Of course, the shuttle can take a much, much larger payload than anything else currently available (I think).
More importantly, the Shuttle can return payloads and experiments to the ground. The Soyuz module has very little space to return payloads. Progress is destroyed during re-entry, as ESA's ATV will be.
In addition the Shuttle connects to ISS using the US docking port allowing the of transfer large rack-sized payloads into ISS. For example this mission will deliver the MELFI rack payload to ISS (a freezer capable of -80C) developed by EADS through ESA for NASA. For more information on MELFI see the ESA fact sheet (pdf).
a world with free music and constantly gigging artists, could even be better
define: gigging spearing or impaling fish on any pronged or barbed instrument attached to the end of any rigid object. Please check regulations on gigging.
I'm not sure how fishing would help. Unless you mean the fans are the fish... Now I get it.
Blogpulse makes similar little graphs based its blog database. The data is taken from blog entries not search info. (I'm somewhat on topic... right? Look over there! Cool graphs!) The lastest trends in the blogosphere are listed in Blogpulse's Featured Trends.
My favorite part of the picture is the fine example of Dutch parking. Look for the small grey car in the center right of the picture parked perpendicular to the curb. The parking places are angled of course.
The resolution is so good that we can read the car's number plate. Now what can we do with that?
I'd rather see it broken apart, melted and recycled in more useful form than have a never-used moon rocket sitting in a museum.
But then how could Space Center Houston make any money? The Saturn V is a major attraction in the JSC tram tour. I think the web site (sorry for the music) gives you the right flavor. PLEASE remember that Space Center Houston is not NASA.
Is a polar orbit useful for anything other than military payloads?
The ESA payload GOCE - Gravity Field and Steady-State Ocean Circulation Explorer - for example would preferably fly in a polar orbit to gather gravity field data for the entire planet including the poles. Instead near-ground (i.e. airplane) measurements will need to fill in the data gaps at the poles. GOCE will fly in a dawn-dusk sun-synchronous orbit, launched by Rockot.
. . . whether or not you should make your hobby your work.
But if your work becomes your hobby, would you get a new and different hobby?
As a kid I always followed everything about space. However, now that I work for human space flight programs, which I love, I really don't follow any space news when I'm away from work. (I'm ashamed to say I didn't even follow the latest Mars lander.) I wonder how many slashdotters out there would pick a new hobby if their old hobby became their job.
This is a newsworthy story as the this guy is going to be one of the first to use ISS to test crystal growth . ..
Okay, I'll be nice since you said "one of the first". I just want to point out that ESA has already flown a crystal growth experiment to ISS three times. The experiment is called PromISS from the Universite Libre de Bruxelles. The PromISS experiment box and samples were sent to ISS via Russian Progress and Soyuz modules. PromISS operates inside the ESA built Microgravity Science Glovebox within NASA's Destiny Laboratory.
PromISS first flew on the Odissea Mission, also known as the Belgian Taxi Flight, in 2002. PromISS-2 flew again in 2003 on the Cervantes Mission (Spanish Soyuz Mission) and the third set of experiments is currently being performed on ISS as part of the Delta Mission (Dutch Soyuz Mission).
. . . it must have some vapor pressure that would cause it to slowly sublime in the vacuum of space. That sublimation would occur much more quickly for small droplets than large. Anybody have numbers?
According to the Orbital Debris Quarterly News in the Jan 2004 edition (see pages 6-7) there is "no noticeable sublimation over the 8 year time period.". This quote comes from an article written by Paula Krisko who is also mentioned in the space.com article.
The article correctly emphasizes the hazard (from collisions) to orbiting spacecraft, and (correctly) says very little about the radiation hazard to us on the ground.
These NaK particles definitely pose a collision risk to spacecraft due to the number of particles, their size and their altitude.
Number: According to the article there are a large number of NaK particles, which are "estimated to be 110,000 to over 115,000 in number".
Size: The largest particles, which are between "roughly 2 inches to 3 inches (5 to 7 centimeters)" in diameter, could really cause damage if they collide with spacecraft. Although the biggest hazard are from smaller particles (less than 1 mm diameter) since they are not tracked by ground radar. The objects that are tracked include relatively large (>10 cm) objects maintained in the US Space Command catalogue and intermediate sized (1 mm to 10 cm) that are sampled by ground telescopes and high-frequency ground radars. (See NASA JSC for more info.) Spacecraft can be manoeuvred out of the path of tracked objects if necessary.
Altitude: The particles orbit at altitudes "between roughly 530 miles (850 kilometer) and 620 miles (1,000 kilometer) altitude". ISS is at an altitude of 400 km for comparison. Most satellites in low earth orbits use altitudes between 700 and 1300 km.
Visit LDEF to see pictures of the results of some meteoroid and orbital debris impacts.
Please add one key adjective to your request: "NASA really has to get thehonest PR machine in motion". It's one thing to try to make science and exploration more interesting to non-science people. It's another to spin every news story so it becomes unbelievable.
The outer container of the Matroshka experiment is made by DTM, formerly known as Ferrari S.p.A Space Division. The DTM logo is visible on the outside of the composite container. This composite, Carbon Fibre Reinforced Plastics, is similar to those used for the better-known Ferrari Formula 1 cars (although a special mould was made to get the shape of the Matroshka container since not too many cars have that shape). The container is leak tight to maintain an atmosphere inside until it's brought back inside ISS (scheduled in ~1 year).
Let's hope it does nothing, as in no space debris hits the space station.
Actually space debris and meteoroids hit ISS quite often. So far they have been very small and as you say hopefully it remains that way. ISS is designed to withstand impacts up to a certain size and probability by placing an additional wall outside the pressurised module to absorb and diffuse the impact. Learn more about the general policy in Protecting the Space Station from Meteoroids and Orbital Debris. Or see a short explanation of the Meteorid / Debris Protection System for Node 2.
That synthetic skin would have to be really strong for this thing not to blow up due to low pressure, wouldn't it?
Actually the phantom is made up of several slices, about 30, stacked on top of each other on a central rod. (Think of the old baby toy.) The main material of the phantom is called RANDO(R). It's embedded with bits of bone and polyurethane to simulate organs. I believe the "natural bone" is ground up and reshaped into bone like structures.
To answer your question, there's really nothing to "blow up" during depressurisation. All of the phantom slices are solid with lots of cut-outs for radiation detectors.
"In any other continent, you go to a cell phone store and buy phones OUTRIGHT, no plans to go with it, no contracts, you simply BUY the phone (at usually half of US MSRP price), then you call up a carrier of your choice start service."
True, this is possible with pre-pay phones at least on this small part of the European continent also know as Holland. But many people buy phones with a service contact and the mobile phone service provider (e.g. KPN) SIM locks the phone. The phone can be unlocked for free by the phone company at the end of the contract provided that you remembered to save that little green receipt from your original contract.
My point is that Europe is not free from SIM locked phones.
- charboy
Re:Tortillas???
on
Eating in Space
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Want to make your own Space Tortillas? You can find the recipe in one of the NASA Educational publications. Appendix F of Space Food and Nutrition contains the formulation (a.k.a. recipe) for Space Tortillas. The ISS Standard Menu is also included in Appendix E.
Ikea even provides the shoeboxes for those of us who need more shoeboxes than shoes. Search on the Ikea website for Kassett. They are made for video tapes, CDs and DVDs but certainly can be filled with an assortment of geek gear.
I was a fan of Ikea before moving to Holland but now that I live in a studio apt in the middle of the Randstad I couldn't live without Ivar or Kassett from Ikea.
I don't know exactly how often Mir was re-supplied but someone else mentioned 3-4 times per year. This sounds about right. The ISS is re-supplied within this same time frame (a little more often now without Shuttle). ISS is re-supplied with the cargo module (Progress) about every 3 months usually with Russian supplies, small ISS hardware and some experiments. The habitable module (Soyuz) is sent up about every 6 months with new crew members as well as other supplies. The main supplier is Shuttle, in particular for water.
Now for how long the ISS crew could survive without re-supply is a difficult question. I would imagine they could easily survive for 6 months after the last Soyuz is docked because that is how long Soyuz can stay on-orbit. If you assume Progress is still re-supplying ISS then from a food and water point of view the crew could survive indefinitely. The lack of orbit re-boost, usually performed by Shuttle, is another thing altogether.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course, the shuttle can take a much, much larger payload than anything else currently available (I think).
More importantly, the Shuttle can return payloads and experiments to the ground. The Soyuz module has very little space to return payloads. Progress is destroyed during re-entry, as ESA's ATV will be.
In addition the Shuttle connects to ISS using the US docking port allowing the of transfer large rack-sized payloads into ISS. For example this mission will deliver the MELFI rack payload to ISS (a freezer capable of -80C) developed by EADS through ESA for NASA. For more information on MELFI see the ESA fact sheet (pdf).
a world with free music and constantly gigging artists, could even be better
define: gigging
spearing or impaling fish on any pronged or barbed instrument attached to the end of any rigid object. Please check regulations on gigging.
I'm not sure how fishing would help. Unless you mean the fans are the fish... Now I get it.
Aaah-haa! Oww!
Blogpulse makes similar little graphs based its blog database. The data is taken from blog entries not search info. (I'm somewhat on topic... right? Look over there! Cool graphs!) The lastest trends in the blogosphere are listed in Blogpulse's Featured Trends.
Here are some of Google's Zeitgeist examples in Blogpulse for the last 6 months:
Libby vs. Rove vs. Plame
Katrina vs. Rita
Skywalker vs. Yoda
My favorite part of the picture is the fine example of Dutch parking. Look for the small grey car in the center right of the picture parked perpendicular to the curb. The parking places are angled of course.
The resolution is so good that we can read the car's number plate. Now what can we do with that?
Funny thing is that in Dutch an apostrophe is not only acceptable but required to make some words plural. This works mostly for foreign words.
pc's is spelled correctly in Dutch.
A couple? I count three?
Anyway let me add a fourth:
(4) Human spaceflight for the scientific study of humans in space, such as biology, medicine, and psychology.
I'd rather see it broken apart, melted and recycled in more useful form than have a never-used moon rocket sitting in a museum.
But then how could Space Center Houston make any money? The Saturn V is a major attraction in the JSC tram tour. I think the web site (sorry for the music) gives you the right flavor. PLEASE remember that Space Center Houston is not NASA.
- charboy
Is a polar orbit useful for anything other than military payloads?
The ESA payload GOCE - Gravity Field and Steady-State Ocean Circulation Explorer - for example would preferably fly in a polar orbit to gather gravity field data for the entire planet including the poles. Instead near-ground (i.e. airplane) measurements will need to fill in the data gaps at the poles. GOCE will fly in a dawn-dusk sun-synchronous orbit, launched by Rockot.
- charboy
. . . whether or not you should make your hobby your work.
But if your work becomes your hobby, would you get a new and different hobby?
As a kid I always followed everything about space. However, now that I work for human space flight programs, which I love, I really don't follow any space news when I'm away from work. (I'm ashamed to say I didn't even follow the latest Mars lander.) I wonder how many slashdotters out there would pick a new hobby if their old hobby became their job.
- charboy
This is a newsworthy story as the this guy is going to be one of the first to use ISS to test crystal growth . . .
Okay, I'll be nice since you said "one of the first". I just want to point out that ESA has already flown a crystal growth experiment to ISS three times. The experiment is called PromISS from the Universite Libre de Bruxelles. The PromISS experiment box and samples were sent to ISS via Russian Progress and Soyuz modules. PromISS operates inside the ESA built Microgravity Science Glovebox within NASA's Destiny Laboratory.
PromISS first flew on the Odissea Mission, also known as the Belgian Taxi Flight, in 2002. PromISS-2 flew again in 2003 on the Cervantes Mission (Spanish Soyuz Mission) and the third set of experiments is currently being performed on ISS as part of the Delta Mission (Dutch Soyuz Mission).
- charboy
. . . it must have some vapor pressure that would cause it to slowly sublime in the vacuum of space. That sublimation would occur much more quickly for small droplets than large. Anybody have numbers?
According to the Orbital Debris Quarterly News in the Jan 2004 edition (see pages 6-7) there is "no noticeable sublimation over the 8 year time period.". This quote comes from an article written by Paula Krisko who is also mentioned in the space.com article.
- charboy
The article correctly emphasizes the hazard (from collisions) to orbiting spacecraft, and (correctly) says very little about the radiation hazard to us on the ground.
These NaK particles definitely pose a collision risk to spacecraft due to the number of particles, their size and their altitude.
Number: According to the article there are a large number of NaK particles, which are "estimated to be 110,000 to over 115,000 in number".
Size: The largest particles, which are between "roughly 2 inches to 3 inches (5 to 7 centimeters)" in diameter, could really cause damage if they collide with spacecraft. Although the biggest hazard are from smaller particles (less than 1 mm diameter) since they are not tracked by ground radar. The objects that are tracked include relatively large (>10 cm) objects maintained in the US Space Command catalogue and intermediate sized (1 mm to 10 cm) that are sampled by ground telescopes and high-frequency ground radars. (See NASA JSC for more info.) Spacecraft can be manoeuvred out of the path of tracked objects if necessary.
Altitude: The particles orbit at altitudes "between roughly 530 miles (850 kilometer) and 620 miles (1,000 kilometer) altitude". ISS is at an altitude of 400 km for comparison. Most satellites in low earth orbits use altitudes between 700 and 1300 km.
Visit LDEF to see pictures of the results of some meteoroid and orbital debris impacts.
- charboy
NASA really has to get the PR machine in motion
Please add one key adjective to your request: "NASA really has to get the honest PR machine in motion". It's one thing to try to make science and exploration more interesting to non-science people. It's another to spin every news story so it becomes unbelievable.
(I don't have a tinfoil hat. Really.)
The outer container of the Matroshka experiment is made by DTM, formerly known as Ferrari S.p.A Space Division. The DTM logo is visible on the outside of the composite container. This composite, Carbon Fibre Reinforced Plastics, is similar to those used for the better-known Ferrari Formula 1 cars (although a special mould was made to get the shape of the Matroshka container since not too many cars have that shape). The container is leak tight to maintain an atmosphere inside until it's brought back inside ISS (scheduled in ~1 year).
Let's hope it does nothing, as in no space debris hits the space station.
Actually space debris and meteoroids hit ISS quite often. So far they have been very small and as you say hopefully it remains that way. ISS is designed to withstand impacts up to a certain size and probability by placing an additional wall outside the pressurised module to absorb and diffuse the impact. Learn more about the general policy in Protecting the Space Station from Meteoroids and Orbital Debris. Or see a short explanation of the Meteorid / Debris Protection System for Node 2.
- charboy
That synthetic skin would have to be really strong for this thing not to blow up due to low pressure, wouldn't it?
Actually the phantom is made up of several slices, about 30, stacked on top of each other on a central rod. (Think of the old baby toy.) The main material of the phantom is called RANDO(R). It's embedded with bits of bone and polyurethane to simulate organs. I believe the "natural bone" is ground up and reshaped into bone like structures.
To answer your question, there's really nothing to "blow up" during depressurisation. All of the phantom slices are solid with lots of cut-outs for radiation detectors.
- charboy
One careful owner mannequin, now in space. Previously used only in car pool lanes around KSC.
I guess you mean Baikonur in Kazakhstan. Do they have car pool lanes there?
"In any other continent, you go to a cell phone store and buy phones OUTRIGHT, no plans to go with it, no contracts, you simply BUY the phone (at usually half of US MSRP price), then you call up a carrier of your choice start service."
True, this is possible with pre-pay phones at least on this small part of the European continent also know as Holland. But many people buy phones with a service contact and the mobile phone service provider (e.g. KPN) SIM locks the phone. The phone can be unlocked for free by the phone company at the end of the contract provided that you remembered to save that little green receipt from your original contract.
My point is that Europe is not free from SIM locked phones.
- charboy
Want to make your own Space Tortillas? You can find the recipe in one of the NASA Educational publications. Appendix F of Space Food and Nutrition contains the formulation (a.k.a. recipe) for Space Tortillas. The ISS Standard Menu is also included in Appendix E.
Bon appetit!
- charboy
Ikea even provides the shoeboxes for those of us who need more shoeboxes than shoes. Search on the Ikea website for Kassett. They are made for video tapes, CDs and DVDs but certainly can be filled with an assortment of geek gear.
I was a fan of Ikea before moving to Holland but now that I live in a studio apt in the middle of the Randstad I couldn't live without Ivar or Kassett from Ikea.
- charboy
I don't know exactly how often Mir was re-supplied but someone else mentioned 3-4 times per year. This sounds about right. The ISS is re-supplied within this same time frame (a little more often now without Shuttle). ISS is re-supplied with the cargo module (Progress) about every 3 months usually with Russian supplies, small ISS hardware and some experiments. The habitable module (Soyuz) is sent up about every 6 months with new crew members as well as other supplies. The main supplier is Shuttle, in particular for water.
Now for how long the ISS crew could survive without re-supply is a difficult question. I would imagine they could easily survive for 6 months after the last Soyuz is docked because that is how long Soyuz can stay on-orbit. If you assume Progress is still re-supplying ISS then from a food and water point of view the crew could survive indefinitely. The lack of orbit re-boost, usually performed by Shuttle, is another thing altogether.
- charboy
I never thought I'd read that on slashdot.
". . . the article has lots of flashy language."
I don't think I'd use the word 'flashy'. More like 'wordy' with a lot of complicated analogies. But the article is interesting despite the writing.