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The Device NASA Is Leaving Behind
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Sun Dec 02, 2007 09:20 AM
iminplaya writes "After years of delays, NASA hopes to launch this week a European-built laboratory that will greatly expand the research capability of the international space station. Although some call it a milestone, the launch has focused new attention on the space agency's earlier decision to back out of plans to send up a different, $1.5 billion device — one that many scientists contend would produce far more significant knowledge. "...it would be a true international disgrace if this instrument ends up as a museum piece that never is used.""
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Intersting comment (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
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Is it an Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator? Where's the kaboom? There was upposed to be an earth-shattering kaboom!
NASA Declares No Room; Re:Intersting comment (Score:4, Informative)
Science 16 March 2007: 1476
DOI: 10.1126/science.315.5818.1476
News of the Week SPACE SCIENCE:
NASA Declares No Room for Antimatter Experiment
Andrew Lawler
NASA has no room on its space shuttle to launch the $1.5 billion Alpha
Magnetic Spectrometer, which is designed to search for antimatter from
its perch on the international space station.
Expanded and posted on a science blog where it was being discussed:
NASA: Alpha to Omega
Category: astro
Posted on: March 18, 2007 10:39 PM, by Steinn Sigurðsson
http://scienceblogs.com/catdynamics/2007/03/nasa_alpha_to_omega.php [scienceblogs.com] [scienceblogs.com]
SPACE SCIENCE: NASA Declares No Room for Antimatter Experiment
Lawler
Science 16 March 2007: 1476
DOI: 10.1126/science.315.5818.1476
News of the Week
SPACE SCIENCE:
NASA Declares No Room for Antimatter Experiment
Andrew Lawler
NASA has no room on its space shuttle to launch the $1.5 billion Alpha
Magnetic Spectrometer, which is designed to search for antimatter from
its perch on the international space station.
Hey, isn't that the Samuel Ting-Michael Salamon project?
Yes, it is:
http://ams.cern.ch/AMS/Secretariat/AmsWhosWho.html [ams.cern.ch] [ams.cern.ch]
NASA HQ is surely going WAY over the edge in punishing Michael Salamon. He was the head of fundamental Physics at NASA HQ, then they sent him to the White House, where he was for half a year or so the
Director of Physics at OSTP (Office of Science and Technology Policy). They pulled him out of the White House for what looks like political reasons.
This was to be the major actual Science experiment on the space station. And they are killing it -- why? I am leaning towards thinking that it is a purely political decision, as the "room" or money
argument is unconvincing, and as I say, it seems to be the #1 science project in the entire Space Station program.
If one detects even a single anti-carbon nucleus, one almost has to conclude that someplace there is an anti-star performinbg anti-nucleosyntheis, which exploded asn anti-supernova.
What a huge discovery that would be by the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer. For that tremendous science value per dollar ratio alone, it should fly.
I am going to write to my congressman and senators. Maybe it would be worth writing to, say, Oprah. The tax-paying public deserves to have SOME science done with their NASA tax dollars.
====
Yep, I'd like to see it launched, too. Cancelling an experiment after spending 1.5 billion to build it is just the sort of idiocy that the govenment does all the time, though.
If you follow NASA politics, though, you'd see that there's no reason to invoke any sort of "punishment" to understand this call. Griffin was given the order to cancel space shuttle by 2010. When you add up
all the things that Griffin has been instructed to do with the shuttle before the drop-dead do-not-fly-it-any-more date, and look at the maximum flight rate that's considered to be safe, there are zero flights available.
Of course, adding one more shuttle flight in 2011 would make perfect
sense-- the replacement for the shuttle won't be available for
another four years, so why not? But at the moment, that is being
considered the "camel's nose under the tent" thinking, and "cancel
shuttle by 2010" is a non-negotiable deadline.
- Show quoted text -
From the same blog and thread, a reply about Michael Salamon and the
Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer:
==========
He was the head of fundamental Physics at NASA HQ, then they sent him
to the White House, where he was for half a year or so the Director of
Physics at OSTP (Office of Science and Technology Policy). They pulled
him out of the White House for what looks like political reasons.
Parent
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And with a very good reason. AMS (the device) is meant to observe extremely high energy cosmic rays - energies magnitudes higher than we can currently achieve in big (or small) colliders.
These rays cannot be observed with ground instruments as once they enter Earth atmosphere they immediately react to produce showers of lighter particles - this is how we know they exist in the first
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
but I doubt it will make anyone run naked in the streets as, say, discovery of a reaction that makes dark matter could (it is the 30% of the universe after all !)
My physics TA (a doctoral student) used to say that this "dark matter" talk reminded him a lot of how we posited an extra planet between Mercury and the Sun because that was the only way to account for Mercury's orbit. It turned out that there was no planet, Newtonian mechanics were just too imprecise to predict the orbit of Mercury. Likewise, his bet was that the effects attributed to "dark matter" would be accounted for once we developed more precise physical laws.
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Nobel prize winner Steve Weinberg says in the article that it will be the only good science done on the ISS if it goes up!!!
...which is slightly misleading, of course. Back in the late eighties, early nineties, cosmic-ray scientists in the US formed a collaboration to conceive pretty much this system. It was called Astromag. It had a certain cost, NASA said it was too expensive, it got canned. Fast forward a couple years and Sam Ting, who has no clue of cosmic-ray science and only now discovers that there's interesting things to be done there drums up financial support in industry and various European partners for a harebraine
What's that item!? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What's that item!? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
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Do not forget CAM (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Do not forget CAM (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
It is still possible. (Score:2)
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"Biolab" centrifuges are usually for pelletting and separating small samples in tubes, etc. Are you sure the ones in Columbus are slow low-grav centrifuges?
Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Would someone please explain to me why this device must be attached to the space station? (Other than that it was built to be attached to the space station.) It seems to me that such an instrument could've been placed on its own dedicated satellite.
Or is this a case of "we'll get funding for this if we hitch it to the best funding-horse around"?
Re:Huh? (Score:4, Informative)
Once in space it will probably use a lot of power / cooling / processing power all of which is found on the ISS, not to mention communication systems and possible installation procedures (getting an astronaut to finish the wiring is cheap in comparison to bracing the wiring for the damage inccured on the launch profile)
By the time they work out what extras are needed, what modifications are required and what mass the new system is then there probably isn't a launcher generally available that will take the resulting bulk into the required orbit. It would be easier to start from scratch and build a dedicated satellite rather than juryrig the current system to free flight.
Note that according to the article they looked at other ways of getting it to the ISS and they all turned out too expensive. It's the shuttle thats the limitation in this case not the ISS.
Parent
Re:Huh? (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
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The option of turning AMS into a free-flyer has been explored and it is prohibitively expensive. Right now it is a precise, sophisticated instrument designed to merge with the ISS infrastructure. Adding propulsion systems, independent power generation, etc. could be done, but is not at all economical. Beyond that, it is probably best that this complicated device be accessible if some unforeseen problem arises.
It is not economical to put things in space. Period. The question isn't whether it is prohibitively expensive, because every launch is prohibitively expensive, yet we still keep launching things. The question is how much it costs and whether it is worth doing.
Give our soldiers in Iraq the week off and you save enough to put 5 of these in orbit. The money is there.
Why does it need to be launched with a shuttle? (Score:3, Interesting)
Couldn't it be just launched with a rocket, after adding the necessary bits so that it doesn't need the ISS?
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Maybe because one of the "necessary bits" is a human being to run it? I'm just guessing here, based on the fact it's specifically called a laboratory as opposed to a module, but if it absolutely requires human intervention to operate and can't be automated then it's the ISS or nothing. It might even be possible to get the module into orbit with an alternate launch vehicle, but even if you can get it parked alongside the ISS, overcoming the logistics of physically mounting it without the aid of the Shuttle
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A pity for physicists, perhaps but . . (Score:3, Insightful)
On the other hand any biological experiments on Columbus might have a far more immediate effect on us e.g. understanding salmonella is important because all of us are at some degree of risk from it.
I am sorry for the people who see their great efforts at risk of being wasted - but not that sorry, because I know that the practitioners of every discipline think that theirs is the most fundamental and important to mankind in some way and all of them are wrong, because everything is important.
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Why do the rest of us care one iota about dark matter? It may answer fundamental questions etc and could eventually have some positive effect for the people who have to pay for it but surely if our discoveries have to wait 10 years for the next opportunity to put a similar instrument up it's no immediate tragedy?
On the other hand any biological experiments on Columbus might have a far more immediate effect on us e.g. understanding salmonella is important because all of us are at some degree of risk from it....
Just consider that people would have posed the same argument about quantum mechanics, particle physics, etc. etc. a hundred years ago. Yet technologies based on the understanding of these theories fundamentally enables most of modern medicine today.
No reason to be short-sighted here. The point is that you simply cannot perform a higher level science like biology or medicine in a vacuum, or you will very quickly stagnate. Just imagine trying to do modern biology or medicine with equipment from a century
Switched horses in mid stream (Score:2, Informative)
Private Enterprise? (Score:3, Interesting)
Does anyone know if this includes any of the nascent commercial carriers?
If they could get this into a slightly higher orbit, could it be delivered later with a small amount of reaction mass?
Perhaps they should re-open this for bids.
Isn't it obvious that it's all wrong?!? (Score:3, Funny)
We're talking about NASA.
So of course it's wrong, by definition. NASA can do no right, on Slashdot.
International disgrace? (Score:2)
If this is a truly an international disgrace and a great launch to science why don't ESA or the Russians launch it? They have the vehicles. I personally am counting the days when they deorbit ISS and move on to project Constellation.
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Although I am not at all familiar with this particular launch, the usual answer is that it would be too expensive to adapt the payload to another launch vehicle. That doesn't mean the other launch vehicles are inferior; it just means conversion isn't practical.
Note that resupply or crew rotation missions are much less problematic, because they consist of a set of smaller payloads, and the e
Share-ware (Score:3, Interesting)
An international disgrace? (Score:3, Insightful)
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Only 1 shuttle has blown up since then. (Score:4, Insightful)
Um... no. The Challenger blew up in the 80s. The project was conceived in 1994.
So since that commitment was made, not two but ONE shuttle has been blown up.
You're also ignoring the fact that NASA is flying shuttle missions for far less important reasons. The ISS is a huge, ridiculous waste of resources. This piece is the silver lining on that cloud, the one major scientific venture. They're skipping it in favor of kiddie science projects and more stuff related to human activity, i.e. putting more lives in danger.
Parent
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If we want to make sure that human kind is not just limited to this one rock we currently inhabit, we are going to have to put lives in danger. Same thing happened when we wanted to be able to fly more than a few miles in an aeroplane. And this doesn't mean just making special test flights. It means making trips to space into a routine activity. Do it more often for wh
Re:Calling Mr Tang (Score:4, Interesting)
The credibility of the US is at stake here? Some needs to write Mr. Ting a memo, reminding him that since that commitment is made, not one but TWO shuttles have been blown to flinders along with their brave crews.
The Challenger blew up in 1986, whereas the commitment was made in 1994. I don't think that anyone has ever questioned the fact that strapping yourself to the top of hundreds of tons of high explosives is inherently dangerous.
If you want to make a more valid point, you could indicate that neither the space shuttle or the ISS are particularly well-suited for the purpose that they were designed to fulfill (and I'd imagine that many of the ISS's woes are stemming from the issues with the fact that the space shuttle is expensive, dangerous, and can't carry very big payloads -- literally the worst of all worlds).
For what it's cost to send the shuttle into orbit umpteen times delivering parts to the ISS, I imagine that we could have designed and built a large rocket that could have delivered most of the payload in one or two trips. We'd already done it twice -- the US had the Saturn vehicles, and Russia more recently had the the Energia platform.
If we had a better platform than the shuttle for sending large parts to the ISS, we might have actually been able to get some legitimate science done on it. The shuttle was *never* an optimal launch vehicle, even before the safety issues came to light.
Parent
Re:Calling Mr Tang (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't think that anyone has ever questioned the fact that strapping yourself to the top of hundreds of tons of high explosives is inherently dangerous.
To drag this further off-topic... Plenty of people have questioned that assertion. Or perhaps more accurately, plenty of people have questioned the idea of strapping yourself to a motor that can't be turned off (the SRBs and most solid motors) -- no current manned rocket actually uses high explosives for propellant. Many of these people are very smart and experienced, and many of them are trying to do something about it. Unfortunately, NASA and the current commercial providers don't seem terribly interested in attempts to reduce the risk of spaceflight by more than modest amounts.
I've worked on rocket engines. There's nothing more inherently dangerous about them than there is about a jet engine or even your car engine. All contain high energy chemicals and at least moderately high pressures. The fact that historically rocket engines are more dangerous than modern airplane engines is a result of two things: higher maturity levels in aircraft engine design, and a very curious lack of attention to safety and reliability in historical rocket engine design.
It does not have to be this way. We know how to build rocket engines that fail less often, and fail less catastrophically when they do fail. We know how to build rockets that don't kill their passengers when they fail. We need to stop assuming that space travel will always be as dangerous as it has been, and ask what we can do differently to make it safer from early in the design process. (It won't ever be completely safe, just as air travel will never be completely safe. It can, however, be continually improving in safety, and we can continue searching for ways to make it safer.)
Parent
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Worse yet, this is clearly a case of putting politics over science. This 'lab' will accomplish nothing more, it seems, than the same insipid crap that's been done since the beginning of the Shuttle era: materials science in 0-g. Zero gravity can be simulated on earth, fairly well. Doing good astronomy needs to be done in space away from sources of interference.
The remaining shuttle missions need to be used for real science, not some political crap that attempts to smooth over differences between US and E
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
So how do you propose to simulate, say, just one hour of continuous zero gravity?
Frankly, I don't know how useful or useless material science in zero-g is. However I'd strongly question your assertion that zero-g can be adequately simulated on earth.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
'Zero-gee': no, never. 'Free-fall': yes, quite well.
Witness:
http://science.nasa.gov/ssl/msad/dtf/tube.htm [nasa.gov]
(cool image: http://science.nasa.gov/ssl/msad/dtf/images/stand1.gif [nasa.gov])
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallturm_Bremen [wikipedia.org]
(additional: http://www.spaceflight.esa.int/users/index.cfm?act=default.page&level=11&page=fac-dt [esa.int])
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drop_tube [wikipedia.org]
Re:Calling Mr Tang (Score:4, Interesting)
The credibility of the US is at stake here? Some needs to write Mr. Ting a memo, reminding him that since that commitment is made, not one but TWO shuttles have been blown to flinders along with their brave crews.
Just think, how many days or is it hours of Iraq does it take to fund a solution to this? Not many.
Think, for what has been spent on Iraq and Afghanistan, we could have a US space station around Mars or Jupiter, maybe both.
Parent
What would a space station around Jupiter cost? (Score:2)
In your estimation?
Just curious.
That ship has sailed..... (Score:5, Insightful)
"The credibility of the United States is at stake here..."
I thought that in the last 7 years (the Bush reign), we had already pretty much lost whatever credibility we once had...
Parent
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It looks like a lot of it went to making that page as indecipherable as possible. I think someone inadvertently created a new crypto algorithm. Let's use something with a little more impact [nationalpriorities.org].
Not really (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The 'device' was designed for the shuttle cargo bay. Fitting it to a rocket would mean redesign and modifications. Making a new one would be cheaper.
Re: The government at its' finest! (Score:5, Insightful)
Some people's faith in businesses is as naive as others' faith in governments.
Parent
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