I do not think it is worth spending $2 billion on Hubble - its been brilliant, but at the end of the day its 70's tech which will get harder and harder to keep going. Also not in the ideal orbit - the earth is too close.
It hsa been suggested we could build another "cheapy" scope for this sort of money or less with about the same capability as Hubble - things like Mirrors, optics, CCDs, etc have come a long long way in the last few decades..
No, you RTFA. These machines are sure as heck not going out with TFTs for $100 - they will be using CRTs - which eat around 75W each. Admittedly 200W may be high, but even 100W/unit is significant power usage.
Have you any idea how non-environmental it is to be chucking out hardware every 5 years or so? Huge resources in terms of energy, raw materials, etc go into every new PC. Much of the "old" circuitry is just going into land-fill, or going back to places like China where they are processed to reclaim some of the gold/silver/etc, but in a very polluting way.
I was merely making the point that everything possible should be done to re-use hardware, rather than just get the 3rd world to copy our bad habits..
Depends on the system. I have seen about 75W for the monitor alone - admittedly for a 15 inch. 15W standby too.. These guys are going to use the cheapest available, off the shelf.
Good, but recycle more first..
on
The Hundred-Buck PC
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
The other day I passed a rubbish skip at my local college filled to the top with Desktop computer units & VDUs, all identical - dozens of units. When I asked what was wrong with them I was told - nothing! They were just old machines, the college was buying new machines. From what I could gather these were units in the P100-250Mhz range, all usable by someone out there..
Having said that, ok $100 PCs are good - but again with the environment/pollution pressures, how far do we go? Remember each machine eats 200W+ of power - nice when we are trying to get everyone to cut back..
If the probability of failure is so high that the first mission fails, isnt it also very probable that the second shuttle will suffer the same failure? Would they just be killing 14 astronauts instead of 7?
At the end of the day these shuttles are really old - isnt it time to say goodbye to them & cut the loses? Its a bit like an old car that you have to keep spending more & more to get through the MOT - its better to get rid of it & save the money for a better car..
I was assimulated by Microsoft..
on
Microsoft in 2008
·
· Score: 2, Funny
The problem was that it was beginning to look like big money ($0.5-1 billion+) to do this Hubble repair. For that sort of money, we could built another cheap scope..
As someone who also remembers handing in piles of puched cards & waiting days for the results, I would agree - C (with a decent library) is much better at the job. However in some ways it has gone to far - I find C++ & OOPs tend to bury, not reveal code functionality. APIs in particular have become so complex that it is becoming quite hard for a single programmer to write & manage a largish sized project.
Just for example, consider what some systems require you to do to get a simple User input - define a template, fill a structure, call the API, untangle the data.. It used to be as simple as 10 INPUT A
While I would not like to go back to BASIC/FORTRAN, it did use to be much easier to write a useful program. These days, in a way, we need less, not more..
IBEX will make these observations from a highly elliptical orbit that takes it beyond the interference of the Earth's magnetosphere.
Guys, I know the article says very little, but from what I can see this probe orbits the EARTH, not the sun, in an elliptical orbit, with sensors to examine (amongst other things) particles from the heliopause. Makes sense - $134 million would not be nearly enough money for a deep-space mission - the Plutonium nuclear batteries (RTG) alone would cost most of that. Deep space needs expensive support from Deep Space Network, and advanced/expensive comms. To get to Earth-escape you need an expensive big rocket too, unless you use ion. This probe will probably run off solar.
To get an idea of what even a "cheap" mission to Pluto & Heliopause is going to cost see the New Horzons page http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/ - this will be around $600 million. Apparantly they are in a real race against time to make the Jan 2006 launch window - there was a hitch at Los Alamos where they make the RTGs - Plutonium 238 is currently very hard to get hold of & they might not have enough by launch date. Shame they are not funding a "cheap" copycat 2007-8 NH-2 mission which could swing by Jupiter,Uranus & a few more KBOs including a nice double system..
By the way I do think it could be done cheaper still - when are we going to have a true deep space ion craft? (solar+RTG)
Let me help you guys with this one with some technical details..
"Inside the battery" - this is where all the clever stuff happens, the result of thousands of man-hours of research by large companies trying to optimise the efficiency of their product.
"Outside the battery", or "the outside world" - is isolated from the clever inside bits by a hefty layer of plastic, so that the battery can survive and work even in hostile environments.
So, we can conclude that sticking a piece of material (made of ceramic, silicon, heck even salami) on the outside is not likely to produce any measurable effect on what happens on the inside..
Here I am, brain the size of a planet, and they give me this lousy asteroid. An asteroid! Me, who has travelled the length and bredth of the universe, and is 4 times older than time itself..
5 PRINT "HELLO, I AM THE HAL 9000 COMPUTER." 10 INPUT "WHAT DO YOU CHOOSE (ROCK, PAPER, SCISSORS)";I$ 15 I = 0 20 IF I$="ROCK" THEN I = 1 30 IF I$="PAPER" THEN I = 2 40 IF I$="SCISSORS" THEN I = 3 50 IF I=0 THEN PRINT "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.":GOTO 10 60 ME = INT (RND(1) * 3) + 1 70 IF I=ME THEN PRINT "SNAP!" : GOTO 10 80 IF ME-I = 1 OR ME-I = -2 THEN GOTO 110 90 PRINT "You win. Dave...my mind is going...I can feel it...I can feel it." 100 GOTO 10 110 PRINT "Are you sure you are making the right decision? " 120 GOTO 10
ps. The HAL-9000 rock/paper/scissors emulator is untested & supplied "as is". The software algorithms used above ("choosing 1 of 3 random numbers, US Pat 124710947") are (P)(C)(T)adeyadey, $1 payable for each time you run it, look at it, or think about it when sitting on the bog.
Does anyone know if they are trying to actually retrieve the A-channel data, or are they just analysing the carrier for dopler-shift to get the data for this experiment?
Its an important difference - if they can retrieve the A-Channel data, they can re-generate the lost picture data from that channel too..
This is a problem that needs to be addressed now, and probably the biggest problem is NIMBY-ism. In fact the easiest & fastest solutions could come from alternative energy sources - probably cheaper & faster than nuclear, given the huge time it would take to commission new plants, etc.
In the UK we have huge wind resources - both off & on shore. We also have huge potential tidal resources - a barrage across, say, the Bristol channel could generate maybe 10% of our total power needs. But (naturally) people who live near such potential schemes are generally opposed - and as a result, deadlock results.
And if you say "go nuclear", you will find exactly the same situation - quite apart from environmental objections, there will be a very long drawn out process, even before construction can start.
Many of those who complain are people with land - in the UK most of the countryside is still owned by a very small % of the populace. Of course, the same people who complain happily drive around the countryside in their SUVs..
I know its sad, considering the excellent science done to date, but the Hubble is in essence 70's tech . There are many non-replaceable parts in Hubble that are getting past their operating date, which cannot be swapped by a robot or even a Human. Modern space scope can have lightweight segmented mirrors, betters CCDs, computers, etc. Also if servicing is not needed, it can be put at lagrange points for better results - the Earths closeness to Hubble creates problems.
Let it go. I would even go as far as to say dont deorbit - $200mil spent elsewhere would save more life than the risk..
Edmund Blackadder: Right, let's get the book. Now; Baldrick, where's the manuscript?
Baldrick: You mean the big papery thing tied up with string?
E: Yes, Baldrick -- the manuscript belonging to Dr. Johnson.
B: You mean the baity fellow in the black coat who just left?
E: Yes, Baldrick -- Dr. Johnson.
B: So you're asking where the big papery thing tied up with string belonging to the baity fellow in the black coat who just left is.
E: Yes, Baldrick, I am, and if you don't answer, then the booted bony thing with five toes at the end of my leg will soon connect sharply with the soft dangly collection of objects in your trousers. For the last time, Baldrick: Where is Dr. Johnson's manuscript?
B: On the fire.
E: (shocked) On the *what*?
B: The hot orangy thing under the stony mantlepiece.
It would be fantastic if they could, but I think they are only talking about using the phase/doppler shift of the carrier signal to infer something about the location/movement of the probe. The high frequency data channel is probably lost in the noise.
As someone who has been involved in large coding projects (100,000 lines +) while I understand how easy it is for bugs to creep in, I do think the programming bug that effectively did not switch on the second channel should have been picked up on a project of this size/budget. Sadly, too often, the bigger the bureaucracy, the more mistakes like this you have - small keen teams often do better.
Regarding image quality on Huygens - in hindsight could that have been done better?
I realise there are constraints - 80's hardware, limited batteries, 8k bit channel, etc, but here are my casual observations..
Much higher resolution CCD's were available at the time - Cassini had a 1 megapixel unit. Low res data could have been transmitted during descent, but hi-res data could have been stored & broadcast after landing. As it is, the radio spent a lot of time sending identical images of the landing site. Another idea that gets a lot more out of a video data stream is variable jpg compression & only transmitting the signal difference between certain frames. That way you can use hi res CCDs then compress-until-it-fits the 8K data channel. When there is a lot of data/change in the pictures you compress a lot, but if certain cameras are not returning any or little change in the pictures, or if the picture has no detail, more channel space is available to send either hi-resolution or even pre-recorded data.
Furthermore, why the assumption that the probe will be destroyed on landing? Why not switch off Huygens when Cassini dissapears below the horizon, and switch it on for the next day? (titan's day is 16 days long..) The batteries lasted many hours after the landing, and the craft did cruise in standby mode for 16 days, so this might have been possible.
I think they could have returned all the data we got anyway up to the landing, and designed a 2nd phase with more data being sent, with little change to mission profile/weight/etc..
One thing I dont understand - why are the triplets out of sequence? The early pictures show the landing site! Is this just some artifact of the transmission process?
If I didnt know any better, I would say that final picture of the rocks was just a "joke" by the programmer, a frame to put in when the data/checksum fails for that camera..:-)
Its not accurate without real height data, which would come from Cassini radar sweeps. The light/dark pixels only tell you so much about height. Once the site is known, you can expect Cassini to make some detailed surveys of that area, which in turn with tell us what is what.
However, on to the image quality - in hindsight could that have been done better?
I realise there are constraints - 80's hardware, limited batteries, 8k bit channel, etc, but here are my casual observations..
Much higher CCD's were available at the time - the probe itself had a 1 megapixel unit. Low res data could have been transmitted during descent, but hi-res data could have been stored & broadcast after landing. As it is, the radio spent a lot of time sending identical images of the landing site. Furthermore, why the assumption that the probe will quit on landing? Why not switch off Huygens when Cassini dissapears below the horizon, and switch it on for the next day? (titan's day is 16 days long..) The batteries lasted many hours after the landing, and the craft did cruise in standby mode for 16 days, so this should have been possible.
Slashdot Mirror
I do not think it is worth spending $2 billion on Hubble - its been brilliant, but at the end of the day its 70's tech which will get harder and harder to keep going. Also not in the ideal orbit - the earth is too close.
It hsa been suggested we could build another "cheapy" scope for this sort of money or less with about the same capability as Hubble - things like Mirrors, optics, CCDs, etc have come a long long way in the last few decades..
No, you RTFA. These machines are sure as heck not going out with TFTs for $100 - they will be using CRTs - which eat around 75W each. Admittedly 200W may be high, but even 100W/unit is significant power usage.
Have you any idea how non-environmental it is to be chucking out hardware every 5 years or so? Huge resources in terms of energy, raw materials, etc go into every new PC. Much of the "old" circuitry is just going into land-fill, or going back to places like China where they are processed to reclaim some of the gold/silver/etc, but in a very polluting way.
I was merely making the point that everything possible should be done to re-use hardware, rather than just get the 3rd world to copy our bad habits..
Depends on the system. I have seen about 75W for the monitor alone - admittedly for a 15 inch. 15W standby too.. These guys are going to use the cheapest available, off the shelf.
b ProductID=39263
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?We
The other day I passed a rubbish skip at my local college filled to the top with Desktop computer units & VDUs, all identical - dozens of units. When I asked what was wrong with them I was told - nothing! They were just old machines, the college was buying new machines. From what I could gather these were units in the P100-250Mhz range, all usable by someone out there..
Having said that, ok $100 PCs are good - but again with the environment/pollution pressures, how far do we go? Remember each machine eats 200W+ of power - nice when we are trying to get everyone to cut back..
If the probability of failure is so high that the first mission fails, isnt it also very probable that the second shuttle will suffer the same failure? Would they just be killing 14 astronauts instead of 7?
At the end of the day these shuttles are really old - isnt it time to say goodbye to them & cut the loses? Its a bit like an old car that you have to keep spending more & more to get through the MOT - its better to get rid of it & save the money for a better car..
and all I got was this lousy tee-shirt!
Stands for "GNU is Not Unix.."
The problem was that it was beginning to look like big money ($0.5-1 billion+) to do this Hubble repair. For that sort of money, we could built another cheap scope..
As someone who also remembers handing in piles of puched cards & waiting days for the results, I would agree - C (with a decent library) is much better at the job. However in some ways it has gone to far - I find C++ & OOPs tend to bury, not reveal code functionality. APIs in particular have become so complex that it is becoming quite hard for a single programmer to write & manage a largish sized project.
Just for example, consider what some systems require you to do to get a simple User input - define a template, fill a structure, call the API, untangle the data.. It used to be as simple as
10 INPUT A
While I would not like to go back to BASIC/FORTRAN, it did use to be much easier to write a useful program. These days, in a way, we need less, not more..
IBEX will make these observations from a highly elliptical orbit that takes it beyond the interference of the Earth's magnetosphere.
Guys, I know the article says very little, but from what I can see this probe orbits the EARTH, not the sun, in an elliptical orbit, with sensors to examine (amongst other things) particles from the heliopause. Makes sense - $134 million would not be nearly enough money for a deep-space mission - the Plutonium nuclear batteries (RTG) alone would cost most of that. Deep space needs expensive support from Deep Space Network, and advanced/expensive comms. To get to Earth-escape you need an expensive big rocket too, unless you use ion. This probe will probably run off solar.
To get an idea of what even a "cheap" mission to Pluto & Heliopause is going to cost see the New Horzons page
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/ - this will be around $600 million. Apparantly they are in a real race against time to make the Jan 2006 launch window - there was a hitch at Los Alamos where they make the RTGs - Plutonium 238 is currently very hard to get hold of & they might not have enough by launch date. Shame they are not funding a "cheap" copycat 2007-8 NH-2 mission which could swing by Jupiter,Uranus & a few more KBOs including a nice double system..
By the way I do think it could be done cheaper still - when are we going to have a true deep space ion craft? (solar+RTG)
Let me help you guys with this one with some technical details..
"Inside the battery" - this is where all the clever stuff happens, the result of thousands of man-hours of research by large companies trying to optimise the efficiency of their product.
"Outside the battery", or "the outside world" - is isolated from the clever inside bits by a hefty layer of plastic, so that the battery can survive and work even in hostile environments.
So, we can conclude that sticking a piece of material (made of ceramic, silicon, heck even salami) on the outside is not likely to produce any measurable effect on what happens on the inside..
http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A559686
Here I am, brain the size of a planet, and they give me this lousy asteroid. An asteroid! Me, who has travelled the length and bredth of the universe, and is 4 times older than time itself..
You plastic pal whos fun to be with..
is that you need really really tiny fingers to dial..
Doom 4..
for my flying car.
..on my Commodore PET..
5 PRINT "HELLO, I AM THE HAL 9000 COMPUTER."
10 INPUT "WHAT DO YOU CHOOSE (ROCK, PAPER, SCISSORS)";I$
15 I = 0
20 IF I$="ROCK" THEN I = 1
30 IF I$="PAPER" THEN I = 2
40 IF I$="SCISSORS" THEN I = 3
50 IF I=0 THEN PRINT "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.":GOTO 10
60 ME = INT (RND(1) * 3) + 1
70 IF I=ME THEN PRINT "SNAP!" : GOTO 10
80 IF ME-I = 1 OR ME-I = -2 THEN GOTO 110
90 PRINT "You win. Dave...my mind is going...I can feel it...I can feel it."
100 GOTO 10
110 PRINT "Are you sure you are making the right decision? "
120 GOTO 10
ps. The HAL-9000 rock/paper/scissors emulator is untested & supplied "as is". The software algorithms used above ("choosing 1 of 3 random numbers, US Pat 124710947") are (P)(C)(T)adeyadey, $1 payable for each time you run it, look at it, or think about it when sitting on the bog.
Does anyone know if they are trying to actually retrieve the A-channel data, or are they just analysing the carrier for dopler-shift to get the data for this experiment?
Its an important difference - if they can retrieve the A-Channel data, they can re-generate the lost picture data from that channel too..
This is a problem that needs to be addressed now, and probably the biggest problem is NIMBY-ism. In fact the easiest & fastest solutions could come from alternative energy sources - probably cheaper & faster than nuclear, given the huge time it would take to commission new plants, etc.
In the UK we have huge wind resources - both off & on shore. We also have huge potential tidal resources - a barrage across, say, the Bristol channel could generate maybe 10% of our total power needs. But (naturally) people who live near such potential schemes are generally opposed - and as a result, deadlock results.
And if you say "go nuclear", you will find exactly the same situation - quite apart from environmental objections, there will be a very long drawn out process, even before construction can start.
Many of those who complain are people with land - in the UK most of the countryside is still owned by a very small % of the populace. Of course, the same people who complain happily drive around the countryside in their SUVs..
My guess is that they have lapsed, though..
..this time its Patented!
I know its sad, considering the excellent science done to date, but the Hubble is in essence 70's tech . There are many non-replaceable parts in Hubble that are getting past their operating date, which cannot be swapped by a robot or even a Human. Modern space scope can have lightweight segmented mirrors, betters CCDs, computers, etc. Also if servicing is not needed, it can be put at lagrange points for better results - the Earths closeness to Hubble creates problems.
Let it go. I would even go as far as to say dont deorbit - $200mil spent elsewhere would save more life than the risk..
Edmund Blackadder: Right, let's get the book. Now; Baldrick, where's the manuscript?
Baldrick: You mean the big papery thing tied up with string?
E: Yes, Baldrick -- the manuscript belonging to Dr. Johnson.
B: You mean the baity fellow in the black coat who just left?
E: Yes, Baldrick -- Dr. Johnson.
B: So you're asking where the big papery thing tied up with string belonging
to the baity fellow in the black coat who just left is.
E: Yes, Baldrick, I am, and if you don't answer, then the booted bony thing
with five toes at the end of my leg will soon connect sharply with the
soft dangly collection of objects in your trousers. For the last time,
Baldrick: Where is Dr. Johnson's manuscript?
B: On the fire.
E: (shocked) On the *what*?
B: The hot orangy thing under the stony mantlepiece.
E: You *burned* the Dictionary?
B: Yup.
It would be fantastic if they could, but I think they are only talking about using the phase/doppler shift of the carrier signal to infer something about the location/movement of the probe. The high frequency data channel is probably lost in the noise.
:-)
As someone who has been involved in large coding projects (100,000 lines +) while I understand how easy it is for bugs to creep in, I do think the programming bug that effectively did not switch on the second channel should have been picked up on a project of this size/budget. Sadly, too often, the bigger the bureaucracy, the more mistakes like this you have - small keen teams often do better.
Regarding image quality on Huygens - in hindsight could that have been done better?
I realise there are constraints - 80's hardware, limited batteries, 8k bit channel, etc, but here are my casual observations..
Much higher resolution CCD's were available at the time - Cassini had a 1 megapixel unit. Low res data could have been transmitted during descent, but hi-res data could have been stored & broadcast after landing. As it is, the radio spent a lot of time sending identical images of the landing site. Another idea that gets a lot more out of a video data stream is variable jpg compression & only transmitting the signal difference between certain frames. That way you can use hi res CCDs then compress-until-it-fits the 8K data channel. When there is a lot of data/change in the pictures you compress a lot, but if certain cameras are not returning any or little change in the pictures, or if the picture has no detail, more channel space is available to send either hi-resolution or even pre-recorded data.
Furthermore, why the assumption that the probe will be destroyed on landing? Why not switch off Huygens when Cassini dissapears below the horizon, and switch it on for the next day? (titan's day is 16 days long..) The batteries lasted many hours after the landing, and the craft did cruise in standby mode for 16 days, so this might have been possible.
I think they could have returned all the data we got anyway up to the landing, and designed a 2nd phase with more data being sent, with little change to mission profile/weight/etc..
One thing I dont understand - why are the triplets out of sequence? The early pictures show the landing site! Is this just some artifact of the transmission process?
If I didnt know any better, I would say that final picture of the rocks was just a "joke" by the programmer, a frame to put in when the data/checksum fails for that camera..
Its not accurate without real height data, which would come from Cassini radar sweeps. The light/dark pixels only tell you so much about height. Once the site is known, you can expect Cassini to make some detailed surveys of that area, which in turn with tell us what is what.
However, on to the image quality - in hindsight could that have been done better?
I realise there are constraints - 80's hardware, limited batteries, 8k bit channel, etc, but here are my casual observations..
Much higher CCD's were available at the time - the probe itself had a 1 megapixel unit. Low res data could have been transmitted during descent, but hi-res data could have been stored & broadcast after landing. As it is, the radio spent a lot of time sending identical images of the landing site. Furthermore, why the assumption that the probe will quit on landing? Why not switch off Huygens when Cassini dissapears below the horizon, and switch it on for the next day? (titan's day is 16 days long..) The batteries lasted many hours after the landing, and the craft did cruise in standby mode for 16 days, so this should have been possible.
Its actually a picture of India.. Thats right, its a Bollywood hoax..