Slashdot Mirror
ISS Orbit-Raising Attempt Fails
hpulley writes "ITAR-TASS reports that the Progress cargo ship currently docked at the ISS attempted an orbit raising burn this morning but the engine failed three minutes into the firing. Further burns are cancelled until they figure out the problem and meanwhile, the station continues to lose approximately a kilometer of altitude every week, with the rate increasing as the orbit decays. At present, the schedule says the next Progress, 20P, will be launched on December 21st, nearly 9 weeks from now. Normally the shuttle would also raise the orbit of ISS but it is not scheduled to launch until May 3rd at the earliest. Nominally the ISS orbits at 358km but if it drops to 300km, it may decay in a matter of days. It was down to 340km already on October 13th."
Since I submitted the article, another report has said this morning's emergency is not a problem, and they may attempt another orbit raising burn today. There is lots of time to make a correction and the orbit is OK for now.
$#!^ happens, but why does it always have to happen to me???
The story gives the impression that the ISS is in some sort of dire predicament, however, upon doing the math, one can see that the ISS has roughly 9 months of orbit still in front of it.
Tempest, meet teacup.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
I bet you won't be so smug when it lands on your house.
You'll need more than your tin foil hat if the ISS lands on you.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
for building an orbiting space station without any real scientific purpose, but I built it anyway. And then its orbit decayed and it burned up upon reentry, so I built another one . . . /message for you sir
This isn't a good situation, but barring future disasters I'm confident that they'll get a ship up there to boost the ISS to a level where it can be saved for many more decades.
If you want to see the graphical representation of the ISS's altitude, there's a nice chart at Heavens-above.com It's a free sign-up, and the bonus is you can find out when ISS flies over your house so you can see it or even take pictures like I do sometimes.
I had noticed just a few days ago that the orbit was at its lowest point, and was getting concerned about what they were going to do about it.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
I think you have failed to remember their considerable role in creating, staffing, and maintaining the ISS..
You say you got a real solution
Well, you know
We'd all love to see the plan
(The Beatles)
Nine months might sound like a long while. But consider the lead times for rockets. Can an unscheduled mission be planned, built, prepped, tested, rubberstamped and shot into orbit inside nine months?
The first burn will be performed at 5:09pm for 705 seconds, the second at 6:33pm for 700 sec, both with 2.94 m/s delta-V each. Main purpose of the reboost is to set up proper orbit phasing for Progress 20 launch. [The burns will be performed by eight DPO-BT thrusters of Progress 19, from the #1 manifold and will be controlled in attitude by Service Module MNFD thrusters from both manifolds. The 19P burns are steered by the SM motion control & navigation system (SUDN) via the US-21 matching unit (installed in 19P on 9/13). The propulsion systems were tested successfully on 9/15.]
They got 170 seconds out of 1405 seconds or about 12% of a burn. MOSCOW, October 19 (Itar-Tass) --A cargo ship docked at the International Space Station (ISS) fired its engine Wednesday to raise the space research platform into a higher orbit but in about three minutes the engine failed and the operation was canceled.
The correction was to boost the space station more than 10 kilometers further from Earth into an orbit that was to reach 356.8 kilometers on the average.
Normally, ISS goes down by 100-150 meters daily. That's about 3-5KM a month.
Also, there are no Shuttles ready that could boost the orbit either, so the Russians are the ONLY method right now. I'm not sure how fast the Russians can send up another Progess if the one currently docked can't get the job done. This IS a serious risk to the station and crew, but it's not panic time.
and landed in kansas...would it make a sound?
i don't care
That sucks, but I think someone is being a bit sensational. They have almost a year to correct this. They have a mission planned in two months, by that time it will still be at least 330km up. They have been that low before. Also, by your own link, it takes at least three weeks for the orbit to decay from 300km, I have seen others that say up to 3 months. Neither of those are "a matter of days".
I wonder who spaced out on the job and let this happen...
This isn't rocket science.
That's the shit that feds me up
Fed up with watching others make impact craters on Mars the international consortium building the ISS have decided to up the ante by making a crater on Earth. Since the only thing they have in space is the ISS it was odds on that they would chose this to crash into Earth. Reports say that it should be a spectacular show especially for the people it hits.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
These Russians have years of experience in the field. Heck, they had MIR for 15 years. That is, 3 times the time it was intendd to last. Sad that we as Americans can only sit and observe at least for now. Even aftr pumping billions into our space program, I will not be suuprised if things just do not work for us.
Will the same thing happen to ISS that happened to Skylab? A series of incidents (generally involving funding) that results in the space station sinking below a level that it could be lifted out.
Of course there are people in ISS, so it's perhaps a bit too early to wonder if funding would be delayed long enough for ISS to fall to Earth.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
So why haven't they put that tether experiment on the ISS that the shuttle ran a number of years ago. Basically it was able to turn orbital motion into electricity or electicity to motion. Next trip take them up a tether and a bunch of solar cell and Fagetaboutit.
I couldn't fail to disagree with you any less.
Well, they have the Soyuz capsules, which were first designed in the 1960s and are currently supplying the ISS because our own shuttles keep blowing up. There was also the Mir, which was falling apart toward the end but still lasted far beyond when its original specs said it would die.
The Russians have had a lot of stuff blow up, but so have the Americans. They have also built a lot of really great technology that is in active use right now.
There are aproximately 4 scheduled Progress missions per year. 12 months divided by four = 3 months lead time.
-everphilski-
our own shuttles keep blowing up
Twice means "keep blowing up?" I suppose three would mean "always blow up?"
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Finally, all that spam provides the answer:
Problems keeping it up?
Get v1ag.ra, x4na.x etc. mailed direct to your ISS and end your low-orbit problems with the ladies forever.
OK, jokes over.
--
__________
Pre|ension is in the eye of the beholder
"Isn't that the satellite that's raining debris all over Europe?"
"Some things have to be believed to be seen." - Ralph Hodgson
Okay, so I was being flippant. More accurately, we are having a lot of trouble keeping our shuttles flying at the necessary frequency that the ISS demands due to various problems with the spacecraft and the organization itself. Soyuz has helped to pick up a lot of the slack.
Don't get me wrong, I have a tremendous amount of respect for NASA and the shuttle program. I was just trying to put to rest the idea that the Russian space program has only made junk.
Manned space exploration inhibits space science and space exploration by wasting the lion's share of space funding on this glorified elitist amusement park ride and hypertrophied high school science fair project. The shuttle is equally worthless and should also be abandoned.
That's true... sort of. Don't forget that the US has made a duplicate of every piece of the ISS that the Russians have built, b/c they were prone to failure and/or inexactitudes which could render them useless.
Here's a dumb idea: Hook a long coaxial cable with a sizable mass (how about a dead satellite?) onto the ISS. Then feed electrical power through the cable (up the center, down the outer jacket) so that the vector crossproduct of the current and the earth's magnetic field act to accelerate the ISS. How much power is required to keep the orbit from decaying, i.e. can this power be reasonably supplied by the existing or an additional solar array? A scheme like this would reduce or eliminate the dependence on periodic orbit boosts by cranky Russian rockets or once-in-whenever Space Shuttle flights.
Less is more.
4 missions per year does not mean 3 months lead time.
Astronauts train for over a year for their flights. Missions are being prepared for concurrently. I do not know what the required lead time is, but it's undoubtedly greater than 3 months.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
"Carter, I can see my house from here!"
IANARocketScientist, and for those other readers who aren't can someone please explain:
Why don't they have ISS in a higher orbit that won't decay as fast/often? And again, pardon my ignorance, but my (un)common sense tells me if they are at a high enough orbit, it shouldn't decay as readily - too high and you have the opposite problem of drifting farther away from Earth.
In other words, rather than having to make orbit adjustments so often, isn't it possible to push it to a high enough orbit that won't require a tweak for a longer period of time?
TIA for n00b-enlightenment.
The Russians have had a lot of stuff blow up, but so have the Americans.
The key difference being that when our stuff blows up we ground it and go back to the drawing board to figure out what went wrong. The Russians (in the Soviet days) would build pretty much the exact same design and find a "volunteer" to test it again.
Think I'm stereotyping? Read about all the "volunteers" who went into Chernobyl. Read about the soldiers in Stalingrad who were told to pick up rifles from fallen comrades because they didn't have enough to go around.
Then there's also the differences in design philosophy. The Russians take KISS to the extreme. Contrast that with the Germans who completely over-design everything (ever had to buy parts for a German car?). Americans usually fall somewhere in the middle.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
You must be new to this re-entry thing.
-William
God is everything science has yet to explain.
"But you fuck one goat..."
Perhaps the thing will tumble from the sky into the middle of the ocean. That would accomplish what a lot of people would like to see done. (A government conspiracy to end it at work here? hmmmmmm.) There are many arguments on either side of this coin that are valid, but I for one am going with the school of thought that says that our commitment to this station is something that is impeding the progress of our space mission. I would hate to see all of the effort and money that has thus far been expended gone to waste, but I would also like to see future opportunities for exploration made available. If you want to save something, save Hubble for crying out loud.
As has been said, Russia has had a number of pretty successful projects. How much can you say about NASA recently? The space shuttle project is falling apart, they're planning repeating Apollo for whatever reason, there were a bunch of failed Mars missions, Hubble's future looks bleak, etc.
Why does the ISS need to be boosted by external rockets rather then doing it itself? Shouldn't it have this type of stuff built in? Did they think about what would happen if we were unable to get into space? The simple fact that they had to go through all of this sounds pretty dumb to me
If man must go to the moon then yes, he will go there....
I hope that damn things comes flaming down. I will gladly roast marshmellows over the smouldering remains of this no-good, waste-of-money, pork-politic monstrousity. It and the shuttle have been an insane diversion driven by politics instead of science that has held back the US manned space program the last 30 years.
The crew will draw straws. Ben Affleck loses and Bruce Willis has to knock his punk ass out before sacrificing himself.
...So we'll be RID of the useless thing within a year.
That's not what your mom said last night.
A chicken ran by me today yelling, "The sky is falling!!!" I thought he was just delirious from the flu.
so that it can be serviced by both Russian Soyuz and Progress craft launched from Khazikstan, and the Shuttle from Florida.
Well, redudancies are always good in a critical system... especially ones that have been manufactured to be the same, but at different facilities... but yeah. Mostly I just wanted to point out that the Russians have had a /lot/ to do with the success (?) of the ISS.
You say you got a real solution
Well, you know
We'd all love to see the plan
(The Beatles)
Much like how the ISS is slowly decaying orbit over the next NINE months - which will end in atmospheric burnout, my life equally will slip into decay as my next nine months play out, and BAM! Fiery burnout!
Damn you defective condom, damn you! *shaking fist at sky* We should have put a condom on the shuttles!
Will tourism to the ISS go down because of the "impending doom" scenario, or will it go up because of the "let's see it before it's gone" mentality?
I'm not really a web designer, I just play one on the Internet.
As I recall, the US and Russia aren't the only ones with a space program anymore.
Couldn't we call in a favor from China and get 'em to send up another Shenzhou rocket? I know their docking ports don't fit into the one on ISS, but you don't technically have to dock with the station to boost it...
1. Shenzhou capsule maneuvers near station
2. Grappling arm grabs a piece of capsule
3. Shenzhou begins burn
4. Grappling arm holds on tight, station accelerates.
5. Problem solved. NASA breathes collective sigh of relief, thanks China for their help.
If it hits the target Taco Bell put out for MIR, do we all get free tacos?
They'll just reboost with the next scheduled Progress or Soyuz and be done with it. That's if they don't decide it's a big enough emergency and just use the rockets on the Zvedza Service Module to reboost.
As has been said, Russia has had a number of pretty successful projects. How much can you say about NASA recently? The space shuttle project is falling apart, they're planning repeating Apollo for whatever reason, there were a bunch of failed Mars missions, Hubble's future looks bleak, etc.
On the other hand, there have been successes some wildly so in recent times. First, the Mars Exploration Rovers are still hanging in there and producing worthwhile data. Second, Gravity Probe B, has succesfully completed its mission. And that's just the stuff that was successful this year.
Failures get more press than successes, for much the same reasons disaters are reported more heavily than the fortunate occurances.
See subject. No astronaut training required at all. Progress missions are robotic resupply and ISS-boosting missions.
-everphilski-
Chicken Little opens November 4th!
lexbaby
"Be Brave, Be Loyal, Be True." -- Hawkeye Pierce
It's not like the ISS is of use to anyone, thanks to it being in its current orbit. Like the Shuttle itself, it was a bad idea poorly implemented. You don't design and implement a space station just so a gaggle of nations can proudly say they have a presence in space, and you don't build a shuttle just because a bunch of Air Force pilots insist on flying a space ship home like an airplane. You do both to accomplish a purpose in space. What is our current mission in space? Besides lining the pockets of the Aerospace Industry, that is. Form follows function. If you don't have a concrete goal to accomplish, you'll never reach it. We have no business being in space without such a goal.
My suggestion: decommission the space station and shuttle, close down NASA, and give the money we currently spend on it to private individuals and companies to do something (tourism, manufacturing, mining, whatever) worthwhile with it. That is the only way mankind will reach the "new frontier", the same way we reached the old one: monitize it.
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
All you need is sufficient tin foil to stop a megatonne object travelling at a few hundred miles per hour, and you should be fine.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
While the first thoughts are that both the astronauts and anyone on the ground will not be hurt, this could be positive news. This year NASA is spending $6.7 Billion on the ISS and the Shuttle program. This is a lot of money that could be far better invested in a new manned space programs that could give us a sustainable manned presence in space. The scientific rewards from the Shuttle and the ISS have been meager at best, certainly once you consider the amount of money that was spent, and have done very little to make it easier to access orbit. It's not an admission of failure or a rejection of manned space exploration to acknowledge that both the Shuttle and the ISS were ill-thought out programs, driven primarily by changing, flaky congressional mandates and pork politics. I doubt it will actually come down, but if it does, it is most likely a net positive for the US manned space program
Where's Superman when you need him?
This ad space for rent.
for each decline the rate of decline increases because there is an increase in drag.
There is no problems...even with a Progress engine failure there are several backups, one of which is the Service Module engines that can be fired after the Progress is undocked.
I never thought I would play Russian Roulette. Meteors do make good bullets but have missed so far. I've been hit by the odd car. All the same, I've never bagged a deer and I would like to experience this element of culture in case fate is against me.
Click.
Click. Click. Click.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
And how many rods to the hogs-head when the burn takes place?
As they spiral in, one of the ISS crew locks himself in the engine room. The other crew cut through the bulkheads in time but in order to keep from crashing into the planet they have do a cold restart of the warp engines. This of course will launch them back in time. Oh wait! That's a Star Trek episode I watched. Never mind.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
It should be a +5! I was going to post the same link but searched existing comments first, including low-rated ones ...
One simple rule for its versus it's
Taco Bell is already in the process of a "Hit here and win a free taco for every American" tarp that they plan on floating out to sea.
Do what I say, cuz I said it.
-Meatwad
Dude this is completely off-topic, but I read about Russian soldier sent out with no BOOTS and no GUNS in WWII when Hitler greedily struck east. They were told to kill the first enemy they encountered with their bare hands and to appropriate guns and boots. Mind you, this is during the Russian winter.
I had an argument with a good friend the other day ab out the power that dictatorships wield; there is nothing more dangerous than an entire country geared towards the agenda of a single person. But then, we in the US already know of this, don't we.
And I agree completely with what you've put forth about design ethos. Although, the space shuttle is a completely "german" design.
Also, pertinent to the Russian design philosophy is to underspecialize. Americans have begun to seriously overspecialize - with many projects having terminator genes - components, science, staff, etc. that don't translate easily into other projects.
un burrito me trampeó.
Twice means "keep blowing up?" I suppose three would mean "always blow up?"
well, if it weren't for the fact that everytime a shuttle blows up they didn't kill the space program for years on end. If I were an astronaut up in the ISS and a shuttle blew up, I'd be like, ok, there goes my ride for the next 3 or 4 years or so.....
Ira
It occurs to me that station-keeping engines would be an excellent application for ion engines. They don't have the power to push the thing into orbit, but certainly they could be built with enough thrust to counter the atmospheric drag at those altitudes. While it would take a bit of effort to bring the engines up on the rockets, it would probably be more than compensated by being able to shuttle up a small load of xenon every now and then instead of all of the fuel necessary to boost it back into its original orbit.
Maybe it's just convenient to have it ride lower every now and again, but I can't imagine that the fuel saved by the lower orbit compensates for having to push it back up there again. I haven't done the math, but it's possible that ion engines would allow it to stay at a lower altitude indefinitely, since there's no danger of decay.
And while we're at it, maybe we could design these things with just a tad bit of aerodynamic considerations. Ok, I'm truly talking out my backside right now, but it's fun to think about how to avoid this kind of thing.
Wake up - the future is arriving faster than you think.
...you mean we can't just reverse the polarity of the plasma conduits!?!??!?!?
We all know that ISS isn't up there anymore.
We obviously want the station properly decommissioned. But it needs to come down. What a waste.
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
Like at a geostationary orbit... what is the fucking big deal about low earth orbit shit???? Get out there!!!!
Reading the summary makes me think either the PR firm who wrote it doesn't understand acceleration, or expects us to be unable to. In order to convey the predicament of the ISS the article should mention altitude, downward velocity, and acceleration.
Or then the writer of the summary understands acceleration, and you fail to notice it: "a kilometer of altitude every week, with the rate increasing as the orbit decays"
Basically giving the altitude and speed is to give a first degree estimate of the space station altitude at a given point of time. Your suggestion to include acceleration would only increase the resolution to a second degree estimate - there still could (and probably are) higher degree components in the exact equation - like increasing influence of air resistance that in turn accelerates the acceleration.
Most of the readers are not looking for third, fourth or fifth degree Taylor estimate of the altitude as a function of time, they are satisfied with the knowledge that it is falling, and falling faster all the time. Your suggestion to include acceleration is not guaranteed to give a completely accurate image of what is happening any more than the current summary, which kind of makes your "doesn't understand acceleration" moot.
http://codeandlife.com
Oh no you don't. I've got a Disco Inferno joke and you're not going to stop me from using it. Ya bastard!
Could someone remind me what is the purpose of this orbitting boondoggle? Didn't the NASA administrator just say that it has no purpose?
I'm having a bad enough day already...now I have something else to worry about.
01/20/09
I agree that is off-topic, but I will bite. Russians called WW2 the Great Partiotic War for a reason. A typical Russian did not even need pursuasion from Stalin to go and fight fascism, barefoot or not.
Let the ISS burn up, the money is burnt up any way... also, blow up all the very crappy shuttles. Update the Saturn V.
Yes. I would love to see a Saturn VI. Let's re-do the whole system, including nuclear upperstages. Even sdtaying totally conventional, just the fact we can use CAD and the procurement would be electronic would make it much easier to do with far fewer people.
If Allen/Rutan can go to space on $20 million, NASA can go anywhere in the solar system on their current budget. A Saturn IV to Saturn would be lovely.
I liked this movie better the first time, when they called it "Skylab".
"You want a toe? I can get you a toe by three o'clock... with nail polish."
Frankly the station is a great candidate for the addition of ion thruster engines to help maintain altitude.
Not only ion thrusters, but perhaps also 3 or 4 small conventional oxygen/hydrogen rocket engines strategically placed in case the station ever needs some higher amounts of thrust or steering manuvering capability for unforseen emergencies. The extra oxygen and hydrogen stored on board for those engines could also be diverted to fuel cells for emergency power needs and the oxygen for life support. (Scotty!!! we've got a breech of the outer hull from a meteor strike and shields have failed! Divert auxilary power from the thrusters to life support now!!!). The continuous low-level ion thrust could counter the additional drag from the extra weight to maintain orbital altitude, and the other engines would be there for "just-in-case", hoping you'd never really need them.
Of course, we'd need a ship big and reliable enough to get those engines, supplies and installation crew up there to install the stuff... but I digress...
Time to break out the oars. On the count of three...
...average Slashdotter's after-sex activities usually conclude with a mere 30 seconds-or-so of simple hand washing.
A typical Russian did not even need pursuasion from Stalin to go and fight fascism
Really? Is that why the NKVD (KGB) setup machine guns behind the Soviet lines to shoot anyone who tried to retreat?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Sig cancelled due to lack of interest
And I agree completely with what you've put forth about design ethos
It served them well in a lot of areas. The T-34 saved the day for them and a lot of the selling points it had over the German tanks related to the simplicity of the design and how easy it was to produce and repair. It's also pretty amazing to look at even more mundane pieces of equipment. Russian field guns typically had less then two dozen parts -- compared to about 80 parts for the German field piece. Which one do you think is going to be easier to repair when it breaks down? There's also the famous M-16 vs AK-47 debate.
In fact most of the times that the Russian design failed them was when politics got into the design process. Witness a lot of the nuclear disasters they suffered in their submarine fleet -- many of which would not have happened if the designs had been more thoroughly tested and not rushed into production to compete with the United States.
Although, the space shuttle is a completely "german" design.
I think the Space Shuttle would be a prime example of letting politics get into engineering (like my submarine example above). I don't know if you could lump Columbia into that category (based on every bit of history they had to go on that insulation was not going to be a problem) but you could definitely lump the Challenger disaster into that category.
For all that, I still think the Shuttle is a pretty amazing machine and a lot of the criticism it gets around here is uncalled for (imho anyway). My biggest beef with the Shuttle is that it seems to have held NASA back from advancing for the last 20 years -- not that it was a bad design or idea from the get-go or that we should fold NASA and give the money to the SpaceShipOne crew.
Americans have begun to seriously overspecialize - with many projects having terminator genes - components, science, staff, etc. that don't translate easily into other projects.
Really? Where do you see that happening? I'm not disagreeing with you -- I just haven't noticed it becoming a huge problem yet.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
As much as I loathe petty, exploitation-driven capitalism, I've seen enough NASA stupidity in the past 20 years to give up hope of a constructive, gov't run space program.
But leave it to a chimp to take a defective gov't boondoggle, and evolve it into another defective boondoggle. Kiddies, sending a sucessful manned mission to Mars will be quite a technological and cultural feat, but it won't accomplish jack for humanity or the US. AT BEST, it will be a baby step towards longterm sustainment of man in space, but it will be an expensive gesture. Frankly, I think it is being proposed so that Bush can cannibalize the productive sections of NASA (scientific, and unmanned probes) with little public outcry. Later on, the manned effort will die when the new administration comes in, due to the bills from Iraq. Put away the phasers and spaceship models and stop being childish.
But petty, exploitation-driven capitalism will not drive colonization/utilization of space. There has to be enough of a gold-mine to make the effort worthwhile. There's only four things that could drive it.
1) Zero-gravity manufacturing processes could be made profitable. Don't see it as of 2005.
2) There could be something worth mining on the moon to make it profitable. If you stuck U.S. taxpayers with the bill to do basic research (robotics and geological surveys), the capitalists would make sure the final step would be taken (provided its profitable). Given my cynicism, I really am in favor of putting the eggs here.
3) Energy collection from space. Ignoring the feasibility of H3 on the moon, putting up stadium sized solar concentrators and beaming down the energy in microwave form could make the Middle East irrelevant. But this is a case of the (oil) capitalists sabotaging a gov't research effort.
4) Militarization of space. Become militaristic butchers and flag waving assholes, you pointy eared freaks. Because this is the only credible way a manned space program is going to be funded.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
Sorry, my mistake. 140 metric tons = 140,000 kg. Please cut my estimate of power loss by a factor of 2.
:(
Sorry, I'm an American. I'm used to thinking ton = 2000 lbs, and I fucked it up because I was in a hurry.
When will America switch to metric?
Just a silly thought. Why didn't we plant it in a gravitationally "null" spot? Ie som place where the moon mojo and the earths mojo will work such that it doesn't need a 'orbital readjustment' in the first place.
You have to do a short story where the space science protagonists are working with these ridiculous measures...
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
It covers several major news items at one.
ISS Falling from sky: check
Upcoming Disney Movie: check
Avian Flu: check
Surely a hat trick like this deserves to be modded up more than just a 3.
I read Slashdot for the headlines, because the headlines, unlike the articles, are usually original and never duplicated
So the next russian rocket brings up 20k gross of Estes E9-0 and D12-0 engines and
the astronauts do a space walk to attach them to the ISS......
I say, "Burn, baby burn!"
Thanks for the great explanation Moofie. ;)
The problem is that the tethers get damaged by micrometeors. A small comparison graph of the degradation rate of single and interlinked tethers can be seen near the bottom of http://www.tethers.com/Hoytether.html. IMHO, this means that other (non-tethered) means of magnetic propulsion may be worth investigating, as there is nothing unique about the tethered geometry which makes it advantageous for magnetic propusion.
It isn't something widespread, but there was an article posted here a couple of days ago about JPL letting go of 300 engineers because of a shift in emphasis from robotics to manned space flight, despite the awesome successes we continue to have with robotics in space. You discussed the idea of politics interfering with engineering, and this is a case.
I agree with you on the unfair criticism that the Space shuttle gets. It's an awesome piece of engineering, but it's terminator tech. It's probably the way NOT to develop a space program. Too complex.
I also saw an interview where an engineer discussed the potential displacement of the shuttle generation of engineers and science as the shuttle is phased out - two generations of talented engineers. Another group of terminator staff.
Because our space program isn't evolutionary, but instead a series of programs doomed to extinction, we're back at square one, the early sixties, trying to figure out how to get to the moon.
un burrito me trampeó.
Even better story is the Soviet paratroopers with no parachutes. Liquor them up, fly low and slow over three feet of snow, and out they go. Half of them could still fight. I imagine that's about the time the German troops all crapped their pants.
You must be new here. I'm seeing history repeating itself all over the map. Thank god the Russians are around to save our space station. I'm sure they could have done it with Skylab, but the US had too much pride and an arms race to attend to. I remember the lies that were told during Desert Storm. I got to see new lies all over again with Operation Iraqi Freedom. History seems to repeat itself on a cyclical basis. Sure, it is a little different on subsequent cycles, but it is the same over and over again. I think that a full scale nuclear war will change the cycle somewhat. Then again, it just may lengthen it.
It isn't something widespread, but there was an article posted here a couple of days ago about JPL letting go of 300 engineers because of a shift in emphasis from robotics to manned space flight, despite the awesome successes we continue to have with robotics in space. You discussed the idea of politics interfering with engineering, and this is a case.
That would probably be a budget issue and would be one of my gripes with Congress -- not NASA or the JPL. It makes me sad that we can find billions of dollars (or rather, write billions of IOUs) for Iraq but we can't find them for NASA or even more mundane concerns (levees). NASA's whole return to the Moon/go to Mars plan is based on the assumption that they can do it with the current budget. That means giving up on Hubble or the ISS (can't do both) just to name the first two that come to mind. Are you telling me that in all the Federal bloat we can't find the money to go to Mars without slashing the JPL and Hubble? *Sigh* The SpaceShipOne fan club doesn't have any better ideas either. Personally I would rather see science then blatant commercialism as the driving force behind our space program.
It's an awesome piece of engineering, but it's terminator tech. It's probably the way NOT to develop a space program. Too complex.
That's a fair point and one that I would agree with. The Space Shuttle is awesome at hauling loads into LEO. It's capabilities for Satellite Repair are unsurpassed. Could the Hubble repair missions have taken place with Apollo/Souyz style designs? All that said, no, it's not the design to take to the Moon or Mars. Too complex and too expensive. Still, I do feel the need to defend it against the crowd calling it a deathtrap that criticizes NASA all day.
Because our space program isn't evolutionary, but instead a series of programs doomed to extinction, we're back at square one, the early sixties, trying to figure out how to get to the moon.
And that's sad. We need a driving force. In the 60s we decided to go to the Moon and managed to pull it off (from scratch) in a decade. There's no motivation these days it seems.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
My undergrad professor for feedback and control systems used to complain about the idiocy of the ISS design (before it was built), claiming that this configuration didn't take into consideration free molecular flow (the fact that there are still some atmospheric particles at that orbital altitude which cause drag) and solar pressure when creating the design. The result would be a very maintenance-intensive beast requiring constant RCS (reaction control system) and re-boosting.
I see that he was right.
A Space station at one of the La Grange points made better sense to me .
I have heard lots of reasons why it wasn't done, but I can't help but thinking
it really just came down to money .
I'd like anyone that "really" works at NASA/JPL or on par to explain why .
I also think Hubble should have been placed at one of the La Grange points
or put in near proximity to the space station for ease of repairs .
Thanks !
Ex-MislTech
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
Russia had rovers down pat years ago...
Once the earth slows down enough gravitational waves might cause the system to decay over time but for now the moon's orbit is increasing.
We need to build millions of tidal generators now, to draw energy out of the system and stop the moon from flying off into space!
Save our moon!
The enemies of Democracy are
Sine fuel has mass, the earth would be sucked in to the infinitly large space staion, not the other way around. gah. :)
I wonder if they could have solar power ion drives that are always on?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I stuck to the topic, yet was banned, no dimpolacy lies within you. You worthless piece of shit, my patience is thin yet you remain on your face with but a grin. The day of the pearly white gates will be harsh, for you choose to judge like Him. You make me sad for I thought you could rise above, yet you stay in the ground like a slug. I liked that dyson topic I wrote it had quite of math in it for I hope. You are better than this so much. Why do you choose this way I don't know. All I want is a why yet your too shy. How do you keep it from collapsing. I'll tell you. Dyson's parents were Mildred Lucy Atkey and George Dyson. George was very talented, both as a teacher of music and as a writer on music. At the time of Freeman's birth George was teaching music at Wellington College in Berkshire. He had earlier taught at Marlborough College where he was a colleague and close friend of Mildred's brother Freeman Atkey. After the death of Freeman Atkey, who was killed in action during World War I, both George and Mildred were shattered. It brought them close together and they married in 1916. Their first child Alice was born in 1919, then their second child was Freeman who was named after Freeman Atkey. Shortly after Freeman was born, his father accepted the post of Master of Music at Winchester College, and so Freeman spent his early years in Winchester. He was closer to his mother than to his father, for she was the more serious of the two being extremely talented and well read. The family were well off and employed a cook, gardener, housemaid and nursemaid. Freeman attended a day school run by Miss Scott from the time he was five years old. Already he was showing exceptional talents for reading, writing and calculating. From the age of nine he was a boarder at Twyford College which was only three miles from his home. Despite the fact that the school was so close to his home, Freeman only went home in the school holidays and his parents never visited him in the school. In 1936 Dyson won first place in a scholarship examination to Winchester College; he was twelve. That first place indicated significant promise and for the first time in his life he began to realise how talented he was. He was an outstanding student across the curriculum, but proved to be brilliant at mathematics. Up until that time he had appeared as a very unusual pupil, very different from his fellow pupils. However he now gained respect from his fellow pupils and his parents were quite bowled over by their son's success. Winchester College was important for freeman for it gave him an outstanding mathematical education. Not only did he have one of the finest mathematics teachers in the country, namely C V Durell, but he was in the same class as James Lighthill and the two studied advanced mathematics together such as Jordan's Cours d'Analyse. Foreign languages came easily to Dyson and when he became interested in number theory in 1938 he decided to read An introduction to the theory of numbers by Vinogradov. The fact that the book was only available in Russian at that time was apparently no problem and he taught himself the language and translated the book into English. In the following year he read Eddington's The mathematical theory of relativity. Dyson gained a scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge in 1941. In his first year he studied physics under Dirac and pure mathematics under Hardy and Besicovitch. During his time there he wrote several papers that were not published until 1944. The first, written in 1941 (published in 1944) is A proof that every equation has a root. Dyson writes:- ... there are so many proofs of the theorem that every equation has a root that it seems almost criminal to produce another. I can however say two things in my defence; first, the proof I shall give is probably not a new one; second, if my proof is new it has a certain advantage over other proofs in using only the most elementary arguments.
Dyson had three papers published in 1943, Three identities in combinatory analysis and On the order of magni
"Read about all the "volunteers" who went into Chernobyl. "
Actually I know some, and they did volenteer. Heros, really.
"Read about the soldiers in Stalingrad who were told to pick up rifles from fallen comrades because they didn't have enough to go around."
now this make no damn sense. If you have a rifle, and the guy next to you doesn't, would you make him go out first?
"Contrast that with the Germans who completely over-design everything"
who, coincidently, played a major role in our space program.
You got to love a country that builds a car that overheats if the engine cover is off!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Like Ed McMahon to laugh at my lame jokes... *sigh*
Flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
"Call us when the New age is old enough to drink" Beck
"She's built like a steak house; but handles like a bistro!! ....You win again gravity!!!"
insert witty comment here
Get them to p*ss and sh*t out the back of the station and down a bit. That'll help.
http://pcblues.com - Digits and Wood
I just wish they would let this stupid ISS crash and burn. Then, maybe NASA would finally bury the shuttle and get on with something more worthwile than continuing to feed this white elephant.
At least NASA have a proven track record in crashing space stations onto WA. It's a nice big target too.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/space/1283 056.html?page=1&c=y/
It's called an elephant's trunk whereas it is in fact, an elephant's nose, a nose by any other name would smell as sweet
Not to "shoot anyone", but to shoot the panic-mongers and restore the discipline. And usually there were no machine guns, just armed normally soldiers and officers.
Panic doesn't win wars and there really was nowhere to run.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
"It wasn't built by Americans alone! Billions of roubles went into it!"