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The Device NASA Is Leaving Behind
iminplaya writes "After years of delays, NASA hopes to launch this week a European-built laboratory that will greatly expand the research capability of the international space station. Although some call it a milestone, the launch has focused new attention on the space agency's earlier decision to back out of plans to send up a different, $1.5 billion device — one that many scientists contend would produce far more significant knowledge. "...it would be a true international disgrace if this instrument ends up as a museum piece that never is used.""
Nobel prize winner Steve Weinberg says in the article that it will be the only good science done on the ISS if it goes up!!!
Argh someone new please RTFA and quickly post what THAT item is! The suspense is killing me!
These are 2 devices that require to be in space. The CAM is the centrifuge module. It would allow us to test biologicals systems to long term exposure to low G's. For instance, what would happen with mice over the course of their life time, if exposed to 6/10 G.. This makes all the difference to us as we speak of setting up a colony on mars.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
From the article: "The AMS is an automated device with a specific set of scientific tasks."
Would someone please explain to me why this device must be attached to the space station? (Other than that it was built to be attached to the space station.) It seems to me that such an instrument could've been placed on its own dedicated satellite.
Or is this a case of "we'll get funding for this if we hitch it to the best funding-horse around"?
cb
Oooh! What does this button do!?
And why does it even need the ISS?
Couldn't it be just launched with a rocket, after adding the necessary bits so that it doesn't need the ISS?
Why do the rest of us care one iota about dark matter? It may answer fundamental questions etc and could eventually have some positive effect for the people who have to pay for it but surely if our discoveries have to wait 10 years for the next opportunity to put a similar instrument up it's no immediate tragedy?
On the other hand any biological experiments on Columbus might have a far more immediate effect on us e.g. understanding salmonella is important because all of us are at some degree of risk from it.
I am sorry for the people who see their great efforts at risk of being wasted - but not that sorry, because I know that the practitioners of every discipline think that theirs is the most fundamental and important to mankind in some way and all of them are wrong, because everything is important.
This is all just my personal opinion.
Some needs to write Mr. Ting a memo, reminding him that since that commitment is made, not one but TWO shuttles have been blown to flinders along with their brave crews.
Um... no. The Challenger blew up in the 80s. The project was conceived in 1994.
So since that commitment was made, not two but ONE shuttle has been blown up.
You're also ignoring the fact that NASA is flying shuttle missions for far less important reasons. The ISS is a huge, ridiculous waste of resources. This piece is the silver lining on that cloud, the one major scientific venture. They're skipping it in favor of kiddie science projects and more stuff related to human activity, i.e. putting more lives in danger.
The credibility of the US is at stake here? Some needs to write Mr. Ting a memo, reminding him that since that commitment is made, not one but TWO shuttles have been blown to flinders along with their brave crews.
The Challenger blew up in 1986, whereas the commitment was made in 1994. I don't think that anyone has ever questioned the fact that strapping yourself to the top of hundreds of tons of high explosives is inherently dangerous.
If you want to make a more valid point, you could indicate that neither the space shuttle or the ISS are particularly well-suited for the purpose that they were designed to fulfill (and I'd imagine that many of the ISS's woes are stemming from the issues with the fact that the space shuttle is expensive, dangerous, and can't carry very big payloads -- literally the worst of all worlds).
For what it's cost to send the shuttle into orbit umpteen times delivering parts to the ISS, I imagine that we could have designed and built a large rocket that could have delivered most of the payload in one or two trips. We'd already done it twice -- the US had the Saturn vehicles, and Russia more recently had the the Energia platform.
If we had a better platform than the shuttle for sending large parts to the ISS, we might have actually been able to get some legitimate science done on it. The shuttle was *never* an optimal launch vehicle, even before the safety issues came to light.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
This whole mess can be blamed on our IDIOT president. We had a project in progress, the ISS, and now we have to change our priorities to satisfy W's ego. Yes it's going to waste a ton of money. Yes it's going to piss off all the people that spent years developing the AMS detector. But obviously Bush doesn't care. Can't wait till he's gone.
Worse yet, this is clearly a case of putting politics over science. This 'lab' will accomplish nothing more, it seems, than the same insipid crap that's been done since the beginning of the Shuttle era: materials science in 0-g. Zero gravity can be simulated on earth, fairly well. Doing good astronomy needs to be done in space away from sources of interference.
The remaining shuttle missions need to be used for real science, not some political crap that attempts to smooth over differences between US and Europe. As if a space station would solve political problems. Like they'll say "you guys really screwed up that Iraq thing, but you helped us out with the space shuttle so you're OK in my book."
That's been the problem with the ISS since the very beginning - cute story for political news, bad use of resources for science.
Article states, "Griffin initiated a study last year into alternative ways to deliver the AMS to the station, but they proved to be prohibitively expensive."
Does anyone know if this includes any of the nascent commercial carriers?
If they could get this into a slightly higher orbit, could it be delivered later with a small amount of reaction mass?
Perhaps they should re-open this for bids.
Lost in space at an early age. Survived the vacuum. Now rebuilding castle in air.
The credibility of the US is at stake here? Some needs to write Mr. Ting a memo, reminding him that since that commitment is made, not one but TWO shuttles have been blown to flinders along with their brave crews.
Just think, how many days or is it hours of Iraq does it take to fund a solution to this? Not many.
Think, for what has been spent on Iraq and Afghanistan, we could have a US space station around Mars or Jupiter, maybe both.
So how do you propose to simulate, say, just one hour of continuous zero gravity?
Frankly, I don't know how useful or useless material science in zero-g is. However I'd strongly question your assertion that zero-g can be adequately simulated on earth.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
"The credibility of the United States is at stake here..."
I thought that in the last 7 years (the Bush reign), we had already pretty much lost whatever credibility we once had...
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- Eric Hoffer
This is Slashdot.
We're talking about NASA.
So of course it's wrong, by definition. NASA can do no right, on Slashdot.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
The money is there; it is simply about priorities. Take a look at the budget to get an idea of where the money is going instead of somewhere constructive.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
Some people's faith in businesses is as naive as others' faith in governments.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
>However I'd strongly question your assertion that zero-g can be adequately simulated on earth.
'Zero-gee': no, never. 'Free-fall': yes, quite well.
Witness:
http://science.nasa.gov/ssl/msad/dtf/tube.htm
(cool image: http://science.nasa.gov/ssl/msad/dtf/images/stand1.gif)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallturm_Bremen
(additional: http://www.spaceflight.esa.int/users/index.cfm?act=default.page&level=11&page=fac-dt)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drop_tube
"It's time to take life by the cans." ~ Bender ("Bendin' in the Wind", ep. 3-13)
I remember working in a DoD shop, and we FREQUENTLY built shelf-ware. You'd get involved in the project, and do to the water-fall nature of the requirements, things would change so much (or get finished in time for a better tool to be built). And it went on the shelf. The worst part was you usually found out it was going on a shelf before you completed it, but you HAD to complete it to finish the contract and get some other task that would replace it... it was all very silly.
meh
SPACE SCIENCE: NASA Declares No Room for Antimatter Experiment
Science 16 March 2007: 1476
DOI: 10.1126/science.315.5818.1476
News of the Week SPACE SCIENCE:
NASA Declares No Room for Antimatter Experiment
Andrew Lawler
NASA has no room on its space shuttle to launch the $1.5 billion Alpha
Magnetic Spectrometer, which is designed to search for antimatter from
its perch on the international space station.
Expanded and posted on a science blog where it was being discussed:
NASA: Alpha to Omega
Category: astro
Posted on: March 18, 2007 10:39 PM, by Steinn Sigurðsson
http://scienceblogs.com/catdynamics/2007/03/nasa_alpha_to_omega.php [scienceblogs.com]
SPACE SCIENCE: NASA Declares No Room for Antimatter Experiment
Lawler
Science 16 March 2007: 1476
DOI: 10.1126/science.315.5818.1476
News of the Week
SPACE SCIENCE:
NASA Declares No Room for Antimatter Experiment
Andrew Lawler
NASA has no room on its space shuttle to launch the $1.5 billion Alpha
Magnetic Spectrometer, which is designed to search for antimatter from
its perch on the international space station.
Hey, isn't that the Samuel Ting-Michael Salamon project?
Yes, it is:
http://ams.cern.ch/AMS/Secretariat/AmsWhosWho.html [ams.cern.ch]
NASA HQ is surely going WAY over the edge in punishing Michael Salamon. He was the head of fundamental Physics at NASA HQ, then they sent him to the White House, where he was for half a year or so the
Director of Physics at OSTP (Office of Science and Technology Policy). They pulled him out of the White House for what looks like political reasons.
This was to be the major actual Science experiment on the space station. And they are killing it -- why? I am leaning towards thinking that it is a purely political decision, as the "room" or money
argument is unconvincing, and as I say, it seems to be the #1 science project in the entire Space Station program.
If one detects even a single anti-carbon nucleus, one almost has to conclude that someplace there is an anti-star performinbg anti-nucleosyntheis, which exploded asn anti-supernova.
What a huge discovery that would be by the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer. For that tremendous science value per dollar ratio alone, it should fly.
I am going to write to my congressman and senators. Maybe it would be worth writing to, say, Oprah. The tax-paying public deserves to have SOME science done with their NASA tax dollars.
====
Yep, I'd like to see it launched, too. Cancelling an experiment after spending 1.5 billion to build it is just the sort of idiocy that the govenment does all the time, though.
If you follow NASA politics, though, you'd see that there's no reason to invoke any sort of "punishment" to understand this call. Griffin was given the order to cancel space shuttle by 2010. When you add up
all the things that Griffin has been instructed to do with the shuttle before the drop-dead do-not-fly-it-any-more date, and look at the maximum flight rate that's considered to be safe, there are zero flights available.
Of course, adding one more shuttle flight in 2011 would make perfect
sense-- the replacement for the shuttle won't be available for
another four years, so why not? But at the moment, that is being
considered the "camel's nose under the tent" thinking, and "cancel
shuttle by 2010" is a non-negotiable deadline.
- Show quoted text -
From the same blog and thread, a reply about Michael Salamon and the
Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer:
==========
He was the head of fundamental Physics at NASA HQ, then they sent him
to the White House, where he was for half a year or so the Director of
Physics at OSTP (Office of Science and Technology Policy). They pulled
him out of the White House for what looks like political reasons.
That's only because you don't "vote the bastards out", you just alternate between the same bastards.
Take a look at the budget to get an idea of where the money is going instead of somewhere constructive.
It looks like a lot of it went to making that page as indecipherable as possible. I think someone inadvertently created a new crypto algorithm. Let's use something with a little more impact.
What?
EU can launch this JUST as much as America can. Why are they or Russia not launching it? In fact, Russia has the ability to put CAM AND AMS into orbit (progress can operate as a tug). Right now, American budget is getting very tight and we have paid for the bulk of the ISS. Russia AND EU are doing good right now.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I think we've got a pretty good head start in that category already. Another one isn't really going to matter.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
I don't think that anyone has ever questioned the fact that strapping yourself to the top of hundreds of tons of high explosives is inherently dangerous.
To drag this further off-topic... Plenty of people have questioned that assertion. Or perhaps more accurately, plenty of people have questioned the idea of strapping yourself to a motor that can't be turned off (the SRBs and most solid motors) -- no current manned rocket actually uses high explosives for propellant. Many of these people are very smart and experienced, and many of them are trying to do something about it. Unfortunately, NASA and the current commercial providers don't seem terribly interested in attempts to reduce the risk of spaceflight by more than modest amounts.
I've worked on rocket engines. There's nothing more inherently dangerous about them than there is about a jet engine or even your car engine. All contain high energy chemicals and at least moderately high pressures. The fact that historically rocket engines are more dangerous than modern airplane engines is a result of two things: higher maturity levels in aircraft engine design, and a very curious lack of attention to safety and reliability in historical rocket engine design.
It does not have to be this way. We know how to build rocket engines that fail less often, and fail less catastrophically when they do fail. We know how to build rockets that don't kill their passengers when they fail. We need to stop assuming that space travel will always be as dangerous as it has been, and ask what we can do differently to make it safer from early in the design process. (It won't ever be completely safe, just as air travel will never be completely safe. It can, however, be continually improving in safety, and we can continue searching for ways to make it safer.)