NASA Sending Probe to Saturn

Plissken writes "Nasa along with the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency have launched a towards Saturn in hopes of obtaining vital data to help understand the mysterious, vast region. The Cassini-Huygens mission is composed of two elements: The Cassini orbiter that will orbit Saturn and it's moons for four years, and the Huygens probe will dive into the depths of Titan and land on it's surface. If all goes well, more than 200 scientists worldwide will study the data collected."

Comments

news?

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhh.. Didn't they launch Cassini a *ling* while ago?
What's the news value of this?

Re:news?

[dWhisper]

This probe was launched a while back. The intersection with the planet is in a little over a year, but I figured this was old news.

It won't...

[da5idnetlimit.com]

People that can think about Stellar IP, and assign an IP to the Moon, don't have to be afraid of the /. effect...

They just turn their DNS in such a way that your packets have to go to Saturn, Jupiter, Webhop in a small private Europa-Io-X firewall and then allow you access to 0.0.0.1:0.0.0.255 (Earth)

Hopefully, your lag will only be a couple centuries.

Re:It won't...

[shish]

In some of the kernel docs it's written (quoted from old memory) that the TCP timeout can be maxed to 255 seconds, so sorry, no SpaceQuake :(

Does IPv6 have longer timeouts, or will we need *another* systems specifically for space comms?

Re:It won't...

[GigsVT]

We already do need another system for space comms. On Starband, using regular TCP/IP, you only get 56k modem speeds. You must use their special modified TCP/IP drivers that are Windows-only to be able to get broadband level download speeds. TCP/IP, as currently implemented, does not lend itself to high latency connections.

200 scientists

[E. T. Alveron]

it's a shame space probe data is disseminated to only the 200 with influence/money/connections to NASA's good ol boy network...

someone tell me the data is public domain... anyone?

Re:200 scientists

[dakers27]

Well, that sounds like a good idea, but think about it..... What if information on Saturn were to fall into the hand of terrorists? Releasing the data into the public domain could be a threat to national security, plus, its not like the project was funded by your tax dollars, oh wait...... :P

Re:200 scientists

[Anonymous Coward]

All the data from NASA missions is normally
released in the public domain after 12 months.
The delay is to give their scientists a head
start in the publicating their work.

In some cases the data is witheld like in the
case of the almost global world RADAR map with
30 m resolution

Re:200 scientists

[JimPooley]

So what exactly would you do with the raw data from the probe? They're probably just giving it out to people who are actually capable of using it. There'd be no point NASA being slashdotted by people who have absolutely no use for raw data just going in to have a look...

Re:200 scientists

[EasyTarget]

...people who have absolutely no use for raw data...

I have a use for it, I'd analyse it to death until I have some sort of sequence that matches the dimensions of the Pyramids, preferably also chucking in the orientation of Stonehenge and distance of Easter Island from Atlantis.

Then I'd write a book.

Perhaps I should patent my Business plan first? or is there prior art?

Re:200 scientists

[Vulch]

The researchers who get immediate access to the data are the ones who have already spent a decade or more of their lives working on the project. In return for their long-term commitment to the project they get the raw data first. After an agreed amount of time, which can vary from project to project but is meant to be long enough to analyse the numbers and write a paper on the subject, the data is made more widely available.

Most space missions including the Hubble Telescope work the same way. Apart from the occasional "pretty" picture used for publicity, the researchers who have planned a set of observations get the first chance to analyse and publish. Those who don't want to make the up-front commitment just have to be patient.

Re:200 scientists

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think I've ever wished harder that I had mod points. Travesty.

Ah well. If either of those Overrateds come my way in metamod, they're going _down_!

Re:200 scientists

[JWW]

Yep, I've seen raw data that comes off of the Lansat satellites, and it's pretty ugly stuff.

The scientests involved will more than likely release pretty pictures for you to look at anyway.

Re:200 scientists

[Anonymous Coward]

Neither overrated, nor underrated mods show up in Meta-mod. Hence why Mods use them now.

Re:200 scientists

[Vireo]

Another reason for giving raw data to the mission's science team first is that they were part of the mission design and know how to calibrate and correct the measurements. Raw data seldom can be used "as is"; it must be filtered, corrected for a bunch of instrumental and spacecraft drifts, etc.

In mission-speak, the first thing to do is transform raw data (Level 1A) into corrected data (Level 1B), before it is ready to be processed and interpreted (Level 2 and above). Mission scientists don't want uninformed scientist to apply ad-hoc calibration and corrections to Level 1A data and publish results which contradicts theirs just because they applied the wrong transformation.

Re:200 scientists

[saider]

Most of the pretty pictures look nothing like the raw data. Many pictures are taken in various wavelengths and the final image is a composite of several exposures with false colors used for invisible wavelengths. Many of those releases are from observations months beforehand.

SOHO is one satellite that does give everyone near realtime access to the data. Some amateur astronomers use this data to find new comets.

Re:200 scientists

[burns210]

"There'd be no point NASA being slashdotted by people who have absolutely no use for raw data just going in to have a look... " my government, my money, my data.

Ugh, this is 6 1/2 years old

[Crazieeman]

I knew /. liked to post old stuff, but its starting to get out of hand

Measurements....

[Max Romantschuk]

Nasa along with the European Space Agency

ESA Engineer: We need to calibrate the spinoff vector 3 micrometers forward.
NASA Engineer: Micrometers?
ESA Engineer: Yes, metric units.
NASA Engineer: Metric?

A bit over the top perhaps, but it's not like it hasn't happened before ;)

Re:Measurements....

[DiSKiLLeR]

Um, excuse me?

This has been beaten to death already. Can we get over the stupid metric jokes? And if your going to do them, can you at least get them RIGHT?

I am quite positive that ESA would use metric, and infact, NASA uses metric too.

Why did we lose the Mars Climate Orbiter? Precisely because NASA *does* use Metric, but NASA's outsourcing to Lockheed Martin, unfortunately, doesn't. American coroporations persist on using ye olde system, while NASA infact DOES use metric.

So don't pay out NASA, they did it right. Lockheed Martin fucked this one up.

D.

Re:Measurements....

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually both Lockheed Martin & NASA f*cked up; LM for using imperial units, NASA for not checking what LM had done (a basic rule in the space industry is that you document everything, and you check everything).

Re:Measurements....

[Max Romantschuk]

This has been beaten to death already. Can we get over the stupid metric jokes? And if your going to do them, can you at least get them RIGHT?

I'm sorry if the joke offends you, but it was meant as a joke, not an I-point-out-stupid-Americans exercise.

Re:Measurements....

[stoborrobots]

IIRC, the Fuckup was that Lockheed HAD used metric measurements, but NASA "corrected" the metric coordinates into the imperial ones before sending them...

So NASA bad, LM good... or something like that...

Re:Measurements....

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe if the U.S. would grow up and join the rest of the planet using a decent, standardized system (metric) instead of an ancient, clumsy one, stuff like this wouldn't happen at all.

I find it hilarious and sad that even within the U.S, agencies like NASA need to convert to outmoded "imperial" units when working with their contractors. Do they measure the Shuttle's fuel efficiency using the number of "rods to a hogs-head" too?

Re:Measurements....

[macdaddy357]

Metric jokes? It's the ones about NASA sending a probe to uranus that are really getting old.

Re:Measurements....

[CausticWindow]

You almost make it sound like I-point-out-stupid-Americans exercises are bad.

Re:Measurements....

[VanillaCoke420]

Why wouldn't the scientists and engineers use the SI system? I thought it was the scientific unit system already? And also, this joke isn't just 'old'. Archaeologists have found it side by side with cave paintings.

Re:Measurements....

[VanillaCoke420]

I have to add, that the joke isn't much older than the 'news' in this article. Seriously. How many did NOT know of this probe??

Re:Measurements....

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I used to work in a physics research lab (in the USA) and I found out the reason the US still uses (ahem)British units. All of the machines in Ye Olde Machine Shoppe that are built in the US are built with only British units on them.

Yup, that's it. The main reason we didn't make the change is that no one wanted to force everyone who works with machining metal to buy all new tools. Or rather, they packed enough political clout to lobby. You can imagine how many Grass-roots votes were won THAT election year this way.

Now, as to why new tools weren't introduced with _both_ measurements available, I don't know.

Re:Measurements....

[thogard]

The Brits had a base 10 system but they gave up centuries ago. The French decide that there are 10,000,000 from the pole to the equator but can't get their figures right.

It turns out that the meter isn't a good "human" unit for most applications. All day I've been working on building a computer room in Australia. They used to use a foot as unit of measure but now use metric and have for 20+ years. The problem is none of the locals now know metric or imperial. I had a flatemate that was an architecture student at Melboure Uni. Not one of her friends who where in the same program could tell me how wide the lounge room was within 2 meters (its 16 ft as built in the finest tradtions in the 1850's). To me this is very scary considering they are all at least 3 years into an architecture degree.

The plywood flooring we bought was 3.6m by .9m and it was but some of the other bits that were sold as some x.y meter were infact even feet down to .001 while they were not close to the sold as size.

All the bolts are in inch sizes but the drill bits are metric. Its a real mess.

I'm quite happy to deal with the metric system nearly everywhere execpt when it comes to building materials and in that case feet work much better. I know builders in the US that never need to write down measurements, the locals need a spreadsheet to keep the numbers together for small projects.

If the local police hear that a suspect is 5'10, they figure +/- 2 inches while if someone says 180 cm they figure +/- 20cm (thats 4x larger than 2 in)

Realestate in Australia is sold in "square" units (a square, not a square something but simply a square) that only one out of 20 people know about. It could be a quare meter or an acre and most people wouldn't have a clue.

Most people under 20 in Australia have never delt with non-metric (except for how tall people are an how heavy babies are) and couldn't tell you how big a foot is if they had too but they aren't much better for metric. The Kiwis are about as bad (so I'm not just picking on the Aussies, I just know more of them)

I propose that a metric foot be a nano-light second (about .299m). That would give the metric world a decent unit for measurement for building.

Re:Measurements....

[edxwelch]

The problem is *not* that some one is using the "wrong" measurement system. There will always be two different mesurement systems: Kalvin/Fahrenheit/Celcius whatever, you have to be able to handle the conversion correctly. That's where the problem was.

Re:Measurements....

[Anonymous Coward]

nah, they seem to be quite able to point themselves out for themselves, as the parent parent shows...

Re:Measurements....

[Mattsson]

The sad part about all this is that there really is no need for more than one system. =(
The US and UK use feet, inch, mile, etc out of tradition. It would be a very hard and costly endevour to change it.
The same goes for kalvin vs. fahrenheit vs. celcius, gallon vs. litre, etc. (Though the litre is a metric standard, so maybe that's a bad example)
No one standard are better than the others. It's just that some countries started using one standard a long time ago and some countries another.
The world would be better of if everyone could unite around one standard per physical phenomena though...
It's very frustrating when you need, say, a certain length of something in a even amount of centimeters and end up having to order it in inches with six or seven decimals instead of your nice no-decimals number...

Why all the fuss over finding primordial life?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see why we're so interested in Titan. The big deal about Titan is it might have life on it. But the fact is, we live in a vast universe and the possibility that we are the only life is very slim. It's also a particularly arrogant and foolish belief. But if we found life on Titan, it would likely be in the very early stages and it wouldn't be particularly interesting. So I don't see why we're making a huge fuss over it.

This raises another question. We might be looking for life in all the wrong places. We assume that all life in the universe is created in our image. We expect that chemically, all other life will be similar to ours. When we go hunting for life on other planets and other moons, our search is limited to this kind of life. This is a rather narrow view of things, and who knows what we're missing? For all we know, there could be life in the volcanoes of Venus. It could be Silicon based, and it'd thrive in an environment rich in Sulfur compounds such as Sulfuric acid and Hydrogen sulfide.

Maybe we're looking in all the wrong places and for all the wrong things. And that's why it's hard for me to get excited about missions like this.

Re:Why all the fuss over finding primordial life?

[stoborrobots]

But that just raises a less tractable question, how do you guess what to look for?

It's very likely that there is life out there which is not similar to ours... but where do we look?

Examining everything is impossible... there are just too many places to look, and too many things to look for. We are unlikely to find those (non-relationship-guide-human-females) Silicon-based Venusians unless they were broadcasting in English on FM frequencies. And even then, we'd probably not notice.

Looking for things like us gives us a target to work towards.

And every little while, there is something slightly off the main track which is interesting, and we find out more about our universe. Maybe even discover silicon-based life in an environment similar to ours somewhere. That could then open our eyes to what to look for to find silicon-based life elsewhere. Then we turn to Venus and see what was staring us in the face all along.

So we are not assuming that "all life is created in our image". We are just using all the models of life we currently know of to start our search.

Re:Why all the fuss over finding primordial life?

[Dan B.]

Yes, but Titan may also be a massivley available fuel source, already in a high orbit, a long way from Earth where future outer space missions can be launched from.

If life exists on Titan, the human race will seek to exploit it for our own goals of exploration to other worlds. Not a hugely good thing, but good none the less.

Re:Why all the fuss over finding primordial life?

[WegianWarrior]

But if we found life on Titan, it would likely be in the very early stages and it wouldn't be particularly interesting. So I don't see why we're making a huge fuss over it.

Taking this logic to the extreme, we should only bother to look for not just life, but actuall civilications at least as advanced as our own.. right?

Wrong! By looking somewhere close and looking for something roughtly simular to the various forms of life we know from earth we can learn a lot. First and foremost, we'll learn that the earth isn't anything special. There is life out there, not just in our imagination, not just around distant stars, but basicly right out there in our own back yard. True, there could exist siliconbased life in the volcanoes on Venus - possible with a life-chemestry analog to the one we find in creatures here on earth that lives near black smokers - but it's a good idea to go look places where we and our probes can surive first, isn't it?

And maybe we are looking in the right place for the right thing. You never know before you actually takes a look...

Re:Why all the fuss over finding primordial life?

[Anonymous Coward]

"We expect that chemically, all other life will be similar to ours. "

Except life very likely are similar to ours. There are only so many elements and chemicals that have the characteristic to support life. Carbon and water are the most versatile stuff in the universe.

Re:Why all the fuss over finding primordial life?

[AndroidCat]

It's very likely that there is life out there which is not similar to ours... but where do we look?

My fridge?

Re:Why all the fuss over finding primordial life?

[oogoliegoogolie]

Considering that space exploration resourses are limited we have to look for life in places where it has high probabilities of existing AND we have to be able to get to those places easily. Life perhaps could exist on places on venus, but the best spacecraft don't last even a few hours on venus so looking for life there would be futile and destined for failure. Titan on the other hand is chemically similar to early earth and if it has an ocean then that would have spread life all over the whole moon so no matter where the probe lands, if life exists it has a good chance of finding it.

Re:Why all the fuss over finding primordial life?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why did you say "silicon based"?! You didn't just randomly pick it, you picked it because that's what we would expect to find if the lifeform isn't carbon based... meaning that scientists are very much aware of the possibility of non-carbon based lifeforms; it's just that we can't just sit around doing nothing until we've one day happen to have the technology allowing us to travel to alpha centauri searching for huge non-carbon based civilizations living lifes very very different than ours... Odds are that we are the most common form of life there is, and we do have the technology to visit nearby objects... So what do you think we should do, wait maybe 500 years (and then maybe 200 more before we get the results back) or go do what we already can do?

Re:Why all the fuss over finding primordial life?

[Anonymous Coward]

...
But if we found life on Titan, it would likely be in the very early stages and it wouldn't be particularly interesting.
...
We expect that chemically, all other life will be similar to ours. When we go hunting for life on other planets and other moons, our search is limited to this kind of life.
...

First you say that in Titan there could only be life that is in its very early stages. Then you say that contrary to what we expect, all life in the universe is not similar to ours. So how can you expect that the possible life in Titan is in its early stages, if we don't even know what kind of forms life can take?

I think you should be excited about this mission. If we happen to find something, wheter it's advanced or not, it certainly tells us alot about life.

::jl

Re:Why all the fuss over finding primordial life?

[VanillaCoke420]

How can this be so uninteresting? Finding life on other worlds, even in our own solar system, would be an extraordinary discovery. I suspect it would teach us quite a lot about the possible origins of life, where life can start, how it evolves... Maybe we will find something, maybe we wont. Either way we will learn a lot about our interplanetary space around us.

Re:Why all the fuss over finding primordial life?

[mikerich]

I don't see why we're so interested in Titan. The big deal about Titan is it might have life on it. But the fact is, we live in a vast universe and the possibility that we are the only life is very slim. It's also a particularly arrogant and foolish belief. But if we found life on Titan, it would likely be in the very early stages and it wouldn't be particularly interesting. So I don't see why we're making a huge fuss over it.

I can think of two reasons, the first is purely for the novelty of it - Titan has an atmosphere, no other satellite does.

The second is more important. Titan appears to have a mixture of organic compounds and nitrogen in its atmosphere, which would make it very similar to the primordial atmosphere on Earth. if we can look at the chemistry of the Titan atmosphere and see what is happening to the compounds on Titan under the influence of solar radiation, we can start to work out what happened on Earth all those billions of years ago.

I don't think anyone is seriously expecting to find life on Titan, the surface temperature is so low that most chemistry has effectively ground to a halt.

And even if you aren't excited at the mission, think of the awe-inspiring pictures we're going to get of Saturn and its rings.

Best wishes,
Mike.

Re:Why all the fuss over finding primordial life?

[xaaronx]

Well, that's not the only reason Titan is interesting.

But if we do find even single celled organisms, it is a HUGE F'ING DEAL! Besides the simple proof that we aren't alone, finding life in our own solar system implies that life is probably neither uncommon or insanely spread out. And, if life is that common, intelligent life can't be all that rare.

The reason we look in Earth-like places for Earth-like life is that we know life like us is possible in conditions like ours. We know how to recognize it and where it might possibly exist. To look for something unlike us in weird environments leaves us flailing about and unlikely to find anything, even if it's there.

And Titan would be one of (and possibly THE) most hospitable place for humans in the solar system. The air pressure is such that we would need only simple breathing gear and drysuits to keep us warm, which could be augmented by small bleed valves allowing small amounts of oxygen to burn against the methane atmosphere. It also has lots of readily available carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen. These, and other, advantages are discussed in obert Zubrin's Entering Space. The only problem with Titan is its distance from us.

And if you're not excited by Cassini, what space exploration does interest you? It's well short of what we could have accomplished if the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 and other things done in the late sixties and early seventies to slow down the space program hadn't happened (not to mention the stagnant shuttle program and cheaper/faster/mia), but we have to work with what's available and build upon it.

Re:Why all the fuss over finding primordial life?

[TnkMkr]

Why you ask? NASA has been suffering in the last decade (or few) because Joe-public just doesn't see space exploration at 'neat' anymore. Why bother to go out into space when there is nothing but rocks and dust. If even the simplist form of life could be found somewhere other than Earth, It may re-ignite the passion of the general public to reach out and see what we can find. The space program may recieve not only the money, but the intrest of our nation, or the world again.

Re:Why all the fuss over finding primordial life?

[Anonymous Coward]

You never know before you actually takes a look...

Wanna bet $50 on it? I accept PayPal, in case you want to pay early.

Re:Why all the fuss over finding primordial life?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe there really are actual civilizations at least as advanced as our own. Or maybe more advanced, so that's why they aren't talking to us. You know, life on Titan would have had about as much time to evolve as life on Earth. Maybe a little more, since the outer solar system would've cooled down sooner.

Re:Why all the fuss over finding primordial life?

[Jim-gagnon]

If life is found anywhere off of the Earth - especially in a place like Titan where it's highly unlikely to have been seeded from the Earth - then it's both scientifically and socially reasonable to assume that life is common at least in our portion of the galaxy. This calls into question the Fundamentalist notion of Genesis and thus the validity of most organized religions' teachings. If Science can finally free humanity of the headlock Religion has upon people, then mankind can move beyond the constraints of strict adherance to the teachings of organized religion and into an arena where enlightened discourse can occur on all sorts of topics concerning the essential character of life (such as the true start of the beginning and end an individual's existence, the biological nature of a "soul", etc).

Only when Mankind is free of the straitjacket of Biblical dictates can true evolution in the social notions of ourselves occur. Finding off-world life, even primordial life, makes this an eventual outcome.

Re:Why all the fuss over finding primordial life?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not quite right - Titan won't have life on it, but it might be like a frozen early-earth, which will enable us to learn more about our own planet - something which has direct value to us.

That being said, I think it's pretty awesome that the Saturn system is getting it's due as far as exploration goes. Cassini is like the Galileo of Saturn system.

Old stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

This mission started several years ago.
I suppose the submitter wanted both karma and attention whoring. Soon we'll see the following story:

New transportation system invented.

Megawhore writes: I seems that researchers have invented a revolutionary new transportation system called wheel which enables people to get around loads without carrying them....
I think this will enable us to transport our MP3 server's around.

Huh?

[DiSKiLLeR]

This is supposed to be new news??? This is like 7 years old! Cassini has been mentioned on slashdot numerous times, and the fact that Cassini-Huygens is en route to Saturn is pretty common knowledge... why suddenly make a story about it now, as if NASA only just launched this beast...

Infact there was alot of Cassini news on slashdot (and other sites) when Cassini did its Jupiter flyby, alowing us to examine and study jupiter from 2 vantage points... Cassini on its flyby, and Galileo in orbit.

Anyway. This'll be fantastic news once Cassini does approach Saturn, and inserts itself into orbit!

D.

Old news or Premature news

[steve.m]

Cassini was launched 15th Oct 1997, and will insert into orbit around Saturn 1st July 2004.

The spacecraft is in good health and is undergoing routine checkouts of the systems and is downlinking pictues of Saturn.

Not exactly front page news....

Re:Old news or Premature news

[DiSKiLLeR]

Precisely what i thought. God knows how this got onto front page of slashdot.

Oh well....

Re:Old news or Premature news

[Guppy06]

"The spacecraft is in good health and is undergoing routine checkouts of the systems and is downlinking pictues of Saturn."

You mean it didn't break up over earth, spewing radioactive death all across the surface of the planet, killing off all human life in the process? Shouldn't the cockroaches be in power or something?

Did the "environmental" lobby ever suggest a different power source for space probes going to Saturn?

Re:What's the news?

[FTL]

> It launched in October 2002

It was launched in 1997

In other news...

[BTWR]

NASA launched two probes to the outer solar system in the late 1970's: Voyager and Voyager 2. Slashdot is just reporting this amazing story today...

Late breaking news!

[Crazieeman]

There was a sudden mass extinction of dinosaurs. More on this as it develops.

Re:Late breaking news!

[Anonymous Coward]

Universe created. "Big bang" suspected cause. More info as it comes in.

Re:Late breaking news!

[Mirk]

[OK, so this is off-topic. I know. But it's interesting.]

There was a sudden mass extinction of dinosaurs. More on this as it develops.

Actually, there may or may not have been a sudden mass extinction: it's one of the big, long-running controversies among dinosaur palaeontologists. What's not in doubt is that there was a mass extinction (well, duh!) but the timescale has not been and may never be established - the evidence just doesn't have enough resolution, at 65 million years' distance, to establish whether the dinos died in a day, a month or a hundred thousand years.

Also: contrary to popular opinion, it is far from universally accepted that a bolide (= meteor or comet) impact was responsible for dinosaur extinction. That is perhaps more widely accepted than any single alternative, but probably less than half of all dino palaeontologists believe it. The strongest alternative theory at the moment seems to be an extended period of extreme volcanic activity resulting in the same kind of "nuclear winter" effect that the bolide is often assumed to have caused. There are plenty of other theories, including but not limited to: radiation from a nearby supernova; disease; climactic changes unrelated to bolide or vulcanism.

Re:Late breaking news!

[Crazieeman]

Its not the method or length of the period I'm pointing out, its how long ago it happened and poking fun at /.'s consistent way of putting out ancient information... in this case, years old.

And this is 'recent' news?

[GraWil]

Well it seems that CowboyNeal has just awoken from a five year coma. The Cassini-Huygens satellite is currently nearing the end of its seven-year voyage to Saturn! It was launched on way back in October 1997 and will arrive in July 2004. In December 2004 the Huygens probe will be ejected from the orbiter and will descend into Titan's cloudy atmosphere. For those that care, there is a huge archive of Cassini Jupiter data availible. Sadly, there are few (if any) Jupiter publications as it seems a few NASA engineers & scientists are still mucking around with the calibration.

Re:And this is 'recent' news?

[Xandar01]

> Well it seems that CowboyNeal has just awoken from a five year coma

Is this why the CowboyNeal option has dissappeared from the polls??

The bets are on...

[kinnell]

How long will it take Slashdot to post a dupe of this "story"?

Re:The bets are on...

[Nanoda]

See, how can the report of reaching orbit be a dupe post? /. has to have this posted now, so that it'll be a dupe in 2004. Either that, or slashdot is trying to beat CNN, and muscle Miss Cleo out in the predictive news business the easy way. ;-)

Re:The bets are on...

[aiabx]

Everyone whined when the transit of Mercury was posted after the fact. This time, the editors are ahead of the curve. This is what the people wanted!
-aiabx

In other news....

[Cally]

"..hats are on heads and ice-creams are in cornets." (Brian Kant, 1975)

Slow news day, huh?

Probe....

[MoonFog]

Man, I've been watching to much southpark. Every time I hear the word "probe" I get an image in my head of Cartman "I know it was just a dream" .....

Fill in the blank?

[videodriverguy]

...... have launched a towards ....

So now Slashdot wan'ts us to work out what the story is about? What's next - a totally blank story to comment on?

Re:Fill in the blank?

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on, you're smarter than that. The point of the article is so that we can bitch and moan at each other. Feel your anger!!!

Re:Fill in the blank?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the next thing are multiple choice articles, written by the same people who think up the polls around here. :-P

Re:Fill in the blank?

[Skater]

Best advice I've heard: "Proofread carefully to see if you any words out." ;)

--RJ

Re:Fill in the blank?

[blinder]

Maybe "a" is the name of the probe???

have launched a towards Saturn

So, its not fill-in-the-blank after all... its just that its probe "a" ???

launched a what ?

[EpsCylonB]

"Nasa along with the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency have launched a towards Saturn

A car ?, a piece of fruit ?, a major new military offensive ?. Please don't tell me it's just a boring old probe.

Re:launched a what ?

[kinnell]

You are obviously reading slashdot using as text only browser, or a graphical browser with image loading disabled. Those of us with graphical capabilities have learned that an Albert Einstein lookalike has been launched towards Saturn.

Re:launched a what ?

[Anonymous Coward]

A GRRRAILLLLL?

Re:launched a what ?

[Anonymous Coward]

You just made my day. Thanks for an awesome punchline.

Re:FP?

[Anonymous Coward]

How can any of you "Anonymous Cowards" claim a FP? Seems like kind of an empty victory to me.

That's where you are wrong my friend. A victory for any one of us is a victory for the entire Anonymous Coward collective.

We only have 25 left now, right?

[KFury]

"Nasa along with the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency have launched a towards Saturn"

Goddamn. They're spending our letters like they grow on trees. Sure, today they're just launching 'a', but tomorrow it'll be 'x', and then 't'. I want to know when they're planning on launching'u' and 'i' in to space...

Re:We only hAve 25 left now, right?

[FroMan]

Don't worry, we still hAve upper cAse 'A's. Use those for now. NASA is working on AlternAtive letters. You cAn sAfetly Assume until the full AlternAtive AlphAbet is creAted NASA will keep the upper cAse 'A' here. Otherwise they'd hAve to chAnge their nAme to NS.

Re:We only have 25 left now, right?

[sohp]

They need to launch 'm' and 's' into deep space permanently. For good measure, follow them up with 'f' and 't'. Hmm. That leaves us with "icroot". How odd.

italian spaceagency!

[skipperkongen]

ok, so there's the european spaceagency, and then we have the italian spaceagency... what excactly are those guys up to? Interstellar pizzadelivery? Pan solar system opera transmissions?

Re:italian spaceagency!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah well maybe ASI never flew any manned missions, but they've never lost any astronauts either... then again you've never seen the insulation, er paint fall off of a Ferrari have you?

here's a more interesting story...

[g4dget]

Japan just launched a space probe for a sample return mission from an asteroid. Here is a home page for the mission (but rather outdated). Apparently, it also uses electric propulsion.

Re:here's a more interesting story...

[Sanga]

NASA has something that will scoop comet matter and return to earth in a few months ...

http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/

Re:here's a more interesting story...

[g4dget]

It won't really "scoop"--it flies by and catches particles in an aerogel. That may be scientifically as valuable, but it seems like a much simpler engineering feat than what the Japanese are doing.

A..?

[Anonymous Coward]

They launched A into orbit? I know 'starbucks' was cack compared to their other stuff, but...

Huygens probe

[Anonymous Coward]

Titan is the only moon in the entire solar system with a significant atmosphere. It is 50% thicker than Earth's atmosphere. In theory, someone could walk around on the surface of Titan with nothing but an oxegen mask, and some warm clothes.

So far, all we have seen of Titan is the Orange clouds circling the planet. The Huygens probe will dive through Titan's atmosphere and reveal what lies below the clouds.

Re:Huygens probe

[GigsVT]

-330 degrees seems to be out of the "very warm jacket" range. I'm thinking you would need something pretty much completely sealed.

Still, Titan is very interesting, and as you said, less toxic to life than most other places around the solar system.

Re:Huygens probe

[CheshireCatCO]

"So far, all we have seen of Titan is the Orange clouds circling the planet."

If you only count visible wavelengths, true. But we have images from a few other bands, mainly radio and infrared. These can make it to the surface, allowing us to do some sorts of mapping.

Ever read Titan by Stephen Baxter?

[DominiqueChanet]

in fact, i'm just reading it right now... it's a novel from 1997 that is based on the assumption that Huygens, when it descends to Titan, will actually find life based not on carbohydrogens but on ammonia and other stuff.

talk about a visionary novel: it opens with a scene aboard space shuttle Columbia, and during the first fifty pages of the book, Columbia gets destroyed in an accident during reentry in the earths atmosphere. Furthermore, Baxter mentions one contemporary dictator, and guess who it is: Saddam Hussein! Even more, he predicts a victory for a Republican president in the presidential elections, and one of the first things this president does in reinstate the Strategic Defense Initiative (AKA Star Wars)... Sounds familiar?

Re:Ever read Titan by Stephen Baxter?

[Muad'Dave]

OMG! Rearrange the bits in the Swahili spelling of "Stephen Baxter" and you get "Nostradamus"!

Eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Cassini-Huygens mission is composed of two elements:

• 1. Floppy The Robot (2 parts unobtainium)
• 2. Crusty The Clown (1 part cheeseium)

Film at 11

More late breaking news!

[cperciva]

Life discovered on earth. Scientists uncertain if it is intelligent.

Re:More late breaking news!

[Anonymous Coward]

Too late Karma Whore. Come back next week.

Ah I see,

[buyo-kun]

They probe us, We probe them. Its only fair.

Time warp

[Anonymous Coward]

CowboyNeal is gone. Proof? He isn't a choice in the polls any longer. So how can he be posting the story?

I believe he posted the story 7 years ago. However, his body mass must've gone critical perhaps after one bag of chips too many, and warped the space-time continuum around his computer enough to cause significant time dilation. The poor sod is calling out for rescue:

"nasa along with the european space agency and the italian space agency HavE Launched a towards saturn in hoPes of obtaining vital data to HELP understand the mysterious, vast region...

It has begun.....

[Anonymous Coward]

<>

"Resistance is futile, you will be assimilated!"

<*click whir weedle weedle click whir bleep bleep*>

Should improve Ford's image

[241comp]

My first thought was - "Well that should improve Ford's image."

And in other news

[Anonymous Coward]

The South African Space Agency (or to give the propper pronunciation, Sas Effriken Spes Ejinsee) have announced that they are also planning a mission. Not to be outdone by the Americans, Europeans, Japanese and Chinese, they decided to send a manned mission to the sun.

At a press conference held to announce this bold mission, a very un-PC reporter dared to point out that the space craft would burn up long before it reached the shores of its destination.

The quick-thinking comrade minister for culture and technology replied that this had been thought of, and that the mission would therefore take place at night.

have launched a towards

[Anonymous Coward]

have launched a what? It's the first sentence!This site sucks! Where do I subscribe - I want to give these guys my money!

Pretty DAMN warm cloths

[wowbagger]

Yes, as far as we know, Titan has 150% the atmospheric pressure at surface level as does the Earth, and those gases are not corrosive/poisonous to human life.

However, the surface temperature of Titan is 95 Kelvin. Liquid nitrogen is 75 Kelvin at 1 atmosphere pressure. Water ice melts at 273 Kelvin at one atmosphere. Water boils at 373 Kelvin at one atmosphere.

You would need some pretty DAMN warm clothes. In fact, you would need better insulation on Titan than you would on the dark side of the Moon, as Titan's atmosphere would be conducting and convecting heat away from you at a prodigious rate.

This has been real problem...

[Anonymous Coward]

I heard about this from a former boss, who used to do astrophysics at Goddard SFC in Maryland.

It seems that seniority really does play a big part in who gets the data and when. She was just starting out, and was way down on the list, and had a hard time getting access to new data. She eventually chucked astrophysics and started doing plain old software development.

I guess that if you get your hands on the data first, you've got a pretty good chance at writing some important papers and perhaps getting into mass media for a couple of seconds, so I can understand why people would want to fight that chance. But the 'merkin taxpayers are footing the bill, so why should only a few benefit?

Seems like a shame to me, although she made a pretty good boss.

Are things getting better? It seems to me that a lot of satellite data is available on the internet. Anyone know?

-- ac at home

Re:This has been real problem...

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod him up.

This has been discussed extensively and openly for Hubble data; basically it is to get the project group to write papers first without worrying about a group, say in China, working day and night on the same data and beating the original project group for the first report.

First publication is important in science. Make your own joke on first posting to Slashdot.

Whoa dude

[madmarcel]

Like dude...you can assume "there's guaranteed to be more life *somewhere* in the galaxy" all you want, nobody is gonna believe you until we actually find some (proof of) life on/in a place other than earth.

Let's start by looking in the obvious places first.
It doesn't matter so much WHAT we find, as long as we find something. Then we can see whether [we|life on earth] is a fluke or not. (And we can see whether or not there are/have been paralllellls in the development of either - or whether one is the origin of the other...etc etc :)

And obviously, by looking in obvious (and familiar) places, we increase the probability that we will actually recognize the life-forms that we find!

e.g.
Silicon life-forms? Sure...eh..ok...how do you know it's alive? What might be a hundred years to carbon-based life-forms might be 1 second of comparative time to a silicon based-lifeform (or even the inverse of that :) How does either one see/know that the other is alive? How does a silicon-based lifeform perceive the world? Does it actually have senses? Do those senses overlap our own?

Let's start by finding alien bacteria and stuff like that....much easier :)

Oh, just a thought:

** If NASA *DO* find signs of life on another planet then I think the same thing will happen as what happened with the so-called 'martian' bacteria that supposedly arrived on earth by hopping on a comet/asteroid/rock -> We will end up with endless arguments over cross-contamination and whether or not we put those bugs there in the first place.
Space might be freakin' cold and a very convenient vacuum, but it doesn't stop pollen and bacteria and god knows what else from happily travelling along with our space-probes :o
(And I need someone to confirm this: Was there stuff growing on the outside of ol' MIR? or is that a myth?)

I was going to add another bit on how religious groups might get upset when the scientific community announces they've found life on other planets....but that's just asking for a troll-rating (:o (Hmm...some cults/sects would be ecstatic I'd imagine ;)

Re:Whoa dude

[snilloc]

Contamination could eventually be proven by genetic analysis, IF we find them alive (or nearly so). If the Martian microbes we might find are genetically identical to known earthly bacteria, then it is 99% likely to be an instance of contamination.

As for religion, it will adapt. Somehow, Christianity came to terms with the fact that the Earth isn't the center of the universe, or even the solar system. Somehow, it has accepted much of medical science, and we all now accept that diseases are the result of pathogens or genetic disorders and not demonic possession. Adjusting to alien life would be a minor adaptation.

I guess it's true ...

[PseudonymousCoward]

No news is good news.

Cassini

[xaaronx]

Yeah, as many have already pointed out, this is not new news. But it is worth discussing. Why? Because Cassini is the last real NASA probe, made in the old way. None of that cheaper/faster/destroyed on entry/by miscommunication/flat out lost in space crap. It should give us some good data to chew on and maybe, but not probably, inspire NASA to cut the crap and get back to real space exploration.

Re:Cassini

[ianscot]

Because Cassini is the last real NASA probe, made in the old way. None of that cheaper/faster/destroyed on entry/by miscommunication/flat out lost in space crap.

Until it gets there and works, we don't know that your fisrt sentence necessarily leads to your second. The fact they built it at greater cost and with a much more lavish set of features may mean that one simple problem could be devastating, whereas the cheaper model at least might spread the risk around by sending several more task-specific probes. To wit:

...the European Space Agency admitted a serious and embarrassing problem due to a a glaring design error which no one had caught during years of design reviews and ground tests.

It now turns out that the Huygens data receiver on Cassini isn't properly adjusted to the Doppler change in the frequency of Huygens' received signal caused by the fact that Cassini will be barreling toward Titan (and Huygens) at over 21,000 km per hour during its listening period.

-- Space Daily March 21, 2001

Significantly...

[bluyonder]

This mission is the last of NASA's big budget planetary projects.

Re:Ugh, this is 6 1/2 years old

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree.

I think the probe should almost be there by now. If it's not already there (I can't remember).

Maybe /. could will post an article titled:

"No horses, just a Ford - A guy named Ford claims to have built a horseless carridge...."

Choose your battles

[dorfsmay]

How about we sort out life on Earth

One should choose one's battles, space seems easier...

Next stop: URANUS!

[visgoth]

So is NASA planning on probing Uranus next?

Geddit?

No? Ok, /me goes back to the corner.

Re:Next stop: URANUS!

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, it IS going to happen sooner or later. I'm just itching to hear how they phrase it:

Headline - NASA sends probe to Uranus

Gotta feel for the poor dude doing the press releases...

What about the flux capacitor?

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

The "spinoff" vector. Thats rich. Yeah... those things need to be "calibrated". I think your computer must be HIV positive. Too much uprotected cybersex.

Re:Next Month's Uranus Probe

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand why this is modded off-topic. It couldn't be more on-topic. Anyway. Eventually NASA WILL (again?) send a probe to Uranus. I wonder if they will giggle at the press announcement. "Today, NASA is embarking on an ambitious mission to probe into the depths of Uranus *tee-hee*."

Useful cool

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the 95K temperature can be useful since it can make high temperature superconductors work in the atmosphere without extra cooling. Some High Tc materias have a Tc (Critical Temperature) of 130K.

Alaska has been proposed as the new home of server megafarms. Google is at about 10,000 computers (running Linux) and assorted disks. Say 500W for each computer and assorted cooling, switches etc and you are talking about a megawatt farm.

Titan: the home of monster grade server farms?

Re:Useful cool

[alienmole]

Yeah, I though Titan would solve my cooling problems, for sure. So I signed up for web server hosting with minorplanethosting.com, but I'm having a bit of a problem establishing an SSH connection to my server now. To try to diagnose this, I did a ping, and here's what I got back, after waiting 3 hours:

64 bytes from 192.168.44.12: icmp_seq=0 ttl=52 time=10803411.277 msec

What do you think could be wrong??

You have to convert the physical world too

[Chemisor]

Switching to a different measurement system is stupid if you don't actually intend to use it. What good is using meters when you still sell 4x8 ft plywood? Measurement system conversion must necessarily imply converting not just the units, but the physical object sizes as well. Sell 1x2 m plywood, 5 mm bolts, and 5 mm drill bits. Halfway conversion is simply an incovenience, since you end up with ugly fractional measurements which give an unjustifiably bad name to the metric system.

Re:You have to convert the physical world too

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

the point of the preceeding post was that some sizes make more sence for a particular industry. 4x8 is a better size for construction then 1mx2m. The problem isn't in the conversions( metric is much better for this) but the magnitude of the fundemental units.

Re:You have to convert the physical world too

[Anonymous Coward]

you're fat :)

500lbs fat..

adding or subtracting zero's is a nice way to convert.

Re:You have to convert the physical world too

[Guppy06]

"Sell 1x2 m plywood, 5 mm bolts, and 5 mm drill bits."

That's all well and good for new products, but what about repairing older products? Do you have any idea how many 5/8" bolts are out there?

Re:You have to convert the physical world too

[Guppy06]

Except there are no conversions in SI. All SI units are metric, but not all metric units are SI. The unit of length in SI is the meter, period. Not centimeters, not kilometers, but meters. It doesn't matter if you're talking about the Bohr radius or the distance to the nearest supercluster, you must use meters. The standards will grudgingly accept the use of such prefixes, but they'd much rather you say "1E(-2) m" than "1 cm."

Mass can even be more annoying. There, the standard is kilograms, not grams. And everybody wants to use these units as force instead.

Oh, by the way, you're also not allowed to use metric prefixes for powers of 2. A kilobyte must be 1000 bytes, not 1024.

Re:You have to convert the physical world too

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't matter if you're talking about the Bohr radius or the distance to the nearest supercluster, you must use meters.

Sorry to be rude, but this is BULLSHIT, and you should know it. When measuring astrophysical distances, scientists nearly always use parsecs. Not meters, not light-years, but parsecs.

The reason is the conversion factor between meters and parsecs is a number which must be measured, and thus has some uncertainty. Therefore if you quote your measurement in meters, you have needlessly increased the uncertainty in your measurement.

Whereas converting meters to kilometers does not introduce this problem, because the conversion factor is a defined quantity (1000) which is known to arbitrary precision.

If you are involved in making any scientific measurements where precision is important but hard to get, then you should be very familiar with this kind of situation.

And if you had any knowledge of physics, you would know about the CGS system of unit, which is used by many people because it treats electric charge in a better way than SI does.

Re:You have to convert the physical world too

[Guppy06]

"When measuring astrophysical distances, scientists nearly always use parsecs."

First off, I wasn't talking about "what is commonly used" here or there, I was talking about SI. I said "SI" in the original post. Several times in fact.

Secondly, parsecs aren't SI. Parsecs aren't even metric.

"And if you had any knowledge of physics, you would know about the CGS system of unit,"

The only SI part of the CGS system, however, is the S.

"which is used by many people because it treats electric charge in a better way than SI does."

But the EMU Coulomb is the one your government has made law. Whatever your thoughts on the matter, the Coulomb and all the other SI units are "the standard" that everybody seems to enjoy talking about in glowing terms.

Re:You have to convert the physical world too

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, misunderstood with you were saying. I'm not usually this much of an ass, except on slashdot.

OT (was Re:We only have 25 left now, right?)

[bryan1945]

I love your score:
-1, Funny

Priceless!

Next Project?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder when they've scheduled the probe to Uranus...

Apologizes and runs for cover

Actually...

[Anonymous Coward]

The Europeans are the ones who made the boneheaded screwup on this one.

The European Space Agency built Huygens, the probe to be dropped into Titan's atmosphere. They made two big mistakes while designing the system for communicating between Huygens and the mothership, Cassini: They totally omitted part of the Dopler shift, and they made the radio bandpass an order of magnitude smaller than called for in the specs.

(The Doppler shift is very important because Cassini and Huygens will be moving at extremely different velocities, and those velocities will be changing quickly.)

If these mistakes had gone undetected, the radio signals from Huygens wouldn't have been received by Cassini for relay to Earth... the mission would have been a total loss. The problem was detected, though, a few years after launch. The early orbits of Saturn by Cassini had to be drastically redesigned, but a mission plan which reduced the second-order Doppler shift was developed. Thus, these problems have now been worked-around. What's the cost? Half of the spacecraft's expected end-of-primary mission fuel reserves. These spacecraft tend to last a hell of a long time, and these Huygens screwups have cost NASA half of the propellant it would otherwise have used for the extended mission.

Uggh.

So, try to make up some Dopler shift jokes so that you can overuse them as you overuse the metric jokes. :)

NASA Sending Probe to Saturn

[nick_davison]

NASA Sending Probe to Saturn

And I thought it was just a damn uncomfortable car seat. I feel so violated!

(For Europeans, Saturn is a US car company that make relatively... let's call them "efficient"... cars.)

At least...

[Plissken]

On the bright side they didn't get /.'d

NASA Sending Probe to Saturn

[Jaguar777]

This story would have been much cooler if it was
NASA Sending Probe to Uranus

Ok, You asked for it.

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Bad pickup lines: If you don't like red then stop running away from me,.. baby. Are you're eyes actually blue or its it that I'm falling into them? A Good Trafic Excuse: I'm sorry officer, but the light was blue when I entered the intersection. It didn't turn red until I got through the intersection.

I don't get no respect

[argStyopa]

I'd love to be a karma whore, but nobody wants me.

(But my submissions about MS EULA forbidding users to even tell anyone benchmark results on .NET get rejected in favor of THIS crap? Who do I have to sleep with to get MY stories accepted?)

Is it me or...

[HellRazr]

Doesn't it seem like today NASA really sucks ass compared to the 60s? Shuttles blowing up. They can barely get a working robot to Mars. What is their problem? Is it a case where they use have to have the best people in the world, and now they have shit people? Probably the quota system at work. Are NASA's challenges much different today than they were 40 years ago?

I'm going to Saturn on Cassini

[Anonymous Coward]

well, my signature is, anyway-
http://planetary.org/news/Cassini/hot-top -cassini6 .html
"When the Cassini spacecraft launches, it will be carrying more than a probe and an instrument package to the saturnian system -- it will be carrying tens of thousands of signatures from people on Earth. "

Interplanetary Internet (was Re:It won't...)

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, there's a _real_ project that is designing a system to give the equivalent of IP addresses to spacecraft on/around other planets. Check out InterPlanNet for more details. And no, it's not IP based.

Thank you Mr. Biology

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Only a Biologist would be so anal as to declare such a assinine statemate. The standards really don't give a crap, they are not living entities. Most scientists , and biologists that have a head above their sholders, use what ever is most convienint. Absolutely, no si unit is "anoying". Only those who do not understand physics want to use kilograms as a measurement of force. Not anyone in the scientific community(except maybe for nutritionists. I had to teach a physics for nurses class and the stupid book said that kilograms were a mesurement of force, and that Work=Weight x Distance).
SI does not apply to computer science. There isn't si a unit of data declared.

Re:Thank you Mr. Biology

[Guppy06]

"Only a Biologist would be so anal as to declare such a assinine statemate."

That's a peculiar prejudice. I have nothing to do with biology.

"Most scientists , and biologists that have a head above their sholders, use what ever is most convienint."

Isn't that exactly what people complained about when the Mars probe was lost? That LockMart was using units that were "convenient" instead of switching to all-SI and forcing their private-sector customers to follow suit?

"Absolutely, no si unit is "anoying"."

Oh, I can think of quite a few. For example, I find the meter too long and the centimeter too short to be convenient in measuring day-to-day lengths. Decimeters might be better, but people look at you funny when you say that word.

However, in that paritcular instance, I was referring to the annoyance of using a "kilo-" anything as the base unit declared for a system. And it does bring to light the way other people have found the units inconvenient as well: A kg*m/s^2 is a "Newton" and a g*cm/s^2 is a "dyne," but nobody even bothered to name a g*m/s^2 because of the mismatch of scales involved.

"Only those who do not understand physics want to use kilograms as a measurement of force."

ie. The vast majority of the population of the planet. Think of all the products sold by the "kilogram" in grocery stores even though they use spring scales.

"(except maybe for nutritionists."

Aside from using "calories" instead of the proper "Joules," they also have the nasty habit of calling a kilocalorie a "Calorie."

"SI does not apply to computer science."

You seem to be confused. The SI isn't about "science" (especially since true scientists understand that the decision of measurement systems is completey arbitrary) it is about an agreed-upon measurement standards needed for trade. Lengths of fabric, areas of land, weights of food, and anything else that you don't purchase per-unit. And computer storage media gets bought and sold just like anything else.

Re:NASA Sending Probe to Saturn

[Parsec]

"... in hopes of obtaining vital data to help understand the mysterious, vast region."

Re:Next Month's Uranus Probe

[stanmann]

Actually, they are back already and they have pictures, but I've forgotten the link... someplace on Christmas Island though.

Obligatory Movie-Tie-In Quote

[YetAnotherName]

Charlie: Bloody typical, they've gone back to metric without telling us.
-- Brazil 1995, Terry Gilliam

woah, we have a probe going to Jupiter??

[Anonymous Coward]

wow! didnt know we could send a probe that far. Wonder if it will be nuclear powered?
Man, if it is I bet the environmentalists will pitch a fit!

Italian explorer finds western path to India

[rk]

An Anonymous Coward writes "Apparently, Christopher Columbus, an Italian navigator in the employ of the Kingdom of Spain has found a way to navigate west across the Atlantic Ocean to new territories in India." No word yet on we can expect broadband internet access there, but this could be a mighty blow to the RIAA.

As long as they don't send a probe to Uranus

[AbdullahHaydar]

Futurama:

Professor: "I'm sorry, Fry, but astronomers renamed Uranus in 2620 to end that stupid joke once and for all."

Fry: "Oh. What's it called now?"

Professor: "Urectum."

Re:Ugh, this is 6 1/2 years old

[BaronCarlos]

Indeed, I was in college when this launched:
JPL's Official Site

and

Current Location.

FYI: Cassini launched on Oct. 15 1997.

Why can't you write? Or even spell?

[Anonymous Coward]

More embarrassing illiteracy splashed on the front page -- for a bunch
of geeks who spend a lot of time complaining about how stupid everyone
else is, you really make yourselves look pretty dumb on a regular
basis.

... Space Agency have launched a towards Saturn ...

Missing word... launched a probe, or vehicle, or something.

data to help understand the mysterious, vast region.

What "region?" Saturn is a planet, not a "region."

The Cassini orbiter that will orbit Saturn and it's moons for four
years, and the Huygens probe will dive...

First, the word is "its," not "it's." Second, either use the pronoun
in both clauses ("that will orbit... that will dive..."), or in
neither. Third, it should be "which," not "that."

Re:NASA Sending Probe to Saturn

[Anonymous Coward]

Through the windy valley, we think we've found the lost dutchman's mine!

Re:Next Month's Uranus Probe

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually the Soviets beat us to it..

click here to see the russian space probe pictures of Uranus

Old, Nonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody will read this but, for myself, I want to point out that the person who put this story here ( Commodore Too Kak ) is not willing to acknowledge that:

1. The post does not belong here ( not being news ).

2. The post is not written in English.

--

"Editor" ? Now what could that mean ?

Re:NASA Sending Probe to Saturn

[Anonymous Coward]

My 2003 saturn is the best dude. What's thie FUD about Saturn. You must be driving some rice burning car like the Mazda or some Toyota or something. American cars own and the Saturn owns you. I bet I can beat your stinky azz at a red light.

Ok ,senor Smelly pants.

[Anonymous Coward]

What to do with civilians who think they understand science? Anyone here have any ideas? SciFi fans and technophiles think they understand scince because they have seen bayblon 5. Then they show up at public lectures and argue with the expert over special relitivity. Or they don't undestand the word convinent.

Convienient: The solution that accompleshes the requirements with the least ammount of effort.

or those that don't understand that mass can be accuratly measured with a spring scale if the gravitational pull is known.

Re:Ok ,senor Smelly pants.

[Guppy06]

"Convienient: The solution that accompleshes the requirements with the least ammount of effort."

I didn't realize what I was saying was so difficult to understand.

A meter cannot fit into a notebook. It is not a convenient unit of measure.

A centimeter falls through small holes in pockets. It is not a convenient unit of measure.

Measurements in whole grams can be thrown off signifigant figures by slight air currents. It is not a convenient unit of measure.

Global confusion like "kilograms of force" can make communication of concepts of mass or force difficult with other people, therefore it is not as convenient as other alternatives.

The word "kilogram" suggests that its defintion is derived from that of the gram, when the truth is actually the other way around. This misunderstanding is also not always convenient.

"or those that don't understand that mass can be accuratly measured with a spring scale if the gravitational pull is known."

Does your grocer know how to measure localized gravitational potential? Can the scales even be corrected? Even for known discrepancies like latitude?

Re:Ok ,senor Smelly pants.

[panthro]

civilian noun:
a person not on active duty in a military, police or fire-fighting force

You seem to imply that there is some correlation between an understanding of science (scince?) and serving in one of the aforementioned forces, or at least that soldiers, policemen and firefighters are outside of your scope of criticism. I think I understand science, and I am a civilian. Does that qualify me for whatever fate you and whoever has any ideas come up with? I think I also qualify as a sci-fi fan and possibly a "technophile" as well, but I do not believe I undestand science due to having seen Babylon 5. In fact, I have never seen Babylon 5. I do not show up at public lectures to argue with "the expert", whoever he or she may be, over special relativity. I'd be interested in listening to you speak about it, though, if you are the humble "expert" who gets all this argument from civilian technophiles and the like.

I must admit, though, I do not understand the word convinent (or convienient, for that matter). Perhaps it is similar to convenient:

convenient adj.:
1. suited to personal comfort or ease
2. placed near at hand

Maybe my personal comfort standards lend themselves to a solution which accompleshes the requirements with some ammount of effort more than the least possible.

I don't think that this would be the case, however, if the requirement was to measure mass accuratly with a spring scale. I don't know the gravitational pull here, and I imagine calculating it would not be particularly convenient, convinent or convienient.

Saturn the Car

[voideng]

It's an Opel although cheaper.

Very nice...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a physicist, and still I had never heard a couple of these! :)

Re:Very nice...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why thanks. I came up with them as a undergrad physics major.

NASA needs the funding

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm very glad to see that NASA is working on perfecting the HERF gun. After all, they have to keep up with the progress made since Slashdot perfected the website-killing HREF gun a few years ago. Just point and click, webserver goes down. :-)

But seriously, all I really want to know is will it fry the cell phone of those people who can't seem to STFU in the restaurant. Perhaps a hand held version of this could be wielded by ushers in movie theaters.

Scaling modifiers do NOT make a new unit

[Chemisor]

A centimeter is not a different unit from a meter. It is simply a shorthand for "one hundredth of a meter". The reason you are asked to normalize (usually in scientific literature), is to facilitate comparisons of different values. You should also note that this normalization process is MUCH easier than in English units, since it involves only modifying the exponent (or moving the decimal point).

Recycle them.

[Chemisor]

That's just the point. You stop manufacturing parts in English units and as soon as you run out of those parts, the old products become obsolete. There will always be mechanics who will rethread a bolt for your vintage car, but most people will soon only need metric parts. So recycle the old bolts.