i didnt want to do this, but i had to. i dont know why.
i'm so sorry. all i've ever wanted was to be loved
Contradiction?
by
Daedalus_
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Is it me, or does the Fox article contradict itself?
First it crashed....
MOSCOW -- The world's first solar sail spacecraft (search) crashed back to Earth when its booster rocket failed less than two minutes after Tuesday's takeoff, Russian space officials said Wednesday.
...but now it's in orbit and sending signals?
U.S. scientists had said earlier that they possibly had detected signals from Cosmos 1 but cautioned that it could take hours or days to figure out exactly where the $4 million spacecraft was.
The signals were picked up late Tuesday after an all-day search for the spacecraft, which had suddenly stopped communicating after its launch, they said.
"It's good news because we are in orbit -- very likely in orbit," Bruce Murray, a co-founder of The Planetary Society (search), which organized the mission, said before the Russian space agency's announcement.
??
Re:Contradiction?
by
Neurowiz
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· Score: 5, Informative
No, that's a legit contradiction. If you go to the Planetary Society's website, you'll find that they are still hunting and there are clear signs that something is screwed up, but the spacecraft may have made it to orbit:
I'm kind of suprised that the Russians are so quick to call "fail" on this, given the conflicting data, but they had a bad karma space day yesterday, what with their other launch of a military payload failing as well.
Chief Spokesperson for the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) today confirmed that the new and improved Cheyenne Mountain Operations Center (CMOC), first announced last January, is fully functional. "We had our first real world test yesterday when an ICBM launch was detected from an as yet unidentified submarine in the Barents Sea. I am happy to report that the threat was eliminated without incident."
-- The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
they could have spent the same 4 million to become Batman, and still have money to spare.
Re:That's what you get with potheads...
by
__aaclcg7560
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· Score: 3, Insightful
The Russian rocket failed 83 seconds into the flight. So the potheads are Russians. At least they were willing to give the idea a shot for the right price. Unlike another space agency that is really good at sitting on their thumbs.
Don't Give Up Hope
by
ndansmith
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· Score: 3, Insightful
There is still plenty of reason for hope. All that happened was that the booster failed. We still don't know how the actually sail technology will perform, since the systems are unrelated.
Re:In Soviet Russia, they don't give up
by
jellomizer
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Well this is an unmanned satilight. No one was hurt (physiclally). In the issue of the shuttle deaths need to be minimized. Because every death in space makes people fear space travel.
-- If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Re:In Soviet Russia, they don't give up
by
Monkey-Man2000
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· Score: 4, Informative
Except this is paid for by the Planetary Society, so who knows if they'll build another one. I suspect they will, but it's not because Russians are involved.
-- This post was generated by a Cadre of Uber Monkeys for Monkey-Man2000 (603495).
Re:In Soviet Russia, they don't give up
by
ScentCone
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· Score: 5, Insightful
These days NASA is full of over-educated monkeys who cringe at their own shadow.
No, NASA is funded by congressional representatives that are too timid to explain the value of the program to their constituencies. And those people are voted into office by people too unaware of the role that science plays in their lives. And those people are raised by parents who think the schools should be the parents, so the schools are so busy teaching Johnny how to Share His Feelings that they never get around to teaching him where his Cartoon Network signal comes from. Don't blame NASA, blame parents.
There, I fixed it.
-- Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Re:Three strikes and you're *out*...
by
Rei
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Russian rocket failure rates are about on par with US rocket failure rates; the only thing that I can think of offhand that they've had serious reliability problems with are their mars probes.
The problem is that this wasn't designed to be an orbital vehicle - the Volna is an ICBM, i.e., designed for lofting moderately heavy suborbital payloads. Russia wants a use for the ICBMs that they can't afford to maintain, and is trying to convert them for launching orbital payloads. I.e., Cosmos 1 and its predecessor are being launched on untested payload delivery systems (and hence the low price).
Cosmos 1 was funded by the insurance money from the previous failure, so don't think that this is the end.:)
-- The War of 1812... the good 'ol days when the federal government actually tried to save New Orleans.
Fox = Slashdot != Planetary Society
by
n54
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· Score: 5, Informative
Why the hell does Slashdot base their "news" on Fox rather than going to the source itself?
Here's the latest (as of this moment) weblog entry from the Planetary Society itself as written by Emily Lakdawalla:
"Jun 22, 2005 | 07:49 PDT | 14:49 UTC The morning after
I showed up here at POP at about 7 am local time. I'm the only one here in the building at the moment. It was a very late night after a very long day yesterday, and we all knew that if anything there would be more people asking questions today; we needed the rest.
Over our night and their day there has been some information coming out of Russia. To recap where we stand: yesterday the launch appeared to happen roughly on time. The Navy reported first stage firing. Then the signal of the spacecraft was detected over the temporary ground station at Petropavlovsk. But it wasn't detected over Majuro, which had us concerned. And then U. S. Strategic Command reported that they did not see our spacecraft in the sky. Later in the afternoon, we heard back from our man in Majuro that he thought actually he may have detected a weak signal. And then we heard the same from Panska Ves via Lou. That all seemed to add up to a consistent story that while there may have been a problem on board, our spacecraft likely was in orbit.
Since then, there has been a new report circulating from Russia:
ITAR-TASS is now quoting officials of the Russian Navy and the Makeyev design bureau as saying that the Volna first stage unexpectedly shut down 83 seconds after lift-off, adding that unlike the standard Volna SLBM the "space version" does not have an automatic destruct system for such an eventuality.
About this, Lou made a statement last night:
Project Director Louis Friedman cautioned that some data point to a launch vehicle misfiring, one that would prevent the spacecraft from achieving orbit. He said, "That the weak signals were recorded at the expected times of spacecraft passes over the ground stations is encouraging, but in no way are they conclusive enough for us to be sure that they came from Cosmos 1 working in orbit." The Russian space agency indicated that the Volna rocket may have had a problem during its first or second stage firing. "This," Friedman noted, "would almost certainly have prevented the spacecraft from reaching the correct orbit."
What this means is that we are still dealing with a very wide range of possibilities for what could have happened yesterday, made even wider by the fact that it kind of sounds like some of the information that we have is contradictory. If the launch vehicle failed, how did we detect signals at Majuro and Panska Ves? On the other side, if the launch vehicle had a problem but still managed to put the spacecraft into some orbit, why didn't Strat Comm see it last night? We don't know what to make of it. We hope to get more information from Lou in an hour or two. Stand by for that."
-- this comment is provided "as is" and without any express or implied legibility or congruity [...]
Re:Fox = Slashdot != Planetary Society
by
n54
·
· Score: 4, Informative
"It's an Associated Press story, you dipshit. Are you seriously asking why we want our news from the actual press instead of somebody's blog?"
For your information it is not "somebody's blog" but the Planetary Society's weblog on the Cosmos 1 launch/project. In other words: directly from the source (the people actually at the hub of information: the Planetary Society) rather than possibly misinterpreted, misunderstood, and generally dumbed down reporting be it by AP, or Fox, or Slashdot.
In a situation where one has conflicting data and reports I think most people would like to get their information directly from those who have the most of it.
-- this comment is provided "as is" and without any express or implied legibility or congruity [...]
You just know that right now there are some aliens up there watching and laughing their asses off. They probably record everything we do and broadcast their own reality series back to their planet(s). "Tonight on funniest earth out-takes..."
Come on you Vulcan bastards, come down here and help us pathic morons!
Seriously though, I think current world events (including the decline of Russia's military and America's focus on homeland dipshiatery) has lead to lack of interest/funding/training in space-related activies. The result is inevitable.
-- The ratio of people to cake is too big
Re:In Soviet Russia, they don't give up
by
GlassUser
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
And those people are raised by parents who think the schools should be the parents, so the schools are so busy teaching Johnny how to Share His Feelings that they never get around to teaching him where his Cartoon Network signal comes from. Don't blame NASA, blame parents.
You're at least partly dead wrong. I'm formerly home schooled, and I'd crap my pants to get into NASA (I live five minutes from JSC, so I'm ready when they are). I will home school my own children, and I'll make good and sure they know how important NASA and associated programs are to us. I'm not alone, I know many home schooled kids who take astronomy classes from an aerospace engineer and astronomer.
You might be more on target if you aimed that at the california village-grown fools.
So much for cold war escalation.
by
holt_rpi
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· Score: 4, Insightful
I guess all those sleepless nights about being nuked by a Russian sub were all for naught.
I mean, if they can't even make a simple booster rocket on a modified SLBM fire correctly, how are they supposed to get MIRVs up to a height to fall (albeit haphazardly) on US soil?
Re:So much for cold war escalation.
by
saider
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· Score: 3, Funny
I mean, if they can't even make a simple booster rocket on a modified SLBM fire correctly, how are they supposed to get MIRVs up to a height to fall (albeit haphazardly) on US soil?
That's what Canada was for.
--
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
Re:Wasting Money
by
mako1138
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· Score: 3, Insightful
This is just my opinion, but I think all this crap the space programs are shooting off into space is a total waste of money that could be much better spent on any number of things (research, healthcare, internet security).
You do realize that: research = all this crap the space programs are shooting off into space
Re:Wasting Money
by
Durinthal
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· Score: 3, Insightful
No progress without trying, and that has to include the possibility of failure.
Ann Druyan, Carl Sagan's widow, the owner of Cosmos Studios and the funder of the project, informed me in a conversation several months ago that should this attempt fail, the Planetary Society would be lacking in funds for another attempt, and that Cosmos Studios is financially unable to fund another attempt, either. So someone else would have to foot the bill for another go at solar sails.
Re:Good news, everyone!
by
stlhawkeye
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· Score: 5, Insightful
You guys act like no other news sources have a political bias in their reporting.
When a poll showed Senator Kerry ahead of President Bush in the 2004 Presidential elections, CNN reported, "Kerry pulls ahead of Bush in latest poll."
When President Bush reclaimed the lead, they reported, "Bush apparantly leads Kerry."
Now, this was an isolated incident. A qualifier like "apparantly" was not used in any other poll reporting for either candidate being ahead. But it happened, it continues to happen, and it will happen again.
We just don't care here because we're mostly liberals and what seems to a right-winger as a "liberal bias" looks to us like the objective truth. It matches our worldview, why would we question it or suspect there of being any bias?
This same phenomenon is responsible for conservative embrasure of FoxNews. Much of what they read on Fox matches their worldview, and other news outlets appear, to them, to be absurdly biased.
In other words, it's a matter of perspective, and frankly I've found Fox's reporting to be no more egregiously biased than any other. I'm sure somebody will respond to this post with 15 examples of horrible, unforgivable sins of journalism by Fox. I'll be there's hundreds that could be cited in the last 30 days alone. But comparing how Fox spins its stories to how any other large news outlets spins it's stories, I really haven't seen that Fox's trangressions are measurably less forgivable.
And "spin" usually comes in the form of reporting selected truth and omitted selected other truth. Of accurately reporting one side of an issue and often ignoring the opposit side. And the worst is when anchors and journalists recite what one large, unsourceable, unverifiable, and undefined group of people "say" or "think" and ignoring the other. For example:
"Critics of Senator Kerry claim that he (insert thing that would make me not want to vote for Kerry here)."
By not reporting what supporters of Senator Kerry say on the same topic, the anchor/journalist/reporter has spun the story against Senator Kerry.
Another technique is to appear impartial by inaccurately or incompletely reporting the other side, or cherry-picking weak arguments or obvious red herrings, while ignoring stronger arguments.
"Critics of Senator Kerry have suggested that his anti-war rhetoric during Vietnam makes him unfit for office. Supporters counter that Senator Kerry looks good in a suit."
This crap happens all the time, and it's all biased journalism. It just doesn't seem biased when you agree with the slant.
-- "I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
Re:Three strikes and you're *out*...
by
Rei
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
It depends. How thin you can make the solar sail is of critical importance. For example, a 12 micron solar sail will be superior to chemical rockets, mass-wise, for missions of longer than 2 months, and superior to ion drives for missions longer than two years. A one micron solar sail, however, will become superior to chemical rockets in just over five days, and ion drives in two months. I have some issues with their calculations (they assume constant solar flux, for example), but it still drives home how, if you can get a very thin sail, your accelerations can be incredible. Also, at least in theory, they'll be cheap to produce and difficult to have just fail on you. Not that I don't like the concept of M2P2;)
For comparison, Cosmos 1's sail is 5 microns (although it's not designed to be permanent). I was thinking the other night about a possibility (who knows if it is realistic). You could produce your sail in three layers:
1) A heavy, strong, flexible backing a dozen or so microns thick that will erode with sun exposure
2) A thin, durable, structurally weak layer less than a micron thick
3) An atomic-scale coating of aluminum
Of course, at regular intervals, you'd have to lay down a thick durable layer to keep the structure from tearing. The reasoning behind my idea is that you can create, stow, and deploy the sail in a heavy, durable fashion; however, once it has been in space for a few days/weeks, it becomes incredibly lightweight from solar exposure (but doesn't tear because it is no longer experiencing any significant forces beyond the uniform solar radiation pressure). You would unfurl with the heavy backing to the sun, and only switch to the aluminized side once the craft has lost mass.
-- The War of 1812... the good 'ol days when the federal government actually tried to save New Orleans.
Re:Three strikes and you're *out*...
by
saider
·
· Score: 5, Funny
Cosmos 1 was funded by the insurance money from the previous failure...
Explorer : I want to buy some insurance for a satellite that I plan on launching on a Soviet...er....Russian ICBM.
Insurance Agent : What dollar value is your craft valued at?
Explorer : The launch vehicle and orbiter total to about 4 million dollars. So what's the premium going to look like?
Insurance Agent : 4 million dollars.
--
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
Up-do-date Information (?)
by
ClippyHater
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· Score: 4, Informative
Space Is Expensive...If You Want To Succeed.
by
ausoleil
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· Score: 3, Informative
As far as space launches go, this was an incredibly inexpensive one. However, that does not say that it was cheap for the Sagan folks. Hopefully, they will bounce back and get their bird up into space sooner rather than later.
To those who criticize NASA, which is hamstrung by its own bureaucracy and an overall lack of fncding, one would be remiss to fail to point out that they have indeed placed two probes on Mars recently, vehicles that have vastly exceeded their life-expectancies and remain useful and operational.
That also extends to the Space Shuttle. Those who constantly criticize it are either ignoring or are ignorant of its history: the Shuttle was a compromised design due to politics rather than technology, and NASA has been "stuck" with a vehicle it would rather not have initially had. On that point, the current design of the shuttle was certainly not what NASA wanted. As the mnost complex mechanical system on the planet, it is bound for failure, and it will not surprise me when all of them are lost in flight accidents.
That's why SpaceShipOne excited me so much on a personal level. It was a successful project, done relatively inexpensively and proved that private funding could succeed in putting a bird up in to technical space. By itself, SS1 is hardly a blip in space history, but it will serve as impetus to what comes next. Fresh eyes coming up with new solutions is a great idea.
The bottom line is this: Today, space flight is expensive, at least if you want a high probability of success. While it is tragic that the Solar Sail probe was lost, it does serve as yet another reminder that "on the cheap" programs prove that you get what you pay for. If you want to go to space, bring copious amounts of cash. It may seem wasteful in the midst of success, but in the midst of failures such as this, the costs suddenly become reasonable.
Re:In Soviet Russia, they don't give up
by
ScentCone
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
You might be more on target if you aimed that at the california village-grown fools.
Um... hence my reference to "those people that..."
You're way in the minority, and I'm glad you're out there. But the vast majority of public school kids are basically uninformed, and worse, lack any critical thinking skills whatsoever. Enough of them vote (uncritically), or bitch at their legislators based on shallow, emotional, short-attention-span-driven reactions to things that we get ridiculous spending priorities. Our high tech/space programs do more to expand our tech economy, help with looming security issues, and keep us ahead of our competition in so many ways... if only the average kid was taught to think in terms of causal relationships and rational economics. Oh well.
I'm glad to hear about astronomy being taught by an engineer in the home-school environment. Unfortunately, too many of the home-schooling families I'm aware of do so because they don't think normal schools put enough Jesus into astronomy, etc., so it's in some ways worse than the public schools. That certainly varies.
-- Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Reminds me of the scene from the Holy Grail. Edited to make it relevant to the situation.
Other countries said we were daft to build a solar sail and launch it into the atmosphere, but we built it all the same, just to show 'em. It burned up in the atmosphere. So, we built a second one. That burned up in the atmosphere. So, we built a third one. That launched, failed to boost, then burned up in the atmosphere, but the fourth one... stayed up! And that's what you're gonna get, lad: the strongest solar sail in this system.
--
--------
This isn't the sig you're looking for. Move along.
Fair and Balanced
by
grahamsz
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· Score: 3, Insightful
I dont know any other news source that open claims that it is unbiased.
Fox make that claim when it's obviously untrue - it's hard to respect them after that.
Re:In Soviet Russia, they don't give up
by
bskin
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· Score: 4, Insightful
We go to the moon in this decade... The space race was won by people with drive and ambition. These days NASA is full of over-educated monkeys who cringe at their own shadow.
Over-educated? They're fucking rocket scientists. A lot of education is generally considered a prerequisite. NASA's problems would seem to have a lot more to do with bureaucracy, politics, and lack of budget than, say, knowing too much.
-- hot foreign sheep.
Update from the Plantery Society
by
Rei
·
· Score: 5, Informative
The Planetary Society as issued the following statement on the fate of Cosmos 1, the first Solar Sail Spacecraft:
In the past twenty-four hours, the Russian space agency (RKA) has made a tentative conclusion that the Volna rocket carrying Cosmos 1 failed during the firing of the first stage. This would mean that Cosmos 1 is lost.
While it is likely that this conclusion is correct, there are some inconsistent indications from information received from other sources. The Cosmos 1 team observed what appear to be signals, that looks like they are from the spacecraft when it was over the first three ground stations and some Doppler data over one of these stations. This might indicate that Cosmos 1 made it into orbit, but probably a lower one than intended. The project team now considers this to be a very small probability. But because there is a slim chance that it might be so, efforts to contact and track the spacecraft continue. We are working with US Strategic Command to provide additional information in a day or so.
If the spacecraft made it to orbit, its autonomous program might be working, and after 4 days the sails could automatically deploy. While the chances of this are very, very small, we still encourage optical observers to see if the sail can be seen after that time.
We await further developments and information coming out of Russia, STRATCOM, and the tracking stations.
-- The War of 1812... the good 'ol days when the federal government actually tried to save New Orleans.
Re:In Soviet Russia, they don't give up
by
TigerNut
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
You're missing some critical points there:
2005: Booster fails - the solar sail never gets a chance.
2001: Booster separation fails - the solar sail never gets a chance.
1999: Deployment mechanism jammed - the solar sail never gets a chance.
The solar sail part of the experiment hasn't had too many flight hours so far, due to component failures almost completely unrelated to the solar sail craft itself. They're not launching failure after failure... they're having launch failures, which is not the same thing.
--
Less is more.
Donations to Planetary Society for another attempt
by
p3d0
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Slashdot Mirror
in soviet russia, solar sails fail you.
i didnt want to do this, but i had to. i dont know why.
i'm so sorry. all i've ever wanted was to be loved
First it crashed.......but now it's in orbit and sending signals???
Chief Spokesperson for the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) today confirmed that the new and improved Cheyenne Mountain Operations Center (CMOC), first announced last January, is fully functional. "We had our first real world test yesterday when an ICBM launch was detected from an as yet unidentified submarine in the Barents Sea. I am happy to report that the threat was eliminated without incident."
The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
Just read this on the Register. Seems they are still receiving faint signals...
they could have spent the same 4 million to become Batman, and still have money to spare.
The Russian rocket failed 83 seconds into the flight. So the potheads are Russians. At least they were willing to give the idea a shot for the right price. Unlike another space agency that is really good at sitting on their thumbs.
There is still plenty of reason for hope. All that happened was that the booster failed. We still don't know how the actually sail technology will perform, since the systems are unrelated.
Well this is an unmanned satilight. No one was hurt (physiclally). In the issue of the shuttle deaths need to be minimized. Because every death in space makes people fear space travel.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Except this is paid for by the Planetary Society, so who knows if they'll build another one. I suspect they will, but it's not because Russians are involved.
This post was generated by a Cadre of Uber Monkeys for Monkey-Man2000 (603495).
These days NASA is full of over-educated monkeys who cringe at their own shadow.
No, NASA is funded by congressional representatives that are too timid to explain the value of the program to their constituencies. And those people are voted into office by people too unaware of the role that science plays in their lives. And those people are raised by parents who think the schools should be the parents, so the schools are so busy teaching Johnny how to Share His Feelings that they never get around to teaching him where his Cartoon Network signal comes from. Don't blame NASA, blame parents.
There, I fixed it.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Russian rocket failure rates are about on par with US rocket failure rates; the only thing that I can think of offhand that they've had serious reliability problems with are their mars probes.
:)
The problem is that this wasn't designed to be an orbital vehicle - the Volna is an ICBM, i.e., designed for lofting moderately heavy suborbital payloads. Russia wants a use for the ICBMs that they can't afford to maintain, and is trying to convert them for launching orbital payloads. I.e., Cosmos 1 and its predecessor are being launched on untested payload delivery systems (and hence the low price).
Cosmos 1 was funded by the insurance money from the previous failure, so don't think that this is the end.
The War of 1812... the good 'ol days when the federal government actually tried to save New Orleans.
Why the hell does Slashdot base their "news" on Fox rather than going to the source itself?
Here's the latest (as of this moment) weblog entry from the Planetary Society itself as written by Emily Lakdawalla:
"Jun 22, 2005 | 07:49 PDT | 14:49 UTC The morning after
I showed up here at POP at about 7 am local time. I'm the only one here in the building at the moment. It was a very late night after a very long day yesterday, and we all knew that if anything there would be more people asking questions today; we needed the rest.
Over our night and their day there has been some information coming out of Russia. To recap where we stand: yesterday the launch appeared to happen roughly on time. The Navy reported first stage firing. Then the signal of the spacecraft was detected over the temporary ground station at Petropavlovsk. But it wasn't detected over Majuro, which had us concerned. And then U. S. Strategic Command reported that they did not see our spacecraft in the sky. Later in the afternoon, we heard back from our man in Majuro that he thought actually he may have detected a weak signal. And then we heard the same from Panska Ves via Lou. That all seemed to add up to a consistent story that while there may have been a problem on board, our spacecraft likely was in orbit.
Since then, there has been a new report circulating from Russia:
ITAR-TASS is now quoting officials of the Russian Navy and the Makeyev design bureau as saying that the Volna first stage unexpectedly shut down 83 seconds after lift-off, adding that unlike the standard Volna SLBM the "space version" does not have an automatic destruct system for such an eventuality.
About this, Lou made a statement last night:
Project Director Louis Friedman cautioned that some data point to a launch vehicle misfiring, one that would prevent the spacecraft from achieving orbit. He said, "That the weak signals were recorded at the expected times of spacecraft passes over the ground stations is encouraging, but in no way are they conclusive enough for us to be sure that they came from Cosmos 1 working in orbit." The Russian space agency indicated that the Volna rocket may have had a problem during its first or second stage firing. "This," Friedman noted, "would almost certainly have prevented the spacecraft from reaching the correct orbit."
What this means is that we are still dealing with a very wide range of possibilities for what could have happened yesterday, made even wider by the fact that it kind of sounds like some of the information that we have is contradictory. If the launch vehicle failed, how did we detect signals at Majuro and Panska Ves? On the other side, if the launch vehicle had a problem but still managed to put the spacecraft into some orbit, why didn't Strat Comm see it last night? We don't know what to make of it. We hope to get more information from Lou in an hour or two. Stand by for that."
this comment is provided "as is" and without any express or implied legibility or congruity [...]
You just know that right now there are some aliens up there watching and laughing their asses off. They probably record everything we do and broadcast their own reality series back to their planet(s). "Tonight on funniest earth out-takes..."
Come on you Vulcan bastards, come down here and help us pathic morons!
Seriously though, I think current world events (including the decline of Russia's military and America's focus on homeland dipshiatery) has lead to lack of interest/funding/training in space-related activies. The result is inevitable.
The ratio of people to cake is too big
And those people are raised by parents who think the schools should be the parents, so the schools are so busy teaching Johnny how to Share His Feelings that they never get around to teaching him where his Cartoon Network signal comes from. Don't blame NASA, blame parents.
You're at least partly dead wrong. I'm formerly home schooled, and I'd crap my pants to get into NASA (I live five minutes from JSC, so I'm ready when they are). I will home school my own children, and I'll make good and sure they know how important NASA and associated programs are to us. I'm not alone, I know many home schooled kids who take astronomy classes from an aerospace engineer and astronomer.
You might be more on target if you aimed that at the california village-grown fools.
funny munging
I guess all those sleepless nights about being nuked by a Russian sub were all for naught.
I mean, if they can't even make a simple booster rocket on a modified SLBM fire correctly, how are they supposed to get MIRVs up to a height to fall (albeit haphazardly) on US soil?
This is just my opinion, but I think all this crap the space programs are shooting off into space is a total waste of money that could be much better spent on any number of things (research, healthcare, internet security).
You do realize that: research = all this crap the space programs are shooting off into space
No progress without trying, and that has to include the possibility of failure.
Ann Druyan, Carl Sagan's widow, the owner of Cosmos Studios and the funder of the project, informed me in a conversation several months ago that should this attempt fail, the Planetary Society would be lacking in funds for another attempt, and that Cosmos Studios is financially unable to fund another attempt, either. So someone else would have to foot the bill for another go at solar sails.
When a poll showed Senator Kerry ahead of President Bush in the 2004 Presidential elections, CNN reported, "Kerry pulls ahead of Bush in latest poll."
When President Bush reclaimed the lead, they reported, "Bush apparantly leads Kerry."
Now, this was an isolated incident. A qualifier like "apparantly" was not used in any other poll reporting for either candidate being ahead. But it happened, it continues to happen, and it will happen again.
We just don't care here because we're mostly liberals and what seems to a right-winger as a "liberal bias" looks to us like the objective truth. It matches our worldview, why would we question it or suspect there of being any bias?
This same phenomenon is responsible for conservative embrasure of FoxNews. Much of what they read on Fox matches their worldview, and other news outlets appear, to them, to be absurdly biased.
In other words, it's a matter of perspective, and frankly I've found Fox's reporting to be no more egregiously biased than any other. I'm sure somebody will respond to this post with 15 examples of horrible, unforgivable sins of journalism by Fox. I'll be there's hundreds that could be cited in the last 30 days alone. But comparing how Fox spins its stories to how any other large news outlets spins it's stories, I really haven't seen that Fox's trangressions are measurably less forgivable.
And "spin" usually comes in the form of reporting selected truth and omitted selected other truth. Of accurately reporting one side of an issue and often ignoring the opposit side. And the worst is when anchors and journalists recite what one large, unsourceable, unverifiable, and undefined group of people "say" or "think" and ignoring the other. For example:
"Critics of Senator Kerry claim that he (insert thing that would make me not want to vote for Kerry here)."
By not reporting what supporters of Senator Kerry say on the same topic, the anchor/journalist/reporter has spun the story against Senator Kerry.
Another technique is to appear impartial by inaccurately or incompletely reporting the other side, or cherry-picking weak arguments or obvious red herrings, while ignoring stronger arguments.
"Critics of Senator Kerry have suggested that his anti-war rhetoric during Vietnam makes him unfit for office. Supporters counter that Senator Kerry looks good in a suit."
This crap happens all the time, and it's all biased journalism. It just doesn't seem biased when you agree with the slant.
"I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
It depends. How thin you can make the solar sail is of critical importance. For example, a 12 micron solar sail will be superior to chemical rockets, mass-wise, for missions of longer than 2 months, and superior to ion drives for missions longer than two years. A one micron solar sail, however, will become superior to chemical rockets in just over five days, and ion drives in two months. I have some issues with their calculations (they assume constant solar flux, for example), but it still drives home how, if you can get a very thin sail, your accelerations can be incredible. Also, at least in theory, they'll be cheap to produce and difficult to have just fail on you. Not that I don't like the concept of M2P2 ;)
For comparison, Cosmos 1's sail is 5 microns (although it's not designed to be permanent). I was thinking the other night about a possibility (who knows if it is realistic). You could produce your sail in three layers:
1) A heavy, strong, flexible backing a dozen or so microns thick that will erode with sun exposure
2) A thin, durable, structurally weak layer less than a micron thick
3) An atomic-scale coating of aluminum
Of course, at regular intervals, you'd have to lay down a thick durable layer to keep the structure from tearing. The reasoning behind my idea is that you can create, stow, and deploy the sail in a heavy, durable fashion; however, once it has been in space for a few days/weeks, it becomes incredibly lightweight from solar exposure (but doesn't tear because it is no longer experiencing any significant forces beyond the uniform solar radiation pressure). You would unfurl with the heavy backing to the sun, and only switch to the aluminized side once the craft has lost mass.
The War of 1812... the good 'ol days when the federal government actually tried to save New Orleans.
Cosmos 1 was funded by the insurance money from the previous failure...
Explorer : I want to buy some insurance for a satellite that I plan on launching on a Soviet...er....Russian ICBM.
Insurance Agent : What dollar value is your craft valued at?
Explorer : The launch vehicle and orbiter total to about 4 million dollars. So what's the premium going to look like?
Insurance Agent : 4 million dollars.
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
http://planetary.org/solarsailblog/index_05.html http://planetary.org/solarsail/latest_update.html
As far as space launches go, this was an incredibly inexpensive one. However, that does not say that it was cheap for the Sagan folks. Hopefully, they will bounce back and get their bird up into space sooner rather than later.
To those who criticize NASA, which is hamstrung by its own bureaucracy and an overall lack of fncding, one would be remiss to fail to point out that they have indeed placed two probes on Mars recently, vehicles that have vastly exceeded their life-expectancies and remain useful and operational.
That also extends to the Space Shuttle. Those who constantly criticize it are either ignoring or are ignorant of its history: the Shuttle was a compromised design due to politics rather than technology, and NASA has been "stuck" with a vehicle it would rather not have initially had. On that point, the current design of the shuttle was certainly not what NASA wanted. As the mnost complex mechanical system on the planet, it is bound for failure, and it will not surprise me when all of them are lost in flight accidents.
That's why SpaceShipOne excited me so much on a personal level. It was a successful project, done relatively inexpensively and proved that private funding could succeed in putting a bird up in to technical space. By itself, SS1 is hardly a blip in space history, but it will serve as impetus to what comes next. Fresh eyes coming up with new solutions is a great idea.
The bottom line is this: Today, space flight is expensive, at least if you want a high probability of success. While it is tragic that the Solar Sail probe was lost, it does serve as yet another reminder that "on the cheap" programs prove that you get what you pay for. If you want to go to space, bring copious amounts of cash. It may seem wasteful in the midst of success, but in the midst of failures such as this, the costs suddenly become reasonable.
You might be more on target if you aimed that at the california village-grown fools.
Um... hence my reference to "those people that..."
You're way in the minority, and I'm glad you're out there. But the vast majority of public school kids are basically uninformed, and worse, lack any critical thinking skills whatsoever. Enough of them vote (uncritically), or bitch at their legislators based on shallow, emotional, short-attention-span-driven reactions to things that we get ridiculous spending priorities. Our high tech/space programs do more to expand our tech economy, help with looming security issues, and keep us ahead of our competition in so many ways... if only the average kid was taught to think in terms of causal relationships and rational economics. Oh well.
I'm glad to hear about astronomy being taught by an engineer in the home-school environment. Unfortunately, too many of the home-schooling families I'm aware of do so because they don't think normal schools put enough Jesus into astronomy, etc., so it's in some ways worse than the public schools. That certainly varies.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Reminds me of the scene from the Holy Grail. Edited to make it relevant to the situation.
Other countries said we were daft to build a solar sail and launch it into the atmosphere, but we built it all the same, just to show 'em. It burned up in the atmosphere. So, we built a second one. That burned up in the atmosphere. So, we built a third one. That launched, failed to boost, then burned up in the atmosphere, but the fourth one... stayed up! And that's what you're gonna get, lad: the strongest solar sail in this system.
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This isn't the sig you're looking for. Move along.
I dont know any other news source that open claims that it is unbiased.
Fox make that claim when it's obviously untrue - it's hard to respect them after that.
We go to the moon in this decade... The space race was won by people with drive and ambition. These days NASA is full of over-educated monkeys who cringe at their own shadow.
Over-educated? They're fucking rocket scientists. A lot of education is generally considered a prerequisite. NASA's problems would seem to have a lot more to do with bureaucracy, politics, and lack of budget than, say, knowing too much.
hot foreign sheep.
The Planetary Society has the following to say:
10:30 am PDT, June 22 (17:30 UTC)
The Planetary Society as issued the following statement on the fate of Cosmos 1, the first Solar Sail Spacecraft:
In the past twenty-four hours, the Russian space agency (RKA) has made a tentative conclusion that the Volna rocket carrying Cosmos 1 failed during the firing of the first stage. This would mean that Cosmos 1 is lost.
While it is likely that this conclusion is correct, there are some inconsistent indications from information received from other sources. The Cosmos 1 team observed what appear to be signals, that looks like they are from the spacecraft when it was over the first three ground stations and some Doppler data over one of these stations. This might indicate that Cosmos 1 made it into orbit, but probably a lower one than intended. The project team now considers this to be a very small probability. But because there is a slim chance that it might be so, efforts to contact and track the spacecraft continue. We are working with US Strategic Command to provide additional information in a day or so.
If the spacecraft made it to orbit, its autonomous program might be working, and after 4 days the sails could automatically deploy. While the chances of this are very, very small, we still encourage optical observers to see if the sail can be seen after that time.
We await further developments and information coming out of Russia, STRATCOM, and the tracking stations.
The War of 1812... the good 'ol days when the federal government actually tried to save New Orleans.
2005: Booster fails - the solar sail never gets a chance.
2001: Booster separation fails - the solar sail never gets a chance.
1999: Deployment mechanism jammed - the solar sail never gets a chance.
The solar sail part of the experiment hasn't had too many flight hours so far, due to component failures almost completely unrelated to the solar sail craft itself. They're not launching failure after failure... they're having launch failures, which is not the same thing.
Less is more.
If you want to see them try again, donate here.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
"Manned space flight and exploration space flight are not economically viable."
How is this statement different from saying in 1490 that "Manned crossing of the Atlantic and exploration of the globe are not economically viable."
I think your contention is very, very short sighted.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Only on Slashdot can the Russians fuck up a launch, and then some idiot uses it as "evidence" of NASA's incompetence, and gets modded up for it.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat