Aw heck, if we want to get it really small, it ought to just send microwaves to a belt pack for the system -- that way the storage media is separate from the camera, and multiple cameras could be used to beam to the same storage media. -- <><
Somewhere, some little spineless geek is laughing. He (I can't imagine a female being such a pain, even among the list of ex-girlfriends of mine) is probably even reading/. to see how well he is doing. He is trying to figure out who he can piss off next.
People like these are the reasons LART's were invented, no? As I tell my friends who do sysadmin work, at any time, I can be a walking, talking, 6'-0", 290 lb. LART.
The sound you are hearing is cracking knuckles . . . not the cracking of vertebrae. Nahhhhh . . . it would just be fun to scare the ever-loving heck out of the guy.
I'm in favor of space exploration as much as the next guy, but I can't believe that we're wasting so many resources on this useless thing. Robots are much more cost effective. I'd rather have systematic (unmanned) infrastructure in space for exploration.
Woo, that'll really stir up the populace. Manned spaceflight captures our imagination much more so than unmanned, even though unmanned is more scientifically effective. Also, continuing manned flight is the only way we'll ever get off of this rock.
It's one thing for the U.S.A. with its booming economy and basically working society, but Russia is a basket-case! Why are we wasting thousands of Russian minds on this inane task with absolutely no benefits to the Russian people or even to the state of human knowlege?
No benefits to human knowledge? Even with the Russian work on this, we don't know diddly crap about long-term spaceflight still. Sure, hanging around in low-earth orbit (LEO) ain't glorious, but there is much to be had.
And, when the science of this thing really gets going, I'm really geeked. I wish I could talk more about the payload we're helping to build, but I can't. (Gotta love those non-disclosure agreements.) Let me say that this could be pretty revolutionary, though . ..
Genomics has got to be the scariest thing that I can imagine happening to our global society. The powers that genetics have, the promise of curing horrible diseases and defect are truly awe inspiring and not inconsiderable, but the awful likelihood of misuse is greater. Our world is just not yet ready or responsible enough to handle such potent knowledge.
The form of genomics that has people scared has a name -- eugenics. We've done it in the animal world for centuries, even millenia. However, as Jon Entine notes in his book on the genotypic advantages of certain genetic populations in sports (review coming to TOTK.com Sports at some point), humanity has this nice habit of sleeping around. =)
It will be interesting to see if humanity is willing to breed along such lines. In some ways, it's already being done with sperm banks, etc. I don't know that it's the right way to go, but I can't make everyone's decisions for them.
See, the nasty bit with this is that genetic research has so much power to fix what's currently wrong (as taken from the norm) with the human organism in the singular. It remains to be seen whether we take the next step into attempting to improve on the human species . . . and I don't think that will be very pretty.
The politics of ISS are a big pain in the ass. I just can't wait until someone figures out that the SPIP requires each International Partner to do all the integration work for payloads manifested on their modules . . . that will make for a fun time. -- <><
Helicopter? Obviously not a Rocket Scientist
on
Helicopter In Space
·
· Score: 1
A helicopter? Come on. If you need a hopper -- which is the mission this guy is trying to come up with -- you design a rocket system that uses in situ propellant generation.
It's fairly simple: design a hyrbid rocket to use oxygen as the oxidizer (seems funny, but that's rarely the oxidizer in rockets). Design a drilling system to grab you a core sample of ice.
Melt and electrolyze the water; dump the hydrogen in a tank to give you partial fuel for a fuel cell, and divert part of the oxygen to the rocket system, the rest to the rocket system. Carry fuel grains on-board.
Using in situ propellants cuts your launch weight, landing weight, and ergo cost by a lot. Sure, there's some increase in complexity to design an in situ system, but it sure would be a remotely-controlled, fold-out helicopter . ..
All this, and there are on-the-board designs for Mars.
The problem is that it is the old geezers who are running the Time magazine, and as such they know how to write, how to formulate an article, etc. What comes out of this Open Media is garbage because it's run by a bunch of kiddies who know nothing of content and quality. It pure-and-simple rubbish - quantity, and not quality.
Funny; running a family of ezines myself -- and being a youngster to boot -- I fully recognize that quality kicks quantity's ass to heck and back. Why? Because of the quantity.
Look at the realm I work in: sports commentary. Everyone is an expert about sports: just ask them. If they're kooky, though, it's like the guy you leave at the bar instead of doing what you want (which is applying a significant amount of force to his temple with an empty beer bottle). Simply put, you go find someone else to talk to.
The Interenet publishing (I refuse to use the cutesy e-publishing term) revolution has lowered costs and barriers to entry. The million monkeys axiom has indeed been proven false, yet there are scads of quality sites out there.
Anyone who doesn't believe in quality should see what happens to Top Of The Key's unsubs when our articles stink that week. You are only as good as your most recent screed.
Yeah, heard this on Discovery last night as well. They are sending the first crew up there with earplugs to avoid damaging their hearing.
It is more likely that the 'stronauts will be outfitted with headphones. You'd think NASA would do something wise, like tie 'em into the comm system . . . but that would be too logical. They didn't ask me.
I don't think it will bother them for most events, other than sleeping. Zero-g sleeping is highly, highly recommended (so saith Owen Garriott, who used to be a VP at my company), but you're impinging on the head whilst sleeping. -grrrrr-
They are going to try to fit some noise-reducing things like fan muffles to try and reduce the noise level, but they said that they basically missed the operating noise-level targets. It was likend to being on a busy freeway 24/7. Not an ideal environment for an extended misson.
What's really frustrating is that the General Accounting Office is who went public on that, not NASA. But then, NASA PAO stands for Propoganda and Arrogance Office in my book.
Good luck fitting muffling material in the spaces where it could be useful. Most of those spaces need to be kept clear of non-essential material to shutoff things like vacuum lines, etc. It's a simple safety trade-off.
What's the line: "Russian parts, American parts, all made in Taiwan!" I don't think Taiwanese QC is that bad. -g-
The other thing I saw they were lacking was micro-meteroid sheilding. I would think this is a far more severe problem? Imagine that sparc station getting hit with an object the size of a b-b travelling at, what, about 30,000 mph? (yeah, I know... I need more coffee, ok?)
Ehhhh, they're okay for shielding on Zvezda. Remember that a Progress ship *ran over* another module, and Mir still survived. What *will* delay the schedule will be the U.S. Lab shielding (Assembly Flight 5A, scheduled for 01/18/2001 -cough- -hack- -hack- yeah right) problems. They supposedly have 33 of 40 built . . . after the subcontractor went bankrupt. How you go bankrupt on a cost-plus-fee contract is beyond me . . . "Impressive, most impressive indeed."
FWIW, orbital speed for STS is 17,500 mph or so. ISS is higher up, with a higher velocity, but I don't think I want to dust off my spacecraft design text to pull out the average vel. equations . . . not when I have less important things to do. -g-
Interestingly, despite the perception that Russian space tech is backwards (it's more advanced then the US, cheaper, and actually happens), the Zvezda is an example of how this isn't true.
In some ways . . . but the biggest problem with Zvezda is the acoustical environment. You're supposed to build hardware to fit the NC40 curve (in other words, about what you'd hear if you had a normal office and not a cube =) for sustained noise patterns . . . and they haven't. It wouldn't seem loud to us, maybe, but we won't be up there 24/7 like the 'stronauts will.
Zvezda has a Sparc station running it, much more advanced then the 80386s that the US modules use.
NASA's computer policy is a bit weird (insert your own Mac bash here), but I don't know that they're totally off-base; you want something that's stable and is not prone to bit-flipping because of the various radiation environments seen by the ISS.
It also has multiple advanced environmental systems that the US doesn't have, including the infamous oxygen candles (redesigned) that started the fire on Mir.
I will happily admit that long-term environmental stuff is something the Russians are good at. It's not the best living environment, but it won't kill you, either. They understand "good enough".
It is much more air-tight then any US spacecraft ever built, too. The shuttle leaks air like a sieve compared to Mir, a station with the same basic design for it's main module.
That's simply a cost-benefit analysis. It's easier to carry on-board oxygen than it is to design hardware that has a certain leak rate. STS is designed for an on-orbit time of 28 days at maximum . . . Mir had a five-year life plan IIRC to begin with. STS carries its own atmosphere up with them; Mir/ISS/Salyut/Skylab had to be built more tightly to ensure that they weren't leaking atmosphere like crazed men.
What, you want STS to be more expensive?
The Russians were first in space, have spent more time in space then the US, and have cheaper manned access to space by a couple orders of magnitude (less then $10 to launch a Soyuz versus $500 million to launch the shuttle), but the US press has indoctrinated us into thinking they are less safe and backwards.
Much of that is due to the various roles of the spacecraft, though. It's not a great comparison; Soyuz is primarily a crew ingress/egress vehicle that has limited cargo capacity; the Russians use a Progress module, a modified Soyuz, to launch cargo. That lowers the launch costs, because the Progress launches can be done with more risk, etc.
The Russians do have superior heavy-lift capability. However, that heavy-lift isn't used for launching manned spacecraft. NASA, in its infinite wisdom, hasn't entered the unmanned cargo-ferrying realm . . . but then, we haven't had a space station since Skylab.
Nothing could be further from the truth, but as long as the cold-war press machine is remembered, with its fabricated stories of Soviet space hoaxes (all disproven) and implied safety problems, most people will improperly assume the US is number one in this regard.
The US is still the premier space power; more great scientific research has happened because of NASA efforts than of Russians. We've been to the moon; they haven't. The Russians are better in doing some things; overall, I'd rather fly up on American hardware than Russian hardware, although I'd rather use their rockets.
Side note: there is talk about hiring Russian rocket scientists and bringing them to the U.S. Many of the guys and gals at RSC Energiya work second jobs so that they can stay in their chosen field; some of the upper engineers drive taxis. Yeesh, but man, they can build 'em some rockets.
Zvezda isn't a true node. It's a living module/propulsion module. It'll house folks until the hab module gets up there closer to assembly complete.
Launch is in about 40 minutes. I'm staying up to watch to see if I have a job tomorrow. =) Now, were I a civil servant, I'd be okay, but I work for a contractor that's sub-contracting to a small Canadian company building a payload that should go up in late 2001/early 2002. If Zvezda blows up, I don't think much will get done at work tomorrow.
Getting the Russkies on was a good idea, but we should have kept the concept of the Zarya procurement intact -- Boeing gets the contract and subs out to a Russian company to build. Zarya was built on-schedule and done very well; Zvezda has had too much governmental involvement to be built properly. -g-
GFM -- damn, if this blows up, I think I'll have to become a full-time coder instead of just a part-timer and a full-time aero -- <><
Slashdot Mirror
Aw heck, if we want to get it really small, it ought to just send microwaves to a belt pack for the system -- that way the storage media is separate from the camera, and multiple cameras could be used to beam to the same storage media.
--
<><
Somewhere, some little spineless geek is laughing. He (I can't imagine a female being such a pain, even among the list of ex-girlfriends of mine) is probably even reading /. to see how well he is doing. He is trying to figure out who he can piss off next.
People like these are the reasons LART's were invented, no? As I tell my friends who do sysadmin work, at any time, I can be a walking, talking, 6'-0", 290 lb. LART.
The sound you are hearing is cracking knuckles . . . not the cracking of vertebrae. Nahhhhh . . . it would just be fun to scare the ever-loving heck out of the guy.
--
<><
I'm in favor of space exploration as much as the next guy, but I can't believe that we're wasting so many resources on this useless thing. Robots are much more cost effective. I'd rather have systematic (unmanned) infrastructure in space for exploration.
Woo, that'll really stir up the populace. Manned spaceflight captures our imagination much more so than unmanned, even though unmanned is more scientifically effective. Also, continuing manned flight is the only way we'll ever get off of this rock.
It's one thing for the U.S.A. with its booming economy and basically working society, but Russia is a basket-case! Why are we wasting thousands of Russian minds on this inane task with absolutely no benefits to the Russian people or even to the state of human knowlege?
No benefits to human knowledge? Even with the Russian work on this, we don't know diddly crap about long-term spaceflight still. Sure, hanging around in low-earth orbit (LEO) ain't glorious, but there is much to be had.
And, when the science of this thing really gets going, I'm really geeked. I wish I could talk more about the payload we're helping to build, but I can't. (Gotta love those non-disclosure agreements.) Let me say that this could be pretty revolutionary, though . . .
--
<><
Genomics has got to be the scariest thing that I can imagine happening to our global society. The powers that genetics have, the promise of curing horrible diseases and defect are truly awe inspiring and not inconsiderable, but the awful likelihood of misuse is greater. Our world is just not yet ready or responsible enough to handle such potent knowledge.
The form of genomics that has people scared has a name -- eugenics. We've done it in the animal world for centuries, even millenia. However, as Jon Entine notes in his book on the genotypic advantages of certain genetic populations in sports (review coming to TOTK.com Sports at some point), humanity has this nice habit of sleeping around. =)
It will be interesting to see if humanity is willing to breed along such lines. In some ways, it's already being done with sperm banks, etc. I don't know that it's the right way to go, but I can't make everyone's decisions for them.
See, the nasty bit with this is that genetic research has so much power to fix what's currently wrong (as taken from the norm) with the human organism in the singular. It remains to be seen whether we take the next step into attempting to improve on the human species . . . and I don't think that will be very pretty.
--
<><
The politics of ISS are a big pain in the ass. I just can't wait until someone figures out that the SPIP requires each International Partner to do all the integration work for payloads manifested on their modules . . . that will make for a fun time.
--
<><
A helicopter ? Come on. If you need a hopper -- which is the mission this guy is trying to come up with -- you design a rocket system that uses in situ propellant generation.
It's fairly simple: design a hyrbid rocket to use oxygen as the oxidizer (seems funny, but that's rarely the oxidizer in rockets). Design a drilling system to grab you a core sample of ice.
Melt and electrolyze the water; dump the hydrogen in a tank to give you partial fuel for a fuel cell, and divert part of the oxygen to the rocket system, the rest to the rocket system. Carry fuel grains on-board.
Using in situ propellants cuts your launch weight, landing weight, and ergo cost by a lot. Sure, there's some increase in complexity to design an in situ system, but it sure would be a remotely-controlled, fold-out helicopter . . .
All this, and there are on-the-board designs for Mars.
--
<><
The problem is that it is the old geezers who are running the Time magazine, and as such they know how to write, how to formulate an article, etc. What comes out of this Open Media is garbage because it's run by a bunch of kiddies who know nothing of content and quality. It pure-and-simple rubbish - quantity, and not quality.
Funny; running a family of ezines myself -- and being a youngster to boot -- I fully recognize that quality kicks quantity's ass to heck and back. Why? Because of the quantity.
Look at the realm I work in: sports commentary. Everyone is an expert about sports: just ask them. If they're kooky, though, it's like the guy you leave at the bar instead of doing what you want (which is applying a significant amount of force to his temple with an empty beer bottle). Simply put, you go find someone else to talk to.
The Interenet publishing (I refuse to use the cutesy e-publishing term) revolution has lowered costs and barriers to entry. The million monkeys axiom has indeed been proven false, yet there are scads of quality sites out there.
Anyone who doesn't believe in quality should see what happens to Top Of The Key 's unsubs when our articles stink that week. You are only as good as your most recent screed.
But then, doesn't that apply to posting here?
--
<><
Yeah, heard this on Discovery last night as well. They are sending the first crew up there with earplugs to avoid damaging their hearing.
It is more likely that the 'stronauts will be outfitted with headphones. You'd think NASA would do something wise, like tie 'em into the comm system . . . but that would be too logical. They didn't ask me.
I don't think it will bother them for most events, other than sleeping. Zero-g sleeping is highly, highly recommended (so saith Owen Garriott, who used to be a VP at my company), but you're impinging on the head whilst sleeping. -grrrrr-
They are going to try to fit some noise-reducing things like fan muffles to try and reduce the noise level, but they said that they basically missed the operating noise-level targets. It was likend to being on a busy freeway 24/7. Not an ideal environment for an extended misson.
What's really frustrating is that the General Accounting Office is who went public on that, not NASA. But then, NASA PAO stands for Propoganda and Arrogance Office in my book.
Good luck fitting muffling material in the spaces where it could be useful. Most of those spaces need to be kept clear of non-essential material to shutoff things like vacuum lines, etc. It's a simple safety trade-off.
What's the line: "Russian parts, American parts, all made in Taiwan!" I don't think Taiwanese QC is that bad. -g-
The other thing I saw they were lacking was micro-meteroid sheilding. I would think this is a far more severe problem? Imagine that sparc station getting hit with an object the size of a b-b travelling at, what, about 30,000 mph? (yeah, I know... I need more coffee, ok?)
Ehhhh, they're okay for shielding on Zvezda. Remember that a Progress ship *ran over* another module, and Mir still survived. What *will* delay the schedule will be the U.S. Lab shielding (Assembly Flight 5A, scheduled for 01/18/2001 -cough- -hack- -hack- yeah right) problems. They supposedly have 33 of 40 built . . . after the subcontractor went bankrupt. How you go bankrupt on a cost-plus-fee contract is beyond me . . . "Impressive, most impressive indeed."
FWIW, orbital speed for STS is 17,500 mph or so. ISS is higher up, with a higher velocity, but I don't think I want to dust off my spacecraft design text to pull out the average vel. equations . . . not when I have less important things to do. -g-
--
<><
Interestingly, despite the perception that Russian space tech is backwards (it's more advanced then the US, cheaper, and actually happens), the Zvezda is an example of how this isn't true.
In some ways . . . but the biggest problem with Zvezda is the acoustical environment. You're supposed to build hardware to fit the NC40 curve (in other words, about what you'd hear if you had a normal office and not a cube =) for sustained noise patterns . . . and they haven't. It wouldn't seem loud to us, maybe, but we won't be up there 24/7 like the 'stronauts will.
Zvezda has a Sparc station running it, much more advanced then the 80386s that the US modules use.
NASA's computer policy is a bit weird (insert your own Mac bash here), but I don't know that they're totally off-base; you want something that's stable and is not prone to bit-flipping because of the various radiation environments seen by the ISS.
It also has multiple advanced environmental systems that the US doesn't have, including the infamous oxygen candles (redesigned) that started the fire on Mir.
I will happily admit that long-term environmental stuff is something the Russians are good at. It's not the best living environment, but it won't kill you, either. They understand "good enough".
It is much more air-tight then any US spacecraft ever built, too. The shuttle leaks air like a sieve compared to Mir, a station with the same basic design for it's main module.
That's simply a cost-benefit analysis. It's easier to carry on-board oxygen than it is to design hardware that has a certain leak rate. STS is designed for an on-orbit time of 28 days at maximum . . . Mir had a five-year life plan IIRC to begin with. STS carries its own atmosphere up with them; Mir/ISS/Salyut/Skylab had to be built more tightly to ensure that they weren't leaking atmosphere like crazed men.
What, you want STS to be more expensive?
The Russians were first in space, have spent more time in space then the US, and have cheaper manned access to space by a couple orders of magnitude (less then $10 to launch a Soyuz versus $500 million to launch the shuttle), but the US press has indoctrinated us into thinking they are less safe and backwards.
Much of that is due to the various roles of the spacecraft, though. It's not a great comparison; Soyuz is primarily a crew ingress/egress vehicle that has limited cargo capacity; the Russians use a Progress module, a modified Soyuz, to launch cargo. That lowers the launch costs, because the Progress launches can be done with more risk, etc.
The Russians do have superior heavy-lift capability. However, that heavy-lift isn't used for launching manned spacecraft. NASA, in its infinite wisdom, hasn't entered the unmanned cargo-ferrying realm . . . but then, we haven't had a space station since Skylab.
Nothing could be further from the truth, but as long as the cold-war press machine is remembered, with its fabricated stories of Soviet space hoaxes (all disproven) and implied safety problems, most people will improperly assume the US is number one in this regard.
The US is still the premier space power; more great scientific research has happened because of NASA efforts than of Russians. We've been to the moon; they haven't. The Russians are better in doing some things; overall, I'd rather fly up on American hardware than Russian hardware, although I'd rather use their rockets.
Side note: there is talk about hiring Russian rocket scientists and bringing them to the U.S. Many of the guys and gals at RSC Energiya work second jobs so that they can stay in their chosen field; some of the upper engineers drive taxis. Yeesh, but man, they can build 'em some rockets.
--
<><
Launch is in about 40 minutes. I'm staying up to watch to see if I have a job tomorrow. =) Now, were I a civil servant, I'd be okay, but I work for a contractor that's sub-contracting to a small Canadian company building a payload that should go up in late 2001/early 2002. If Zvezda blows up, I don't think much will get done at work tomorrow.
Getting the Russkies on was a good idea, but we should have kept the concept of the Zarya procurement intact -- Boeing gets the contract and subs out to a Russian company to build. Zarya was built on-schedule and done very well; Zvezda has had too much governmental involvement to be built properly. -g-
GFM -- damn, if this blows up, I think I'll have to become a full-time coder instead of just a part-timer and a full-time aero
--
<><