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Informative Shuttle Ascent Video
minterbartolo points out this video, produced by Matt Melis at the Glenn Research Center, excerpting from its description: "Photographic documentation of a Space Shuttle launch plays a critical role in the engineering analysis and evaluation process that takes place during each and every mission. Motion and Still images enable Shuttle engineers to visually identify off-nominal events and conditions requiring corrective action to ensure mission safety and success. This imagery also provides highly inspirational and educational insight to those outside the NASA family. This compilation of film and video presents the best of the best ground-based Shuttle motion imagery from STS-114, STS-117, and STS-124 missions. Rendered in the highest definition possible, this production is a tribute to the dozens of men and women of the Shuttle imaging team and the 30yrs of achievement of the Space Shuttle Program."
With all due respect, the Shuttle is a program that needs to go. I agree that it is a travesty that there is no overarching goal after the end of the shuttle program.
Still though, when's the last time you saw government deliver a good, cheap, quality product on time? I get the feeling that in the next twenty years or so, commercial entities will be able to surpass our present status. The only hope I have on the government front is to maintain the space program legacy to encourage smart young kids to pursue something greater than themselves. Or, at least to maintain the program until it looks pathetic compared to the commercial entities in the same market.
---jstlook ---For that is the way of Elves, for they say both yes AND no, and mean every word of it. --- J.R.R.T.
It's a "high definition" video that's only available in 480p. Sigh.
Obama didn't cancel the shuttle, Bush did, and yes we do have a plan. It is the SLS.
http://www.universetoday.com/75522/president-signs-nasa-2010-authorization-act/
...man on the moon
Divide a cake by zero. Is it still a cake?
What's the point of bragging about how the program is rendered in 'the highest definition available' - and then putting it on You Tube in crappy low definition?
yeah, and Obama / congress cancelled portions of it's overdue replacement, which I thing was the point. By all means cancel Orion, but make sure to pay the fuckers that precipitated the financial meltdown $800B.
I still cannot find the droids I am looking for...
Why? It's exactly those overarching goals that keep effing NASA up. Pretty much every other government agency gets to do it's work in a straightforward and methodical fashion without a dramatic goal - but if NASA doesn't have one, it gets flamed. (Never mind that NASA only carries the policies set by the Administration and funded by Congress.) When NASA does get to do methodical development and to work out the basics, it gets flamed for 'going around in circles'.
About the same time I last saw a good cheap quality product delivered by anyone. I.E. never. 'Cheap' is pretty much antithetical to 'good quality' for a product of any significance. (Yeah, there are some down at the end of the bell curve, like Linux, but they're exceptions and you're fooling yourself if you believe otherwise.) Most government programs do get done more or less on time and in budget, but as always you never hear about the middle of the bell curve.
Not a chance. Commercial entities aren't going any further than LEO any time soon.
In other words, you want the same mess we've always had - unsustainable, extremely expensive programs for entertainment. Why not? You get something to drool over (because it's SPACE!) and something to bitch about (because it's hard and expensive) all at once. What a bargain.
That rocked! I can't believe I'm the first to say that.
and Obama could change that with a snap of his fingers.
noting more to say
What does the shuttle 'imaging' team have to show us? As a nerd-loving public, other than good imagery, this shows me nothing of the previous failures and bad launch images that have plagued the shuttle history. Show me something like a new vehicle, even a new concept design. "We had bad launches in the past, so we videotaped our next launches" doesn't cut it for me. Something like, "We have an experimental launch vehicle to access other planets and explore the boundaries of human exploration, similar to what the Apollo Astronauts did, and the heroes died... That would cut it. But, "we are so afraid to continue launching people into space because the bureaucracy of our space program is so bad that we have not made any improvements in fifty years and have actually continued a program in which two vehicles of the same design disintegrated upon launch and re-entry. We can no longer afford to put humans into space because our bureaucracy has made it prohibitively expensive, therefore, that is a useless endeavor. I call bullshit, and I call bullshit on the people who spend money on war instead of money on human exploration. There are many soldiers who would be willing to risk their lives going back to the moon, and beyond that, going to Mars. If JFK had the balls to make that call, and the governers of this country respect him, why have we not been back there? Don't tell me it is funding, because the current military expenditure annualy in the US could easily fund at least some research on the project. Compound that billions of dollars of funding since the Iran Contra, and we could have a man, woman, and family on the Moon, not to mention an exploratory team going to mars. People like Jim Lovell, who were willing to say, this has never been done before, but maybe it can. If it can, I will risk my life to make it happen. The age of communication has destroyed the idea of centralized regimes like the Germans in 1939. That horror physically and informationally cannot happen again. So lets get past it, change our goals, and realize the limitations and possibilities of life on our planet. It needs to be preserved, and expanded. Expansion is not possible while people are still fighting over things as trivial as religion, philosophy, and wealth. All three are fairly relative when you consider survival, are they not?
Koalas. They're telepathic. Plus, they control the weather. -Margaret
They weren't paid, it was loaned, and all but some $30 billion came back. Also, we once let the financial system collapse and we didn't do a thing to stop it -- today it's widely known as the Great Depression. Back then 1/3 of banks in the U.S. shut their doors in the days before the FDIC. The details were different this time, but the impact could have been the same as bank capital went from $1.3 trillion to $.3 trillion in a few months. We complain that Washington doesn't "do the right thing," but in this case they did (Congress, Bush, and Obama), and now they catch hell for it. Finally, there's a reason that Bernanke was Time's Person of the Year.
Rendered in the highest definition possible, but uploaded as a 480p YouTube clip...
And here are some extra clips: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsvVU24uDIc
These boom-bust cycles were CAUSED by the people running the national bank.
About the same time I last saw a good cheap quality product delivered by anyone. I.E. never. 'Cheap' is pretty much antithetical to 'good quality' for a product of any significance. (Yeah, there are some down at the end of the bell curve, like Linux, but they're exceptions and you're fooling yourself if you believe otherwise.) Most government programs do get done more or less on time and in budget, but as always you never hear about the middle of the bell curve.
So very, very, VERY wrong. The only reason you say that is because standards keep ratcheting up. A cheap car today costs the same as one made fifty years ago (with inflation), but the quality is much, much, much better (despite what old fogies would have you believe). How about calculators? A cheap, high quality four function calculator costs a few pennies today. In 1950 they were expensive office appliances that needed frequent repair. The same goes for nearly every consumer good you can think of. Sure, botique shops make better quality higher priced versions of nearly everything, but the fact is, the quality of goods is on average, phenomenal, and the prices are fire-sale low.
True, but only with a hundred years worth of iteration, a truly MASSIVE user base to test with and (until recently) a large amount of competition. In the process they killed hundreds of thousands (millions?) and STILL manage to produce some real howlers even these days. Though it is true to say that they don`t explode in a ball of flame and kill the passengers very often now, a wheel felling off due to incorrect maintainance whilst joining a motorway (think re-entry) is still going to cause a problem.... All the things you mention are produced by the million at least, launch vehicles are not going to be in that range until we`ve come up with some seriously new physics. Which is a shame, `cause I`d love my corpse to be cremated in a SunDive (tm Douglas Adams).
You have to find all the reasons that make gutting NASA good for Obama. Along the lines of:
> No more whities in space!
> We'll take money from NASA in order to come take your guns away. Only way we can afford it.
> By gutting NASA, we'll take all the high paying jobs in the south and eliminate them.
> Rockets? In Utah? As if!
> The Overlords told me to.
The crazier the better. Then you get the Teabaggers/Republinuts to demand more NASA funding. Because now giving NASA money would be bad for Obama.
Yes, I am serious.
Crap yesterday is crap today, but mid-range equipment from 30 years ago - especially electronic - was built to last and built to be repaired.
When I was born we had one main TV, and that same TV was repaired two or three times by a knowledgeable, cheap, well-known, local repair guy until its death over two decades later. None since has lasted more than 5 years without developing some niggle or dying completely.
Even at your desk, LCD longevity is a fucking joke compared to CRTs, and printers are sold disposable with ink DRM. An HP 48 has buttons as fresh today as in 1990, but an HP 49G will make you give up after a couple of hours and a 50G - after several iterations of fail - is only just about usable.
Items 30 years ago were engineered to work - that's all we knew how to do. But now we know how to do something more profitable: items today are engineered as cheaply as possible to last for the length of the warranty. It'd be uncapitalistic not to, right?
We certainly had booms and busts well before we had a central bank (i.e. the Fed, which was established in 1913). As time has gone by, they've generally gotten better at central banking; the period from 1982 to 2007 is often called the "Great Moderation" for this quarter century of stable growth: two mild recessions and stable and low inflation; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Moderation . Also, take a look at the real GDP data from http://measuringworth.com/usgdp/ (put together by economic historians) and note the falling volatility over the last century (easiest seen in the log view). Finally check out http://www.nber.org/cycles/cyclesmain.html (from the people who officially date recessions) and note the increasing length of expansions and shorter recessions.
Ah, we have an Austrian Economic Theorist in the house. So the fact that these booms and busts happened before central or reserve banks and even banks in general is explained by? Or even that they happen in non-economic systems?
You can argue that they exacerbate them, but the evidence shows they don't cause them. In fact the evidence makes it very easy to argue that they actually make them less severe.
Post anonymously - For when your opinion embarrasses even you!
Items 30 years ago were engineered to work - that's all we knew how to do. But now we know how to do something more profitable: items today are engineered as cheaply as possible to last for the length of the warranty. It'd be uncapitalistic not to, right?
Of course, given the choice between expensive quality and cheap crap, the vast majority of consumers buy the cheap crap every time. If you try and build stuff designed to last for decades, nobody buys it and you go out of business. Sucks for the tiny minority which is actually willing to fund quality, of course.
To give a concrete example: Modern photocopiers are basically just big printers. They're the only printers left which have reasonable cost per page and are designed to last for millions of pages. But they cost several thousand dollars. The thing is, when you look at cost per page, they're actually *well worth it*, even at that price. You get break-even after a few years; after that they're making you money. But most people still buy a $300 printer instead.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
I'll say!
Apparently the best of the best ground-based Shuttle motion imagery is 480p. :-/
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
My experience has been the opposite. When I was born we had tube TVs which broke down regularly when tubes burned out. The picture tubes CRT got dimmer over time and also burned spots on the screen if you weren't careful. Since moving to solid state, I've never had a TV (even CRT tube TVs) die on me. I had two TVs (solid state + CRT) from 1982 that were still working fine until I gave them away last year. The LCD screens that I've had (on laptops, TVs, desktop monitors) are all working just fine. I've never had one fail in any way. They are all bright and clear as when new.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Some guy did something similar (though not quite as extensive) for the footage of the Apollo 11 lift-off.
http://vimeo.com/4366695
Yeah, TVs from the '80s were way better than those of the '60s and early '70s - but cheaper processes (hello, China!) through the late '80s and '90s fixed that, and since moving to LCD things have got very shit again. I do not believe that the backlights in your LCDs have not dimmed, unless you barely use them or you only moved to LCD very recently. Backlights are simply not built to stay bright for as many hours as recent CRTs will chug along.
But it's not just the main components which die sooner: "advances" in PSU design often mean not installing over-specced components (must..save..last..$0.01). More recently, regulations on filtering have become enforced (in the EU, certainly) as if no more than friendly advice, with self-certification being the way backward.
NASA has never been good at public relations. This is a case in point. What they have here is some first class engineering pr0n. There are engineers all over the world that would love to see this on their 50" plasmas. Yet... it's not available. Why don't they realize what a public relations boost this could be? Not only does it make NASA look good, it illustrates what they do, how hard it is, and in the end how beautiful it is.
I'd buy a bunch of blu-rays of this. If I could. Ya listening NASA?
Anyone similarly interested, you can get the email address of Edward Schilling, the NASA public affairs contact for video imaging, here:
http://science.nasa.gov/about-us/public-affairs-points-of-contact/
Can't hurt to drop him an email. Might not help, but if we don't tell him what we want, there's no chance we'll get it.
Obama touched my junk.
Bush never did that.
Obama seized GM gleefully.
Bush never did that.
Obama marches troops away from the enemy.
Bush never did that.
Obama seizes banks gleefully.
Bush never did that.
Obama spreads socialist misery.
Bush never did that.
If ever there was a justification for bittorrent, this is it. Why stick this on Youtube with crappy resolution, when you could post a torrent file and seed for a while.
The video could be public domain, high-def, and inspiring to young geeks, instead of being lame.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
I think you and I may be from a dying generation.
I got my first computer in 1999, and with it came a 19" Gateway CRT monitor. When I got it it had already been used daily for a year.
That monitor lasted for 8 years with very few problems. The last year, the screen picture would bend inwards like an hourglass, but if you smacked the side of it that fixed things nicely. One day, about 10 years after it was purchased originally, the hardest of technical taps would not restore the screen. I junked it and replaced it with a backup 15" monitor.
Now I have a LCD that I got used. I already loathe the fact that it seems far more difficult to clean without damaging it (I received it with some dust and dirt stains on it just from being stored on the floor in a room somewhere). I don't imagine that it would last half as long as my Gateway 2000 CRT.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
...when's the last time you saw government deliver a good, cheap, quality product on time?...
Hoover Dam? Maybe we should call it the Dam Government.
Slowly waving my hand - "This is not the sig you are looking for."
DerekLyons please go find a different pot to piss in. NASA is better money than most government programs!
Slowly waving my hand - "This is not the sig you are looking for."
Bush lied, people died.
I was talking to my 10 year old about this subject recently. I told him that in his lifetime, I can see him taking a trip to the moon. I kind of think that this stagnation has been what caused us to not have the space station from the beginning of 2001. If the private sector was doing it, it would already be done. Build in space, like the old Star Trek (why they changed that in the new one I cannot fathom.)
The funny thing was my son just not getting what I was saying, he said "but I don't want to be an astronaut." I had to explain what commercial space flight means. Some day I have to put him through watching 2001 and 2010, it might open his eyes to what will happen in the next 50 years.
Go Bigelow, go SpaceX, go Virgin; bring to us what NASA couldn't. I look forward to space travel becoming reality, I just doubt it will happen while I am young enough to go.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
That was back when immigrant labor clearly wasn't a problem. That or a huge number of deaths.
---jstlook ---For that is the way of Elves, for they say both yes AND no, and mean every word of it. --- J.R.R.T.
yep! I was just mentioning the last time the Govt was ahead of schedule and under budget. Well, the last time I can recall anyway. I am glad we do not exploit people and lives this way now, at least not blatently.
Slowly waving my hand - "This is not the sig you are looking for."