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Space Science

Perimeter Railway for ISS; HETE-1 Comes Down 166

Posted by michael from the they-think-they-can dept.
Quirk writes "The Sydney Morning Herald is touting the mission to start construction of an orbiting railway. Space Shuttle Atlantis will carry the astronauts who will initiate the planned 107 meter rail line along the outside of the International Space Station. The remote controlled train will move at speeds of 2.5 centimeters a second and be able to carry more than 20 tonnes of cargo. Construction is projected for completion in 2004." And B3avis followed up with news about the HETE re-entry: "The pieces of the HETE-1 spacecraft seem to have crashed somewhere in the Himalayas. "The final notification from Space Command indicates that the debris re-entered at 31.5 degrees North and 92.4 degrees East." says NASA. And they should know."
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Perimeter Railway for ISS; HETE-1 Comes Down More

Perimeter Railway for ISS; HETE-1 Comes Down

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  • cm/s - mph (Score:2, Informative)

    by mberman ( 93546 )
    In case anyone's wondering, 2.5 cm/s is about 1/20 mph...so it takes a while for this thing to get anywhere.
  • Does this remind anyone of that movie "The Gods Must Be Crazy," when the bushmen find that Coca-cola bottle and think its from the gods?

    There's probably some people up in the Himalaya's that saw the thing come down and think its the end of the world....

    ...if only they knew.

  • In other news... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Rhinobird ( 151521 ) on Monday April 08, 2002 @02:32AM (#3301936) Homepage
    The crushed remains of the legendary beast 'Yeti' were found today, near a recent crater of unspecified origin...
  • A spokesman for NASA, Tom Farrell, said: "We've done a lot of work to make certain it can't jump the tracks."

    Well I hope that's good enough. Even though its going pretty slow, I wouldnt want 20 tonnes 'popping off' a train track and heading for the space station.
    • I don't quite understand what the difficulty with making sure it can't jump the tracks was. Just make the thing similar to roller coaster tracks.
      Geez, this isn't exactly rocket science!
      • Geez, this isn't exactly rocket science!

        One word: Inertia.

        Accelerate the 20 tonne payload to 5mph and then decelerate it. Where is that energy going to go? It just doesn't evaporate into space.

        • *sigh*
          we were talking about the fact that it wont jump off the rails which is very simple to prevent by locking the wheels in place. you will need enough energy to bend or break the wheels or bars holding the wheels on. Energy required to slow the thing down is not going to have an effect on the thing railjumping as the force should be linear and directly along the rail(s).
          The thing also is going like 0.09KPH or some such speed anyhow..

  • Cosmos choo-choo? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by pjbass ( 144318 )
    Although the whole idea of building an orbiting train is cool, the article fails to mention *why* they are building it. If the train track run 107 meters, and goes 2.5 cm/sec, without stopping, it will take 71 minutes to go from end to end. To do what? Carry 20 tons? What do they have up there that is 20 tons that they're moving? I don't remember how much of a cost NASA quoted before to carry something like a gallon of water into space on the shuttle, but if they're sending 20 tons of something up there, why?? The idea of the train is really cool, but beyond that, I really don't get it. Anyone have insight?
    • It's like why that guy built that monorail [slashdot.org] in his backyard...because he could...

    • Re:Purpose (Score:3, Informative)

      by Merik ( 172436 )
      from NASA [nasa.gov] "Also, STS-110 spacewalkers will install the Mobile Transporter, which will later be attached to a base system that will allow the station's robotic arm to ride along the truss to perform assembly and maintenance work"

      Basically this is to allow automated construction of the IIS as it grows in size. That site also mentions they are installing a new expansion hub,to which new modules are attached (maybe by the robotic arm)

    • It's clearly to move all the garbage the station will invariably produce to the trash compactor :)

      • You would think it would be cheaper just to chuck out the garbage of the station. =) Free garbage incineration, and a hell of a good time to boot!

        • Garbage chucked out stays in orbit, close to the space station. To make it fall down into the atmosphere and burn up it has to be accelerated appropriately. That's expensive. Better to compact it and leave it in storage.

    • Why 20 tons? (Score:5, Informative)

      by zardor ( 452852 ) on Monday April 08, 2002 @07:56AM (#3302378)
      The reason for the 20 ton mass requirement is due to the fact that the train track will be expected to 'build itself'. As new sections of the truss are brought up in the shuttle payload bay (each massing about 14,000 kg), they need to be attached to the ends of the truss already in place. The shuttle robot arm won't be able to reach that far out, so the station's robot arm (with one end on the 'train') will chug out along the rails on top of the truss, then lock itself down, grab the payload from the shuttle, and swing it accros and attach it onto the end of the truss. Repeat eight times (with eight shuttle flights, and lots of spanner weilding astronouts to bolt it together), and the truss is completed by 2004 or so.
      Also, a lot of very heavy equipment is mounted in/on the truss (things like storage batteries for example), and these need to be replaced every so often, so the train will be used for that also.
      Regarding the water, the US considers it a waste product, and actually dumps quite a lot of it from the US lab on the station. (quite a lot of it builds as condensation from the people on board, several liters per person per day). The Russians on the other hand, consider it a resource, and pump the 'waste' water from their AirConditioner into a electrolosis unit which electrically splits off the oxygen for breathing purposes. In any case the condensed water would not be safe for drinking, but fresh drinking water is supplied by the shuttle, as a by-product of the shuttle fuel cells. (Cyrogenic H2 + 02 = lots of electricty + pure water) The shuttle actually produces a *lot* of water, but dosn't really carry much into orbit to start with!
  • This is 2002 and NASA has a space station in space, but their 'bright' solution is a train? Trains are so... Industrial Revolution. You'd think they'd at least have some sort of rocket-propelled spacecraft with small engines used to make fine adjustments to its path and keep it in the proper orbit. Or maybe the NASA folks got jealous of that guy with the monorail in his backyard. ;-)

    "You just better have a damn good conductor."

  • hmmm (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 08, 2002 @02:42AM (#3301966)
    Interesting similarity, IIS and ISS both carry a huge load and move very, very slowly.

    • Re:hmmm (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Before this gets modded to +5 funny, I'll have you know that IIS is the leader in speed among all web servers, that includes Apache, iPlanet, and Roxen. I believe Zeus edges it out on dynamic content, though.
    • "Interesting similarity, IIS and ISS both carry a huge load and move very, very slowly."

      Wow! 2.5 cm/sec? That's... that's... (whipping out palm)... a blistering .06 MPH. Rounding up. Is there really a point?

  • Heh... (Score:3, Funny)

    by diggem ( 74763 ) on Monday April 08, 2002 @02:46AM (#3301972) Homepage
    Brings a whole new meaning to the term "Space STATION" eh? :D

    • Re:Heh... (Score:3, Funny)

      by heikkile ( 111814 )
      Yes. Trains stop at train stations, buses stop at bus stations, on my desk I have a work station, and up there we have a space station...

  • What it does... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by StaticEngine ( 135635 ) on Monday April 08, 2002 @02:50AM (#3301980) Homepage
    When finished in 2004 the line will stretch about 107 metres along the outside of the International Space Station, 400 kilometres above the planet.

    It's just a robotic system for manipulating cargo outside the ISS without the need for someone to do a EVA. It's not like it's that hard to figure out from the article, if you'd actually read it.

    Does anyone know a better site that has tech news with a higher signal to noise ratio? Because wading through the same tiresome uninformed /. comments in an effort to keep up on DMCA and tech issues is really getting frustrating...

    • Re:What it does... (Score:1, Offtopic)

      by interiot ( 50685 )
      politechbot.com has less BS and is focused on politics, especially things like the DMCA (in fact, have a look [google.com] at the DMCA postings there).

    • Does anyone know a better site that has tech news with a higher signal to noise ratio? Because wading through the same tiresome uninformed /. comments

      I too found the noise to signal ratio ludicrously high until I groked the /. mission statement which is to launch a web site true to the Bar Scene in Star Wars. Mission successful...

    • Salon.com and theregister.co.uk are both sites with excellent tech news, although Salon is a bit leftist for my tastes.

      For straight-up hardware news, tomshardware.com's news section (http://www.tomshardware.com/technews/index.html) is a good place to start.

    • Here's a link [nasa.gov] to some pictures of the mission and one of the train car.
    • Try alterslash [alterslash.org].

      You get the stories, the best comments, and a plot of the new comments and percent signal plotted verus time. It's great. I only log into slashdot now when I post comments.
  • Word on the street is that funding for this project comes from Lionel Toy Trains [lionel.com] in a massive effort to revive the interest in locomotive models. The first test run of this new train in space will sport an astronaut riding the front car of a gigantic toy train.

  • ISS Railway Links (Score:2, Informative)

    by Quirk ( 36086 )

    Here are a few more links that provide greater detail.

    http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/spacenews/releases/200 2/02-58.html [nasa.gov]

    http://www.spacedaily.com/news/iss-02c.html?astron omylinks [spacedaily.com]

  • Riiiiiight (Score:5, Insightful)

    by kwishot ( 453761 ) on Monday April 08, 2002 @03:30AM (#3302038)
    How long do you suppose it would take to bring 20 *tons* of material up to the ISS that's going to stay there? Not only that, but be in one place at one time, which just happens to be on a 1m by 3m cart.

    Also...I see a lot of people complaining about the speed (or lack thereof) of this thing. If you have 20 tons of material moving, and you want it to stop, you have some serious momentum issues. The speed seems appropriate for this application, I would think.

    -kwishot

  • $A357 million (Score:5, Funny)

    by Stackster ( 454159 ) on Monday April 08, 2002 @04:22AM (#3302135) Journal
    "Although the $A357 million train..."

    Is that "A" a typo, or are the numbers in hexadecimal to make it look cheaper?
  • I thought cool there going to build a train ring around the station to provide artifical gravity but no, its so the arm can move around to help build the station. Maybe to much Red Mars for me :)

  • slashdotted (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Damn slashdotting. here [pandora.be] is a mirror.

  • Train? Don't let the British build it! (Score:4, Funny)

    by mccalli ( 323026 ) on Monday April 08, 2002 @04:57AM (#3302185) Homepage
    As a train-travelling Britain myself, I can just imagine the announcement:

    "NASA Spacetrains (UK) regret to announce the late departure of the 17:48 'Dark Side of the Station' service. This is due to the wrong kind of sub-atomic particles bombarding the track. We apologise for any inconvenience caused."

    "NASA Spacetrains (UK) regret to announce the cancellation of the 17:53 'Earthside' service. This is due to a shortage of rolling stock. We apologise for any inconvenience caused."

    "NASA Spacetrains (UK) regret to announce that all anti-clockwise trains are running approximately three hours late. This is due to overrunning engineering works and signalling problems near Mars. We apologise for any inconvenience caused."

    etc...

    (Probably have to have experienced UK trains to find any of that funny. If you have experienced UK trains though, then you have my deepest sympathies.)

    Cheers,
    Ian

    • As a train-travelling Britain myself...

      Or even a Briton. Oops.

      Cheers,
      Ian

    • Dont you mean something similar to:

      "bing-bong. Brimish Rull regret that mumble maz bem dermumble a mir mumble mumble bimble late. Passengers mizzing to mumble rimble mumble are advised to momble mar at murmble. Thank you mor mumble mimbling Brimble mum. bing-bong."

      • "bing-bong. Brimish Rull regret that mumble maz bem dermumble a mir mumble

        That sounds remarkably like the Chicago El.

        [squeel] Welcome [screetch] mumble Passengers mumble no Radio Playing mumble [static] [static] mumble. The next stations [bzzt] [static] mumble muble [squeel]
    • I agree that some grade-A bad planning has been
      occuring in Britain on its rail systems, this last
      decade; however, we should not forget that we
      built one of the first, and one of the best
      underground systems in the world. Rail transport
      in Britain is far superiour to that in the
      United States, where Amtrak is usually late and
      runs on government funding, and the local rail
      (Metrolink in Los Angeles) only opperates during
      rush hour, weekdays, and not bloody at all on weekends.
      • we should not forget that we built one of the first, and one of the best underground systems in the world.

        Hmm. As a daily Tube commuter (Hangar Lane to Canary Wharf) I'm not too sure I'd agree with that. Certainly one of the first, but I'd argue we've hit classic 'early adopter' syndrome and been left with a load of antiquated nonsense when most other people have long since moved on.

        Cheers,
        Ian

        • Here in Zurich, we have trams. Yes, trams, the train-like things that run in the middle of the street on 1 metre gauge track, with ugly wires hanging everywhere. On the other hand we, have have pretty fast commuter trains (S-Bahn/RER, as seen in most European cities) that are reasonably clean and usually on time. Except when it snows. Then nothing is on time.

          I thought the Canary Wharf area had some of the newer subway facilities anyway? Britons talk so very negatively of their public transport system. Is it that bad?

          NB: I have never ridden a subway system before. Neither Zurich nor Melbourne (where I lived earlier on) has such a system. Anyone who regulary rides both willing to comment which they prefer, LRT/tram or subway?
          • I thought the Canary Wharf area had some of the newer subway facilities anyway? Britons talk so very negatively of their public transport system. Is it that bad?

            Yes, it's that dreadful. I'm delayed on trains usually three out of four journeys. Canary Wharf -does- have some of the newer facilities, and the investors in those facilities are demanding half their money back due to poor performance.

            I used to commute in to London by train too (I live about twenty miles west). Gave that up as well because the trains back out of Paddington were so unreliable. I now drive to Ealing (reasonably far west in London), then take the tube the rest of the way.

            Takes about two hours for about forty miles. Usually in sardine-like conditions, and with no air-con.

            Cheers,
            Ian

    • "If you have experienced UK trains though, then you have my deepest sympathies."

      You folks need to come to the US.. where our ONLY trains run ONLY between big cities, and ONLY if you've got tons of cash to pay for them.

      I spent 3 months in the UK. Having a functional rail system was the highlight of my trip.

      You don't realize how lucky you are.
    • "Ping PING pong ping ping. May I please have your attention. Due to a magnitude 6.0 moonquake on the Tycho main line, the supaa-hoshi express will be 23 seconds late. We sincerely and deeply apologize for the major inconvenience this may cause our honoured passengers."

      The most I've been delayed on a regular Japanese train was 35 minutes due to a major quake.

      On a subway it was a couple of hours, but that was due to some people tossing Sarin nerve gas around.

  • Nice fellows. They know for years that that batteries will crash SOMEWHERE. They had enough time to pick their garbage up, but they decided to let the garbage crash.
    What would have happened if it crached in a higher populated area than Nepal or Tibet?

    I would say this is highly unresponsible behaviour.
    • There's a huge amount of junk orbiting the Earth. The various space agencies of the world have done a beautiful job making sure there's no doubt as to which species lives here.

      And while every piece of that junk does pose extreme danger to anything of a non-junk nature in orbit (Astronauts on EVAs, satellites, ISS..) it's still not economically feasible to go on a garbage collecting mission.

      So yes, they let the batteries crash. Would you rather them spend several million tax dollars chasing it down? As you may recall, they've let far larger things fall out of the sky like, oh, Skylab.
      • I realise that is is very expensive to collect the spacegarbage, but hey, if I mess up my room I have to clean it up too ;)

        The point I wanted to make wasn't that space agencies should clean up their mess.
        The point I wanted to make is this: When you know large peaces of space-junk will fall on earth and you don't know WHERE is will fall down, you are knowingly endangering people.
        With the Mir they more or less controlled the crash but with these batteries.....

        Maybe they should clean up their garbage, but it IS way too expensive indeed. Will it ever be economically feasible to clean it up? Cleaning up nuclear waste isn't economically feasible.
        Maybe one day there will be an other reason for the space agencies to clean up their mess. When too many satellites get damaged perhaps.
  • Great, more junk for those Everest-climbing do-gooders to clean up. "I found an oxygen canister, a dead guy and three attitude control thrusters"
  • If the train moves at 2.5 cm/s in one direction carrying 20 tonnes then newtons laws dictate that
    the space station will move in the opposite direction (at presumably a lower speed cos it
    weights more). Won't this use up a lot of thruster fuel trying to counteract this?
    • don't know why these folks fail to see the issues here... boltar has the right idea:


      1: the acceleration against the station will be cancelled by an opposite acceleration against the station when the 'train' stops. this will leave the station displaced from its orginal position. when you move the 'train' back to the start point, you'll displace the station the other way, getting the station back to where -it- started.


      2: if you don't care about the small displacement of the station's orbit as you use the 'train', no need for thrusters. if you do care, you'll be counter-acting the train with thrusters.


      i should think it wouldn't be a problem, practically speaking, unless a telescope is trying to point at a star, in which case just don't use the train until it's done. as far as keeping station on orbit i should think there are bigger problems than the displacements caused by the train.


      that's boltar's real question: how tightly does the space station's orbit need to be controlled?

  • Now that there will be a train track circling the space station, anyone else think it's high time they decorate the modules with garland and little colored lights? Space Tinsel (A$400/Strand) would really complete the effect.

    Of course, the lights will have to flash VERY SLOWLY to be consistent with the glacial speed of the Space Lionel.

    Justin
  • Three words. Monorail, MONORAIL, MONORAIL!

  • Wonder how many trainspotters will be be buying telescopes by 2004
  • Should they call "The Galaxy Express 999"?
  • (Found this in the press this morning. Wonder if it was HETE and the coordinates given by NASA where the first point of 'no longer in space'. If that is the case, I could imagine that the visible bits would occur hundreds of miles away. May be completely unrelated-- I'm fully willing to admit I did zero research beyond seeing the article and the /. article in a short enough period of time that both were still in short term memory.)

    Strange lights in the sky baffle Bavarians

    MUNICH, Germany, April 7 (Reuters) - Strange lights in the sky baffled Bavarians late on Saturday as hundreds of panicked callers jammed police telephone lines seeking an explanation for the phenomenon.

    Reports of an unsettling late-night natural light show came from all over the southern German state as well as the neighbouring region of Baden-Wuerttemberg.

    "It had nothing to do with the weather. But I don't think little green men from Mars have landed in Bavaria. It was something burning out in the atmosphere," a meteorologist said.

    "It was like a huge firework," a Reuters TV correspondent in Munich said, describing the display. "You could even see it through half-closed blinds. It lasted around three seconds," she said.

    Pilots flying into Munich airport radioed the control tower with reports of unusual lights in the sky.

    The German police said NASA scientists initially thought the light was caused by space junk -- floating debris in the Earth's atmosphere -- but later said they were still unsure.

    The German army reported no unusual movements on its radar.

    Scientists said the lights may have the result of a meteor breaking through the Earth's atmosphere.

    "There are no signs of impact or damage. We can't say what it was," a police spokesman said.
  • Hi,

    Last Friday night (Apr, 5, ~ 22:45 Eastern) I saw a light in the sky, probably a meteor of some kind. It traveled South to North and it was visible (at least I saw it) for 4 seconds. Its light changed from red to green. This was in Central North Carolina.

    Did anyone else see it? I doubt it was the Satellite from this /. story. Coordenates do not match.

    I am pretty interested to know if this was just a piece of rock, a satellite or a party at ISS.
    • "Last Friday night (Apr, 5, ~ 22:45 Eastern) I saw a light in the sky, probably a meteor of some kind. It traveled South to North and it was visible (at least I saw it) for 4 seconds. Its light changed from red to green. This was in Central North Carolina."

      Hmm, red to green, in central North Carolina? Now, if you were in West Virginia, I'd say you were just startled by the traffic light... ;)
  • So how did US Space Command track it over Asia? It's not like we have tracking stations out there... Or do we?
  • staticengine above said this, but it wasn't emphasized as i would like:


    it is NOT A TRAIN! it is a robotic AXIS OF MOTION!


    and don't believe those commercials that claim a bagless vacuum is easier to deal with than the (now) old fashioned bags: it makes a MUCH smaller cloud of dust to drop a full dust bag in the garbage than to POUR OUT and SCRAPE OFF the dust from the bin and filter of a bagless!!!

  • Amtrak in space? God help us all!

  • Question (Score:1)

    by PD ( 9577 )
    Who else thinks this is even stupider than building a monorail in your backyard? I mean, the train doesn't even GO anywhere.

  • Will it go to the kingdom of make believe?

    "Can you open the pod bay doors, trolley?; I knew that you could."

  • Bummer (Score:2)

    by "Zow" ( 6449 )
    "The pieces of the HETE-1 spacecraft seem to have crashed somewhere in the Himalayas."

    I can picture it now. . .

    Yeah! All my life I've wanted to conquer Mount Everest and now I will finally. . .Twack!

  • HETE: High Energy Transient Experiment.

    it sounds to me like this was almost the perfect end for a satellite with this name. a high energy burnout then impact, ending its transient experiments with orbital flight.

    almost like... they planned it this way.

  • So we can have a math problem that starts; A train leaves the ISS at 12:01 EST traveling 2 cm per second...

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