Astronauts In Florida For Space Station Mission 129
Michael Holve writes: "It seems the ISS (International Space Station) is slipping 1.5 miles per week closer to Earth. Seven astronauts are set to use the Atlantis to push it 19 miles back out into space until mid-July, when the Zvezda module arrives, which was meant to keep the ISS in orbit and provide living quarters for three astronauts."
Hmm... (Score:3)
It would have saved them time and money (and would have avoided an extra launch to reposition it)
Will we see any more stuff like this on the International Space Station? Or will they start using solely the metric system to prevent what happened on Mars?
skylab (Score:1)
On the count of three... (Score:2)
PUSH!
Hope they brought enough people to push it back into orbit
Woohoo! (Score:1)
I was browsing around the various Shuttle sites and pictures from SpaceImaging last night... Man, hours of fun. There's quite a bit of information out there, and kind of brought me back to the days where one could get lost for HOURS, just mindlessly surfing and going, "oooh."
Re:Hmm... (Score:1)
How massive is this thing? (Score:2)
OT: From the article.... (Score:3)
This would a a cool place to advertise.....hopefully they have some sort of agreement not to allow this. Maybe just have the country flags on it. Oh well, it might be just a small spec anyways. Wonder how many hunters will try shooting at it.
OK....now something relavent. Why don't all the astrnonauts in it just count to 3 and all run to one side. It works for tilting a school bus. Maybe there's some sort of internation confusion with it. "Do we run on three? Or is it 1, 2, 3, run?"
Shuttles to Receive Updates... (Score:3)
Basically, all the screens have been updated to make it easier to deal with and reduce the load on astronauts for other tasks.
Wonder if someone will port Linux to the Shuttle... ;>
Other cool thing about the mission (Score:2)
In space it doesn't matter (Score:1)
Yeah, I know about mass, but we're not pushing a planet, after all. Heh.
Re:OT: From the article.... (Score:1)
A question (Score:1)
It sounds like they threw this whole mission together rather "seat of pants" style; with quotes like While crews normally train together for a year or more before launch, this crew was only finalized in mid-February.
The question: What happens if this thing fails? How long do we have until the hunk-o-metal crashes down into my living room? Do they have a backup plan? Am I psychotic for wondering these things?
-Jer
Re:Shuttles to Receive Updates... (Score:1)
Shuttle computers already run Linux... (Score:2)
--Lenny
Observations (Score:3)
1. They need to put in a little more "What If?" scenarios into the planning for just such situations, when the project doesn't go quite the right way or in the right order, especially when you are dealing with resources (other countries) that may fall behind.
2. It seems that one of the overriding goal of the ISS is more of the nature of world peace/cooperation, symbolically. The symbolism of the mission may be almost as important as its success, and I guess in that case, more allowance is made for things like slipped schedules?
3. In some ways, this "improvisational" mission to help the ISS from falling back into earth is really good because it exercises the space program to be more flexible and alert, especially in relation to #1, having to deal with other countries. It also makes space flight seem more routine, making it that much easier to imagine that space flight will become widely available (to everyone) within our lifetime. That'd be cool.
Riddle me this: (Score:2)
A: You get out and give it a push!
Q: Whet do you do when your space-statioon falls?
A: You get up there and give it push!
Taco Bell! (Score:1)
a-patchy space-station (Score:5)
An old prof. at my U. loves to point out that MS Windows, the Great Pyramids, and the Great Wall, all share approximately equivalent numbers of person hours in them. So, he asks... what makes the great wall and the pyramids stand for centuries and Windows crash almost daily?
The answer is (according to my prof.) that by the time of the pyramids and the great wall, construction was a technology that humans were very familiar with. The project was huge but the tech was well known. Software and space-stations are brand-new, and therefore a certain amount of instability will be inherent in the project.
(* microsoft flame & linux chest-beating omitted *)
What intrests me in the space-station aside from the coolness factor are "patches" like the one posted in this article. NASA is slapping together a mission to prevent catastrophic falure of the project... its a hack. A quick and dirty fix until other team members get their act together. I've seen this millions of times in software-engineering projects.
Open-Source is an intriguing way of dealing with enourmous projects. I think that NASA could stand to learn a few lessons from OS development... as well as OS building from NASA. I find this an intriguing problem set... enormous projects in a short time with huge unknowns... and no one pays attention unless you make a mistake and blow something up.
BTW:
Anybody got numbers for the person hours spent on any given linux distro?
--// Hartsock
Time for some Tom Petty (Score:2)
I gotta remind myself to look on the shuttle pics when they're up to see if they're running Napster up there. Is copyright law interplanetary?
That was ISS (Score:1)
OH THE HUMANITY (Score:2)
What you may not know is that I am on the International Space Station. They have placed me here to keep me safe from my half klingon/half brother who will soon hatch from his human shell and consume the earth in its entirety.
You needn't fear, as using my top-notch Cuban Communist education, I have placed the ISS on a targeted trajectory with Havana.
On Friday April 28, at 0400, I will crash into the Cuban Capital Building, killing Fidel Castro and liberating the oppressed people of the once-free nation.
On impact, Castro's Beowulf Cluster of Quad G4 Boards running Linux will be destoryed, releasing Hianny [cnn.com] from the conspiratorial Cuban mind control machine, thereby neutralizing the treat and making the world safe again.
Thank you.
In a related story . . (Score:5)
As Shuttle astronauts scramble to keep the International Space Station up, a team of Nasa navigation engineers came out with some new findings that brings new urgency to the shuttle launch.
``We're incredibly happy to be here,'' said mission commander James Halsell, a colonel in the U.S. Air Force. ``It's our understanding the vehicle is in fine shape, but if it drifts any lower in it's orbit, it'll be whacked by Iridium salelites.''
An unnamed source close to the project said that a team of hackers calling themselves "Team Slashdot" have hacked the trajectory of the Iridium satleites and put them into the International Space Stations path.
When asked for comment, an unidentified slashdot team member said only: "first..post..grits..pants..natalie..taco". Crypygraphic experts from around the world are working on decoding the message to find it's hiden meaning.
___
Many problems... (Score:1)
Then, it would be really screwed.
Personally, I can't wait till NASA is disbanded, and all of this is privatized. Private companies can't afford to fuck up, so you never have this kind of incompetance. We'll all be a lot better off when it happens, and it is happening.
Same goes for the post office. Grrr.....
ISS = VW? (Score:1)
ISS_UNITS==customary (Score:1)
Since the Space Station was started as an American project, it used customary units. By the time it became international, enough lots-of-fractions-unit stuff was designed that it stuck that way.
Oh, this inspires confidence... (Score:1)
> on-board problems found during tests conducted
> on the launch pad. Repairs were made to systems
> that control the shuttle's rudder, flaps and
> brakes
I can see it now...
"ok, everyone fasten there seatbelts. We're going to land on a 45 degree angle from the run-way, our flaps are busted, so we'll be landing at aproximatly 300MPH (which will instantly evaporate our tires) and as a kicker, we have no breaks, so we expect to come to a complete stop somewhere in the middle of Phenix"
Linux isn't too widespread onboard yet. (Score:2)
Re:How massive is this thing? (Score:2)
256k lbs, according to this [shuttlepresskit.com]. Or is that just the rocket they're using to move it.?
and to all the people who said it's easier to move something in space, the answer is NO. The object is very massive, and is already moving in an incorrect direction at high speed. So the work involved is not in "moving" the object, but rather in changing it's inertia: The thrust must be in such a direction and force that the average of the of the way it was going and the thrust of the rocket is equal to the direction and speed you want it to go.
286es (Score:1)
No Advertisements on the ISS (Score:1)
--Josh
Re:Many problems... (Score:1)
Russians Out of Money (was: Re:Hmm...) (Score:1)
Maybe Mir's commercialization [mirstation.com] will bring the needed money for Russia to continue participating in the ISS... or rather it might encourage them to forget the whole ISS business.
Dominos? (Score:1)
Seriously, what good are ads if only astronauts can see them? Space tourism is still a little ways away... (the recent Mir thing notwithstanding)
Phoenix (Score:1)
NASA Doing their job ? (Score:1)
Re:Dominos? (Score:1)
Nope, they have used it in orbit, too. (Score:2)
Nope. I'm right. Check out:
Debian in Orbit on Space Shuttle!
http://www.debian.org/News/1997/19970708b
Debian Rides Space Shuttle!!
http://www.educ.umu.se/~bjorn/mhonarc-files/debia
Most on-board computers are still about 20-25 years behind today's bleeding edge
This I realize. I wasn't trying to imply that all of the space shuttle's computers are running Linux. They have, however, used linux on some of their experimental computers, as the above articles mention.
What you really heard was probably that NASA's ground control has been switching to Linux en masse.
Nope, I remember what I heard, and a 5 second search on Google will back me up. I recall the news stories from the time, and it was quite a big deal for the community. Back in 1997, Linux was still pretty starved for mainstream acceptance, so NASA adopting Debian in even a very limited capacity was cause for celebration.
Actually, it's funny to think back to those days. Headlines would read things like "Mid-sized company X says something vaguely positive about Linux", or "Small government agency uses Linux in a few of their firewalls". These days we have headlines like "SGI donating their ultra-high-end journalling filesystem to Linux...to release under GPL". My how things have changed...
--Lenny
Re:Dominos? (Score:1)
Not many people really watch shuttle launches anymore either, since they're so "common." I remember during the first shuttle missions, along with the other launches prior - people would stop what they were doing and gather 'round the TV for some "oooohs" and "aaahhhhs."
In my original post, I was thinking of ads being on the side of ISS, not the shuttle - like the Taco Bell ad, if that's true.
I'm just saying, there's better/cheaper ways to get your point across. ;>
Isn't this rather optimistic? (Score:2)
I think in the long run it might prove less expensive for it to have been a U.S. Space Station. Those extra shuttle flights and delays add up.
Bruce
Re:NASA is Doing their job (Score:2)
Don't hammer them so fast. This is uncharted teritory. It's not like they can say: "You know, we learned from the *last* International Space Station we need to have more contingency plans." This is a first. With every firsts comes a lot of learning.
NASA even has another module (yet another back up plan) that they've been threatening to put up if the russians s delay much longer.
Regarding you comments:"we shouldnt be in space?"
and man should use tools. .
and man shouldn't walk upright.
and man shouldn't explore the oceans.
and man shouldn't fly .
ect..ect..
___
Re:Other cool thing about the mission (Score:1)
The fact the Windows crashed? Does the Space Shuttle get invalid page faults in kernel32.dll?, although that would explain most of NASAs cost over runs and delays.
But seriously folks, does anyone know what OS is used on the space shuttle computers, and what NASA generally uses?
Re:Shuttle computers already run Linux... (Score:1)
Re:NASA is Doing their job (Score:2)
and man shouldn't walk upright
I think I walked upright a few times. The last time was about a month or two ago when Slashdot hadn't posted anything interesting and I got up to go to the refrigarator for some more raw cookie dough and cough syrup
Re:Russians Out of Money (was: Re:Hmm...) (Score:1)
Instead of using these funds for Station, they spent it on Mir; in their words, "borrowing" money from the ISS funding to assist in the "commercialization" of Mir.
As it limps along in orbit, Mir continues to distract Russia's efforts from Space Station and make a bad situation worse. The United States is right to raise a fuss -- NASA is getting rooked in the name of international harmony.
Re:Isn't this rather optimistic? (Score:1)
Those extra shuttle flights and delays add up. A billion here, a billion there, sooner or later that's real money. My question is, who's flipping the bill to pay for this "booster flight"? Is russia sharing any of the liability that it created?
___
Last Minute Crew Addition? (Score:2)
A NASA spokesmodel is rumored to have said that "Elian's rapidly increasing knowledge of international relations will be a valuable asset to this mission. Besides, if we can get him off the damn planet for awhile, perhaps we can return to normal, run of the mill day to day lunacy."
Re:Many problems... (Score:1)
"Private companies can't afford to screw up"? Have you never owned a car that was a lemon? Never owned a computer? Never ran Windows? Ever had a bank overcharge you? And have you ever been employed by a large private company?
"You never have this kind of imcomptence"?, you are kidding, right? While NASA might have made some mistakes, how can you say that they are doing a terrible job, when you have no one to compare them to? They have lost 10 astonauts in 40 years, while using new technologies to do totally new things.
The post office is a mostly private company...they receive no tax dollars and I think they mostly do a pretty good job. $.33 to move a letter across a continent in a week is a pretty good price.
Re:OH THE HUMANITY (Score:1)
No... (Score:1)
Re:Isn't this rather optimistic? (Score:1)
Yeah, right! And make another SkyLab??? You can't beat Russian space station's reliability and with the MIR they acquired great experience with living quarters (the single most important part of a space station). Besides, last time I checked the European parts were put on time! Let's try and be less US-centric, shall we?
Re:Shuttle computers already run Linux... (Score:2)
Linux was employed on a microgravity experiment.
These 'experiments' exist in a sealed box, or some such thing, not connected directly to the shuttle in any way (perhaps forpower).
They simply used linux as a controlling OS for an experiment, and placed it on a shuttle.
Real life non-drama (Score:1)
Is there anyway we can convince the media to run with the story like disaster is imminent?
Pump the drama, run the news
"New international space station in failing orbit without engines"
"Umpteen billion dollar space station left without engines, already falling to earth"
"No Scotty on board to save international space station in decaying orbit"
Or is it just that real life is boring compared to the movies.
Re:Dominos? (Score:2)
>I'm just saying, there's better/cheaper ways to get your point across. ;>
Yeah, but not necessarily more novel.
In other news today, Taco Bell paid $6.3 million to put their now popular, Chalupa-loving dog on the side of the ISS. {Cut to multiple shots of the ad that "will never get seen"}. It will be painted on the side of the space station's mess pod. Unfortunately, due to NASA restrictions, the ad will not be visibile, even with a high powered telescope, because it must face away from earth. Here's Taco Bell spokesman, Commander Taco, with some words about this PR stunt. {insert video of spokesman talking about why they did it.} That's it for Roger 10 News, we'll see you tomorrow."
COMMERCIAL
We here at Taco Bell have always thought big, except when it came to prices, and so the biggest thing we could possibly do is to put our ad on the side of the largest man-made structure in space. But that wasn't enough so we are going even further. In addition to the large $6.3 million ad we have painted on the side of the ISS, for a price of $9.6 million, plus $1.2 million a year for the next 10 years, our chalupa-loving dog will live aboard the International Space Station. He will work and play along with astronauts of all nations. So next time you get the craving for almost authentic mexican food, remember to run for the border, because with the help of the ISS, we at Taco Bell are helping to erase them.
To be followed, in later weeks, with an announcement by McDonalds that they will be sending up a McDonald's restaurant pod to be attached to the spacestation, serving delicious McDonald's food, and also some story about how an astronaut is refusing to wear the Nike branded spacesuits that NASA requires because it conflicts with his Adidas endorsement contract.
3 cheers for capitalism!
Huh? (Score:1)
In the long run it would be stupid to make it a U.S. space station. As another poster pointed out, the Russians have a great deal of experience which we need. That's a major factor that lead up to the incarnation of the ISS and is also why the Russians are making a critical piece of it.
America is NOT number one everywhere. Get used to it.
Modules (Score:2)
Or why not have made the module a part of hte station itself? Everyone that modules are slow and inefficient compared to something compiled directly to the kernel. I mean, it IS an essential component of operation. Sheesh, these NASA boys must run windows or something.
-------
CAIMLAS
Re:In a related story . . (Score:2)
'Truth seeks to be free, don't moderate it down!'
Re:That was ISS (Score:1)
Yeah, I remember. They had that MS-funded experiment where they took Linux and Windows 100 miles up and threw them out to see which one crashed first.
Never published the results, tho.
--
"Damn! And just when Piranha was starting to turn the tide of negative PR!"
Re:Many problems...Solution (Score:1)
I realize that they're probably already over budget so I figured that the least we could do was to help. Every person should send 1 roll of duct tape to the ISS team. The sooner the better.
I know they'll appreciate it, you do too. After all, Apollo 13 would've either burned up in the sun or gone the way of Voyager without it!
Don't delay, send 'em a roll today!!!
Re:Many problems... (Score:1)
---
Re:286es (Score:1)
I'm pretty sure they are "hardened" 6502s -- same processor that was in the Apple ][.
--
Yet Another Example (Score:2)
Why does this have to be an international space station? Because some idiots up on the Hill and the State Department thought that it would "foster better international relations" or "develop cooperation between cultures". As if running science experiments or lofting up multiton modules had anything to do with either goal.
What this really points to is that Someone (be it NASA administration, Congress, or the Executive Branch) needs to get their head out of the '70s protest movement. "Make Science Not War" sounds pretty fscking stupid when it's costing taxpayers tens of millions of dollars in overlapping work and delays.
Cost: Lots of lost money, time, and equipment.
Benefit: Putting in space some extranationals whose countries don't have the resources by themselves to build their own space station.
Is it just me, or is the US getting absolutely zip out of this deal? I mean, by letting these other countries in on the project, do we gain leverage in global trade disputes, the Security Council, strategic arms treaties, or conflict negotiations?
NASA needs to learn a lesson from the corporate world: never outsource for materiel you can produce unless your own resources are tied up elsewhere. The words "faster, better, cheaper" will never be associated with the word "international".
telnet://bbs.ufies.org
Trade Wars Lives
Well for Debian... (Score:1)
A code changes to Debian are submitted or accepted once every 13 seconds to 7 minutes. (depending on the time of day) Source: Debian Weekly News - March 28th [debian.org]
Linux kernel (version 2.2.13) has just under 2 million lines of code in it. And remember that each line of code has probably been changed at least once. Plus 2.4.x has lots of new code in it. And I'm not counting all of the software you would get with a average Linux distribution...
Re:Space Tourisim (Score:1)
I think that the law was written that way so that space tourism [www.spaceislandgroup] wouldn't be restricted in the future. I'm not sure as to the actual wording of the law because I heard about it on Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell [artbell.com] when Art was interviewing they guy from Space Island Group (see the link above) talking about plans to make a space station that could be a hotel in the short term.
--Josh
Re:Isn't this rather optimistic? (Score:1)
are waiting for the Proteon rocket booster to
have a couple of successful launches after their
recent round of disasters.
I know there have been news articles talking about the volume (sound) level in the russian modules, it doesn't meet NASA standards.
Living Quarters Was Supposed To Be Russian (Score:1)
telnet://bbs.ufies.org
Trade Wars Lives
GPL Elian! (Score:2)
in "Free Speech"?
If you haven't noticed Elian has been GPL'd for
months now. Everyone has been modifying Elian
to suit their own (political) needs and have been
distributing him Internationally.
BTW:
Is the Elian Distro being used in a DDoE
(Distributed Denial of Entertainment) attack?
I got up this morning and the Elian Channel
- All Elian! All the Time!! - was on every station.
I'm running Linux 2.2.0 on my TV. Is
there a patch out yet for this?
Re:On the count of three... (Score:2)
Knowing NASA, it would take 6-8 weeks and a committee to decide ... :)
Re:Isn't this rather optimistic? (Score:1)
Also note that Canada and Europe have been fairly good about respecting their commitments to the international station, from what I've heard.
Re:Isn't this rather optimistic? (Score:2)
Re:Yet Another Example (Score:1)
Re:How massive is this thing? (Score:1)
Oh yeah...
I keep forgetting that whole "Earth is round" thing. :)
Re:Many problems... (Score:1)
Re:Isn't this rather optimistic? (Score:1)
true. I recently watched a show on TLC about the ISS, and they americans are learning quite a bit from the russians about building a space station. They are heads and shoulders above the americans in that department. But the Americans have the cash.
Also Canadians are building the new robotic arm, since that is where we have loads of experience. Americans could do it all by themselves, but it would take a lot longer, and probably wouldn't be near the quality of the ISS.
Doh... (Score:2)
As much as I disagree with Perens in other areas, I don't think this is necessarily US centric. Russia may very well have the scientists and the engineering experience to design these things, but that is only one important element of the space program. They still need to manufacture. Unfortunately, manufacturing is largely a function of the economy. Not only does it cost billions, which Russia does not have, to produce these things under ideal conditions, but when Russia doesn't even have the stability or the economy for OTHER (as in the rest of the economy) production, it is going to be next to impossible to follow through on the plans. While Russia's economy under communist rule was piss poor, they were sufficiently stable and "wealthy" for such narrow objectives. Today, they are not. They lack to totalitarian rule to divert resources around arbitrarily. The limited infrastructures which they had built up are falling apart, or being torn down. For example, Moscow has had severe problems lately even keeping power lines up, because desperate people have been cutting down high power lines for the cabling (to sell presumably). Add to this problems with staffing, corruption, etc. It would be difficult to even build a modern automobile today (which is why you see very little investment of this kind in Russia), never mind spacecraft.
The bottom line is, that, if Russia can't follow through on their promises, it may very well cost as much much more be politic. That being said, there might be something to be said for this cooperation (e.g. promote pride amongst Russian people, promote mutual good will, etc.), even though it costs us more (in the short run?).
Oh PLEASE! (Score:1)
Re:Dominos? (Score:1)
*mumbles* (damn, why didn't I bookmark it, cache is long gone)
Re:Yet Another Example (Score:2)
>other countries in on the project, do we gain leverage in global trade disputes, the Security
>Council, strategic arms treaties, or conflict negotiations?
(*sigh)
No. And that's a good thing, because nationalistic gain is not the point of this venture.
As a US citizen, I'm increasingly ashamed of the culture of personal and national selfishness that we've grown into in the past quarter century. There are perfectly good reasons to participate in a project that doesn't give immediate gimme-gimme satisfaction, reasons that could be labeled with quaint words like "noble" and "selfless," as well as more mundane ones like "far-sighted" and "cooperative."
Unfortunately, such reasoning gets tarred with the same brush as 'protest movements' and the like, and therefore slandered into submission before the American corporate juggernaut's bottom line.
You can call it 'touchy-feely' or any other name you want, but as a citizen of the human race first and an American second, I applaud the idea of the United States using some of its vast wealth and power for something besides accumulating more wealth and power; it gives me a tiny nugget of hope in a bleak, graceless age.
--
ominous prediction (Score:1)
Hmm. Well, at least we will have a decent scapegoat if I am correct in my assumption of what shall take place.
Hint: Blame Canada!
Re:Russians Out of Money (was: Re:Hmm...) (Score:2)
As far as them borrowing money to make improvments on Mir, I'd like to read and URL's you might have, hadn't heard about it..
Re:Dominos? (Score:2)
Re:Dominos? (Score:1)
http://www.reston.com/nasa/humor/shuttle.ads.ht
and
http://www.reston.com/nasa/commercialization/is
Actually, now that I look at it, the liquid fuel tank is mcdonalds, it is one of the solid boosters that is painted like an energizer.
(oh, and sorry I'm too lazy to actually submit with working links)
Re:NASA Doing their job ? (Score:1)
When Hubble's mirror was ground the piece of glass was so large that the earths gravity affected its shape significantly. When the calculations for the mirror were made they had to take into account the difference in gravitential potential between oribit and ground level and correct for it.
The problem was that the correction was applied twice. The maths for this is actually quite complicated so don't be two hard on them.
-dp
Unfortunately, ISS Is A Failure (Score:2)
Firstly, this is a project without a mission. Lets be realistic here - this project was mostly political - unite Russia and the US in a common scientific project. Instead, it has created divisions between the two nations as dollars and schedules slip.
Secondly, even most scientific reasons forst conjured up are no longer valid. Most experimentation regarding materials can no be done cheaper on earth, and less problematically.
Thirdly, hot since "Star Wars" in the eighties has any project wasted more money without any useful payoff. I regard payoff as being valid scientific progress and wonderment for the US public.
Now we come to the discouraging conclusion - our continued neglect of this boondoggle project is requiring expensive maintainence just to keep it at the status quo.
For these reasons and other I susect that they should simply let current segments burn up and maybe take another stab at this in twenty years or so, when it can be done cost-effectively (satellite launchings are pushing the envelope for lift technologies outside of the ISS effort), and with some valid purpose.
Yeah, June of 2009 (Score:1)
Re:Isn't this rather optimistic? (Score:2)
And on another note, everyone makes a mistake eventually. The US made theirs early on with SkyLab. I'd say you learn more from your mistakes then your accomplishments..
It was never about science (Score:1)
Getting Russia onboard in a meaningless, endless debacle of public spending is the best way to keep their rocket engineers from moving to the middle east or China.
Also, the Star Wars gravy train had dried up and left many military contractors hung out to dry, so the usual pork diet was lined up to keep them afloat too.
Re:Hmm... (Score:1)
a cool device for space station... (Score:1)
Seth
Burn Up?! (Score:1)
The shuttle put them up there using the arm, it can just pluck them out of space and return with them the same way...
They can then be used for exhibit pieces at the Smithsonian. Heh.
Deport Alien Gonzalez! (Score:1)
But seriously, the childs father is responsible for ALL that happens to him.
It's a big word, 'RESPONSIBLE' but overlooked FAR too often.
Re:Yeah, June of 2009 (Score:2)
Thanks
Bruce
Re:Isn't this rather optimistic? (Score:2)
By the way, Apollo 13 wasn't the way Oliver Stone portrayed it: When the Service Module blew up, Apollo 13 astronauts rode home on the LM life-support and got their deorbit burn from the LM, and the Grumman engineering team was at least as responsible for saving their lives as NASA and Boeing were. But they were at each other's throats, as they were all through the rest of the program.
Given that the Russians ran power electrical cables through open doors that they needed to close to keep their astronauts breathing, I'm not sure I believe in them as orbital habitat designers. What they have, though, and we don't, is experience.
Thanks
Bruce
Re:ISS_UNITS==customary (Score:2)
Low earth orbit (Score:2)
Basic problem: space travel using chemical fuels just barely works. Nuclear-powered rockets are possible, but messy. That's why space travel hasn't progressed much in 30 years.
Bed Time Story (Score:2)
The ISS had a great fall
All the NASA Shuttles and all the NASA men,
couldn't put ISS together again.
Thank you,
Thank you very much.
Re:In space it doesn't matter (Score:2)
It's a common misconception that gravity is zero in orbit, but it isn't. It is just that the centripital force due to the circular acceleration around the planet is equal to the gravitational pull, so any object inside of a craft experiences zero net force, or weightlessness. You can think of it as the spacecraft "falling" in a circle around the earth.
Re:A question (Score:2)
> with quotes like While crews normally train together for a year or more before
> launch, this crew was only finalized in mid-February.
You don't finalize your crew before you let them work together. Intracrew social conflicts are not an option in space.
Space Station Is A Kluge (Score:2)
This thing was started in 1983 in Reagan's State of the Union Address. NASA quickly decided it was supposed to last for 30 years, create every kind of perfect crystal/drug/ball bearing/McGuffin possible, service satellites, be the gateway to Mars, have a crew of 8, 100 kilowatts of power and an equivalent amount of heat rejection (important and often overlooked by non-space geeks - space is the ultimate vacuum thermos that keeps heat in), a 300 foot truss that was going to have every kind of telescope pointed up and every kind of camera pointed down. It was supposed to be made from a couple of 42 foot modules (Lab and Hab (habitation)) linked in a racetrack via four corner nodes that were basically six sided docking ports. Supplies were going to be brought up (and trash down) in a 27 foot logistics module via the Shuttle. The thing was supposed to be in a 28 degree inclined orbit, where the shuttle can take a maximum amount of payload, and reboost was supposed to use excess water as propellant offloaded from the Shuttle's fuel cell system. The whole thing was to be inaugurated in 1992, Columbus' 500th anniversary for $8 billion dollars.
What a crock. And to think I got excited and wasted years of my life on this thing.
The "dream" has undergone reverse "mission creep" to where it isn't even worth doing anymore, but nobody has the guts to say that. Forget 4 nodes and two 47 foot modules and crew of 8 - they turned the 27 foot logistics module into a "lab" and are using one node (the one up there now) to hook it to Russian junk that couldn't pass a NASA safety review if its life depended on it. (Wait a minute - astronaut's lives DO depend on it!) With the 27 foot logistics module "reassigned" and the 47 foot modules "reconsidered", all supplies are to be delivered via Soyuz/Progress to the new 57 degree inclined orbit - max payload ability for Russian launches, but the Shuttle has to leave stuff at home and burn a hideous amount of extra fuel to get there. On the news they say "the shuttle delivered a ton of supplies" as if that were a big deal - the shuttle was supposed to deliver over TEN TONS of supplies per flight in the original orbit!!! Since resupply logistics are now the stranglehold on the project after the STUPID decision to move the station's orbit to allow Russian participation, there is going to be effectively NO science over the 10 (not 30) projected life.
And as far as reboost to overcome atmospheric drag goes, well gee, at the 57 degree orbit we can't afford to lift 100 KW of solar cells, so we can't support water electrolysis to obtain reboost propellant, so we can't use the Shuttle's fuel cell byproducts, so let's just take that water that cost $10,000 a pound to lift to this God-forsaken orbit, bring it all back to Earth, and open a spigot after landing to let it drain out on to a concrete runway at Kennedy Space Center. Instead, let's change the reboost fuel to hydrazine and fly it up as part of the resupply weight budget (already reduced by a factor of ten, remember)! Who cares if the highly toxic exhaust freezes all over the exterior of the space station and sticks to an astronaut's space suit during a space walk and kills the crew when it vaporizes back in the crew modules after the spacewalk? The crew is only 3 now, not 8.
NASA has been working on Space Station for almost 20 years now as an officially sanctioned project and it is a criminal embarassment as to how little engineering has been accomplished in the past and how little science will be accomplished in the future. The cost overrun is beyond comprehesion over the past 20 years and is deliberately obscured by NASA by always referring to the overrun from the last rebudget exercise, not the beginning of the project.
Worst of all, it bodes terribly for our future in space. This millstone around our neck will soak up all of our energies for the next decade until we deorbit the thing into the Pacific with a sigh of relief. Only then will we start thinking seriously about a moonbase / Mars mission that will stay put and grow with each pound we launch to it instead of continually slip down into a firey re-entry and destruction unless we send up an equal mass of reboost propellant every year to fart away.
When I was a kid, I watched Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon and thought I could set foot on Mars - or at least some American my age would. But if NASA manages a moonbase or Mars mission the same way they've done Space Station, I'll be in my grave before another human sets foot on another world again. And she probably won't even be American. D'oh!
Re:286es (Score:2)
Space Technology ia an area of special interest for me. Here are the CPUs that I use in "back-of-the-envelope" speculation and planning.
AFAIK, the most powerful fully space-qualified CPU is the RAD-6000 SC (rad-hardened IBM/6000 single chip RISC computer akin to a R6000 workstation) used on the Mars pathfinder [nasa.gov], the IMAGE [nasa.gov] satellite (Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration) and several other projects. As a guess, the GNU CC-supported MIL-SPEC 1750A [uregina.ca] (16 bit PDP-11-like CPU ca. 1979) is the most popular CPU in use right now for 'power apps', and 80C85 and 80C86 are quite common among NASA craft currently in space.
I had some links to lists of space qualified CPUs (don't know if they were comprehensive) but they are all dead now. If anyone has the link to the space-qualified hardware list, please post them here.
ISS Planning (Score:2)
The problem lies not with planning, not even with NASA, but in the fact that ISS is a foreign-policy tool intended to help the Russians keep their technical class employed and explicitly NOT selling nukes to Iraq. All other considerations are really secondary. As for your points:
1. What-Ifs? NASA has made detailed consideration of the what-ifs, but they are bound here not by the technically feasible but by the politically possible. It was suspected years ago that the Russians might fail to launch their module, but NASA was prevented again and again from doing anything about it by the political ramifications of embarrassing the Russians.
2. Slipped schedules are practically CAUSED by the diplomatic requirements of the mission. Since NASA delivered a plan that had the Russians as a critical mission component, which is exactly what Congress did NOT want but what the Clinton administration DID, the Russians were in the catbird seat as far as schedule. Slip slip slip
3. You're right about the improvisational nature here, except that the people going had already trained for a FULL 2A mission, now they will merely do part of what they had trained for. Space flight is less routine this year than in any year since Return to Flight, with just 4 or maybe 5 missions, mainly because post-Challenger, the shuttle was (sensibly) stripped of its satellite-launch mission; and now, with ISS, it has become pretty much the ISS van line. From a space science standpoint, this is an enormous waste of money and resources that could be better spent on
Don't look to NASA to provide that ride to space. Look at the new launch concepts being developed (www.rotaryrocket.com, www.kistler.com) and what they might achieve in reduced launch costs. This is the way that the average joe might get to space one day.
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