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Origami Plane to Fly From the Int. Space Station
SK writes "The University of Tokyo and the Japan folded paper (origami) plane society hopes to fly a paper airplane from the International Space Station to Earth. The plane will be 30-40cm long and weigh about 30 grams. A University of Tokyo research group has successfully designed a special paper plane model that was able to withstand a Mach 7 high velocity stream for 10 seconds. The experimental plane was about one-fifth the size and withstood temperatures as high as 300C without burning up." Unfortunately for most of us reading this, the original source is all in japanese.
"Check out what I made!"
"Ha, that's sweet! You know what we should do with it?"
*Airlock Sounds*
Obligatory blog plug: http://www.caseybanner.ca/
Am i the only one who thinks these people got too much time on their hands and some cash to burn? I dont know about you but i can think of much better ways to spend money. Some things people do just amaze me and make me ask why?
After years of paper airplane building avoidance, maybe top-tier scientist are not stuck asking there lazier peers exactly what is the best way to make one.
So basically, -1 troll/offtopic is really slashdots way of saying "I hate that you thought of something before me."
I can read Japanese! Unfortunately, this doesn't allow me to comprehend their language.
won't the paper flip when it starts to hit air, and burn up? How do you get a paper airplane to get to mach anything? I know how to make a very fast paper airplane for hand throwing, but it only goes maybe into the low 100 range... I never clocked it, though. Still, I think it would flip before getting that fast.
stuff |
China will probably vaporize it, just out of spite.
Even though it's in Japanese, just use Google Translate to read it.
Somebody gave me an origami book once. I never read it - I couldn't, it was all creased seven ways to Sunday.
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
...paper boat? That way it could just float to earth and fall in the sea and drift to land?
Japan wants to fly paper plane from International Space Station to earth:
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/national/news/20080118p2a00m0na025000c.html
I have excellent Karma and I am not afraid to Troll it.
I would think that a metal foil would provide a better "paper" for the plane. Not only would it resist higher temperatures, but it would conduct heat from the hot side to radiate heat on the upper side. Chemically etching the foil on the upper surface to make it black would also help radiate heat. Finally, a metal foil plane would have a higher radar cross-section so it might be possible to track the trajectory and recover the plane.
If purists insist on paper, the one could deposit a thin foil veneer on the leading edges or deposit a trace-work of metal to create a reflector of radar waves (extra credit for adding an RFID chip to the mix).
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
That's exactly what we need! A paper airplane that comes from orbit and doesn't burn up on the way back. That's not going to hurt at all when it hits somebody.
Although the more likely outcome is that it will just land in the ocean, never to be seen again.
what's that now?
the Japan folded paper (origami) plane society
Nah, you just fail at reading comprehension.
What if it crashes? All the boffins are gathered, scratching their heads, and then one of them will say "But it looked fine on paper!" Then all the others will groan, and proceed to calculate the optimum method for beating the crap out of him.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
This is the Librarian wing of the JSA testing new paper for books. This paper, obviously with embedded copy protection coatings, will prove that books are better than websites, and gloriously launch the Japanese people to a state of technological superiority over western libraries. This is just stage one of the Paper Ninja Warriors contest.
Stage two involves plasma thrusters and a "paper moon" orbiter. When you can afford to launch 14 million orbital vehicles, one of them is bound to accomplish the job. Besides, what better building material to use if you want to send a message to aliens in other galaxies?
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
...would spend millions of dollars to fly a paper airplane from an International Space Station to Earth.
I can see it now...
"W00t! I just threw a paper airplane towards Earth!"
"You idiot, that's not Earth, that's the Sun!"
"..."
"Goodbye, 10 million dollars."
"Know but never fear the consequences of your actions."
Paper airplane? When I read the article, I read that the Japanese students wanted to recreate the finale from Final Fantasy VII where Sephiroth summons a meteor to destroy the planet! I've been taking Japanese class for almost 3 semesters, I should know what I'm talking about! :P
And how can they not know if it is 30cm or 40cm? that's quite a range, haven't they picked the paper yet?
Anyhow, if they do it, I'd claim success! You won't be able to prove it didn't make it all the way down OK, unless you find its charred remains, but just in case, I would litter "seed" charred remains about, so that I could claim any found "were just a test model", thus ensuring victory!
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
This is brilliant! The use is obvious. We need cheaper reentry vehicles. These vehicles would not be designed to bring back passengers, but there are times when you have 50 (harmless) samples and would like to get one of them to a lab earth-side.
First, for those who say they've never seen a paper airplane break 100MPH, that's at 1 atmosphere. Mach 7 is definitely not at 1 atmosphere.
Second, for those who say it would flip, try writing a stability proof sometime. do you know how to apply inverse kinematics? can you write an equation for the Jacobian of a human elbow joint?
Third, the first step is to try one small paper plane. It'll probably not work, and we'll have to try again. Eventually, we might get a working 8" plane. Some day, we might even have a meter long plane that can bring 3 ounces back to earth.
Imagine an astronaut who is sick, and we need to get some lab tests run. Sending a shuttle or Soyouz down is incredibly wasteful. OTOH, a paper airplane could be equipped with a tracking device (think 1-2oz GPS & transmitter) and a small sample case. We drop the plane, and it's got a 1-in-3 chance of getting the sample into the right hands, in a usable condition. So we drop 5 or 10 and hope for the best.
Think of the potential when we start building larger stations & craft in space. A line of bolts could shear off, and we might not have the ability to analyze it in space. We drop one on each of 5 paper planes, and get a good idea from 2 that we recover of what happened. Were the bolts defective? Was it a fatigue issue? Were they improperly installed?
Imagine a very low cost mission to a near Earth crossing object. Half a dozen paper planes could let us get a few ounces of samples on the cheap.
Andy
I mean... I can't say any more than that. A news source, dedicated to the more unusual aspects of Japanese culture... called Pink Tentacle.
;)
I'm a total perv myself but I'm just having a hard time dealing with a news source with that name that has nothing to do with Hentai... maybe that's my problem... I must be too much of a perv.
But then again, I am on slashdot, there must be tons of us unable to process this
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
The ISS Orbits the Earth at around 7.400k/s at an altitude of 365k. You can't just throw something out of the ISS and hit the Earth's atmosphere for Re-entry. If you "throw" it out of the ISS, it'll orbit, just like the ISS. In order to intersect with the Earth's atmosphere for areo-braking, you are going to need to lower he perigee of your orbit to at least 50-60k. You'll need a delta V of about 100 m/sec to do this.
What gives? Have they built an oragami retrograde rocket as well?
You should have tossed an "All your base are belong to us!" in the middle of that just to see if anyone catches it.
I'm not associated with the project, but I do have common sense.
For those who think this is a high-risk project, risk is the chance of failure multiplied by the cost. The cost of throwing a paper plane from the ISS is low compared to other experiments, and we will learn quite a bit, not matter what happens.
For those who think this is a waste of money, I understand. You would have never funded the research into better clocks that eventually led to better navigation, which led to Columbus' voyages. The idea of opening a new frontier does not excite you. You would have us turn inward like the Chinese did at one point, burn your own ships, and never venture out again. You will accept a stagnant society. Based on my understanding of you, I offer one suggestion: Please commit suicide. We're better off without you.
Andy
Unfortunately for most of us reading this, the original source is all in japanese.
I'm a Jap, you insensitive crod!
Go creased lighting! Go creased lighting!
So what is the point of this, exactly? I mean other than to launch a paper plane from what could be argued as a really cool place to throw one from?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
What would be funny is if the re-entry of the plane was missed and its final destination never found. Then, years later someone hacking through the jungle finds a tribe of people who appear to worship a small deity that fell from the sky.
Am I the only one who is worried about NASA now announcing plans to investigate 'new' technology for super low cost re-entry vehicles. As a bonus, the vehicles can be folded flat to take up less room on the trip to space and can be stored for emergencies at the ISS.
So, here's the thing. I've got a plane. And I have a window in the plane. The rules say (FAR 91.15) that I can chuck stuff out of the plane if I take reasonable precautions to avoid hurting anyone on the ground. So the answer here is simple:
A bunch of paper airplanes with japanese writing on them, air brushed lightly at the nose to look like it's re-entered.
Thrown out the window over the local university.
Playing the odds, at least one of them will be seen landing by someone who reads slashdot. "Holy crap!" he/she (just kidding, he) shouts.
Mua-ha-ha-ha.... I don't know what step 2 is, but #3 is profit.
Origami spaceplane aims for space station descent
No, it won't. You're assuming it'll somehow magically come to a dead stop when released, then start to fall straight down. What will really happen is that it'll just get shoved into a slightly lower orbit, so it will hit the atmosphere at pretty much orbital velocity, just like the shuttle does.
The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.
NASA budget cuts inspire the design of the On-site Assembled Crew Escape Vehicle (OSASSCREV): Take twelve sheets of 50-lb A4 paper from storage locker, crease the first lengthwise and fold...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Critics of the space station, and a significant manned program in general, point out that the space station serves no scientific or engineering purpose. Unfortunately things like this, rich tourists, and hitting golf balls don't provide the best endorsement, at least from the scientific community. Then again, the scientific and engineering community has basically no input for the station, because if they did the station would either be scrapped, or filled with actual scientific experiments.
I don't begrudge them the fun of launching a "paper" airplane in space but want to think long-term. How can we use "paper" airplanes in space?
I'd bet that foil airplanes might be an interesting way to de-orbit a stream from materials from LEO. Rather than build big expensive return vehicles (that require fuel for de-orbiting), one could build origami return vehicles that deorbit automatically due to thin atmosphere at LEO. Robotic machinery would create sheet metal (from nickel-iron asteroids), fold it, attach some minimal control package (like a micro UAV), add a payload (more nickel-iron, He3, pharmaceuticals, etc.), and kick the "plane" into space (I could imaging an efficient electromagnetic launcher that kicks the plane below the orbits of any satellites to avoid the planes become space junk). If it takes a year or two deorbit, so what. Earth gets a "free" stream of space materials that hopefully land in a recovery area.
My point is to think how we can use origami in space to get both "fun" public relations news and interesting engineering data at the same time.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Sounds like a new business opportunity for the Origami Boulder guy:
http://www.origamiboulder.com/
A goal is a dream with a deadline
Wow. That was incredibly insightful. I wish I had modpoints. At first I was kind of confused myself but now I really can see the potential of this. It's not exactly useful for anything that has to remain secret but there's still a wide range of applications if it's applied properly. Thanks for the explanation.
I think I know where the Japanese got their inspiration. Anyone see that MacGyver episode where he was stuck on the Mir space station with a ream of paper to work with?
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
Back of the envelope time:
The cost to launch something to the ISS's orbit is something like $10,000/lb. Let's say they make it from typical 20-lb bonded paper - the kind you'd pull from a copier.A 500-sheet ream of 20-lb actually weighs about 5 lbs, or 1/100th of a pound per sheet. Do out the math, and it works out to about $100/sheet of paper.
Ouch! That's an expensive paper airplane!
Fuck you, scissors and rock!
I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that.
400km up 27700 km/h the energy loss required is about 117kJ potential and 888kJ kinetic to land. say 1MJ. This is slightly reduceded as to get to an eacth grazing orbit the plane must be thrown backwards fom the space station eith a relative velocity of about 700km/h.
If we assume a surface area of 1000 sq cm, not unreasonable for a length of 30-40 cm, then and a re-entry time of 1000 seconds the energy must be lost at about 1 watt/sq cm, which seems possible.
The launch from the space station would appear to require rocket assistance.
We always think of re-entry of a spacecraft as this fiery process, but would it be possible for a paper airplane to approach the atmosphere slowly and enter it gently without any high temperatures? Perhaps someone can explain how this is impossible.
I have to say that this is an experiment actually worth doing, but I would like to see them do it with a bigger paper airplane than a few inches long. That way, if it does land on a continent, it would be easier to find (assuming that it remained intact). But, still, the thought of a paper airplane landing somewhere from orbit is just, cool.
This is my sig.
If I was an astronaut, I probably would have done something like this by now, just because its funny. The space station is rather small, and I imagine its novelty wears off quickly. What else are you supposed to do?
However, I'm curious if they have a plan to know whether or not it worked? An origami paper plane should be pretty tiny and can easily be lost somewhere between space station and the ground.
Unless it has some sort of microscopic transmitter on it, are going to track it with a telescope, or they're just going to declare victory no matter what, I'm not sure how you can easily tell whether this design and special paper made any sort of difference. Which is terrible because I'm really curious to know if it does!!
Unfortunately for most of us reading this, the original source is all in japanese.
I am Japanese, you insensitive clod.
The site is bi-lingual, just click the "English" button.
Since there is no mention of instrumentation or tracking, I fail to see even the remotest point to this exercise. Who will know (or care) if this "plane" survives a Mach 7 reentry? It would take months or yers to deorbit if they just throw it out the shuttle. In the meantime, it joins all the orbiting debris as a hazard to near-Earth navigation. Even a paper airplane is a serious piece of debris if you are orbiting in the opposite direction. Kudos on the wind tunnel research, though. How about a study on the aerodynamics of a 20 thousand yen note with origami folds?
Doesn't paper burn at 451 degrees and not 300 degrees? Am I missing something?
Badges!?! We don't need no stinking badges!
"... the next is ... aluminum foil. Pressurizing the air lock ..."
I'm anxiously awaiting the NASA Arts and Crafts division. I'm onboard for sending macaroni collages to seach for life on Mars. And I'm hearing preliminary reports that pine cone Christmas ornaments will be replacing the Hubble telescope.
How come the Japanese article gets cool yet visually helpful images like this and the English version only has this?
Anyone?
Or is it just me that went "ZOMG! Its a message from Alita!"
Yeah.. I know. It IS just me. (^_^)'''
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Where is it gonna land? Most likely the ocean, of course; but, imagine how sweet it would be if this thing landed in your back yard. Or imagine how awful it would be if this thing landed on some poor soul's windshield as they are rollin' 85 mph on 95 S.
FOXTROT UNIFORM CHARLIE KILO
I think they should drop rocks from the Space Station, and make bets on who can get closest to a particular target.
Of course, if anyone is to track the results, the rocks must either be very large rocks, or covered with metal, or both.
But it might be fun.
I suggest, for the first contest, they try to hit whatever passes for a Capitol Building in Iran.
(rim-shot).
Joe K. set the skydive record and might have some useful pointers.
But to deny that it wouldn't put a major damper in being able to fund research is naive at best.
They have too much time and money on their hands?
:(
Well, at least they aren't making them out of $100 dollar bills. Now THAT would be a waste of money. Actually, I guess $100 bill aren't worth that much anymore anyway...
Fact: Everything I say is fiction.
Since it's unpowered flight, maybe they should christen it BAW038 and keep their fingers crossed it turns up on the threshold of 27L at healthrow.
If you can track it, you can learn stuff about the reentry characteristics of ultra-light probes.
Now, think about the consequences of that for a moment. Most existing reentry vehicles are reentry vihicles designed to return personnel and equipment and data to ground level, but when you explore other planets the data flow goes the other way. There's also a lot of data that doesn't have to be collected from the ground. So, instead of an orbiter chucking two or three big chunky armored landers which attempt to survive crashing into the surface, and then trying to get a rover to crawl out of the lander and chug for miles to get somewhere interesting (without falling down a hole), why not release a cloud of ultralites and have them beam back picture info and data as they they drift earthwards? If you could insert an ultralite robotic aircraft into the atmosphere (of the type they currently use for weather sensing), it wouldn't have to land, and some of these designs might be able to stay aloft for years. Couple that with a microsatellite relay network and you potentially have a good system.
Alternatively you could go down the balloon path ... instead of a conventional balloon carrying a heavy heavy metal box with electronics in ... instead, stick your CCD chips to the balloon, print additional circuitry and perhaps solar cells directly onto the surface, perhaps use the upper and lower surfaces as charge carriers to avoid batteries, or have the lower surface metallised and the upper transparent, and use it as a solar collector.
With a whole bunch of these balloons drifting about in the upper atmosphere, you have an ad-hoc signal relay system. Hell, give em internet protocols. You won't be able to steer them, and you'd always be losing contact with a few, but a mission could carry along hundreds of them. The transponders would only have to be comparatively short-range, maybe you could even beam power from the orbiter. If you want random mapping plus a study of the atmosphere, bung 'em into a low orbit and wait for them to decay.
Perhaps a future Venus mission might well involve an orbiter repeatedly chucking a series of fifty cheap, disposable, "smart" transponder-equipped paper planes into the Venusian atmosphere and relaying that data back to Earth.
The first step is developing and testing materials. The second is using a tracking system to see how well they cope with reentry. The third is embedding smarter electronics.
Eric Baird
It seems that this is endorsing litter at the highest levels.
We'll get some ISS launches and some wind tunnel tests
oh yeah
(Keep talking whoa keep talking)
A mach 10 liftoff and special coated paper oh yeah
(I'll get the money I'll kill to get the money)
With a paperclip on the tail, out the airlock it'll bail
To be completely fair, we'll be catchin lots of air
In Creased Lightning
Go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go
Go creased lightning you're burning up on reentry
(Creased lightning go creased lightning)
Go creased lightning you're coasting through the atmosphere
You are supreme the chicks'll cream for creased lightning
I know this is Japan, but hey: "Your tax dollars at work"
Now some american is going to try shooting 4th of July crap fireworks off the back of a shuttle, and devote 3 billion dollars to research the right kind of fuse.
Maybe I'm too skeptical, but I feel space research could take a back seat while we fix the many problems we already have on THIS planet.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
How are they going to deorbit it? Getting out of an orbit as high as the ISS requires at least 100 m/s of delta V. Do they have a slingshot or something to launch it with? Where's the telemetry and onboard webcam links?
Changing the parameters of the question a bit ...
What if the de-orbiting vehicle had a 1G thruster, ie. just enough to prevent itself from ever acquiring any vertical velocity component?
Lawn darts
Future "paper" planes such as this will be constructed from Asbestos.
Al-Queerda has already offered to build and launch them from the next Pakistani satellite.
hey, maybe thousands of them.
They claim the planes might burn up, but not to worry!
(cough- cough!)
http://technology.newscientist.com/channel/tech/dn13208-origami-spaceplane-aims-for-space-station-descent.html?feedId=tech_rss20
http://harridanic.com
Babelfish is more successful, but the original article still seems a bit mundane.
Outer space -> the earth, fly the paper love house and Tokyo University verification test
2008 January 14th 14:26
The Japanese folded paper association and Tokyo large group have tackled the paper airplane making which gets off from the space station in the earth. On the 17th, using the same university wind tunnel, it does verification test.
8 centimeters in length, those which do heatproof processing in the paper airplane which is snapped to space shuttle shape are used in experiment. Tokyo large Kashiwa campus (Chiba prefecture Kashiwa city) heat resistance and strength are inspected, inside high-speed flow of Mach 7 of the super high speed wind tunnel for experiment which is.
Because space ship such as space shuttle when returning becomes Mach 20 thing speed, in friction with the air becomes high temperature, the special device of heat resistance is on the surface. Because the paper airplane is light, it can decelerate from the place where the air is thin, can land at low speed. You say that perhaps, it returns without blazing.
Makoto two Tokyo great professor Suzuki (aerospace engineering) acquiring the message of peace "from the space station, we would like to throw. You do not know it lands somewhere of the world, but if it can have delivering to the person who is picked up "with you talk dream.
30 grams starting out at 18,000 MPH, that's just shy of a MILLION Joules of kinetic energy to start out with.
Now to keep the paper from burning, the rate of energy loss had better be oh, let's say 40 watts as a ballpark estimate. We estimate that because if we aim a fan at a 40-watt light bulb, we can keep our finger on it without burning.
Now a watt is one Joule per second, so the plane has to stay in the air about 1 million over 40 seconds, or about 25,000 seconds-- 416 minutes, or almost seven hours.
Now a good paper airplane might have a glide ratio of ten to one, so in dropping 100 miles it would go forward 1000 miles. One thousand miles over seven hours is about 142.85 MPH.
That's probably about ten times faster than a paper airplane is going to go, so whew, we are on the safe side, by about a factor of ten. i.e. the plane going 14.28 MPH will take ten times as long, thereby dissipating only 4 watts, thereby not heating up very much at all.
How sad.