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NASA Set To Launch Solar NanoSail Into Space
An anonymous reader writes "Earlier this year the Japanese space agency successfully deployed and used a solar sail to propel its spacecraft Ikaros, and now NASA announced plans this week for its own solar sail mission. This fall it will launch the NanoSail-D into orbit 400 miles up with a Minotaur IV rocket. Once deployed, it will orbit for 17 weeks, proving the technology and allowing astronomers to snap lots of photos."
This is what NASA has come to? A me-too approach?
Sad.
Is this all we are now, just "snapping lots of photos"?
Nanosail D was originally to launch on one of the ill-fated Falcon 1 test flights, at which time it would have indeed been proving the technology. But now that JAXA have not only proved the technology, but applied it to interplanetary travel, it seems a bit moot.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
This seems to be almost exactly the same as the Planetary Society's LightSail project, http://www.planetary.org/programs/projects/solar_sailing/
And I think that LightSail was started because NASA gave up on the NanoSail-D project. So what gives? Did NASA change their mind about this and what about the LightSail project?
And here's the answer to the question everyone wants answered: What does "D" stand for?
"We chose the 'D' in the name, not because it came after models A, B, and C, but because it can stand for demonstrate, deploy, drag, and/or de-orbit."
- Edward "Sandy" Montgomery. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center.
Screw the solar. It's such a massive fragile structure and it has so low acceleration and minuscule force so it can only push/pull a small/light vessels. Why not test nuclear engines ? Are we so afraid of little nuclear radiation that will probably be undetectable because the earth is bombarded with so much radiation already ? The cold war is (kind of) over. We should stop fearing the *NucleaRrRr* (I just shit my pants) power and start using it to really take off our space programs. Chemical power is a joke. It's a proof of concept overused. Solar sails are of very limited use at most.
Why, in the first place, do eastern nations, developing or develop, adopt names from western culture. I believe the japanese have thousands of mythical characters of their own. ingilizdili
literacle.com
Turned out that is not:
NanoSail-D has a surface area of more than 100 square feet and is made of CP1, a polymer no thicker than single-ply tissue paper.
Rrright... It's like... say... an ISP providing a "broadband package" with speed no lower than 56 kbps.
Unless it is a helluva-lot thinner than a tissue paper, what's so Nano in this sail?
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
Hmm, a gian, thin space sail that's probably several square miles. Boy, I sure hope one single little chunk of orbital debris or meteor doesn't impact that gigantic area in the 2 weeks or it won't work so well. Sails tend to not like meteors impacting them. Too bad the odds of that happening are about 99.99999%. I don't know what they're thinking.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
Um. No. Nanosail-D is several years old and has been waiting for its launch.
In fact, this is the second try at launching it. The first try was lost in the failure of the Falcon-1 vehicle, August 2 2008.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/smallsats/nanosaild.html
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
"One of the most difficult challenges solar sails face is trying to deploy enormous but fragile spacecraft from extremely small and compact structures. We can't just attach a giant, fully spread sail to a rocket and launch it into space. The journey would shred the sail to pieces," said Dean Alhorn, NanoSail-D principal investigator and aerospace engineer at the Marshall Center."
Space is always described as "hostile" - since solar sails are believed by some to be the only feasible option for interstellar space travel, which will require them being in space for a long time, what are the plans for improving their durability? It seems over time they would be shredded.
Hmm, a gian, thin space sail that's probably several square miles. Boy, I sure hope one single little chunk of orbital debris or meteor doesn't impact that gigantic area in the 2 weeks or it won't work so well. Sails tend to not like meteors impacting them. Too bad the odds of that happening are about 99.99999%. I don't know what they're thinking.
Actually, solar sails are almost completely unaffected by small impacts by micrometeoroids or debris. The micrometeoroids go right through. They do leave a hole, which reduces the area of the sail by a trivial amount, but sail areas are so large, and micrometeoroids so small, that it would take decades to centuries before the effective area loss reduces performance significantly.
If a micrometeoroid impacts the struts or support structure, of course, that may be more of a problem, depending on how redundant the structure is (and how big the impact-- but micrometeoroids are small, and debris is not much of a problem in interplanetary space, where sails are most likely to be used). Of course to make a sail lightweight, the support structures had better account for only an extremely small fraction of the sail area.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
It's not enough to known that the concept works, you have to demonstrate that your version works. Their satellite is not exactly the same as Ikaros, for example it uses a different deployment method.
Think about it in terms of any other technology in existence, and bask in the obviousness.
The enemies of Democracy are
What the heck does this have to do with making the Mislims feel good about themselves?
US's actions seem to contradict your story,
So, US shit scared of the Russian with their "permissions" for overflight *YET* they managed to produce a spy plane for the explicit purpose of overflights?? Then they used such aircraft prior to the Russian Sputnik story you are spinning?
So, it seems they didn't want von Braun from attempting his launch not for reasons you cite, but for PR reasons. But once Russians launched (which was *unexpected*), US stopped giving a shit about PR and media spin and went to von Braun to go ahead as fast as possible. Vanguard project was also accelerated at same time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_crisis
Why a crisis and sudden acceleration in funding for all space related things if they wanted Russians first in space? Heck, US wouldn't even be able to compete for the Moon if von Braun was successfully assassinated by the SS (Nazi plan was to kill him and his team rather then allowing enemy to get their research) or captured by Soviets instead.
But I guess you can spin your story any way you like. The bottom line was,
1. US didn't want a Nazi to build the first US rocket
2. US thought they were *years* ahead of Russians anyway, so no problem with US delays
3. oops, "Sputnik"
4. oops, "Gagarin"!!
5. GTF to the Moon NOW! - Kennedy.
Russians were preparing to launch for the Moon at about same time as Apollo 11. They were few weeks behind and scrubbed after successful landing of Apollo 11. They didn't want to be "2nd".
IKAROS is capable of adjusting its attitude whilst spinning, through the use of LCD panels on the sail which subtly alter its albedo and thus the effect of light pressure, so you are wrong on at least that note.
I said IKAROS was not very maneuverable. "Subtly altering its albedo and thus the effect of light pressure" is a very good description of a vehicle that's not very maneuverable. There may be useful applications in which a not-very maneuverable sail is a good technology. Different applications need different technologies.
Basically, IKAROS and Nanosail-D are quite different in the details of the technologies for sails. Apparently you think that once any sail has ever been deployed that every other approach should be abandoned, but that's not actually a good way to develop things.
--In fact, I hate to disappoint you on this, but if sails are ever going to become practical, there are going to have to even more test flights.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
What's there to "spin"? The Nazis and the USSR proved conclusively that mass murdering, totalitarian regimes can produce big science quickly, possibly more quickly than democracies. Being first on big science isn't necessarily something to brag about.