NASA Cancels "Sunjammer" Solar Sail Demonstration Mission 74
An anonymous reader writes "Space News reports that NASA has cancelled its solar sail demonstration mission (also known as Sunjammer) citing "a lack of confidence in its contractor's ability to deliver." "Company president Nathan] Barnes said that in 2011 he reached out to several NASA centers and companies that he believed could build the spacecraft and leave L'Garde free to focus on the solar sail. None of those he approached — he only identified NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California — took him up on the offer.
Rather than give up on the opportunity to land a NASA contract, L'Garde decided to bring the spacecraft development in house. It did not work out, and as of Oct. 17, the company had taken delivery of about $2 million worth of spacecraft hardware including a hydrazine tank from ATK Space Systems of Commerce, California, and four mono-propellant thrusters from Aerojet Rocketdyne of Sacramento, California."
The Wind from the Sun (Score:3, Insightful)
And in related news, an earthquake was reported in Sri Lanka
(A.C. Clarke turning in his grave)
Sunjammer was the orignal title (Score:2)
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In the mean time, you can still listen to this [youtube.com].
(Yes, Mike Oldfield is an Arthur C. Clarke fan in case you hadn't guessed [wikipedia.org].)
Ouch (Score:2)
A vote of no confidence. I remember when NASA canceled the USNO FAME [wikipedia.org] satellite - they said it was over the budget, but really it was over the management team. I expect that there is something similar here - fortunately, there is still NASA Marshall's Solar Scout [interplane...erence.org], which is much smaller and cheaper than the Sunjammer.
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while that was an absolutely stupid thing to do, its not really relevant to the topic at hand here now is it??
It's not even really true; it's just bamboozlement for people who want to be bamboozled. If you listen to the actual fracking interview [aljazeera.com], he says that his goals, on this particular trip to the Middle East include outreach to the Muslim world, including reminding them in their role in the development of science. That is a non-surprising goal for an official trip to a particular region. I have a news flash - at the recent IAC meeting, he congratulated the Indians [nasa.gov] on the initial success of their MOM Mars mis
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I have met Mr. Bolden several times, and had the opportunity to see him in action. He is an excellent NASA administrator who is seriously focused on "boots on Mars," not self-esteem initiatives.
Thank you for your insight. I am really pleased to hear that
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NASA is tasked for Muslim outreach to make them feel better after putting infidel footprints all over their moon god.
you don't know much about islam do you?
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But there's one thing I do know (Score:1)
There's a lot of ruins in Mesopotamia.
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First of all: in all cultures where the moon is a deity (hint, get that noun I used) it is a 'Goddess' and not a God.
And muslims (so are the believers in the religion called Islam are called) believe in the same god as Jews and Christians.
Shocked? Then get a damn education. Idiot!
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Why did the Christians?
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Yeah, this is a hilarious non-sequitur reaction that you're guaranteed to get from most Muslims...
X: "This Allah guy sure is a major douchebag."
A Muslim: "Actually, it's the same as your Christian god, so shut up, you ignorant moron."
...they usually don't realize the major fallacies involved in that response.
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They profess to believe in the same God as Jews and Christians, but they don't believe that Jesus Christ was the son of God, they believe he was another prophet like Mohammed - that means that they don't actually believe in the same God as Christians, they believe in a much earlier Judeo God, which is essentially the Jewish God.
In essence, the Muslim faith is a branch off of Judaism rather than Christianity, as they flat out reject the basic tenant of Christianity. This is important because the Christian f
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That is only true for the "catholic" wing of Christianity.
The protestants reject the "holy trinity" ... there is only god, and ofc Jesus as his son, but Jesus simply was a mortal like the muslims see it.
On the other hand, who am I to care? I'm an atheist ... and as far as I can tell: if you follow the ten commandments and Jesus Idea for god it won't matter if you really worship him or simply live a good life.
So regardless how it turns out in the end, I certainly will be either simply dead ... or in heaven.
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You need to retake religious studies :) Seriously, your entire understanding of Christianity is wrong.
Catholicism is Christianity in entirety - it has essentially two main branches, Roman Catholic, and Protestant (or Church of England based Christianity, and also includes most other non-Roman Catholic Christian branches such as Baptists, Methodist etc, which are all offshoots of the CoE branch). But both sit under the label of Catholicism.
Protestants most certainly believe in the Holy Trinity of Father, Son
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I'm raised protestantian, as Martin Luther defined it.
Certainly there is no trinity.
And you should perhaps check your definition of protestants, they are not a subbranch of catholicism ;D
Oh, and they most definitely believe he is the Son of God.
Ofc he is, I said so in my previous post. But the main difference versus catholicism is: he is not god like, but a mere mortal. That is exactly the point about Jesus!!
Your idea of how salvation occurs is also completely broken for both branches of Catholicism - sim
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Ok, so you know jack shit then.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C... [wikipedia.org]
I also suggest, as a starting point, reading the Church of England article as well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C... [wikipedia.org]
And being a protestant myself, we definitely believe in the Holy Trinity.
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Rofl, the european "protestantism" started with Martin Luther and has nothing to do with the UK Anglicanic church.
However it makes sense to proclaim the anglicanic church a branch of catholicism. After all they did not change much except switching from latin to "english" in their masses.
Anyway ... no real need to discuss, as I'm not much interested in this stuff.
I learned in school that "my face" (which I'm supposed to have, if I had not left "my church" with age of 14) does not believe in the trinity. And
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I'm raised protestantian, as Martin Luther defined it.
Certainly there is no trinity.
Uh, my understanding is that Lutherans subscribe to the Nicene Creed [wels.net]. So do the Baptists (Southern and otherwise), Methodists, Presbyterians, the Catholics and the Orthodox, and in fact every Christian church I have ever been in*.
The Trinity, and the divinity of Christ (that "true God from true God" part), is built into the Nicene Creed. It is a feature, not a bug. You may not believe in it, but don't go saying all those churches don't know what they are doing when they recite it.
* You will get bonus points
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The "Trinity" stuff emerged around 200 CE.
It got challenged quite often.
In the catholic church it remained doctrine.
With Martin Luther it got more or less dropped in the "protestantic" church, as he an later philosophers that it contradicts the "there is only one god" doctrine.
And no, you realized precise: I don't believe in a monotheistic god who is a split personality. (The trinity was stolen from several pagan religions anyway and never was a christian core believe before 200/400 CE)
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So, there's no Coptic church? No Orthodox church? And they're just the ones that there is no doubt about them being Christian. You could have a slightly longer discussion
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Uh, no. On one trip by one administrator to the Middle East in one interview he mentioned that was one of several goals of that one trip. I realize that's not quite the spin that Fox News put on it for you, but that's the truth. Sorry.
Re: Fame deserved it (Score:2)
What was the detector? 24 wafers isn't as absured as it may sound, for a one off prototype. Developeding a high yield process takes a lot of time and money, especially if it's a relatively new material system.
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FAME deserved it. Let' s just leave it at that and walk away from the wreckage.
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Payment (Score:2)
PerkinElmer is still in business, by the way.
To me, this is good news (Score:5, Insightful)
Whenever NASA (or any other agency) cancels a contract because they lack confidence in the contractor, it probably means that someone in the government is paying attention to what's going on, and is holding the responsible party's feet to the fire.
Compare this to situations where billions of dollars of money are tossed away in the pursuit of unworking (and possibly unworkable) missle defense systems. [latimes.com]
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Oh, yes. FAME (to pick my previous example) absolutely deserved to be canceled. It hurt some people I have real respect for, but there it is. I am sure the current situation is pretty similar. (This is analogous to firing a contractor when they are halfway finished building an addition to your house - it is so messy and represents such a real loss of money, and also such a loss of face, that it is almost never done without some real provocation.)
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And yet, as with your house analogy, it's better to bring in a competent contractor to set things right, than to soldier on and live in a house that threatens to collapse in the first strong wind.
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Well, it's an analogy. Generally, in the spacecraft case, the plug is just pulled, for a bunch of different reasons (which is why it doesn't happen all that often). In this case, L'Garde was trying to reuse a bunch of technology they developed for previous inflatable structures in space. This led to the sail inflation mechanism weighing more than the Sunjammer itself, which is not desirable, and likely not what you would do if you started from scratch. No new contractor would want to come in and try and mak
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I see you're new to the US, Welcome! Things here rarely are canceled because they're "holding the responsible party's feet to the fire". Projects can go orders of magnitude over their budgets, with less capabilities then promised and and still continue unquestioned (F-35, Big Dig, Bridge to Nowhere, Afghan command center, Solyndra). The only thing that really stops a project is if it doesn't have enough political clout and the money is wanted by those who do or it is proven beyond all doubt that it will
Re:To me, this is good news (Score:5)
Actually, I've been a private IT contractor supporting various government branches for about 25 years now. :-) I've actually seen projects -- not mine, thankfully -- cancelled for precisely the reason stated in this article: the contractor was screwing up royally, and the Federal managers did not want a flaming disaster on their hands.
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Wrong guess, minus five.
Hint: the pound is a unit of FORCE, the kilogram is a unit of MASS. It makes no more sense to measure thrust in kilograms than it does to measure distance in square meters.
If you really want to have consistency, they should have measured the thrust in newtons, NOT in kilo
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for what it's worth for GP and anyone else who's interested, 1 lb thrust = 4.45 Newtons. I like this analogy I found online [howstuffworks.com]: If you were floating in space with a bag of baseballs and you threw one baseball per second away from you at 21 mph, your baseballs would be generating the equivalent of 1 pound of thrust. If you were to throw the baseballs instead at 42 mph, then you would be generating 2 pounds of thrust. If you throw them at 2,100 mph (perhaps by shooting them out of some sort of baseball gun), the
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true, nor do Europeans measure speed in miles per hour. the equivalence would be relating one Newton to the thrust imparted on you when you kick a football away from you at XX km/hr. presumably it's a balance-of-kinetic-energy equation. I challenge Slashdot to solve this eqn!
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Pounds are units of both mass and force, which is a problem with the "standard" system of weights and measurements. Usually there is a distinction made if it is ambiguous and matters (lb_f or lb_m). It's my understanding that this is because the unit was named before the concepts of mass and weight were observed to be different, but that may be apocryphal.
The tragedy is that Europeans are apparently determined to screw up a perfectly good unit system by adding back the ambiguity in the creation of the kil
You would think....but no. (Score:2)
When doing physics the pound is most often used as force, but it's not quite as simple as you make it out to be.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P... [wikipedia.org]
Also, consider the system of measurement with pounds-as-mass, where the unit of force is the "poundal".
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Pound as well as kg are measures of mass.
In both cases the measurement is done by 'looking at' the force such a weight exercises in the earth gravity field on 0 above sea level.
It is a no brainer that mass and force excersiced by that mass is completely equivalent for any daily ordinary men usage.
So what was the point you wanted to make with your wrong reasoning?
You've got it backwards. (Score:2)
The fundamental property is mass, and the "weight" is defined by the force generated due to "standard" gravity.
The kg is a measure of mass. The pound can be mass or force, depending on the system of measurement involved. Most technical people would consider pounds to be units of force, where the corresponding mass is the slug. (Though honestly SI units are more convenient for doing physics with.)
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Sorry, you are simply wrong.
Like the pound a kg can be a unit of mass or force.
A pound is just a "smaller kg" something around 450g ... there is no difference in usage. Neither for laymen nor for scientists.
Oh: scientists neither use kg nor pound for force, but only as mass.
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It's worse than that. There are slugs, pounds and poundals, and (IMHO) anyone who doesn't immediately convert these units to MKS is just being silly.
Sunjammer was to have a total surface area of ~ 1,200 square metres, so its thrust at 1 AU would have been 2 x 1361 W / m^2 x 1200 / c ~ 0.01 Newtons (assuming the sail had a near perfect reflectivity). On the surface of the Earth, that thrust would be generated by a weight of 0.01 / 9.8 ~ 1 gm, or ~ 0.002 pounds.
Blame these Space News websites (Score:2)
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Well, big chunks of the US aerospace industry (i.e., their audience) still use English units. You don't see this in formal publications as much as you used to, but it's still fairly common.
Planetary Society (Score:4, Interesting)
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a windjammer* is a vessel designed to take full advantage of every bit of wind energy it can capture and put it into forward motion using the largest sail area it can possibly handle. Hence the name "Sunjammer", being designed along the same line: the largest sail the payload can practically handle using the lightest material available with just one aim: to maximise the conversion of the solar wind thus captured into forward motion.
*oceangoing windjammers were steel hulled and designed to carry cargo on int
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I'm pretty sure in the UK a wind jammer would be known as a clipper.
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nope. Clippers are wooden hulled. Windjammers are at least four times more massive and steel hulled.