That, I will grant you. In fact, the second Soviet female astronaut (Svetlana Savitskaya) was specifically launched to capture the distinction of being the first woman to do an EVA, just beating Kathryn Sullivan by a few months
I think Thereskova was mainly choosen because of her parachutist background (the early Russian kosmonauts parachuted out of the capsule just before landing). The other factors certainly played, but as an "additional".
Sure, because everyone (except those in the Soviet space program) thought that she actually *did something* besides sit there.
At least Our Guys had control sticks even though they were mainly for emergencies.
Spacecraft orientation maintenance and orbital control was actually not entirely automated on the Vostok: Thereskova had to do that manually based on info from her onboard instruments and groundcontrol feedback. So you are just being petty here. The Soviet Union launched a woman into space within 2 years of their first manned flight. The US did so only 22 years after their first manned flight.
1) Along with the iPad's flat shape, the metal rod and the cylindrical thing (the GPS tracker?) underneath it acted to weigh and stabilize it. Look at the video: after some initial tumbling, it stabilizes and takes a flat, horizontal attitude throughout the fall. The bottom of the iPad is always level with the horizon.
As a result, the flat iPad starts to create it's own lift-effect, slowing the ascend down. It starts to glide, kind of like a falling leaf.
Analyzing the the video, especially the imagery of the last second before impact on a frame-by-frame basis, you can see that the ground upon impact is not smeared in individual frames, but visible in all detail. This simply shows that the speed upon ground impact was not high at all. It makes a relatively gentle, gliding landing with a speed of at best a few meters/second.
2) As others remarked, it did not drop from space. 30 km is nowhere near the boundary of space. Even (a few, military) aircraft can and do fly at 30 km altitude. It's airspace, not Space.
The earth has its closest approach to the 12P/Pons-Brooks orbit near December 6th, not August 12th (see diagrams in the link above). Hence, fragments of the latter cannot pass close to earth mid-august (and they do not come even particularly close on 6 December, as the minimal earth to comet orbit distance is still 0.2 AU, i.e. the comet passes closer to the orbit of Venus than to the orbit of Earth).
The whole story has very little substantial fact behind it, and factual errors such as pointed out above do not promote confidence.
Wouldn't this be something that lends itself to automation more easily than crowd sourcing? Just asking...
Actually, the human eye is still beter at detecting trails on plates than automated systems are, especially where fainter trails are concerned. Automated system also have serious difficulty discerning between real NEA trails and trails from cosmic ray impacts on the sensor.
Spacewatch used automated detection, nevertheless human inspectors discivered 43 additional asteroid trails on the images between 2004 and 2006: trails that the automated routines missed.
Interesting as it is, this is not a "first". The Spacewatch program "crowdsourced" the search for NEA by using volunteer plate inspectors between 2004 and 2006 (the Spacewatch FMO project) and discovered 43 new NEA this way (http://fmo.lpl.arizona.edu/discoveries.cfm). I personally discovered 2005 GG81, a small Amor asteroid, as a volunteer plate reviewer in this project.
Actually, many/most countries are signatory to the Space Treaty that specifically states (amongst other things) that any space debris landing on their territory has to be turned over to the country who launched it, if the latter wishes so. So yes: by international law, UARS remains US property.
Or is the issue that whatever made the Progress fail could also make the next one fail (i.e. a Soyuz with people on board)?
That is indeed the rpoblem: the manned Soyuz is launched by the same type of rocket that failed with the last Progress.
So the concern is that no new Soyuz will go up for a while if they do not sort out the cause of the malfunction quickly. In that case, the Soyuz coupled to ISS at the moment will have no replacement. It will have to return before February 2012 as a safe function of it cannot be guaranteed after that date. Because of the wintertime conditions hampering a safe landing, it will actually have to leave ISS in November at the latest. Any astro/kosmonauts onboard ISS will have to take that last Soyuz back otherwise they will be marooned on the space station.
The problem is not supplies: there are enough supplies in the ISS already to last untill after the winter.
The problem is that the only remaining return Soyuz module apparently is not fit to function untill next spring. So it has to return earlier, if no replacement arrives before that point. The hazard of a landing under winter (darkness) condition means that it cannot return later than November. Leaving the ISS with no return vehicle after November.
Remember that we are talking about stuff that moves at 7.5 km per second. With a fraction of a second uncertainty in the orbit, those 335 meter could have been reduced to zero meter. Assuming the 335 meter was right in the fligthpath of ISS rather than above or under it, 335 meter represents a difference of 0.04 seconds in time....
1) the satellites will increasingly *not* be there after 2016. They don't have endless lives. That is the whole point, if you'd cared to read the original newsitem.
2) if funding for mission maintenance is dropped, these satellites will go out of control. Then some of them might still be still up after 2016, but with controlled attitude lost their sensors will no longer automatically be pointed towards earth. I.e., they will be useless bricks circling Earth and your APT receiver will be useless as well..
Disposable income is a fraction of what it is in the USA.
In absolute terms, but not in relative terms. The average Dutchman can buy as much here for his/her salary as the average US citizen in the US can for his/her. Added to this should be the fact that poverty levels (i.e. the relative number of poor people) in the Netherlands are much lower than in the US. Dutch also tend to be well-educated (we are among the highest educated people in the world). 8% of our population has a university degree (and that is a real university, not a college) and 30% of our population has an advanced level degree ("college").
With respect to cars etc.: we are not a car-oriented society. We are a small country, and a lot of people use public transport, which is very good (even though we complain about it) and brings us everywhere without having to wait a half day.
I had a relationship with a US expat for a while, and have an expat US/British colleague. Their life is dull, because they usually form their own social circles and don't integrate well into Dutch society.
I checked the used car prices on autotrack and found that the price is a little higher, the cars are usually lower mileage, and the taxes quite a bit higher. Insurance is higher and NL has a pretty expensive road tax. Actual quantification eludes me.
At the same time, you have to take into account that the Netherlands is a small country. We don't have to drive 3 hours to our work (and many people actually commute by public transport). So while gasoline is expensive, you won't spend as many gallons a week typically as an average US citizen would.
I am part of one of the groups targetted in this paper: amateur classified satellite trackers. And I am highly offended in how the paper presents us: it has little to do with reality.
The author apparently did not bother to contact any one of us: on what grounds he then comes to the conclusion that we don't show restraint, is completely unclear. Moreover, his conclusion in this is incorrect. We do show restraint, more than he imagines. What we make public, is actually only a part of the story, and it is the part that any adversary (State or ideological group) can easily assemble themselves with very little effort.
The SAIC writer appears completely unaware of (or willingly ignores) what we really know but do not make public. For a number of classified satellites, we have formulated quite precise ideas about what they are doing (in terms of: the purpose of their mission): but decided within our little group to not go public with that, thinking it might endanger the mission of these satellites (and one satellite in particular, one of the most enigmatic there is out there). This is something this SAIC writer (who acts like a classic communist agitprop) seems not to be aware of (or put it differently: appears not te be interested in at all): and certainly hasn't even bothered to check. Talking about bias and being ill informed! So, how serious should we take this paper then?
The SAIC writer is highly unrealistic in his attitude and ideas. Our group basically is made up of 15 or so active observers. We track 300 objects. Many of those, are naked eye objects. All you need for this work is a good star map and a stopwatch, or a off-the shelf DSLR camera. We do it as a hobby alongside formal jobs, etc. The idea that any adversary, State or group, cannot create such an observing network themselves and is dependant on us, is ridiculous.
What this SAIC writer should realize, is that we simply show the limits to realistic secrecy. Within the US military, there is a group of people who have highly unrealistic ideas about secrecy. The more realistic people within the military (which luckily there are too) accept that some things cannot be kept secret (like a satellite that is easily visible naked eye), and realize that good military strategy includes being able to discern realistic secrecy from unrealistic attempts at secrecy. This SAIC writer fails in that regard, and displays an attitude that I feel is highly dangerous to US security as it amounts to the mentioned unrealistic ideas about secrecy that do not make for good military strategy. In other words: advisors like this SAIC Troll are the biggest danger to realistic US military strategy and from that US security. Not us satellite observers.
It are unrealistic ideas about secrecy like these that actually kill people. A military strategy that assumes their adversary doesn't have knowledge about the position of space reconnaissance assets is one that will quickly shatter to pieces, with lives lost, when the troops on the ground are confronted with the reality. The unrealistic calls for "secrecy" like those of this SAIC Troll therefore, is what if acted up on will increase the number of body bags coming back from war zones. THEY are the true danger.
I am not a US citizen by the way, and most observers in our network are not. In principle, I don't give a rats ass (and don't need to) about what the US government wants to keep secret. These very satellites might be spying on my own country (history shows the US is not beyond spying on allies).
Last but not least: the US is a signatory to the "Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies". This treaty specifically states that signature States (including the US thefore) must: "inform the Secretary-General of the United Nations as well as the public and the international scientific community, to the greatest extent feasible and practicable, of the nature, conduct, locations and results of such activities". This call for secrecy is therefore in violation of an International Treaty signed by the US government.
It keeps being funny though, to see the typical American reaction to any suggestion that the US might not always be on the technological forefront of things. Up to Americans then starting to hail the perceived merits of old fashioned systems... In terms of monetary transactions, the US is decidedly lagging behind the rest of the western world. Paper cheques: monetary clay tablets, really.
No argument with that. Progress has its drawbacks, notably in the privacy realm. From cellphones tracking your movement to pyaments tracking your spending.
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Actually, the oldest human DNA is that of the Sclayn Neandertal dating to 90,000 BP.
That, I will grant you. In fact, the second Soviet female astronaut (Svetlana Savitskaya) was specifically launched to capture the distinction of being the first woman to do an EVA, just beating Kathryn Sullivan by a few months
I think Thereskova was mainly choosen because of her parachutist background (the early Russian kosmonauts parachuted out of the capsule just before landing). The other factors certainly played, but as an "additional".
Sure, because everyone (except those in the Soviet space program) thought that she actually *did something* besides sit there.
At least Our Guys had control sticks even though they were mainly for emergencies.
Spacecraft orientation maintenance and orbital control was actually not entirely automated on the Vostok: Thereskova had to do that manually based on info from her onboard instruments and groundcontrol feedback. So you are just being petty here. The Soviet Union launched a woman into space within 2 years of their first manned flight. The US did so only 22 years after their first manned flight.
I filmed the ATV 3 as it passed over Leiden, the Netherlands, in twilight this morning.
The video can be seen here:
http://sattrackcam.blogspot.com/2012/03/footage-of-atv-3-passing-in-morning.html
The spacecraft is quite bright, easily visible naked eye in a bright blue twilight sky.
A problem for Mr Popovkin's blame-game, is that Phobos-Grunt did not pass over Alaska until several hours after it failed.
1) Along with the iPad's flat shape, the metal rod and the cylindrical thing (the GPS tracker?) underneath it acted to weigh and stabilize it. Look at the video: after some initial tumbling, it stabilizes and takes a flat, horizontal attitude throughout the fall. The bottom of the iPad is always level with the horizon.
As a result, the flat iPad starts to create it's own lift-effect, slowing the ascend down. It starts to glide, kind of like a falling leaf.
Analyzing the the video, especially the imagery of the last second before impact on a frame-by-frame basis, you can see that the ground upon impact is not smeared in individual frames, but visible in all detail. This simply shows that the speed upon ground impact was not high at all. It makes a relatively gentle, gliding landing with a speed of at best a few meters/second.
2) As others remarked, it did not drop from space. 30 km is nowhere near the boundary of space. Even (a few, military) aircraft can and do fly at 30 km altitude. It's airspace, not Space.
The authors propose a link in their paper to fragments of comet 12P/Pons-Brooks.
This is nonsense however, as pointed out here: http://sattrackcam.blogspot.com/2011/10/ot-1883-zacatecas-observation-of.html
The earth has its closest approach to the 12P/Pons-Brooks orbit near December 6th, not August 12th (see diagrams in the link above). Hence, fragments of the latter cannot pass close to earth mid-august (and they do not come even particularly close on 6 December, as the minimal earth to comet orbit distance is still 0.2 AU, i.e. the comet passes closer to the orbit of Venus than to the orbit of Earth).
The whole story has very little substantial fact behind it, and factual errors such as pointed out above do not promote confidence.
Wouldn't this be something that lends itself to automation more easily than crowd sourcing? Just asking...
Actually, the human eye is still beter at detecting trails on plates than automated systems are, especially where fainter trails are concerned. Automated system also have serious difficulty discerning between real NEA trails and trails from cosmic ray impacts on the sensor.
Spacewatch used automated detection, nevertheless human inspectors discivered 43 additional asteroid trails on the images between 2004 and 2006: trails that the automated routines missed.
Interesting as it is, this is not a "first". The Spacewatch program "crowdsourced" the search for NEA by using volunteer plate inspectors between 2004 and 2006 (the Spacewatch FMO project) and discovered 43 new NEA this way (http://fmo.lpl.arizona.edu/discoveries.cfm). I personally discovered 2005 GG81, a small Amor asteroid, as a volunteer plate reviewer in this project.
Anyone know what orbital plane/altitude it's at?
It currently is in a 198 x 345 km orbit inclined 42.8 degrees.
Actually, many/most countries are signatory to the Space Treaty that specifically states (amongst other things) that any space debris landing on their territory has to be turned over to the country who launched it, if the latter wishes so. So yes: by international law, UARS remains US property.
But of course, the Russians may always decide that the last Soyuz currently attached is "safe" after February 2012 after all.
Or is the issue that whatever made the Progress fail could also make the next one fail (i.e. a Soyuz with people on board)?
That is indeed the rpoblem: the manned Soyuz is launched by the same type of rocket that failed with the last Progress.
So the concern is that no new Soyuz will go up for a while if they do not sort out the cause of the malfunction quickly. In that case, the Soyuz coupled to ISS at the moment will have no replacement. It will have to return before February 2012 as a safe function of it cannot be guaranteed after that date. Because of the wintertime conditions hampering a safe landing, it will actually have to leave ISS in November at the latest. Any astro/kosmonauts onboard ISS will have to take that last Soyuz back otherwise they will be marooned on the space station.
The problem is not supplies: there are enough supplies in the ISS already to last untill after the winter.
The problem is that the only remaining return Soyuz module apparently is not fit to function untill next spring. So it has to return earlier, if no replacement arrives before that point. The hazard of a landing under winter (darkness) condition means that it cannot return later than November. Leaving the ISS with no return vehicle after November.
So not, SpaceX can not come to the rescue....
Remember that we are talking about stuff that moves at 7.5 km per second. With a fraction of a second uncertainty in the orbit, those 335 meter could have been reduced to zero meter. Assuming the 335 meter was right in the fligthpath of ISS rather than above or under it, 335 meter represents a difference of 0.04 seconds in time....
Here's an image I took, using the 0.61-meter F/10 Cassegrain of Sierra Stars Obs. in California:
http://sattrackcam.blogspot.com/2011/06/ot-close-encounters-of-rocky-kind-2011.html
Actually, no:
1) the satellites will increasingly *not* be there after 2016. They don't have endless lives. That is the whole point, if you'd cared to read the original newsitem.
2) if funding for mission maintenance is dropped, these satellites will go out of control. Then some of them might still be still up after 2016, but with controlled attitude lost their sensors will no longer automatically be pointed towards earth. I.e., they will be useless bricks circling Earth and your APT receiver will be useless as well..
Disposable income is a fraction of what it is in the USA.
In absolute terms, but not in relative terms. The average Dutchman can buy as much here for his/her salary as the average US citizen in the US can for his/her. Added to this should be the fact that poverty levels (i.e. the relative number of poor people) in the Netherlands are much lower than in the US. Dutch also tend to be well-educated (we are among the highest educated people in the world). 8% of our population has a university degree (and that is a real university, not a college) and 30% of our population has an advanced level degree ("college").
With respect to cars etc.: we are not a car-oriented society. We are a small country, and a lot of people use public transport, which is very good (even though we complain about it) and brings us everywhere without having to wait a half day.
Life is dull, but secure
I had a relationship with a US expat for a while, and have an expat US/British colleague. Their life is dull, because they usually form their own social circles and don't integrate well into Dutch society.
I checked the used car prices on autotrack and found that the price is a little higher, the cars are usually lower mileage, and the taxes quite a bit higher. Insurance is higher and NL has a pretty expensive road tax. Actual quantification eludes me.
At the same time, you have to take into account that the Netherlands is a small country. We don't have to drive 3 hours to our work (and many people actually commute by public transport). So while gasoline is expensive, you won't spend as many gallons a week typically as an average US citizen would.
Identity theft is not really an issue here. It seems to be more of an issue in the US.
And it even more fun to see that mentioning this, will result in your comment being moderated "Troll"....
I am part of one of the groups targetted in this paper: amateur classified satellite trackers. And I am highly offended in how the paper presents us: it has little to do with reality.
The author apparently did not bother to contact any one of us: on what grounds he then comes to the conclusion that we don't show restraint, is completely unclear. Moreover, his conclusion in this is incorrect. We do show restraint, more than he imagines. What we make public, is actually only a part of the story, and it is the part that any adversary (State or ideological group) can easily assemble themselves with very little effort.
The SAIC writer appears completely unaware of (or willingly ignores) what we really know but do not make public. For a number of classified satellites, we have formulated quite precise ideas about what they are doing (in terms of: the purpose of their mission): but decided within our little group to not go public with that, thinking it might endanger the mission of these satellites (and one satellite in particular, one of the most enigmatic there is out there). This is something this SAIC writer (who acts like a classic communist agitprop) seems not to be aware of (or put it differently: appears not te be interested in at all): and certainly hasn't even bothered to check. Talking about bias and being ill informed! So, how serious should we take this paper then?
The SAIC writer is highly unrealistic in his attitude and ideas. Our group basically is made up of 15 or so active observers. We track 300 objects. Many of those, are naked eye objects. All you need for this work is a good star map and a stopwatch, or a off-the shelf DSLR camera. We do it as a hobby alongside formal jobs, etc. The idea that any adversary, State or group, cannot create such an observing network themselves and is dependant on us, is ridiculous.
What this SAIC writer should realize, is that we simply show the limits to realistic secrecy. Within the US military, there is a group of people who have highly unrealistic ideas about secrecy. The more realistic people within the military (which luckily there are too) accept that some things cannot be kept secret (like a satellite that is easily visible naked eye), and realize that good military strategy includes being able to discern realistic secrecy from unrealistic attempts at secrecy. This SAIC writer fails in that regard, and displays an attitude that I feel is highly dangerous to US security as it amounts to the mentioned unrealistic ideas about secrecy that do not make for good military strategy. In other words: advisors like this SAIC Troll are the biggest danger to realistic US military strategy and from that US security. Not us satellite observers.
It are unrealistic ideas about secrecy like these that actually kill people. A military strategy that assumes their adversary doesn't have knowledge about the position of space reconnaissance assets is one that will quickly shatter to pieces, with lives lost, when the troops on the ground are confronted with the reality. The unrealistic calls for "secrecy" like those of this SAIC Troll therefore, is what if acted up on will increase the number of body bags coming back from war zones. THEY are the true danger.
I am not a US citizen by the way, and most observers in our network are not. In principle, I don't give a rats ass (and don't need to) about what the US government wants to keep secret. These very satellites might be spying on my own country (history shows the US is not beyond spying on allies).
Last but not least: the US is a signatory to the "Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies". This treaty specifically states that signature States (including the US thefore) must: "inform the Secretary-General of the United Nations as well as the public and the international scientific community, to the greatest extent feasible and practicable, of the nature, conduct, locations and results of such activities". This call for secrecy is therefore in violation of an International Treaty signed by the US government.
It keeps being funny though, to see the typical American reaction to any suggestion that the US might not always be on the technological forefront of things. Up to Americans then starting to hail the perceived merits of old fashioned systems...
In terms of monetary transactions, the US is decidedly lagging behind the rest of the western world. Paper cheques: monetary clay tablets, really.
No argument with that. Progress has its drawbacks, notably in the privacy realm. From cellphones tracking your movement to pyaments tracking your spending.