the change in plume could have just been because of a change in the orientation of the vehicle relative to the trajectory (ie turned sideways). Nothing really points to an engine malfunction yet. Could have been avionics, which have been known to cause problems for rockets in the past.
insurance. It's not costing them a dime and since it was a student satellite it's not that important. Plus at $6 million it's pocket change for the DARPA and a hell of a lot cheaper then how much they put into the other rocket programs for development.
It also looked like it went unstable with a wobble. Spaceflight Now is reporting that the flame looked funny right before video was cut but this could be due to a weird orientation of the vehicle relative to the flight path. (ie sideways)
Hopefully we get more info soon and Elon flies the next one as soon as they figure it out. Take a page out of NASA's early history and just keep putting them up until you get it right. Luckily at $6 million a pop they're pretty reasonably priced compaired to other vehicles out there.
The idea is that if it can do 100-200m on earth it can do much more on the Moon. The whole system is suppose to show capability of a Lunar transit system.
From the Draft:
The (TITLE) Lunar Lander Challenge is designed to accelerate technology developments supporting the commercial creation of a vehicle capable of ferrying cargo or humans between lunar orbit and the lunar surface.
Since the moon does not have an appreciable atmosphere, if the system can meet the goals on earth it shouldn't have any problems on the moon. The big problems are developing the propulsion systems cheap and light enough. Turning them on and off at different times doesn't change much in the scheme of things if they can provide enough thrust at the right times.
The President has the ability to start a war but only Congress can wage war. There has been no Declaration of War and therefore there is no war that the United States of America is engaged in. The President has the ability to quickly react and defend the Constitution and People of the country but long term deployments of troops must be approved by Congress.
Any executive orders must have their authority from Congressional acts and/or the Constitution. No if or but about it. We are a nation of Laws. That is the founding idea behind all that we have, we agree to follow those Laws and that only Congress has the power to create those Laws.
if I remember right, they're going for 5cm accuracy. Had to research this mission for my design class this year. We're using the LRO data to choose where we land our sample return. 5 freaking centimeters!
the lunar orbit instability is mostly due to crazy changes in the lunar composition and desnity. Basically the gravity gradient is all messed up and does things to the orbiter. We're going to have to map is sometime and then update our models for the lunar orbits but that takes a mission in itself, or at least a couple secondary missions.
A design course did exactly that far side mission a couple years ago. They ended up designing a comm sat that sits out at a Lagrange point. Crazy orbit manuevers to get there to but I degress. The problem with putting a observator at the pole is durring half of the month it's pointing somewhat towards the earth or at least enought to get some garbage RF. You want to be far enough away that you've got clear skies the whole time. That means extremely long power lines. Doable but not desirable since power lines also act as antennas and pollute the spectrum. The design team ended up using RTGs and putting it in a crater near the equator.
This year we're designing a mission to do a sample return from the moon looking for ice. So it's to the poles we go!
Money. Plan and simple. It takes money to put satellites in orbit around the moon and to image it. Ground based systems that have the kind of resolution you want are busy looking at long distance objects. They can't focus on something as close as the moon. Why build a telescope that can only look at the moon?
That said, NASA does have a satellite about to launch that will produce amazing high res pictures and topographical data of the moon in preperation of landers looking for ice and other goodies on the moon. http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/database/MasterCatalog? sc=LUNARRO
Funny, we designed the entire system. Afterwards the so called proffesionals told us there was no way we could fit dual redundant comm, CDH and peak power tracking on a a 4"x4" board. So we pulled the board out and showed them exactly how we did.
Most if not all of the CubeSats are entirely designed by students, at least the ones I've seen, which includes all of them waiting for launch right now...
Those were cool birds to. I worked on the Cal Poly team that helped with that effort and was heavily involved in tracking operations with our Earth station. To bad we were only half working at the time.
There you guys go. I get tired of people "forgetting" to mention their cool satellite was designed based on the CubeSat spec. Not DTU or AAU, they're cool, just certain other groups...
Anyway the CubeSat hardware that we developed at CP and is available to the CubeSat Community. Most of the ideas I see on this page have been discussed by some developer or is in work with some developer. If not, anyone can build one of these birds, the Spec Sheet is on the page and CP is now trying to also coordinate launches for the CubeSat Community.
Doesn't anyone do their homework anymore? Connexion By Boeing is via geostationary satellite. Why waste putting a bird up that is only visible to the ground for a few minutes each pass when you can buy time on a couple of geo birds?
You want to know if your plane has Connexion? Look on top for a square "bubble" about 3 feet on each side and purtruding about 6 inches. That's where the antenna is, and yes it tracks the satellite, not that hard, we've been doing it for years on military planes.
The Enabling Technology
Connexion by Boeing uses a worldwide network of geostationary satellites and ground-based receiving stations to relay data between aircraft and the global information network. An advanced-technology antenna designed and built by Mitsubishi Electric Co. enables aircraft to maintain high-quality connectivity, even at high latitudes.
And you have it for the win. Seriously, the wire runs on an aircraft are ridiculous as it is. I can't imagine trying to run 200-500 new lines for all of the seats, not to mention the weight cost. Planes can't carry more fuel since they're already trying to flight at max gross takeoff weight, means less people and increased cost.
wire
- installation
- maintenance/repair
- weight cost
+ guaranteed interference free
wireless
+ installation
+ single point maintenance
+ virtually no weight cost
+ interference from 2.4GHz not an issue (it's already swamped anyway)
Seriously, everyone's suggesting these complex (for a normal coffee shop) solutions when they've already found one. Pulling the plug works fine for them, why is everyone up in arms. Dear god don't take the free internet away!
What about state police? or county firefighters? They have massive networks of repeaters setup across states so that all of the different emergency services can jump on and immediately ask for help from other agencies without having to go through a third party (dispatch). Many of these are HF and VHF simply because you need the range. These are the ones going to get hit by BPL interference.
RTFA, only if you stay within the range of the infected phone. If you walk away it stops asking to install. So if you just walk by you'll get the message but then it stops.
Just like the damn whiny kid, you leave him in the car and you don't have to worry about him pestering you to buy candy.
Absolutley, I know a Ham that is "down" to 60 wpm with morse code after peaking 100+ while serving with the Navy. I've seen this guy decode and he's faster and more accurate then the computers we had doing the same thing.
Now I just need to go get a slow 5 wpm to upgrade my license.
You should NOT launch space equipment on manned launch vehicles. The safety requirements drive the cost through the roof. There is no argument for launching satellites on the same vehicle as people, all that ends up happening is you drive the costs of both up.
It's much cheaper to launch equipment on Expendable Launch Vehicles (ELVs) and people on a small system designed to get just people up. In orbit rendezvous is easy for us now and this way you don't have to launch wasted mass in the form of quadruple safety redundancy.
Apparently no one told the authors the second thing anyone reading a paper does is skim over the graphs and tables. I had flashbacks to a lecture from a lab professor about making clean clear graphs after trying to decode those cryptic plots.
According to international treaties, no country can claim land outside of the Earth. But who's going to stop them? Basically it's going to come down to who can get there and put people there.
IIRC they can put research facilites and whatnot there, and they own the facilities but not the ground they're on.
The other side is that international law makes no mention of nongovernment agencies (ie Corporations) claiming parts.
Basically it's going to all come down to ability to claim and hold an area. We've got crazy people all over the earth who "buy" plots of land from compainies who purport that they can claim parts of the moon even though they've sent no one there and have no intentions to.
Mining resources is also going to bring up interesting implications, since countries can't claim the land and minerals, how can one make money from the sale of it?
This whole thing has been the subject of countless SciFi books and will probably come to the fore front soon as we approach the capabilities to actually use extra-planetary sites.
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how can you tell it was not normal to flight? I was watching and couldn't tell orientation of the vehicle relative to anything else at that point.
the change in plume could have just been because of a change in the orientation of the vehicle relative to the trajectory (ie turned sideways). Nothing really points to an engine malfunction yet. Could have been avionics, which have been known to cause problems for rockets in the past.
insurance. It's not costing them a dime and since it was a student satellite it's not that important. Plus at $6 million it's pocket change for the DARPA and a hell of a lot cheaper then how much they put into the other rocket programs for development.
It also looked like it went unstable with a wobble. Spaceflight Now is reporting that the flame looked funny right before video was cut but this could be due to a weird orientation of the vehicle relative to the flight path. (ie sideways)
Hopefully we get more info soon and Elon flies the next one as soon as they figure it out. Take a page out of NASA's early history and just keep putting them up until you get it right. Luckily at $6 million a pop they're pretty reasonably priced compaired to other vehicles out there.
Here's a similar idea. For an extra $100/week we won't trash your beautiful shop here. Don't think of it as extortion, it's protection.
From the Draft:
Since the moon does not have an appreciable atmosphere, if the system can meet the goals on earth it shouldn't have any problems on the moon. The big problems are developing the propulsion systems cheap and light enough. Turning them on and off at different times doesn't change much in the scheme of things if they can provide enough thrust at the right times.
To clarify above.
The President has the ability to start a war but only Congress can wage war. There has been no Declaration of War and therefore there is no war that the United States of America is engaged in. The President has the ability to quickly react and defend the Constitution and People of the country but long term deployments of troops must be approved by Congress.
Any executive orders must have their authority from Congressional acts and/or the Constitution. No if or but about it. We are a nation of Laws. That is the founding idea behind all that we have, we agree to follow those Laws and that only Congress has the power to create those Laws.
if I remember right, they're going for 5cm accuracy. Had to research this mission for my design class this year. We're using the LRO data to choose where we land our sample return. 5 freaking centimeters!
the lunar orbit instability is mostly due to crazy changes in the lunar composition and desnity. Basically the gravity gradient is all messed up and does things to the orbiter. We're going to have to map is sometime and then update our models for the lunar orbits but that takes a mission in itself, or at least a couple secondary missions.
A design course did exactly that far side mission a couple years ago. They ended up designing a comm sat that sits out at a Lagrange point. Crazy orbit manuevers to get there to but I degress. The problem with putting a observator at the pole is durring half of the month it's pointing somewhat towards the earth or at least enought to get some garbage RF. You want to be far enough away that you've got clear skies the whole time. That means extremely long power lines. Doable but not desirable since power lines also act as antennas and pollute the spectrum. The design team ended up using RTGs and putting it in a crater near the equator.
This year we're designing a mission to do a sample return from the moon looking for ice. So it's to the poles we go!
Money. Plan and simple. It takes money to put satellites in orbit around the moon and to image it. Ground based systems that have the kind of resolution you want are busy looking at long distance objects. They can't focus on something as close as the moon. Why build a telescope that can only look at the moon?
? sc=LUNARRO
That said, NASA does have a satellite about to launch that will produce amazing high res pictures and topographical data of the moon in preperation of landers looking for ice and other goodies on the moon.
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/database/MasterCatalog
Funny, we designed the entire system. Afterwards the so called proffesionals told us there was no way we could fit dual redundant comm, CDH and peak power tracking on a a 4"x4" board. So we pulled the board out and showed them exactly how we did.
Most if not all of the CubeSats are entirely designed by students, at least the ones I've seen, which includes all of them waiting for launch right now...
Funny but the CubeSat concept was by a Stanford professor and is coordinated by another California university, Cal Poly.
It's just that the international schools don't have the ITAR restrictions so they can actually get their satellites launched.
CubeSat has a bunch of American CubeSats ready to go, just waiting on the Russians to launch it now. http://www.cubesat.org/
Those were cool birds to. I worked on the Cal Poly team that helped with that effort and was heavily involved in tracking operations with our Earth station. To bad we were only half working at the time.
http://www.cubesat.org/
There you guys go. I get tired of people "forgetting" to mention their cool satellite was designed based on the CubeSat spec. Not DTU or AAU, they're cool, just certain other groups... Anyway the CubeSat hardware that we developed at CP and is available to the CubeSat Community. Most of the ideas I see on this page have been discussed by some developer or is in work with some developer. If not, anyone can build one of these birds, the Spec Sheet is on the page and CP is now trying to also coordinate launches for the CubeSat Community.
Did not know they had phased arrays, awesome. Looks like fun stuff to work on.
You want to know if your plane has Connexion? Look on top for a square "bubble" about 3 feet on each side and purtruding about 6 inches. That's where the antenna is, and yes it tracks the satellite, not that hard, we've been doing it for years on military planes.
http://www.boeing.com/connexion/backgrounder.html
And you have it for the win. Seriously, the wire runs on an aircraft are ridiculous as it is. I can't imagine trying to run 200-500 new lines for all of the seats, not to mention the weight cost. Planes can't carry more fuel since they're already trying to flight at max gross takeoff weight, means less people and increased cost. wire - installation - maintenance/repair - weight cost + guaranteed interference free wireless + installation + single point maintenance + virtually no weight cost + interference from 2.4GHz not an issue (it's already swamped anyway)
Seriously, everyone's suggesting these complex (for a normal coffee shop) solutions when they've already found one. Pulling the plug works fine for them, why is everyone up in arms. Dear god don't take the free internet away!
What about state police? or county firefighters? They have massive networks of repeaters setup across states so that all of the different emergency services can jump on and immediately ask for help from other agencies without having to go through a third party (dispatch). Many of these are HF and VHF simply because you need the range. These are the ones going to get hit by BPL interference.
because they like having more then two options.
RTFA, only if you stay within the range of the infected phone. If you walk away it stops asking to install. So if you just walk by you'll get the message but then it stops. Just like the damn whiny kid, you leave him in the car and you don't have to worry about him pestering you to buy candy.
Absolutley, I know a Ham that is "down" to 60 wpm with morse code after peaking 100+ while serving with the Navy. I've seen this guy decode and he's faster and more accurate then the computers we had doing the same thing.
Now I just need to go get a slow 5 wpm to upgrade my license.
You should NOT launch space equipment on manned launch vehicles. The safety requirements drive the cost through the roof. There is no argument for launching satellites on the same vehicle as people, all that ends up happening is you drive the costs of both up.
It's much cheaper to launch equipment on Expendable Launch Vehicles (ELVs) and people on a small system designed to get just people up. In orbit rendezvous is easy for us now and this way you don't have to launch wasted mass in the form of quadruple safety redundancy.
Why? No one RTFA anyway.
Apparently no one told the authors the second thing anyone reading a paper does is skim over the graphs and tables. I had flashbacks to a lecture from a lab professor about making clean clear graphs after trying to decode those cryptic plots.
According to international treaties, no country can claim land outside of the Earth. But who's going to stop them? Basically it's going to come down to who can get there and put people there.
IIRC they can put research facilites and whatnot there, and they own the facilities but not the ground they're on.
The other side is that international law makes no mention of nongovernment agencies (ie Corporations) claiming parts.
Basically it's going to all come down to ability to claim and hold an area. We've got crazy people all over the earth who "buy" plots of land from compainies who purport that they can claim parts of the moon even though they've sent no one there and have no intentions to.
Mining resources is also going to bring up interesting implications, since countries can't claim the land and minerals, how can one make money from the sale of it?
This whole thing has been the subject of countless SciFi books and will probably come to the fore front soon as we approach the capabilities to actually use extra-planetary sites.