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Space Science

Discovery Docks At International Space Station 98

Posted by timothy from the my-space-home-is-closer dept.
tewl writes: "Saw this on CNN. For all of those interested in the space program: 'The space shuttle Discovery gently latched onto the docking port of the International Space Station Friday afternoon (1:45 p.m. EDT) as the two spacecraft hurtled at 250 miles above Kazakhstan at a rate of 50 miles a second. "Houston, Discovery, we have capture," radioed one crew member. It was the fourth shuttle docking at the fledgling station. NASA is planning another 35 shuttle visits over the next five years to build the station, estimated to cost between $60 billion-$100 billion. When complete, in 2006, the 16-nation project will have the interior volume of a 747 jumbo jet and stretch the length of a football field.'"
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Discovery Docks At International Space Station More

Discovery Docks At International Space Station

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  • Your social security money? Your social security money goes to pay for your grandmother and/or parents once they retire. Their social security "tax" went to their parents and grandparents (and others of retirement age of course). Social security is just a big ponzi scheme that will collapse in about 20 years once the baby boomers start retiring. I don't know about you, but I'll be about 45 then and I sure as hell am not going to watch 50-75% of my income taken away to sustain the same social security level for the boomers that retirees today get. Honestly, we should have done away with it years ago and instituted more tax deductions and tax-free investment plans that employees can use to build a REAL retirement fund. Oh wait, I forgot, we can't do that since we're stuck in this ponzi scheme. If we take the money we're paying social security now and invest it instead then there's no money for the current recipients. Oh well. We'll just keep paying our social security tax and pretend it'll be there when we retire. hehe. I'll also keep believing in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy while I'm at it.
  • I have to wonder -- why the hell are they flying with such flaky systems? And why are all the systems running Windows? I'm not suggesting everything suddenly switch to Linux, but it would seem to make sense that the servers (at least) run something more stable than the ones currently flying have demonstrated themselves to be.

    Well, I don't know about the control systems for the shuttle, but they certainly do run Windows on the ground workstations to control experiments, from here: [nasa.gov]
    --------------------------------------------
    In addition to cost savings, Bradford promotes broadband connectivity via Internet2 networks as a way to allow wider participation in ISS science activities by academic and commercial entities. Using the Telescience Resource Kit (TReK), a Windows NT-based telemetry and command system developed by Marshall software engineers, researchers can monitor and control space station experiments directly from their offices and laboratories at home.

    "This past year, we also put TRek workstations in 26 middle schools and high schools around the country," says Bradford. "We sent simulated space station data over their school networks, allowing them to participate in space station science."

    A researcher needs a workstation with considerable horsepower to manage the telemetry, command payload operations, and communicate with the space station via voice and video. The recommended TRek hardware configuration is a dual Pentium III 500 MHz machine with a high-resolution display, 256 MB RAM and a 9 GB SCSI hard drive.

    *snip*

    "TRek has an open API", says Michelle Schneider, TRek development project lead. "It's basically a DLL library, a set of C functions, that any commercial product that supports an ANSI-C interface, such Visual C++ or Visual Basic, can use to retrieve telemetry data." Researchers also have the option of linking in other libraries such as Huntsville, Ala.-based Global Majic Software's instrumentation library to build end-user displays and computations that contain x-y plots, bar charts and other graphics. "We try to keep our telemetry processing system generic by using a Microsoft Access database to describe how a telemetry stream is put together. There is also a database definition document that details the schema and all of the database tables. We've had some internal discussion about a TRek port to the Linux platform, but that hasn't gotten off the ground yet."
    -------------------------------------------
    So basically, I don't know about the actual command of the vehicle itself, but the experiments are controlled via Microsoft Windows NT workstations (i.e. TReK).
  • I thought russia was spending their money on oh.... say food? we are the only country that is really making oodles of money and we are not the only one making "stuff".

    Correction, Russia was spending *our* money (the USA) and their launch vehicles on supporting Mir running the damned missions for Mircorp. They were being paid by the USA to build the damned module. The only reason being to foster international "unity" (no pun intended). It looks better in the papers to see the USA funneling money through the space program to NASA than just sending them a check for welfare aid.
  • Brilliant idea! But we haven't gone far enough. Let's borrow a trillion dollars and go to Mars - next year. Why not max out all the governmental credit cards, all over the world, and do everything we can, all at once? After all, we've got forever to pay for it...

    -Mars
  • >We need to adapt to the other planet,
    >not ruin it the second we get there.

    What, and ruin Mars' pristine ecology? Give me a break. Mars is, for the most part, a dead, dry, desert. We need to change it to suit us, and we have every right to. We won't be harming anything, and we'll be helping ourselves. Sounds like a pretty good deal to me.

    And do you really have any clue as to how far advanced our space techonology is? We can just barely operate the space shuttles! We don't have the experience in studying long-term effects of space on human bodies. Mir was a good start, but we need to find out if people can physically handle multi-year-long missions in microgravity. and low-gravity conditions, and if we can mentally handle confined spaces for the same lengths of time.

    Don't be impatient. I want to see us colonizing the solar system as much as you, but we need to take our time and do it right.
  • Interestibgly enough, two ISS modules are already built and launched by Russia. One of them (FGB), however, was paid by U.S. To date this is the only piece of equipment delivered on schedule (yes, US modules are late too, but fortunately for them Russians are late even more). Why Russia in its current situation is doing this and still taking all this crap for not contributing to ISS is beyond me.
  • Watch out NASA, Bill Gates has enough money to build his own Space Station. You will be assimilated!

    Ben
  • Every modern country has debt.
    Hmm... we don't have any dept in Norway :)
  • I agree that paying off the debt is not our highest priority; in fact, we don't want to do this at all. Simply put: we should tax during expansion, spend during contraction. This cuts out the extremes, ya know?

    If we want something to tell our grandkids about, though, why don't we tell them that we stopped letting people starve to death when we destroy enough food every year to feed the whole world (well, nobody really knows how many people live in China) , and stop letting little kids die of diarrhea or other diseases and sickness that we could prevent or treat with very little money?

    I'm not saying that space research is invalid at all, but...

    Imagine if you kept a small country's worth of people from dying for the above causes, and they became productive members of the global community. What kind of impact would that have? Who knows? It's never been done before. What an excellent and noble experiment this would be.

    ---
    click a button, feed a hungry person!
  • >we're going to see a lot more space ham activity.

    PIGS IN SPACE!!!
  • And there is *no* surplus... if the Feds would stop stealing the interest from *our* social security money (not like we'll ever see it) we'd still have a small shortage. Scarey eh.

    Brian Macy
  • Heh, I have just been saved by an AC! This is a first! :-) Bravo!

    In all honesty, I could go on talking about the pros and cons of welfare all day long - such as: "who cares if you hurt the rich, if you can help only one deserving poor" - and other similar cases. Personally, I am not in favor of welfare because I don't see a tremendous need for it. It simply wastes too much money - money that the American people deserve to have in their pockets, or put to some worthwhile use. Now, don't get me wrong - improving the lives of people is a very noble use of the money - BUT it should be moderated.

    Email me if you actually care to hear my idea on moderated welfare.

    Caio!

  • Because they should not be pampered and babied. They should have to do what everyone else in the world does to make a living: WORK. I am so SICK AND TIRED of hearing about how we should give all this money to people who are just too damn lazy to make something of life. Of course, I am not talking about those who are not ABLE to work - just those who are, but don't.

    Sorry for the rant, but that really bothers me.

  • See the previous slashdot article 2001: A Space Laptop [slashdot.org] and then the link it refers to from SpaceRef [spaceref.com] will all sorts of interesting information about the laptops, why they run windows, and how the networks are all set up, including both the shuttle LAN and the ISS LAN.
  • I've been hearing that description since the ISS was first proposed a decade or two ago.

    It never fails to get a grin, since the column by Canadian journalist Eric Nicol after his visit to the Boeing plant. After hearing that the 747 was the length of a football field and the hanger doors were the size of football fields and the factory floor was the size of 100 football fields and so on, he commented:

    "Americans seem to measure everything in football fields. (And nobody else has the same size football field, so its a pretty provincial unit.) Anyway, we then got in shuttle vans and travelled, lo, for many, many football fields across the tarmac the the parking lot..."
  • Offtopic?
    Mildly funny, for sure.
    It's part of the moderators on crack conspiracy!


    (Score -1: Dissed the moderators)

    Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.

  • Man the space station is so cool. I really hope they can figure a way to make space exploration more affordable and reliable. Can't wait to see people move in.

    -Moondog
  • There must be a mistake somewhere. The stations have a roughly circular orbit, so their speed must be about 11 km/s if I remember correctly which comes to about 5 miles per second. Lotzi
  • The actual altitude will vary but just because orbits are eliptical, not circular.

    Satelites do not generally need to use fuel to stay in orbit. That just happens in Star Trek when the Enterprise is in danger of crashing because someone has turned the engines off.
  • But how do you make space "yooser friendly"?

    I certainly didn't see any animated paperclips on DS9.

  • Interesting chart at that page telling us the altitudes of IIS. It seems that it keeps falling despite of sudden upward bounces here and there.

    Is it not high enough to keep a constant orbit? Looks like it relies on fuels to keep itself from falling, which sounds bad to me...
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • When complete, in 2006, the 16-nation project will have the interior volume of a 747 jumbo jet and stretch the length of a football field.

    When I read this, it reminds me how little progress we've made when it comes to space travel

    In 1969, the United States landed on the moon. That was over 30 years ago. We've just now gotten to the point where we have a space station the size of an airplane that's been around for years.

    I'm one of those sci-fi nerds who can't wait to travel into space, colonize other planets and perhaps meet other intelligent life, but it shows that we still have a long way to go. Waiting for those vacations to other planets in our solar system like in Total Recall? Considering we only have a "vehicle" (well, a base, not really a vehice) large enough to hold a bunch of travellers (scientests and astronauts right now), it probably won't happen in our lifetimes.

    If any of you are really interested in some practical and well thought out plans to colonize space, I would suggest picking up a copy of The Millennial Project: Colonizing The Galaxy in Eight Easy Steps [amazon.com] by Marshall T Savage. It even gets into the geeky details (ie: numbers).

    Even though the title has quite a name to live up to, the book has many, many great ideas to improve the efficency of space travel if only governments were to put some funding behind it and cooperate, along with some space travel ideas that science fiction has talked about for years.
  • Looking at the price (60 - 100 bilions dollars), it looks like this might be something that a few corparations might be able to put together. Then they could have tours or experiment in freefall or something like that. But then the government might step in and try to regulate it. It would be pretty interesting to see this happen.

    Luke
    -Would a slide of bacteria reproducing be considered porn?
  • Wow. Okay, now as far as government programs go, I like the space program more than most, but that's an awful lot for a single space station that seems to have very little in the way of concrete goals, aside from "fostering the spirit of international cooperation." If this is just for the shuttle flights, then presumably it's being paid for solely by America, and with approximately 250 million Americans, that's $240-400 EACH! I'd be interested in paying maybe $100, I think, for a space station that I'll never be able to go to, but $400 is just crazy.

  • America's richs 1% pay for it?
    FUZZY MATH...
  • and cheezy adds for IBM...
  • Yes they are running Windows on the laptops up there (check spaceref [spaceref.com].
    There is a Free software project, but it's pretty much dead (or dormant.). I'm currently researching some maths about it.
    If you have the kownledge, contact me.
    sxpert _at_ www _dot_ esitcom _dot_ org
  • That doesn't really look very "clean" to me, the man front and center has no covering on his beard!!

    major breach of any clean room. I am taking a lab that meets in a clean room this semester and have to put a "thingee" over my beard every time I go in, and there is no million dollar satalite in my lab :)
  • I thought russia was spending their money on oh.... say food? we are the only country that is really making oodles of money and we are not the only one making "stuff". ESA is also involved but why don't we just make America's richs 1% pay for it? hehe sorry jsut had to say that
  • well if you want to talk about opec, its your can of owrms. sure they get lots of money but their GNP is no where even close to a smidgen of ours. their reletivly few superelite are very wealthy and could probably fund 1/2 of this endever with their fortunes but they are no where close to where we are in terms of median wealth. In other words stop being a stupid shit and think about economics.
  • maybe.. caus its geek news (ie space) and that is what we want to read and do read? if you don't want it filter it out troll
  • There is a significant problem with the whole concept of feeding all the hungry. There is an excellent site that explains in details the mechanics of world population.

    It states that most of the rapid population growth comes not from higher birth rates but from lower mortality. Earth can probably produce enough food for much more people than current 6 bln, but who will give them jobs/occupation, and how (and how long) will they live without money and medicine ??? :-(

    You can devote all your spare funds for the noble cause of preserving their lives, but I don't see the need to save everyone who is born until the birth rates in the third world stabilize at the acceptable level.

    The link is:

    http://www.popexpo.net/eMain.html
  • and then everything explosive inside the shuttle blew up

    Which would be...what?

    --
  • They have a neat powder that turns into a loose gel when activated by water, so any urine/feces that contacts it congeals and then it's probly just tossed into the next progress service module to burn up with their other waste matter.

    --
  • A space shuttle never has blown up, but one's external tank did causing the shuttle itself to fragment...

    --
  • Boston.com [boston.com] and The Washignton Post [washingtonpost.com] both report that Commander Brian Duffy had to dock the shuttle without the aide radar (broken since Thurs.), so the crew used stellar navigation and a hand-held laser system.

    I watched the launch on space.com. I thought I remembered them having thermal issues with APU number 2, so it was shut down before the other two APUs. Anybody else catch this? When was the last time they did a compete design audit on the shuttle? Granted it's a very complex system, but it seems that they have more problems than I would be comfortable with.

    Karl

    I'm a slacker? You're the one who waited until now to just sit arround.

  • Wouldn't that hurtle them into space? The circle velocity at this altitude is less then 4.8 miles or 4.15 nm per second...
  • Sold! I'll take a 1000 tonnes of ice per year for the next decade to LEO. Not sure how you're going to make a profit at $1300/lb but hey that's your problem ;-)
  • - that's expensive. That's what politicians do when they get into power, they produce symbols of their power. i.e. white elephants. They always have. You only have to look at any town hall or whatever...

    For about 4 billion we could be mining the moon for ice right now. That is a reasonably good rocket propellant and allows MONEY to be made from space and would be the start of commerce in space. We could actually open up the asteroids and reduce the cost of putting things into geosynchronous orbit by upto 6 times, things like wireless internet connections, TV satellites etc.

    There's a site that talks about this stuff, the guy that wrote it is retired though, check out www.neofuel.com [neofuels.com]

  • Almost as annoying as not being able to watch the Z1 truss go up is that most feeds appear to be Windows mediaplayer. You have to dig for Real, and of course there's NOTHING non-proprietary at all.

    Okay /. -- Don't say I never gave you nuthin:
  • The first crew is scheduled to launch at the end of this month (Oct. 30). They are going up in a russian rocket, I imagine NASA wouldn't let our boys ride in it if they thought it might explode (at least I hope not). Go to: http://www.cnn.com/2000/TECH/space/10/11/russia.sp ace.ap/index.html for more information. (Hope /. doesn't mangle this URL)

    Enigma .sigless


    Enigma
  • Anyone notice that at the mission control centre?
  • Alas, as we all know, science isn't really a "hot campaign topic," so Good George and Honest Al don't really give a rat's ass about it. What NASA needs to get more funding, is some sort of stunning discovery (so that they can whine about not having the funds to fully explore it) or something equivalent to the Cold War, where we've actually got some competition, and national pride is at stake. Maybe Bush, with his whole "expand the military" agenda will toss a few billion to NASA to promote some sort of "space defense" or something... who knows.
  • I was there last night... It's not all that great.
  • but damn, is it cool. I wish i could go there.
  • The Russians sent up stuff last month (or the month before).

    It had been delayed and there was a concern that their transport rocket would explode upon liftoff.
  • They won't get a case of the fuzzy green Mir-an fungus going there. It would be quite bad if it had to be abandoned at this point.

    Kierthos
  • I'm assuming that they will have some sort of exercise equipment up there to avoid the loss of muscle tone while spending extended amounts of time in microgravity.

    However, it should be interesting to note that the astronauts in the International Space Station will be as much guinea pig as anything else. They are going to, AFAIK, be in microgravity much longer then anyone else. The effects that this will have on the human body will most likely take years to study, the results of which will make it much 'easier' for future generations of astronauts.

    Mind you, their diet while up there may have some strange effects on the body as well. I know that they are stocking food up there, but does the shuttle also empty the loo before it comes back down, or do the astronauts just let their feces shoot out of the station and burn up in re-entry? Inquiring minds... really don't want to know...

    Last thing: Anyone have a tentative list of experiments that the first batch of astronauts are supposed to do while up there? Or a link to said list?

    Kierthos
  • Well, just because they're being thrust in one of the most advanced machines ever built into a place where there's 0 atmosphere, 0 room for failure, and several hundred degrees difference between light and dark is irrelivant.

    Now, several billion dollars being spent over several years... why, we could spend that in a day on welfare!! Where's my check???

    -----------
  • Maybe 5 mps. Escape velocity is around 7 MPS. At 50 MPS the shuttle and the station would be headed out of the solar system. NOT orbiting the earth.
  • Mmmmmmmmmmm comfy.... Why not a Porshe sation wagon?
  • Russia is broke. This is why we are only expecting one more module (DC-1) out of them, and a steady flow of Progress and Soyuz spacecraft, which will basically be funded by the US. At least they're cheap.
  • and how that got a 1?
    since it is so far off topic it makes my head split...
  • They're not moving at 250miles/sec...they're moving at -5-miles/second, and they were 250 miles above Kazakhstan.
  • To host Napster and DeCSS up there?
    -----------
  • NASA-TV [nasa.gov] can be found at various locations on the Web [nasa.gov]. Most satellite providers broadcast it as well.

    This mission features 4 spacewalks, but the Ku antenna is broken so we won't get much for live video.

  • Re:Wow. (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Convincing the private sector or the general public would be much more effective

    I would pay $1 extra (optional) at (morning caffine source of your choice)bucks

    If it went to the space program.

    Others might say What about my cause?

    Well businesses could rotate causes periodically.

    The dinosaurs went extinct because they didn't have a space programe.

    We don't have an effective one yet.

  • I'm probably going to regret giving this out (as in, I may never get a good connection again...) but here goes:

    The best source of a RP stream for the NASA channel is at Space.com. (URL: http://www.space.com/n ews /spaceagencies/nasatv_sched.html [space.com] ) get you most of the way there.

    They've got a cheesy JavaScript interface you've got to get through the first time, but from then on you should be able to just select it from the RP history menu.

    Enjoy.

  • You mean like some sort of "space shuttle"? That's a cool idea. We should get to work on it immediately.
  • They're moving at 250 miles/sec way the hell up in the sky, the ground distance covered is probably a bit less. I don't think there is a Kazakhstan conspiracy.

    I'm much more amused by the fact that astronauts have become so common, boring, and unrecognizable that the article refers to them simply as "an astronaut" instead of giving their name.
  • Whoosh ... there was the sound of my grade school geometry lessons flying out of my head. :-/
  • Hmm ... at the exact moment of transmission, they were over Kazakhstan, or did they just throw that in just to enhance the "International" sound of the whole thing? At 250 miles/sec, they would fly over the whole country in about 5 seconds or so.
  • This link gives all the ISS visibility info, PLUS information for Mir and dozens of bright naked eye satellites.

    No matter where you live on earth, every evening just after twilight you can sit outside with a timetable and an accurate watch calibrated to the timelady's voice, and watch the "artificial moons" go by.

    www.heavens-above.com [heavens-above.com]

  • [...]
    stretch the length of a football field.'"

    You americans really should switch to the metric system, like your neighbours to the north.

    So how long, in hockey rinks, will the ISS be?

  • I think this is a fantastic common ground for nations to get together and do something.

    Yes. Countries need something to keep them occupied and stop them from getting bored. When they get bored they start wars.

  • ... leaving shuttle pilot Pamela Melroy to finish by herself ...
  • NASA's got a nice shuttle web site [nasa.gov] with updates during the mission (STS-92). There's also the mission press kit [shuttlepresskit.com] with all and more than you wanted to know.

  • Wow. (Score:2)

    by RJ11 ( 17321 )
    I wonder if anyone has brought up the issue of expanding funding for the space program in the elections. With all these talks of surplus, it might be rather nice to use it on space exploration.....
  • Not only will it be "challenging" but it will be quite an "enterprise" that will likely result in the "discovery" that they are as likely to "find a path" to "Atlantis" as the money needed.

    Indeed, it seems a hopeless "endeavor" for a has-been superpower that is now almost as poor as "Columbia".

    (while groans are acceptable, a barrage of rotten turnips would be frowned upon by the management, and reckless discharge of a firearm within city limits is a serious felony)

    --------
  • Have you ever spent a lot of time in one of those things (747, I mean)? Comfy is NOT the word I'd choose!

    Try the 16+ hour LA -> Sydney flight some time. At least in cattle class (MOOOO!) It gets a little... close.
  • How did they measure the speed of the station at the point of hookup? in relative value to the speed at which it passed earth's ground?

    In reality, there isn't a 'miles per hour' in space. On earth, it's measured in relation to the position from the earth's surface, and it's change from that position. In space, we don't really move in relation to the earth anymore.

    -------
    CAIMLAS

  • Will there be any regulation in terms of time in orbit? Is there already? What I want to know is, if someone's up there with no gravity for a year, and they come down, they aren't going to be able to walk.

    I had a knee injury one time that disabled me from using the leg for about a month and a half. It was a noodle when I recovered. It took me a while to walk correctly again (however, I was about 10 at the time, so I recovered quickly).

    Another thing: Food. Will they have a hydropaunics lab or something? I've read they will be moderately self-sustaining. Not quite Star Trek: Voyager, though...
  • You seem to be misunderstanding keysian economics. Using this ideology the debt should only be accumulated during times of recession, and should be paid off during times of growth. Thus, when ression hits again, there should be little or no debt load. If the debt is paid off in the future there will be more money for the government, and the people to spend. Then again i live in canada where the debt per captia is higer.
  • Mhhm.
    Every modern country has debt. And all of those contributing to the international space station are included.
    It's a fact of modern life, and nations have sophisticated methods of dealing with that. I'm not happy about it either, but that's the way it is.
    But do you want to tell your children that you paid off your national debt, or that your country contributed to one of the most wondrous anomanalies in the sky? That you bargained, negotiated, created, innovated and had the balls to put together something that defies natural law, and provides scientific value to the entire human race? And how that process brought you to a deeper understanding of different cultures, the benefits of which will underwrite your childrens future?
    Go on then. I think this is a fantastic common ground for nations to get together and do something.

    Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.

  • That'll be the international part of it then.
    And your claiming by inference a space shuttle never blew up?

    Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.

  • Now IIS is in the space. When are we launching Apache?
  • two spacecraft hurtled at 250 miles above Kazakhstan at a rate of 50 miles a second.

    Ummmm NO! Escape velocity for earth is 11.2 km/s, or 6.8 mi/s. In fact if the shuttle were travelling this fast it would be the fastest man made object ever, the previous record holder being voyager 2 at 21 mi/s. What you probably meant to say was that they were travelling at 5 mi/s which is orbital velocity at that altitude. Off by an order of magnitude, oops!

  • NINE YEARS! You, too, can buy a space station for $3,168.81/SECOND for the next nine years (yes, that's $20,000/minute, $11,407,711.61/hour). Of course, ;Ma rs Direct [marsnews.com] would have cost around $30 Billion. Maybe if China goes to Mars [yahoo.com] first, we'll take notice that there is something there that we may be interested in.

    This [permanent.com] link tells of the ease of going to Mars. But I can't find the real link of interest. Telling of that the ISS is being built so that the shuttle has something to do. If we took the money from the ISS, and not even touch the money from the shuttle runs, we could colonize Mars in 20 years.

    Oh, and I loath the idea of terraforming Mars. Let's rip out Yellowstone and pave it over while we're at it. We need to adapt to the other planet, not ruin it the second we get there.
  • I was listening last night, and at least part of the problems were that they had to redirect dataflows because of the Ku antenna mishap.

    Almost as annoying as not being able to watch the Z1 truss go up is that most feeds appear to be Windows mediaplayer. You have to dig for Real, and of course there's NOTHING non-proprietary at all.
  • Is it still really necesary for news agencies to make this stupid comment every time a shuttle goes up? it's speed relative to the earth is 5mi/sec but WHO CARES, that is almost totally irrelevant when it's orbiting/docking.

    Traveling only a few miles an HOUR when it finally docs with ISS. I mean, I handed someone a piece of paper tooday while we "hurtled through space orbiting the sun at about 30km/sec" right? oooo..daring, you say? NO! Because your frame of refrence was EARTH not the solar system!
  • When complete, in 2006, the 16-nation project will have the interior volume of a 747 jumbo jet and stretch the length of a football field.'"

    This is perfect. When the space station is finally completed, they can make some of their money back, by holding the superbowl there. They can use some of that space algae as makeshift astroturf. They'll of course, dress up one of the shuttles like the Goodyear blimp. We can get Roseanne to sing the National Anthem again, because after all, in space, no one can hear you scream.
  • From Ralph Nader. [votenader.org]

    "Social Security is a success story providing retirement income to 35 million people, and disability insurance and life insurance to almost all workers. Its sound financial base ensures solvency well into the future. But because politicians and investment firms use scare tactics for their own benefit, millions of Americans believe that Social Security is endangered.

    According to the Social Security trustees' projections, if nothing is done to adjust benefits or revenues, the program would still pay every penny of scheduled benefits through 2037. (The trustees assume slow economic growth. If growth is at or near its historic rate, the program can pay all scheduled benefits for over sixty years.) After 2037, while the trust fund would be depleted, the program would still take enough annually to pay benefits in excess of what the average retiree receives today. So much for the widespread idea that baby-boomers may never see any benefits."

    It's worth looking into, maybe he is right, the politicians have been using scare tactics to actually make everyone think that there is a "problem". I certainly hope so, I pay $35 into the social security fund every week...

  • Surplus (Score:3)

    by Bruce Perens ( 3872 ) <bruce@perens.com> on Friday October 13, 2000 @06:53PM (#707060) Homepage Journal
    I really don't understand why the entire nation doesn't yell "B.S." every time either candidate says "surplus". The United States Government has a debt of a Trillion dollars. About 1/4 of your federal taxes go to paying interest on the loan! The surplus is much smaller than the debt, and should be used to pay down a piece of the debt. And we shouldn't call it a surplus if we owe more than we have.

    Bruce

  • Numerical error. (Score:3)

    by Christopher Thomas ( 11717 ) on Friday October 13, 2000 @07:11PM (#707061)
    as the two spacecraft hurtled at 250 miles above Kazakhstan at a rate of 50 miles a second

    Not to pick nits (ok, yes to pick nits), orbital velocity is actually about 5 miles per second. Someone added an extra zero here.

  • NASA TV (Score:3)

    by _dewman_ ( 24216 ) on Friday October 13, 2000 @07:11PM (#707062) Homepage
    For those of you who would like to see the Shuttle & ISS activities in Real Audio, the link on NASA's site points to: http://198.116.66.254:8080/ramge n/e ncoder/live.rm [198.116.66.254]

  • so that's what he's been up to... (Score:3)

    by davekam ( 32669 ) on Friday October 13, 2000 @06:37PM (#707063)
    I guess now that DS9's been cancelled, Miles O'Brien found himself a cushy job as space correspondent for CNN.

  • $50 Billion Could Open Up Space (Score:3)

    by Baldrson ( 78598 ) on Friday October 13, 2000 @10:07PM (#707064) Homepage Journal
    next five years to build the station, estimated to cost between $60 billion-$100 billion

    All NASA would have to do to open up space for humanity is guarantee to award $500/lb for anything that anyone puts into orbit up to $50 billion dollars. That would, with commercial participation, put 100 million pounds of stuff in orbit and spawn a competitive launch industry that has costs below $500/lb to LEO.

    Jerry Pournelle and friends tried to get NASA to do that back in the early 80s when Reagan's folks pretended like they cared about space (due to Gen. Graham's promotion of SDI), but they failed to make inroads at that time.

    Strange how Dan Goldin was able to convince Jerry that Jerry had input on NASA policy recently when, in fact, Goldin was not about to pursue anything akin to the launch incentives envisioned by Jerry's crew. Goldin even broke the Launch Services Purchase Act of 1990 that a bunch of us grassroots guys got passed when he launched the Advanced Communications Technology Satellite on the Shuttle, as well as failing to pursue the launch vouchers program we also got passed, so it is pretty clear Goldin doesn't give a rats ass about the law, let alone making space accessible.

    But what happened to Jerry when Goldin had him running around thinking he was having input on NASA policy? Why didn't Jerry just rub Goldin's nose in NASA's failure to set up simple, dumb, launch incentives?

    Why bother to do anything else?

  • Re:Stay Time (Score:3)

    by X_Bones ( 93097 ) <(moc.oohay) (ta) (31zronad)> on Friday October 13, 2000 @07:18PM (#707065) Homepage Journal
    [...]if someone's up there with no gravity for a year, and they come down, they aren't going to be able to walk.
    Back in September, a shuttle crew installed a treadmill to deal with this very problem (link [cnn.com]to story on cnn.com). A super-fancy one too, lying in some sort of weird spring/harness thing so it doesn't affect the mocrigravity experiments going on up there.

    As to your second point, I don't believe they're growing their own food. Virtually all the room on the space station is taken up by equipment, laboratories, etc. I read somewhere (also cnn.com, just don't have the exact page in front of me) that the previous three or four shuttle missions were basically supply runs, so I'd imagine they just hauled a whole bunch of dehydrated food up on one of the missions.


  • Re:ISS Visibility (Score:3)

    by esonik ( 222874 ) on Saturday October 14, 2000 @02:53AM (#707066)
    ISS is slowed down and thus loses altitude by atmospheric drag. It needs to be "reboosted" to a higher orbit every few months (which will ususally be done by visiting spacecraft). This is normal and it was designed that way. The upper limit of 400km altitude is due to the limited range of the visiting spacecraft (range depending on payload mass). The lower limit is due to the requirement that the ISS must not sink to a dangerously low orbit even if one reboost cycle is missed.

  • Lots of computer problems this flight... (Score:4)

    by chalsall ( 185 ) on Friday October 13, 2000 @06:33PM (#707067) Homepage
    I've been monitoring the NASA channel in the background with RealVideo, and there's been a lot of traffic back and forth about computer system and networking problems they've been having this trip. They keep having to reboot servers and bring the network up and down.

    As they each describe directory paths, it's clear they're using Windows based machines. It also seems like they're using a human (on the ground) doing single-file-at-a-time transfer for e-mail rather than a proper MTA, and this can't happen when the machine is being used "in certain ways".

    Bill McArthur has been spending a lot of time fighting with the systems so far, and this isn't the first time software problems have cropped up during flights -- a few back a software program refused to write log files until someone figured out the directory limit for files had been reached.

    I have to wonder -- why the hell are they flying with such flaky systems? And why are all the systems running Windows? I'm not suggesting everything suddenly switch to Linux, but it would seem to make sense that the servers (at least) run something more stable than the ones currently flying have demonstrated themselves to be.

    I don't know if this has been caused by the loss of the Ku-band (high-bandwidth), but regardless, perhaps it's time to form an Open Source project for space-flight software?

  • If it has the interior volume of a 747 (Score:4)

    by Lerc ( 71477 ) on Friday October 13, 2000 @06:19PM (#707068)
    Why not just get a 747 and slap some huge rockets onto it and put it into orbit.

    Then eveyone would have comfy seats too.

  • oh, baby (Score:4)

    by dragonfly_blue ( 101697 ) on Friday October 13, 2000 @06:09PM (#707069) Homepage
    There's something so.... sexy... about watching two giant space modules connecting in a zero-G environment.... raaaarrr.

    Er, I knew I shoulda stayed away from those oysters at the work party last night. =P

  • The last mission brought up the first ham radio payload. They won't activate it on this trip, but they've given out callsigns for a mission later this year. Hams will be able to work the station with as little as a walkie-talkie and a hand-held beam antenna. When astronauts aren't operating voice, the system will be set up for packet radio and will answer and acknowledge a contact automaticaly. More information is here [nasa.gov]. Between this and the soon-to-be-launched Million-dollar amateur radio satellite, built and financed by hams [amsat.org], we're going to see a lot more space ham activity.

    Bruce

  • Debian Developer Involved (Score:5)

    by Bruce Perens ( 3872 ) <bruce@perens.com> on Friday October 13, 2000 @06:47PM (#707071) Homepage Journal
    I forgot to mention - look here [amsat-dl.org] for a picture of Debian developer Bdale Garbee (on left, in foreground) in the clean room in Kouru, doing pre-flight testing on his GPS receiver experiment. The rest of the album is here [amsat-dl.org]. The GPS receiver on the satellite is built to operate both inside and outside of the orbits of the GPS transmitter satellite constellation - something GPS wasn't designed for. If it works, it will transmit precise coordinates of the satellite to the ground, so that accurate ephemerides can be made without ground observation, without inertial navigation, etc.

    Some of the development systems for this experiment run Debian.

    Check out the rest of the album. I found the emergency escape drills and the "spacesuits" worn while fueling the satellite with hazardous chemicals most interesting, after pictures of people I know :-) .

    Thanks

    Bruce

  • ISS Visibility (Score:5)

    by Dr. Merkwürdigliebe ( 90125 ) on Friday October 13, 2000 @06:17PM (#707072)
    For those around the world who would like to actually see the ISS in the night sky, as it soars past high above:

    ISS Naked-Eye Visiblity Data [nasa.gov]

    It isn't very bright yet, but will be in the future. Perhaps the docked shuttle will add to it as well.

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