Hopefully I'm not being too pedantic, but thats a bit of mischaracterization -- its more like NASA purchasing some flights and putting up some of the money in advance.
While the advance funding did make it possible to accomplish this, I think its important to frame it this way as it creates different expectations from the legacy cost-plus contracting methods.
I'm curious what the good and bad news is. While I will say that I am biased in thinking that Constellation was never going to work and we were better off canceling it to fund things that could work, I see a lot of good things happening:
- The elimination of the 'giggle factor' for commercial, fixed-cost space transportation in NASA's realm - Development of multiple US based resupply vehicles - Enthusiastic development of private manned capsules by Boeing/Bigelow, SpaceX, and SpaceDev/Sierra Nevada - Opening of new spaceports across the US - Diversification of NASA centers capable of interplanetary missions (Ames and Goddard encroaching on JPL territory) - Sheer tenacity overcoming inexperience at JAXA - India taking big steps in real exploration - Abundance of new ideas of what could be done with a set of cheap space taxis - Beginning to actually utilize the ISS as a national lab - People looking at doing real technology development again at NASA - Governmental and private support of a suborbital launch industry as an alternative to expensive sounding rockets - Sufficient interest to make 'space tourism' not a joke
Yes, the politics surrounding the debate are disheartening, but things are moving in a direction that the politics will no longer hold our basic access to space hostage.
I think the most exciting thing is using Dragon as part of a beyond-LEO mission, but not necessarily sending it there. The idea of what Buzz calls 'real spaceships' -- large vehicles assembled on orbit or launched on large non-man-rated vehicles that can be refueled on orbit. Dragon et. al. would be the taxis to get you to LEO.
The fuel costs to this approach would be higher -- Apollo didn't have to burn its engines to get back into Earth orbit, it dropped all its energy during its direct re-entry. However, a large, comfortable refuel-able lunar ferry that astronauts reach in a cheap capsule like Dragon could be much cheaper and more sustainable in the long run, particularly if concepts like orbiting fuel depots get off the ground. Fuel could be launched separately and cheaply by those crazy space gun concepts that subject the payload to 100s of Gs.
While it all sounds a little farfetched, it seems more likely to happen than getting congress to fund an Apollo class effort. This is how we go other places to stay.
Correct me if I'm wrong but most of the force from a solar sail is from reflectance of photons, not solar wind particles, thus why understanding the reflectivity of your surfaces is critical to understanding solar radiation pressure effects.
I dont think in most cases you even bother to consider the solar wind as far as trajectory analysis goes (obviously its more important for electronic protection).
Depends on your altitude and attitude. In this orbit, yes, atmospheric drag is going to have a stronger effect, but in higher orbits, the solar effects could be effective for a well-designed system to facilitate disposal. I may try and look at that later if I have some free time (I'm actually doing simulations of spacecraft atmospheric passes right now...).
But I agree at this altitude the sail is deployed to enhance atmospheric drag and is mischaracterized by the summary as a solar sail. TFA says nothing about it being a solar sail.
Thats a scary proposition: spacecraft have weird things happen to them all the time, but most of the time you can bring them back. If a spacecraft were to de-orbit itself the first time it safed itself, or the comm system went wacky for a few days, whoever made that decision would be canned. Spacecraft are so expensive that every action is pre-meditated, and anything that has the potential to bring it down has a number of human-in-the-loop decision points. To a satellite operator, the cost of it unnecessarily committing suicide is far greater than it being unable to dispose of itself properly.
A solution like the solar sail that would result in a very slow de-orbit is good because it allows a failsafe like you describe, but without the risk of killing the satellite due to a minor error or cosmic ray.
While you will get a balanced force for a sail that is normal to the sun, once you move it slightly off normal, and account for shadow periods, you'll get an unbalanced force that will have a deterministic secular effect on the orbit. And it will be non-normal unless you're actively maintaining the attitude.
Also, the sail is definitely not small. Its 100 square feet for a tiny satellite. Obviously if you wanted to use one as a failsafe mechanism for a large GEO comm bird you'd need something larger.
It all depends on the orbit of the satellite, and the purpose of the mission.
A low-Earth orbit satellite will naturally de-orbit due to atmospheric drag, and can be de-orbited in a controlled manner with a very low fuel cost since it just means bringing your perigee down ever so slightly so it burns up. This is good because LEO is the most crowded region you'll find, and the most likely place to encounter an accidental collision.
However, when you start to get up middle altitudes, such as those used by GPS satellites, those things will stay up forever if you don't do anything about them. They're also a lot more expensive to de-orbit, in terms of fuel usage, and even if you do have fuel you plan to use for that, if you lose communications with the satellite you can't do anything about it anyway. Fortunately its much less crowded up there, so a collision is not a very large risk.
Finally, geostationary orbits are interesting, because it gets a lot more crowded again. The costs of truly de-orbiting those is also extremely high, so its not done. Instead, you have what are called graveyard orbits that GEO birds are put into at their end-of-life. This works well enough, but there is an issue of what happens when you have a vehicle die before it can be moved to its graveyard orbit -- this gives you the aptly named zombie satellites that are a significant danger to geostationary spacecraft.
So yes, satellite engineers foresee the problems, but its damned hard to design something that will behave perfectly for years and decades with no capability to go out and make physical repairs. A device to make satellites in high-orbits have the same self-deorbiting properties as LEO satellites would be quite handy.
As a programming non-programmer, I think I kind of fall under the category the post is talking about.
My background is an aerospace engineer, but I've been coding since I was about 10. My job is spacecraft navigation, and much of my free time is spent helping manage a conference and a non-profit organization. My job is a lot of analysis and simulation, and the way its set up, it ends up being a lot of code (Python tying together a bunch of C objects,) and for my non-profit work, I have the skills that have led me to end up doing a lot of the web work -- particularly developing a complex web-based app to manage speakers, schedules, volunteers, etc.
Since I spend a lot of my time in code, and I'm an engineer at heart, I'd say I've learned how to do decent coding -- modularity, MVC, properly normalized databases, small well-defined functions, OO when necessary (and recognizing when its necessary). Now I won't claim to be at all skilled in anything lower level -- I can handle memory management, but I have no handle on things like compilers, operating system design, fancy algorithms and basic computer science theory -- but I feel confident in saying that I have a good if amateur grasp of software engineering. Its never bullet-proof code, but its adaptable and expandable and does its job well.
I enjoy coding a lot, but I'm an engineer, and I like to build working systems for a purpose. In my work, being able to script together exactly what I need to do is a huge help, and compared to my older colleagues who don't take advantage of the newer scripting capabilities (I'm the first person trained entirely on our new system), I'm able to do a lot of new and creative things quickly. In my non-profit work, having worked on the conference before and writing the software to run it without having to trade back and forth as much with the customers makes it great. Basically, I am one of my own customers when I write this code, which helps a lot.
I guess what it comes down to is that you don't want the managers coding, but having technically-minded but non-CS/CE be able to write good prototype code can be great. People like me won't write code that will scale past a certain point, but it can prove the concept and be quite useful at small and medium scales.
Sure police can, but it's probably not terribly useful. Commercial satellite imagery is limited to.15 meter resolution by ITAR restrictions, and has to be targeted in advance. Great for tracking crowds, not for police work.
Because its a US-based company flying out of a US military owned base, going to a largely US Ggovernment operated space station, flying a mission purchased by the US government, and re-entering into US airspace as well. Its US airspace and falls under the US governments jurisdiction -- I'd much rather the FAA be in charge of it than the military. Do you plan to set up a process for airlines to get licenses to fly over your house too?
This is a situation of the FAA and the company working together to figure out the best way to create a regulatory environment that is safe, reduces liabilities and encourages new development. If the government had told them they couldn't re-enter, they would have been free to re-incorporate in the Isle of Man, launch from Kwaj and re-enter into the Pacific. Fortunately the FAA is trying to help rather than hinder right now and should be praised for that.
Having a license is *good* for SpaceX, it gives them credibility and keeps things predictable for the future.
Thats why the regulations are still in flux. FAA-AST is working with the upcoming companies to avoid unintended consequences, they're not working in a vacuum.
Do you honestly think the military would allow a Falcon 9 to launch from the Cape, without having some documentation of how they plan to re-enter? This way appropriate notices can be given. Though I've heard many complaints from private space folks about various regulations they have to deal with, FAA licensing has never been on the list. Until ITAR restrictions, arcane contracting laws and efforts by senators to keep jobs in their districts at the expense of commercial entities are done away with, and those pesky laws of physics stop making spaceflight hard, I doubt FAA licensing will be the long pole of any venture, at least in the current regime.
The biggest risk to a company like SpaceX or Sierra Nevada/SpaceDev is not having to get licenses, its being FUD'd to death by the likes of ATK, Marshall Spaceflight Center, and their personal attack senators, Hatch and Shelby.
I wouldn't call SpaceX a 'big business,' at least not in their field. Their established competitor for manned re-entry vehicles is NASA. Having a set procedure to obtain clearance for re-entry makes it so that instead of fuzzy measures of 'experience' a new company can simply say "Here is our license." In this case, with something dangerous, difficult, and with potential military ramifications, having a defined procedure increases the ability of new companies to compete by decreasing their liability.
And comparing the nascent commercial space industry with the nascent aviation industry is not the best analogy -- first and foremost, commercial aviation never had to step out of the shadows and defend itself from established government agencies and their large commercial supporters. It also didn't risk accidentally looking like a nuclear strike.
Too much regulation can stifle an industry, this is certainly true, but that doesn't mean the correct answer is to have none instead.
I realize you're trying to make a joke, but having met many of the people in the FAA Office of Commercial Space, and as someone who cares about seeing an economically sustainable space system develop, I'm damn glad those people are there.
While it may not be as flashy as the guys actually building the capsule that will re-enter, creating a solid legal framework for licensing and regulating commercial launches and re-entries is absolutely critical for getting anything thats not a pork-filled government project into space. Otherwise the entire industry is likely to shut down after the first accident.
Regulation isn't necessarily bad, and the people involved at the FAA understand that this is a nascent industry, and as such must be given a lot of room to grow and adapt in the marketplace. These are people who want to see the industry thrive, not simply petty fief-building bureaucratic charicatures.
From what I know, the parts where you have to keep a human in the loop on terrestrial UAVs is not on basic piloting, but for redirecting it to new stations, checking targets, keeping airspaces clear, etc.
Most of these 'hard thing's for terrestrial UAVs wouldn't apply to a scientific vehicle on another planet. As for the basic piloting and station-keeping tasks, all of the military UAV research would actually make an ARES-type much easier (assuming the pertinent data can be de-classified).
The obvious analog is in-situ resource utilization.
We're well on our way to learning how to "live off the land" on other planets without requiring an ideally closed system. Probably most practical systems would operate by recycling, but could reduce the efficiency by orders of magnitude (e.g. 99.99% efficient to 90% efficient) and make up the rest by extracting it from the atmosphere and ground.
It seems that its on Moffett Field, not actually at Ames itself. Moffett is the old air base that plays host to Ames as well as other facilities. In order to get into Moffett, I believe that only a picture ID is required.
However, even if it were on Ames itself, Pete Worden is a unique administrator and if anyone could find a way to make it work, its him.
I believe that it's basically out of propellant. So while it will be able to continue the exoplanet hunt for a while (it can maintain attitude with what little remains) they don't have enough to retarget it to a new asteroid or comet.
The EPOXI team did a great job, but amazingly most of them are straight back to work after this. The Stardust NExT mission, another repurposing of a used deep space spacecraft is going to be revisiting Temple 1 (which deep impact originally hit) in another 4 months.
Right after the flyby much of the team was in meetings to make sure Stardust gets where it needs to go. Not sure whether it'll be easier or harder though. The comet is larger and less likely to stray too far off course, but the spacecraft itself is a finicky thing that's nearly out of fuel... Should be exciting to see even more pictures like this in a few months.
Is it that hard? Really? It just takes a bit of attention:
- When you're out shopping with her watch the things she picks up and looks at, but doesn't decide to get -- sometimes those are the kinds of ridiculous fun things that she would love but wouldn't buy for herself, a perfect gift. - Listen to things she says she'd like to do. A massage gift certificate or getting her old clarinet (that used to be her mothers) restored are two things that stand out for my particular situation. - When out shopping by yourself, online or in a store, if something makes you think "hey, she would love this." then THATS A GOOD GIFT IDEA.
Quite frankly, the best gifts are going to be the ones she wouldn't think to ask for. I'm not the most observant person -- in fact, I'm pretty damned absent-minded -- but my trouble with gifts is that I'm bad about getting it and giving it to her now rather than waiting till the "appropriate" times. Ideas are easy to come by with just a bit of effort.
Somehow I find in-situ resource utilization, economic development of extra-planetary resources, and reduction of launch costs via economies of scale a lot easier to expect and plan for than FTL based on as-yet undiscovered physics.
Not saying its impossible, just saying there are only incremental developments required to make a real economic case for settlement. We need to reconsider our approach, largely in terms of business practices, not abandon the concept.
The shuttle and ISS, boondoggles that they are, are a completely different world from Apollo.
Apollo was not the end-all be-all of what we can do in space. A massive effort to achieve a single goal is impressive, but quite frankly, learning to stay up for long periods of time, build a huge structure in space, and test out reusable launch vehicles is much more important, if less obviously impressive. Some things have worked better than others, but all of these things are on the road to learning how to actually, really live in space with ever smaller umbilicals back to Earth. If we had followed the Russian approach after Gemini, I can't help but we'd be a lot further along in true settlement.
And no one is abandoning space. We're just adjusting to the fact that Apollo and its anything-goes budget were apparitions of short-term geopolitics, and we've got to learn to leverage market mechanisms where appropriate to bring costs down and make it more sustainable.
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Its a common engineering pattern.
The 90s-00s NASA paradigm to go for 'better, faster, cheaper' unmanned missions was usually followed by the half-joke "choose 2 of the 3."
Hopefully I'm not being too pedantic, but thats a bit of mischaracterization -- its more like NASA purchasing some flights and putting up some of the money in advance.
While the advance funding did make it possible to accomplish this, I think its important to frame it this way as it creates different expectations from the legacy cost-plus contracting methods.
I'm curious what the good and bad news is. While I will say that I am biased in thinking that Constellation was never going to work and we were better off canceling it to fund things that could work, I see a lot of good things happening:
- The elimination of the 'giggle factor' for commercial, fixed-cost space transportation in NASA's realm
- Development of multiple US based resupply vehicles
- Enthusiastic development of private manned capsules by Boeing/Bigelow, SpaceX, and SpaceDev/Sierra Nevada
- Opening of new spaceports across the US
- Diversification of NASA centers capable of interplanetary missions (Ames and Goddard encroaching on JPL territory)
- Sheer tenacity overcoming inexperience at JAXA
- India taking big steps in real exploration
- Abundance of new ideas of what could be done with a set of cheap space taxis
- Beginning to actually utilize the ISS as a national lab
- People looking at doing real technology development again at NASA
- Governmental and private support of a suborbital launch industry as an alternative to expensive sounding rockets
- Sufficient interest to make 'space tourism' not a joke
Yes, the politics surrounding the debate are disheartening, but things are moving in a direction that the politics will no longer hold our basic access to space hostage.
I think the most exciting thing is using Dragon as part of a beyond-LEO mission, but not necessarily sending it there. The idea of what Buzz calls 'real spaceships' -- large vehicles assembled on orbit or launched on large non-man-rated vehicles that can be refueled on orbit. Dragon et. al. would be the taxis to get you to LEO.
The fuel costs to this approach would be higher -- Apollo didn't have to burn its engines to get back into Earth orbit, it dropped all its energy during its direct re-entry. However, a large, comfortable refuel-able lunar ferry that astronauts reach in a cheap capsule like Dragon could be much cheaper and more sustainable in the long run, particularly if concepts like orbiting fuel depots get off the ground. Fuel could be launched separately and cheaply by those crazy space gun concepts that subject the payload to 100s of Gs.
While it all sounds a little farfetched, it seems more likely to happen than getting congress to fund an Apollo class effort. This is how we go other places to stay.
Correct me if I'm wrong but most of the force from a solar sail is from reflectance of photons, not solar wind particles, thus why understanding the reflectivity of your surfaces is critical to understanding solar radiation pressure effects.
I dont think in most cases you even bother to consider the solar wind as far as trajectory analysis goes (obviously its more important for electronic protection).
Depends on your altitude and attitude. In this orbit, yes, atmospheric drag is going to have a stronger effect, but in higher orbits, the solar effects could be effective for a well-designed system to facilitate disposal. I may try and look at that later if I have some free time (I'm actually doing simulations of spacecraft atmospheric passes right now...).
But I agree at this altitude the sail is deployed to enhance atmospheric drag and is mischaracterized by the summary as a solar sail. TFA says nothing about it being a solar sail.
Thats a scary proposition: spacecraft have weird things happen to them all the time, but most of the time you can bring them back. If a spacecraft were to de-orbit itself the first time it safed itself, or the comm system went wacky for a few days, whoever made that decision would be canned. Spacecraft are so expensive that every action is pre-meditated, and anything that has the potential to bring it down has a number of human-in-the-loop decision points. To a satellite operator, the cost of it unnecessarily committing suicide is far greater than it being unable to dispose of itself properly.
A solution like the solar sail that would result in a very slow de-orbit is good because it allows a failsafe like you describe, but without the risk of killing the satellite due to a minor error or cosmic ray.
While you will get a balanced force for a sail that is normal to the sun, once you move it slightly off normal, and account for shadow periods, you'll get an unbalanced force that will have a deterministic secular effect on the orbit. And it will be non-normal unless you're actively maintaining the attitude.
Also, the sail is definitely not small. Its 100 square feet for a tiny satellite. Obviously if you wanted to use one as a failsafe mechanism for a large GEO comm bird you'd need something larger.
It all depends on the orbit of the satellite, and the purpose of the mission.
A low-Earth orbit satellite will naturally de-orbit due to atmospheric drag, and can be de-orbited in a controlled manner with a very low fuel cost since it just means bringing your perigee down ever so slightly so it burns up. This is good because LEO is the most crowded region you'll find, and the most likely place to encounter an accidental collision.
However, when you start to get up middle altitudes, such as those used by GPS satellites, those things will stay up forever if you don't do anything about them. They're also a lot more expensive to de-orbit, in terms of fuel usage, and even if you do have fuel you plan to use for that, if you lose communications with the satellite you can't do anything about it anyway. Fortunately its much less crowded up there, so a collision is not a very large risk.
Finally, geostationary orbits are interesting, because it gets a lot more crowded again. The costs of truly de-orbiting those is also extremely high, so its not done. Instead, you have what are called graveyard orbits that GEO birds are put into at their end-of-life. This works well enough, but there is an issue of what happens when you have a vehicle die before it can be moved to its graveyard orbit -- this gives you the aptly named zombie satellites that are a significant danger to geostationary spacecraft.
So yes, satellite engineers foresee the problems, but its damned hard to design something that will behave perfectly for years and decades with no capability to go out and make physical repairs. A device to make satellites in high-orbits have the same self-deorbiting properties as LEO satellites would be quite handy.
As a programming non-programmer, I think I kind of fall under the category the post is talking about.
My background is an aerospace engineer, but I've been coding since I was about 10. My job is spacecraft navigation, and much of my free time is spent helping manage a conference and a non-profit organization. My job is a lot of analysis and simulation, and the way its set up, it ends up being a lot of code (Python tying together a bunch of C objects,) and for my non-profit work, I have the skills that have led me to end up doing a lot of the web work -- particularly developing a complex web-based app to manage speakers, schedules, volunteers, etc.
Since I spend a lot of my time in code, and I'm an engineer at heart, I'd say I've learned how to do decent coding -- modularity, MVC, properly normalized databases, small well-defined functions, OO when necessary (and recognizing when its necessary). Now I won't claim to be at all skilled in anything lower level -- I can handle memory management, but I have no handle on things like compilers, operating system design, fancy algorithms and basic computer science theory -- but I feel confident in saying that I have a good if amateur grasp of software engineering. Its never bullet-proof code, but its adaptable and expandable and does its job well.
I enjoy coding a lot, but I'm an engineer, and I like to build working systems for a purpose. In my work, being able to script together exactly what I need to do is a huge help, and compared to my older colleagues who don't take advantage of the newer scripting capabilities (I'm the first person trained entirely on our new system), I'm able to do a lot of new and creative things quickly. In my non-profit work, having worked on the conference before and writing the software to run it without having to trade back and forth as much with the customers makes it great. Basically, I am one of my own customers when I write this code, which helps a lot.
I guess what it comes down to is that you don't want the managers coding, but having technically-minded but non-CS/CE be able to write good prototype code can be great. People like me won't write code that will scale past a certain point, but it can prove the concept and be quite useful at small and medium scales.
I guarantee you haven't seen this. Look up the diffraction limit, it makes this basically impossible from orbit.
Sure police can, but it's probably not terribly useful. Commercial satellite imagery is limited to .15 meter resolution by ITAR restrictions, and has to be targeted in advance. Great for tracking crowds, not for police work.
Because its a US-based company flying out of a US military owned base, going to a largely US Ggovernment operated space station, flying a mission purchased by the US government, and re-entering into US airspace as well. Its US airspace and falls under the US governments jurisdiction -- I'd much rather the FAA be in charge of it than the military. Do you plan to set up a process for airlines to get licenses to fly over your house too?
This is a situation of the FAA and the company working together to figure out the best way to create a regulatory environment that is safe, reduces liabilities and encourages new development. If the government had told them they couldn't re-enter, they would have been free to re-incorporate in the Isle of Man, launch from Kwaj and re-enter into the Pacific. Fortunately the FAA is trying to help rather than hinder right now and should be praised for that.
Having a license is *good* for SpaceX, it gives them credibility and keeps things predictable for the future.
Thats why the regulations are still in flux. FAA-AST is working with the upcoming companies to avoid unintended consequences, they're not working in a vacuum.
Do you honestly think the military would allow a Falcon 9 to launch from the Cape, without having some documentation of how they plan to re-enter? This way appropriate notices can be given. Though I've heard many complaints from private space folks about various regulations they have to deal with, FAA licensing has never been on the list. Until ITAR restrictions, arcane contracting laws and efforts by senators to keep jobs in their districts at the expense of commercial entities are done away with, and those pesky laws of physics stop making spaceflight hard, I doubt FAA licensing will be the long pole of any venture, at least in the current regime.
The biggest risk to a company like SpaceX or Sierra Nevada/SpaceDev is not having to get licenses, its being FUD'd to death by the likes of ATK, Marshall Spaceflight Center, and their personal attack senators, Hatch and Shelby.
I wouldn't call SpaceX a 'big business,' at least not in their field. Their established competitor for manned re-entry vehicles is NASA. Having a set procedure to obtain clearance for re-entry makes it so that instead of fuzzy measures of 'experience' a new company can simply say "Here is our license." In this case, with something dangerous, difficult, and with potential military ramifications, having a defined procedure increases the ability of new companies to compete by decreasing their liability.
And comparing the nascent commercial space industry with the nascent aviation industry is not the best analogy -- first and foremost, commercial aviation never had to step out of the shadows and defend itself from established government agencies and their large commercial supporters. It also didn't risk accidentally looking like a nuclear strike.
Too much regulation can stifle an industry, this is certainly true, but that doesn't mean the correct answer is to have none instead.
I realize you're trying to make a joke, but having met many of the people in the FAA Office of Commercial Space, and as someone who cares about seeing an economically sustainable space system develop, I'm damn glad those people are there.
While it may not be as flashy as the guys actually building the capsule that will re-enter, creating a solid legal framework for licensing and regulating commercial launches and re-entries is absolutely critical for getting anything thats not a pork-filled government project into space. Otherwise the entire industry is likely to shut down after the first accident.
Regulation isn't necessarily bad, and the people involved at the FAA understand that this is a nascent industry, and as such must be given a lot of room to grow and adapt in the marketplace. These are people who want to see the industry thrive, not simply petty fief-building bureaucratic charicatures.
From what I know, the parts where you have to keep a human in the loop on terrestrial UAVs is not on basic piloting, but for redirecting it to new stations, checking targets, keeping airspaces clear, etc.
Most of these 'hard thing's for terrestrial UAVs wouldn't apply to a scientific vehicle on another planet. As for the basic piloting and station-keeping tasks, all of the military UAV research would actually make an ARES-type much easier (assuming the pertinent data can be de-classified).
The obvious analog is in-situ resource utilization.
We're well on our way to learning how to "live off the land" on other planets without requiring an ideally closed system. Probably most practical systems would operate by recycling, but could reduce the efficiency by orders of magnitude (e.g. 99.99% efficient to 90% efficient) and make up the rest by extracting it from the atmosphere and ground.
It seems that its on Moffett Field, not actually at Ames itself. Moffett is the old air base that plays host to Ames as well as other facilities. In order to get into Moffett, I believe that only a picture ID is required.
However, even if it were on Ames itself, Pete Worden is a unique administrator and if anyone could find a way to make it work, its him.
I believe that it's basically out of propellant. So while it will be able to continue the exoplanet hunt for a while (it can maintain attitude with what little remains) they don't have enough to retarget it to a new asteroid or comet.
I think it was actually two bodies joined by impact. It probably compressed and melted the joint, and outgassing is more likely to happen on the ends.
Everything but the fact that its a joined body is pure speculation by me though, so take it as it is. I'm a rocket scientist, not a planetary one.
The EPOXI team did a great job, but amazingly most of them are straight back to work after this. The Stardust NExT mission, another repurposing of a used deep space spacecraft is going to be revisiting Temple 1 (which deep impact originally hit) in another 4 months.
Right after the flyby much of the team was in meetings to make sure Stardust gets where it needs to go. Not sure whether it'll be easier or harder though. The comet is larger and less likely to stray too far off course, but the spacecraft itself is a finicky thing that's nearly out of fuel... Should be exciting to see even more pictures like this in a few months.
Is it that hard? Really? It just takes a bit of attention:
- When you're out shopping with her watch the things she picks up and looks at, but doesn't decide to get -- sometimes those are the kinds of ridiculous fun things that she would love but wouldn't buy for herself, a perfect gift.
- Listen to things she says she'd like to do. A massage gift certificate or getting her old clarinet (that used to be her mothers) restored are two things that stand out for my particular situation.
- When out shopping by yourself, online or in a store, if something makes you think "hey, she would love this." then THATS A GOOD GIFT IDEA.
Quite frankly, the best gifts are going to be the ones she wouldn't think to ask for. I'm not the most observant person -- in fact, I'm pretty damned absent-minded -- but my trouble with gifts is that I'm bad about getting it and giving it to her now rather than waiting till the "appropriate" times. Ideas are easy to come by with just a bit of effort.
Somehow I find in-situ resource utilization, economic development of extra-planetary resources, and reduction of launch costs via economies of scale a lot easier to expect and plan for than FTL based on as-yet undiscovered physics.
Not saying its impossible, just saying there are only incremental developments required to make a real economic case for settlement. We need to reconsider our approach, largely in terms of business practices, not abandon the concept.
The shuttle and ISS, boondoggles that they are, are a completely different world from Apollo.
Apollo was not the end-all be-all of what we can do in space. A massive effort to achieve a single goal is impressive, but quite frankly, learning to stay up for long periods of time, build a huge structure in space, and test out reusable launch vehicles is much more important, if less obviously impressive. Some things have worked better than others, but all of these things are on the road to learning how to actually, really live in space with ever smaller umbilicals back to Earth. If we had followed the Russian approach after Gemini, I can't help but we'd be a lot further along in true settlement.
And no one is abandoning space. We're just adjusting to the fact that Apollo and its anything-goes budget were apparitions of short-term geopolitics, and we've got to learn to leverage market mechanisms where appropriate to bring costs down and make it more sustainable.