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T-43 Hours and Counting
An anonymous reader submits "As seen on NASA TV, for the first time in over two years, the countdown clock has started at 6:00 PM EDT for the Wednesday 3:51 PM EDT launch of Space Shuttle Discovery on the first of the return to flight test flights. The launch is not for certain due to weather issues associated with hurricane Dennis. Currently it is estimated for a 70% chance of launch on Wednesday, with the chances lowering later in the week. If you are confused on how T-43 hours equals almost 3 days, perhaps you should read Countdown 101."
Where you have short periods of time that somehow extend to 2-5x as long as they're 'supposed to', because of all the time stoppage in the middle!
Maybe NASA is leasing their timer from the NFL where the last several minutes really takes a half hour.
I am NOT putting my signature in this stupid little box! How do I know you won't steal my identity???
Worlds grow old and suns grow cold
And death we never can doubt.
Time's cold wind, wailing down the past,
Reminds us that all flesh is grass
And history's lamps blow out.
But the Eagle has landed; tell your children when.
Time won't drive us down to dust again.
Cycles turn while the far stars burn,
And people and planets age.
Life's crown passes to younger lands,
Time brushes dust of hope from his hands
And turns another page.
Yet the Eagle has landed; tell your children when.
Time won't drive us down to dust again.
But we who feel the weight of the wheel
When winter falls over our world
Can hope for tomorrow and raise our eyes
To a silver moon in the opened skies
And a single flag unfurled.
For the Eagle has landed; tell your children when.
Time won't drive us down to dust again.
We know well what Life can tell:
If you would not perish, then grow.
And today our fragile flesh and steel
Have laid our hands on a vaster wheel
With all of the stars to know
That the Eagle has landed; tell your children when.
Time won't drive us down to dust again.
From all who tried out of history's tide,
Salute for the team that won.
And the old Earth smiles at her children's reach,
The wave that carried us up the beach
To reach for the shining sun.
And the Eagle has landed; tell your children when.
Time won't drive us down to dust again
I want a new world. I think this one is broken.
Anyone remember those?
All I remember about CUSeeMe is a lot of nudity.
Man.... NASA sure has gotten a lot more conservative since then
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Since we've got a Shuttle launch post here on slashdot, i think its time to show you the Cheshire Catalyst's Space/Launch stuff that pertains to this. FAQ: http://space.launch.info/faq.html Launch Schedule: http://space.launch.info/launch.html He also has a page about "How to become an astronaut" Enjoy The Info! 73 DE KI4GMB
Time. As in liftoff time. Before the liftoff, the clock regesters as "T minus ..." after liftoff it regesters as "T plus..."
T-19 hours and holding This built-in hold typically lasts four hours. * Demate the orbiter's midbody umbilical unit I don't have any idea what this means, but it sounds really sexy. yb.
drink beer, and let the water run the mill
Assistant: Sir, the TV ratings for the launch are the highest in ten years.
Everyone: Yay!
Controller: And how's the spacecraft doing?
Assistant: I dunno. All this equipment is just used to measure TV ratings.
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
"Clear the blast danger area of all nonessential personnel" What kind of flight plan is that? Shouldn't they leave the nonessential people in the blast danger area, and the essential people get to spare their lives???
That would work...except for the built-in holds where they do various checks. If a check fails, they have to keep the countdown timer paused until the problem is resolved.
Also, even without the built-in holds, what would happen if during the countdown a problem is detected and they need to repair it? Stop the clock? Keep it running?
I would much rather have NASA and their scientists/engineers do things right, rather than be pressed for time. If they have to hold for a few hours at T-43 hours, so be it.
T0 is launch time, period. They don't launch at T+5 hours because there was an issue and they kept the clock running.
It's just the way it works. I guess when one is launching a multi-billion dollar spacecraft on top of hundreds of thousands of gallons/pounds/whatever of rather volitile fuels, strapped to Big Beefy Missiles, carrying a multi-million/billion dollar payload, I'm pretty sure one doesn't want something to go wrong, and thus take every practical measure to ensure that the launch goes off without a hitch.
If someone at NASA is seriously stupid enough to worry about launching on the 13th then NASA does indeed have a problem - hiring stupid people.
Well in a lot of ways NASA's manned space program is a jobs program and without it there might a lot of homeless aerospace engineers(all the ones not willing to get a top secret clearance and work for the DOD on antimissile defense). The only problem with it as a jobs program for the potentially homeless is the efficiency of the charity is horrendous.
You know its a jobs program because in a recent article on the new adminstrator and his attempts to get NASA redirected towards something that isn't a dead end like the Shuttle and the ISS, there were several blurbs about how Congressman wouldn't stand for any budget cutting during the transition to CEV that meant lost jobs in any of their states/districts. The implication being NASA has to keep both its civil servant and Boeing/Lockheed contractor army at the same levels from now to eternity. That means NASA will continue to pour billions of dollars a year in to supporting this jobs program, whether there is real work or not, and it will drain funding away from actually building new launch vehicles. Also if you keep the staffing levels the same as now when CEV starts launching the launch costs are going to astronomical too.
Unfortunately since the beginning, NASA and its contractor horde were spread across the nation so congressman would give them money and political support because it resulted in jobs in their states and districts. It was OK during the Apollo era because funding was vast and they had a purpose. Over the years the funding dwindled, and the sense of purpose disappeared. It became a jobs program instead of an organization pushing back frontiers. It resulted in the ISS in particular, a 100 billion dollar hole in space which has no useful purpose other than it created high tech jobs, kept aerospace engineers in the U.S and Russia employed, and made Boeing, Lockheed etc. a lot of money for very little.
You want to fix NASA's manned space program can everyon civil servant and contractor and start over and implement Kelly Johnson's 14 rules(he built the SR-71 and U2 and the Skunkworks) in particular:
Rule No. 3
The number of people having any connection with the project must be restricted in an almost vicious manner. Use a small number of good people (10 percent to 25 percent compared to the so-called normal systems).
Basicly fire all the civil servants and all the contractors and start over. Put everyone in one place, and put someone in charge that can do more with less instead of less with more. Burt Rutan would be a great counterpart for Kelly Johnson though he would have to be completely freed of all the politics and bureaucracy that is strangling NASA. There are lots of people in the Russian Space Agency who would also be great for the nucleus of an all new manned space program. Of course they are already doing Kliper and it sounds like there is a chance Europe will team with them on it and kiss NASA off. The RSA is already building mockups of Kliper, while NASA is just pushing piles of paper from point A to point B on CEV.
You know the manned space program is fixed when Johnson is closed. It was insane to put a 1000 miles between the launch site and mission control just because LBJ wanted to give his home state jobs, see, a jobs program again. The bad communication between Johnson and Kennedy was a leading contributor to both shuttle disasters.
@de_machina
"we're at T-20 minutes and holding, we'll be back after these messages"
Mongrel News all the news that fits and froths
Sheesh, no wonder every time you guys get something from a foreign provider you always screw up the conversion... it's bad enough you have feet instead of meters, gallons instead of liters..... but, come on man, you guys just have to have your own special, unique number of hours in 3 days?!? It was all fine and good that you started spelling things differently after the War of Independance, but that's just wrong!
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
However, many eminent scholars have various informed opinions as to what it stands for:
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
T- stands for "Time minus". "Time" is when the main event occurs (the shuttle liftoff). All other times are specified as relative to this event. Thus, T minus 3 minutes is (theoretically) three minutes before the shuttle lifts off, and T plus 6 hours is 6 hours after the shuttle lifts off. The military uses this convention for operations too (e.g. D-Day plus 6 is 6 days after D-Day). This system is good because it allows things to be scheduled without knowing exactly when the main event is going to occur (the launch could be delayed by weather, etc).
The system isn't perfect though, which is why you have "holds" for some things. These "holds" allow time for activities whose duration is really difficult to predict.