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NASA STEREO Spacecraft Set to Launch
An anonymous reader writes "As first reported on last year, NASA's
STEREO mission is set to launch tonight at 8:38pm EST. The two near-identical spacecraft will give us unprecedented stereoscopic views of the Sun-Earth system, hopefully leading to the creation of the first
3-D movies of the Sun! Launch can be watched live on
NASA TV with coverage starting at 6:30pm EST."
I thought that when I look at the sun, since I see it with two eyes, I see it in 3D.
Oh! My eyes! Well, so much for that...
They do realize there isn't sound in space, right?
. . . for those who haven't figured out the trick of fusing images by crossing their eyes.
* * *
Funky fictional anecdote.
Olaf Stapledon's science fiction "novel" (more like a future history) Last and First Men covers the evolution of humanity from us poor demi-apes to a hyper-evolved species living on a terraformed Neptune two billion years from now.
These "last men" are not only telepathic (and have 96 genders and look like anthropomorphic animals), but they can communicate with themselves across time.
Stapledon describes the "last men" astronomers staring at the sky, sending a telepathic impression of the sight one-half of a Neptune year in the future, where their future selves integrate it with their own observation of the sky to create a wide-baseline 3D parallax image of the heavens.
No. I don't know what Stapledon smoked.
Stefan
Which one uses metric?
I'm definitely not a scientist either, but let me help you logically think this through.
You ask how the 3d view of the sun could be used in further research, implicitly in the pursuit of space colonization. Well, seeing as the sun is a pretty big deal in our solar system (I mean, it's the solar system), I think all of humanity would really benefit from understanding how and why it does the things it does.
In relation to space colonization, the radiation given off by the sun (and other celestial bodies) is only one of a ridiculous multitude of environmental factors to deal with (nevermind the logistics) in any spaceflight, manned or unmanned.
Besides, it's just frickin' cool to get a better look at the sun.
google is your friend:
m ission_leinbach_transcript.html :
From http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/podcasting/115_ask
"Barrett: Why are there holds in the countdown and what is happening in the firing room during those holds?
Leinbach: Well the holds were put in -- designed in the countdowns from the very beginning of the manned spaceflight program. And they are intended to be points in the countdown where the team can take a breather, essentially. There's not supposed to be much work going on during a hold. Again, it's a point where if work leading up to that built-in hold has run behind schedule for some reason, we can continue to work into the hold and then take the hold itself and then when we pick up the clock again, get back into work. So, really they are points in the timeline that allow catch-up time and also time for the team to take a breather and think about what's coming up next in the count. The last built-in hold we have is at T minus 9 minutes and for the current missions those are 40 minute long holds so that we can make sure that the vehicle is ready to pick up the clock at T minus 9 minutes and counting, because for 9 minutes on down is when the vehicle really starts to come to life. And so we want the team to be focused having just taken a short break as it were. We don't leave the control room, but we look forward to what's about to happen and we concentrate on our jobs. And so, it's really a time of reflection. It's a time to catch your breath and to think about what we're about to go do."
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun the frumious Bandersnatch.
Your tax dollars also pay for the publication of volumes of information available at NASA's website.
Here is some very relevant information on the science instraments attached to the STEREO probe.
You'll notice that each of the vehicle's instruments has it's own page, and some pretty good information on what it is supposed to do and why. It sounds pretty relevent to me. NASA's website is pretty great actually. You paid for it, go check it out.
Some manager talked about 7-4-2 during the launch.
Let me try and remember what the numbers meant;
7 - was the tons of helium converted (burned) into hydrogen every second.
4 was the 4 reasons why we care; 1) solar winds and how it effects things/us 2) communications and how it was affected 3) was the impact on astronauts (and thus your point about colonization) 4) was the affect on airplanes in our atmosphere (apparently an issue large enough to currently cause restriction of flights near the poles)
2 was for stereo views
He said there is a need to better understand how the sun affects us currently and for future space travel and these experiments will help in that understanding.
For the paranoid types, the air force is also involved in the project - one can only guess how 'stereo' eyes in orbit can be tested and developed as new surveillance technologies.
slashdot troll = you make a compelling argument I do not like the implications of.
For reference, the fusion works the other way: hydrogen is fused to produce helium. I'm also pretty certain that the sun fuses a LOT more than 7 tons of hydrogen every second. Wikipedia claims it's 3.6e38 protons a second, which my back of the envelope calculation (3.6e38 / 6.02e23) says is basically 6e14 grams, or six hundred million metric tonnes per second, most of which becomes helium... there's some other fusion reactions that make traces of heavier elements, and some of that mass is converted into energy.
My favorite stat is that 99% of the mass of the solar system is the Sun, with the other 1% being Jupiter. Our wonderful planet, with all it's enormity and majesty, and all most of us will ever know personally, is lost in the underflow of the total mass. :-)