruise Missile (ACM). Unlike the earlier Boeing ALCM, the ACM (now supported by Raytheon) has extremely low radar-cross section, very quiet engines, improved guidance systems and somewhat longer range than the earlier ALCM (about 3,000 km or 1,863 miles).
With ACM, Soviet ground detection radars would be rendered obselete, and its very low noise signature meant ACM could also avoid detection by noise sensors, too. That meant ACM would stand a pretty good chance of reaching its target before radar-guided defenses could "engage" the target. 460 AGM-129A missiles were built, though there is talk of restarting AGM-129 production with a conventional unitary or cluster muntion warhead version assisted by GPS guidance that will allow the older ALCM to be phased out.
The crew of that Tornado GR.4 belonging to 9 Squadron RAF Marham were known for their concientious attitude towards their work along with their great experience on Tornados.
Neither officer was reknowned for 'goofing-off' as they knew like any-other RAF crew that such behaviour leads to a court-martial in jig-time.
It is know that they were in the right place at the right time and it might also be worth pointing out that it is highly unlikely that they would deactivate the IFF when they knew that Rapier systems were deployed (You don't even know they are there till they fire).
The current status of this 'friendly-fire' incident according to both the US and UK is that it is under investigation. you may like to read this article on possible bugs in the Patriot system software.
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
That's like landing a space shuttle in the LA river, or something.
Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
I keep saying, don't use Windows CE for controlling the spacecraft. Do people listen?
Mission Control: Hello, Microsoft, we have this problem with Windows CE which made our Soyuz capsule land offway. What's the reason?
Microsoft Support: First of all, Such usage in production systems void all warranty. Secondly did you apply Patch #3156B before applying WindowsUpdate #675581 while the moon was full?
When will people listen?
-------- Cluster bombing from B-52s is very, very accurate -- the bombs always hit the ground.
What you're talking about is component level testing. Unfortunately, all that testing doesn't substitute for a true "shakedown" integration test. Look up the AEGIS cruiser system (actually sort of a mini-SDI for a ship). On it's first full integration test, it failed to shoot down 6 out of 17 targets due to software errors. Now, make the integrated platform 2 orders of magnitude more complicated than that (and at least one order of magnitude more complicated than ANY software project attempted to date) and you can see why I'm skeptical of the chances of SDI working as advertised.
There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself
-Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye
Here's a system that failed gracefully. Consider a simple taxonomy of software bugs:
/corrupt/ data. A kernel panic serves exactly the same purpose. The kernel detects that it can no longer rely on itself, instead of continuing to operate it shuts down. The potential consequences of continuing in any form, might results in writing random or bad data to the hard drive, or who knows what else. It's better to system panic and stop doing anything.
- you lose data
- you corrupt data
The second one is far, far worse because the failure makes changes to your data and you know longer know what is right and what is wrong. The same situation maps onto this failure. The automatic primary system failed, and lost data. But it did not
Code that fails gracefully is good code.
simon
home page
what will always be a beta release
;-)
Ah.. it is OSS
TMI man, TMI...
Georgia Tech, the leader in Chia(tm) technology.
...between american and russian space engineering.
Russian: oops, bug, looks like we'll land in Kazakhstan.
USA: oops, bug, we're confetti.
You win again gravity!
-- Zapp Branigan
The Russians are not the only ones with shuttle problems. Unfortunately the list is long:
Ariane 5 (1996) - distruction at 40 seconds after launch. Cause: 64-16 bit conversion generated an uncatched exception in both main and backup module.
Mars Pathfinder (1997) - was frequently reseting. The cause: priority inversion between processes with shared resources.
Mars Climate Orbiter (1998) - desintegration while entering the athmosphere. Cause: errors at conversion between American and European metric system.
As you see, what happened with Soyuz was nothing compared with the rest.
A efective solution can be Formal Verification (.ps article by Joost-Pieter Katoen) - authomatic tehniques for verifying finite state concurent systems as is defined in Clark, Grumberg and Peled's book - Model Checking
Family guy rules, glad to see it got picked up by cartoon network, it was definitely one of the funniest shows i've ever watched. Maybe we'll see some new episodes eventually :)
Ok I'll apply capitalism,
on one side put the countries who have nukes,
and on the other side, put the amount of money they spend on research.
then ring any countries that are planning to develope new nukes (against the NPT)
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Actually, the AGM-129 ACM uses better understanding of stealth technology than the F-117A, which is based on Lockheed's original research into reducing observability of an airplane.
Because of the AGM-129's design, it probably has a very small fraction of the F-117A's radar cross section, even lower noise levels and just about zero IR signature.
I still see the possibility of restarting the AGM-129 production line, essentially trading in older ALCM's for the ACM on a one-to-one basis.
If things are done right, those G's are in the direction pushing you into the seat cushions (eyeballs in). An F-16 pilot pulls G's eyeball's down (towards the feet), and those are the G's that can cause blackout from blood pooling in the legs after being drained from the brain. The eyeballs-in G's don't do that -- they are merely very uncomfortable, although they can mess up your inner ear temporarily and make you headachy and dizzy.
Guess my semi-vacation is over. For the longest time all I had to deal with was managers that where out to justify there jobs due to the fear of budget cuts. Now I will have to deal with an actual schedule push to get the shuttles back flying.
You provide no motive for this supposed recklessness -- "because, hey, he's in a Tornado" doesn't explain anything at all -- and your "I remember hearing" amounts to the regurgitated speculation of a Fox News anchor, I'm betting. I especially loved the "The coalition noticed" part -- where you don't want to deal with the fact that it was an American Patriot crew shooting down a pair of British fliers.
You, friend, are living Orwell's worst nightmare.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
No, it might not always be a beta release.
We hope it will always be a beta release.
There is a possibility that the code will be tested enough in the real world to reach "production" status, but we hope the situations which exercise it in the real world will never happen.
The Russian factory's replay to call for help is typical. My company would always tell me - it was working when it left the shop, what did you do to it?
Which is why I will never trust the Strategic Defence Initiative - the star wars project. It only takes one line of mistyped code in what will always be a beta release.
You could use that argument against any weapons system that uses a computer. You could also further expand that statement to say that computers can never be used for important tasks. It is amazing how quickly politics can make luddites of us, isn't it?
"Which is why I will never trust the Strategic Defence Initiative - the star wars project. It only takes one line of mistyped code in what will always be a beta release."
You mean which is why we DON'T NEED the Strategic Defense Initiative... with accuracy like that, we are safer with the Russians aiming at us!
Ok, the top-level reference shouldn't have mentioned SDI, but sheesh.
Those guys spend months learning how to switch buttons in proceedures trainers. If you don't know exactly where the buttons are and have the reflexes to push them in the right order, you might not have time to punch them. You don't just jump into someone else's capsule and fly it. The language barrier makes it so you can't even figure out what to push. If that capsule was designed to be operated by more than one man, they are lucky they made it back at all.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
You are refering to the Tsar Bomba, a selectable yeild 50 or 100 Megaton weapon built as a one-off technology demo that was fired at the lower setting. The claim of a 57-58 Megaton yeild was the result of a misestimation by the west and the subsequent and understandable reclutance of the Soviet scientists to say "Um, no, it was actually a bit weaker than that"
Fire cold missles at an abandoned spot in the midwest, or over the ocean. Test the system.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
IIRC the capsule is also used on launch, and rockets have escape mechanism with additional boosters
(check the page for description of how it worked too) on top of the rocket that carry top part away from exploding rocket or ejection seats.
Possible explanations:
- Americans are just more accident prone due to procedures, discipline, lines of communication problems, or something else. U.S pilots who bombed Canadians in Afghanistan were on speed (on orders), which is not condusive to good decision-making.
- The American military is just more effective due to superior equipment, training, etc., so that they are able to take out targets more quickly and effectively than British forces, giving them less time to identify and avoid mistakes.
- American incidents are reported, British ones are covered up.
- Americans are world pariahs, friendly fire incidents are blown out of proportion by world media.
Any suggestions?Just a thought, nobody ever seems to mention that China could deliver a nuclear payload just about anywhere, they have decent ICBM systems (after-all they are looking to send a man on a couple of orbits later this year).
;) Its funny now how they take their Communism in a very Neo-Capitalist way :)
I know that China has no terrorist leanings or interests but it is amusing that America almost appears to be ignoring their old worst-nightmare (A communist country with nuclear capability).
To be fair China is a very level-headed country and have always stood by their no-first-use policy, but backing it up with a Mutually Assured Destruction policy if you hit them.
I can't help thinking that Americas worst enemy could turn out to be itself in terms of total global alienation.
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
Wha?!!! The cold war spawned at least two large scale wars and a plethora of endless small scale ones in which scores of humanity suffered immensely.
Your statement about Carter is absolutely absurd. First, the helicopters crashed because of a sandstorm. Second, in case you didn't notice, that happened during this last conflict too. The U.S. lost a number of helicopters directly or indirectly to the sands of the desert-- and in one case, the pilots were captured as well.
But I see from the rest of your comments that you're really just putting down spin.... My recommendation: stop basing your perspective of the world on what CNN tells you and open your eyes.
Do not spread "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" over the internet, thank you.
Velcro was invented by a Swiss guy walking his dog in the 1940s, according to velcro.com
Wow. I haven't seen a more accurate parody of the direction Slashdot story postings are going. People seem to think that every post needs to inspire discussion- by flaming on some topic only slightly related.
Someone from the Russian space centre revealed this right after the landing, and later the story was changed to a "software glitch". It is always easier to blame a computer than human error, which happens more often.
Here is the link to the Russian site that describes this, translated by www.translate.ru. Check the last paragraph.
Chris
Moose and Squirrel!
To Alcohol! The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems.
North Korea AFAIK has never signed an anti-proliferation treaty on nuclear or other arms. It wouldn't be Americas place to 'contain' or otherwise act against North Korea unilaterally.
:)
It would require that all countries that have signed anti-proliferation treaties to first attempt to engage in talks and then discuss together any further action
If America constantly cuts everyone out of the 'loop', everyone else will create a new 'loop' which will exclude America. - This is what I was getting at when I mentioned 'global alienation'.
At the moment, to an outsider, America appears as an unfriendly, neurotic and potentially dangerous creature.
Hmm, this thread has gone so far off the main topic that I'm going to need a GPS & some binoculars to find my way back
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
I was stationed in Germany with Pershing 2 missiles. For those of you who don't know thers were Intermediate range, two stage, solid fueled, semitrailer launched missiles with WMD warheads. I remember when one burned in Heilbron killing people. We didn't think that it was very well tested or perfect.
All your database are belong to U.S.
Who is to say that these things wouldn't have been found anyway.
All your database are belong to U.S.
OK, I think the SDI is goofy, too, but what you've said makes no sense --- unless you never get on an airplane, that is. What the heck do you think your flight management system and autopilot run on, if not software? You think the pilot is using a sextant up there?
In the MSNBC story they say:
Anyone know why that was? I would have thought it would be relatively easy to find a spacecraft that had a working transmitter. Is there any reason they can't just, for example, consult a hand-held GPS and radio in their location for a pickup? Seems odd that they have to be spotted by a search plane.
Did any of the last shuttle pieces reach their intended landing zone? ;-)
Say what you like about the Russian space program, the fact is that they've done bloody well on a shoestring budget. If if weren't for them, the astronauts would still be up there, rapidly running out of supplies.
Go permanent? In your dreams and my worst nightmares.
K.I.S.S. engineering.
You want to move cargo, use a big dumb cargo booster. Moving people and cargo in the same box, then making a half hearted attempt to reuse the airframe, that's daft. So's sticking stubby little glider wings on an orbiter - when the russians have repeatedly demonstrated that 'chutes work fine.
"Defect" is a good word for bad code -- a machine word for a machine environment.
"Spoilage" makes more sense for corrupted data. When my floppy disk passes too near a magnet, the disk suffers from a kind of rot -- less mechanical, more organic in nature.
-kgj