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NASA Cancels "Sunjammer" Solar Sail Demonstration Mission
An anonymous reader writes "Space News reports that NASA has cancelled its solar sail demonstration mission (also known as Sunjammer) citing "a lack of confidence in its contractor's ability to deliver." "Company president Nathan] Barnes said that in 2011 he reached out to several NASA centers and companies that he believed could build the spacecraft and leave L'Garde free to focus on the solar sail. None of those he approached — he only identified NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California — took him up on the offer.
Rather than give up on the opportunity to land a NASA contract, L'Garde decided to bring the spacecraft development in house. It did not work out, and as of Oct. 17, the company had taken delivery of about $2 million worth of spacecraft hardware including a hydrazine tank from ATK Space Systems of Commerce, California, and four mono-propellant thrusters from Aerojet Rocketdyne of Sacramento, California."
And in related news, an earthquake was reported in Sri Lanka
(A.C. Clarke turning in his grave)
A vote of no confidence. I remember when NASA canceled the USNO FAME satellite - they said it was over the budget, but really it was over the management team. I expect that there is something similar here - fortunately, there is still NASA Marshall's Solar Scout, which is much smaller and cheaper than the Sunjammer.
The Species! One basket! This rock! Shriek! Asteroid of Doom! 3D printing! Space Nutter poetry and emotional arguments!
I wonder how much they've been paid or are being paid.
PerkinElmer is still in business, by the way.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Whenever NASA (or any other agency) cancels a contract because they lack confidence in the contractor, it probably means that someone in the government is paying attention to what's going on, and is holding the responsible party's feet to the fire.
Compare this to situations where billions of dollars of money are tossed away in the pursuit of unworking (and possibly unworkable) missle defense systems.
Koans and fables for the software engineer
As designed, Sunjammer’s solar sail — measuring only about 0.005 millimeters thick — would generate about 0.002 pounds of thrust
This just hurts the brain. First they make a very nice attempt to be international by using the metric system. Then it mentions a number in 'pounds'.
Being a European i have no clue how much a pound is, and probably British and US pounds differ too. Ok, i could guess a pound is about half a kilogram. Still makes no sense to mix them up in a scientific article.
The Planetary Society's LightSail project is apparently still on track, so Clarke (and we) shouldn't despair just yet.
What a scary name. When I put anything else in front of the word "jammer" (radiojammer; satellitejammer; wifijammer...) it sounds bad.
But imagine the possibilities of power one could hold, if one could jam sun-input of a portion of the Earth.
They all seem to do it - Space.com, Spaceflightnow.com, Spacefellowship, Nasaspaceflight. They know their audience is educated yet they persist in writing articles with both metric or imperial units. Or worse, they mix them as in this instance. They also take the let-me-convert-everythgin-for-you approach and put the complementary units in parentheses. Why they don't just stick to one measurement system - SI makes the most sense - I do not know. However I do believe spaceflight enthusiasts are NOT idiots.
I remember one of my brother's first issues (Apr? 1964) of Boy's Life having "Sunjammer" as the cover story. AC Clarke later expanded the story under the name "Wind from the Sun". FWIW, Boy's Life is one of the magazines digitized by Google Books and you can look up the issue in question.
A Shadeless room is a brighter room.
Couldn't we get a spaceship to resonate at the same frequency as the background noise of the Big Bang (probably another demension) and tune it to where we want to go in the universe?
When doing physics the pound is most often used as force, but it's not quite as simple as you make it out to be.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...
Also, consider the system of measurement with pounds-as-mass, where the unit of force is the "poundal".
Yeah we could look it up, but in future that's what the <a> tag is for
The fundamental property is mass, and the "weight" is defined by the force generated due to "standard" gravity.
The kg is a measure of mass. The pound can be mass or force, depending on the system of measurement involved. Most technical people would consider pounds to be units of force, where the corresponding mass is the slug. (Though honestly SI units are more convenient for doing physics with.)
FAME was over budget, and was way behind on detectors, having burned through 24 wafers with no device that met specs. And yes, I worked on the FAME mission.
I worked for L’Garde and was part of the recent lay-off. L’Garde does not have the capability to execute a project one-twentieth the size of Sunjammer. L’Garde does not have the ability the procure materials and adhesives and many times I was forced to used expired product. L’Garde’s Engineers, Program Managers and Directors have not demonstrated the ability to track a project’s status with respect to deadlines or critical path. The Director’s, Program Manager’s and the Project Engineers are never held accountable for inconclusive, contradictory or incorrect documentation. The assembly personnel and production supervisors have been told fix the issues on the production floor or have the ultimatum of being terminated. L’Garde is currently executing a program to provide targets for a USA ally. This project is currently at a company loss approaching $300,000. The Program Manager and the Project Engineer were never held accountable for the ‘Botched’ execution of this project. L’Garde performed and internal audit called ‘Lessons Learned’ to identify the exorbitant costs. The finding concluded that there were too many ‘Non-Conformity Reports’ (NCR’s). The corrective action was for the QA Department to minimize the NCR’s because too much time went into writing the documentation causing an inference in production flow which resulted in what was considered unnecessary overtime. The Directors or the Program Manager did not wish to discuss the reasons for the NCR’s. L’Garde is a very reactive, not a proactive company. L’Garde recently obtained a contact from Northrop Grumman to fabricate the Thermal Protection System for the James Webb Telescope. When the customer was due to arrive on a Monday to view the fabricated prototype; L’Garde started the build the Thursday before the customer was to arrive. The production floor needed to make tooling and practically executed an around-the-clock effort to make the prototype. The production floor is an amazing team (and L’Garde’s greatest asset) but only got 80% of the build accomplished. I was told by a Mid-Level Manager that any company that has been in business for 40 years should be running like a Swiss Watch. He also told me that he has never worked for a company as disorganized as L’Garde.
They forgot the helm.
There's a lot of ruins in Mesopotamia.
No brain, no pain.