They are using several (5 I think) Sony DVD portable players up there. They have been hacked to be region free.
See here for an article on how they were modified for space flight.
Nasa will never fund a fully autonomous , independent spacecraft. Never forget that Nasa is a government bureaucracy, and its main (unstated) mission is not to explore space, develop new technologies, or discover new things about the universe. Rather, it will just spend more and more money on administration, paperwork, redesigns, and project (mis)managment.
If a spacecraft can manage itself, then what will all the pointy haired bosses do?
Similarly, I have my doubts about the mars sample return mission using rocket propellents produced on mars from the martian atmosphere. If a craft can make it's own fuel, and then do its own launch preparation and fly itself home to earth, with nobody there to manage it, then why do we need thousands of people here on earth do do the same thing everytime a rocket is launched? (especially if the taxpayer is paying for it)
History should tell us that whenever independence first makes its appearance, in any form (political/cultural/religious/freedom of choice/ - whatever), it will always be strongly resisted.
It may eventually prevail, but the resistance may only decline slowly. The experience will be painfull for many.
Space probes don't run on weapons grade plutonium. They need lots of heat, and P239 is too 'cold'. Although its got a long half life, that just means it takes *ages* to decay, and the decay heat is spread out over thousands of years.
Other isotopes of plutonium, however, are a different matter, particularly the even numbered ones. (such as P234, P238). These have short half life (10's of years), which means they decay quicker and give off the decay heat faster. They will also kill you quicker, but not your grandchildren. P239 will just mutate you and your grandchldren.
On a side note, having traces of these 'even' isotopes in your nuclear bomb is a real problem, since the intense radioactivity (neutrons) will cause your lump of P239 to go off before you expect it to.
Plutonium is not found in nature. It has to be man made in a nuclear reactor by (for example) bombarding uranium (which we do dig out of the ground). Natural uranium is actually very stable, and relativly speaking, not very radioactive at all. Most of it is U238, which is very stable and useless for bombs and power generation, until you stick it in a nuclear reactor and turn it into (mostly) P239.
Once it's turned to plutonium, then it becomes very nasty, and the only thing that turns it back to something safe is time (lots of it), (although you can use some of it as fuel in special reactors and 'burn it up' that way, but that is not a complete solution)
So you can't just throw it down a hole in the ground and forget about it. Under certain conditions, just getting it wet can cause it to blow up, and ground water is going to be a problem if you throw it down a hole.
Why are they proposing the storage of weapon grade plutonium? You only store something if you intend to use it sometime.
Producing and processing plutonium to weapon grade is expensive and dangerous, which is one of the reasons that the number of countries that have nuclear weapons is relativly few.
Having a huge stockpile of the stuff just sitting there for the taking is too big a risk.
A better solution is to dilute and 'contaminate' the plutonium with other isotopes so that is unusable in weapons. In such a form,it would be more difficult to 're-purify' back to weapons grade than to produce 'fresh' plutonium.
Once you have done that, then you can put it in your fancy monument for safe keeping for all time.
Just wait until the heat from all that decaying plutonium cracks the concrete, then some ground water gets in and starts moderating (in a atomic sense) all those fast neutrons flying around in there, and pretty soon your concrete and plutonium is not in a nice orderly structure any more.
"Little boy", the first bomb dropped on Japan, was a 'gun type' weapon, which fired two subcritical lumps of enriched Uranium (mostly U-235) together, not plutonium.
It was the second bomb, "Fat Man" (and also the one tested at trinity) that used a sphere of P-239.
It is easier and cheaper to 'breed' P-239 in a reactor (by irradating the relativly common U-238) than try and enrich natural uranium (which has only about 0.7% U-235). You then use the 'left over' 98%+ of U-238 (plus onter trace nasties) to make artiliry shells to smash Iraqi tanks and irradiate and toxify your own soldiers.
According to an article on the Space and Tech website, the Avrora launch vehicle is a Russian designed and manufactured rocket capable of delivering satellites to both low earth and geosynchronous transfer orbits. APSC (Asia Pacific Space Centre) plans to use a new spaceport being developed on Christmas Island, an Australian territory located in the northeast India Ocean.
No technology or license on the production of rockets and spacecraft will be offered to the Australian partners. No Russian government funds will be invested in the venture.
The Avrora flight tests will be launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome. The first commercial launch out of Australia's Christmas Island is planned for the last quarter of 2003. After introduction, manufacturing and launch rates are projected to ramp up to as many as 15 launches per year by 2006.
Avrora is capable of delivering 4.5 metric tons (9900 lbm) of payload to geosynchronous transfer orbit at 11 degrees inclination and over 2 metric tons (4400 lbm) directly to geostationary orbit.
SA space program secures $US135 million grant
The Federal Government has welcomed a $US135 million grant to Kistler Aerospace to further its reusable rocket launching program at Woomera, in South Australia's north.
The grant is part of NASA's $US4.5 billion Space Launch Initiative, which will foster two competing designs for re-useable rockets by 2006.
The Parliamentary Secretary for Science and Resources, Warren Entsch, says the grant ensures the future of a very important program for Australia and Woomera's future space industry.
"To get $US135 million coming from NASA, it is great news for them and I think that it's really going to be a tremendous boost for the company and for the prospect of reviving rocket launching activities from Woomera in South Australia," he said.
From http://www.abc.net.au/news/newslink/weekly/newsnat -18may2001-104.htm
Re:That is, if Cassini manages to listen to Huygen
on
Continents on Titan?
·
· Score: 4
Even if they don't fix the doppler problem, the Cassini 'mothership' has a radar system on board, which they will use to 'scan' Titan every time they pass, (probably about a dozen times during the mission), and from the radar echos, they will be able to map out a fair percentage of the moon's surface. The Huygens probe will give a 'close up' of the properties of the atmosphere, and if they're lucky, a small section of the surface.
It is from the HitchHiker's guide to the Galaxey 'trilogy', by the recently late Douglas Adams. The exact plot details escape me, but basically some distant planet (Golgafrinch?) built several great spaceships in order to escape an alleged impending disaster, and loaded the first one up with all their advertising executives and telephone sanitisers. The rest of the population was to follow on, see.
Anyway, the first ship crashed on earth, and the elite class that remained behind got wiped out by a disease caught from a dirty telephone.
The rule is: always clean that phone with your towel first.
NASA introduced its planned five-year, $4.8 billion Space Launch Initiative on 17 May, awarding 22, ten-month contracts, with a total of $767 million, to aerospace companies, including Boeing, Pratt&Whitney and Kistler Aerospace, to research and develop new technologies to support the eventual development of a successor to the Space Shuttle in 15 years. Further contracts will be awarded in late 2001 and in 2002. Technologies include crew survival systems, advanced tanks, engines and thermal protection systems. NASA hopes to have two designs of the new vehicle to choose from within five years. The new reusable spaceplane, however, is unlikely to be a single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO) vehicle, but a reusable spaceplane flying piggyback on a reusable launcher.
However, note that the cost of a week long Soyuz mission (including the rocket and capsule) is about $10Milion, so if you can get 2 wannabees to shell out $6 mil each you are making a profit. The cost of a Space Shuttle mission is about $500Million, and I can't see NASA squeezing ~90 people in there to cover the costs. (Perhaps a partnership with Delta could help there....)
Slashdot Mirror
They are using several (5 I think) Sony DVD portable players up there. They have been hacked to be region free. See here for an article on how they were modified for space flight.
Hey Bruce, come on over and we'll throw another crab on the launchpad...
Nasa will never fund a fully autonomous , independent spacecraft. Never forget that Nasa is a government bureaucracy, and its main (unstated) mission is not to explore space, develop new technologies, or discover new things about the universe. Rather, it will just spend more and more money on administration, paperwork, redesigns, and project (mis)managment. If a spacecraft can manage itself, then what will all the pointy haired bosses do? Similarly, I have my doubts about the mars sample return mission using rocket propellents produced on mars from the martian atmosphere. If a craft can make it's own fuel, and then do its own launch preparation and fly itself home to earth, with nobody there to manage it, then why do we need thousands of people here on earth do do the same thing everytime a rocket is launched? (especially if the taxpayer is paying for it) History should tell us that whenever independence first makes its appearance, in any form (political/cultural/religious/freedom of choice/ - whatever), it will always be strongly resisted. It may eventually prevail, but the resistance may only decline slowly. The experience will be painfull for many.
Space probes don't run on weapons grade plutonium. They need lots of heat, and P239 is too 'cold'. Although its got a long half life, that just means it takes *ages* to decay, and the decay heat is spread out over thousands of years. Other isotopes of plutonium, however, are a different matter, particularly the even numbered ones. (such as P234, P238). These have short half life (10's of years), which means they decay quicker and give off the decay heat faster. They will also kill you quicker, but not your grandchildren. P239 will just mutate you and your grandchldren. On a side note, having traces of these 'even' isotopes in your nuclear bomb is a real problem, since the intense radioactivity (neutrons) will cause your lump of P239 to go off before you expect it to.
Plutonium is not found in nature. It has to be man made in a nuclear reactor by (for example) bombarding uranium (which we do dig out of the ground). Natural uranium is actually very stable, and relativly speaking, not very radioactive at all. Most of it is U238, which is very stable and useless for bombs and power generation, until you stick it in a nuclear reactor and turn it into (mostly) P239. Once it's turned to plutonium, then it becomes very nasty, and the only thing that turns it back to something safe is time (lots of it), (although you can use some of it as fuel in special reactors and 'burn it up' that way, but that is not a complete solution) So you can't just throw it down a hole in the ground and forget about it. Under certain conditions, just getting it wet can cause it to blow up, and ground water is going to be a problem if you throw it down a hole.
Why are they proposing the storage of weapon grade plutonium? You only store something if you intend to use it sometime. Producing and processing plutonium to weapon grade is expensive and dangerous, which is one of the reasons that the number of countries that have nuclear weapons is relativly few. Having a huge stockpile of the stuff just sitting there for the taking is too big a risk. A better solution is to dilute and 'contaminate' the plutonium with other isotopes so that is unusable in weapons. In such a form,it would be more difficult to 're-purify' back to weapons grade than to produce 'fresh' plutonium. Once you have done that, then you can put it in your fancy monument for safe keeping for all time.
Just wait until the heat from all that decaying plutonium cracks the concrete, then some ground water gets in and starts moderating (in a atomic sense) all those fast neutrons flying around in there, and pretty soon your concrete and plutonium is not in a nice orderly structure any more.
"Little boy", the first bomb dropped on Japan, was a 'gun type' weapon, which fired two subcritical lumps of enriched Uranium (mostly U-235) together, not plutonium. It was the second bomb, "Fat Man" (and also the one tested at trinity) that used a sphere of P-239. It is easier and cheaper to 'breed' P-239 in a reactor (by irradating the relativly common U-238) than try and enrich natural uranium (which has only about 0.7% U-235). You then use the 'left over' 98%+ of U-238 (plus onter trace nasties) to make artiliry shells to smash Iraqi tanks and irradiate and toxify your own soldiers.
According to an article on the Space and Tech website, the Avrora launch vehicle is a Russian designed and manufactured rocket capable of delivering satellites to both low earth and geosynchronous transfer orbits. APSC (Asia Pacific Space Centre) plans to use a new spaceport being developed on Christmas Island, an Australian territory located in the northeast India Ocean.
No technology or license on the production of rockets and spacecraft will be offered to the Australian partners. No Russian government funds will be invested in the venture.
The Avrora flight tests will be launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome. The first commercial launch out of Australia's Christmas Island is planned for the last quarter of 2003. After introduction, manufacturing and launch rates are projected to ramp up to as many as 15 launches per year by 2006.
Avrora is capable of delivering 4.5 metric tons (9900 lbm) of payload to geosynchronous transfer orbit at 11 degrees inclination and over 2 metric tons (4400 lbm) directly to geostationary orbit.
SA space program secures $US135 million grant The Federal Government has welcomed a $US135 million grant to Kistler Aerospace to further its reusable rocket launching program at Woomera, in South Australia's north. The grant is part of NASA's $US4.5 billion Space Launch Initiative, which will foster two competing designs for re-useable rockets by 2006. The Parliamentary Secretary for Science and Resources, Warren Entsch, says the grant ensures the future of a very important program for Australia and Woomera's future space industry. "To get $US135 million coming from NASA, it is great news for them and I think that it's really going to be a tremendous boost for the company and for the prospect of reviving rocket launching activities from Woomera in South Australia," he said. From http://www.abc.net.au/news/newslink/weekly/newsnat -18may2001-104.htm
Even if they don't fix the doppler problem, the Cassini 'mothership' has a radar system on board, which they will use to 'scan' Titan every time they pass, (probably about a dozen times during the mission), and from the radar echos, they will be able to map out a fair percentage of the moon's surface. The Huygens probe will give a 'close up' of the properties of the atmosphere, and if they're lucky, a small section of the surface.
But how many times can you attempt re-entry?
It is from the HitchHiker's guide to the Galaxey 'trilogy', by the recently late Douglas Adams. The exact plot details escape me, but basically some distant planet (Golgafrinch?) built several great spaceships in order to escape an alleged impending disaster, and loaded the first one up with all their advertising executives and telephone sanitisers. The rest of the population was to follow on, see. Anyway, the first ship crashed on earth, and the elite class that remained behind got wiped out by a disease caught from a dirty telephone. The rule is: always clean that phone with your towel first.
Of course, we would probably all die from a disease caught from a virulent telephone, but that's another story.
So Long...
On the topic of starbucks in space, take a look at this piece of breaking news
NASA introduced its planned five-year, $4.8 billion Space Launch Initiative on 17 May, awarding 22, ten-month contracts, with a total of $767 million, to aerospace companies, including Boeing, Pratt&Whitney and Kistler Aerospace, to research and develop new technologies to support the eventual development of a successor to the Space Shuttle in 15 years. Further contracts will be awarded in late 2001 and in 2002. Technologies include crew survival systems, advanced tanks, engines and thermal protection systems. NASA hopes to have two designs of the new vehicle to choose from within five years. The new reusable spaceplane, however, is unlikely to be a single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO) vehicle, but a reusable spaceplane flying piggyback on a reusable launcher.
However, note that the cost of a week long Soyuz mission (including the rocket and capsule) is about $10Milion, so if you can get 2 wannabees to shell out $6 mil each you are making a profit. The cost of a Space Shuttle mission is about $500Million, and I can't see NASA squeezing ~90 people in there to cover the costs. (Perhaps a partnership with Delta could help there....)