Hmm, I just found this Nature Article which mentions that a Hubble servicing mission costs $700 million. Much higher than the $41 million figure I mentioned in my post.
I don't know where O'Keefe got that $41 million number from. Maybe that's the cost to finish the instruments but doesn't account for the actual shuttle launch and servicing.
Anyway, I still believe $700 million would be greatly worth it to fix up Hubble to keep it running for a few more years. I can only hope some other bigwigs at NASA think this too, and can convince the policy makers.
O'Keefe (NASA's administrator) supposedly made the decision entirely on his own this morning regarding Hubble. That's one hell of a profound decision, affecting significant research project as well as jobs, for a single person to make on their own.
With the quality and light gathering abilities of surface based scopes approacing or surpassing Hubble
That's not true in many respects. Regarding spectroscopies, Hubble gets vastly superior data. Ground-based telescopes have too much atmospheric absorptions and excitation artifacts, especially in the UV. Not Hubble.
And regarding imaging, IIRC, Hubble can do extended acquisitions of single objects for far longer with less interference than adaptive-optic Earth-based scopes. Plus, the adaptive optics you mention need guide stars nearby, or artifical sources which can produce other artifacts.
Note that the announcement isn't "Turn it off tomorrow." It's "We're not going to do any more servicing, but we'll let run until it dies of natural causes."
No, it's more like someone not paying $500 for a new clutch to keep their '90 Mustang running because instead they want to buy an '04 Hummer and really want that built-in TV/DVD option.
SM4, IMHO, would be greatly worth its cost in terms of scientific research. NASA is shifting away from pure science towards engineering. Given that Hubble is working great and invaluable to the current generation of astronomers, not going ahead with SM4 (estimated at $41 million) is, IMHO, a poor choice.
Finally, regarding your comment about the shuttle fleet. NASA supposedly has plans to bring down Hubble by heavily modifying a shuttle. That's alot of effort to bring back a piece of space history, considering they won't launch the next repair mission. IMHO, it would be much better to service it with SM4 than bring it back in a modified shuttle.
I never cease to be amazed at some of the images (yes I know they are touched up) that the HST has given us.
Firstly, HST science goes FAR FAR beyond the pretty pictures. There's tons of useful spectroscopy work being done with it. And even the images are useful for things (shape/motion of galaxy spirals, for instance).
Anyway, yeah, I totally agree with the rest of your post. They do intend to keep Hubble functioning for the rest of it's mechanical lifetime. But unfortunately, only 3 gyros are working right now. If one of them goes (it will happen sooner or later), then there is only a subset of useful science that can be done. And of course, the next gyro failure will render Hubble 'mostly dead'.
SM4 would greatly extend Hubble's life and the utility of science. Cutting it is like cutting the Superconducting Supercollider in the 90's. Only SM4 is vastly cheaper and the monies to fund it do exist. It's the priorities of NASA that have changed.
The weird thing is that Hubble is that the ISS project is expected to be over in 2010. That's around the same time as the anticipated end of the Shuttle program. O'Keefe also supposedly estimated only $41 million necessary to finish funding SM4, which should be ready before 2010. So something's not adding up here.
Anyway, the decision to not put a single shuttle flight to extend Hubble boggles my mind.
I guess NASA execs want to capitalize more off of the glitz of mars/moon missions instead of pure science missions (Hubble, Chandra, etc).
Interstingly enough, look at the NASA centers that benefit the most from Bush's ISS/moon/Mars plan.
The three main beneficiaries are Cape Canavral (launch, at Florida), Johnson Space Center (Mission Control, at Houston), and JPL (interplanetary craft, at Pasadena, California). FL, TX, and CA. All of these centers, and hence states, will see vastly increased funding. And all of these centers are also in key states Bush needs to win the election.
Sorry about the conspiracy theory, but it's an interesting trend, noticed especially by several NASA folks too.
The following estimates state that servicing mission 4 (really 5 considering there was 3A and 3B) spent about $200 million so far developing instruments. But the NASA head administrator (Sean O'Keefe) estimated that only $40 million remains for funding to completion. IMHO, it's a total shame and waste to pull the plug now, if we're only $40 million away from goal.
Another note regarding safety is really suspect. Supposedly all future shuttle missions will go to ISS in case of failure, so the astronauts can stay there and maybe use an escape pod if absolutely necessary. Hence, no more Hubble missions in the interest of safety.
What is missing from this discussion is that NASA is still keeping with their plans to bring Hubble back down from orbit as per an international treaty regarding space debris above a specific size. This entails heavily modifying one of the shuttles as Colombia was the only one large enough to fit the HST inside its cargo bay.
So they consider bringing Hubble down intact (as opposed to crashing it into the ocean, for instance) higher priority than keeping it running. I think that's a shame, again.
SM4 is important. Hubble only has 3 functioning gyros right now (SM4 would replace these and batteries, as well as install new instruments). If one of these gyros breaks, Hubble is severely crippled, and can do some, but only limited pointing and hence less science. If the next gyro breaks beyond this, then Hubble is effectively next to useless.
Come on NASA, change your mind and keep the SM4. It's been in progress for a long time, and its estimated cost is a drop in the bucket compared to some other USA funded endeavours (cough IRAQ cough).
It's funny because I just was reading that wiki article the night before I posted that comment, and remembered that.
I studied Japanese in college, and we called it romaji (with long o), but I also knew about the various other romaji pronunciation methods. So it seemed perfectly plausible that romanji was used instead of romaji in some parts of the world.
Does George Lucas own the copyright to every Star Wars book ever published--say, the Timothy Zahn trilogy?
No, Star Wars has all kinds of trademarks which Lucas probably owns some kinds of right to.
The analogy is more SCO as the art collector that bought the first known Picasso painting, and then claiming ownership of copyright of all subsequent Picasso paintings.
Dude, those are advances made by the space program for the space program.
I'm curious, what do you do for a living?
You're wondering what the benefit is for THz and near-IR devices? Whole new classes of electronics, bringing in orders of magnitude more bandwidth than available now. Think communications, for example. Also, perhaps, better ways to detect IR. And mixers, who doesn't want a better higher-frequency more-linear mixer? You could do some kickass up/downconversion if you had THz and IR mixers. Again, think communications.
If the X ray CCD's have applications in, and are affordable for, areas other than an X ray telescope then you would have a good example.
What technology is ever affordable shortly after it's been devloped? Well, transistors do hold the record for the fastest transition from lab invention to the store shelves.
Again, just off the top of my head, X-Ray CCD's could be used instead of X-Ray film in medicine, perhaps allowing much much shorter durations of exposure to the harmful rays.
And to finally give you a ridiculous example for your suggestion of advances by the space program for the space program. That's just like the 3-terminal semiconductor device developed at Bell Labs 50+ years ago which could barely amplify current. It was made by the phone company for the phone company.
Second lunacy: only add $1B to NASA's budget. They will have to gut every other program to fund this return to the moon, and they appear to be eager to do so.
Unfortunately, this seems to be what's happening.
My girlfriend works for the Space Telescope Science Institute (ie, the group that controls the Hubble Space Telescope, as well as planning for the James Webb Space Telescope, etc).
The 1 billion increase in NASA's overall budget is good thing. But this increase is totally dwarfed by 12 billion funding re-allocation that also accompanies the budget increase. And they're really worried that alot of that funding will be taken away from the hard science missions (Hubble, Chandra, etc).
This is what alot of people, even here on/., don't realize when they bash NASA. NASA doesn't only fund the space shuttle and ISS and Mars rovers. There's a whole slew of astrophysical observational experiments, both earthbound and in orbit, that are contributing hugely to scientific research.
This funding shift implies NASA will be shifting it's focus, away from science and towards engineering.
While the budget increase is good for the space travel programs and probably ISS, it's not so good for the pure science and observational programs.
I'd really like to see a list of advances, with earth bound applications, that have come from the space program in the last 10 years. [snip] NASA simply hasn't done a whole lot worthwhile in a long time, especially in the context of the space shuttle and the space station.,
Dude, open your eyes. NASA's scope goes way beyond the space shuttle and space station, they're only the two most well-known projects to the general public.
You're totally missing NASA's mission, which includes space technology and space travel, but is also aimed at Space Exploration.
For example, the Hubble Space Telescope is performing shitloads of worthwhile astronomical data, along with Chandra for X-Rays, SIRTF (I think it may have changed it's name) for IR, and many others.
As for technology advances, I can specifically firsthand tell you that the telescope was called a few years ago SIRTF (Space IR Telescope F-something) funded technology development (by NASA, of course) for microwave and higher frequency (THz range) bolometers and mixers. I know this because some people at the lab I used to work at were trying really hard to bandgap engineer some novel solid-state materials to work at these THz frequencies. Really hard stuff and totally pushing the envelope of technology, even by today's standards for 5 years ago.
And that same lab also designed and built the CCD's for Chandra, which was no easy feat either. X-Ray sensitive CCD's, including the connectors (I know the flexible data bus to the CCD's gave some problems).
So there are 2 examples, just off the top of my head. Those are just two specific projects with immediate advances to solid state research, though it probably will be a decade or so before these advances are readily commercially available. And those are only some of the few projects I've known about. I can't imagine how many other technological advances are being funded for the other spacecraft.
However, for more "artistic" photography, film is a great way to go. It's not just about the actual taking of the pictures, but also the developing of the film and the enlarging of prints.
I just found my old 35mm SLR camera I last used in college 7 years ago. It even still had some undeveloped film in it, but the pictures came out like crap.
But anyway, speaking of enlargements, I'm curious how do enlargements look w/ digital cameras?
I'm wondering because I want to take some cool scenery pics with my old film camera, using low-# ASA film, and blow up the shots. I hear all kinds of people clamoring how film is dead, but I really don't know how digital stacks up to this.
FWIW, I know in astronomy some people still make measurements with film plates because the resolution is so good. Of course, on the other hand, the digital CCD's let you measure almost down to individual photons. So it's a tradeoff between resolution and sensitivity.
Hell, it's worse than you say - anything even vaguly critical of Israel (or even pro-Palestinian) is often decried as being anti-Semitic.
Dude, where in the USA do you live?
I often see pro-Palestinian student groups holding activities on campus, and nobody calls them anti-Semitic.
Every week someone writes pro-Palestinian and/or anti-Israeli letters to the editor in the New York Times, Boston Globe, as well as the student papers at my university, etc. These authors are never labelled anti-Semitic by anybody. Even by the pro-Israel rebuttals that sometimes follow.
I think you're just pushing the myth that all criticism of Israel is decried as anti-Semitism. Perhaps you're doing that to weaken the credibility of the pro-Israel crowd.
It was already cheap and even if it cost millions it was very inexpensive compared to the Pathfinder or the incoming M2K4-Landers from Nasa.
I just want to chime in here a bit.
People have been saying NASA missions are much more costly than Beagle 2, and therefore NASA is wasteful (this was implied by BBC and later removed from articles after they couldn't contact the craft).
Pathfinder was a Discovery class mission, and had a budget of $250 million. This is about 4x Beagle's budget of $60 million.
If anybody wants to say NASA is wasteful by looking at those numbers, they must realize the following
Beagle 2 made use of the parachute/airbag landing system that was tested and demonstrated by the Pathfinder team
Pathfinder had an autonomous (ie, not controlled realtime by a human) rover while Beagle 2 has a robotic arm.
Pathfinder (IIRC) had a high-gain antenna which could communicate w/ Earth while Beagle 2 only has low-gain antenna to communicate with Mars orbiting craft with small hopes of Earth receiver arrays of detecting the craft.
Beagle 2 may have been cheaper but that doesn't mean it was necessarily more efficiently planned. Pathfinder had more complicated tasks to conduct, and also had more rigorous testing, and thus cost more.
It's just annoying to see BBC showing nationalistic bias and taking jabs at NASA when we should all really be working together in the exploration process. Especially in areas of science where nationalistic bias shouldn't exist at all.
FM radio is line-of-sight too...and you don't lose everything when you're parked next to a brick house.
You're ignoring diffraction, which of course is more obvious at larger wavelengths. FM radio seems more line-of-sight than AM because the smaller wavelength bends around properly-sized objects (read people-sized houses and small hills) less well.
An FM radio signal (about 100 MHz) has a wavelength of roughly 3 meters. Some brick houses aren't that much larger than this, so you'll can get some diffraction around the house.
A 5.8 GHz signal has a wavelength of about 1/60 this, or roughly 5 cm. So yes, expect much smaller objects to significantly obscure your receival of the transmission.
Finally, what really matters is the index of refraction of whatever material is 'obscuring' the signal. I'm not really sure, but I would guess that wood and brick would be more opaque at 5.8 GHz C band than at 100 MHz.
atellite radio will never surpass a case of CDs and a CD player, and will always be a niche market.
Hmm. People still pay for cable or satellite TV, despite having a case of DVD's and a DVD player.
And good ol' AM and FM radio stations seem to thrive, despite many drivers having CD's and CD players.
The trade off is paying for subscription vs having wide-scale coverage (great for truckers and other long-distance drivers) and having more available channels and less commercials.
Some people have managed to meaasure the EM radiation from an open computer and measured practically nothing on the scale.
I think the FCC and the TRS-80 will disagree with you. This thing was the only (to my knowledge, at least) computer to be known to be illegal to sell because it violated FCC RF emission laws.
Some early games for it even made sound by having the user put an AM radio nearby, and then sent proper bit combinations through the memory bus such that the radio could pick up and play sounds.
Yes, they shouldn't have scrapped their shuttle replacement project. But don't blame the NASA folks. Blame the US budget allocators for reducing NASA's budget.
In your link it said the $6 billion expected for shuttle replacement has mushroomed to $35 billion. I don't suppose you have that kind of cash lying around to keep funding this program?
They shouldn't ditch the shuttle until another viable alternative is ready. We probably both agree that they should be funding alternative launch vehicles more agressively.
But don't ditch the shuttle until there's a better option. I'd rather have us still go to space instead of wait for the development of a new vehicle to come to completion.
In my opinion, every aspect of the fleet should always be tested, simulated, improved, and tested some more every single month.
That's a great idea, there's only the slight hitch of funding.
NASA's budget is continously being scaled back. One can look at the recent Beagle 2 failure to see that testing is really important, and cutting testing in the interest of saving $$$ lowers the odds of success. Given enough missions, the failure will eventually happen.
BBC printed : "Despite more than 30 missions launched to the Red Planet since the 1960s, only three landers have ever reached the Martian surface successfully."
This is kind of misleading. Of the 30 total missions to Mars, only nine were attempted landers. THis gives a lander failulre rate of 1/3 instead of 1/10, which BBC implies. The other 21 craft were orbiters and the like.
On a further note, I felt BBC did indulge in nationalistic bias as of yesterday, which people in Slashdot previously praised them of not doing with this story. Firstly, there's the misleading lander success rate above.
They also compared to the successful US missions, calling them costly and implying wasteful. Although now that they cannot get a signal from the craft they took this bit out of the story.
This is misleading because the two Viking landers were built decades ago using even older technology. The more recent Mars Pathfinder event was, however, on a cheaper budget, part of a Nasa Discovery Mission, which built/tested the craft for 150 million. This approach included researching the parachute/airbag landing, which the Beagle 2 was able to imitate. ALso, comparing the cost of building a rover (Pathfinder) vs. a robot arm (Beagle) isnt' fair as a rover is much more complex.
On a different note, all hope is not lost yet. There are still banks of receiver antennas in case the Beagle's antenna is pointing the wrong way such that NASA's Mars Odyssey craft couldn't pick it up.
I've only lived in two places in my life. I'm about to take a two month long cross-country drive. I'm seriously worried that I'm not going to see (or hear) anything unfamiliar.
Hi, I did a two month cross-country trip in the summer of 2000, and you can see part of my unfinished journal . I guarantee you that you'll pick up tons local flavor just about anywhere you go, not just through radio but through cuisine, live music, scenery, and just talking to locals. Here are some tips, in case you or anybody else is interested.
Firstly, to have the best experience, avoid interstates as much as possible. Obviously if you need to get somewhere fast, the interstate is essential. But travelling on the US or state highways will bring you into contact with literally orders-of-magnitude more local culture.
I drove to the West coast (from Jersey) and about 95% of the drive westward was off the interstate. It was totally awesome. The scenery of smaller roads is usually way better. And you pass lots of farms and produce stands, find little country kitchens to get good homecooked food, small bars and honky-tonks to hang out in, etc. And in the smaller towns it's much easier to meet people and have a good chat in the small bars too. Before my trip I lived in NJ, Boston, and Philly, and found it far easier to talk to folks in bars outside the cities. I then drove back to the East Coast in a few days on the interstate, but that was because I had to be back in Baltimore for my graduate school starting date.
I'd also suggest trying to keep your trip as flexible as possible. Ie, make it up as you go. That way you can stay places you like, leave those you don't, etc. The more deadlines you place on yourself, the harder it is.
And finally, here's a tip I didn't find out until about halfway through my trip. You can sleep in national forests for free. I forget the details, but if you're something like 200 feet off the road, you can stay there for 2 weeks. Much much easier on the wallet that way than paying $5 to $15 for small campgrounds. Although it is kind of freaky being in the middle of the woods in the middle of nowhere at night by yourself. But also really cool too. And you can shower at truckstops, though these are usually found along the larger roads, for 2 or 3 bucks.
Let's see, to post something roughly on topic, there were parts of the trip where no radio is to be picked up for miles. Ie, in the deserts of the southwest and some parts of the deep South, etc. Satellite radio would be great for truckers and other folks driving through these ares, though I didn't have it. If you're driving alot, sometimes it's nice to hear a real human talking live, it gives some form of interaction, even if it's one way. I did pick up alot of tapes on my way from various truck stops.
The other thing is that you'll also find alot of Christian radio stations the further you are from big cities. If you're not religious, they can actually kind of interesting/amusing for short times, depending what they're doing. And always look for radio stations in the lower part of the spectrum, ie around 88, 89, and 90. This is where most of the college stations lie, and they definitely play the best sort of stuff of all genres.
Anyway, you'll have a great time. The most important thing to pick up the local culture try to avoid the interstate as much as possible. You'll find out that American culture (ie, Americana) truly does exist, and you can feel different flavors of it as you distinguish between New England, southern Appalachia (Dixie), Cajun Bayou country, the Great Plains and "Wild" West, the Southwest and Mojave, the West Coast, the Rockies, etc.
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I don't know where O'Keefe got that $41 million number from. Maybe that's the cost to finish the instruments but doesn't account for the actual shuttle launch and servicing.
Anyway, I still believe $700 million would be greatly worth it to fix up Hubble to keep it running for a few more years. I can only hope some other bigwigs at NASA think this too, and can convince the policy makers.
O'Keefe (NASA's administrator) supposedly made the decision entirely on his own this morning regarding Hubble. That's one hell of a profound decision, affecting significant research project as well as jobs, for a single person to make on their own.
That's not true in many respects. Regarding spectroscopies, Hubble gets vastly superior data. Ground-based telescopes have too much atmospheric absorptions and excitation artifacts, especially in the UV. Not Hubble.
And regarding imaging, IIRC, Hubble can do extended acquisitions of single objects for far longer with less interference than adaptive-optic Earth-based scopes. Plus, the adaptive optics you mention need guide stars nearby, or artifical sources which can produce other artifacts.
Note that the announcement isn't "Turn it off tomorrow." It's "We're not going to do any more servicing, but we'll let run until it dies of natural causes."
No, it's more like someone not paying $500 for a new clutch to keep their '90 Mustang running because instead they want to buy an '04 Hummer and really want that built-in TV/DVD option.
SM4, IMHO, would be greatly worth its cost in terms of scientific research. NASA is shifting away from pure science towards engineering. Given that Hubble is working great and invaluable to the current generation of astronomers, not going ahead with SM4 (estimated at $41 million) is, IMHO, a poor choice.
Finally, regarding your comment about the shuttle fleet. NASA supposedly has plans to bring down Hubble by heavily modifying a shuttle. That's alot of effort to bring back a piece of space history, considering they won't launch the next repair mission. IMHO, it would be much better to service it with SM4 than bring it back in a modified shuttle.
Firstly, HST science goes FAR FAR beyond the pretty pictures. There's tons of useful spectroscopy work being done with it. And even the images are useful for things (shape/motion of galaxy spirals, for instance).
Anyway, yeah, I totally agree with the rest of your post. They do intend to keep Hubble functioning for the rest of it's mechanical lifetime. But unfortunately, only 3 gyros are working right now. If one of them goes (it will happen sooner or later), then there is only a subset of useful science that can be done. And of course, the next gyro failure will render Hubble 'mostly dead'.
SM4 would greatly extend Hubble's life and the utility of science. Cutting it is like cutting the Superconducting Supercollider in the 90's. Only SM4 is vastly cheaper and the monies to fund it do exist. It's the priorities of NASA that have changed.
Anyway, the decision to not put a single shuttle flight to extend Hubble boggles my mind.
I guess NASA execs want to capitalize more off of the glitz of mars/moon missions instead of pure science missions (Hubble, Chandra, etc).
The three main beneficiaries are Cape Canavral (launch, at Florida), Johnson Space Center (Mission Control, at Houston), and JPL (interplanetary craft, at Pasadena, California). FL, TX, and CA. All of these centers, and hence states, will see vastly increased funding. And all of these centers are also in key states Bush needs to win the election.
Sorry about the conspiracy theory, but it's an interesting trend, noticed especially by several NASA folks too.
The following estimates state that servicing mission 4 (really 5 considering there was 3A and 3B) spent about $200 million so far developing instruments. But the NASA head administrator (Sean O'Keefe) estimated that only $40 million remains for funding to completion. IMHO, it's a total shame and waste to pull the plug now, if we're only $40 million away from goal.
Another note regarding safety is really suspect. Supposedly all future shuttle missions will go to ISS in case of failure, so the astronauts can stay there and maybe use an escape pod if absolutely necessary. Hence, no more Hubble missions in the interest of safety.
What is missing from this discussion is that NASA is still keeping with their plans to bring Hubble back down from orbit as per an international treaty regarding space debris above a specific size. This entails heavily modifying one of the shuttles as Colombia was the only one large enough to fit the HST inside its cargo bay.
So they consider bringing Hubble down intact (as opposed to crashing it into the ocean, for instance) higher priority than keeping it running. I think that's a shame, again.
SM4 is important. Hubble only has 3 functioning gyros right now (SM4 would replace these and batteries, as well as install new instruments). If one of these gyros breaks, Hubble is severely crippled, and can do some, but only limited pointing and hence less science. If the next gyro breaks beyond this, then Hubble is effectively next to useless.
Come on NASA, change your mind and keep the SM4. It's been in progress for a long time, and its estimated cost is a drop in the bucket compared to some other USA funded endeavours (cough IRAQ cough).
It's funny because I just was reading that wiki article the night before I posted that comment, and remembered that.
I studied Japanese in college, and we called it romaji (with long o), but I also knew about the various other romaji pronunciation methods. So it seemed perfectly plausible that romanji was used instead of romaji in some parts of the world.
Time for me to be pedantic. Romaji, romanji, and rmaji are all valid names for the same script. See wiki.
No, Star Wars has all kinds of trademarks which Lucas probably owns some kinds of right to.
The analogy is more SCO as the art collector that bought the first known Picasso painting, and then claiming ownership of copyright of all subsequent Picasso paintings.
I'm curious, what do you do for a living?
You're wondering what the benefit is for THz and near-IR devices? Whole new classes of electronics, bringing in orders of magnitude more bandwidth than available now. Think communications, for example. Also, perhaps, better ways to detect IR. And mixers, who doesn't want a better higher-frequency more-linear mixer? You could do some kickass up/downconversion if you had THz and IR mixers. Again, think communications.
If the X ray CCD's have applications in, and are affordable for, areas other than an X ray telescope then you would have a good example.
What technology is ever affordable shortly after it's been devloped? Well, transistors do hold the record for the fastest transition from lab invention to the store shelves.
Again, just off the top of my head, X-Ray CCD's could be used instead of X-Ray film in medicine, perhaps allowing much much shorter durations of exposure to the harmful rays.
And to finally give you a ridiculous example for your suggestion of advances by the space program for the space program. That's just like the 3-terminal semiconductor device developed at Bell Labs 50+ years ago which could barely amplify current. It was made by the phone company for the phone company.
Unfortunately, this seems to be what's happening.
My girlfriend works for the Space Telescope Science Institute (ie, the group that controls the Hubble Space Telescope, as well as planning for the James Webb Space Telescope, etc).
The 1 billion increase in NASA's overall budget is good thing. But this increase is totally dwarfed by 12 billion funding re-allocation that also accompanies the budget increase. And they're really worried that alot of that funding will be taken away from the hard science missions (Hubble, Chandra, etc).
This is what alot of people, even here on /., don't realize when they bash NASA. NASA doesn't only fund the space shuttle and ISS and Mars rovers. There's a whole slew of astrophysical observational experiments, both earthbound and in orbit, that are contributing hugely to scientific research.
This funding shift implies NASA will be shifting it's focus, away from science and towards engineering. While the budget increase is good for the space travel programs and probably ISS, it's not so good for the pure science and observational programs.
Just my two cents.
Here's a link to NASA's own list of technological spinoffs.
[snip]
NASA simply hasn't done a whole lot worthwhile in a long time, especially in the context of the space shuttle and the space station.,
Dude, open your eyes. NASA's scope goes way beyond the space shuttle and space station, they're only the two most well-known projects to the general public. You're totally missing NASA's mission, which includes space technology and space travel, but is also aimed at Space Exploration.
For example, the Hubble Space Telescope is performing shitloads of worthwhile astronomical data, along with Chandra for X-Rays, SIRTF (I think it may have changed it's name) for IR, and many others.
As for technology advances, I can specifically firsthand tell you that the telescope was called a few years ago SIRTF (Space IR Telescope F-something) funded technology development (by NASA, of course) for microwave and higher frequency (THz range) bolometers and mixers. I know this because some people at the lab I used to work at were trying really hard to bandgap engineer some novel solid-state materials to work at these THz frequencies. Really hard stuff and totally pushing the envelope of technology, even by today's standards for 5 years ago.
And that same lab also designed and built the CCD's for Chandra, which was no easy feat either. X-Ray sensitive CCD's, including the connectors (I know the flexible data bus to the CCD's gave some problems).
So there are 2 examples, just off the top of my head. Those are just two specific projects with immediate advances to solid state research, though it probably will be a decade or so before these advances are readily commercially available. And those are only some of the few projects I've known about. I can't imagine how many other technological advances are being funded for the other spacecraft.
I just found my old 35mm SLR camera I last used in college 7 years ago. It even still had some undeveloped film in it, but the pictures came out like crap.
But anyway, speaking of enlargements, I'm curious how do enlargements look w/ digital cameras?
I'm wondering because I want to take some cool scenery pics with my old film camera, using low-# ASA film, and blow up the shots. I hear all kinds of people clamoring how film is dead, but I really don't know how digital stacks up to this.
FWIW, I know in astronomy some people still make measurements with film plates because the resolution is so good. Of course, on the other hand, the digital CCD's let you measure almost down to individual photons. So it's a tradeoff between resolution and sensitivity.
I quoted part of a BBC article in one of my previous comments from a few days ago. But I didn't have a link to the article, unfortunately.
Dude, where in the USA do you live?
I often see pro-Palestinian student groups holding activities on campus, and nobody calls them anti-Semitic.
Every week someone writes pro-Palestinian and/or anti-Israeli letters to the editor in the New York Times, Boston Globe, as well as the student papers at my university, etc. These authors are never labelled anti-Semitic by anybody. Even by the pro-Israel rebuttals that sometimes follow.
I think you're just pushing the myth that all criticism of Israel is decried as anti-Semitism. Perhaps you're doing that to weaken the credibility of the pro-Israel crowd.
I just want to chime in here a bit.
People have been saying NASA missions are much more costly than Beagle 2, and therefore NASA is wasteful (this was implied by BBC and later removed from articles after they couldn't contact the craft).
Pathfinder was a Discovery class mission, and had a budget of $250 million. This is about 4x Beagle's budget of $60 million.
If anybody wants to say NASA is wasteful by looking at those numbers, they must realize the following
- Beagle 2 made use of the parachute/airbag landing system that was tested and demonstrated by the Pathfinder team
- Pathfinder had an autonomous (ie, not controlled realtime by a human) rover while Beagle 2 has a robotic arm.
- Pathfinder (IIRC) had a high-gain antenna which could communicate w/ Earth while Beagle 2 only has low-gain antenna to communicate with Mars orbiting craft with small hopes of Earth receiver arrays of detecting the craft.
Beagle 2 may have been cheaper but that doesn't mean it was necessarily more efficiently planned. Pathfinder had more complicated tasks to conduct, and also had more rigorous testing, and thus cost more.It's just annoying to see BBC showing nationalistic bias and taking jabs at NASA when we should all really be working together in the exploration process. Especially in areas of science where nationalistic bias shouldn't exist at all.
Just my two cents.
You're ignoring diffraction, which of course is more obvious at larger wavelengths. FM radio seems more line-of-sight than AM because the smaller wavelength bends around properly-sized objects (read people-sized houses and small hills) less well.
An FM radio signal (about 100 MHz) has a wavelength of roughly 3 meters. Some brick houses aren't that much larger than this, so you'll can get some diffraction around the house.
A 5.8 GHz signal has a wavelength of about 1/60 this, or roughly 5 cm. So yes, expect much smaller objects to significantly obscure your receival of the transmission.
Finally, what really matters is the index of refraction of whatever material is 'obscuring' the signal. I'm not really sure, but I would guess that wood and brick would be more opaque at 5.8 GHz C band than at 100 MHz.
Hmm. People still pay for cable or satellite TV, despite having a case of DVD's and a DVD player.
And good ol' AM and FM radio stations seem to thrive, despite many drivers having CD's and CD players.
The trade off is paying for subscription vs having wide-scale coverage (great for truckers and other long-distance drivers) and having more available channels and less commercials.
I think the FCC and the TRS-80 will disagree with you. This thing was the only (to my knowledge, at least) computer to be known to be illegal to sell because it violated FCC RF emission laws.
Some early games for it even made sound by having the user put an AM radio nearby, and then sent proper bit combinations through the memory bus such that the radio could pick up and play sounds.
Yes, they shouldn't have scrapped their shuttle replacement project. But don't blame the NASA folks. Blame the US budget allocators for reducing NASA's budget.
In your link it said the $6 billion expected for shuttle replacement has mushroomed to $35 billion. I don't suppose you have that kind of cash lying around to keep funding this program?
And replace it with what?
They shouldn't ditch the shuttle until another viable alternative is ready. We probably both agree that they should be funding alternative launch vehicles more agressively.
But don't ditch the shuttle until there's a better option. I'd rather have us still go to space instead of wait for the development of a new vehicle to come to completion.
That's a great idea, there's only the slight hitch of funding.
NASA's budget is continously being scaled back. One can look at the recent Beagle 2 failure to see that testing is really important, and cutting testing in the interest of saving $$$ lowers the odds of success. Given enough missions, the failure will eventually happen.
This is kind of misleading. Of the 30 total missions to Mars, only nine were attempted landers. THis gives a lander failulre rate of 1/3 instead of 1/10, which BBC implies. The other 21 craft were orbiters and the like.
On a further note, I felt BBC did indulge in nationalistic bias as of yesterday, which people in Slashdot previously praised them of not doing with this story. Firstly, there's the misleading lander success rate above. They also compared to the successful US missions, calling them costly and implying wasteful. Although now that they cannot get a signal from the craft they took this bit out of the story.
This is misleading because the two Viking landers were built decades ago using even older technology. The more recent Mars Pathfinder event was, however, on a cheaper budget, part of a Nasa Discovery Mission, which built/tested the craft for 150 million. This approach included researching the parachute/airbag landing, which the Beagle 2 was able to imitate. ALso, comparing the cost of building a rover (Pathfinder) vs. a robot arm (Beagle) isnt' fair as a rover is much more complex.
On a different note, all hope is not lost yet. There are still banks of receiver antennas in case the Beagle's antenna is pointing the wrong way such that NASA's Mars Odyssey craft couldn't pick it up.
Hi, I did a two month cross-country trip in the summer of 2000, and you can see part of my unfinished journal . I guarantee you that you'll pick up tons local flavor just about anywhere you go, not just through radio but through cuisine, live music, scenery, and just talking to locals. Here are some tips, in case you or anybody else is interested.
Firstly, to have the best experience, avoid interstates as much as possible. Obviously if you need to get somewhere fast, the interstate is essential. But travelling on the US or state highways will bring you into contact with literally orders-of-magnitude more local culture.
I drove to the West coast (from Jersey) and about 95% of the drive westward was off the interstate. It was totally awesome. The scenery of smaller roads is usually way better. And you pass lots of farms and produce stands, find little country kitchens to get good homecooked food, small bars and honky-tonks to hang out in, etc. And in the smaller towns it's much easier to meet people and have a good chat in the small bars too. Before my trip I lived in NJ, Boston, and Philly, and found it far easier to talk to folks in bars outside the cities. I then drove back to the East Coast in a few days on the interstate, but that was because I had to be back in Baltimore for my graduate school starting date.
I'd also suggest trying to keep your trip as flexible as possible. Ie, make it up as you go. That way you can stay places you like, leave those you don't, etc. The more deadlines you place on yourself, the harder it is.
And finally, here's a tip I didn't find out until about halfway through my trip. You can sleep in national forests for free. I forget the details, but if you're something like 200 feet off the road, you can stay there for 2 weeks. Much much easier on the wallet that way than paying $5 to $15 for small campgrounds. Although it is kind of freaky being in the middle of the woods in the middle of nowhere at night by yourself. But also really cool too. And you can shower at truckstops, though these are usually found along the larger roads, for 2 or 3 bucks.
Let's see, to post something roughly on topic, there were parts of the trip where no radio is to be picked up for miles. Ie, in the deserts of the southwest and some parts of the deep South, etc. Satellite radio would be great for truckers and other folks driving through these ares, though I didn't have it. If you're driving alot, sometimes it's nice to hear a real human talking live, it gives some form of interaction, even if it's one way. I did pick up alot of tapes on my way from various truck stops.
The other thing is that you'll also find alot of Christian radio stations the further you are from big cities. If you're not religious, they can actually kind of interesting/amusing for short times, depending what they're doing. And always look for radio stations in the lower part of the spectrum, ie around 88, 89, and 90. This is where most of the college stations lie, and they definitely play the best sort of stuff of all genres.
Anyway, you'll have a great time. The most important thing to pick up the local culture try to avoid the interstate as much as possible. You'll find out that American culture (ie, Americana) truly does exist, and you can feel different flavors of it as you distinguish between New England, southern Appalachia (Dixie), Cajun Bayou country, the Great Plains and "Wild" West, the Southwest and Mojave, the West Coast, the Rockies, etc.