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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.
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?
But a lot more likely that there was a faulty O-ring or something.
It was an old surplus ICBM they were using to launch it. ICBMs are build with the hope that your opponent will see how many you have and they'll never get used. In the event that they are used, you'll be launching so many that it won't matter if some don't make the trip. Add to that the decades of storage. Is it any suprise that when some are used for other purposes they fail?
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.
t's not beyond the realms of possibility that it was sabotaged by those with an interest in the continued used of fossil fuels
Well, then it's also not beyond the realms of possibility that there was no launch, and that they faked the whole thing so they could say that it was sabotaged by those with an interest in the continued use of fossil fuels.
You know, like the people that make rocket fuel.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
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?
This wouldn't be the first time a launched satellite has been 'lost' on purpose.
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
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.
If we start using perfectly good weapons of mass destruction for peaceful purposes then I fear the terrorists have already won
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"); }
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.
"It's not beyond the realms of possibility that it was sabotaged by those with an interest in the continued used of fossil fuels."
I wouldn't rule out Romulan involvement.
"Derp de derp."
Please, for the love of God, no more car analogies.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
They didn't load it by mistake. They intentionally reused large parts of the Ariane-3 flight software to save money. The problem was that it wasn't adequately tested to make sure that it worked correctly with the Ariane-4 flight profile. This resulted in an overflow error during the flight, crashing the guidance computers. The flight was terminated after the guidance system failed.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
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?
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.