The V2 was FULL of fuel and was designed to withstand high speed flight.
Not to knock this guys accomplishment, but he has built a large, mostly hollow, scale model rocket with model rocket motors at the bottom. It will not break the that mach barrier or attain more than a few thousands of feet in height. It also has no guidance system.
Get a Mac, set Energy Saver to boot and shutdown the computer at pre-arranged times.
This is not just the province of Macs, many pc's have similar capabilities to boot at preset times, albeit that particular feature gets configured in the bios.
Is it really so hard to actually consider the fact that NASA may have put some actual THOUGHT to this?
I understand that NASA has put thought into this. This just seems a very convoluted solution and nobody that I have seen has adequately explained the rationale behind the hovering sky crane piece in a way that explains all of the risks associated with it. I am trying to understand what their thinking is, not deride it. Nedlohs had provided his explanation above, and I countered with why I didn't think that was the real reason for the sky crane.
Your dust explanation may be closer to the truth but there has to be more to it than that. After all, a protective shell wouldn't have to be 'dustproof'; a simple sheet might do it, and certainly wouldn't add lots of weight. A vehicle this size is going to kick up dust of its own in its travels, so it will be designed to live with that anyway. Also this rover doesn't depend on solar cells that need to remain clean like the current rovers do.
Nedlohs was speculating that the reason to lower the lander to the ground via the winches was because it was too tricky to some to a soft landing.
I was refuting that particular explanation by pointing out that if they can come to a hover close to the ground, which it is designed to do, then it is feasible to come to a computer controlled soft landing from that point, as Armadillo has demonstrated.
re: payload: Armadillo's lander carries at least a 25kg payload to satisfy the contest rules, and they have noted that they actually carry "quite a bit" more:
re: relative size: I'm not sure what you are using as a basis for your 1000 multiple in the mass comparison of the vehicles, but from what I can find Armadillo's vehicle in the example weighs about 200kg. Certainly not as heavy as the Mars lander, but enough for a proof of concept, especially considering the decreased gravity on Mars.
I'm OK with everything up until they start winching the lander down under the crane. How is that better than sitting the rover on top of the retro rocket module, hovering, then landing, and having the rover drive off the top of the lander?
The number of failures that could happen to the winching system seems nuts; a line might not lower, or at the wrong speed, or a line could tangle, or a side to side oscillation while descending, or a cable not disconnect, and if any of these go wrong, you have no time to fix it.
Sorry for being so dense, but I really don't understand.
At the apogee of its flight, when it starts to descend back down, SS1 is going, well, zero. It's fairly easy to take it slow at the beginning when you start at zero, no?
When a NASA spacecraft starts down, its going, well, that orbital velocity that you mentioned.
How can those, basically, conceptually, be the same?
I don't buy that. If Armadillo Aerospace can design and build a lander that can go from a hover to a soft controlled rocket landing, in Earth gravity, why can't NASA do the same thing in Mars gravity?
It seems like the TSA should setup a database for all of the theft reports. It would seem like it should be fairly easy to identify time/location patterns and cross reference those with staff schedules.
That combined with some judicious ebay/craigslist surfing for missing items might stem this a lot.
That should be on top of more obvious steps such as putting some kind of tamper proof seal on the luggage at dropoff. If the TSA wants to inspect the luggage then they are only allowed to break the seal while under camera and supervision. The luggage would then need to have a new tamper proof seal applied. If a passenger receives their luggage with a broken seal then it will be obvious that theft has occurred.
His ebay account is still visible, and there are hundreds of sales listed over the last year. I assume that it all gets confiscated from the buyers? Do they face criminal charges for receiving stolen goods or are they just out the money they paid?
I have to see this as Sony paying respect, not as them knuckling under to threats. I would like to think that they would do the same thing if it was a passage from a Buddhist text which had offended Buddhists with its inclusion. (ashamed that I can't name a Buddhist text without looking it up)
Slashdot Mirror
OK, so the V2 is a missile, point taken.
Where is the line between a missile and a sounding rocket?
Shouldn't that be
Vroooooommmm!!
The V2 was FULL of fuel and was designed to withstand high speed flight.
Not to knock this guys accomplishment, but he has built a large, mostly hollow, scale model rocket with model rocket motors at the bottom. It will not break the that mach barrier or attain more than a few thousands of feet in height. It also has no guidance system.
Not a 'real' rocket.
from cnn:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/02/03/iran.satellite/index.html
"The United States has confirmed that Iran launched a low-earth orbit satellite on Monday night, two U.S. officials told CNN's Barbara Starr. "
FreeNas is not supposed to be a production ready product. Note this statement on their site:
http://www.freenas.org/index.php?option=com_openwiki&Itemid=30&id=faqs:en
"FreeNAS is Alpha or Beta, its not a production release and it will have bugs in it. It is your risk if you load valuable data onto FreeNAS."
Why you would risk your customer's data, or recommend that others do the same, is beyond me.
Unicorn bones are going to destroy the internet infrastructure?
Do they set off chain reaction explosions in the tubes or something?
ignore parent, some guy spamming a lame ebay auction, nothing to do with article.
This is not science.
This is not "stuff that matters"
This is not "news for nerds"
Why the hell are you posting this crap?
It was a Cyrix chip, 50Mhz clock doubled in the chip to 100.
Doom, C&C, Civ, those were the days.... When a guy could take pride in how much free base memory he had! Himem skills, ....
Oh god, I'm old, aren't I?
486 dx2/100 ftw!!!
Get a Mac, set Energy Saver to boot and shutdown the computer at pre-arranged times.
This is not just the province of Macs, many pc's have similar capabilities to boot at preset times, albeit that particular feature gets configured in the bios.
Is it really so hard to actually consider the fact that NASA may have put some actual THOUGHT to this?
I understand that NASA has put thought into this. This just seems a very convoluted solution and nobody that I have seen has adequately explained the rationale behind the hovering sky crane piece in a way that explains all of the risks associated with it. I am trying to understand what their thinking is, not deride it. Nedlohs had provided his explanation above, and I countered with why I didn't think that was the real reason for the sky crane.
Your dust explanation may be closer to the truth but there has to be more to it than that. After all, a protective shell wouldn't have to be 'dustproof'; a simple sheet might do it, and certainly wouldn't add lots of weight. A vehicle this size is going to kick up dust of its own in its travels, so it will be designed to live with that anyway. Also this rover doesn't depend on solar cells that need to remain clean like the current rovers do.
Nedlohs was speculating that the reason to lower the lander to the ground via the winches was because it was too tricky to some to a soft landing.
I was refuting that particular explanation by pointing out that if they can come to a hover close to the ground, which it is designed to do, then it is feasible to come to a computer controlled soft landing from that point, as Armadillo has demonstrated.
re: payload:
Armadillo's lander carries at least a 25kg payload to satisfy the contest rules, and they have noted that they actually carry "quite a bit" more:
http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/Armadillo/Home/News?news_id=346
re: relative size:
I'm not sure what you are using as a basis for your 1000 multiple in the mass comparison of the vehicles, but from what I can find Armadillo's vehicle in the example weighs about 200kg. Certainly not as heavy as the Mars lander, but enough for a proof of concept, especially considering the decreased gravity on Mars.
http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/Armadillo/Home/News?news_id=347
Just a little longer...
http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/081001-tw-phoenix-microphone.html
I'm OK with everything up until they start winching the lander down under the crane. How is that better than sitting the rover on top of the retro rocket module, hovering, then landing, and having the rover drive off the top of the lander?
The number of failures that could happen to the winching system seems nuts; a line might not lower, or at the wrong speed, or a line could tangle, or a side to side oscillation while descending, or a cable not disconnect, and if any of these go wrong, you have no time to fix it.
Sorry for being so dense, but I really don't understand.
At the apogee of its flight, when it starts to descend back down, SS1 is going, well, zero. It's fairly easy to take it slow at the beginning when you start at zero, no?
When a NASA spacecraft starts down, its going, well, that orbital velocity that you mentioned.
How can those, basically, conceptually, be the same?
Thanks, good link!
I don't buy that. If Armadillo Aerospace can design and build a lander that can go from a hover to a soft controlled rocket landing, in Earth gravity, why can't NASA do the same thing in Mars gravity?
http://media.armadilloaerospace.com/2007_10_21/modFreeFlight.mpg
I was just going to use that example but state that therefore it obviously DOES work for much larger payloads!
Parent post was just a day early...
Well, in theory I would guess they could get their money back, but in practice, what are the chances that he hasn't spent it?
It seems like the TSA should setup a database for all of the theft reports. It would seem like it should be fairly easy to identify time/location patterns and cross reference those with staff schedules.
That combined with some judicious ebay/craigslist surfing for missing items might stem this a lot.
That should be on top of more obvious steps such as putting some kind of tamper proof seal on the luggage at dropoff. If the TSA wants to inspect the luggage then they are only allowed to break the seal while under camera and supervision. The luggage would then need to have a new tamper proof seal applied. If a passenger receives their luggage with a broken seal then it will be obvious that theft has occurred.
His ebay account is still visible, and there are hundreds of sales listed over the last year. I assume that it all gets confiscated from the buyers? Do they face criminal charges for receiving stolen goods or are they just out the money they paid?
You're judging on eye-candy. XKCD is brain-candy.
I have to see this as Sony paying respect, not as them knuckling under to threats. I would like to think that they would do the same thing if it was a passage from a Buddhist text which had offended Buddhists with its inclusion. (ashamed that I can't name a Buddhist text without looking it up)