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Space Science

NASA's Compton Hits Earth On Sunday 99

Posted by emmett from the thanks-for-the-nine-years dept.
fialar writes: "NASA's Compton Gamma-Ray laboratory is due to plunge into a remote area of the Pacific on Sunday marking an end to the mission. Read the complete story here."
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NASA's Compton Hits Earth on Sunday More

NASA's Compton Hits Earth on Sunday

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  • I don't know if it'd be all that bad a PR thing for the US. The CIA blew up a Chinese embassy not to long ago, albeit it was and "accident". The government was able to spin their way out of that. And that was a tough one. I think having a little 4 ton spacecraft randomly fall from the sky would be much easier to explain.
  • How true. When I was in Beirut in the early eighties it became common NOT to beleive the documentation we were supplied. Nothing as bad as Panama or China, but it could have been. Over there everyone was a "bad guy". Even the intelligence community. They have seemed to have toned it down quite a bit over the last few years though. It's nothing like it was in the late 70's or mid 80's. That's why the China embassy bombing surprised me. I had thought as a country we greq up a little and were beyond all that.
  • Skylab was great. I have some pictures from NASA in Ames from the party they had when it finally plunged through the atmosphere and burned up. I seem to remember reports that a 1 foot or so peice actually made it to the ground and landed in New Zealand somewhere. Remember the US/Soviet docking? I forget what it was called but remember seeing it on TV.
  • Many estimate that the 1/1000 chance is way too large. Some estimate that there is only a 1 in 4 million chance even if the remaining 2 gyros fail: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/astronomy/sa ve_compton_000515.html I think that NASA, like other government agencies I know, is more concerned with covering its own ass against bad press than doing good work.
  • I'm 22. I'm a moderate space geek. I know about skylab. Skylab was damn cool. The whole idea of an orbiting space station is awesome. I hope some good shit comes out of the new international station like it did from skylab. That russian/american docking will probably be in the history books for a long time.
  • After an unintentional mid-eighties nuclear escalation: "If this is what it means to be under the United States nuclear umbrella, I think we'd rather go it alone"

    After a test firing of a Minuteman-II rocket, due for installation in nearby countries as per request, went bad due to a misaligned gyro: "We will not stand to have these things near our state. You militants have to know that the days of whomever draws first wins have been over for a lifetime' [exact quote, bad translation]

    After a military exercise in the Pacific allegedly 'locked on' to a civilian aircraft flying in restricted airspace: "If they are allowed to continue this brash course of action, not only will we speak out against it we will rally others to our cause [total offensive disarmament]'

    The Swiss shoot off their mouths faster than Clint Eastwood can draw that .357 of his. They engage in the worst sort of mouthy threat, backed by hot air and vitrolic innuendo. I refer to them as cowboys because they are as likely as Ronnie 'The Cowboy Diplomat' Raygun to shoot off their mouth with threat.
  • Ok everyone, here's a 22nd century time capsule for you...

    Pebble-sized titanium bolts, aluminum I-beams and heavy nickel batteries
  • Beirut?? That late?

    A few friends and I were sitting around BS'ing about this very subject some weeks back. From what I gleaned, things have gotten progressivly better since Vietnam, when intel was to be considered correct as a last recourse only, through Panama, where the intel was judged to be correct if and only if it made absolute sense, to Desert Storm, where intel was 100% correct and stating different meant you got branded..

    The stuff they pull never ceases to surprise me, unfortunatly. I always assume worst case because that's all they have been historically good for, and they hit new lows all the time..

  • He wasn't completely forgotten. [berkeley.edu] Speaking of scientists working to advance the frontiers of Gamma Ray Research, you forgot to mention another fine pioneer, David Banner [hulk-emm.com].

    And, yo, moderators, where ya' gettin' yo $3 crack from?

    --Joe
    --
  • After such a successful mission the only thing to make it better would be to actually profit monetarily from it. So sell it on EBAY!! One used as-is satellite. For research or retaliation. Cost of sale includes shipping (i.e. final resting place of satellite). The right entry angle and you could smack someone's embassy pretty hard. What, our satellite? Act of god man, we didn't mean to blow up your building.
  • it is kind of scary. i can only hope that the moderator was trying to be equally funny.
  • Actually 1 in 1000 is terrible odds, what about animals, property damage, and cosmetic wilderness damage? If it lands and destroys part of some farm and kills a few animals is that ok?

    There are more things on Earth than just people and some of them are actually very important. A responsible space agency would understand this and release the gamma ray satellite when they are sure it can be landed safely into the ocean. Risking a few ocean fish sure beats a potential hit or near hit to a populated area.
  • Very good. Nice job. I miss the old days. . .
  • There once was a slahshdot request
    A new haiku rejoicing success
    Last night life, so sweeten'd
    Many hats would be eaten
    2 point postings, I must now confess

  • Escape speed corrections. (Score:3)

    by roystgnr ( 4015 ) <`gro.srengots' `ta' `yor'> on Saturday June 03, 2000 @10:36AM (#1028777) Homepage
    Earth escape speed is about 25 mi/sec. This speed, however, will still leave the object in solar orbit at earth's distance. To make the object fall into the sun, you have to accelerate it to the orbital speed of the earth around the sun, about 67 mi/sec. This delta-v requires far more fuel than any spacecraft can possibly carry to low earth orbit.

    You got all the facts right; the numbers are off. Earth escape speed is 7 miles per second (perhaps you were thinking Mach 25, orbital speed?), and earth orbital speed is... damn, I used to know this one. BOTE calculations give me 19 mi/sec.

    Anyway, a lot of speed. We can't even send probes up to solar escape velocity without gravity assists, and solar escape velocity is actually lower deltaV than an orbit inside the sun.

    No, much better to drop used-up LEO satellites into the ocean (since air resistance will bring them down eventually, best to force the matter and keep the reentry risks minimal), and to move used-up HEO satellites into parking orbits where they are less likely to be a debris source.

    To answer another poster's question, yes satellites carry rocket fuel on them... although it's almost certainly not going to be the same high-thrust cryogenic fuel that got them up in orbit to begin with. For a satellite, you just need a little thrust for stationkeeping purposes. Since the Earth isn't perfectly round and isn't the only other body in the universe, you can't expect your satellite to follow a nice Kepler orbit exactly without help. And for LEO sats, your orbit will drop over time as air resistance (not much of it, but it's there) takes its toll, unless you have small thrusters to raise the orbit again.

    Of course, what I'd like to see done with old satellites is refueling and refurbishing. I'd like to see a tug in orbit with ion drives to reduce its fuel requirements and a metal or water-shielded bay to carry satellites through the Van Allen belt. The primary use of such a beast would be to carry satellites from LEO to GEO (thus putting much heavier sats in geosynchronous orbit than we can with chemical rockets alone, and permitting travel to GEO from reusable launch vehicles), but perhaps even bringing back satellites for on-orbit refueling and replacement of failed parts would be economical.
  • Uh, the CIA blew up a Chinese Embassy? The freaking U.S. Air Force did it! It was bad intel on the part of the CIA but the U.S. Air Force is the one that dropped the bomb. Sounds like someone has been read too much Tom Clancy.

  • I dunno, If I had to choose, I think maybe DC or Miami would be ok. These places need to begin again anyway.

    BTW, I like the oscar, nice site.

  • I'm pretty sure they have a piece that survived reentry on display somewhere. I think I remembevr seeing it. Maybe in the Air and Space museum in DC. if I remember correctly, it looked sort of like a mutilated bale of hay. That doesn't really make sense, but it's what comes to mind.

  • Compton was a great success (Score:4)

    by Bryce ( 1842 ) on Friday June 02, 2000 @04:56PM (#1028781) Homepage
    From the article:

    The Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory outlived its mission lifetime by seven years. NASA considers it to be one of the space agency's most successful missions.

    All that any satellite has to do is fulfil its mission. If it sticks around another year or two, then that's gravy. All satellites eventually die; the low earth orbiting ones all need to be deorbited so they don't collide with other satellites. Compton outlived its life by _seven_ _years_. The US taxpayer got WELL worth his or her money with this one. ;-)

  • just to be annoying..... actually the compton gamma ray observatory DOES have a radioactive source on board, it is solar powered like you mentioned so does not contain any RTG's (radioisotope thermoelectric generators) for power. but it does contain two small Cobalt 60 gamma emitters for calibration of the COMPTEL instrument. the amount of radioactive material contained in the sources is so small however, that when dispersed in the atmosphere, it can be considered negligable when compared to natural background radiation.
  • Umm...one of the main reasons NASA spends lots of money throwing stuff into outer space is to further the pursuit of science. I'd imagine quite a few "nerds" (I dunno, even when happily self afflicted, that word still seems to carry a negative annotation to me. Geek is ok though.) find space exploration, and most anything pertaining to it rather interesting. If nothing else, it has provoked some fairly interesting discussion in the threads. Stop whining.

  • A bus stop in Redmond.

    (Score -1 Flaming Satelite bait)

  • A big fat battery plunging through the roof of my house, along with aluminum I-beams and titanium bolts. Yippee.

    These things aren't THAT accurate you know...

    --
    Eric is chisled like a Greek Godess

  • While Gamma Ray research was furthered by NASA's Compton, the greatest Gamma Ray research was done by the pre-eminent scientist of his day in 1960 by Dr. Reed Richards.

    Eschewing the titular formality of Dr, preferring instead to be known simply as Reed Richards, he led a manned space probe, along with his wife Sue, her brother Johnny and their friend Ben. This probe was of such a secret nature that history has not recorded it, bestowing the first manned space probe honors upon John Glenn instead.

    While the Gamma Ray research during the probe did not go as planned (Reed and the others were are all horribly mutated in various ways), it led to further refinement of Gamma Ray research techniques, finally culminating in NASA's Compton.

    I think we all owe a debt of gratitude to the Fantastic Foursome of those intrepid space pioneers, who by necessity of the secret nature of their research, have been passed over by the history books.
  • NASA definitely needs a little good PR; that 1 in a 1000 stat didn't go over well with the general public. You can't expect the G.P. to understand that it's only if another gyroscope goes out.
  • You might be thinking Persing 2...not Minuteman II

    The Minutemans were never based outside the US.
  • I'm sorry, but I'm outraged that this has been moderated up. Somebody needs to point out what is really going on here.

    Dr. Reed Richards did not do any important Gamma radition research in the 1960's, but instead he stole his research for the legendary Victor Von Doom. [sigma.net] I wish you historical revisionists would finally give this accomplished scientist the credit he is due.

    This crap is enough to make me not want to even come to /.
  • I suppose it depends on what you consider the "thing" is. I don't think safety was the driving factor in the decision because the Goddard engineers figured out a way to do a controlled re-entry without the use of any gyros. Unfortunately the NASA brass didn't want to hear it. I'm guessing that budget reasons probably had more to do with it.
  • The US/Soviet docking of 1975 was called the ASTP (Apollo - Soyuz Test Project), and some would argue it to be the beginning of the end of the cold war. Not only that, but it was also the first (and only) spaceflight for Deke Slayton, who was one of the original mercury astronauts, but was grounded for abnormal heart rythms before the Mercury mission that was scheduled to be his. As for the spirit of the nation of the time, it would be nice to get the nation thinking the space program was worth it (maybe they don't realize that a lot of the technology in their everyday lives is a result of the space program).

    The funny thing is, I know/think this, and I'm only a Junior in High School.
  • I remember staying up real late to watch it fall out of the sky as a kid, about 9 yrs old. It was fascinating to me - Perth (the nearest largish city in the area where it crashed) wasn't really sure if it was going to hit or not, and there was a general superstition in the neighbourhood about the whole thing ...

    It ended up crashing near Esperance, and yes - large bits of it made it to the ground, including an Oxygen tank or two. There are people in Esperance who swear that the piles of junk on the shelf contain bits of Skylab, even to this day.

    Here in Los Angeles (where I now live), there's a bit of Skylab up in the Griffith Observatory (near the Hollywood sign), as well as a pretty nifty little display on the whole thing. Go check it out some time if you're in the area, it's a free geek-out.
  • Actually someone is taking odds for it landing on NASA HQ...

    The big worry is we will have a coronal mass ejection (like happened thursday) that will arrive at earth saturday night (Like is predicted for tonight) which will cause the earths atmosphere to expand enough to cause it to re-enter early.

    Re-enter to early and your in asia
    Come in one orbit early and your in the jungles of south america...

    So much for reducing risk...

    TastesLikeHerringFlavoredChicken
  • look on the AviationNow [aviationnow.com] site here [aviationnow.com]

    Any odds on it landing on NASA HQ ?

    TastesLikeHerringFlavoredChicken
  • My Chemistry teacher (a big aeronautics fan) mentioned that there exists a photo of a NASA rep handing over A$5 to a Western Australian park ranger (where Skylab fell over) to pay for "littering" in the outback after bits of Skylab landed there.

  • when NADA says it's going to land in a remote area of the Pacific, the people of Western Australia had better put their hard hats on.

    Precedent: Skylab

  • Haiku (Score:3)

    by 575 ( 195442 ) on Friday June 02, 2000 @04:32PM (#1028797) Journal
    Compton, satelite
    Not the bad L.A. suburb
    Don't confuse the two
  • I know more then just a few. And how about people getting out and getting a job so that they can support themselves and their children? Of the people that I know on welfare almost every single one of them just don't give a rats ass. They're glad the government is giving them money and that they don't have to work hard to support themselves. As for the small children, some of these people are taking this money and doing whatever they wish with it and damn the children. Maybe it's different where you are but it certainly that way here.

  • I wish I was able to have enough money, to be able to have billions of dollars of technology crash into the earth and speeds that are just obsence....so...much..fun.
  • Oh and on a second thought don't try the "Well they couldn't help having the children they need help" ploy... that's what condoms, the pill, Depo-Provera and a myriad of other birth control methods are for. Got pregant and can't support the child? Well abort it (if that is where your politics go) or adopt it. Think about what that childs life is going to be like if you can't support it and for God's sake take care of your responibilties.

  • the fireworks with this one won't be as nearly as impressive as Iridium.
  • you approach life as though your mommy is still laying out your clothes for you. life, for most individuals, is complex. solutions, like the ones you suggest, are not easily found or sought. once you experience life more you'll find that out.

  • Bummer! (Score:3)

    by zeck ( 103790 ) on Friday June 02, 2000 @04:31PM (#1028803)
    According to the article (for those too lazy to read it), it was still working fine with 2 out of 3 gyroscopes after the first one failed. They decided to crash it to reduce the risk of debree hitting a person from 1 in 1000 (after the second gyroscope failed and it lost control) to 1 in 29 million.

    That seems like kind of a waste to me. I mean, 1 in 1000 doesn't seem so bad to me, odds-wise. And that's only after the second one fails. They probably could have gotten years of service out of it without any problem.
  • If it comes in early it will hit Central / South america.

    Now we know where Costa Rica's is getting the computers for it's free internet proposal.

    Anyone watching the GRO reentry live [spaceflightnow.com] ?

    TastesLikeHerringFlavoredChicken

  • Doing the right thing (Score:4)

    by Tei'ehm Teuw ( 191740 ) on Friday June 02, 2000 @04:31PM (#1028805)
    NASA has known about this for months. They have spent a lot of man hours working toward a safe solution. They must have a controlled entry for Compton to target a remote area in the Pacific Ocean for it to crash. Got to admire NASA for doing the right thing, even though crashing an expensive satelite into the ocean isn't always the best PR.

    I hope the press is kind to them, they sure were rough on NASA back in Dec,-Jan when this first was announced.

  • I guess NASA weighed the cost of keeping it going versus the potential benefit. I don't know how long this satelite has been up there, or how much more could be done with it, but I guess with NASA's tightened budget, it wasn't worth it. <P> Anyone know any more details about the satelite and gamma-ray research? I'm curious.

  • NASA CUTBACKS caused by Compton Crash (Score:4)

    by Tei'ehm Teuw ( 191740 ) on Friday June 02, 2000 @04:36PM (#1028807)
    SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR ANNOUNCES HISTORIC COOPERATIVE AGREEMENT BETWEEN NASA AND THE U.S. FISH & WILDLIFE SERVICE.

    WASHINGTON, D.C., June 2, 2000. Secretary of the Interior called a press conference today to announce the implementation of a new cooperative agreement between the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The interior Secretary called the agreement an historic step towards successful implementation of Reinventing Government, Stage II, that has been developed by the Clinton Administration.

    Under the terms of the new agreement, packs of wolves, imported from Canada, will be introduced into several NASA centers. In particular, the NASA research and spaceflight centers at Goddard (Greenbelt, MD), Marshal (Huntsville, AL), Johnson (Houston, TX), and Ames (Moffett Field, CA) have been targeted. "Wolves are an endangered species that need special protection to allow their populations to increase," said Babbit. "Private landowners have objected to releasing wolves in National Parks, fearing that they will wander onto private lands and attack livestock. This agreement represents an innovative compromise that will allow the wolves to prosper in areas where the public will have no objection to their presence."

    The Administrator of NASA, Daniel Goldin was present at the Department of Interior press conference. When asked for his reaction to the plan, Goldin said, "NASA is undergoing unprecedented downsizing in response to the desire on the part of the Clinton Administration and the U.S. Congress to reduce the size and cost of the Federal Government. This agreement with the Fish and Wildlife Service will introduce ecologically sound management practices that will replace the 'business as usual' approach to personnel issues at NASA. Federal agency work forces are no different than overpopulated herds of deer or elk in our country today. We, too, need to thin the herds," said Goldin.

    The Interior Secretary interrupted Mr. Goldin to reassure NASA employees that the vast majority of them would be unaffected by wolf pack predation. "Keep in mind that wolves tend to prey mostly on the weak and slow," Babbit said. "Most NASA employees can move pretty fast and stay out of harm's way. If you keep alert and show no fear, chances are the wolves will leave you alone. Our wildlife experts tell me that 95% of the NASA employees will be unaffected by wolf predation in an average year."

    An information brochure, entitled "Adapt or Die," will be distributed to all NASA employees. The brochure explains the ecological basis for this new management policy. It also points out that there are severe penalties for harming endangered wolves, even in self-defense. It says, "Keep in mind that humans are not an endangered species and, therefore, lack protection under the law."

  • Nah, Clancy is to intraverted, I like Ludlum.

    Anyway, I never really bought the oh we acidetally did it story. I think it was a well thought out excercise. I wouldn't blame the Air Force, the pilot gets his order to drop the pickle on spot x and he flies and drops. He has no breifing on the intel or what is really inside. Hell they could have told him Hitler was in the building, to him it doesn't matter, he's just following his mission plan. The spin that some CIA analyst didn't know the right street address? Come on, YHBT HAND.

  • Perhaps a better failure state for various satellites, rather than crashing into the earth, is to crash into the Sun(or even to simply travel off into space?)

    The presumption is this: The passage of time creates additional technologies for discerning signal from noise in radio signals. Thus, missions could be designed to have failure states that allow for the presumption that, in case of gyroscopic failure that would otherwise lead to an earth crash recovery model, a "send it out there and hope we can still interpret its signals" mode could be used.

    Of course, this would never function for anything in a low earth orbit or even in geosync, due to the requirements for enough fuel to escape our orbit, but there's might be at least a few satellites barely in orbit such that a maximum burn of all reserved fuel in a given direction would allow escaping our orbit entirely.

    Thoughts? I'm no rocket scientist, and I fully admit that.

    Yours Truly,

    Dan Kaminsky
    DoxPara Research
    http://www.doxpara.com
  • Compton outlived its life by _seven_ _years_. The US taxpayer got WELL worth his or her money with this one.

    Yeah, try and sell that to the public. Never mind that we spend more on welfare in a week then NASA spends in a year (and get more from NASA mind you). Just like the moon landings cost the American public damn little (I don't have the figures here at hand unfortunatly) but people were convinced it was a waste of money. Why? The news media. Bastards. They can hardly ever tell a story with any meat behind it and when they do they botch it. Ex: Clinton got head from a intern! Hang him! Possibly sold secrets to China? No one will care about that... not news. Alright. Excuse me while I go and attempt to calm down...

  • Not to knock the Swiss. Nice people, fine country, but your representation makes the rest of y'all look like cowboys

    Huh? How so? The hot chocolates good.

  • hmm (Score:1)

    by vectus ( 193351 )
    I kinda wish it'd hit land, cause a it'd make an awsome souvenir.
  • Funny! Like a SegFault piece, but even better...

    NASA had the "best and brightest" - in the late '60s and early '70s. Then many of the really good people moved on, especially after it became clear that the Apollo program wouldn't continue.

    Now NASA has four types of programs: (1) old missions that are still running (and I've seen the mainframes at JPL running ancient software to support the surviving planetary probes); (2) old technology they're still flying (Space Shuttle); (3) the "better, faster, cheaper" missions that mostly fail, at least so far; and (4) visionary stuff like manned Mars missions that they hope will eventually gain support and massive funding.

    NASA needs its long-serving staff for the first two categories, uses kids (JPL postdocs, the next crop of NASA-dependent scientist welfare cases) to burn up the most of the third missions, and keeps overpaid managers and the PR machine on #4.

    NASA has outlived its usefulness in an age when a Motorola can spend $50 Billion on Iridium folly. Since there's that kind of money available for space enterprises, government subsidies are not only not necessary but counterproductive anymore.

    Just my 2 cents...

  • Of course, this would never function for anything in a low earth orbit or even in geosync, due to the requirements for enough fuel to escape our orbit, but there's might be at least a few satellites barely in orbit such that a maximum burn of all reserved fuel in a given direction would allow escaping our orbit entirely.

    Satellites have rocket fuel on board? That doesn't seem right to me.

  • Earth escape speed is about 25 mi/sec. This speed, however, will still leave the object in solar orbit at earth's distance. To make the object fall into the sun, you have to accelerate it to the orbital speed of the earth around the sun, about 67 mi/sec. This delta-v requires far more fuel than any spacecraft can possibly carry to low earth orbit.

    Ah-duh. Makes perfect sense. Forgot about the much, much bigger "dent in the fabric" that we were already spinning in.

    --Dan
  • Skylab was from the REAL MACHO days of NASA. They couldn't do anything wrong.

    When Skylab was launched (check out this link [nasa.gov]) it lost a solar panel. The photo on that link is Skylab clearly missing a wing! What happened was during the launch vibration shook the missing solar panel until it deployed. It was ripped off the Saturn V/Skylab stack by *atmospheric drag* taking a meteorite shield and fouling up the other solar panel. The first people to live on Skylab had to clear the remaining solar panel so it could deploy, and rig a sunshade to bring temperatures in the laboratory down to bearable levels.

    And, not to be completely offtopic, today's Astronomy Picture of the Day [nasa.gov] has a good page about the Compton re-entry.

  • You're correct.. It was a failure of my family company (who designed the faulty guidance systems) so I should have known better. They did the Pershing II, the Minuteman II and had a hand in the failed Polaris refit. No wonder we sold that division to General Dynamics..
  • I agree, NASA gets it right more often than not. The problem is, when there is as much taxpayer money on the line as with even their "economy" missions, they still are given no margin for error in the press or by the critics.

    I was a junior in high school when Hubble went up. I remember the shit NASA caught over the flawed mirror, and how "Hubble couldn't see without glasses". I would say that is one mission that has more than redeemed itself.
  • 70% of welfare dollars go to small children. unlike you, i prefer to take care of human beings. you should get to know a few. you might find that you like them.

  • not quite as precise as a mars landing, but still... Frightening thought though. (and I don't think they'd let that happen twice)
  • don't forget yeller. i think he's a busboy or something.
  • How is these lyrics insightful? Its disgusting...


    Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
    NPS Internet Solutions, LLC
    www.npsis.com [npsis.com]
  • 1/1000 is the probability of actually killing somebody. Then there's the (oh, say, 1 in 5) probability of a front page story like:

    Perth schoolkids almost killed by Gamma-Ray Satellite!

    The fact that the pieces landed 30 yards from the nearest kids would be entirely secondary to the news editors. They'd probably mention the distance in about the third or forth paragraph.

  • I've had lots of fun with the BATSE [batse.com] instrument onboard this observatory. On May 19, 1998, I was at the Nordic Optical Telescope [not.iac.es] at La Palma, Canary Islands. BATSE came up with some rough coordinates for a Gamma Ray Burst during that day. When darkness came, the BeppoSAX satelites came with more accurate coordinates, and we took a few exposures of the sky. My first thought when I saw the images was that it would be almost impossible to find anything there, there were lots and lots of stars, and all we where looking for was another tiny dot. Nevertheless, one of the other guys on the team found it, it was the 7th Gamma Ray Burst Optical Counterpart that was discovered. More about it here [astro.uio.no]. I can tell you it was exciting.

    I had another attempt after getting some coordinates in January this year as well, but failed to find anything [nasa.gov].

    Bye, CGRO, you've been a great instrument.

  • (apologies to Tom Petty)

    I'm a good tool. I love my gamma
    Love burst tests, and imaging too
    I make good maps, with EGRET and COMPTEL
    And I'm wideband to 30 GeV, too.

    It gets lonely at three-twenty miles high
    There's a spysat here, we never even talk.
    But I'm a bad sat, 'cuz I only got two gyros
    I'm a bad sat, ao they're breaking me up

    And I'm free ... free falling

    Down at Goddard, out on the Beltway,
    Could keep me up 'til my detectors go dark!
    But all the hackers are standing in the shadows
    While the suits there, are holding all the cards.

    So I'm free, I'm free fallin'

    I wanna glide down in the Pacific
    Don't wanna leave chunks all over the sky
    Don't wanna free fall down onto someone
    Don't wanna be a NASA black eye

    So I'm free, I'm free fallin'

    Yes, I'm Compton. I loved my gamma
    Read transients, and did imaging too
    I'm a bad sat, and you won't even miss me
    I'm a bad sat, and it's breaking my heart

    So I'm free, I'm free fallin'
  • My mommy has lousy fashion sense. I don't let her lay out my clothes. As for the solution what's wrong with adoption? I'm adopted. My parents raised me well. At least with adoption some criteria is applied to the process. As for abortion... well you don't have to worry about the child after that now do you? What's wrong with working to support yourself and not leaning on the government (actually those who are working)?

  • After a test firing of a Minuteman-II rocket, due for installation in nearby countries as per request, went bad due to a misaligned gyro: "We will not stand to have these things near our state. You militants have to know that the days of whomever draws first wins have been over for a lifetime' [exact quote, bad translation]

    Compare that to the US, who threatened military action which might well have lead to the third WW, just because some missiles were stationed nearby in Cuba.
  • A retrofit from the shuttle could be an answer on an as needed basis. Either fic it or strap on some Wiley Coyote rockets and send it on it's way like "Veger".

    The Interstellar Highway Patrol tolerates occasional probes from backward civilizations like us, but wanton littering? NO WAY. First one of these and it's going to be a bad case of 'Klatuu Verada Nicto'.

  • The craft began coming apart about 2:14 a.m. and engineers estimated that it would take as long as 20 minutes for some of the lighter pieces finally to hit the water. (CNN [cnn.com])

    That comment deorbits on its own (because lighter pieces fall more slowly than heavier pieces! ha!).

  • If it is not orbitting above high concentrations of geeks, they should have kept it.

    Isn't there a way of having it crash into a particular office in Redmond?

    dePapierBelge

  • I'm usually extremely skeptical and almost always never accept conspiracy theories, but does anyone realise that the embassy bombing occured at the same time as some Chinese spies were caught stealing Tomohawk missile secrets and other stuff. Seems like the bombing was quite a clear payback and warning to China IMHO.
  • I'm no rocket scientist (no pun intended), but there must be some way that the remains of the satellite could be put to some function. Given the costs of sending stuff into space is about $US22000/kg (I think), if you can reuse one tonne of old satellite parts, you've just saved yourself $22 million. Again, I know little about the science of satellites, this is just what I think.
  • Your both wrong. Acceleration due to gravity is 9.81 meters per second squared, regardless of mass. The only thing that would cause a difference in speed is air resistance.
  • ... to a certain location in Washington state? That would end that anti-trust suit real quick. Maybe someone could perhaps suggest a military target for this thing. Seems like an awful waste letting it hit the ocean.
  • I also wonder about the cost of repairing it.. That is, if there is still useful research to be done with it. Could have the shuttle swing by on its next loop around, no?

  • Who the fuck are you to say that? I'm willing to bet that you know nothing of the details of the incident. Your reaserch on the matter probably consited of a blurb on MSN.COM.


    Talk about a stupid and immature statement! Yell fire in a theater because maybe you'll get a mod point. You ARE the coolest.

  • As someone who lives in a country in a remote area of the Pacific, I'd just like to express my heartfelt concern about having a Gamma-Ray laboratory falling to Earth nearby.

    Despite New Zealand's nuclear-free policies, we already have quite more than our fair share of Radioactive Monsters from the Deep, and we certainly don't need any more politicians, thanks all the same...
  • Actually they should be because the Compton observatory is as large as a bus and when falling down it will break up into many large pieces. It should be a really cool sight... Imagine a bus falling from the sky at about 5000 mph... I think Compton weighs about 15 tons, which is more like 4 busses. The Iridiums are much smaller and will be done one by one, so one Iridium crash would not be as spectacular.
  • A retrofit from the shuttle could be an answer on an as needed basis. Either fic it or strap on some Wiley Coyote rockets and send it on it's way like "Veger".
  • Wouldn't be the first time the CIA has intentionally given 'bad' intel to the DoD. They've done it a few times to my knowledge: Panama(Wrong locations of strategic ground targets. US soldiers died.), the Phillipines (They didn't 'know' about the medical students; They were 'inconsequential'.), not to mention Iran-Contra, where they lied to the DoD, the FBI, and Congress under oath..
  • Here is the UPI story. [newsalert.com]

    Quick, everybody, /. NASA [nasa.gov] so they can't do the final burn like they need to. With any luck it will hit a city where either Metallica, Madonna, or the RIAA happens to be.

  • ...you mention to some of the guys at work that this reminds you of when SkyLab crashed, only to be met with blank stares from a bunch of early 20's who were 2 or 3 at the time and have no idea that SkyLab ever existed.

    Oh well, I guess I better get back to the walker, I'm pushing 30 here.
    --

  • Given the recent crashing troubles, it's good that Nasa is letting the world know up front that this is supposed to happen. Maybe they should put some guys in lab coats around the crash site (yeah, I know, ocean) to wave their hands and shout "It's OK, this is supposed to happen! It's a good crash!"



  • I agree to a point. But in reference to the first part of your post, I really miss the old days of NASA. I grew up watching the Gemini and Apollo missions on TV. What an era. I was pretty close to it, my dad was head of AI for NASA for about twenty years until he passed away in 92. It's just not the same, the general public doesn't seem to have the passion for the support anymore. The last big event was Sogurner(sp?) which had a lot of people excited again. But now it seems all they get is flames in the press and it's hard to get dollars and support when your not amazing the public. And unfortunately the public has a very short memory. A very "What have you done for me lately" attitude.
  • ... you faked the flu to get day off school to watch the first Shuttle launch back in '81. STS looked much cooler before they stopped painting the external tank white ...
    Camaron de la Isla [flamenco-world.com] 'When I sing with pleasure, my
  • In the age of instant news, high powered/super-zoom lenses, and live coverage of just about anything that burbs, is someone going to be covering this event? Do any of the major news outlets have 1m resolution look down satelites yet?
    ___
  • Well, it has allready been there for nine years, a lot longer than planned. While it certainly does have some really great instruments on board, they are getting old, and new missions are pretty much replacing them, so the retirement doesn't come surprising.

    If you want to learn more, a good place to start is the .com they have put up for one of the instruments, BATSE, that I have seen some data from a few times. Check out www.batse.com [batse.com].

  • definately not NASA's finest hour... (Score:3)

    by HerringFlavoredFowl ( 170182 ) on Saturday June 03, 2000 @04:16AM (#1028848)
    I remember when NASA use to try to squeze every ounce of life out of it's probes, Just look at the history.

    Neptune and Uranus where secondary objectives for voyager II if it survived that long.

    Pioneer 10 and 11, first probes to cross the asteroid belt, visit jupiter, and visit saturn. They continued obtaining data from them long after the jupiter and saturn(pioneer 11) flybys. Pioneer 10 expired in the mid 90's (launched 1973) and they are predicting pioneer 11 (launched 1972) to kick the bucket anyday now. It is still returning usefull data, though it has no budget!

    Pioneer 6, launched in 1965 is considered NASA's oldest operational space craft, I know it was still running in 1996, I think it is still running...

    Pioneer Venus launched in 1978 was designed to last a year, they kept it going until 1992.

    The Viking missions, launched in 1976, they kept them going till the landers died in the mid 80's.

    The Skylab rescue, instead of writing it off they salvaged the derilict space station.

    They salvaged and repaired Solar Max with the shuttle, to bad they where to cheap to launch a reboost mission to keep it going later (under the NEW NASA)

    And finally the (Orbiting Astronomy Observatory) OAO-3 copernicus. Launched in 1972, it was kept going until the early 1990's. As the Gyro's failed (one by one) the control software was modified to handle first only 2 working gyro's, then only 1 working gyro.

    Which btw. is what happened to GRO, it now has only 2 working gyro's. GRO was designed to be serviced by the space shuttle (just like solar max, and hubble). NASA acknowledges that they can modify the software to safely control/re-enter with 1 or 0 operating gyro's.

    This is a waste of tax payer money, and a direct effort by the NEW NASA to distance itself from the successful programs of the OLD NASA.

    Did you hear since the VP is in charge of the space program that Al Gore invented outer space ?

    TastesLikeHerringFlavoredChicken

    While I vent some deep links to nasawatch [nasawatch.com]
    comments on the crash [reston.com]
    likely excuses by NASA [reston.com]
    FAQ on why to crash [reston.com]
    SpaceflightNow crash status [spaceflightnow.com]
  • Let's see...

    The US had close to 50 ICBM's and nuke equipped bombers that could strike deep inside of russia.
    The US had IRBM's stationed in Turkey and Britian that could have decimated Eastern Europe and Western Russia.

    Russia's ICBM program was a major mess,
    Turns out they had less than 10 ICBM's and less than 50 bombers that could strike the US.

    Placing Nuke's in Cuba to create a credible deterence makes sense to me...
    Gotta love Khruschchev, he knew how to gamble.

    TastesLikeHerringFlavoredChicken
  • BzzzzT...
    Half right...
    An emergency space walk was made to fix a jammed antenna just before it was released from the shuttle.
    The shuttle has not been back since.
    The shuttle is just so over booked with ISS right now, we've have had, umm 1 shuttle mission this year.

    TastesLikeHerringFlavoredChicken
  • Considering that by the time they get it in to space, it's quite obsolete, I see no problem with this. You have to admit, smashing up an 8088 with a sledgehammer is quite fun.. Not to say that's how I (or NASA) get my jollies ;P
  • Er... that was the point.

    The article insinuates that the lighter parts would fall slower. Next time I should remeber to turn on my <sarcasm> tag!

  • We'll miss the Compton, it did a good job.

    At last night's 2600 meeting here, Cheshire Catalyst took us all outside at exactly the right time to see it pass overhead and wave goodbye. The instant when the angle of the solar panels was right to reflect the sun at us was glorious.

    Bye, Compton; good work. You can sleep now.
    --
  • The problem is, when they do wrong, it's often apthetic incompetance that caused the problem.

    How did the mirror on Hubble be designed to be the wrong shape! Incompetence. It was a simple, fundamental error. And while the mission as a whole has redeemed itself in the main, it would still be able to see more clearly if the mirror was the correct shape in the first place.

    And mixing up units? I could not believe that NASA would use anything but meters in ANY calculations.
  • I've seen your 'work' for a couple days now, and I must say it is constantly in the top 10% of the normal 'Offtopic' and 'Troll' variety.. Let us all know when you hit +1 with a deliberate haiku, eh?

    He passed 20 karma with them yesterday. He did that in less than 48 hours of posting.

    I'd say his detractors are in the minority; he's posting at +1 now. Check his user info page.

    --
  • "Who the fuck are you to say that?", say what? My opinion? I am simply putting my opinion up, if you don't agree with it, feel free to put up opposing views. I can back up my case with evidence, so what is wrong with that? Really, feel free to attack my arguments, just not my person.
  • 1 in 29 million isn't such good odds if it lands on a citizen of a potentially 'unfriendly' country. Shit, every time we go to an alert condition for testing or exersize we have half a dozen nations pissing on the US and calling names in open UN assembly! Imagine how bad it would look for it to come down on the Chinese or even the damn Swiss (Not to knock the Swiss. Nice people, fine country, but your representation makes the rest of y'all look like cowboys.And any percieved knock against the Chinese stands. China sucks.)

  • That's very interesting. The governments of the world can't find any evidence, but a high school student in Australia can. Exactly where is this evidence?


    I am simply putting my opinion up, if you don't agree with it, feel free to put up opposing views

    OK, It wasn't intentional.

  • Re:Bummer! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I don't think you totally understand the problem. If one more gyro fails, NASA loses control over the sattelite. This thing has already outlived its planned life, so the second gyro could go tomorrow, or it could last another two years...there's just no way to know. The problem is that this thing is the size of a friggin bus! The largest section predicted to survive re-entry will be over 1000 pounds at surface impact. Would you really be happy knowing that a bus-sized chunk of metal could land on your house? As much as it sucks, NASA is doing the right thing by bringing the Compton down while they still can. Besides, there'll be a relacement up in a few years, so there'll be no huge loss.
  • I've seen your 'work' for a couple days now, and I must say it is constantly in the top 10% of the normal 'Offtopic' and 'Troll' variety.. Let us all know when you hit +1 with a deliberate haiku, eh?
  • Because they can't aim exactly. Debris will fall along a line thousands of miles long, along the descending node of the orbit of the satellite (crossing the equator going from above Hawaii to South America). This is equivalent of having debris all the way from Redmond to Miami.

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