The first data download with pictures from the encounter (the "New York TImes" download) will start at 5:00 AM EDT Wednesday. Expect some in the morning, and a lot during the 3:00 PM EDT NASA Press Conference.
The government is always self-insured. I believe that the private launch companies have to have some basic insurance to get a launch license. Commercial satellites are routinely insured, but that is a business move, not a requirement.
The Orbital failure took out the pad, which was owned by the Commonwealth of Virginia, which had neither insurance nor reserve cash to pay for a new one. That caused a scramble to find the bucks to repair the pad.
Should scientists be more responsible for communicating their results directly to the public?
Most science articles are due to press agents at a lab or University or a journal or working for conference organizer either putting together and sending out press releases or contacting reporters they know (or both), and that is always done in collaboration with the scientists issuing the results. Scientists who have access to such resources should certainly use them. Scientists who don't are at an disadvantage (IMHO) and should spend some time figuring out how this is done. Technical people tend to underrate the difficulty of good public communication; it is not trivial to do it well.
There was one other thing that cinched it (IIRC) - the original mission goal for Voyager was to explore the Jupiter and Saturn systems (NOT to do the "grand tour"). For the planning for Voyager I, the mission goals hadn't been completed (as neither Voyager had gotten to Saturn at that point), and Sagan made a strong case that the mission goal should include Titan, and that the mission goals should be completed to the extent possible with Voyager I. When Voyager II came to Saturn, the mission goals had been met (by Voyager I), so they could take the gravity assist to go on to Uranus and Neptune on an extended mission.
How do you think these decisions are made? Carl Sagan was involved with basically every NASA planetary mission (including Apollo) from 1960 through Voyager and Viking. He proposed that Titan might have a lot of hydrocarbons (it does) a thick atmosphere (it does), haze (check) and maybe a biosphere (the jury is still out). (He did propose a strong greenhouse for Titan, and struck out there. The surface is not as balmy as he hoped.) As far as I can remember, no one was proposing a biosphere for Pluto (we didn't even know Pluto had a moon at that point). The decision to do a Titan close approach was rational, and (while it certainly wasn't his decision alone) his advocacy for it carried a lot of weight.
Carl Sagan thought it was more important to get close to Titan, which made a gravity assist for Pluto impossible. I think he hoped that there would be good pictures of the hypothesized Methane seas, but in the event the Titan haze made the surface just a blur.
What the close Titan approach did provide was a radio occultation of the Titan atmosphere, showing how deep it was and something of its structure.
In space flight, as in life, you have to chose, and they chose Titan.
Bowditch Navigation Systems had a similar video navigation system, but for ships at sea. It included an integrated navigation system (LORAN, OMEGA and dead reckoning), and displayed the user's location by projecting microfiche cards of the usual navigation charts. Unlike the car system, this was a practical product with a number of customers. GPS integration was planned but never implemented; the company was caught up in a lawsuit against one of its main investors and collapsed in the 1986 time frame due to a lack of cash.
The town only had 120 residents. From their perspective, 40 new people is a mass migration. Heck, most towns of this size are slowly decreasing in population. They lack the resources to absorb 40 new people, let alone 40 new nut jobs with bizarre needs.
This town basically is an observatory town, and the population has been pretty stable for decades. As long as the NSF doesn't shut off the GBT (as they keep threatening to), the town won't shrink.
I have done work with the NRAO at Green Bank (I was technical lead on one of the 20 meter telescopes) and the vast majority of the people who live in Green Bank work for the NRAO (or are part of the family of someone who does). There are, in other words, a lot more PhDs than in most small country towns (even though it looks like a small country town). These are people who are used to having evidence to back up their beliefs.
Now, you take this set of people and add in a bunch of people with (shall we say) poorly evidenced medical ideas, and there is no surprise there is friction.
Marianne Ny, who heads the investigation into accusations of rape, coercion and sexual molestation against Assange, made a formal request to interrogate him in the Ecuadorian embassy...
Ny said she had changed her mind because the statute of limitations on several of the crimes of which Assange is suspected runs out in August 2015.
Unfortunately that attempt failed since the government of Ecuador didn't give permission to the Swedish delegation to enter their embassy. That is quite odd given the years of demands for this.
Not odd at all.
The Statue of Limitations on some of the charges against Assange run out this August.
The problem is, if you do that, you'll eventually have to do it again, and again, as the earth's rotation continues to slow in the long term. It kind of destroys the notion of the second as a fundamental physical unit.
Before 1972, for a brief while there were changes in UTC rate, not just step functions in time, to keep UTC close to UT1 (or, at the time, UT2). It did not take long to realize that this was a massively bad idea and stop it.
I was there at the time, IMHO it was really clear they didn't understand what they were doing and in any case it was not done for any branding reasons.
There are a number of different realizations of TAI/UTC, for example, UTC(USNO), UTC(NIST), etc. They are all different at the nanosecond level. The BIPM keeps a "paper clock" which (after the fact) provides estimates of offsets between the different realizations and the official TAI.
Slashdot Mirror
The first data download with pictures from the encounter (the "New York TImes" download) will start at 5:00 AM EDT Wednesday. Expect some in the morning, and a lot during the 3:00 PM EDT NASA Press Conference.
SpaceX policy seems to be to collect rich telemetry from each launch
And you think ULA, Orbital and Boeing don't?
And, by the way, if you find any debris washed up on the beach (any beach) they want it - call the SpaceX debris recovery hotline, 866-392-0035.
The government is always self-insured. I believe that the private launch companies have to have some basic insurance to get a launch license. Commercial satellites are routinely insured, but that is a business move, not a requirement.
The Orbital failure took out the pad, which was owned by the Commonwealth of Virginia, which had neither insurance nor reserve cash to pay for a new one. That caused a scramble to find the bucks to repair the pad.
Most science articles are due to press agents at a lab or University or a journal or working for conference organizer either putting together and sending out press releases or contacting reporters they know (or both), and that is always done in collaboration with the scientists issuing the results. Scientists who have access to such resources should certainly use them. Scientists who don't are at an disadvantage (IMHO) and should spend some time figuring out how this is done. Technical people tend to underrate the difficulty of good public communication; it is not trivial to do it well.
This seems like a new version of the Eliza program with more memory.
Video stream
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia...
There was one other thing that cinched it (IIRC) - the original mission goal for Voyager was to explore the Jupiter and Saturn systems (NOT to do the "grand tour"). For the planning for Voyager I, the mission goals hadn't been completed (as neither Voyager had gotten to Saturn at that point), and Sagan made a strong case that the mission goal should include Titan, and that the mission goals should be completed to the extent possible with Voyager I. When Voyager II came to Saturn, the mission goals had been met (by Voyager I), so they could take the gravity assist to go on to Uranus and Neptune on an extended mission.
I'm curious to find a source for your anecdote about Sagan's influence. I'm Googling, but having no luck.
Well, how do you think the Golden Record got on the side of the spacecraft? I am sure your favorite search engine will reveal something on that.
How do you think these decisions are made? Carl Sagan was involved with basically every NASA planetary mission (including Apollo) from 1960 through Voyager and Viking. He proposed that Titan might have a lot of hydrocarbons (it does) a thick atmosphere (it does), haze (check) and maybe a biosphere (the jury is still out). (He did propose a strong greenhouse for Titan, and struck out there. The surface is not as balmy as he hoped.) As far as I can remember, no one was proposing a biosphere for Pluto (we didn't even know Pluto had a moon at that point). The decision to do a Titan close approach was rational, and (while it certainly wasn't his decision alone) his advocacy for it carried a lot of weight.
Carl Sagan thought it was more important to get close to Titan, which made a gravity assist for Pluto impossible. I think he hoped that there would be good pictures of the hypothesized Methane seas, but in the event the Titan haze made the surface just a blur.
What the close Titan approach did provide was a radio occultation of the Titan atmosphere, showing how deep it was and something of its structure.
In space flight, as in life, you have to chose, and they chose Titan.
Bowditch Navigation Systems had a similar video navigation system, but for ships at sea. It included an integrated navigation system (LORAN, OMEGA and dead reckoning), and displayed the user's location by projecting microfiche cards of the usual navigation charts. Unlike the car system, this was a practical product with a number of customers. GPS integration was planned but never implemented; the company was caught up in a lawsuit against one of its main investors and collapsed in the 1986 time frame due to a lack of cash.
The town only had 120 residents. From their perspective, 40 new people is a mass migration. Heck, most towns of this size are slowly decreasing in population. They lack the resources to absorb 40 new people, let alone 40 new nut jobs with bizarre needs.
This town basically is an observatory town, and the population has been pretty stable for decades. As long as the NSF doesn't shut off the GBT (as they keep threatening to), the town won't shrink.
The NSA has been at Sugar Grove since the 1950's. They are not going anywhere.
It's like a social science experiment.
I have done work with the NRAO at Green Bank (I was technical lead on one of the 20 meter telescopes) and the vast majority of the people who live in Green Bank work for the NRAO (or are part of the family of someone who does). There are, in other words, a lot more PhDs than in most small country towns (even though it looks like a small country town). These are people who are used to having evidence to back up their beliefs.
Now, you take this set of people and add in a bunch of people with (shall we say) poorly evidenced medical ideas, and there is no surprise there is friction.
Anyways, what Assange did qualifies as rape in every country I know of.
Really? Let me introduce you to the United Kingdom. It is a fairly small country, but it does have its charms.
I think it would be fairer to say that what Assange is alleged to have done would not qualify as rape in any first world country except Sweden
trolling or no, I'm not making this up:
Not odd at all.
The Statue of Limitations on some of the charges against Assange run out this August.
That's what I'd like to see on Slashdot.
We have that, and it's call "TAI."
Awesome, now that we have another 50 years of technological advance, maybe it's time to revisit the issue...
There may or may not be a vote on new proposals this year.
The divergence is (roughly) quadratic; those estimates (well, for leap "something > 1 second") are off.
The problem is, if you do that, you'll eventually have to do it again, and again, as the earth's rotation continues to slow in the long term. It kind of destroys the notion of the second as a fundamental physical unit.
Before 1972, for a brief while there were changes in UTC rate, not just step functions in time, to keep UTC close to UT1 (or, at the time, UT2). It did not take long to realize that this was a massively bad idea and stop it.
:)
I was there at the time, IMHO it was really clear they didn't understand what they were doing and in any case it was not done for any branding reasons.
There are a number of different realizations of TAI/UTC, for example, UTC(USNO), UTC(NIST), etc. They are all different at the nanosecond level. The BIPM keeps a "paper clock" which (after the fact) provides estimates of offsets between the different realizations and the official TAI.