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:Contradiction?
by
Neurowiz
·
· 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.
--
Neurowiz
Re:In Soviet Russia, they don't give up
by
ScentCone
·
· 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
·
· 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 [...]
Is it me, or does the Fox article contradict itself?
Nah, they're just being Fair and Balanced.
Re:Good news, everyone!
by
stlhawkeye
·
· 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.
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.
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.
Slashdot Mirror
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.
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:
h tml
http://planetary.org/solarsailblog
http://www.planetary.org/solarsail/latest_update.
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.
Neurowiz
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 [...]
Is it me, or does the Fox article contradict itself?
Nah, they're just being Fair and Balanced.
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.
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.
I thought their slogan was "Fox News: We Decide, You Nod Your Head In Agreement Or Yell At The Screen, But Either Way Our Ratings Climb"
The War of 1812... the good 'ol days when the federal government actually tried to save New Orleans.
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.