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Capturing Genesis 155

Posted by CmdrTaco from the thats-just-bizarre dept.
cbull writes "USA Today has an article about practice for the attempts to capture the Genesis capsule. Helicopter stunt pilots will have 5 chances to capture the 400-lb. capsule. Military pilots were unavailable, due to the 6-year commitment required."
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Capturing Genesis More

Capturing Genesis

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  • Not again! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Dirtside ( 91468 ) on Sunday September 05, 2004 @10:35AM (#10162545) Journal
    Some kind of Genesis device? KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!

  • Hmm... sounds tricky (Score:5, Funny)

    by petra13 ( 785564 ) on Sunday September 05, 2004 @10:37AM (#10162554) Journal
    The stunt pilots say their biggest challenge will be flying at 40 mph nearly a mile over the Utah desert without any visual reference points to judge distance or speed as they close in with hook and cable on the capsule, which will be descending 400 feet a minute at a forward speed of 20 mph.

    So will the capsule get bonus points if it takes out one of the helicopters without the pilots seeing it first?

  • I've got the training! (Score:5, Funny)

    by twenty-exty-six ( 772817 ) on Sunday September 05, 2004 @10:37AM (#10162556)
    Where do I sign up. I've spent months working on an intense helicopter simulator [addictinggames.com], fine-tuning my skills to perfection.

  • When will they learn? (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Protomatter is unstable! It was a mistake to use it.
  • Is anyone else wondering why the container has to be caught in midair? Why can't the capsule have larger parachutes or a balloon structure attached to it?

  • Bad joke thread (Score:3, Funny)

    by tepples ( 727027 ) <.tepples. .at. .gmail.com.> on Sunday September 05, 2004 @10:40AM (#10162575) Homepage Journal

    Please don't overdo your bad jokes about the following topics:

    • Genesis, the first book of the Old Testament
    • Genesis, a progressive rock band
    • Sega Genesis, a 16-bit game console called "Mega Drive" in some markets
  • If it's the boy Spock in there, they might get an extra pass at it.

  • 6 year commitment? (Score:5, Funny)

    by keiferb ( 267153 ) on Sunday September 05, 2004 @10:51AM (#10162639) Homepage
    Why did the pilots have to commit for 6 years? Does it seriously take that long to learn how to catch a falling space probe with a hook dangling from a chopper?

    Amateurs.
    • Probably they needed to test it before they launched it to be sure they'll be able to catch it ;-)

      • Re:6 year commitment? (Score:4, Funny)

        by keiferb ( 267153 ) on Sunday September 05, 2004 @11:01AM (#10162682) Homepage
        Sure... but seriously, why not two one year commitments: one for the testing before launch, and one to re-acquaint the pilots with the procedure before re-entry?

        I mean, come on... catching a probe that's re-entering the earth's atmosphere with a hook and rope dangling from a chopper is like riding a bike.. once you learn, you never really forget.

    • Re:6 year commitment? (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      This is going to make an awesome movie eventually (ala "the right stuff" perhaps?).

    • Re:6 year commitment? (Score:5, Informative)

      by jon787 ( 512497 ) on Sunday September 05, 2004 @11:07AM (#10162717) Homepage Journal
      Actually I sent these people some email after hearing a claim of this being a first (which isn't true, project Corona did mid-air recovery of returning space capsules) and they have a few people who did this during project Corona.

      Closest Thing to a Corona Homepage [nro.gov]
      • Yep, they used to snatch the parachutes with a T-shaped bar trailing from a C-119...if you can do it with a 60,000-pound, 200 mph airplane, you can certainly do it with a helicopter.

        rj
      • I don't know this, but my guess is that since this thing reenters the atmosphere from something really remote, it will crash in much faster than something falling in from low earth orbit. That could make a big difference. But I'm just guessing.
        • ...but then, since it does deploy a parachute, I guess not. But it is OK to hype things to get people excited about something that is pretty cool, namely the return of solar wind particles.
    • A military pilot might be committed elsewhere on that particular day. Somewhere that couldn't have been predicted 6 years ago.

      Say, Afghanistan.

      • A military pilot might be committed elsewhere on that particular day. Somewhere that couldn't have been predicted 6 years ago.

        Say, Afghanistan.

        Yup that's true. Any dumbass could have predicted that military pilots would be needed in Iraq, but Afghanistan, why, even GWB couldn't guess that.

        Even when Bill told him.

        • 1. So why didn't Bill C. do something about it? After all...he knew, right?

          2. Tell us, o sage. Where will military helicopter pilots be active on September 8, 2010? Haiti? Sudan? Yemen? Saudi Arabia? Chechnya?
          Where will a particular pilot be in 2010?

          • So why didn't Bill C. do something about it? After all...he knew, right
            Well, he tried.

            And you laughed at him:

            Wag the dog... ha ha ha ....
            Of course he was also a pusillanimous weenie.

            But so is George:

            Iraq doesn't have nukes? Attack!

            North Korea probaly has nukes? Bring back our boys from South Korea.

            Iraq may be trying to get nukes? Pout.

      • If the military can commit people to things like the Air Force Band, sending people to the olympics, and things like the Golden Knights [army.mil], then they can commit a crew or two to this project. If one or two helecopter crews are going to make the difference in winning a war then we have an even bigger problem.

        Would it be so hard to get one more helecopter and train one more crew over what we already have?
        • None of those you listed are 6 year committments. And all are subject to "the needs of the military".

          Is this a function that only a military pilot can do? No. Besides...many, many high end civilian pilots (rotary and fixed wing) came from the military.

  • Just curious... (Score:4, Funny)

    by KoolDude ( 614134 ) on Sunday September 05, 2004 @10:54AM (#10162651)

    ...am I the only one who saw the post and said, "Sh*t, looks like I have to RTFA to make any sense of it." ?

    [goes off to RTFA, grudgingly]
    • I just thought that Slashdot editors had started letting Shakespeare monkeys post stories. If I hadn't RTFA, I would have had no idea it was a real story.
    • Yes, a real slashdotter would have remembered the last article about this and had no need to RTFA.

      A semi slashdotter would have searched for that previous article and read the comments on that, thus cirmumventing the necessity to RTFA :)

  • What to shout? (Score:4, Funny)

    by dj245 ( 732906 ) on Sunday September 05, 2004 @10:55AM (#10162656) Homepage
    I'm a little baffled over what to yell out when the catch is made.
    "He's out!"
    "Goal!"
    "Touchdown!"
    "Tiddlywinks!" and
    "KHAAAAN!"
    are all pretty good options IMO
    • This sounds more like a fishing thing than a ball game to me. So what do fishermen say when they catch something - "Hey, pass me another beer"? Or maybe the other guy should critize: "Pretty small - throw that one back!"

  • Why do they need to put this? (Score:4, Funny)

    by FooAtWFU ( 699187 ) on Sunday September 05, 2004 @11:23AM (#10162793) Homepage
    Why do they need to put this? Are people really that stupi... oh, wait a minute. =b

    Since this mission is named Genesis and will tell us about the beginning of the solar system, will it try to prove or disprove the Bible?

    The Genesis mission will collect samples of the solar wind, material flowing outward from the Sun, and return these samples to Earth. Scientists will be able to compare the compositions of these samples with known compositions of the planets and help in the effort to understand how our solar system and its planets formed. It is not NASA's role to address theological questions or interpretations, and Genesis' investigation will be studied as a scientific question, not a theological one.

    • Re:Why do they need to put this? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by VanillaCoke420 ( 662576 ) <vanillacoke420@h ... l.com minus poet> on Sunday September 05, 2004 @11:58AM (#10163006)
      It's amazing, isn't it? Science is science, and whether or not religion agrees with its findings have absolute zero relevance.

      • relevance (Score:4, Insightful)

        by anomaly ( 15035 ) <tom.cooper3@gmail.DEBIANcom minus distro> on Sunday September 05, 2004 @12:23PM (#10163141)
        I agree completely that science is science. The light is either on or off, it really doesn't matter how you feel about it. Truth is that way.

        However, frequently a straw man is drawn between science and matters of faith, where science is portrayed as unbiased - merely truth, and matters of faith are at best irrelevant, and at worst completely counter to reason itself.

        People of faith bring a bias to a discussion. People of no faith bring a bias to a discussion, too. Because scientists are people, they bring a bias to their work. Specifically, scientists who deny God's existence have a bias that impacts their work, and not always in a positive way.

        It's true that science and theology are separate disciplines, but to suggest that neither is relevant to the other is a bit naieve.

        Respectfully,
        Anomaly

        • Re:relevance (Score:1, Redundant)

          by Knos ( 30446 )
          Where does your favorite deity appear (or rather where should it appear) in physical equations? And how? (And if you answer, in the cosmological constants, then where's the bias?)

        • The problem is (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Sycraft-fu ( 314770 ) on Sunday September 05, 2004 @02:56PM (#10163889)
          That many religious people seem to feel as though their faith should be given special weight, as though because it's written in the Bible or some other book claimed to be of divine origin, science should accept it as fact. They want scientists to find evidence that supports their views, and ignore evidence that doesn't. Well, that's not how it works. Science (when properly done) finds evidence and draws theories to explain it, regardless of if they like what it shows.

          The other problem is that the claims of faith are generally unfalsifiable, which is REQUIRED to be a valid scientific theory. So anything that looks like it might support their claim, they point to and shout, anything that looks like it might detract from it, they claim doesn't apply. Since their claim isn't an empiricially valid, falsifiable claim, it doesn't really matter either way.

          Remember: We do not prove things true in sciemce, with each test we show them to be not false under a certian set of circumstances. So the more something is tested and the more varied the conditions, the more sure we can be that it is the truth.

          So when you take an empiricist viewpoint, which is what is needed to do good science, leaving god out of it is appropriate. There is NO valid empirical evidence to support the existance of god. That god exists ins't even a testable theory. Thus it needs to be treated like ESP or anything else that is claimed but not testable. That doesn't mean that god doesn't exist and we just can't test for it, but science is, and must be, only concerned with the testable.

          So having faith is fine, but don't pretend the arguments should be given scientific creedence until you can come up with a falsifiable test. If you want scientists to deal with matters of god, design a test that is empirically valid and falsifiable. Then they'll be interested and test it (as well as probably winning you major recognition as a philsopher, whichever way it turns out).
          • You submit that people of faith want the scientists to cook the books by collecting evidence in harmony with religious belief and discarding that which appears to conflict with it.

            While many would describe me as quite religious, I know a great number of intelligent people, some of them scientists, who would totally reject that idea. The evidence is the evidence. Nothing more, nothing less.

            Realistically, science provides us with a framework to measure, describe, and manipulate the material that comprises

            • Again you fail to understand science (Score:4, Insightful)

              by Sycraft-fu ( 314770 ) on Sunday September 05, 2004 @07:46PM (#10165260)
              See Karl Popper's "The Logic of Scientific Discovery" for complete information. The thing is, science is ONLY concerned with the testable, and to be scientifically testable a theory must be falsifiable. This is how science is done. If it's not testable, it's not science. Doesn't mean you aren't free to believe it but don't pretend like science should give it any weight. You hold a belief with no scientific proof, that's faith and that's fine, but don't then turn around and ask scientists to consdier your faith in science.

              Of course scientists have bias, everything has bias. Even physics has bias as there are things that you cannot observe without changing the result. That does not, however, make religion any more scientific or any more worthy of scientific consdieration.

              Look, whatever facts you think you have that support a cerator, none of them come even close to passing scientific muster. I've heard basically all of them, and they just don't hold up. You may choose to believe they are evidence of a creator, and that's fine, but they are SCIENTIFIC evidence and thus aren't of any intrest to scientists.

              I'll cover a couple of the popular ones:

              The cause of the universe. The believer says that everything must have a cause, including the universe. This cause is god. Sorry, but now you've got the same problem, now god is the prime cause, what caused god? It is a much simpler explination (and thus the working theory) that the universe IS the prime cause.

              Healing by prayer. The believer points to cases where a person with an uncurable disease got better after they, or others, prayed for it. Problem is, the ignores counter evidence, the many cases where people prayed and the person still died. This was restated as a falsifible theory and tested, and falsified. They said that if prayer healing worked, then there would be a statistical difference in those that survived. So they had a group go and pray for some cases in a hospital, not others. There was no stastical difference.

              So it goes for all the claims I've ever heard. A believe may see them as evidence and that's fine but they are NOT scientific evidence. Science has a very specific standard, strong inference (laid out in Popper's book) that must be met. Religion doens't get a free pass at that and get to be called science with less evidence.

              Also you mistake the difference between not believing in something and saying it can't exist. I don't believe in god because there is insufficient evidence to do so. I do nto claim god can't exist, just that until I see some scientific proof, I'm not going to believe in it. Same for ESP, astral trips, and so on. There is not the evidence to convince me it is true so I don't believe it.

              Really, you need to get some of the philsophy of science and Popper's book is the best place to start. You have a very common misconception of what science is. It's a process of knowing things about the world and testing things, the only reliable one we've found. It is not infalliable or complete but it is highly reliable and has advanced knolwedge more than anything else save writing. It isn't just some random process, it's a logical, robust process of testing things to find out the truth.
              • You didn't read/understand his post did you?

                He was talking more about scientists. And you're talking more about science.

                Not all scientists do good science.

                As for the supernatural: there was at least one double blind study which showed that prayer affected IVF success rates - the IVF was done in a hospital in Korea, the prayers were done by people in the US who only had the photos of those prayed for- the people in the hospital didn't know who was being prayed for - not even sure if most knew a study was
                • Gently illustrates your point...
                  Exposed: conman's role in prayer-power IVF 'miracle'

                  One of the authors of a university report on infertility has admitted a multi-million-dollar fraud, reports Paul Harris in New York

                  Sunday May 30, 2004 - The Observer

                  It was a miracle that created headlines around the world. Doctors at one of the world's top medical schools claimed to have scientifically proved the power of prayer.

                  Many Americans took the Columbia University research - announced in October 2001 after

                • Again, problems in understanding science. I am NOT talking about if scientists are properly doing science, I'm talking about how science is properly done. You deal with the testable, the measurable, and that's it. That there may be more to the universe is fine, you don't deal with that, htat's for philsophers (that's actually one of the purposes of philsophy, to postulate an explination that scientists can test). A theory isn't a scientific theory unless it's a testable, falsifiable one.

                  As noted by another
                  • Anomaly was pointing out that scientists have a bias.

                    You ignored that and kept going on about science.

                    While it's not quite the "wookie defense" you have validated his point about the "straw man".
                    • I noted scientists have bias. Scientists kow they have bias and, on more universal terms, that the simpl act of measuring something can change the result, so something can be different when measured than when not measured.

                      The reason I go on about science is because of the other side of his argument, that scientists need to take god into account to clear up or at least balance the bias (or at least that's what I got out of it). That's not the case. Scientists deliberatly bias away from untestable, so called
                    • You're putting words in my mouth. Others may have that perspective, but I do not.

                • As for the supernatural: there was at least one double blind study which showed that prayer affected IVF success rates - the IVF was done in a hospital in Korea, the prayers were done by people in the US who only had the photos of those prayed for- the people in the hospital didn't know who was being prayed for - not even sure if most knew a study was being done. Whether it proves there is a God is another thing - coz it could just prove that some people can effect supernatural powers if they do certain th

                  • That's new info to me. Thanks.

                    Has the journal really withdrawn the paper? I haven't been keeping track.

                    The rest of my post remains valid. Even if the study was correctly done the responses to it would still be the same.
                    • I've read that the paper has been withdrawn , but I can't find a link to it right now. (The links I gave are a few months old.)

                      There were other problems as well. For example, no informed consent of the people taking part in the study. Speaking as an ex-infertility patient, I would have been highly offended if I had been one of the ones included in the study without the authors asking.

              • Science is all about the testable. I agree completely. To follow the scientific method, one observes a phenomenon, gathers information about it, develops a theory about the relationships among the events, and then tests that theory.

                We're on the same page here, right?

                Origins are not testable using this method. This method can be used to gather information and speculate about the origin of the universe, but science cannot conclude what happened in the absence of being able to test the speculation.

                Scienc
            • To suggest that all of humanity is built from the basic building blocks of elements and chemicals causes us to neglect much of the human experience.

              Actually doing that is not a scientific requirement at all. Economics, for example, doesn't require that kind of analysis; it keeps "human actions" as an indivisible object of study, and build a (somewhat) successful theory in top of it.

              Reductionism is not the only way to proceed on science. As Sycraft-fu points out, the only required thing is testability -

    • Those who believe the Bible is right don't need it to be proven to them and those who don't believe never will believe.

  • Why a helicopter? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by sockonafish ( 228678 ) on Sunday September 05, 2004 @11:28AM (#10162820)
    I know I've seen plenty of footage of big prop planes capturing spy satellites before they knew how to beam images back to Earth. Why spring for helicopters? (FYI, helicopters are generally more expensive than fixed-wing aircraft)

    • Re:Why a helicopter? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by YrWrstNtmr ( 564987 ) on Sunday September 05, 2004 @11:52AM (#10162959)
      The difference in cost between a couple hours flight for a C-130 or a helicopter isn't even a blip on NASA's budget. And I'm not sure operating a C-130 is actually cheaper per hour than a helicopter.

      This is literally a once in a lifetime chance. Why risk it trying to shave a couple of dollars?

  • MARS in the Early 70s (Score:4, Informative)

    by iCharles ( 242580 ) on Sunday September 05, 2004 @11:53AM (#10162972) Homepage
    The six-year commitment explanation made me feel a lot better. All the coverage made a big deal about a "stunt pilot" doing this maneuver.


    This sounds only a little more difficult that the recovery of drones ("UAVs" in today's parlance) during the early 70s [55srwa.org]. In this, drones would be captured in mid-air by a CH-3.


    (My dad flew the CH-3 part of this set-up)


    Not saying that there aren't new aspects, merely that the capability was present 30 years ago.

  • But won't it be hot??

  • What if they all miss?
  • I would think that the air pressure of the heilocopter going above the parachute would quickly cause the chute to fold up and send the probe crashing to the ground.

  • I'd like to point out that... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mav[LAG] ( 31387 ) on Sunday September 05, 2004 @01:03PM (#10163356)
    ...this story has been mentioned before [slashdot.org]. It is my single accepted submission on /. and thus occupies a special place in my memory :)

  • Silicone (Score:5, Insightful)

    by morcheeba ( 260908 ) * on Sunday September 05, 2004 @01:38PM (#10163501) Journal
    Ah, USA today, how I love you for your technical prowness...

    Together, the charged atoms captured on the capsule's disks of gold, sapphire, diamond and silicone are no bigger than a few grains of salt

    Atomic element or polymer [cafepress.com], it's probably close enough. But Spaceflightnow say's it's the element Silicon [spaceflightnow.com]. And they've got a cool picture of the spacecraft.

  • Pilot: "I got it! I got it!"
    (chop chop chop chop chop)
    ..... "Don't got it...."
  • The first U.S. spy satellites, the Corona series, sent its exposed film back via capsules that were gathered by crews in, I believe, C-130's. This was almost 40 years ago.

    Dunno if the Soviets needed to try that, since they had all that empty space to bring a payload down safely and away from prying eyes.

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