Dropped Shuttle Toolbag Filmed From Earth 389
cathector writes "An article at spaceweather.com reports that the toolbag dropped during Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper's spacewalk has been recorded on film from earth: 'When Endeavour astronaut Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper dropped her toolbag during a spacewalk on Nov. 18th and it floated away, mission controllers probably figured they'd seen the last of it. Think again. Last night, Nov. 22nd, veteran satellite observer Kevin Fetter video-recorded the backpack-sized bag gliding over his backyard observatory in Brockville, Ontario. "It was easily 8th magnitude or brighter as it passed by the 4th magnitude star eta Pisces," he says. Spaceweather's satellite tracker is monitoring the toolbag.'"
The actual loss of the bag was filmed, too; reader Kagura links in a comment on the original story to this YouTube clip of the bag's escape.
Re:Check out the sexism on the youtube video (Score:2, Insightful)
I mean I live in the Southern US, home of the redneck troglodyte... and I dont know anyone who feels that strongly about this, but evidently somewhere there exists a serious reserve of "brefoot pregnant in the kitchen shut up and get me a beer, honey you need to be quiet the menfolk are talking" types.
Great! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Check out the sexism on the youtube video (Score:3, Insightful)
cue stream of XKCD links in 3....2....
Re:A "FETCH" unit (Score:5, Insightful)
It probably would be cheaper just to have the astronauts make sure the bag is continually tethered to something.
Re:That's no moon! (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, a woman dropped an expensive toolbag. An organisation comprised predominantly of men oversaw the disintegration of the Space Shuttle Columbia...
If you're keeping score, I think women might be in the lead for some time yet ;)
Re:Check out the sexism on the youtube video (Score:2, Insightful)
Hillary was/is smart, Palin was/is/always will be a dumb fuck. Its not sexism to dislike the idea of a more powerful Palin, its self-preservation.
NASA Bloopers Tape (Score:5, Insightful)
NASA funniest home videos?
Seriously though, I feel sorry for this woman. One minor slip up and because the media latched onto it this is all she'll ever be remembered for. NASA astronauts risk life and limb and while the humour's good we shouldn't forget the effort and sacrifice they make should not be dismissed lightly.
A reason for exploring underground (Score:4, Insightful)
How? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Filmed? Those look more like video to me. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:That's no moon! (Score:0, Insightful)
An organisation comprised predominantly of men oversaw the disintegration of the Space Shuttle Columbia...
Yeah, and those same men built the fucking space shuttles, and oversaw a hundred-something successful launches, which means absolutely nothing.
</wastedtime>
Neat! (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's put aside any blame, mistakes, whether the media is being unfair...for just a moment.
Seeing that bag just drift off, only a few feet away from the station and then a few days later we see it pass by in orbit from Earth is just amazing. I'm always impressed with whatever we do in space.
Was it my tax dollars that paid for that lost bag? Still worth the money.
She fumbled, but it's not her fault. (Score:5, Insightful)
She fumbled, in a high-stress enviroment under high-stress circumstances, but it's not her fault. I actually instantly saw the flaw with something/somebody else when I read this the first time.
what in heavens name is up with a space grease gun leaking grease were it's not supposed to? Were does Nasa get these? At the local hardware store for 10 Dollars a piece or what? This stunt actually went quite well. Imagine her not being able to do her job (or get back to the airlock) because a grease gun explodes all over her helmet visor or something simular.
Say what you want, but somewhere some Nasa engineering team has to get back to the drawing table ASAP and design a greasegun that actually works relyably - Nasa style wise. Or something simular with no moving parts at all. Maybe get a vaseline can and a spatula tied to a string or something - that's probably how the russians do it.
I'd actually be super-pissed at gear that goes haywire on me 7 hours into a stressy EVA. I do climbing - imagine your backback shedding mission-critical gear at 300 meters in the vertical or something simular. Multipling that by a thousand hints the scale of issues we're talking about.
Way more people than just the astronaut are responsible here.
Re:That's no moon! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:That's no moon! (Score:4, Insightful)
Chill, friend - just a joke, aiming to highlight that it's silly to raise the fact that a woman did it, because men aren't exactly robots :)
Disclaimer: I am a guy and therefore also not a robot.
Re:Check out the sexism on the youtube video (Score:5, Insightful)
Your first mistake was reading the comments on a Youtube video.
Re:That's no moon! (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder, will she catch any flak for this? Does she get docked salary for letting it slip?
More importantly, why wasn't this extremely expensive bag tethered to something? If it can't be tethered to her for safety reasons, how about a magnetically secured line attached to the work surface?
Re:Check out the sexism on the youtube video (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:That's no moon! (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't forget, this is how it works.
http://www.xkcd.com/385/ [xkcd.com]
Re:That's no moon! (Score:4, Insightful)
Compared to the cost of the whole mission the toolbag costs next to nothing. And people make mistakes and errors. This is a small but slightly annoying one. I think she's punished enough by having her mistake crawling all over the web.
Re:A "FETCH" unit (Score:1, Insightful)
I think the AI for having something reach out and fetch stuff in 3D would be complicated. Even on land-based mazes, this is supposedly pretty hard.
I do think that space provides a lot of black background (if the AI can filter out the stars and planet in its field of view). The problem comes with judging distances.
But maybe, the military lock and missile firing mechanisms have already solved part of the Identify-and-track mechanism. I mean, those clips where you see little squares locking onto tanks and things... well, the problem is that NASA is a US-endeavor. Space is international. If NASA somehow works out "opening" government AI algorithms, they will become usable by potential enemy scientists.
And imagine having lock-on technology that could be expanded to work from outter space down to ground targets. Well, far-fetched now, but advanced technology is sufficiently like magic, to paraphrase the saying.
Re:That's no moon! (Score:3, Insightful)
And those bags don't even come with a full set of Allen Keys.
Re:That's no moon! (Score:3, Insightful)
A Snap-on 22 piece ratchet kit is over 500 bucks. Hell a tool box from them is over $300!
I didn't believe you so I checked.
http://buy1.snapon.com/catalog/tools.asp?tool=all&Group_ID=103&store=snapon-store [snapon.com]
Direct from manufacturer you're looking at $348.65 for the 20 piece and $610.80 for the 34 piece. I now believe there could be a 22 piece set that I couldn't find thats around $500 with shipping, as you claimed.
I knew they were outrageously expensive but I didn't expect $20 per socket level of expense. They better be made of solid silver for that price. For that kind of money I don't just expect a socket set, I expect the Chinese guy whom made it to fly out here and pull the wrench for me.
My first metal lathe was about $500. Somehow I think I get "more" out of that than I would out of a 34 piece socket set.
Re:When will the toolbag enter the atmosphere? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sorry, did you really mean to say "density"? Atmospheric drag affects surface area of an object, not the number of atoms per unit of volume.
~Sticky
//I do not think that word means what you think it means...