> So if it is warm enough to not require active heating in the suits.
Disposal of waste heat is one of the 3 major issues in spacesuit design. This includes Mars suits. Maintaining body/lung pressure, oxygen supply and shedding heat. Other stuff (flexibility, duration, ruggedness) derives largely from these requirements. Mechanical Counter-pressure suits (MCP) will alleviate a lot of these issues on Mars, but I don't think reflected mirrors will matter that much for human EVA.
Mirrors could be useful for melting parts of the Elysium glaciers or similiar water-rich material. For a "warming" test that we could do now, why not drop a 6' acrylic dome on Mars with the MSL rover?
If they spend 5 years performing the study an entire "generation" of network users will change over in that time. Think how much the online experience has changed in 5 years. This is a study in watching user tastes and technology change.
I'm all for alternative architecture, but DIRECT has several problems. The main issue is that it only "saves" money in the area of eliminating development of a second VSE rocket: the Crew Launch Vehicle AKA the Stick. It delibrately maintains the standing army of workers, which is the main cost issue with NASA manned space hardware. DIRECT tries to preserve all those jobs, while modern rockets (Atlas, Delta, Zenit and Falcon) all use radically fewer construction and deployment personell. DIRECT also has the issue of trying to make something work in an unintended way, and it requires development of a new version of the RS68. Not so direct.
Simpler modifications and evolution of existing launchers (Atlas, Delta) will achieve better results in both time and cost, IMHO.
Sorry, bro. In my story the world wakes up to walls of water flooding the Atlantic basin and a cackling maniac from Denver on the TV. It is more revenge than hostage situation and there is Hell to pay afterward. I'll have the first book finished soon, which leads into the described situation.
I don't agree with the entire Washington system, I don't really have a "side" in the game. The Repubs and Dems are just about the same thing, I loose in every election. I don't need mental treatments, nor do I think the majority is wrong, I just disagree with them. I didn't call anyone subhuman, either, shit head.
Tommy Franks giving the inaugural Homeland Security address with ranks of shaven-head stormtroopers in gray uniforms scared the crap out of me. Almost as much as the assault on Waco. The USA uses tanks against it's own civilians, and you call me a twit? Piss off, your user number is over 1 million, troll.
But really the old USA that never quite existed. If it was all Liberty, this place would be great. I'm going to put my fist in the face of the next "love it or leave it" twit I hear, they're the ones turning this beautiful land into the New Soviet.
With what's been going on the last while, yes, moving crosses my mind. The place I'd go would be to one of several South Pacific or equatorial islands: Kiribati, Palau, Tuvalu, etc. The reasons I haven't left include friends, family, finances, and that I haven't assembled my ninja army to take one of those islands over. No, I'm not talking about being an American ex-pat who smokes and does the local hotties, I'm talking about going someplace and conquering it to live out my libertarian-anarchist fantasies. Anyone know where I can get a crate of AK-47s and a cheap hydrofoil?
Sample kits are something that NASA and others make to better understand how our materials interact with the space environment. They call the current ones on ISS "suitcases", basically it's a case with a flat tray inside and many (dozens) of different materials attached to the tray. The ones on ISS spend several months exposed to vacuum and are then retrieved for analysis. Similiar experiments with exposure facilities have been done on MIR and freeflyers like the recent Russian FOTON launch. Interesting point on the FOTON capsule: it showed that two species of lichen can survive in open space.
A Mars exposure test might include several skin/leather materials, some synthetics like nylon and kevlar. It would just be part of a lander or rover, so we'd be able to have a better idea of what the environment there does.
The solution to the possible peroxides (not the life-detection) issue is to fly a set of sample materials and see how they react to martian atmosphere and regolith. We've been batting this back and forth for 20 years - just fly some samples and see what happens.
There were reports a few years ago about a new analysis of Viking GC-MS data that showed a 24.5-hour respiration cycle in the regolith samples it gathered. We might have to stop calling it regolith and start calling it soil.
> Imagine you can no longer use the internet for those purposes: getting fast access to news articles from so many sources, latest research docs,
The problem with your analysis is that those resources were available on mailing lists long, long before the Web. For example the French-Harvard "Exoworlds" list existed as email way before they had a website. More reliable, too.
Actually, I would buy a 5 ton ball of shit in orbit. Someday I want to grow trees in space, and that would make for some cheap fertilizer. Rednecks in Spaaaaaace!!
On Grandparent post - every rocket launched and payload developed has specific debris-mitigation efforts. US commercial payloads must pass through AST's debris process. Debris is an issue, but it's a small step compared to regenerative life support or deep space radiation issues.
As a home-office entrepreneur, I rely on the 'Net almost all the time. That extra 1% is pedalling to the Post Office. Cox network's consumer cable modem/phone connection has been very reliable.
DOOM isn't that far from the truth. The Russian scientists that orginally studied Phobos insisted it was an artificial satellite. Along with resource extraction, they were hoping to find artifacts or evidence.
> Why would they go to all that trouble of making such a huge trip and not land on the planet??? > I know maybe it has larger risks but COME ON, it's not like you go to Mars every week.
Russian scientists have been obsessed with Phobos for decades. There is a lot of science and discovery on that tiny moon, including samples of Mars (blown into space and swept onto Phobos) and other solar system bodies. Landing on Phobos is worlds easier than Mars itself, and there is an amount of preservation available that isn't available on Mars. The Phobos lander would be able to pick up (if it can find them) pieces of Mars that are truly ancient, and they won't have weathered as on the planet.
The single biggest question that Phobos-Grunt will answer is absolutely critical to future space development: How much water does Phobos contain and where is it? Phobos is easier to get to energy-wise than Luna. If it really is 1/3 water then it can become the fuel station for all of human space activity.
Josh www.postcardstospace.com Send a Note to the Cosmos!
I've never pirated a game. The reason I buy at most 1 game a year is mostly cost. At $50 a game, it's hard to justify that. Replayability is another factor. A lot of games simply suck the second time through, many the first time through. Civ4 is great, but just variations on a theme - it needs more dynamics like flooding, weather, replanting/engineering the land, canals, etc.
Joshua Gigantino Send a Note to the Cosmos! PostcardsToSpace.com Printed on giant rings in space at ProjectSanBao.com
One of the problems with the Big Dig ceilings is that some of the engineers that designed it have never actually built anything. These guys must not have ever gotten their hands dirty on an actual jobsite. Their the guys in ties, hard hats and a slight look of confusion on an actual site. The book says epoxy has the strength, it must, use it. When the accident occured and it first came out that the bolts were epoxied in place, my first thought was "what kind of idiot makes suspended ceilings out of concrete, then tries to epoxy them in place?" Epoxy is a wonder material, but this is just so obviously not a smart use for it. No, i'm not an engineer.
I've got a running bet with anyone that'll take it that the Big Dig is closed down in less time than it took to build the beast.
My wife is a news designer for the Boston Globe, she made this graphic to explain what happened, it's pretty cool. No complaints about it being in Flash, that's what she uses:
"Crack found in foam of space shuttle's external fuel tank... Developing... "
As of Monday AM. NPR says it's a 5 inch crack. I'm not sure if this is a big issue or grandstanding, but it could scrap this launch. Thermal cycling of the tank causes the cracks, they've tanked Discovery twice so this is to be expected. It definitely poses an added element of risk. If they are going to fly, they need to light that candle. Otherwise, stop the song-and-dance routine.
I want to see them succeed, finish the ISS and retire the Shuttles with dignity. What I don't want is for Shuttle to limp along with 1 or 2 flights a year and keep sucking NASA dry. We have a one-time opportunity to begin working on Mars flights, don't blow it.
> You can send them to school, but you can't make them pay attention.
I could say much the same about your post. I'm not blustering (I might have been sugar-crashing, though?), mine are economic arguments not emotional and it's a Slashdot post: I'm not going to analyze the entire situation in a sub-subthread. If you want to understand what I'm talking about, part of it can be viewed in this discussion:
The materials are already there, on Mars and the asteroids. Water is one of the more abundant materials in the Solar System, after silicate. Plants and animals breed, increasing their poputlations. You only need to start with a few "seeds", biologically. Manufacturing and industry will come from developments in the new places. We will grow new habitats and live off local resources. I'm not talking about terraforming but building millions of custom-purpose cities across the system, each based around small brine seas and intense biologics.
I have no personal interest in other star systems, the physics to get there are daunting. My goal is to help gain our foothold, commercially. Sol has enough material available to support trillions of people and other animals. Space really does offer an unlimited future - we can turn Earth into a living jewel by moving industry upstairs. Beamed power, manufacturing and refining, even grain production can take advantage of space, and it's not GPS that I'm talking about. Don't talk about superstitions unless you understand my view.
Any space development beyond a flag&footprint mission should lead to what I described. The post is mostly to the grandparent post. Utopia is not the answer.
Bollocks. Space offers us an unlimited future. As soon as anyone can exist in space, we have that limited backup (sort of). As soon as we can build, garden, live and breed in space, then we have that unlimited future.
The problems people cite as reasons not to explore have always been with us, read Tacitus, Sun Tzu or the Hammurabi column for proof. The "Fix us first" crowd wants Utopia on Earth. There is no such thing, unless you can stamp out human nature. If their arguments won out, we'd still be clubbing antelope in Africa, "Oh, no, don't walk north, you might stub your toe."
Space is our future. Lead, follow or get out of the way. The meek shall inherit the Earth, the rest of us are going to the stars. Earth is the cradle of civilization, but one cannot live in a cradle forever . Ad Astra, etc, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
> So if it is warm enough to not require active heating in the suits.
Disposal of waste heat is one of the 3 major issues in spacesuit design. This includes Mars suits. Maintaining body/lung pressure, oxygen supply and shedding heat. Other stuff (flexibility, duration, ruggedness) derives largely from these requirements. Mechanical Counter-pressure suits (MCP) will alleviate a lot of these issues on Mars, but I don't think reflected mirrors will matter that much for human EVA.
Mirrors could be useful for melting parts of the Elysium glaciers or similiar water-rich material. For a "warming" test that we could do now, why not drop a 6' acrylic dome on Mars with the MSL rover?
Josh
In the Shaper/Mechanist stories, there is a small spaceship that monitors it's health with tunes.
In ex-Sov spacecraft, ship monitors you!
J
If they spend 5 years performing the study an entire "generation" of network users will change over in that time. Think how much the online experience has changed in 5 years. This is a study in watching user tastes and technology change.
I'm all for alternative architecture, but DIRECT has several problems. The main issue is that it only "saves" money in the area of eliminating development of a second VSE rocket: the Crew Launch Vehicle AKA the Stick. It delibrately maintains the standing army of workers, which is the main cost issue with NASA manned space hardware. DIRECT tries to preserve all those jobs, while modern rockets (Atlas, Delta, Zenit and Falcon) all use radically fewer construction and deployment personell. DIRECT also has the issue of trying to make something work in an unintended way, and it requires development of a new version of the RS68. Not so direct.
i ssions&Number=606289&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o= 0&fpart=
Simpler modifications and evolution of existing launchers (Atlas, Delta) will achieve better results in both time and cost, IMHO.
We're discussing DIRECT on the uplink forums, too:
http://uplink.space.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=m
josh
Sorry, bro. In my story the world wakes up to walls of water flooding the Atlantic basin and a cackling maniac from Denver on the TV. It is more revenge than hostage situation and there is Hell to pay afterward. I'll have the first book finished soon, which leads into the described situation.
OMG dude! That's the premise behind a trilogy I've partly written! Except they actually DO it.
If you're talking about the island I'm thinking of, it's going to collapse soon naturally and we really should be building seawalls.
josh
Dude, you need to lay off the caffiene.
I don't agree with the entire Washington system, I don't really have a "side" in the game. The Repubs and Dems are just about the same thing, I loose in every election. I don't need mental treatments, nor do I think the majority is wrong, I just disagree with them. I didn't call anyone subhuman, either, shit head.
Tommy Franks giving the inaugural Homeland Security address with ranks of shaven-head stormtroopers in gray uniforms scared the crap out of me. Almost as much as the assault on Waco. The USA uses tanks against it's own civilians, and you call me a twit? Piss off, your user number is over 1 million, troll.
Josh
Sounds like Ananova with built-in scripting.
But really the old USA that never quite existed. If it was all Liberty, this place would be great. I'm going to put my fist in the face of the next "love it or leave it" twit I hear, they're the ones turning this beautiful land into the New Soviet.
With what's been going on the last while, yes, moving crosses my mind. The place I'd go would be to one of several South Pacific or equatorial islands: Kiribati, Palau, Tuvalu, etc. The reasons I haven't left include friends, family, finances, and that I haven't assembled my ninja army to take one of those islands over. No, I'm not talking about being an American ex-pat who smokes and does the local hotties, I'm talking about going someplace and conquering it to live out my libertarian-anarchist fantasies. Anyone know where I can get a crate of AK-47s and a cheap hydrofoil?
Josh
Sample kits are something that NASA and others make to better understand how our materials interact with the space environment. They call the current ones on ISS "suitcases", basically it's a case with a flat tray inside and many (dozens) of different materials attached to the tray. The ones on ISS spend several months exposed to vacuum and are then retrieved for analysis. Similiar experiments with exposure facilities have been done on MIR and freeflyers like the recent Russian FOTON launch. Interesting point on the FOTON capsule: it showed that two species of lichen can survive in open space.
A Mars exposure test might include several skin/leather materials, some synthetics like nylon and kevlar. It would just be part of a lander or rover, so we'd be able to have a better idea of what the environment there does.
Hope this helps.
Josh
The solution to the possible peroxides (not the life-detection) issue is to fly a set of sample materials and see how they react to martian atmosphere and regolith. We've been batting this back and forth for 20 years - just fly some samples and see what happens.
There were reports a few years ago about a new analysis of Viking GC-MS data that showed a 24.5-hour respiration cycle in the regolith samples it gathered. We might have to stop calling it regolith and start calling it soil.
Josh
You only have half of it. Confucius is attributed to saying:
"May you live in interesting times and attract the Emperor's attention."
Makes much more sense like that.
Josh
> Imagine you can no longer use the internet for those purposes: getting fast access to news articles from so many sources, latest research docs,
The problem with your analysis is that those resources were available on mailing lists long, long before the Web. For example the French-Harvard "Exoworlds" list existed as email way before they had a website. More reliable, too.
Josh
Actually, I would buy a 5 ton ball of shit in orbit. Someday I want to grow trees in space, and that would make for some cheap fertilizer. Rednecks in Spaaaaaace!!
On Grandparent post - every rocket launched and payload developed has specific debris-mitigation efforts. US commercial payloads must pass through AST's debris process. Debris is an issue, but it's a small step compared to regenerative life support or deep space radiation issues.
Josh
As a home-office entrepreneur, I rely on the 'Net almost all the time. That extra 1% is pedalling to the Post Office. Cox network's consumer cable modem/phone connection has been very reliable.
Josh
Sounds like a job for Paper! I have 3 active & 1 reference notebooks for my current project. Lined yellow legal pads rock!
Josh
www.PostcardsToSpace.com
DOOM isn't that far from the truth. The Russian scientists that orginally studied Phobos insisted it was an artificial satellite. Along with resource extraction, they were hoping to find artifacts or evidence.
> Why would they go to all that trouble of making such a huge trip and not land on the planet???
> I know maybe it has larger risks but COME ON, it's not like you go to Mars every week.
Russian scientists have been obsessed with Phobos for decades. There is a lot of science and discovery on that tiny moon, including samples of Mars (blown into space and swept onto Phobos) and other solar system bodies. Landing on Phobos is worlds easier than Mars itself, and there is an amount of preservation available that isn't available on Mars. The Phobos lander would be able to pick up (if it can find them) pieces of Mars that are truly ancient, and they won't have weathered as on the planet.
The single biggest question that Phobos-Grunt will answer is absolutely critical to future space development: How much water does Phobos contain and where is it? Phobos is easier to get to energy-wise than Luna. If it really is 1/3 water then it can become the fuel station for all of human space activity.
Josh
www.postcardstospace.com Send a Note to the Cosmos!
I've never pirated a game. The reason I buy at most 1 game a year is mostly cost. At $50 a game, it's hard to justify that. Replayability is another factor. A lot of games simply suck the second time through, many the first time through. Civ4 is great, but just variations on a theme - it needs more dynamics like flooding, weather, replanting/engineering the land, canals, etc.
Joshua Gigantino
Send a Note to the Cosmos! PostcardsToSpace.com
Printed on giant rings in space at ProjectSanBao.com
it works fine with Flash 9 plugin.
One of the problems with the Big Dig ceilings is that some of the engineers that designed it have never actually built anything. These guys must not have ever gotten their hands dirty on an actual jobsite. Their the guys in ties, hard hats and a slight look of confusion on an actual site. The book says epoxy has the strength, it must, use it. When the accident occured and it first came out that the bolts were epoxied in place, my first thought was "what kind of idiot makes suspended ceilings out of concrete, then tries to epoxy them in place?" Epoxy is a wonder material, but this is just so obviously not a smart use for it. No, i'm not an engineer.
s /2006/07/28/bolt_system_graphic/
I've got a running bet with anyone that'll take it that the Big Dig is closed down in less time than it took to build the beast.
My wife is a news designer for the Boston Globe, she made this graphic to explain what happened, it's pretty cool. No complaints about it being in Flash, that's what she uses:
http://www.boston.com/news/traffic/bigdig/article
Enjoy,
Josh
"Crack found in foam of space shuttle's external fuel tank... Developing... "
As of Monday AM. NPR says it's a 5 inch crack. I'm not sure if this is a big issue or grandstanding, but it could scrap this launch. Thermal cycling of the tank causes the cracks, they've tanked Discovery twice so this is to be expected. It definitely poses an added element of risk. If they are going to fly, they need to light that candle. Otherwise, stop the song-and-dance routine.
I want to see them succeed, finish the ISS and retire the Shuttles with dignity. What I don't want is for Shuttle to limp along with 1 or 2 flights a year and keep sucking NASA dry. We have a one-time opportunity to begin working on Mars flights, don't blow it.
Josh
> You can send them to school, but you can't make them pay attention.
u sinesstech&Number=503952&page=2&view=collapsed&sb= 5&o=0&fpart=
I could say much the same about your post. I'm not blustering (I might have been sugar-crashing, though?), mine are economic arguments not emotional and it's a Slashdot post: I'm not going to analyze the entire situation in a sub-subthread. If you want to understand what I'm talking about, part of it can be viewed in this discussion:
http://uplink.space.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=b
The materials are already there, on Mars and the asteroids. Water is one of the more abundant materials in the Solar System, after silicate. Plants and animals breed, increasing their poputlations. You only need to start with a few "seeds", biologically. Manufacturing and industry will come from developments in the new places. We will grow new habitats and live off local resources. I'm not talking about terraforming but building millions of custom-purpose cities across the system, each based around small brine seas and intense biologics.
I have no personal interest in other star systems, the physics to get there are daunting. My goal is to help gain our foothold, commercially. Sol has enough material available to support trillions of people and other animals. Space really does offer an unlimited future - we can turn Earth into a living jewel by moving industry upstairs. Beamed power, manufacturing and refining, even grain production can take advantage of space, and it's not GPS that I'm talking about. Don't talk about superstitions unless you understand my view.
Josh
Any space development beyond a flag&footprint mission should lead to what I described. The post is mostly to the grandparent post. Utopia is not the answer.
> it's creating a limited backup.
Bollocks. Space offers us an unlimited future. As soon as anyone can exist in space, we have that limited backup (sort of). As soon as we can build, garden, live and breed in space, then we have that unlimited future.
The problems people cite as reasons not to explore have always been with us, read Tacitus, Sun Tzu or the Hammurabi column for proof. The "Fix us first" crowd wants Utopia on Earth. There is no such thing, unless you can stamp out human nature. If their arguments won out, we'd still be clubbing antelope in Africa, "Oh, no, don't walk north, you might stub your toe."
Space is our future. Lead, follow or get out of the way. The meek shall inherit the Earth, the rest of us are going to the stars. Earth is the cradle of civilization, but one cannot live in a cradle forever . Ad Astra, etc, etc.
Josh