Essentially a satellite is just a body orbiting its the parent planet. So there is really no lower limit on size.
At the moment it is just the resolution of our imaging techniques that limits what we call a satellite. There are bound to be hundreds, if not thousands of smaller bodies around Jupiter that we haven't spotted yet.
Let's just hope that they fit future spacecraft with radar, or send a man up the main mast.
the USSR's feverish 'race' that claimed the lives of a lot of their astronauts.
If any country did things at a feverish pace, it was the Americans. The Apollo project short-circuited everything by building one very big rocket that was good for one purpose - taking three men and a lunar module to the Moon. Saturn V was practically useless for anything else.
So when Apollo ended the rockets were no longer needed - instant crisis - what was going to replace them?
The Soviets took the long term approach of reusing their hardware time and time again and building families of rockets that complemented one another. Even their 'Moon rocket' the N1, was not just intended to take men to the Moon, it was intended to lift up to 100 tonnes into low orbit. What was stacked on top was irrelevant - the Soviets had plans for Moon missions, space stations, weapons, space probes the lot to go up on N1s.
That design failed, but the workhorses of the 1960s are still going strong. And that's because they're damned good designs that can be used for almost anything. Soyuz not only puts men into orbit, it launches communications satellites, can throw a payload to the Moon and in July it will be carrying a European probe to Mars.
And Soviet missions lost four men in two missions - Soyuz 1 (1967) and Soyuz 11 (1971). Since then, none.
There are no 'missing' or 'secret' cosmonaut deaths, the Soviet Union simply had a better strategy for getting into space. It worked hard and there is no point in taking that achievement away from them.
Luna also landed two rovers (Lunokhod), whilst the Zond missions to the Moon were unmanned test flights for a Soviet circumlunar flight.
(Zond was one of those catch-all terms used by the Soviets. It means 'probe' and was also used for missions to Mars, Venus and Earth orbiting flights)
The Zond probes to the Moon were modified Soyuz capsules that would have carried a single cosmonaut around the Moon and back to Earth.
The original plan was to send the first mission to the Moon in November 1968 (which would have just pipped Apollo 8), provided that three or four unmanned missions proved successful.
After a series of unsuccessful launches (which were given the designation Kosmos), Zond 5 and 6 both successfully completed their missions - until the last few minutes. Zond 5 suffered a gyroscope failure and re-entered pulling some 20G, whilst Zond 6 depressurised during re-entry and suffered a parachute failure.
Zond 7 flew unmanned in 1969 and returned safely to Earth. The last mission, Zond 8 suffered another 20G re-entry and was recovered from the Indian Ocean instead of inside the USSR.
Apparently more capsules were built, but were allocated to the Soviet Union's ambitious plans to construct a lunar base. That came to nothing because of the failure of their N1 booster.
By the way, have fun with the Mars expedition. Oh wait. That wonderful Ariane you mentioned - the one that "does what's needed" - is pooched. See you in two years!
Mars Express? It's flying on a Fregat/Soyuz. Your point was what precisely?
Perhaps it will raise their profile in Japan, but the problem isn't the technology - Microsoft have bent to the Japanese - smaller controllers, even a smaller box.
The real problem lies with the games. There is almost nothing that is likely to appeal to the Japanese market (and precious little to appeal to this XBox owner). Pretty much everyone agrees that the XBox has one 'must-have' game - Halo - and that's it. Halo's brilliant, but FPS don't seem to have taken off in arcades and that genre doesn't do well in Japan.
Now maybe Microsoft' strategy is to flood the Land of the Rising Sun with arcade DOA Beach Volleyball, but I can't see it selling many more machines.
When america loses astronaughts their manned space flight shuts down untill years later after an investigation is done. In SOVIET RUSSIA they just kept sending man after man after man up into space. I have a feeling china would do the same damn thing. I'm sure they'll get there eventually.
Sigh.
No they didn't. First the Soviets managed to kill just four cosmonauts during their manned missions. After each failure their was a long stand down whilst the ships and procedures were checked thoroughly.
The first disaster was Soyuz 1 in April 1967. Soyuz had been under development for several years, but the programme had been thrown into confusion by the death of the Chief Designer Sergei Korolev. He was replaced by Vasily Michin - a fine engineer, but not up to the job of controlling the Soviet space programme, which was in itself in crisis. There were too many competing programmes vying for attention and too little money. It was during this time that the Soviet Moon programme completely lost its way - for which Michin would eventually take the blame.
Soyuz was a highly advanced craft and needed a lot of testing. That testing was nowhere near complete. However, the manned Soyuz 1 was launched under political pressure to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. The engineers complied despite the failure of three unmanned versions of the craft.
Had Yuri Gagarin lived, it was almost certain he would have flown the mission. Instead, Soyuz 1 was piloted by Vladimir Komarov it had a succession of failures whilst in orbit, including the failure of one solar panel to deploy correctly. The craft re-entered the atmosphere as planned, but with a slight rotation. The parachute lines became entangled and the craft crashed to Earth at a high speed killing Komarov.
It had been planned that Soyuz 2 would be launched one day after Soyuz 1 and they would rendezvous in orbit. The launch was cancelled. The Soyuz 2 spacecraft was dismantled and found to have identical problems to the ship that flew. Had it been launched, it would have killed its crew.
(By horrible coincidence the flight of Soyuz 1 occured just six months after the Apollo 1 fire that killed three American astronauts.)
Soyuz was grounded whilst the entire manufacturing and quality control process was reorganised. Only when that was complete did the Soviets launch five unmanned Soyuz craft as part of their Kosmos series. When these were considered successful they then launched a second Soyuz 2 completely unmanned.
Soyuz 3 was the first successful manned mission in a Soyuz which flew in October 1968 - 16 months after the disaster.
The second cosmonaut disaster was Soyuz 11, which suffered decompression during re-entry after a mission to the Salyut 1 space station. The disaster killed three men in June 1971. The craft landed automatically and the technicians were able to see that a valve had been opened during undocking.
The Soyuz 12 mission which would have used the same design of Soyuz module was cancelled. No further flights were made with this model of ship.
It was already due to be replaced by a new Soyuz design which flew eight unmanned missions before Soyuz 12 became the next Soviet manned flight in September 1973; more than two years after the loss of Soyuz 11.
I'm so fucking bored. Slashdot sucks.
Well excuse us, for not making more of an effort to entertain you. Go back to jerking off into the gaping mouth of your dead mother under your bed. Also you are such a lame troll, it's obvious to all of us here that you are a virgin with a B.O problem.
:)
Wow, I think you've got that special sensitive touch when dealing with people. You'd make an excellent addition to Kelly and the team down at DriveSavers.
'My hard disk is fragged.'
'And this matters to me how?'
And where does the hydrogen to power these fuel cells come from? Most likely, electrolosis of water.
In the short term a lot of this hydrogen is going to come from the catalytic cracking of natural gas. There are still plenty of underutilised gas fields that could be brought on stream.
Not to mention that it would keep Dubya's paymasters happy for a while. They'd get to sell a commodity that isn't in huge demand for a premium price.
As for nuclear power to drive electrolysis - hmmm let's see that's rarely over 70% efficient on top of (let's be generous) 35% efficient for a nuclear power plant.
That's not too surprising, especially in Europe. There's not a whole bunch of places to put the waste, for one thing. No desert mountains to bury it under. New Scientist did a piece on the dump near Sellafield, which has the radioactive leavings stored up. It's a light concrete bunker containing enough waste that if a medium size plane were flown into it, it would release radioactive waste equivalent to hundreds of Chernobyls.
Europe's a small place. That kind of thing makes people very rationally concerned.
There are plenty of places where fuel and waste could be deposited. The Swedes have been testing a repository for many years now. Intermediate waste can be stored in the huge salt deposits that run across most of Northern Europe. Germany is already doing so, and only political cowardice stopped the British from starting work in the 1980s.
Britain has made things much worse by its blind devotion to nuclear reprocessing, despite the hideous economics.
And of course, being Britain (and naturally 'a bit crap'), we decided that our intermediate waste store was going to be in a waterlogged, fault-ridden layer of rock just outside Sellafield. Fortunately, the government bothered to listen to the geologists before putting waste down that particular hole.
Then they decided not to do anything and leave the piles of waste to accumulate in Sellafield.
Sigh.
Oh, not to mention the ongoing problems in the Irish Sea, and the atypically high rates of cancer recorded around some of the existing plants...
IIRC statistical studies have been unable to find any association between cancer clusters and nuclear installations in the UK. The rates are so low even inside the clusters that they might be statistical noise. Clusters also occur in areas with no nuclear facilities.
And of course, what is now only just coming out is that a huge swathe of Northern Britain received fall-out from the 1957 graphite fire in the Number 1 reactor at Windscale (now Sellafield).
Actually, I don't think it's so much oil (and gas) as the old nuclear power stations coming to the end of their active lives, and the government being unwilling to build new ones (due to the political difficulties it would cause since much of the population here doesn't want new ones being built near them).
Actually its more that no one is willing to pick up the bill for a new generation of nuclear power stations.
British Energy who run the AGR stations and our single PWR are in the toilet, and have only been kept afloat by government bail-outs.
Private companies realise that they can generate power more cheaply from just about any other source than nuclear. Not to mention that they don't have to raise billions in finance before starting work, set aside billions more for decommissioning and that they can bring other generation capacity on line faster than with nuclear.
Nuclear is also hampered by the dergulated market where companies switch between providers. Nuclear is great for providing lots of power over long periods, but the market is moving towards short term contracts that directly benefit gas and renewables.
The state is pretty much out of power generation (with the exception of BNFL's Magnox division) and shows no sign of wanting to get back in - even assuming that European Union rules would allow a massive government investment in what is supposed to be a competitive industry.
Nuclear has had its day in the UK. It tried, it eventually built damn good reactors but in the end, it was killed off by economics.
There's also an attack on a space elevator in Alastair Reynold's 'Chasm City'. Terrorists place a small nuclear bomb on an elevator car and blow it up en-route. The diamond (in this case) cable comes crashing down across hundreds of miles of the planet.
Mind you that's just an incidental detail in the book - which is a cracking good read for all those people who like 'hard' science fiction.
Generaly the left handed and right handed molcules have very quite different behaviours, for instance some drugs use only one of the versions, whilst the other version is a poision.
The most famous example being thalidomide. The early production methods produced both versions of the compound. One isomer relieved morning sickness, the other was teratogenic and affected the unborn child.
Nowadays, thalidomide can be produced in the pure form and it shows promise against Hansen's Syndrome (leprosy) and some forms of cancer.
no joke. i was in london for a school trip that week the derailment happened, and a cross-town bus trip jumped from a 1-hour inconvenience to a 3-hour nightmare. i really had expected the tube to function at least as well as the L in chicago, seeing as how they've had the tube around for so long, but it is in need of a serious reworking, (not to mention a deep cleaning!)
Well its been starved of investment for over 30 years, which is now being felt.
The jewel on the line is the incredible Jubilee Line Extension out towards Greenwich and Canary Wharf. The stations are just breathtaking - Canary Wharf looks like something out of Bladerunner.
I just wish it was as good as the Paris Metro/RER system. But they've had lots of government money - the poor old Underground hasn't.
Toshiba have only licenced the ability to embed TiVo technology in their chipsets. They have made no announcement about releasing boxes and as yet wouldn't have the rights.
Its particularly true when you go to places like India and see that they are still not only using the same train tracks installed by the British over a century ago, but they are still using the same trains.
And they are still more reliable than Connex South Central.
If any Indians want to come over and take revenge on us by building an integrated rail network please feel free.
Don't tell 3DRealms. I hear they're *this* close to shipping DNF, and I'd hate for them to have to go back and try to redo it without flashy graphics, T&A, or Duke himself.
Shhhh! Don't say anything or 3DRealms will just announce that there will be a 'slight delay' while they re-write the whole thing using Liquid Narrative.
Mind you DNF seems to be a game that's gone on forever.
It's not that the machine is noisy per-se, but just that when the fan cuts in you really notice it. Quite a lot of the time, the machine is incredibly quiet.
Mind you it was only a couple of weeks ago I realised that my iBook had a fan - until then it had been so quiet I assumed that something had failed inside.
Uh, we don't actually get The Ashes... you lot get to keep it no matter who wins it..
Oh yes, I forgot that - apparently they're now too fragile to make the trip Down Under.
A shame that the ECC didn't think of that excuse before Nasser and the team flew out - we could have been saved a great deal of embarrassment.
Anyway if you're desperate to have the Ashes you couldn't have come to a better place, I am personally willing to exchange one of our greatest cultural icons for one of yours. Please FedEx Kylie immediately.
BTW. Isn't it wonderful to know that most of the Americans on this list have no idea what we're talking about?
*cries* oh it's true... it's so true... boooohoooo we're nothing but arse kissers!
Hey come on! Us Brits have precious little to be proud of (whole of Australia nods in unison), but Tony Blair's sensational record of kissing the USAian arse has been unchallenged.
Until now.
Please don't take this last achievement away from Britain - aren't The Ashes enough for you?
Slashdot Mirror
At the moment it is just the resolution of our imaging techniques that limits what we call a satellite. There are bound to be hundreds, if not thousands of smaller bodies around Jupiter that we haven't spotted yet.
Let's just hope that they fit future spacecraft with radar, or send a man up the main mast.
Best wishes,
Mike.
If any country did things at a feverish pace, it was the Americans. The Apollo project short-circuited everything by building one very big rocket that was good for one purpose - taking three men and a lunar module to the Moon. Saturn V was practically useless for anything else.
So when Apollo ended the rockets were no longer needed - instant crisis - what was going to replace them?
The Soviets took the long term approach of reusing their hardware time and time again and building families of rockets that complemented one another. Even their 'Moon rocket' the N1, was not just intended to take men to the Moon, it was intended to lift up to 100 tonnes into low orbit. What was stacked on top was irrelevant - the Soviets had plans for Moon missions, space stations, weapons, space probes the lot to go up on N1s.
That design failed, but the workhorses of the 1960s are still going strong. And that's because they're damned good designs that can be used for almost anything. Soyuz not only puts men into orbit, it launches communications satellites, can throw a payload to the Moon and in July it will be carrying a European probe to Mars.
And Soviet missions lost four men in two missions - Soyuz 1 (1967) and Soyuz 11 (1971). Since then, none.
There are no 'missing' or 'secret' cosmonaut deaths, the Soviet Union simply had a better strategy for getting into space. It worked hard and there is no point in taking that achievement away from them.
Best wishes,
Mike.
(Zond was one of those catch-all terms used by the Soviets. It means 'probe' and was also used for missions to Mars, Venus and Earth orbiting flights)
The Zond probes to the Moon were modified Soyuz capsules that would have carried a single cosmonaut around the Moon and back to Earth.
The original plan was to send the first mission to the Moon in November 1968 (which would have just pipped Apollo 8), provided that three or four unmanned missions proved successful.
After a series of unsuccessful launches (which were given the designation Kosmos), Zond 5 and 6 both successfully completed their missions - until the last few minutes. Zond 5 suffered a gyroscope failure and re-entered pulling some 20G, whilst Zond 6 depressurised during re-entry and suffered a parachute failure.
Zond 7 flew unmanned in 1969 and returned safely to Earth. The last mission, Zond 8 suffered another 20G re-entry and was recovered from the Indian Ocean instead of inside the USSR.
Apparently more capsules were built, but were allocated to the Soviet Union's ambitious plans to construct a lunar base. That came to nothing because of the failure of their N1 booster.
Best wishes,
Mike.
Mars Express? It's flying on a Fregat/Soyuz. Your point was what precisely?
Best wishes,
Mike.
LOL!
Oh yes!
I can see it now - Microsoft presents 'Steve Balmer Dancing Monkey Jiggleathon' (tm) - only on XBox.
Best wishes,
Mike.
The real problem lies with the games. There is almost nothing that is likely to appeal to the Japanese market (and precious little to appeal to this XBox owner). Pretty much everyone agrees that the XBox has one 'must-have' game - Halo - and that's it. Halo's brilliant, but FPS don't seem to have taken off in arcades and that genre doesn't do well in Japan.
Now maybe Microsoft' strategy is to flood the Land of the Rising Sun with arcade DOA Beach Volleyball, but I can't see it selling many more machines.
Best wishes,
Mike.
Sigh.
No they didn't. First the Soviets managed to kill just four cosmonauts during their manned missions. After each failure their was a long stand down whilst the ships and procedures were checked thoroughly.
The first disaster was Soyuz 1 in April 1967. Soyuz had been under development for several years, but the programme had been thrown into confusion by the death of the Chief Designer Sergei Korolev. He was replaced by Vasily Michin - a fine engineer, but not up to the job of controlling the Soviet space programme, which was in itself in crisis. There were too many competing programmes vying for attention and too little money. It was during this time that the Soviet Moon programme completely lost its way - for which Michin would eventually take the blame.
Soyuz was a highly advanced craft and needed a lot of testing. That testing was nowhere near complete. However, the manned Soyuz 1 was launched under political pressure to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. The engineers complied despite the failure of three unmanned versions of the craft.
Had Yuri Gagarin lived, it was almost certain he would have flown the mission. Instead, Soyuz 1 was piloted by Vladimir Komarov it had a succession of failures whilst in orbit, including the failure of one solar panel to deploy correctly. The craft re-entered the atmosphere as planned, but with a slight rotation. The parachute lines became entangled and the craft crashed to Earth at a high speed killing Komarov.
It had been planned that Soyuz 2 would be launched one day after Soyuz 1 and they would rendezvous in orbit. The launch was cancelled. The Soyuz 2 spacecraft was dismantled and found to have identical problems to the ship that flew. Had it been launched, it would have killed its crew.
(By horrible coincidence the flight of Soyuz 1 occured just six months after the Apollo 1 fire that killed three American astronauts.)
Soyuz was grounded whilst the entire manufacturing and quality control process was reorganised. Only when that was complete did the Soviets launch five unmanned Soyuz craft as part of their Kosmos series. When these were considered successful they then launched a second Soyuz 2 completely unmanned.
Soyuz 3 was the first successful manned mission in a Soyuz which flew in October 1968 - 16 months after the disaster.
The second cosmonaut disaster was Soyuz 11, which suffered decompression during re-entry after a mission to the Salyut 1 space station. The disaster killed three men in June 1971. The craft landed automatically and the technicians were able to see that a valve had been opened during undocking.
The Soyuz 12 mission which would have used the same design of Soyuz module was cancelled. No further flights were made with this model of ship.
It was already due to be replaced by a new Soyuz design which flew eight unmanned missions before Soyuz 12 became the next Soviet manned flight in September 1973; more than two years after the loss of Soyuz 11.
Best wishes,
Mike.
Well excuse us, for not making more of an effort to entertain you. Go back to jerking off into the gaping mouth of your dead mother under your bed. Also you are such a lame troll, it's obvious to all of us here that you are a virgin with a B.O problem.
Wow, I think you've got that special sensitive touch when dealing with people. You'd make an excellent addition to Kelly and the team down at DriveSavers.
Either that or writing children's novels.Best wishes,
Mike.
In the short term a lot of this hydrogen is going to come from the catalytic cracking of natural gas. There are still plenty of underutilised gas fields that could be brought on stream.
Not to mention that it would keep Dubya's paymasters happy for a while. They'd get to sell a commodity that isn't in huge demand for a premium price.
As for nuclear power to drive electrolysis - hmmm let's see that's rarely over 70% efficient on top of (let's be generous) 35% efficient for a nuclear power plant.
That's the economics of the madhouse.
Best wishes,
Mike.
Europe's a small place. That kind of thing makes people very rationally concerned.
There are plenty of places where fuel and waste could be deposited. The Swedes have been testing a repository for many years now. Intermediate waste can be stored in the huge salt deposits that run across most of Northern Europe. Germany is already doing so, and only political cowardice stopped the British from starting work in the 1980s.
Britain has made things much worse by its blind devotion to nuclear reprocessing, despite the hideous economics.
And of course, being Britain (and naturally 'a bit crap'), we decided that our intermediate waste store was going to be in a waterlogged, fault-ridden layer of rock just outside Sellafield. Fortunately, the government bothered to listen to the geologists before putting waste down that particular hole.
Then they decided not to do anything and leave the piles of waste to accumulate in Sellafield.
Sigh.
Oh, not to mention the ongoing problems in the Irish Sea, and the atypically high rates of cancer recorded around some of the existing plants...
IIRC statistical studies have been unable to find any association between cancer clusters and nuclear installations in the UK. The rates are so low even inside the clusters that they might be statistical noise. Clusters also occur in areas with no nuclear facilities.
And of course, what is now only just coming out is that a huge swathe of Northern Britain received fall-out from the 1957 graphite fire in the Number 1 reactor at Windscale (now Sellafield).
Best wishes,
Mike.
Actually its more that no one is willing to pick up the bill for a new generation of nuclear power stations.
British Energy who run the AGR stations and our single PWR are in the toilet, and have only been kept afloat by government bail-outs.
Private companies realise that they can generate power more cheaply from just about any other source than nuclear. Not to mention that they don't have to raise billions in finance before starting work, set aside billions more for decommissioning and that they can bring other generation capacity on line faster than with nuclear.
Nuclear is also hampered by the dergulated market where companies switch between providers. Nuclear is great for providing lots of power over long periods, but the market is moving towards short term contracts that directly benefit gas and renewables.
The state is pretty much out of power generation (with the exception of BNFL's Magnox division) and shows no sign of wanting to get back in - even assuming that European Union rules would allow a massive government investment in what is supposed to be a competitive industry.
Nuclear has had its day in the UK. It tried, it eventually built damn good reactors but in the end, it was killed off by economics.
Best wishes,
Mike.
Mind you that's just an incidental detail in the book - which is a cracking good read for all those people who like 'hard' science fiction.
Best wishes,
Mike.
The most famous example being thalidomide. The early production methods produced both versions of the compound. One isomer relieved morning sickness, the other was teratogenic and affected the unborn child.
Nowadays, thalidomide can be produced in the pure form and it shows promise against Hansen's Syndrome (leprosy) and some forms of cancer.
Best wishes,
Mike.
Well its been starved of investment for over 30 years, which is now being felt.
The jewel on the line is the incredible Jubilee Line Extension out towards Greenwich and Canary Wharf. The stations are just breathtaking - Canary Wharf looks like something out of Bladerunner.
I just wish it was as good as the Paris Metro/RER system. But they've had lots of government money - the poor old Underground hasn't.
Best wishes,
Mike.
So this little black box at CES is what exactly?
You can see the little TiVo logo just below the DVD tray.
Best wishes,
Mike.
Anyone know if they are planning on releasing machines here in the UK?
Thanks,
Mike.
I believe Virgin Trains were keen on the idea until a nasty accident involving a passenger on the roof and the 25 kV overhead line. :)
Best wishes,
Mike.
Yeah well we can test that proposition when we get a socialist government in the UK rather than Maggie-lite as at the moment.
Like Conservatism but can't stand the people? Vote New Labour, all the same old policies in a shiny new wrapper!
Best wishes,
Mike.
And they are still more reliable than Connex South Central.
If any Indians want to come over and take revenge on us by building an integrated rail network please feel free.
Best wishes,
Mike.
Shhhh! Don't say anything or 3DRealms will just announce that there will be a 'slight delay' while they re-write the whole thing using Liquid Narrative.
Mind you DNF seems to be a game that's gone on forever.
Best wishes,
Mike.
And that folks is what happens when you take /. postings too seriously.
No other nation in the Western Hemisphere has "America" in its name.Hey you're right - and there's only one Mexico and Uruguay as well :) These unique country names could come in useful someday.
Calm down no one was offending America, we all know what an important role it has in stopping Canada fraying at the edges.
Best wishes,
Mike.
Mind you it was only a couple of weeks ago I realised that my iBook had a fan - until then it had been so quiet I assumed that something had failed inside.
Best wishes,
Mike.
Oh yes, I forgot that - apparently they're now too fragile to make the trip Down Under.
A shame that the ECC didn't think of that excuse before Nasser and the team flew out - we could have been saved a great deal of embarrassment.
Anyway if you're desperate to have the Ashes you couldn't have come to a better place, I am personally willing to exchange one of our greatest cultural icons for one of yours. Please FedEx Kylie immediately.
BTW. Isn't it wonderful to know that most of the Americans on this list have no idea what we're talking about?
Best wishes,
Mike.
Hey come on! Us Brits have precious little to be proud of (whole of Australia nods in unison), but Tony Blair's sensational record of kissing the USAian arse has been unchallenged.
Until now.
Please don't take this last achievement away from Britain - aren't The Ashes enough for you?
Best wishes,
Mike.
Best wishes,
Mike.