GRAIL-A Enters Lunar Orbit 62
NASA's twin-craft GRAIL mission, launched way back in September (more information here), has successfully reached its destination. Grail-A has now entered lunar orbit; GRAIL-B is expected to enter lunar orbit tomorrow.
GRAIL huh? (Score:5, Funny)
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Will they be able to transport a coconut then?
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An african or european coconut?
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A aaaaaargh!
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In other news, it has been discovered that this was not GRAIL-A after all. Instead, it was merely a beacon that just happened to be shaped like a GRAIL-A.
Operation Galahad has been initiated to investigate this situation.
Re:GRAIL huh? (Score:5, Informative)
> You're a little off, Grail-A is Canadian, not European.
How did you get modded up to +4 for that? Grail-A and B are American, not Canadian. Built by Lockheed Martin, a US company, in the US (Denver, specifically), and launched by NASA.
Nothing against Canada, I love the place, but Grail is very much a US spacecraft.
It's nuts that posts like that get modded up as "informative".
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I'm not your GRAIL-Buddeh!
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To the whooshes below, it's the grail, eh?
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We're Back! (Score:1)
Happy New Moon!
More missions to the Moon!
Go NASA!
Here's to hoping they find TMA-1 (Score:2)
I know, I know it is the "M" stands for Magnetic not "Mass" anomaly but maybe they'll find something that indicates an extraterrestrial (intelligence) origin!
Re:Why should I care? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is no doubt good news, but why should I care? Folks I know, even in the IT sector, need jobs, period! ....
These missions can wait till our economy gets better. What's wrong with that?
Yep, shut down NASA and cancel all future projects - that ought to create more jobs!
If you ever run for congress, I'm sure you'll have no problem getting elected.
Re:Why should I care? (Score:5, Insightful)
The crisis we find ourselves in was partly created by projects like these
NASA's budget represents less than 1% of the Federal budget. It peaked at around 5% during the Apollo years and has declined almost every year for the last two decades. If every Federal agency worked like that we wouldn't be worrying about turning into Greece.
Re:Why should I care? (Score:4, Informative)
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The crisis we find ourselves in was partly created by projects like these, which do not create value at all, save for pride.
And now you've exposed yourself as a troll and a liar.
Well, either that, or you (in your original comment) meant to type "does not create any value" but accidentally slipped, fell, and while falling randomly hit a bunch of keys which just happened to spell out "this is no doubt good news". Personally, I'm going with the "liar" explanation.
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The GRAIL mission costs ~$400B. The NASA budget is ~$17B/year.
If you could fix the economy/budget problems with that amount of money in a politically viable way, GO TELL SOMEONE! Seriously... thats chump change in terms of the federal budget.
Re:Why should I care? (Score:4, Informative)
Oops. $400M for GRAIL. If it were $400B you might have a better point.
Re:Why should I care? (Score:5, Insightful)
If we listened to guys like you this would be a poorer world for it. Not all value in monetary. What is the value of information? It really is the source of all other value.
Anyway, the time to complain about the cost was at the start of the project in 2006. The project cost around $500 million. All that money was spent here on Earth paying the wages of the guys who built the satellites and rocket and the people who supplied them. If you're worried about the deficit the first thing to look at is the fact that we spend on much on the military as the next 15+ countries combined.and half of those are allies. The US spends 43% of all money spent on the military in the world.
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I love statements like this " we spend on much on the military as the next 15+ countries combined.and half of those are allies.". I need at least one mind boggler a day and this was the first. Now I may try to fact check, but my gut tells me you're correct...and how fucking sad is that.
I am all for a strong defense, I surely don't want my country invaded by 'fill in the blank evil people', but we seriously are over the top on our approach these days. We have enough nukes to ensure that any "major" countr
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If we listened to guys like you this would be a poorer world for it. Not all value in monetary. What is the value of information? It really is the source of all other value.
Economic innumeracy rears its ugly head again. All value can be expressed in monetary value for a very simple reason. Because you choose to pay for it. Paying for such projects only with Other Peoples' Money is a strong indication that the project doesn't have inherent value.
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Another guy who knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing. I pay taxes so some of my money went into the GRAIL satellites and I have no problem with that.
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Another guy who knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing. I pay taxes so some of my money went into the GRAIL satellites and I have no problem with that.
Put your money where your mouth is. There are so many platitude-spouting layabouts who can tell us how important or valuable something is supposed to be, but can't be bothered to contribute to it with their own wealth and/or effort.
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Watch out who you're calling a layabout. I first payed federal income taxes in about 1965. I own my own home, paid for by myself. My wealth and effort helps support this country.
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To be blunt, US government space activities are
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There are only two reliable ways for a government to create jobs - either pay for people to do work or provide stability.
If you rule out paying for work due to being broke, the only thing you can possibly do is try to avoid making major changes. Shutting down projects in the name of saving money is a major change.
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"Urgh!!! Because Obama's handouts have done so much to fix everything."
I had a friend comment (more like complain) that "We" spent all these millions of dollars in 1999 to change software....and nothing happened on Jan 1, 2000. "Really?" I exclaimed. "Nothing happened? So, like, all that money spent to avert a potential mess...worked?"
Would you like to ponder what could have happened had we not spent millions on coding against problems resulting from Y2K? "Ah fuggitabout, let the system work it out".
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What encourages new start-up companies is demand. Taxes have nothing to do with it.
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You forgot: massively cutting taxes and regulation... which is the only reliable way to create long-term jobs.
That voodoo economics has been tried and failed. All it does is ensure the booms and busts are bigger. If you control the booms, you make billions more, if you are a regular person, you get screwed worse. Trickle up economics only benefits the 1%. The other 99% are screwed by the corporate handouts.
Holy Grail Batman... (Score:2)
Obligatory.... (Score:3)
That's no moon...
Why 3 months? (Score:2)
Re:Why 3 months? (Score:5, Informative)
Why it took them so long to reach the Moon? Lunar transfer takes 3 days. Does anyone know?
Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory [wikipedia.org]:
Unlike the Apollo program missions, which took three days to reach the Moon, GRAIL will make use of a three- to four-month low-energy trans-lunar cruise via the Sun-Earth Lagrange point L1 to reduce fuel requirements, protect instruments and reduce the velocity of the two spacecraft at lunar arrival to help achieve the extremely low 50 km (31 mi) orbits with separation between the spacecraft (arriving 24 hours apart) of 175 to 225 km (109 to 140 mi)
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Ah beat me to it, I found the same link as you being the most informative.
Bottom of this page, is a movie that shows how they were released
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/grail/launch/index.html [nasa.gov]
darn sure doesn't answer many questions though.
Re:Why 3 months? (Score:4, Interesting)
www.gg.caltech.edu/~mwl/publications/papers/lowEnergy.pdf
It's amazing; it forced me to dust my rusty maths. Wonder if one could use it to create plugin for Orbiter...
Another reason (Score:2)