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ESA Cryosat Launch Reported Failure
hptux06 writes "Earlier today the ESA lauched their "Cryosat" satellite, designed to monitor ice levels across the Arctic/Antarctic. It's being reported a failure, disappearing 90 minutes after the launch. It cost £90M (160M US$) to build, and was supposed to spend three years determining the effects of global warming." From the article: "The satellite rode into space on a Rockot vehicle, a converted SS-19 intercontinental ballistic missile. The rocket, which in the Cold War would have been armed with nuclear weapons, had been modified for peaceful space duties with the addition of a Breeze-KM upper stage. Dr Matthias Oehm, chief executive officer of Eurockot, said they had not received the expected signals from either the spacecraft or the upper stage of the rocket that should have injected it into orbit. "
...they get a replacement up there won't be any ice left to study.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
Will I get troll-modded again?
My ZooLoo
It was a waste of money anyway. Global Warming is a crock invented by anti-capitalist socialist marxist liberals to deter America's economic success and progress in the world.
I know it's off topic, but does anyone know why it's raining little bits of metal? I just raked the yard ...
I was going to post about how the rocket was probably shot down by the United States, to prevent global warming information from getting out, but then I remembered that shooting down a rocket is impossible.
It's not beyond the realms of possibility that it was sabotaged by those with an interest in the continued used of fossil fuels.
With the Cosmos I disaster and now this, should we really be using ICBMs to launch satellites? These rockets don't seem to be bringing them to orbit...
Well this is one way to get more money into space flight. Shoot up duds ;-)
My UID is prime is yours?
and was supposed to spend three years determining the effects of global warming.
Bush pushed the big red button "aheh heh heh".
----
Go canucks, habs, and sens!
This satellite would have shown that ice levels were shrinking, bolstering the argument for global warming.
:-)
Then again, they're ignoring all of the evidence now, why would this have mattered?
Ignore Alien Orders
Eurockot pressrelease
Looks like it was another controller foulup that stopped a command from being issued to shut down stage 1 and seperate the upper stack, and causing a reentry of the entire package.
Not that I'm into starting a conspiracy, but ;-)
maybe you finally got a hit
http://www.mda.mil/mdalink/html/mdalink.html
__
Sigs are like arse-holes, everybody has one
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4323378.stm
$ strings FTP.EXE | grep Copyright
@(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
Because ice caps on Mars are shrinking:
g s-092005-imagesc.html
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8029
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/solarsystem/m
Of course, shrinking ice caps on Mars kinda kill the "ohmygodmankindiscausingglobalwarming" leftist groupthink crowd, doesn't it?
What kind of elven magic caused this?
The satellite rode into space on a Rockot vehicle, a converted SS-19 intercontinental ballistic missile. The rocket, which in the Cold War would have been armed with nuclear weapons, had been modified for peaceful space duties with the addition of a Breeze-KM upper stage.
Hm. You add a stage to an ICBM, launch it, and wonder why it stops transmitting signals 90 minutes after launch.
This wouldn't be the first time a launched satellite has been 'lost' on purpose.
...to see that all those ICBMs that were aimed at us in the cold war were junk? They're cherry-picking the good ones to sell; I guess the bad ones would have blown up on the pad, instead.
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
I'll save you all some time. Bush has been pushing the Star Wars space weaponry system to defeat eco-satellites which would prove global warming true so Haliburton can continue gouging consumers and funneling the money to the skull and bones society which then funds the new world order... and aliens and stuff. Is that about right?
What if Digg added local news and a Slashdot inspired comment karma system? ---
http://houndwire.com
Dr Matthias Oehm, chief executive officer of Eurockot, said they had not received the expected signals from either the spacecraft or the upper stage of the rocket that should have injected it into orbit.
That's probably because it broke up and crashed into the ocean.
On a serious note here, if they can't even get the damn rocket to put a satellite in space, imagine if they actually used that rocket to carry nuclear weapons. This worrys me.
And aside from that, if what humans are doing to the environment isn't responsible for the shrinking ice caps of Earth, then that means we should be free to spew out whatever crap we want into the environment without any concern for more basic things like air quality, etc.
Stupid leftisft thinking indeed, because of course, concern about the environment is purely a "leftist" issue.
Ooh, the conspiracy theory boys are gonna love this one. At least, they will till all their computers stop operating after a mysterious huge EMP from the upper atmosphere...
Why this is irrelevant
mt
If we start using perfectly good weapons of mass destruction for peaceful purposes then I fear the terrorists have already won
"...the rocket, which in the Cold War would have been armed with nuclear weapons..."
What's to say they sent the right rocket?
Sounds to me like someone forgot to remove the warhead before they launched it.
On the bbc.com, there is a video of the launch and the subsequent explosion of the rocket. Just goes to show you that getting into space is difficult and risky. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4323378. stm/
public class null extends java applet { System.out.print ("Tabula Rasa"); }
Right, because of course, everything that happens on Mars must be directly parallel to what happens on Earth. So if the ice caps on Mars are shrinking, then it MUST mean that the ice caps on the Earth are shrinking for the same reason.
Well smart guy, if the sun increased it's solar output, then yes the effects would be reflected on both planets.
Isn't that the third converted Russian ICBM to have a launch failure? The launch price discount compared to other launch systems means nothing if it can't put the payload into the correct orbit. The other one I remember was that solar sail experiment, but I was sure there was at least one more that used one of these missile conversions that also failed to make orbit.
Designing IC component systems strung with sometimes miles of wire is a non-trivial problem. In another words you are using so much metal that quantum effects in the impurities of the wires is exhibited at a local scale. I myself would favor an optical system for launch systems, but I'm still just an engineering student. Don't they use like tons of copper wire that they have to ship to orbit anyways? Optical fiber is pry 100x the weight for the same strength when spun in a kevlar carbon fiber sheath as the copper they are shipping to orbit. How are optical processors doing, can they handle the logic in a small enough package for a seperation procedure which pry means synchronizing dozens of mechanical locking devices on an object doing mach 8?
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
And unless James can get it back, The world will be a much hotter place.
Why that realclimate.org rubbish is even more irrelevant.. http://motls.blogspot.com/2005/10/dutch-journalism -award-kyoto-is-junk_06.html
Thanks for the info. Since the speaker outputs are little headphone jacks, this might be challenging, but I'll look into it.
I've got the software volume controls maxed out, so that I can have the hardware volume control on the (amplified) speakers turned down. However, when I power-off, suspend, power-up, or wake my PC, there's a very loud one-time pop on the speakers.
How many times have governments and obese space programs spend years and millions developing one thing, only to have it blow up in space because someone didn't convert feet to inches or forgot or because one tiny wire failed resulting in failure to launch a key component. There's so many different parts to these missions, and so many locations for human error, that it is totally impractical to assume a 100% success rate when putting things into space. Back in the age of the space race, money was being poured into space programs; more money means more time, which means more double-checking, which means less failue. We don't have that these days.
NASA, ESA, and other space programs are going about it all wrong. They're trying to adapt old designs and architectures of how to get into space to new technologies, and they just aren't fitting.
-dave
6th Street Radio @ddombrowsky
I was surprised not to see a "In Soviet Russia..." joke, then again this article is pretty fresh.
Again, of course, even if global warming DOESN'T have anything to do with it, I still think there is a larger point here. There are other reasons to try and control what we are putting into our own atmosphere beyond global warming. It seems insane to basically argue that we should avoid any attempts to do what we can to improve our own environment even if there is nothing that can be seen about global warming.
Err what?
Multiple countries wanted to send tons (yes, tons) of stuff to help - your great government did not want it.
I remember every European nation (including the really poor ones!) offering people, doctors, search teams, money and food/blankets! What didn't we do!? The public donated money to the Red Cross - and we ALL felt sorry for those poor people!
My country gave money, search teams, equipment and offered oil assistance - the US administration told us to wait.
I once cared greatly for the US - now I realize I must have been wrong. I for one hope we/Europe cut all ties with the US. NATO should die and the EU should align itself with Russia.
I have a friend that works at NASA (the JPL specifically) and while I am waiting for her response to my email I thought I would pose the question to any slashdot/NASA folks...
I am kind of wondering how they react to these kind of events at work. Do they have some professional empathy? Are there polite jokes at the ESA's expense? Or, is it more along the lines of a bunch of engineers sitting around on Saturday with chips and beer watching the video and then when the rocket explodes they jump up cheering and doing "booty dances" while giving each other high fives. All of this is of course with huge panorama's of Mars on their walls.
Any NASA foks out there?
So what you're saying is that because someone somewhere in Europe wasn't entirely sympathetic towards the US regarding the hurricane, you therefore have no sympathy for anyone anywhere in Europe when something bad happens, regardless of what their specific views on Katrina were.
Sounds like the same illogic that made sense of invading Iraq because some Saudis carried out 9/11. After all, they're all in the Middle East, eh? They're all the same, right?
Personally, as a European, I was horrified at the effects of Katrina, and contributed money to one of the hurricane relief organisations (did you?). Thus I find your attitude deeply offensive and ignorant.
Maybe they forgot to take the nuke out first?
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Sorry, I'm only a 1336 h4x0r.
That just shows how bad the pollution must be, if it reaches as far as Mars.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
This is what? The 3rd ICBM convered to a SLV (Space Launch Vehicle) to die? There was the solar sail one. I think there was another. And now this one. I can't believe anyone will use them these days. Also hopefully people realize that missiles that leave the atmosphere are not something that just happens. Reguardless of how big and advanced your country is, it's still very hard.
I do security
Because the global average of CO2 emmissions per capita is about 5 tons per year. The distribution of emmissions per capita is roughly US 4 : EU 2 : World 1. And please don't forget the World includes the US and Europe.
As far as the neutering is concerned, if that's what you're trying to compensate with a huge SUV...
In an unrelated news the pentagon is reporting the first sucessful test of it's missile defense system today.
--aiee
http://icesat.gsfc.nasa.gov/
It has been operational since January 2003.
Whoops. It will be a very time before the ESA puts another satellite in orbit. How about Europe's threatened GPS equivilent? The most effective thing they do on the old continent is harangue Microsoft. They're working off the battery in ther UPS and hoping for a graceful shut down. Future generations of Europeans will rue this generation's weak minded approach.
Right on, my brother from another mother!
I've never seen any soundcards that don't do this. To me it seems more like a power-spike. You shut the system down and power gets dumped to the soundcard and out. I have two cards, an Audigy 2 and an M-Audio Firewrie 410 and they'll do this form tiem to time. I always shutdown my amps prior to reboot. Also the mixer does the same thing sometimes, it'll produce a snap when shut down if the amps are active.
The amps don't do that, but they have protection circutry built in, they cut the outputs when powering on and off. In fact a number of pro amps have cutout circutry that waits about 5 seconds after powerup to turn the outputs on. That way if you power up a rack of gear, any signals are stopped at the amp and hopefully everything is warmed up and not generating errant current.
I always just suggest making the amp the last thing on, and first thing off.
As the article notes, this was a $150 million fuckup. That's a lot of damn money. Seems like a better idea to just go for a more expensive launch, but one that's more likely to succede.
Remember there is a thrid option: Don't launch the ICMB rocket at all. It's not like if they aren't used for this Russia will randomly launch nuclear warheads just for the fun of it. They'll just sit in their silos or storage sheds as they have in the past.
No. I am talking about the official positon of a major EU government. See my other post
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
You mean that we sent everything from food and shelter over water purification systems and high power pumps to generators and a cellular phone network? After Dubya finally decided to accept foreign aid, at least from us and other regions, unlike the more than 1000 fully equipped doctors Cuba offered?
The satellite wouldn't have only benefitted Europe, you know. It's not that we treat environmental scientific data like military secrets.
A (1m 14.8s) video that shows the launch. About 28.5 seconds into the video, it disappears into a cloud, and the light from the exhaust diffuses through the cloud.
The commentary at 1:01-ish: "Well, a fantastic, successful launch by the looks of it, Mark, for Cryosat." Subsequent cautiously optimistic comments. Video ends.
What I got from the video -even though there's no scale- was: damn, that's a thin rocket.
Which leads me to the question: aren't designed-for-space rockets normally fatter than this? A quick link to "rocket widths through the ages" would be appreciated.
(and measure at the same time)
Okay, what would be the feasibility of making an autonomous unit which floats on the ocean, anchors to the ice pack and covers the water around it w/ solar cells and uses the energy from the solar cells to extract salt from the sea water, chill it and spray it towards the ice pack?
Set it up so that it disengages and re-anchors itself as the ice pack increases in size and it should ``just work''. Add a GPS unit and a radio transmitter and you can keep track of the edge (but not thickness and density --- you can use a submarine fleet doing maintenance on these things for that).
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
I had not seen it - in fact that's not the way media portrayed it here. I certainly understand your feelings, it was not the time and place. However his views on the matter are far from uncommon - I heard the same remarks from people I know. It shocked me to hear them say it - some said it with glee or jokingly: "That serves them right for their environmental policies".
I actually agree, I believe the world community of scientists have said that there is a link between the increase in natural disasters/weather conditions and pollution. So it would perhaps be a fitting reminder to a certain president that the Kyoto protocols and other initiatives are not just for fun. We need to change, all of us. We have seen the ill effects in Europe as well, don't know how much you've heard of them? People died here as well. Of course I regret the loss of life, however it's a potent reminder and perhaps the catalyst the US needs? In that sense I agree that you "deserve" it. You can not isolate yourselves from these global issues.
P.S. My feelings on US-EU relations remain and are independent of this discussion - Europe has remained under US influence too long. Similar to a long marriage - we've grown apart.
Because it's not so much a per country-, but a per capita thing. Yes, China might eventually emmitt more than the US. However, like India, they have about four times the population. So when they're on par with the US, then it would still take about four Chinese to produce the same amount of carbon dioxide as one person in the US causes. At the moment, it takes about 20 Indians, so despite their bigger population it will take a while for them to catch up, I guess.
There is a certain correlation between energy consumption and living standard. That doesn't mean it's proportional, though. Much can be saved by increasing efficiency -- better insulation for houses, cars with better milage, modern power plants, that kind of stuff. Still, to a certain degree that correlation is undeniable, and when we in the rich countries say we want to keep our wasteful lifestyles unless the poorer countries reduce their energy consumption, too, then we're saying they're not entitled to a higher living standard than they have today. Since we caused the mess in the first place, I have a bit of a problem with that attitude.
There is no good reason, and that is why Kyoto is flawed. I do have to commend Europe for their work with the environment, but once they play favorites, they lost me on wanting such a treaty for the US.
Try to look at it from our (I'm in Europe) perspective. The science is pretty solid, our climate is changing. Even if there were doubts -- and there aren't any to be taken seriously -- considering what is at risk, we should play it safe. So we try to reduce our energy consumption, and carbon dioxide emmissions in general. But even if Kyoto meets its target, the reductions will be less than the increased output of the US in the same timeframe. We read about the outrage at US gas stations because you now have to pay $3 per gallon. We pay twice as much, so people buy efficient cars.
You use a quarter of the world's oil production, and you could do with much less if there were some decent incentives for efficiency, without lowering your living standard one bit. Instead you point at poor countries where people use a fraction of what we use in our countries before we even have lunch, and claim it's unfair that they don't have to reduce their output. Those are countries where the average person makes much, much less than we make, so if $3 per gallon seems like much for somebody in the US, you can imagine what it means to them even if they would only have to pay the $2 a gallon costs to produce at today's oil prices. Reducing consumption also means less of an impact of higher oil prices due to growing global demand -- do you understand why some see the US as somewhat unfavorable when they read arguments like yours?
As it appears that it is the second stage that failed the accident does not reflect on the reliability of Russian ICBMs
Thats too bad, because it would make me feel safer that something that may have once been targeted at the US for mass destruction failed when launched.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
According to SpaceFlightNow the failure was caused by missing command from on-board flight control system to shutdown second stage engine. No engine shutdown -> no stage separation ->> second stage, third stage and the cryosat end up fallig back on Earth in the designated second stage drop zone.
Clearly the ESA which has the capability to launch this on their own decided to use Russian boosters and a Russian polar orbitally oriented site to toss this up on the cheap. But the Russians were never and are still not big on QA. They figured that the workhorse SS-9 would 'just get the job done' but lobbing a 5Mgton nuke at New York plus minus 2 miles is a LOT different from a precise polar orbital insertion.
And that's why per-capita models for pollution control are flawed. Breed a lot of people living in mut huts somewhere and you get a free pass on your heavily polluted industries.
I've been to Beijing. The air there ain't clean. I've never actually felt sick just from breathing a city's air before, and I've been to most major cities in the US and Europe.
Damn straight. What really matters is not per-capita output, but the net output of each nation. At least that's what matters if you're trying to discourage pollution; if you're trying to economically sabotage the United States, it's another story.
to start working on space elevator insead of continuing to use explosions to launch equipment and humans
But a developing country won't begin to think about environmental standards until developed countries do. They're probably thinking the same thing. "If the US doesn't want to limit its carbon emissions, why should we?"
sigfault. core dumped.
I see. They're "[breeding] a lot of people living in mut huts" to get a "free pass". So you suggest we go by what? Per country? The very few living in Liechtenstein will be happy to hear that. If you want to go by economic output, China looked in fact pretty bad -- they heavily rely on coal to produce energy. They still do, nowhere near as bad as they used to, but they're still about at US levels.
You can find various relevant statistics here, among other measures graphs of carbon dioxide emmissions per economic output for the G7 countries and developing asian nations.
I've been to Beijing. The air there ain't clean. I've never actually felt sick just from breathing a city's air before, and I've been to most major cities in the US and Europe.
At least they're doing something about it.
Man, with all these converted Russian ICBMs failing, it makes me think we should have started WWIII. We didn't need the Strategic Defense Initiative to be safe. Maybe a few cities might have got nuked by the missles that didn't explode, but that is a small price to pay for kickin' some commie ass! Yeehaw!
Yes. As long as humor makes you feel comfortable living in the world that you live in, keep it up. I mean if its the only thing keeping you sane when you look at the world right now, laugh it up. People have been doing it for many years before you were born, in fact some of your past contemporaries made light of their own situation too. They even left us a little rhyme about it.
Something about rings around a rosie...
human nature never changes, only its clothes. For to laugh in the face of your own demimse is the essence of being human, almost as much as it is that we are bound to repeat our own history, no matter how foolish we think it is
It's not, I think, that the Soveits were not into quality in the product, but they had a different mindset than the West. Here, we tended to want to Built It Right The First Time, even if that cost a fortune and took wild leaps in technology (cf. the Space Shuttle, arguably way too bold a design leap for 1970s technology). We like technology, and we don't trust low-level employees, so we make sure our high-end products will last and last without any human oversight at all. Think of those rovers on Mars, still chugging along 600 days after landing, i.e. over 10 times the original design lifetime, more or less.
But the Soviets thought different. For them technology was expensive, but people were cheap, and they specialized at rigorous training and constant checks on one's reliability. So in keeping their aerospace stuff up to snuff they probably relied a lot more on platoons of rigidly-trained technicians checking and re-checking and fixing any little boo-boos. It is almost certain that this has now vanished. The State can no longer command the efforts of huge numbers of people effortlessly, and the apparatus for making people function as reliably as robots is gone. As a consequence a system designed to work with giant amounts of low-level but reliable labor is now struggling to do without it. Without success.
ICBMs blowing up before orbit is one thing, but it's sobering to think about (for example) all those aging nuclear reactors on Soviet-era subs rusting in White Sea ports. They, too, were probably designed with the assumption that they would get constant tending from armies of Soviet technicians. They're not getting it now.
But they haven't implemented the -1, Fucking Stupid mod yet.
Propoganda.
In fact, my Chinese instructor announced to our class that the air in Beijing was quite clean to breathe now.
Of course, that was less than a month after I got back, and I doubt even if they shut off all their factories right when I left, that the air still wouldn't be clean by the time she announced that.
And to answer your question as to the best way, per-capita living in modern, industrialized cities.
Sure, I was being facetious that they would breed people to get out of quotas, but the simple fact is the rural poor in China allow the major population centers to essentially pollute as much as they want, since they get to divide it out by their billion people.
Bush & Co are denying that it's happening at all. The real issue that needs fixed is that we need a way to get off this planet before it becomes uninhabitable.
> leftist groupthink crowd
Right is good! Left is bad! Oompah loompah, fiddle dee dee!
Here's a tip: if you reveal that your level of political sophistication is barely above a child's, then most people won't pay you much attention. At least try to make some *pretence* at having a considered opinion that you have arrived at by yourself.
"And the meaning of words; when they cease to function; when will it start worrying you?"
of an ICBM that, when launched, they don't turn over and drop right back from where they were launched from ?
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
I will have to admit, the sneaky wacky part of my mind did start wondering. Maybe Regan got his Starwars space lasers after all?
I like it.
It's got a nice beat, and you can dancce to it.
"Any connection between your reality and mine is purely coincidental." -Slashdot
The units are wrong, the numbers are sufficiently correct for computing the "tiny fraction" ratio. Of all the greenhouse gasses that Kyoto regulates, China is now the #2 producer in the world - and still exempt!
Second, Kyoto regulates FAR MORE pollutants than just CO2.
HAHAHAHA... you guys are such a fucking joke. FIVE. Kyoto regulates FIVE more pollutants than just CO2.
Hey, here's the actual text of the Kyoto protocol. Why don't you read that and tell me what the world's #2 polluter's reduction commitment is.
Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
Edward Everett (1794 - 1865)
For exactly those reasons I said I believe, the community of scientists that claim, there IS a link. It will always be a battle of experts on the matter - hard to claim absolute truths, of course. However I must say your man does not make a good impression. He doesn't come off as objective at all, why should I believe this "expert" over any other?
To me it seems the world is experiencing more disasters now then it used to (from what I've read) - it would be prudent to take it seriously and at least try to reduce the damage inflicted on our ecosystem. Even if global warming isn't on the top of your agenda - your children's health should be. It's been proven that children suffer greatly from exposure to pollution - everything from ADHD to allergies. And European laws are far ahead.
P.S. I'm a conservative and in no way green/socialist. A clean environment is a requirement for a productive society.
The launcher was built to deliver an H-bomb to a target, not orbit a satellite or a person. If you build it (relatively) cheap, it's less likely to accomplish its mission. But you can build more cheap launcher/bomb pairs, allowing (a) a successful mission if you have to, and (b) deter opponents with all those missiles.
It kept the peace during the Cold War, but peace by potlatch is REALLY COSTLY.
The clearance system sounds logical. It is not. It is completely arbitrary. -- John Bolton
So, what you're saying is that all countries should only have the same emissions of say, England, or some "middle-sized" country. Well, I think that sounds great! The people in the US better stop driving their gas-guzzling SUVs soon because the US is probably top 5 in the world's population...and I'm sure they're a long way from reducing their emission to the level of that of England. But sarcasm aside, this clearly doesn't work...so maybe a hybrid verson based on a constant factor plus a multiple per capita times land area will work best.
Obviously you don't know that Russia is now a democratic nation - far more so than the US!
Why should I care what you spent here? We're not responsible for your spending after all.
You really should look at the map again, why else would I suggest Russia? It's close to Europe in every aspect - in politics, culture and race. Why should we align ourselves with the extreme right wing nuts of the US Republican party? No, thank you. We're not inclined to believe in "intelligent design" and we don't fear sex. You my friend have a very "sick" country to deal with. What Europe needs is a strong partner (militarily) who agrees with us - Russia in other words.. (and not the US).
If you don't agree, don't move to Europe. And why should you care/meddle in our affairs anyway? I don't care that you "saved" France or any other European country. You didn't do it alone, the US didn't even enter the war till it was raging and the Germans had their hands full with Russians and Brits! We don't owe you anything!