Out For A (First) Stroll From The Space Station 70
An unnamed correspondent writes: "Since I figure most people on this board are space buffs, just thought I'd send this link about the first space walk at the space station.
2 dollars a day, hehe." They weren't just walking around, though -- they attached antennas and other vital bits. The station isn't yet complete, but it's already getting quite large.
2 dollars a day, hehe." They weren't just walking around, though -- they attached antennas and other vital bits. The station isn't yet complete, but it's already getting quite large.
Re:Yes...but (Score:1)
Re:Yes...but (Score:1)
Didn't you know he invented the space program? Kids today... you probably don't even remember his personally designing the Saturn V booster...
Maybe MIR, but ISS? (Score:1)
/. in space? (Score:1)
I disagree. (Score:3)
It shows that after all those delays with the russian components, and cost overruns the station's development is still progressing.
Now if you are not interested in such stories, you don't really need to go and read about it. So is it really worth complaining about the fact that your browser had to load a few bytes of HTML that didn't interest you? I'm sure that there's quite a few people on Slashdot who look at ISS's development with sufficient interest to find the link helpful.
Slashdot techsupport (Score:2)
Solution: Advised said random individual to either read another thread, go read the site where people refer to Slashdot as "the other site" [kuro5hin.org], or to plain right get lost.
Next!!
I can really identify with you, so much.
More continuous updates (Score:5)
Aw, c'mon! (Score:1)
This is just stupid...
Excuse me? (Score:3)
Hold on. 90 men and 10 women? And the women are the ones that are supposed to get tired? Better make that 900 men and 10 women.
I can really identify with you, so much.
Jet Packs (Score:2)
I wonder what type of 'tests' they are going to implement?
Space Stastion stories (Score:1)
I like space stories, I just don't give a damn about the space station.
Re:NASA is willfully inefficient (Score:1)
The proper term. (Score:1)
Re:A slow day. (Score:1)
ATTENTION NASA! (Score:1)
Right, the tank saved 600 pounds (Score:1)
Makes sense, right?
An extra 300 pounds is a satellite or two.
Re:Jet Packs (Score:4)
JET PACKS [spaceflightnow.com]
Ok, I want to see what my tax dollars are buying (Score:2)
I want to know if I am getting my money's worth (something tells me, picture or not, I am not)...
I support the EFF [eff.org] - do you?
Three Stooges Eh? (Score:1)
Come on you Simpsons fans, I know you're out there!
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A First Troll From The Space Station ? ;-) (Score:1)
If I understand correctly, it is just a routine; nothing new and exciting for the humankind.
Re:Important! Please Read! (Score:1)
Are you wearing any space shuttle parts? Do you have any in your house? Of course not.
I certainly hope not! Having parts of the ISS fall 37000 million miles*, through my roof, and into my living room would make me less than impressed with the space program.
* may be off by an order of magnitude or seven.
Re:NASA is willfully inefficient (Score:1)
a bugg
Re:NASA is willfully inefficient (Score:3)
Yes, launching stuff into space costs on the order of ten thousand dollars per pound. That cost is found by taking the total weight of payload launched and dividing it by the total cost of the launch. It does not then equate to sending up one fewer pound costing ten thousand dollars less. A lighter payload will result in less fuel needed, and fuel is one of the smallest costs in the launch. The costs for assembly, training, and staff (hundreds of people work for months on each luanch) far outweigh the paltry costs for fuel on your typical shuttle launch.
Even if your figure were correct at three million saved, the typical shuttle launch costs between four and seven hundred million, depending on who you listen to. That's less than a one-percent cost savings.
Re:Antenna? (Score:1)
Re:Three Stooges Eh? (Score:1)
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Re:Excuse me? (Score:1)
Only through hard work and perseverance can one truly suffer
question (Score:1)
However, I was kind of disappointed by the design. Why didn't they design the station with some kind of rotating circular piece... like in 2001 and (shudder) Mission to Mars?
Having a piece like this would allow astronauts to go inside of it and have some gravity, so they don't have to float around all the time.
Re:Ok, I want to see what my tax dollars are buyin (Score:3)
The latest picture on the NASA STS-92 site of the Station itself seems to be , which shows the entire station and the new antenna on the truss. [nasa.gov]
Re:Ok, I want to see what my tax dollars are buyin (Score:2)
Re:Ok, I want to see what my tax dollars are buyin (Score:2)
Further information on the ISS... (Score:4)
The news bulletins keep you informed of the progress of the various human space flight projects underway, and are certainly a lot more timely than this slashdot posting
Enjoy...
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Interesting remakrs want to prove them (Score:1)
NASA knows this, and the male patriarchy knows this, which is why there aren't very many female astronauts. If there were enough female astronauts, they could flee earth and start their own amazon empire (not the on
click kind) on Mars.
Yeah sure, and pigs fly.
Nasa tax dollars (Score:3)
A few years back I got the chance to speak with a NASA engineer, and got to hear what he had to say about this issue.
According to him, the NASA gets 1% of the federal budget... but every dollar we invest there is returned SEVEN fold!
Do you know how many breakthroughs have happened because of NASA? Teflon, kevlar, and velcro are just some of the examples off the top of my head.
These developments happen rather quickly too. In fact, that engineer showed me what looked to be like a black square made of plastic. He said, "NASA develops things so quickly, we don't even have a name for this type of material yet. If made in large sheets, its very brittle, but if in small squares like this, its unbreakable." He proceeded to try to smash it and he couldn't. He then said, "This will probably be used somewhere on the space station."
I think that most government agencies and functions are wastes of money, but NASA ironically seems to be the exception to this rule.
Re:question (Score:1)
Re:NASA is willfully inefficient (Score:1)
(150 - 100) * 6 = 150?
And how do you get another 150 pounds in savings from food, water and oxygen. The requirements for a healthy active adult are very close to the same for males and females.
Re:Ok, I want to see what my tax dollars are buyin (Score:1)
The NASA space flight site [nasa.gov] has on its space station page [nasa.gov] a picture [goatse.cx] of the space station with the Z1 truss attached [nasa.gov].
Space Station Creation (Score:1)
The only fool bigger than the person who knows it all, is the person who argues with him.
Re:Ok, I want to see what my tax dollars are buyin (Score:2)
Unless you are Bill Gates, the amount of your money spent on the ISS is miniscule. NASA gets less than 1% of the Federal Budget. Even if the ISS takes up half of NASA's budget thats 0.5% of the (roughly) 66% of the budget that comes from income tax. So maybe 0.33% of the total amount of what you have paid in Federal Income tax is up there. Most of your money has gone to pay the interest on Reagan's debt and for $90 hammers.
Re:Nasa tax dollars (Score:1)
Maybe NASA should get together with some Make Money Fast spammers and mass-email some fund solicitations.
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This story says as much about geeks ... (Score:4)
Sure, it's not *new* news (heck, I was watching this space walk on NASA TV on Sunday...), but it is news for nerds. My generation (I'm 30) of nerds grew up with the space program, and I still have a fondness for it.
Perhaps some of the posters that exhibit anti-NASA sentiment are a new generation of nerds who just don't care
Space is useful. We're using it. It's a good thing to be exploring it and building in it...
This is good stuff (Score:1)
I wonder what are the specs for computing on the ISS. What kind of OSes and h/w they are using.
Dorks in space (Score:1)
And these are supposed to be astronauts?
"Look at the moon up there! Is that the moon?" an awed McArthur said at one point.
These guys sure know the area -- like the back of their hand!
"Ah, yes indeedy!" McArthur exclaimed.
Added Chaio: "Wow, this is really cool."
I dig it, man. Maybe the next time, they could shoot somebody funny and interesting up there, like Denis Leary or Nicholas Negroponte, just to avoid more embarrassing dialogue.
Somehow, this reminds me of Keanu (Score:1)
Said Chaio: "Wow, this is really cool."
The last to leave the cargo bay was Keanu, who added: "Woah. Dude."
Re:Rename station (Score:3)
Of course, in terms of the technology involved, it's probably closer to "Babylon 0.05"...
Eric
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Re:Ok, I want to see what my tax dollars are buyin (Score:1)
There are lots of high-res photos at http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/ [nasa.gov], but it's not updated yet to include the new parts fitted by STS-92.
There are some pictures on the STS-92 site. This one [nasa.gov] shows the entire station, and the new antenna on the truss they just fitted.
Re:Rename station (Score:1)
Woohoo! I bet you'd get WAY more congressional funding if NASA whacked a couple of those massive rail-gun things onto the ISS!
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Re:NASA is willfully inefficient (Score:1)
Re:Ok, I want to see what my tax dollars are buyin (Score:2)
That might give you a better idea of the scale of the thing.
Re:question (Score:2)
There *are* rotating structures in the space station - they're called gyro's, and in fact they're used by the station to move around. There are gyro's all over the ISS - spin one up, and the station starts to move in that direction, slowly due to centrifugal force.
They're an efficient means of maintaining position, because they're run by electric (solar) power, and thus don't require expendable fuel like the retro rockets do...
Re:This story says as much about geeks ... (Score:2)
It might be a bit hasty to declare that those with anti-NASA sentiments as not caring about space exploration as a whole. I think that many
Rare is the geek who doesn't think space itself is cool.
Re:This story says as much about geeks ... (Score:2)
But I often find the anti-NASA sentiment to be completely lacking any fundamental basis in reality, other than membership in the popular lynching culture that so many diletanttes seem to adhere to.
NASA has done a *hell* of a lot for space exploration... and if you take the time to actually peek behind the mud slung on NASA, you'll find an incredible amount of actual, real, hard-core scientific value.
Don't come to me with anti-NASA sentiments unless you've got a pile of NASA Tech Briefs sitting in your basement (like I do), and can refer to articles from 3 years back. Don't come to me with anti-NASA sentiments unless you know your way around the NASA web sites well enough to know how to get the full Apollo manuscripts and audio archives, unless you know the details of STS-33 and the significance it had on space exploration, unless you can tell me what the NBL is.
I don't want to hear your anti-NASA sentiments if you don't even know what NASA is, and what it's been all about all along...
In other news (nothing personal) (Score:2)
HOLLAND - Slashdot founder Rob Malda announced today that his newest addition to the topics, "everything".
Malda stated that the new category was an answer to "the endless bunch of people whining about how they hate an extremely specific type of story that doesn't come up all that often normally, but has recently. Now they can just filter everything out."
"It's wonderful," proclaimed one slashdot reader. "Now I don't have to put up with boring ISS, CueCat, or CPHack stories! I don't have to listen to Jon Katz, I don't have to see duplicate stories, It's as though I'm not reading slashdot at all!"
The reader was unavailable for comment after being informed he didn't have to read slashdot in the first place.
antiNASA doesn't mean antiSpace(out of USA anyway) (Score:3)
anti- NASA doesn't necessarily mean anti-space programs. Certainly speaking from Europe I think a lot of people have a wider perception of space flight. Space flight isn't exclusive to NASA.
Big respect and all to NASA and the US programs but also a lot of praise to the Soviet/ Russian program, the European Space Agency, Japan, China, Canada, and everybody else who is up there or wants to be. And let's not forget the very professional 'amateurs' who are trying to be there (i.e. individuals and organisations who aren't nation states).
I'm only anti-NASA insofar as the idea of any one nation's military-industrial organisation having complete monopoly over access to the rest of the entire Universe is a bit worrying, eh?
But for the most part, yup, I'm biased, I'd like to see humanity out there in the stars.
Re:This story says as much about geeks ... (Score:1)
I might be a minority though, because I don't know of many others my age who really care about space exploration and habitation.
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3d Printers in Space... (Score:1)
Wouldn't one of the new, relatively cheap 3d plastic objects printers be perfect for the spacestation? Some vitally important part is broked? "Oh that's fine, I'll go print out another one". Instead of hauling all the 'stuff' up on the space shuttle you could use the raw materials to make needed parts in space.
Just my $.02
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Re:Nasa tax dollars (Score:3)
All of those breakthroughs preceded NASA by years.
Teflon (PTFE) was invented and classified by American scientists at the Oak Ridge nuclear fuel processing plant during WWII. They were looking for a gasket material that could withstand enriched uranium, and they puzzled out what an ideal molecular structure should be and then went experimenting. A few years later it was re-discovered by a French materials scientist, who had the great idea of coating cooking pans with it, known as Tefal in Europe. For a number of years, it was illegal to import teflon coated pans into the US, but nobody really knew why.
Kevlar was a material created during WWII as well, but it remained classified, and no work was done with it until the 1960's when it was declassified. The military had no idea what the material could do, and they kept it away from commercial sight until about 1969.
Velcro is another French invention, dating back to the 1920's. The name comes from the two materials, Velvet and Crochet hooks.
There were some cool materials that came out of NASA. Kapton is one, its used as a fireproof electrical insulator.
If you ever can afford it, get a subscription to NASA Technical Briefs, a magazine that highlights all the inventions and patents NASA is making public. Since the US taxpayers are paying for all that research, all the patents are available for cheap, non-exclusive licensing. Because of the "Open Source" nature of NASA's R&D, they get tons of money just from licensing patents, and lots of companies can get cool tech without a huge R&D budget. But any company developing for NASA automatically signs over all rights to discoveries, so they can't jack up the prices later if something becomes key to space exploration.
the AC
oops (Score:1)
hehe.
Re:Moderation system needs for story posting (Score:1)
I thought that artical was worth submitting for a few reasons:
1: It shows how common place and realativly easy a spacewald has become. When you consider all the variables, this is pretty damn amazing
2: It was the first walk outside spacehab. As big as the first space walk ever? no, but worth a note. where not writting history here, just commenting on it as it happens.
3: It seems to me about 45-60% of the people on this board enjoy this kind of space stories, it's not like it will prevent them from posting other stories as they come in, this is a web site that can handle stories on the fly, not a newspaper.
Re:Aw, c'mon! (Score:1)
Actually, that was just the third one of this mission. It's like the 40th or 50th (?) spacewalk of the US space program overall. And they did two or three walks on the mission a few weeks ago. I may be wrong, but I think every shuttle visit to ISS so far has involved at least one EVA.
Hey! (Score:2)
Heck, I'll even double the payment to assure they get a profit and pay FOUR bucks a day for a spacewalk.
Dangitall anyways.
Re:What the HELL is this? (Score:1)
Re:Nasa tax dollars (Score:1)
I thought I might be flamed for this..
I think NASA took them and used them to develop new things, or improved them, or something else. But thanks for pointing that out and giving more info
Re:you are a (Score:1)
Re:question (Score:1)
The orbit of your center of mass will stay the same regardless of what you do with the station. You need an engine to change the orbit.
If the station has rotating parts then it becomes more stable because gyros tend to keep their axis of rotation. However when a force is applied they generate precession effect which might be unwelcomed.
A correct design of a rotating station will require a lot of innovative thinking. We don't have bearings, for one, that work in vacuum, don't need lubricants, don't need maintenance and can hold segments as heavy as hundreds of tons. The segment with antennas, telescopes etc. has to be mechanically insulated from the rotating part (anyone has an idea of an airlock?) because you want to keep your telescopes fixed, not spinning. Furthermore, the joint may need to allow 3-D rotation (pretty much as a ball joint). This is not as easy as launching few tin cans and tying them together with a rope.
Does space buff mean naked in space? (Score:1)
believe
most people
on this forum
are
a little bit
spacey,
true!!!!!
Re:This is good stuff (Score:1)
The laptops themselves have lotsa hardware mods, see SpaceRef [spaceref.com] for more info (look under mission guides).
Re:Dorks in space (Score:1)
He does'nt (Score:1)
Re:Rename station (Score:1)
Or else at least something out of star trek.
Mark [zwienenberg.com]
Mark [zwienenberg.com]
Re:This is good stuff (Score:1)