Space Rope Trick Experiment Goes Awry

Tjeerd writes "An experiment that envisaged sending a parcel from space to Earth on a 30-kilometre tether fell short of its goal yesterday when the long fibre rope did not fully unwind, Russian Mission Control said. It was intended to deliver a spherical capsule, called Fotino, attached to the end of the tether back to Earth — a relatively simple and cheap technology that could be used in the future to retrieve bulkier cargoes from space.""

Comments

Actually...

[The_Isle_of_Mark]

I climbed up the rope and hid in my secret magic room until I felt rested. Then, I climbed down and did 10d4 damage to Fotino.

Re:Actually...

[lexarius]

But where did you put your magic bag while you were in there? It's dangerous to bring those inside, you know.

after a thourough scientific analysis ...

[Kristoph]

The reason for the problem wasn't immediately clear. "It could be that the tether got stuck," Lyndin said.

Re:after a thourough scientific analysis ...

[Volante3192]

What thourough analysis? The tether's in outer space inside an unmanned craft. Not like you can just pop the hood and go, "Here's the problem. Looks like a vodka lid got stuck in the gears."

Re:after a thourough scientific analysis ...

[Anonymous Monkey]

I thought it was "ah, I see provlum, wodca lid stuck in gear," and then some kind of wise crack about moose and squirrel.

Re:after a thourough scientific analysis ...

[Amouth]

as easy as it is to creat a birds nest with line on earth.. god in zero or micro gravity.. it would be a royal pain

Re:after a thourough scientific analysis ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wheeee. Now say "nuclear wessels".

Re:after a thourough scientific analysis ...

[DJ Fadereu]

He said that Mission Control would try to calculate the capsule's orbit and determine when and where it would land. uh, oh...

Re:after a thourough scientific analysis ...

[Anonymous Coward]

The flay rods have apparently gone skew on treadle.

it's funny because it's true

[User 956]

An experiment that envisaged sending a parcel from space to Earth on a 30-kilometre tether fell short of its goal yesterday when the long fibre rope did not fully unwind

So that's how UPS plans on routing packages in the future. Perhaps they realize that the only way to achieve more damage per parcel is to actually drop them from outer space.

Re:it's funny because it's true

[Psychor]

I think even dropping from outer space plus the burns from reentry would still damage a package less than the average UPS delivery. They set a pretty high bar, I'm not sure that mere science is enough to top it.

Re:it's funny because it's true

[CRCulver]

Speaking of UPS, what happened to the idea that express parcel companies would be major forces behind private space exploration? In Michael Flynn's novel Firestar FedEx is one of the first companies to buy private spacecraft because it sees major profits in being able to deliver anywhere on Earth in just a couple of hours. But when you read about private space ventures here on Slashdot, parcel companies don't play any sort of role.

Re:it's funny because it's true

[Hoi Polloi]

This explains the "atmospheric reentry safe" boxes they kept trying to sell to me in the UPS store.

Re:it's funny because it's true

[fbjon]

We order everything on the internets now, duh!

Re:it's funny because it's true

[shawn(at)fsu]

what happened to the idea that express parcel companies would be major forces behind private space exploration?
Other than the obvious reason that the book in question is a work of fiction?

I'd imagine parcel companies either don't even see it as profitable yet and haven't done any feasibility studies or they have done feasibility studies and it's not worth it yet. FedEx doesn't have to design a plane it just buys one from Boeing or who ever. Maybe it will change when Lockheed make a working commercial space place.

Re:it's funny because it's true

[Anonymous Coward]

Globalisation has made the products available locally pretty much the same anywhere on the planet, and since most things these days are software, we don't need to burn colossal amounts of fuel to ship an 80s tape player halfway around the planet...

Re:it's funny because it's true

[The Angry Mick]

So that's how UPS plans on routing packages in the future.

INCOMING!!!

Re:it's funny because it's true

[Speare]

A vanishingly small number of situations require a specific material object to cross the globe in a couple hours. The Internet relieves any information hauling needs, and the rise of manufacturing and general ubiquity of export goods has meant that there's probably an identical copy of that object that can be had more locally. So most remaining situations would be fully burdened (not amortized like all 2,000 packages in a neighborhood UPS truck). Now it takes a LOT of energy to get even the smallest object into orbit, ...

Re:it's funny because it's true

[eln]

A couple of reasons I can think of:

1.) Cost. Sure, you could get a package delivered to Russia in less than an hour, but it would cost 3 million dollars.

2.) Right now, the vehicles we have that are designed for quick takeoff, orbit, and re-entry carry rather more destructive cargo. Maybe FedEx doesn't want the Russians mistaking one of their rockets filled with Barney DVDs for a nuclear attack and triggering World War III. I would have to imagine the PR from that sort of thing would be somewhat damaging.

Re:it's funny because it's true

[Valiss]

Are you implying that a fictional book did not acurately predict the future?

Re:it's funny because it's true

[Atlantis-Rising]

Would you be willing to pay 2.5 million dollars for 2.4 hour delivery, compared to 250 dollars for 24 hour delivery?

That's why Fedex isn't buying spacecraft.

Re:it's funny because it's true

[CFTM]

Uh, I can answer this question for you quite easily; the R&D has yet to be done by other companies! Why the heck is a public company, like UPS, going to waste their profits on this sort of R&D when they can let other people do it for them? You won't see UPS and FedEx getting involved with this sort of stuff until someone else bears the heavy burden for the R&D required to make this cost effective.

Re:it's funny because it's true

[JWtW]

I think you're on to something. With a quick slingshot around the sun, they could start offering 'UPS Yesterday Air'

Re:it's funny because it's true

[tomknight]

Just have to make the tubes large enough to stuff parcels down them....

Re:it's funny because it's true

[tomknight]

I think lauching a nuclear strike against someone delivering Barney DVDs sounds rather reasonable. I see what you mean, everyone would blame FedEx for consenting to deliver that tripe in the first place...

Re:it's funny because it's true

[MindStalker]

Actually UPS and FedEx do a lot of R&D currently they are both heavily invested in alternative fuel and hybrid technologies (think of the amount of gas one UPS truck on one route burns).

When they see its financially beneficial they will do it you can bet.

Re:it's funny because it's true

[monk.e.boy]

Perhaps they should employ my mum: Free physical and emotional damage.

Re:it's funny because it's true

[monk.e.boy]

And your presentation to the board would be along the lines of:

...stuff...parcel...tube...and in conclusion: goatse

Re:it's funny because it's true

[UbuntuDupe]

A vanishingly small number of situations require a specific audio message to cross the globe in a couple tenths of a second. The postal system relieves any written information hauling needs, and the rise of messenger boys has meant that it's easy to send messages that need to be delivered more locally. So most remaining situations would be fully burdened (not amortized like all 2,000 letters in a mail truck). Now it takes a LOT of energy to get even the smallest audio message across the cables.

Re:it's funny because it's true

[TooMuchToDo]

If I'm a government, and absolutely, positively need a vaccine/supplies/etc. on the other side of the world in a couple of hours, yes, 2.4 million is chump change (a shuttle launch costs 500-600 million dollars). This is the reason scramjets/ramjets are in development. Getting between the two farthest points in the world takes a short time when you're traveling at Mach 4-10.

Re:it's funny because it's true

[Anonymous Coward]

Globalization with tangible goods only works with really cheap fuel and relative peace. Watch if they attack iran and how fast prices for most everything rise,(along with availability at all) because oil will go between 100-200 bucks a barrel pretty darn quickly.

And I really don't get what you mean "most things are software". Uhh, no, no they aren't. Most "things" are tangibles. You can try downloading an image of a hamburger and licking it off your screen I guess, but I don't think there are a lot of calories there.

Re:it's funny because it's true

[jimstapleton]

it's R&D now - getting the knowledge up and cost now. Parcel shippers aren't going to find it profitable now.

Others will bring the cost down, and when they do, then you'll find the parcel shippers interested in buyin craft.

Re:it's funny because it's true

[AvitarX]

I know your trying to prove a point with a bad analogy, but it is really bad.

Energy to get information down a gable is not much at all. You are also using an example of information transport (audio) and trying to apply it to physical object transport. The GP's point was that we can transport massive amounts of information in the 3 hours it takes to fly a spaceship across the globe (in said example).

Also since audio messages are information they are amortized with the millions of web pages sent down cables.

An example of things not needing to ship quickly follows:

After 911, MBNA wanted American flags with "God Bless America" to greet all of their workers world wide on the way into the office, this was decided later on in the day on September 11th. We could either print everything locally and ship it out, or get vendors in other parts of the world to print them too. In the past getting people in Dublin to print them would have required shipping negatives (30 years ago) or disks (20? years ago) or Cds (10 - 20 years ago (maybe 15 to 20?). We were able to send the file in an hour and get it produced locally on identical equipment, where previously we would have paid FedEx out the ass (and been delayed however many days for airplane to fly again). Fast physical delivery is far less important than it used to be.

Re:it's funny because it's true

[db32]

What PR? Who is going to be left to complain?

Re:it's funny because it's true

[Atlantis-Rising]

If you're a government and you need those suppies there yesterday, you probably have your own spacecraft (including in that sub-orbital spacecraft, like ICBMs, which could of course be used for delivery of things other than weapons) and high-speed fighter craft. Even as late as 1999, the US government had access to the SR71 Blackbird- Mach 3+ (and of course the inevitable speculation that the SR-71 was replaced by another plane of greater capacity).

Sure, getting stuff there quick is good. But it'd just not be economically feasible most of the time- and the very, very small portion of the time when it would isn't enough to fund the effort.

Re:it's funny because it's true

[UbuntuDupe]

I don't know what you thought my point was, but saying that the situation isn't analagous "because we're talking about X, not Y" isn't in general a valid response.

My point was that quick global transport appears to us now, as the telephone appeared to people in the 1880s. There are even quotes (that I didn't bother to look up) where people question the use of it on the grounds that "we have messenger boys". No one bothers to come up with uses for quick global transport, because it's always been so prohibitive expensive as to be out of the question. Once it's cheap, people will find a use for it.

Off the top of my head:

-A California computer company with factories in east Asia may prefer to have prototypes in their hands in 3 hours rather than 12.
-Rich people may want the luxury of fish freshly caught across the globe, delivered to them so shortly after catching it.
-And of course, human transport.

Re:it's funny because it's true

[blind biker]

Where do you live? I thought it was only in Finland that the UPS employs untrained monkeys.

The image I have of the UPS is that of an abject, mindless, clueless, arrogant and destructive company. I mean, heck, USPS gets the job done for far less, and yet the parcels are not mangled, punctured or delivered weeks later. If USPS, FedEx, DHL, GLS etc. etc. can all do it, why can't UPS?

WTF is wrong with UPS Finland?

Re:it's funny because it's true

[Matt]

2.) Right now, the vehicles we have that are designed for quick takeoff, orbit, and re-entry carry rather more destructive cargo. Maybe FedEx doesn't want the Russians mistaking one of their rockets filled with Barney DVDs for a nuclear attack and triggering World War III.

"When it absolutely, positively, has to be there first."

Re:it's funny because it's true

[Anonymous Coward]

You, sir, have just invented the greatest diet ever!

Are you an overweight slob living in your mom's basement? Buy "Feeding (on the) Tubes" or three equal payments of $39.95 and we will show you can look at images of any food you want and still not gain any weight!

Re:it's funny because it's true

[cool_arrow]

For anyone interested check out the link above. There is a time-lapse photo of multiple re-entry vehicles deployed by a Peacekeeper missile near the Marshall Islands. Awesome photo.

Re:it's funny because it's true

[deftones_325]

" Maybe FedEx doesn't want the Russians mistaking one of their rockets filled with Barney DVDs for a nuclear attack and triggering World War III. I would have to imagine the PR from that sort of thing would be somewhat damaging." - Not to mention the emotional damage that would be caused by thousands of "I love you ..You love me.."'s cascading upon half the countryside.

Re:it's funny because it's true

[Anonymous Coward]

After 911, MBNA wanted American flags with "God Bless America" to greet all of their workers world wide on the way into the office,

Sweet Christ. "aw man! We've been attacked and I'm freaked the fuck out! OOOOH! A red white and blue piece of fabric! I'm all better now! Joy to America!"

Re:it's funny because it's true

[Orange Crush]

It's really quite simple. You can have anything delivered, worldwide (in areas with sufficient infrastructure) within 24 hours, often quicker for a (relatively) reasonable price. The faster something gets somewhere offers diminishing returns but exponential increases in cost. Sub-orbital ballistics can theoretically get anything anywhere in about 90 minutes, but at hideously outrageous cost (and in the real world, prep time wipes out any time advantage unless you have the craft & payload on standby at all times . . . like nukes.)

Information, on the other hand, travels at the speed of light--limited only by the bandwidth of what you're sending, and it's dirt cheap to do so. So the options are basically:

-Pay $ to get a reconstructable model now
-Pay $$ to get the actual item tomorrow or
-Pay $$$,$$$,$$$+ to get it in under 3 hours.

So, from the perspective of FedEx, how many situations actually warrant such a rapid physical shipment knowing it's going to be so hideously expensive for the near future? Is there any real possibility of recouping costs of even seriously investigating such an idea?

(the answer's "not yet, maybe in a couple of decades")

Re:it's funny because it's true

[QMO]

Well, the cockroaches that come across the Barney DVDs won't complain. They THRIVE on garbage.

Re:it's funny because it's true

[FurryFeet]

Children... you feed them, nurture them, love them and they still break your heart and badmouth you in Slashdot.

But I would still cut off my right hand and feed it to hungry wolves for you. You know that, don't you dear?

Re:it's funny because it's true

[AvitarX]

Actually it was a piece of paper with a photo of a red, white, and blue piece of fabric.

It was interesting to me that the product being produced in Dublin was delayed because they had a day of silence when we printed stupid posters.

Re:it's funny because it's true

[Anonymous Coward]

Not everybody feels better just masturbating in his own feces like you do, you know.

Re:it's funny because it's true

[Rei]

I had a friend who was a translator for the US military who went over to the USSR (specifically Kazkhstan) as part of a disarmament mission under one of the nuclear disarmament treaties (I forget which one). She often referred to them as somewhat of a scam, as both sides kind of liked the excuse to phase out older systems and create new ones to replace them. Both sides had teams go to inspect and verify the destruction of said systems. They could inspect anything large enough to conceal a "treaty limited item", which really was just used as an excuse to snoop as much as possible. The US side sent their teams over with laser measuring devices; she said that the Russians were really impressed with that, as they had sent their teams over with a much simpler device -- a stick. If it fit, they could inspect.

Anyways, everything to be destroyed was dismantled and ultimately crushed and scrapped. My friend saw this as somewhat tragic; here were these great feats of engineering that could deliver a payload anywhere on the planet with good accuracy in the matter of time you might spend waiting for a pizza on a busy night, and they were being wasted. Which gave her and some other members of her team an idea; wouldn't that make a great pizza delivery system if it could be retrofit instead? The concept was that you retrofit it with a new heat shield so keep the right temperature for baking, and you put uncooked pizzas in on racks welded into the "warhead". The pizzas bake on reentry, and then it detaches and parachutes down for landing. They even did some off-the-cuff estimates on how much it would cost, and they came up with, if a missile full of pizzas was ordered, a delivery charge of something like then-$20 per pizza -- but what a delivery!

She claims that she told the idea to a Soviet officer, who looked at her like she was crazy.

Re:it's funny because it's true

[Cecil]

UPS in North America is just as bad.

Re:it's funny because it's true

[Adammil2000]

Because FedEx/UPS are only interested in traveling to places where someone already lives to receive a package. They cannot be expected to lead the discovery of anything.

Re:it's funny because it's true

[Rei]

Sometimes, though, regulations can hold you back.

A decade ago, I worked at Terre Haute Medlab. We had billing records that needed to be transferred to... I want to say Medicaid, but I don't recall for sure. The center was in Indianapolis. Like most hospitals at the time, we had a nice, fat (for the period) internet pipe. They did too. We could easily have sent them all in short order.

Nope!

Government regulations designed decades prior still governed how we were allowed to send data to them, and it forbid sending information over an open network. Of course, we could easily have *encrypted* the data, but that wasn't an option in the regulations. In fact, we were outright forced to transfer with a bisync modem. Not an async like you're used to! No, a bisync. I don't remember the exact baud, but it was somewhere from a couple hundred to a couple thousand bps. Transmissions would take all night (racking up long distance charges, I might add). If it was ever interrupted, we had to start all over again. It would have been faster for us to burn them onto a CD, drive over, give them the CD, then drive back, then to transfer the way we had to.

Re:it's funny because it's true

[MattskEE]

Actually, it's been tried: One Small Step For Mail.

For the reasons you would expect, it didn't catch on.

Re:it's funny because it's true

[Eric52902]

I don't like the idea of my pizza being exposed to cosmic radiation when its way up out of (or close to?) the atmosphere. I'm not sure if it'd be something worth worrying over, but good luck selling it to the consumer.

Re:it's funny because it's true

[nmos]

Forget spacecraft, what UPS etc. need is a really big cannon or rail gun to shoot packages to their destinations. Just cram a package into some sort of a shell with a gps guidence system and pop out fins (tech. borrowed from military smart weapons) and you're all set.

Re:it's funny because it's true

[CFTM]

Right, they're doing R&D for things down here on earth, like more efficient fuel BUT they arn't going to invest in to the sort of aerospace R&D needed to make this model feasible for them. They'll let universities and Aerospace companies make those breakthroughs and then do the old 3M ('We don't make the XXXX you use, we make it better').

Re:it's funny because it's true

[BillyBlaze]

The only type of object you'd want to send quickly halfway around the world badly enough you would pay for a whole rocket launch is a nuclear warhead. But typically the government handles such deliveries.

Re:it's funny because it's true

[PeterChenoweth]

Groovy, just make sure you're using really fresh ingredients. Otherwise...

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/25/1140253

And you thought you had a tough time of it when you got that bad sausage from PapaDomiHut's...

Re:it's funny because it's true

[Jherek Carnelian]

Are you implying that a fictional book did not acurately predict the future? As if factual books are any more accurate...

Re:it's funny because it's true

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, not to mention it'd suck if your express delivery is either destroyed or triggers a nuclear exchange because it was percieved as an incoming threat.

Re:it's funny because it's true

[Anonymous Coward]

Now I thought of gerbils for some reason... maybe because my elementary school had a large gerbil maze along one side of the wall. I dunno, either that or ...

Re:it's funny because it's true

[gd2shoe]

Nah. Remember, they planned on using reentry to cook their product. Efficient.

Re:it's funny because it's true

[gd2shoe]

Now that's hacking!

Re:it's funny because it's true

[gd2shoe]

quote:

I don't know what you thought my point was, but saying that the situation isn't analagous "because we're talking about X, not Y" isn't in general a valid response.

Oh, but it IS in general a valid response. It's typically called "comparing apples and oranges".

And I'll agree, you were not "comparing apples and apples".

Re:it's funny because it's true

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah what I meant is that devices are so advanced that people care more about the software that makes things do things. Yeah I'm fucking drunk right now but the idea is that a VCR needs tapes to be shipped around but these days you just need a laptop and then you download shit and stuff. Ergo, nobody cares about building a business around blasting tapes around the universe while burning fossil goo, you just push bits into wires instead.

And if oil prices rise, donchoo think blasting shit around the atmosphere will be even more prohibitive?

Re:it's funny because it's true

[UbuntuDupe]

You misunderstand. Specifying the *principle* that differentiates the circumstances is a valid response. Specifying the correct basis for comparison (showing it's not currently apples to apples) is a valid response. But merely saying that we're "talking" about topic X and not Y, is not a valid response. To give you an example:

"I think it's wrong to shoot trespassers because that involves violence."
"Fighting in a war involves violence too. You're saying no one should ever fight in any war?"
"No, but that's different. I'm talking about trespassers here, not wars."

Or, to skip to Godwin's law:

"Our university shouldn't let Jews in because a lot of them cheat."
"A lot of non-Jews cheat too, should we ban them?"
"Irrelevant. We're talking about the Jews here."

In my original response, I attempted to show the flaw in his reasoning by giving an example of the exact same argument being applied to a different technology we now know to be fallacious. Specifically, the inability to think of a use for a quicker invention because of present alternatives. His response to that: "We're talking about information here, not physical goods" is the same type of fallacy described above.

Re:it's funny because it's true

[Randolpho]

Great... the new face of internet delivery services is actually an ass.

Re:it's funny because it's true

[owndao]

How about emergency biologicals (organs, antivenin, blood), food, and medicines? Could instances like Katrina in the U.S., tsunami, and other worldwide natural disasters have been made better with this technology?

Re:it's funny because it's true

[AvitarX]

I hate to break it to you,

But we won't even pay for those people not living in their own shit for the days after the disaster, we're not going to pay to get them precious organs.

Specifically:
Organs, we don't have enough anyway, without paying out the ass to rush them in (of course all th young people killed by a disaster may make it worth rushing them out?)

Antivenin, Should be available locally enough already (It's not like we are going to have tons of snakes attack somewhere).

Blood, We don't have enough in general, it is not a transportation constrained resource (like organs)

Food, Available fairly locally in any case where the victims are worth spending money on (as judged by those in charge, not me)

Medicines, Again, what are we going to do with medicine a few hours earlier? in Katrina we couldn't get it to people, and didn't have enough of the right stuff.

Saving people is not why infrastructure gets built, and certainly not to save people across the globe. Sometimes we are not too big of asshats and use existing infrastructure to save others though.

Re:it's funny because it's true

[gd2shoe]

It was not the exact same argument. You can't leave the syntactic structure of an argument in place, and change the words to show that the structure is fallacious. The words that you changed were part of the structure, and he was telling you why they were a significantly different structural element.

Classic philosophical example (minor simplification):

All emeralds found so far are green.
We expect all emerald we find in the future to be green.

This gives us a basic structure, and a true statement.

Definition:
Grue -- Green and discovered before 2010, or Blue and discovered after 2010.

That leads us to the statement:

All emeralds found so far are grue.
We expect all emerald we find in the future to be grue.

This is clearly a fallacious statement. Changing what seemed to be a non-structural element of the argument did indeed change the entire argument. I know you don't see it, but this is exactly what you did in your post.

I contend that it would be a fallacy to ignore the similarities between physical and information transportation. It is also a fallacy to ignore the differences.

Re:it's funny because it's true

[UbuntuDupe]

My objection referred to "You are also using an example of information transport (audio) and trying to apply it to physical object transport."

Saying my analogy is invalid because "that's information, this is physical objects", which the above quote does, it itself an invalid objection, and that was what I was referring to. He did list other reasons, but the quoted claim is an invalid response, and is unrelated to the rest of his post.

Now: what did your lastest philosophical example have to do with anything?

Re:it's funny because it's true

[gd2shoe]

I tire of this. I expect this will be my last post in this thread.

Quote:

My objection referred to "You are also using an example of information transport (audio) and trying to apply it to physical object transport."

Saying my analogy is invalid because "that's information, this is physical objects", which the above quote does, it itself an invalid objection, and that was what I was referring to.

He did list other reasons, but the quoted claim is an invalid response, and is unrelated to the rest of his post.

Now: what did your lastest philosophical example have to do with anything?

**sigh** I'll try again. In order to get this, you will need to go back and reread my post.

A vanishingly small number of situations require a specific material object
to cross the globe in a couple hours.
The Internet relieves any information hauling needs,
and the rise of manufacturing and general ubiquity of export goods has meant
that there's probably an identical copy of that object that can be had more locally.
So most remaining situations would be fully burdened
(not amortized like all 2,000 packages in a neighborhood UPS truck).
Now it takes a LOT of energy to get even the smallest object into orbit, ...

Compared to:

A vanishingly small number of situations require a specific audio message
to cross the globe in a couple tenths of a second.
The postal system relieves any written information hauling needs,
and the rise of messenger boys has meant
that it's easy to send messages that need to be delivered more locally.
So most remaining situations would be fully burdened
(not amortized like all 2,000 letters in a mail truck).
Now it takes a LOT of energy to get even the smallest audio message across the cables

This is the logical fallicy that I was attacking. You think that you can argue that "This statement has the same structure, and is false. Therefore, the first statement is false too". That is uterly rediculous. Any statement can be argued as false and mocked in exactly the same way. The closer the substituted words are in meaning, the more insidious the fallicy

I'll give AvitarX his due: "I know your trying to prove a point with a bad analogy, but it is really bad."

Re:it's funny because it's true

[gd2shoe]

Sorry, Posted a premature copy. Full reply is as follows: I tire of this. I expect this will be my last post in this thread.

Quote:

My objection referred to "You are also using an example of information transport (audio) and trying to apply it to physical object transport."

Saying my analogy is invalid because "that's information, this is physical objects", which the above quote does, it itself an invalid objection, and that was what I was referring to.

No, It's not an invalid objection. Information and physical objects share some common behavior. They are NOT interchangeable in an argument because they do not have exactly corresponding sets of behavior.

He did list other reasons, but the quoted claim is an invalid response, and is unrelated to the rest of his post.

Now: what did your lastest philosophical example have to do with anything?

**sigh** I'll try again. In order to get this, you will need to go back and reread my post.

A vanishingly small number of situations require a specific material object
to cross the globe in a couple hours.
The Internet relieves any information hauling needs,
and the rise of manufacturing and general ubiquity of export goods has meant
that there's probably an identical copy of that object that can be had more locally.
So most remaining situations would be fully burdened
(not amortized like all 2,000 packages in a neighborhood UPS truck).
Now it takes a LOT of energy to get even the smallest object into orbit, ...

Compared to:

A vanishingly small number of situations require a specific audio message
to cross the globe in a couple tenths of a second.
The postal system relieves any written information hauling needs,
and the rise of messenger boys has meant
that it's easy to send messages that need to be delivered more locally.
So most remaining situations would be fully burdened
(not amortized like all 2,000 letters in a mail truck).
Now it takes a LOT of energy to get even the smallest audio message across the cables

This is the logical fallacy that I was attacking. You think that you can argue that "This statement has the same structure, and is false. Therefore, the first statement is false too". That is utterly ridiculous. Any statement can be argued as false and mocked in exactly the same way. The closer the substituted words are in meaning, the more insidious the fallacy

I'll give AvitarX his due: "I know your trying to prove a point with a bad analogy, but it is really bad."

Delivery failed?

[Rob T Firefly]

But, Planet Express is usually so reliable!

Re:Delivery failed?

[JSchoeck]

Great, now you made me want to watch Futurama. Damn it!

Actually it doesn't matter if I read /. or watch a show... when I really should be studying!

Is a 30km rope

[Tastecicles]

...really long enough? One would have thought that to drop something 150km one would need a 150km rope? ...and something to reduce friction as the probe gets towed along the ground at 17,000 kilometres per hour....

Re:Is a 30km rope

[Tuoqui]

It wouldnt be going 17000 km/h if the object in orbit is in geostationary orbit.

Re:Is a 30km rope

[fotbr]

But then you'd need an even longer rope.

Re:Is a 30km rope

[Hoi Polloi]

If you RTFA you'd have read that the goal wasn't to reach the earth's surface but to lower something to a lower orbit.

Re:Is a 30km rope

[eln]

Sure, but to do that, you'd need a 35,786 km rope. I think we're gonna need a bigger spacecraft to haul that thing up there.

Re:Is a 30km rope

[Tim82]

Very true.... However, if it was in geostationary orbit, the object would need to be 35,786 km from the Earth's surface, not 30 km.

Re:Is a 30km rope

[MontyApollo]

At 17,000 km/hr you would have to worry about friction in the atmosphere, let alone the ground. It would be a fireball a long way from the ground.

Re:Is a 30km rope

[dmatos]

Technically, to lower it down enough that it was no longer travelling at orbital velocity, at which point the tether would be released, and the capsule would fall through the atmosphere before a parachute opened up.

Given that LEO is at least 200km, the object would still be at 170km when released, and would have to survive the entire brunt of the re-entry problems. I'm not sure how lowering something on a tether is more economical/effective than using thrust to de-orbit, though.

Re:Is a 30km rope

[clambake]

One would have thought that to drop something 150km one would need a 150km rope?

You don't know anything about space, clearly, so just shut up. Leave this stuff to us experts.

(aside: Hey Bob, I have an idea why our space tether idea didn't work our right, get this: what if we used MORE than 30km of...)

Re:Is a 30km rope

[spleen_blender]

I would assume that they could accurately maintain geosynchronous orbit to a margin of error in the difference of velocities that most of those problems could be minimized. Maybe I have too much faith in our technological capabilities, though.

Re:Is a 30km rope

[Volante3192]

I'm not sure how lowering something on a tether is more economical/effective than using thrust to de-orbit, though.

From what I could tell, from my armchair scientist opinion, is that they're using a combo of gravity and air friction to drop the ball.

One plus to this method is it doesn't require the package to have fuel and engines, which thrust would require. Just shove everything into a really heat resistant ball and let it go.

Re:Is a 30km rope

[greenguy]

Bob: 30 km? When did we start using the metric system?

Re:Is a 30km rope

[Overzeetop]

And you couldn't just shoot it out the back of the parent spacecraft to impart the required delta-V to de-orbit? I haven't run the numbers*, but it seems a good bit more reliable than a long tether. Tethers have a nasty habit of doing bad things in space, where forward is up, backwards is down, and anything to the side comes back to hit you half and orbit later.

*Yes, I have taken space guidance and navigation courses at both the graduate and undergraduate level. Thanks for asking.

Re:Is a 30km rope

[dmatos]

I originally thought that as well, but the blob on the tether is in orbit at the same time as the spaceship. You still have to impart some delta-vee to start the capsule moving away from the spaceship. Things can't just be "lowered" from orbit. I assume they're giving this ball a shove out the door to start it on its way down, and just using the tether to control it for the first 30km. Same thing could be done without the tether, and you'd have a less controlled release.

Maybe that's the point. The ball hanging at the end of a 30km tether will fall in a well-defined location, whereas if it were just shoved, it would not (a small difference in shove speed could make it end up on the far side of the world).

Re:Is a 30km rope

[zippthorne]

Returning things from space via tether provides the tether with a "free" reboost. You really want the tether to be able to boost objects into a HIGHER orbit. In theory, saving a lot of money on conventional propulsion:

e.g. combine a long tether with a hypersonic high-altitude aircraft, mate the payload with the tether at the altitude where tether and aircraft overlap (or a small engine to get from aircraft alt to tether alt) and let centripetal force launch the payload into the higher orbit. Then (magic here) reboost the tether cheaply somehow. There are actually quite a few options depending on how much altitude and delta-v the tether must drop each payload cycle. Many of which fall under the heading, "Electric Propulsion."

Re:Is a 30km rope

[Rei]

Most of the "tether" experiments for lowering payloads that have been done in the past involve the use of the Earth's magnetic field inducing current in a cable that moves through it, creating resistance. They radiate away the energy produced, thus lowering the orbit.

The reverse is also potentially possible, and is discussed as a way to reboost satellites without fuel.

Re:Is a 30km rope

[barakn]

You've forgotten tidal forces. Once there's any separation at all between the two objects they are experiencing two different gravitational forces on them. The difference between the two forces is the tidal force that will separate them. It quickly gets complicated as the lower one will want to move faster in its orbit and the higher one will want to orbit slower but they're tethered together...

Re:Is a 30km rope

[onemorechip]

I assume they're giving this ball a shove out the door to start it on its way down, and just using the tether to control it for the first 30km.

IANAOM (orbital mechanic), but the tether forces the object to maintain the same velocity as the station. Since the object is at a lower altitude, the gravitational pull on it is stronger, and the object is pulled towards Earth -- but it can't speed up relative to the station because the tether is holding it back, so it keeps moving downward. The pull on the tether actually speeds up the station, moving it higher (unless a counterweight is extended in the opposite direction).

You don't really need a minimum delta-v to get it started; you just need to extend the object to a position lower than the station (perhaps with a robotic arm), far enough to get some tension in the rope, and gravity does the rest. Mechanically it's not really different than lowering a package on a rope from a helicopter, except that in this case, the pull gets stronger in proportion to the length of the rope.

If you just shove the object out the door, with a backward delta-v, it will move downward, but it will need a lot of delta-v (either an extended burn requiring the payload to carry its own fuel, or a large explosion or a powerful rail gun or slingshot) to make re-entry possible. So unless I'm missing something, the tether is much more efficient.

BTW, if the initial delta-v is downward, then the object will accelerate ahead of the station; either it will re-enter with an even greater speed, or it will go into an elliptical orbit. So backward delta-v is what you want if you are going to use the non-tethered approach.

Re:Is a 30km rope

[onemorechip]

One clarification -- when I said the station will move higher, I meant that this will happen as the rope is paid out; the center of gravity of the station, rope, and payload should stay in the same orbit until the payload is let go. If you don't pay out more rope, the altitude of the station and payload do not change.

Re:Is a 30km rope

[dmatos]

/me nods sagely and returns to his library to re-read Neutron Star.

Yeah, I can see how that would require less energy than just imparting delta-vee. Thanks.

Re:Is a 30km rope

[Overzeetop]

I haven't seen a really good tether boost that (a) didn't use a massive body to boost a smaller one and (b) was more reliable than chemical propulsion. I don't remember the numbers, but tethers from booster stages weren't much more reliable after low orbit insertion than sending up a chemical rocket. And I was personally involved in the safety board ugliness which surrounded an attempt to fly a tether-boosted satellite from MSFC on the shuttle.

Re:Is a 30km rope

[datadigger]

30 km? When did we start using the metric system?

Do you think Russians would be willing to use imperial units?

Re:Is a 30km rope

[gd2shoe]

The "brunt of ... re-entry" is relative.

(No, I am not a physisist)

If you think about it, propulsion based re-entry sufers from a dilema. If they decelerate just enough to bring them below LEO, they hit the atmosphere almost sideways at tremendous speeds and friction force. If they start higher, but decelerate too much, then they free fall towards the earth. In this case, there is no "terminal velocity" to keep them alive. They will keep acclerating until they hit the atmosphere hard.

A good propulsion based re-entry system relies on a combination of the two, and good heat shielding.

But, what if the tether system could be further advanced? If we could use the tether as a means to decelerate the target while simutaniously keeping it from premature freefall, then we might have something.

For example: Men have done skydiving from 30km. This is still a bit of a long shot from your 200km, but you get the idea. Add a little heat shielding, and don't put a person aboard, and you could put this concept to use (further testing of course).

I am a big fan of the sky-hook method, should it ever become feasible.

(Queue technical objections in 3...2...1...)

Close call

[Joe the Lesser]

This project hangs on a thread. I don't know if they'll be able to pull it off or knot. They have to make sure they don't get tied up on this setback. It really could unravel any day.

Re:Close call

[Anonymous Coward]

Your punny post had me in stitches... ... yeah yeah, ok, I won't quit my day job after all.

Re:Close call

[Mushdot]

They should have outsourced the rope trickery to India :-)

Re:Close call

[dr_labrat]

I'm a frayed knot.....

Re:Close call

[CptNerd]

That post really struck a chord, but I'm too high-strung to reply. When I'm less tensile post something better in this thread.

Re:Close call

[jellomizer]

I was thinking the same thing. Having ropes stay in mid air is the type of think that Indians are known for. Even before they were know for Doing Computer Sciecne.

Re:Close call

[Rockin'Robert]

It is neither a frayed knot nor the string theory.
It's an expensive yo yo
that don't work.
Hint: 2nd generation 'Bouncing beagle'.
RR

Space Elevators endanger EVERYONE.

[Anonymous Coward]

The idea is so ill-thought out and ridiculous that I can't understand why people blithely accept it. Do we really need super-strong, miles-long cables hovering over us like swords of Damocles?

Even sci-fi authors like Kim Stanley Robinson have included disaster scenarios when contemplating this technology, but irl nobody ever discusses the massive dangers.

The tech is premature and unnecessary at this point, and the risk/reward is insane. This isn't a chicken/egg scenario. Let's get something going in space before we kill thousands and destroy millions in property for nothing.

Re:Space Elevators endanger EVERYONE.

[CRCulver]

In the years since the publication of Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy, alternative models for space elevators have been proposed that would not have the elevator falling down upon the Earth were it severed. See the Wikipedia article on the subject, as this is a frequently asked question.

Re:Space Elevators endanger EVERYONE.

[lewiscr]

> Seriously, get off this planet.

We're trying. STFU.

Re:Space Elevators endanger EVERYONE.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, but I disagree, mein freund!

Your lives are ours to toy with as ve choose! Ve have choost to make ein presentation to ze Pentagon and ve haff funding.

Ze tiny voice of ze menschen luddite shall not even be heard! It is ein minor fart in ze windstorm.

Luddites be aware! You shall not impede the march of ze science! Ve laff at your sad attempt at ze bravado.

Relaxen und watschen der blinkenlighten.

Cordially,
The scientific community.

Re:Space Elevators endanger EVERYONE.

[dpbsmith]

To say nothing of falling packages trailing 30-km-long super-strong ropes behind them, or lots of satellites with 30-km-long super-strong ropes getting tangled in each other.

One of the common observations about orbital collisions is that space is big, but by the time you start restricting yourself to practical orbits and orbital distances, and then deploying objects whose longest dimension is very long compared to its volume, it may not be so big after all.

Re:Space Elevators endanger EVERYONE.

[east coast]

Everyone's lives aren't yours to fuck with, you pompous pricks.

Yeah, let's go back to the days when science didn't create problems like this so that we can all die of the plague as nature intended. You science types, how dare you think that you can continue to dicker in my affairs.

I'm outta here. I need to go chop wood for 12 hours a day so I don't freeze to death this winter.

Re:Space Elevators endanger EVERYONE.

[Loke the Dog]

Why is this danger greater than the danger of getting hit by debris from an exploding space shuttle attempting reentry? Anyway, the tether would have extremely low density. If it for some strange reason did not burn or break because of the increased stress, it would probably fall to ground like a feather, if it even came down at all. It might just stay up there with the help of jet streams, like a kite.

In other words, the sci-fi authors don't know what they're talking about.

Re:Space Elevators endanger EVERYONE.

[hab136]

If you want your life and property under yet another constant threat, buy your own planet and move there. [...] Seriously, get off this planet.

Duh, that's why we're building a space elevator!

I'm sick and tired of the freewheeling science geeks that find new ways to put us all at risk with their useless toys, generation after generation.

Yeah, germ theory, that polio vaccine, seat belts, and global communications (like the internet) are evil. Those bastards. /sarcasm

Nobody but a selfish minority is interested in anyone making black holes in particle accelerators, building doomsday devices or suspending lethal pieces of engineering above everyone's heads.

You seem to think that the scientists building these things are either suicidal or incompetent (unable to assess the risks). I'd argue the people doing this advanced, risky thinks are smarter than either of us.

As for a "selfish minority" endangering the rest of the populace - no. The major threats to human life are heart disease and cancer (>50% of deaths in the US), automobiles (40k deaths/year), and other humans (homicide/suicide/police/military). New methods of space travel/delivery? Not so much.

You seem to really hate science for some reason. Arguing a project is risky is one thing; namecalling is just blind prejudice.

Re:Space Elevators endanger EVERYONE.

[Anonymous Coward]

Gosh, let's have two dozen more weak sisters trot out this straw man and pretend it's a substantive response.

I don't see one post in this thread railing against "science," fallacists. The actual topic is world-breaking insanity, which I notice that none of you can really defend specifically.

Yes, yes, anyone against creating black holes on earth or propping nearly-useless edifices above everyone's head hates polio vaccines and automobile engines. Great argument!

Re:Space Elevators endanger EVERYONE.

[jandrese]

Doesn't the low density requirement turn it into even harder to get unobtanium? The problem with space elevators isn't really the safety aspect--nobody who matters lives on the equator anyway. >:) The real problem is the materials science. We don't have anything close to strong enough to build this thing with yet, and I'm not as enthusiastic about carbon nanotubes being the solution as a lot of the people in the industry.

Re:Space Elevators endanger EVERYONE.

[hab136]

I don't see one post in this thread railing against "science," fallacists.

I guess "I'm sick and tired of the freewheeling science geeks" was only against scientists, not science itself. My mistake.

Yes, yes, anyone against creating black holes on earth or propping nearly-useless edifices above everyone's head hates polio vaccines and automobile engines. Great argument!

Both vaccine research and automobiles were described as dangerous and useless in the beginning (Don't toy with nature, you're going to kill us all! Who needs horseless carriages when we have horses?), just as you describe black holes and space elevators now, so I figure it a valid comparison.

Re:Space Elevators endanger EVERYONE.

[SlowMovingTarget]

Someone's been watching too much of the SciFi channel...

If particle accelerators were able to create black holes, those black holes would be so minuscule as to dissipate immediately (we do not have anywhere near the level of technology needed to create non-transient black holes, and if we did, we'd also have the technology to create them away from existing gravity wells). As another poster pointed out, space elevators could be designed such that they fail upward, just as we can now design nuclear fission reactors that cannot melt down.

Also, just to throw it in, a small fusion reaction in a magnetic bottle would not create gravity, just in case you saw Spider-Man 2.

Re:Space Elevators endanger EVERYONE.

[Loke the Dog]

Yep, you are absolutely correct, an earth based space elevator may very well be impossible even in theory because of the demands on the tether, and that's even before considering issues with climbers, wear and tear, etc... The people who put their faith in carbon nanotubes are blind to the facts.

However, on the moon or on mars, a space elevator is possible in theory. I expect that in the next 20 years, we'll see more and more detailed proposals for a space elevator on the moon. If one is built in our lifetime or not probably depends more on politics and money than on technology development.

Re:Space Elevators endanger EVERYONE.

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate to break it to you, but quite a few people have looked the supposed danger from a physics standpoint, and Kim Stanley Robinson is wrong.

An elevator ribbon can not plummet at incredible speeds to the earth, crushing everything in its path. Should an elevator ribbon fail, anything above the break point, regardless of altitude, flies off harmlessly into space. Anything below falls down at 9.81 m/s/s. The lower portions flutter harmessly down, like heavy fabric. The higher portions, as they fall into the increasingly thick atmosphere, will either be slowed to terminal velocity, becoming more fluttering fabric, or burn up in the process.

Of course, that point is moot since:
1.) No one's figured out how to make a strong enough ribbon.
2.) No one's figured out how to pay for and build such a ribbon in space.
3.) No one's figured out how to provide enough energy for anything to climb such a ribbon.

Re:Space Elevators endanger EVERYONE.

[Fweeky]

Even sci-fi authors like Kim Stanley Robinson have included disaster scenarios when contemplating this technology, but irl nobody ever discusses the massive dangers. Er, you don't think the possible dangers haven't been discussed, modeled, etc? Here, have a paper I found in about 30 seconds. See page 10:

Below about 43 km, vterm is below 10 m/s. This confirms what was stated in Edwards (2000b, Sec. 10.9): the ribbon will reach the ground at a very low velocity, and there will be no impact damage due to the ribbon falling. ... [pg 11] For a 20 T elevator, with a breaking point of 130 GPa, the maximum tension that can be achieved anywhere along the ribbon before it breaks is 1 MN. The Fate of a Broken Space Elevator corresponding force is 1.1 kN (about 110 kg) at 1 m of height, ten times more at 100 m of height. A building (100 m) should be undisturbed by this force, and a person (1 m) may be trapped, but should not be hurt. ... [pg 13] After an intense deceleration phase the ribbon falls slowly to the ground at less than 1 m/s In future, either learn to troll better, or learn to use Google. And perhaps update your mental model of "teh scientists!1!111!" to take into account the likelihood that they're rather less dense than you

Re:Space Elevators endanger EVERYONE.

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, get off this planet. Everyone's lives aren't yours to fuck with, you pompous pricks.

I'm sorry, who's f***'ing with everyone's lives here by putting a satellite in orbit? Looking at a relative risk analysis, is the Russian space agency placing a small satellite in space f***'ing more with your life or less than your neighbor driving his car to the store for groceries (which statistically is at least several thousand times more dangerous for both of you).

Why don't you get off the planet or else learn to accept some of the complexities of life.

Re:Space Elevators endanger EVERYONE.

[Anonymous Coward]

In future, either learn to troll better

*views angry responses to patently absurd rants*
*views hook in your mouth*

I dunno, seems like a pretty well-done job as-is.

Nothing exceptional, but a solid three-star effort.

what?

[Anonymous Coward]

wouldn't there be an equal and opposite reaction pulling the space part down to the earth part?

So much for...

[Delusion_]

...string theory.

Neat Trick

[roadkill_cr]

Thank goodness it only had to do with ropes hauling things. For a second I thought that the Ruskies were practicing the Rope trick effect for battle in outer space.

Previous try

[Harmonious Botch]

From new scientist

Experimental space tether fails to deploy * 15:17 11 May 2007 * NewScientist.com news service * Kelly Young A trio of mini-satellites has failed in their attempt to deploy a kilometre-long tether in space. The setback means the low-cost Multi-Application Survivable Tether (MAST) experiment, launched on 17 April, may not achieve its goal of testing the survivability of a thin, braided tether in space. Over the past week, mission managers determined that the tether-deploying element, known as Ted, had properly separated from the tether inspector, a tiny satellite called Gadget. But a glitch in the restraint system kept Ted from pushing away hard enough to keep unreeling the tether from its spool. So the tether deployed just a few metres, rather than a full kilometre. Robert Hoyt, chief executive officer of Tethers Unlimited, which designed the picosatellites, says mission managers suspect they know what caused the glitch, but the company is not ready to disclose this to the public yet. "I don't think we'll ever know for sure," he says. Space tethers could one day be used to fling satellites into different orbits, thus saving satellite companies money on fuel. Or tethers could enable clusters of satellites to fly in formation and prevent them from drifting away from one another over time. Such an application might be useful in interferometry, where images from several telescopes, spaced some distance apart, are combined to give greater resolution. Some data Despite the setback, the MAST team at Tethers Unlimited, a company in Bothell, Washington, US, still may be able to get other data from Gadget to learn how a short tether behaves in microgravity. MAST team members discussed having Gadget crawl down the tether to Ted to try to restart the deployment, but they decided that option was too risky. "If we were to have Gadget start to crawl, there is the possibility of the satellites banging together, which would be very likely to damage solar cells and other systems," Hoyt says. This was not the first setback for the mission, which costs less than $1 million. After launch, the satellite team could not get a signal from Ted (see No signal yet heard from tether-deploying satellite). But they said that this should not have affected Ted's ability to deploy the tether. Longest tether Then, sky watchers who had been on the lookout for the deployed tether and satellites from the ground had not seen anything when MAST was scheduled to appear overhead. "That's one confirmation that the tether is not deployed to a very long length," Hoyt told New Scientist. In other space tether news, the longest planned space tether just got a little closer to launch. The satellite, a project of 500 students in Europe known as Young Engineers Satellite 2 (YES2), was shipped to its launch site in Russia from the Netherlands on 10 May. YES2, a project of the European Space Agency, is scheduled to launch in September. If everything goes as planned, the satellite will unroll a 30-kilometre-long tether that is a mere 0.5 millimetres thick. The end of the tether will be attached to a small round capsule called Fotino that will eventually re-enter Earth's atmosphere and attempt to land

Story is not complete

[The-Bus]

The rope did not only not unwind fully, it started going back into the spacecraft. Representatives from the manufactuer of the rope-unwinding mechanism, Duncan YY Heavy Industries, were unavailable for comment.

Re:Story is not complete

[aero6dof]

Duncan YY Heavy Industries, were unavailable for comment.

I heard that they barely beat out YoYoDyne unwinder contract.

Previous try ( with formating corrected )

[Harmonious Botch]

Experimental space tether fails to deploy

        * 15:17 11 May 2007
        * NewScientist.com news service
        * Kelly Young

A trio of mini-satellites has failed in their attempt to deploy a kilometre-long tether in space.

The setback means the low-cost Multi-Application Survivable Tether (MAST) experiment, launched on 17 April, may not achieve its goal of testing the survivability of a thin, braided tether in space.

Over the past week, mission managers determined that the tether-deploying element, known as Ted, had properly separated from the tether inspector, a tiny satellite called Gadget. But a glitch in the restraint system kept Ted from pushing away hard enough to keep unreeling the tether from its spool. So the tether deployed just a few metres, rather than a full kilometre.

Robert Hoyt, chief executive officer of Tethers Unlimited, which designed the picosatellites, says mission managers suspect they know what caused the glitch, but the company is not ready to disclose this to the public yet. "I don't think we'll ever know for sure," he says.

Space tethers could one day be used to fling satellites into different orbits, thus saving satellite companies money on fuel.

Or tethers could enable clusters of satellites to fly in formation and prevent them from drifting away from one another over time. Such an application might be useful in interferometry, where images from several telescopes, spaced some distance apart, are combined to give greater resolution.
Some data

Despite the setback, the MAST team at Tethers Unlimited, a company in Bothell, Washington, US, still may be able to get other data from Gadget to learn how a short tether behaves in microgravity.

MAST team members discussed having Gadget crawl down the tether to Ted to try to restart the deployment, but they decided that option was too risky. "If we were to have Gadget start to crawl, there is the possibility of the satellites banging together, which would be very likely to damage solar cells and other systems," Hoyt says.

This was not the first setback for the mission, which costs less than $1 million. After launch, the satellite team could not get a signal from Ted (see No signal yet heard from tether-deploying satellite). But they said that this should not have affected Ted's ability to deploy the tether.
Longest tether

Then, sky watchers who had been on the lookout for the deployed tether and satellites from the ground had not seen anything when MAST was scheduled to appear overhead. "That's one confirmation that the tether is not deployed to a very long length," Hoyt told New Scientist.

In other space tether news, the longest planned space tether just got a little closer to launch. The satellite, a project of 500 students in Europe known as Young Engineers Satellite 2 (YES2), was shipped to its launch site in Russia from the Netherlands on 10 May.

YES2, a project of the European Space Agency, is scheduled to launch in September. If everything goes as planned, the satellite will unroll a 30-kilometre-long tether that is a mere 0.5 millimetres thick. The end of the tether will be attached to a small round capsule called Fotino that will eventually re-enter Earth's atmosphere and attempt to land

Ricky Jay Started a space company a few years back

[Anonymous Coward]

They had a plan for launching playing cards back to earth from a satellite.

They went under because they vastly overestimated the market for deorbiting playing cards. Perhaps with the new uptick in texas holdem, this might make economic sense again.

Obligatory obligatory

[navygeek]

Queue stupid 'In Soviet Russia...' jokes in:
5....
4...
3..
2.
1

Re:Obligatory obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia, stupid jokes queue you.

Re:Obligatory obligatory

[Dunbal]

We can clearly see that the "stupid" count-down joke has already taken off.

Some of us actually LIKE the "Soviet Russia" jokes...

Re:Obligatory obligatory

[mjwx]

Some of us actually LIKE the "Soviet Russia" jokes...

In Soviet Russia Joke likes you.

converse project also fails

[kj_in_ottawa]

The other half of the space exploration on a string program previously failed, when Russian Scientists discovered they could only push the space probe approximately 3 cms with the fibre.

The Proper Way to Do It

[Hoi Polloi]

If they bothered to do some research they would've found out that the way to do this is to sit in a cloth, put on a turban, and play a flute in front of a basket with a rope coiled in it until it went up into the sky. Then you have a little kid climb up it.

Sounds like...

[Anonymous Coward]

they needed to get Haji on the issue.

Spooling is hard

[Animats]

Managing big spools of line is surprisingly difficult. Oceanographers run into this all the time, as they try to lower a few miles of line into the ocean. The textile industry runs into it when they try to use very large spools so they can run machinery longer without splicing. Designing something to unspool 30Km of line under near-zero tension in zero G is non-trivial.

Here's a discussion of spool winding, if you're really interested. There are even companies that specialize in spool winding.

Re:Spooling is hard

[dpbsmith]

"The whale line is only two thirds of an inch in thickness. At first sight, you would not think it so strong as it really is. By experiment its one and fifty yarns will each suspend a weight of one hundred and twenty pounds; so that the whole rope will bear a strain nearly equal to three tons. In length, the common sperm whale-line measures something over two hundred fathoms. Towards the stern of the boat it is spirally coiled away in the tub, not like the worm-pipe of a still though, but so as to form one round, cheese-shaped mass of densely bedded sheaves, or layers of concentric spiralizations, without any hollow but the heart, or minute vertical tube formed at the axis of the cheese. As the least tangle or kink in the coiling would, in running out, infallibly take somebody's arm, leg, or entire body off, the utmost precaution is used in stowing the line in its tub. Some harpooneers will consume almost an entire morning in this business, carrying the line high aloft and then reeving it downwards through a block towards the tub, so as in the act of coiling to free it from all possible wrinkles and twists."

--Herman Melville, "Moby-Dick, or the Whale"

Re:Spooling is hard

[Lumpy]

Designing something to unspool 30Km of line under near-zero tension in zero G is non-trivial.

then put a heavy weight on the other end.... DUH. why dont these scientists think of these things!

Re:Spooling is hard

[Dunbal]

then put a heavy weight on the other end

      I assume you were being sarcastic. At least I hope so!

They needed Slim Pickins

[ProteusQ]

Just to kick on the bit that didn't uncoil and ride it all the way down, waving his cowboy hat.

Tether Enabled SSTO

[StCredZero]

HASTOL stands for Hypersonic Airplane Space Tether Orbital Launch. This was studied by NASA. We currently have a hard time with a winged craft that can make it to orbit. Space elevators also require "Unobtanium" with unattainably high tensile strengths. But if we combine the two, we get something which is both technically feasible and capable of dirt-cheap earth to orbit. Basically, have an aircraft capable of very high altitude, and about half orbital velocity rendevous with a rotating tether (Rotovator) that can take a cargo the rest of the way to orbit.

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Re:Tether Enabled SSTO

[GreggBz]

My first question about this HASTOL was how are you going to anchor the orbiter laying out the rope? Wouldn't it get pulled right back down towards Earth? Then I googled for the documents and read this tidbit,

Next is the grapple system that will grip the payload from the airplane and hand it over to the tether system. The tether system will rely on Earth's gravity or its electromagnetic energy to slingshot the payload at orbital speeds. This momentum-exchange tether will allow the energy and momentum to be transferred between objects in space, allowing the system to toss a spacecraft from one orbit to another.it seems that this is a system for transfering payloads between objects in established orbit.

Rely on it's gravity or electromagnetic energy? I'll need to read more to get some clarification on this..

Re:Tether Enabled SSTO

[StCredZero]

Basically, the Rotovator stores kinetic energy which is transferred to the cargo being lifted. The Rotovator can be gradually accelerated back to its former speed by very high efficiency engines, like ion engines. This is much more economical than chemical rockets because: 1) the very high exhaust velocities reduce the fuel required by a couple of order of magnitude and 2) you can refuel periodically using the Rotorvator itself.

In addition, power can be beamed to the Rotorvator from the earth using lasers or microwaves, which further reduces the weight of the entire system.

Re:Tether Enabled SSTO

[MyLongNickName]

Forget how to rely to the story instead of the unrelated First Post. Comment should be modded off topic (as mine should be too)

Re:Tether Enabled SSTO

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not use a blimp? Wouldn't that be easier?

Re:Tether Enabled SSTO

[Rei]

Blimps can't get out of the atmosphere, contrary to the claims of JP Aerospace ;) The drag on them is just too huge.

Rotavators are tricky; they're not completely immune to drag, either. I did some off-the cuff calculations a while back, and they didn't look promising at all. When you have even a thin cable moving through rarified atmosphere, that helps, but the cable has to be very long, so it still has significant cross-sectional area, and hypersonic speeds are really problematic. Even though the cable is at it's slowest (relative to Earth) when in the deepest part of the atmosphere, that area still has by far the strongest atmospheric resistance. It's pretty significant. It also makes me worry a lot about oscillations on all axes, since you're getting a regularly applied, evenly applied force. How could you possibly get enough damping? And this doesn't even consider drag from Earth's magnetic field.

Given the success in the history of space tethers just with the most basic of experiments, I see very little hope for Rotavators in the foreseeable future. I think that electromagnetic assist may eventually be achievable for raising or lowering payloads already in orbit, but I'm not that hopeful for this particular proposal.

Re:Tether Enabled SSTO

[turgid]

The Rotovator can be gradually accelerated back to its former speed by very high efficiency engines, like ion engines.

All the rotovators I've ever seen run on two stroke and are piloted by a burly man called Colin wearing steel toe-cap boots a donkey jacket and ear defenders.

You should have seen his potatoes and sprouts.

Re:Tether Enabled SSTO

[lastchance_000]

I thought the Rotovator was one of the weapons from the Ratchet & Clank games.

Re:Tether Enabled SSTO

[PingPongBoy]

Space elevators also require "Unobtanium" with unattainably high tensile strengths. But if we combine the two, we get something which is both technically feasible and capable of dirt-cheap earth to orbit. Basically, have an aircraft capable of very high altitude, and about half orbital velocity rendevous with a rotating tether (Rotovator) that can take a cargo the rest of the way to orbit.


Here's an idea, very unlikely to work: use more than one rotovator rather than a big, long one. Each rotovator extends to its limited length, at the working limit of its strength. Each rotovator suspends another, except the bottom one has a hook for the cargo. Of course, the higher rotovators have to carry more weight, but simply use the block and tackle idea of hanging from many different loops.

Of course, the force of gravity increases as an item is lowered so ultimately the centre of gravity also descends. When the thingy reaches the ground, the centre of gravity may be so low that the entire contraption is practically on the ground. Not to mention, it probably would have the mass of several Brooklyn Bridges.

A better idea: make monster towers that reach into space. These would resemble mountains at the base but can be much skinnier as the effects of gravity decrease a few thousand kilometres above sea level. Of course, the base might be as wide as the Sahara Desert, and several of these may have to be built around the equator for balance. Another problem is the solar wind, which might wear away the surfaces, though this is a problem with a suspended cable too.

It's not a wonder that Borg ships are cubical. The pyramid points around a circumscribed sphere allow gravity to be defied.

Re:Tether Enabled SSTO

[StCredZero]

The post is related to the parent post's subject: "Actually..." But I decided to to an actual "actually" instead of a joke.

Re:Tether Enabled SSTO

[StCredZero]

Someone at NASA also worked out that you could build a tower 100km tall by using highly pressurized boron balloon tanks as columns. Put an electromagnetic accelerator on top of a series of these, and you have a working space elevator.

Re:Tether Enabled SSTO

[PingPongBoy]

Someone at NASA also worked out that you could build a tower 100km tall by using highly pressurized boron balloon tanks as columns

That sounds wonderful for the first 100 km.

A couple of problems arise. If something hits the tower, even gusts of wind, it will break from its anchor and fly away. The other problem is going higher.

Pardon the pun, but defying gravity cannot be done lightly. The ultimate solution may be to build an enormous structure that itself does not rest on the geologically shifting ground but rather wraps around the globe.

Weird reversal of space pen gag

[192939495969798999]

In Russia, they spend millions of dollars developing space cable to lower object from space. In America, we just wait for gravity to bring it down!

Re:Obligatory obligatory - In Soviet Russia . . .

[nevermore94]

In Soviet Russia, space rope tricks you. (Didn't want to leave ya hangin.)

Re:Obligatory obligatory - In Soviet Russia . . .

[navygeek]

Yeah, fair enough. I deserved that...

oblig ISR

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia, rope unwinds you!

DHL are working on it

[simong]

But the difficult bit is working out how to put Atlanta into orbit.

Re:Am I the only one...

[Anonymous Coward]

Thankfully, no one asks you whenever there's a radical idea. Bet you'd be against this http://world.honda.com/HondaJet/ on the grounds of 'absolutely retarded' as well.

confused?

[kurtis25]

I'm not sure I get this one bit... In my mind I'm taking this to mean that a big ball will be let down from a satellite hanging on a 18 mile long cord that eventually clips off and falls to earth. Does this cord break up or give people the lashing of a lifetime? Even better could we anchor it on the ground and hook an elevator up to it?

Re:Sorry Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

I know someone who's getting a dictionary and grammar guide for Christmas!!

"It could be that the tether got stuck,"

[Cajun Hell]

People, please think about that, the next time you put off trimming your trees. It's not just about the neighborhood kids' kites anymore.

2,000 packages

[Leuf]

No wonder my dog barks so much at the UPS truck, that thing must be a TARDIS to get all that in there. That also explains why they aren't interested in our quaint little rockets and space shuttles.

They were actually pretty close

[Kazymyr]

Since 30000 feet = 9.14km...

Ah wait...

This isn't NASA.

Nothing to see here, move along.

Russian mission control, but ESA Student satellite

[Anonymous Coward]

The space rope trick was actually an ESA students project: YES2, the second Young Engineers Satellite.

According to the article at ESA:

The Second Young Engineers' Satellite (YES2) was activated and separated from the Foton-M3 spacecraft earlier today. The tether deployed for 8.5 km, after which the Fotino capsule was released on its way to Earth.

"We are very proud of the students' work, although we didn't reach the full 30 km deployment" said Roger Walker, YES2 project manager for ESA's Education Office. "The hard work of the YES2 team over the past five years has paid off with this largely successful demonstration."

YES2 was part of the Foton-M3 experiment, which concluded succesfully today.

The reentry capsule for the Foton-M3 spacecraft, which has been in low-Earth orbit for the last 12 days, successfully landed this morning in an uninhabited area 150 km south of the town of Kustanay in Kazakhstan, close to the Russian border, at 09:58 CEST, 13:58 local time.

The unmanned Foton spacecraft, which was launched on 14 September from Baikonur Cosmodrome, in Kazakhstan, carried a payload of 43 European experiments in a range of scientific disciplines - including fluid physics, biology, crystal growth, radiation exposure and exobiology.

Why the submitter didn't link to ESA is beyond me.

FedEx Satellites

[Maximum Prophet]

Interestingly enough, FedEx does/did have satellites. Why you ask? In the 1980's what was then Federal Express worked with the fax companies to develop the Group III fax standard. Every FedEx station got one of these large fax machine complete with hard drives and a plain paper printer. The theory was, people would go to a FedEx location, have their documents faxed to somewhere else, where, for a fee, a courier would deliver it to the recipient. Alternately, high value customers, like law firms, would get a smaller thermal machines for mostly sending to the FedEx station which would forward it to the target station for delivery. The satellites were used to route the data between stations w/o using a phone line. Remember, this was before the Internet, and most companies who used fax would buy them in pairs to send between sites. Almost no one else would have a fax machine that could talk to your fax machine.

Federal Express spend *billions* on the system, and it failed utterly. What happened was the same companies that helped them develop the Group III standard made their thermal machines cheap and interoperatable. Soon, everyone had them, and the thermal paper wasn't too bad. You could always photocopy it once if you wanted a more permanent record. That, and falling long distance phone prices made it overall cheaper to fax a document than to have FedEx do it for you.

To sum up, FedEx has already been to space. They are looking at it, and it's always way too expensive for any kind of regular service. (except some data)

Low use rope skill?

[Sheik Yerbouti]

Because that is definitely a DC 20 attempt.

Goes Awry?

[LanceUppercut]

What is this nonsense? Another bit of propaganda? The success of the experiment itself does not include the rope unwinding fully (or not unwinding fully). That's completely secondary. The success of the experiment depends only on the payload returning to Earth successfully. Period. If it returns, then the experiment is 100% successful. How much of the rope unwinds in this case makes absolutely no difference, especially taking into account the fact that no one knows yet how much is really necessary. That's actually one of the things they are trying to determine by this experiment in the first place.

One more reason

[OglinTatas]

Sure you could deliver a package anywhere in the world in a couple of hours, but it will take a few more hours to a few days to clear customs anyway.

(I had a _very_ bad experience shipping a friend's dog to Turkey recently... they decided to classify a spayed pet coon hound as an "exotic breeding animal" which required a few days of chasing around the proper forms, finding the proper officials to fill them out/stamp them, and of course all the taxes and fees. FIVE days in a box instead of the scheduled two. I suspect the forms were thrown out and the fees pocketed, and the dog officially admitted as a pet. Turkey is ranked 64 on the list of corrupt nations)

So the old proverb is true!

[corifornia2]

It does't take a rocket scientist to drop a rope... Thanks for making that one obvious.

Re:Am I the only one...

[KGIII]

Actually yes. I think that is just as retarded. Maybe more so. "Let's make more jets to tax an already overwhelmed system that protects people and property by making them smaller." Who ever came up with that idea needs to be shot in the face and their parents should be prevented from breeding again.

Fast delivery is extremely valuable

[sjbe]

A vanishingly small number of situations require a specific material object to cross the globe in a couple hours.

Are you kidding? If I could get products from China delivered here in the US within hours economically that would be HUGELY beneficial. Long delivery lead times are an enormous cost for a huge variety of products. It takes weeks for a ship to cross the ocean. Cut that to days or hours (at a reasonable cost) and you have altered the global economy forever. That's just products. There is a lot of value in being able to deliver people to distant destinations quickly as well. The problem is that the technology doesn't exist to make such transport both quick and cheap. But the need is there even if the technology isn't (economically) there yet.

Re:Fast delivery is extremely valuable

[PitaBred]

It takes weeks to ship things from China because people don't want to pay the extra to have things flown over. It's not hugely beneficial to have things delivered in hours... it takes a ton of time to get the thing manufactured in the first place (plans, tooling, etc.), a few weeks to save a LOT of money is always worth it. The only time it wouldn't be is with prototypes, but then, why aren't you just making those closer to home, or even having a direct hand in the building of the prototype? The "need" won't ever be there as long as it takes a fuckton more energy to move things more quickly than via a ship. But hey, maybe it's time to get back into the dirigible business...

Re:Fast delivery is extremely valuable

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you read what was said? We're already able to get things across the globe in days, and can amortize the cost of such deliveries to do so. Short of that, we can usually find or make an identical copy locally. The premise I was answering was the ability to get a unique object across the globe in, say, three hours. I pointed out that the energy required to do so, and the low likelihood of batching up such deliveries, means that the cost of a delivery far exceeds the value of the object, which isn't likely to change anytime soon.

Re:Fast delivery is extremely valuable

[hondo77]

It takes weeks to ship things from China because people don't want to pay the extra to have things flown over.

Then again, if I order an iPod directly from Apple, I get free shipping from China and it arrives in just a few days. I suspect my iMac order next month will have the same deal.

Re:Fast delivery is extremely valuable

[sjbe]

It's not hugely beneficial to have things delivered in hours...

I'm an industrial engineer and global sourcing is what I do for a living. Yes having things delivered in hours is hugely beneficial, if not always necessary. It's just not usually economically possible for a lot of products. Just-In-Time delivery exists because of the cost of storage and transport are so high for many products, even durable ones. If air transport was anywhere close to as cheap as sea transport, (almost) no one would use boats. Economics wins out over logistics almost every time. But all other things being equal (and they almost never are equal) faster delivery is better. We use slower delivery methods because the trade offs economically favor the slower method but never forget there is a cost to slower delivery. It may be overshadowed by other costs but it's still there.

Seafood, cut flowers, produce and lots of other products use air transport every day because sea transport is too slow. Food preservation is an enormously important industry precisely because of the inefficiencies in transportation. Go to your grocery store. Fresh salmon from Chile doesn't last for 6 days much less 6 weeks unfrozen or unpreserved. A huge percentage of the produce was transported by air because it's the only way to get it to market before it spoils. Over time these products along with technology improvements in aircraft will pave the way for other products to be transported economically by air. Will ocean vessels disappear? Of course not. They have certain advantages which aren't going away in our grandchildren's lifetimes. But that does not change the fact that there is a cost to slow delivery even for products which do not spoil. Storing and transporting a product is not free no matter how slow the transport becomes. Cut product delivery times from China and India from weeks to days while keeping costs contained and you will change the world economy more than you can imagine.

Re:Fast delivery is extremely valuable

[Rei]

If we had better infrastructure, ground transport would be so much faster and cheaper and we wouldn't have to rely on air transport for anywhere that ground connected to. If we were building all of our transportation infrastructure from the ground-up, everything from vehicle design to road construction, why bother with human drivers at all? We could have autoconvoying vehicles moving much faster and taking more efficient routes to their destinations. We could have vehicles getting their power straight from the grid as they travelled, eliminating the need for stops. Much simpler, easier to maintain vehicles, since they're all electric and only need minimal batteries. Heck, we could even have halbach arrays on the undersides of vehicles and coils of wire embedded in the road on major interstates, allowing for Inductrac-style maglev for those roads (potentially hundreds of mph in a convoy), and have the vehicles settle back to normal wheeled transport for the regular, cheaper to construct surface streets. Overall, cheaper, faster, safer, and more environmentally friendly all at once -- and nothing about it would preclude manual, offroad driving for those who like to drive, if they want to spend extra on an ICE or batteries.

I think it's a shame that our existing infrastructure holds us back from modernizing. We have the technology but not the capital.

Re:Fast delivery is extremely valuable

[larry bagina]

Yep. I ordered mine on a Thurday night and it was in my hands on Tuesday morning. I assumed it had been sent from a warehouse in California until I took a careful look at the shipping label.

(I'm also ordering an iMac the day leopard is released).

summary of joke

[icebones]

Is the summary supposed to be an intentional joke?

sending a parcel from space to Earth ... fell short of its goal .... rope did not fully unwind

Slim Pickins

[FozE_Bear]

They tried to get Slim, but he would NEVER work for the Ruskies! He's in Vegas with his survival kit.

Pushing rope

[flyingfsck]

Well, pushing rope is known to be a problem, while smoking rope is an acient passtime. When they finally did manage to talk to the satellite, it said: "Hey, dude...".

After a minute and a half on Google.

[ahfoo]

I get the following:

The tether was made of Dyneema.

Wikipedia says this is a synonym for ultra high molecular weight polyethylene

    Regarding the weaknesses of UHMWPE, thermal properties are highlighted and consist of the following:

The weak bonding between olefin molecules allows local thermal excitations to disrupt the crystalline order of a given chain piece-by-piece, giving it much poorer heat resistance than other high-strength fibers. Its melting point is around 144 to 152 degrees Celsius, and according to DSM, it is not advisable to use UHMWPE fibers at temperatures exceeding 80 to 100C for long periods of time. It becomes brittle at temperatures below -150C.

      Googling for the temperature outside of the space station turns up a Yahoo answers page.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20061215121108AASpIMx&show=7

        Which says the answer is -250 F. Convert to Celsius and we get -156.7C

          Maybe this helps to explain what might have happened.

Re:After a minute and a half on Google.

[Rei]

Ambient "temperature" is somewhat of an abstract concept when there's effectively no atmosphere. What matters most to how warm you are is how much radiation you're absorbing and how much you're radiating. I.e., insulation and color.

There's no way that they didn't consider the temperature of the tether. You consider the temperature of *everything* that goes into space.

What probably ruined this experiment is what ruined past experiments: oscillations. You can get axial oscillations from all sorts of sources, even things as little as variations in the speed of the motor can build up because of resonance. There's almost nothing to dampen them. We've had tethers outright snap because of this. We've also had tethers snap because of other things, of course. My "favorite" was the tether whose insulation had tiny pockets of trapped gas that expanded in the vaccum of space. The tether had become very high voltage because of moving through Earth's magnetic field, and the leak of gas allowed it to discharge in a plasma arc that cut the tether in half.

Not so simple a process as it at first seems.

Re:After a minute and a half on Google.

[dnormant]

Google sent you to yahoo answers?

Re:After a minute and a half on Google.

[RodgerDodger]

Not really, because temperature in space doesn't work the way you seem to think it does.

If it's -20C on Earth, a human will lose heat fast. Why? Because the heat will transfer from the person to the surrounding air via conduction.

In space, there's no air (duh). That means you don't lose heat from conduction - only via radiating. Furthermore, if this experiment was done in sunlight (probably), then rather than losing heat energy, the line would almost certainly have been gaining it.

Re:After a minute and a half on Google.

[ahfoo]

I'm just reporting the facts of what I turned up in a quick background search using the terms that were in the article. It looks pretty relevant to me. The Wikipedia article on UHMWPE says very clearly, and I'll quote it for you again one more time.

"(UHMWPE has)much poorer heat resistance than other high-strength fibers."

I was comparing two facts. A) the temperature that was stated for when UHMWPE gets brittle to B) the temperature that is recorded outside the space station when it is dark. They happen to match.

You're the one making assumptions. I'm bringing in some additional facts that weren't in the article.

Re:After a minute and a half on Google.

[RodgerDodger]

Except that the temperature ratings for the material are in an atmosphere - not a vacuum. Thus, the two points aren't related.

Dyneema

[Anonymous Coward]

... is aka Spectra in the US. Used for sailing rigging, kites, and fishing line among other things. .5mm would be about 70lb test strength. Given where this package is supposed to dangle from might that be overkill?

Re:Am I the only one...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the GP was referring to the engines above the wings on that jet which play around with Bernoulli's Principle, as opposed to the classic style where engines are below the wings.

It's not like planes are going to go away any time soon, so I don't see how that applies. Too many airplanes is more a social and business problem than a scientific one.

Sounds impressively dangerous

[dstone]

From TFA...

the tether only unfolded to a length of 8.5 kilometres after being released from the spacecraft orbiting around 300 kilometres above Earth ... Mission Control would try to calculate the capsule's orbit and determine when and where it would land ... the tether deployed Tuesday is half a millimetre thick and is made of Dyneema, which the ESA described as the world's strongest fibre Heads up! Light, unbreakable, invisible rope flailing around...

Re:Am I the only one...

[KGIII]

Ah maybe that's what they were on about. I had no idea if they had a point other than it was a nifty looking small airplane which, really, I think is a crazy idea and said why. Not that it was a scientific reason that I thought it was retarded but rather, as you point out, a social and business problem that science likely can't repair. (At least not without genetically engineering people to behave differently and I don't think most of society is going to stand still and let that happen, but I digress.)

I realize that I got modded down as flamebait though, really, my goal was simply to express my thoughts on the subject and being modded down doesn't bug me too much. It is unfortunate that people thought it was an effort to flame or to get heated responses. I just think it's an absurd method to solve a problem that doesn't need solving. I was just as alarmed when the story cropped up in my local paper this morning and just as grateful that it wasn't my tax dollars being wasted on that too.

I will go spend a few minutes reading more about Bernoulli's Principle because that does look interesting though it may be a bit over my head. Thanks for that - I didn't need to get any work done today anyhow. ;) It looks as though it will make some interesting reading.

P.E.T.E. ?

[Anonymous Coward]

"The tether deployed Tuesday is half a millimetre thick and is made of Dyneema, which the ESA described as the world's strongest fibre and is used by kite surfers."

P.E.T.E. (People for Ethical Treatment of Extraterrestrials) reports space seals and other space life are getting tangled in plastic lines. Please remember to cut your tethers in to little pieces before discarding. Thank you.

Hmm

[abug]

Beanstalks are out of fashion now? Hrmph. I bet they use those fancy metal ladders now too.

"landing" like Harold the sheep?

[Medievalist]

The ESA article says, in part,

The reentry capsule for the Foton-M3 spacecraft, which has been in low-Earth orbit for the last 12 days, successfully landed this morning in an uninhabited area 150 km south of the town of Kustanay in Kazakhstan, close to the Russian border, at 09:58 CEST, 13:58 local time. I was under the impression that Russian vehicles do not so much land as plummet . That's why they generally aim for uninhabited portions of Kazakhstan.