NEAR Lives On; Balloon Doesn't 37
Rix writes "CNN has another story about NEAR. Apparently, they've extended the mission again - until Feb 28th - to gather even more data. They also have a simulation of NEAR's descent. Unfortunately in QT, so I can't comment on it." And a short update to the balloon story posted just few hours ago: it popped.
Well... (Score:1)
The balloon developed a leak not long after launch and fell slowly back to Earth near its launch site in Alice Springs in central Australia's remote and inhospitable outback, Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio said.
Sounds (or rather, doesn't sound) like it didnt 'pop', but deflated.
pesky javascript (Score:3)
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These Asteroids will be fought over. (Score:2)
Already Japanese companies are interested, and many have asteroid mining as part of their 100 plans (Japanese companies plan far into the future, unlike western capaitalist companies). Here in the west our companies do not plan beyond the next shareholder AGM, generally speaking, and so our government has to take the lead in making long term plans for our society.
I congratulate NASA and the government for the foresight they are showing here. It is vital that the USA get a good place in the biggest resource bonanza of the 21st century. Vital for our future.
My only quibble is with them making the results of this mission public, and the data available to all. Would the Chinese do it? No. The Japanese? No. Only the idealistic Americans. We need to close the lid on this, for it is needed for our future in the face of our competitors.
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Clarity does not require the absence of impurities,
Balloon Popped (Score:3)
Big as a football field, it would have been... gee... how metaphorical of the XFL
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Re:pesky javascript (Score:1)
Because Average User person wants it to open up in a new window. It isn't slashdot or some other site aimed at people who know what javascript it, it's a news site aimed at everyone. The majority of people just want to see the movie in a nice little window on their screen without knowing what is going on behind the scenes.
It's a nuisance, especially to people with scripting turned off / not available, but sites like CNN target the general public, not nerds like ourselves.
The sheer arrogance is staggering beyond belief (Score:1)
I am not a physicist, but it seems pretty obvious to me that landing a craft on an asteroid could have a serious impact on its orbit.
How do US scientists and NASA employees know that they have not inadvertantly set this asteroid on a collision course with another inhabited planet somewhere else in our galaxy ? Or even worse Earth itself ?
How do they know they are not sending Earth diseases out into space to decimate the population of any extra-terrestrial civilization which is unlucky enough to encounter it ?
NASA is just boys and their toys. It is time we taxpayers took those toys away. Sure they will squeal like pigs at the idea, but the will of the people must prevail. At a time where poverty in the USA is at an all time high, the money could be better spent here on Earth, in the so-called land of the free.
Re:Just one more NASA failure... (Score:1)
Would you rather a billion dollar satellite blew up?
Re:pesky javascript (Score:2)
FUNNY how Banner Ads were in the Slashpoll, rather than these. I sense a conflict of interest in the force...yesss...
tho it could be they just didn't notice, but who would believe that?
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Re:pesky javascript (Score:1)
I didn't expect an serious answer. I know perfectly well why they do that. What I was doing was posting a link to the actual downloadable file and then making some tongue-in-cheek moaning about javascript popups. (that little winky ';-)' thing should have given this away) But thanks for clearing that up anyway. =)
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Re:Well... (Score:1)
Australia is a tough place, mate, best to launch the balloon from a natural location, such as Disneyland, I swear there's a Mickey Mouse ballon in one of those NEAR photos.
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Re:pesky javascript (Score:1)
Settings could be:
Never
Ask
Always
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My guess (Score:1)
Re:The sheer arrogance is staggering beyond belief (Score:1)
Or gee, maybe it might change its course so it DOESN'T hit another inhabited planet.
Furthermore, have you ever stopped to think about how much space technology has improved life here on Earth? It is not just about "space exploration" and colonization, it is about improving technology for all facets of life.
Re:The sheer arrogance is staggering beyond belief (Score:1)
balloons (Score:3)
<child>sobbing I wanted that one
<parent>It was a complete rip off. It said it was "ultra long duration". And it was far too big. I don't know how we were meant to take it on the bus home being the size of a football field. Jolly impracticle altogether if you ask me...
<child>still sobbing Its not fair...
<parent>I'm sorry dear, I don't know what NASA were thinking by making it. How about a normal size one next time eh?
Re:Just one more NASA failure... (Score:1)
Actually, I wouldn't mind it. The money spent on satellites in R&D and pre/post production is money put back into our fumbling economy. It's an investment in companies employing many thousands of people.
So, you didn't get to see an uninhabited Galaxy billions of light years away. Who cares, it's not like viewing it would cure real problems we face in this world(poverty, education, etc, etc, etc)
Re:Just one more NASA failure... (Score:1)
Since when did the US government ever do anything useful with money anyway?
I sense a -1: Troll / Flamebait here, so better tick that box...I can't come back, I don't know how it works! (Score:2)
+1 bonus to whoever identifies the subject first. (Just kidding about the +1 part.)
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Re:I can't come back, I don't know how it works! (Score:1)
Re:Just one more NASA failure... (Score:1)
Who's fault is that? It's OURS....the American peoples fault. That's the beauty of the American Democracy. If you don't appreciate the current policies our government has in place, we have the power(as an overwhelming majority) to change it. By voting in policy makers that are in agreement with your own philosophies/ideologies we can make a difference.
Power to the people could never be more true with our form of government, it's just ashame we choose not to take advantage of it.
Re:The sheer arrogance is staggering beyond belief (Score:5)
Let's see. Mass of EROS [spaceviews.com] = 7.2 million billion kilograms. Mass of NEAR [jhuapl.edu] = 805 kg (includes propellant). Propulsion capabilities of NEAR = 100-lb thruster. Speed of impact [jhuapl.edu] = 4 mph (1.9 meters per second).
So. A 4mph collision between a big thing, and a thing with a mass of 0.00000000001118% or less of the big thing. Total effect: somewhat slight.
Risk assessment: "We might get some asshole debating whether the impact might throw EROS off course ... other than that, seems safe enough"
15 Year Old Matches Wits with NASA (Score:1)
As a balloon rises in the atmosphere, more and more pressure is placed on it. Does anyone know if NASA considered this? I'd like to think that they spent years carefully planning for the increasing pressure as the balloon rose, but I'm led to believe otherwise. (Or did they make another metric/standard conversion error?)
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Non Quicktime versions (Score:3)
Okay. How about a version that's in AVI format (2.4 Megs) [deskmedia.com]. Or maybe just the raw images (24 Megs) [deskmedia.com] directly.
-Sean
Re:NASA should employ more British scientists. (Score:1)
No you didn't. The Russians did. Concorde was the first commercial success--a joint venture with the French.
television and radio,
Marconi was British? Armstrong? DeForest? Edison? Fleming I'll grant--just one piece of the puzzle, though.
computers,
Information theory, sure. Turing was a genius. But computers? Zuse, Atanasoff, Berry--a German and two Americans. And don't forget John vonNeuman
cryptography
See note about Turing. But claiming crypto as a strictly British invention--pft!
and many more firsts which my English manners prevent me from boasting about here in this forum.
They don't seem to be terribly effective.
You are forgetting one rather incredible British scientist/engineer--Alan Bond, the developer of the world's first hypersonic jet engine. The government bought the patents, classified them, and they've been sitting in a vault for fifteen years. The British government doesn't want to use them, and if they can't have them, nobody else can either.
Re:The sheer arrogance is staggering beyond belief (Score:1)
You're changing the Earth's momentum which might cause a catistrophic disaster in 20M years.
How can you be so selfish?
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Re:These Asteroids will be fought over. (Score:1)
Non-spherical balloons are better, it turns out (Score:2)
It turns out that a pumpkin-shaped balloon, with strong cords in the seams of the pumpkin, does a much better job of resisting pressure for a given overall weight of balloon. Each gore between the ribs sees only the stress for a spherical balloon more or less the diameter of the space between the ribs, not the diameter of the whole big balloon.
What struck me was how the Greeks still influenced me thousands of years later with their ideas of 'perfect' shapes.
And, of course, this balloon didn't 'pop', it leaked...I'm sure that they'll get that fixed and try again; it's too good an idea to abandon.
thad
space.com on the NEAR extension (Score:2)
A little melodramatic. (Score:5)
This is the kind of spasce mission that NASA should do more of. This mission was essentially all about prospecting - going out to check out the asteroids and see what resources they have for us to rape and use for our own ends. [...] it is clear that the only possible reason anyone other than a scientist could be interested in an asteroid is for the resources that it contains.
Well, I agree there should be more exploration of the asteroids. Prospecting, however, is just a very-long-term (very very long term) upside from a mission such as NEAR. The mission objective has much more to do with planetology and cosmology -- the origins of the solar system -- than it does with asteroid mining. (For one thing, we don't really need to send a vehicle to a body to find out whether it has metal or not.)
Already Japanese companies are interested, and many have asteroid mining as part of their 100 plans (Japanese companies plan far into the future, unlike western capaitalist companies). Here in the west our companies do not plan beyond the next shareholder AGM, generally speaking, and so our government has to take the lead in making long term plans for our society.
Not even the government, really. Although this mission is not, as I noted above, an example with much relevance to commercial exploitation, the planning that you speak of does take place in academia and in many R&D think tanks that are collaborations between industry and academia. NASA has been singularly unsuccessful in helping "commercialize" space, and most experts today would prefer that they stick to science and long-term R&D.
I congratulate NASA and the government for the foresight they are showing here. It is vital that the USA get a good place in the biggest resource bonanza of the 21st century. Vital for our future.
Again, you don't seem to have a grasp of the relevance of this mission. We don't need a probe to tell us there are resources out there. What we do need is cheap access to space, and the right economic conditions. For instance, resource substitution remains a much more economical approach than asteroid mining for the forseeable future.
My only quibble is with them making the results of this mission public, and the data available to all. Would the Chinese do it? No. The Japanese? No. Only the idealistic Americans. We need to close the lid on this, for it is needed for our future in the face of our competitors.
Ridiculous. YOu don't have the slightest understanding of how the scientific community works, which casts into doubt everythign else you've said. Japanese research by their space agency is made public. A lot of Chinese research is made public as well. We have an excellent history of scientific cooperation with the Japanese; your xenophobia seems to have bounced through a time warp from 1979 or something, and is very prejudiced as well. Do Americans have a monopoly on idealism? Do the Chinese have a monopoly on secrecy? Good grief.
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eek (Score:1)
Re:These things happen (Score:3)
Granted, it was probably just balloon failure, and those you expect to happen a few percent of the time (or less, probably). All this basically has done is probably lowered spirits on the ULDB team- that's why I find it really harsh that we criticize NASA for the idea. They're feeling bad enough already, even though it was completely out of their hands.
It does kindof make you yearn for the days when proof-of-concept ideas were done in secret in military bases, and when things blew up, no one cared. You really look perfect when no one sees your mistakes.
Re:NASA should employ more British scientists. (Score:1)
These trolls just seem to be getting dumber and dumber. A bit of advice for the original poster: "It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt." It's a widely used quote, and has been attributed to many different people. There's even something similar to it in the book of Proverbs. Still, it seems that the above troll has not yet figured out its meaning.
Learn your basic physics (P=hpg) first (Score:3)
Dead wrong.
Pressure = height of fluid above x its density x acceleration due to gravity. As a balloon rises, the pressure outside decreases. Most balloons expand as they rise, so that they stay at the same pressure as the outside air. (Because remember, PV/T = constant.)
Its no fun responding to trolls in the hope of giving them some education, maybe...
Maybe you should learn some first... (Score:2)
>Dead wrong.
As the outside pressure drops, the balloon will expand, due to constant internal pressure not being conterbalanced by external pressure. Try putting a balloon in a vacuum chamber (it'll pop). So don't browbeat the kid.
Now, that said, I highly doubt that's what actually happened - the story said that the balloon was designed to inflate to its full size when it reached its destination altitude.
I wish people would stop being so critical when NASA doesn't succeed. They're trying things that've never been done before, of course things are going to break some of the time.
Cheers,
Rick Kirkland
Re:The sheer arrogance is staggering beyond belief (Score:1)
Galaxy? It orbits our *SUN* for pete's sake, we're pretty sure we've the only inhabited planet in our part of the universe.
I am not a physicist either but I did do physics at school, so a quick scribble on the back of an envelope and ...
The scale of the impact would be akin to hitting a fully-loaded Ford Transit van travelling at 80mph with a gently thrown tangerine.
Re:Learn your basic physics (P=hpg) first (Score:1)
Dead wrong.
Sorry, but although your equation is quite correct, your reasoning is flawed. Obviously the balloon expands as it rises. As the original poster quite rightly said, more pressure is placed on the balloon *from the inside*. It expands until the material is overstressed and bursts.
This is what happens to weather balloons.
Its no fun responding to trolls in the hope of giving them some education, maybe...
If you can't say something nice, say nothing. Oh, and learn how to use the apostrophe.
Its - neuter possesive (belonging to it)
It's - contraction of "it is"
Re:My guess (Score:1)