Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Galemp on September 08, 2004, 11:31:26 am
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You folks may have heard about a recovery op for a space probe re-entering the atmosphere today; it's been collecting various sensitive samples from the sun, and its contents are very fragile.
So NASA designed this recovery op; the probe's parachutes were to deploy, then helicopters flown by Hollywood stuntmen were going to pluck it gently out of the air and return it to earth slowly and carefully to avoid any damage to the precious cargo.
Five minutes ago the probe's parachutes failed to deploy and it slammed into the ground at over 100 miles per hour, and is now buried in a 3 foot deep crater.
Score another one for NASA. I wonder how the Mars program's going...
More info:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/webcast/genesis/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3638926.stm
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...hollywood stunt pilots?
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Hmm - I wonder what's going to happen to the Titan probe (is it Hyugens?)
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Yeah. They have experience in this sort of thing.
I just love seeing a big publicity stunt on international live television turn into a massive f***-up, and watch the commentators stutter and stumble for words. :D There's nothing like watching a 264 million dollar piece of equipment slam into the earth at about 3000 feet per second. I love NASA.
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Originally posted by Carl
...hollywood stunt pilots?
They are crazy enough do that ? maybe
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I hope that they can still recover something from the ship...
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I don't think he meant that literally, though I wouldn't be surprised if it were true, everything is getting Hollywoodized these days.
Oh well, another few billion down the drain, I'm sure all the starving kids are happy.
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No, they were literally stuntmen from Hollywood, hired by NASA to catch this thing.
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my God, stupidty knows no bounds. Have we as a society reached the point when even science has to be spectacular and entertaining in order to sustain people's attention?
Run for the hills, nothing is sacred anymore.
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They were hired because they were the only ones with the necessary flight skills... I don't see it as stupidty... it's the parachutes' fault not the pilot's...
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Wouldn't military pilots be better skilled for something like this?
Anyways, I realize that it was the parachute, or lack thereof, that caused the crash, I'm just lamenting the "made for TV" turn that our society has taken.
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Military heli pilots don't have better skills at doing something of this magnitude, stunt pilots are used to doing things with helicopters that other pilots would even dream of...
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OK, press conference at 2:00 PM EST, that's in about an hour, 7 PM GMT. See you there...
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The best minds in the world work for NASA, and that they coldn't save the probe is just embaresing.
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I think this was just the universe generating a karmic return for those at NASA who laughed at Beagle 2 :D
Seriously though it's a real shame.
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Damn...this thing could have had huge potential for astronomical research :(.
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Well, there's only one thing to say; "Thanks Utah! For smacking your big ass nothingness into the probe!"
:rolleyes:
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Originally posted by Rictor
I don't think he meant that literally, though I wouldn't be surprised if it were true, everything is getting Hollywoodized these days.
Oh well, another few billion down the drain, I'm sure all the starving kids are happy.
How did I know you'd find some political angle to this thing....
(edit: qualifier removed)
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Why can't we all switch to one measurement system? I mean... damn... I'm not going to say that was the problem this time, but damn...
Also, their recovery method seemed way complex. They got alot of things right, it's true... but there were too many things to go wrong, I wonder why they felt the need to grab it mid-air? But then again, who knows... Maybe someday this will happen to one of my projects. :( But with me it would be more like Hubble, which was thankfully repairable.
And it's true that some of the best minds work at NASA... but they aren't all "best minds." NASA doesn't pay well enough. ;) Mostly because of the lack of funding and public interest someone was mentioning earlier.
Lets hope that everything is not a loss... it's always a shame to see this happen because you know many people have been spending many years just on that spacecraft.
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I'm just curious as to how it was only travelling at 100mph when it hit!
I mean, this thing fell from the upper atmosphere with not even a drogue 'chute to slow it down - I would have expected it to hit the ground a lot harder!
Some luck I guess :)
Hehe, the irony is that they used the stunt pilots because they were worried a normal parachute landing (Which would still have quite rough ) might damage the delicate particle containers, so they spend all this time planning some convoluted intercept mission and forget about the simple stuff :P
NASA of all people should look to ths KISS principle!
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Originally posted by ionia23
How did I know you'd find some leftist political angle to this thing....
Don't lump that stupidity in with the left. I'm pretty far to the left and I think cutting money from science is as about as stupid as you can get.
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Originally posted by karajorma
Don't lump that stupidity in with the left. I'm pretty far to the left and I think cutting money from science is as about as stupid as you can get.
Fair enough indeed, I stand corrected.:)
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ah well, its not like this has ruined the otherwise perfect streak of agreement with everything you say ionia. I remember having this same discussion before, and my general view was (and is), that problems here on Earth ought to be fixed before we go galavanting around space. Thats seems kind like common sense to me, not a specific political ideology.
I tried to explain all this to NASA, but they're not returning my calls.
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Originally posted by Rictor
ah well, its not like this has ruined the otherwise perfect streak of agreement with everything you say ionia. I remember having this same discussion before, and my general view was (and is), that problems here on Earth ought to be fixed before we go galavanting around space. Thats seems kind like common sense to me, not a specific political ideology.
I tried to explain all this to NASA, but they're not returning my calls.
Yup, I remember that too. It's not as cut and dry as "well, we'll just cut funding for teacher's raises so we can keep kids from starving".
There's such a sickening abundance of food in this country the very idea that anyone starves at all is astounding, but that's a totally separate issue. People aren't going without eating because NASA exists.
One more thing: I don't suppose you'd entertain the possibility that one of the contributing factors to 'mishaps' such as this is the cutting of funding for the sciences, specifically in the field of space exploration?
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no, you're right. Its not as simple as cutting funding to X to finance Y, at least not on an international level. If you're talking domestically, then yes, but the world has some deep social problems and inequalities that need to be fixed to bring needless suffering to an end. Alot of it has to do with a grossly disproportionate distrubtion of wealth and resources.
but that's a story for another day.
edit: cutting of funds to applicable sciences, yes somewhat. But while collecting space dust and running around on Mars is all well and good, and makes for great headlines, I fail to see how its actually of practical use to people.
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Yeah. And tell Roentgen to stop f**king about with those vaccuum tubes while you're at it. As for Becquerel and those stupid rocks what a waste of time that was.
Rictor. You sicken me.
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The world does have some social problems and inequalities. Now, you may fail to see how space exploration helps some of these issues, but I'd like to hear how it makes them worse...
Besides, the spinoff technological benefits from the space program have been more numerous than we may ever know. Everything from water purification to microcomputers, to communication links of all kinds... thousands of advancements in medical science that has resulted in saving the lives of millions... long and short term weather predictions that save just as many lives... that computer joystick you probably play freespace with...
...to name a few ;)
Anyhow, not all these things are going to solve any "deep social problems and inequalities that need to be fixed." But many of them certainly help. And the things they don't help probably won't magically get better by throwing more money at them... :(
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Why should we explore space? Because it's there :D.
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Originally posted by Rictor
no, you're right. Its not as simple as cutting funding to X to finance Y, at least not on an international level. If you're talking domestically, then yes, but the world has some deep social problems and inequalities that need to be fixed to bring needless suffering to an end. Alot of it has to do with a grossly disproportionate distrubtion of wealth and resources.
but that's a story for another day.
edit: cutting of funds to applicable sciences, yes somewhat. But while collecting space dust and running around on Mars is all well and good, and makes for great headlines, I fail to see how its actually of practical use to people.
Okay, the 'practicality' argument I can live with. It would be hard to explain the value of the scientific data being collected by Genesis, Spirit, Opportunity, Stardust, Cassini, and Voyager to a guy on the street corner trying to bum change from me for whatever purpose.
Here's an easy way to think about it:
I'm not sure even what part of the world you live in, but I'm going to assume you're familiar with the concept of the 401K plan offered to some employees in this country. Have some money deducted from your paycheck, company matches it up to X amount, deposit it in a mutual fund or whatnot, and you can't touch it until you're 59 1/2.
(be gentle folks, that's a pretty grand generalization).
People who live close to the paycheck-to-paycheck line will look on that and say "But I need the money NOW.". They will not see the practicality in socking money away that they 'need' right now.
Of course, when the retirement years hit....oh boy.
Space exploration is a very slow, very gradual, and after the Apollo program got canned, very frugal investment in our future. The return on investment can be summarized in just a few examples:
New manufacturing tecniques that can only be explored in zero gravity, conditions we CANNOT create for any extended period of time on Earth.
Satelites for communication, weather, surveillance, etc.
A greater understanding of the of events outside Earth's atmosphere, and how they impact us below. How difficult do you think the prediction of catstrophic weather events would be if we didn't have weather satellites, or the ability to provide warnings of impending solar flares?
Researching nearby planets and moons for possible colonization in the distant future. We are going to have to leave the rock sooner or later.
Firing the imagination so people can think beyond 'when will I eat next'.
Numerous advances in synthetics.
hell, signifigant chunks of the computer you're working on are a direct result of the space program. cause - effect.
Remember "Live Aid" from 1985? Bob Geldof's big old "Feed The World" concept to bring aid to Africa through donations? The guy managed to raise some ridiculous amount of money, like 100 million dollars. In most cases, the food and supplies purchased with those funds never reached their intended recipients due to attrition, war, or whatever. It rotted on docks. Isn't that sad? What this tells you is the social problems of the world cannot be solved by simply throwing money at them.
Bill Gates has enough net worth to buy himself six space shuttles of his own. He could fund NASA for five years or more, probably just on stock turnovers alone. And he's very generous with his money.
Nasa's Operating Budget for Fiscal 2003 (http://www1.nasa.gov/pdf/2167main_04budget_sum_030227.pdf) was 15 billion dollars. More than double that was spent on tobacco products. Why not ask people to give up the habit and donate that money to the underpriviledged?
More to the point, why does the money have to come from NASA? How about we buy a few less stealth bombers for the military? or do away with raises for teachers? or funding for safe sex programs for teenagers?
There is no fundamental reason why we cannot look to our future, fire our imagination, AND work on the social problems of the world at the same time. Successes in space give a good feeling of unity, unless you prefer the 'good feeling of unity' brought on by, say, a terrorist attack.
Space exploration benefits a group of individuals. What an individual within that group gains is up to them to decide.
I have to say, you are the last person around here I expected would question the practicality of the space program. Really, I'm stunned.
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Originally posted by Raa
Well, there's only one thing to say; "Thanks Utah! For smacking your big ass nothingness into the probe!"
:rolleyes:
Hey's its not my fault the parachutes didn't open :p.
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I'm just glad they do these things with unmanned craft. I just saw the footage of the thing hit the ground. If anyone had been aboard that they'd be Human Cream by now.
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Itd be great if we solved all the social problems on earth only to be wiped out by a meteor we didnt detect because we redirected all the funds.
GG scientific research is key for advancing humanity, space exploration is a driving force in said research.
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Originally posted by Galemp
Score another one for NASA. I wonder how the Mars program's going...
Mars program? You mean it actually exists? I thought that was just something that the president said in a speech to have some fun with every space-junky's mind. :D
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Originally posted by Corsair
Mars program? You mean it actually exists? I thought that was just something that the president said in a speech to have some fun with every space-junky's mind. :D
;) With the (media) attention it's been getting lately, if I didn't know better I'd probably agree.
But, believe it or not, Spirit and Opportunity are still going, despite the fact that they were only designed to last 90 days... So, we could harp on failures, or the successes...
Sad thing is, unless astronauts die, things crash, or (evil) aliens are discovered, you won't see NASA getting any media attention. :( It's hard to believe that the program that put the Hubble up (it was only the first of three phases) finished and for the first time since I can remember, we have more data than we know what to do with. :)
I'll tell you a secret... That's why all the newest and best weather satellites are placed in orbit by none other than the US Navy... They can spend the money and take the risks on new technology. If something goes wrong, nobody hears except the people who need to (ie: congress, and then the media if they care). But if something goes wrong with a NASA satellite, it's front-page news and everyone starts screaming about how useless NASA is... So on weather satellite food chain, it goes Navy, NASA, then European space agency. I kinda wish t was the other way around, but that's public opinion. Go Pr0p4Ga|\|d4!!!
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god damnit Rictor! you hate America and now you've got to go and hate Mars too! I mean god damnit!
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but in all seriusness, the last five hundred trillion didn't fix world hunger, but the 800 million from this probe sure as hell would have fixed it!
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Earth will never be free of problems. If we wait until things are all going swell on Earth to conduct space exploration it will never happen. The efforts must be simultaneous.
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Not even scientists can foresee everything. possible the chutes were damaged by heat, maybe something jammed the release mexhanism, for every 'thing' we know it floating between us and the Sun, theres 100 things we don't know about. That was the point of the mission in the first place.
It's a terrible pity that this happened, more so because NASA had tried to play it for publicity for the looks of things. I don't blame them as such, they need the funding, but it always works in the opposite direction when this sort of thing happens :(
As for the whole 'world hunger' thing, I think Rictor is meaning is the millions of the local currency our various governments spend on things like nuclear weapons research, I mean what do they hope to achieve, irradiate an extra 100 square miles of land, or create a 'civilian friendly' H-Bomb? Theres already enough nuclear weapons on the planet to irradiate it something like 3 times over, and enough Bioweaps to poison it several hundred times that. I'd be all for redirecting the money for research such as that into hydroponics, solar power, sexual education programs etc.
In all fairness, it is some countries themselves that have stood in the way of such things happening, seeing it as an attempt at spying or invasion, and possibly Ric picked a bad example, but I do know that millions are flowing into research that is pointless every year, just look at some of the scientific grants that have been given out, millions to completely pointless experiments, How long can people will themselves to stay awake, got a 1.2 million grant to find out!? Just get a room full of Uni students and as much beer etc as you can, and start timing.
Either way, sorry to see it end like that, the info would have been interesting :)
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No flipside you fool throwing billions at ethnic slaughter will prevent it!
Money can do everything!
That said the biggest breakthroughs in solarpower and hydroponics are going to come via the space program.
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Originally posted by Mr Carrot
No flipside you fool throwing billions at ethnic slaughter will prevent it!
Money can do everything!
That said the biggest breakthroughs in solarpower and hydroponics are going to come via the space program.
That said the biggest breakthroughs in solarpower and hydroponics have come via the space program.
http://aerospacescholars.jsc.nasa.gov/HAS/cirr/ss/3/5.cfm
http://www.thespaceplace.com/nasa/spinoffs.html
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i wasnt disputing that ;)
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I know :) I was just using it as an opourtunity to add websites supporting your point.
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I felt the need to scream the word, "PWND!" when I watched it crash on live NasaTV.
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[color=66ff00]Who cares if it crashed and who really cares if it cost that amount of cash.
How much is a dream worth?
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Originally posted by Maeglamor
[color=66ff00]Who cares if it crashed and who really cares if it cost that amount of cash.
How much is a dream worth?
[/color]
250 bucks and a Tara Reid sandwich. I'm good to go.
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my biggest issue with nasa is that they are going about the whole field of space exploration the wrong way. the shuttle is way out of date, the avionics are probibly slower than my frst computer and weigh so much that the cost of a launch goes up a few million. last figures i looked at marked the cost of sending something into space at about $10000/lb. the advent of carbon fiber composites and the ever decreasing size of electronics could really cut down on payload. nasa needs to borrow a few of russias ideas, such as renting out seats on board space craft to rich civilians. also learn some lessons from burt rutan. space ship one has already reached x-prize altitude and set world records and is due to make a run for the prize by the end of this month. and all at a cost of 20 million. nasa needs to hire that guy.
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two words: space elivator.
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3 words
nae ****ing chance
:D
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Originally posted by Nuke
and the ever decreasing size of electronics could really cut down on payload.
Congratulations. You've just lost a next generation space shuttle due to it being hit by a single cosmic ray!
There's a damn good reason why NASA uses old components for the shuttle and it's nothing to do with cost.
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Originally posted by aldo_14
3 words
nae ****ing chance
:D
intheory that is possible. But the only substance strong enough (that we know of) is diamond
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Hey Vaelinx, I haven't seen you around before. Welcome to HLP. :)
Anyway, yeah, this is a real shame. I'm still excited to see how space exploration and research will go within our lifetimes, but we're hardly going to get anywhere if we keep on bungling up like this. :no:
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no carbon nano-tubes, and they've nearly reached the point by wich they would be strong enough, we're already produceing the stuff in kilometer long spools. the only real problem is avoiding debris.
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Thank you Setekh.
There are people working on the requirements for a space elevator. The thing is, you need more than simply strength. You need flexibility to some extent, and a strength to weight ratio that can remain light enough to hold itself up. Plus whatever tether you have. So Bobboau is right in that carbon nano-tubes are the best prospect... But there are more real problems than avoiding debris... From two perspectives:
1) Military/defense: You thing that a tall building is a good terrorist target? If something went wrong with something like that, the potential destruction it could reap is HUGE... nuke huge.
2) Practical/Environmental: While the upper atmosphere is realtively stable laterally, it has to be able to deal with potential weather problems on earth. And there are possible dangers in doing wierd stuff with/to the Ionosphere...
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Originally posted by magatsu1
intheory that is possible. But the only substance strong enough (that we know of) is diamond
Actually, I think there are some tensile carbon-steels that can take the stress as well, but I think at the moment they are actually more expensive by weight than the diamonds :(
Space Elevator is the way to go, It would cut the cost of putting ships in orbit by massive proportions :D
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Let's hear it for awesome ship construction (and a little dumb luck) (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5962416/)
Also, regarding the space elevator thing, Ihave a general question.
Remember taking two magnets in school? Setting them pole-to-pole one way made them attract, the other way made them repel?
With an electromagnet you can control field strength.
Couldn't something like this be used for the 'elevator? Pushing against Earth's own natural magnetism?
Or is it a retarded concept. I'm picturing a huge platform with giant electromagnets on it where field strength can be controlled.
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I heard that today as well, and am happy that they managed to salvage the mission.
For your other questions:
Well, the Earth's magnetic field doesn't work quite that way. For one, the field lines tend to be tangential to the surface of the earth for almost all of it's surface. This would require something a little more exotic than simply a strong electromagnet above the ground.
The other thing is that the field strength drops off as 1/(distance)^2. So the power requirements would be huge to beat gravity, and even then you'd have a coil/generator to mass ratio with a high enough efficiency so that you could lift the entire apparatus. Superconductors help though ;).
Now, using the Earth's ionosphere, we do similar things in space using the E-field instead (the E-filed is cooler than the H-field anyway :)). For low orbit, tether systems are employed to essentially induce charge/potential difference on one end of the tether, causing a net force in a certain direction depending on that charge. Currently we use such a system to control and hasten the decay of slowly decaying orbits. Basically, it acts as a sort of EM "anchor."
However, if we were to actually build a space elevator, I think that electromagnetic locks on Earth would be an excellent choice for anchoring it down. Rather than some sort of mechanical anchor to bedrock or something, a field controlled anchor could allow for more flex or slack, etc... easier. The only problem is that it would require mechanical failsafes.... But there are actually intellegent scientists, researchers, and engineers that meet to talk about the serious viability of a space elevator...
Another option for getting into space: inductive launching. Like a long EM rail gun with a barrel burrowed through miles of mountains, and shoots the payload out into space... maybe not a good idea for manned flight, but eventualy for resource delivery it could be possible...
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No prob, Vaelinx. (Where's that name from?) :)
Now, where was that thread on the space elevator we had a few weeks back? About all I know about space elevators is what I learnt from playing Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. ;)
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the snapping of a (realy big) nanotube strand wouldn't have the destructive capasity of a firecracker, the stuff has the weight of news paper, it's termenal velocity, most of it will ether flap about for a while falling, or burn up before hitting.
but it would still be a good idea to mount the thing somewere unpopulated.
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such as antarctica, or northern russia :D
as for nasa's issues with modernized electronics technology, im sure its possible to use some kind of shielding on the technology to keep it safe from cosmic rays. advances in steatlh technology has rendered substances that will absorb or deflect those pesky rays, unfortuneately said substances are probibly classified technology and not available for nasa's use. they can still save weight, for example replacing crt displays with lcd displays. simply replacing old style resistors with chip resistors would cut the weight tremendously. most impotant thing to do is replace alot of the shuttle's aluminum and titanium alloys with carbon fiber composite would strengthen the shuttle and cut the weight by huge factors. if you can make the whole ship light enough you can decelerate in the upper atmosphere and eliminate the need for those hreavy thermal tiles (sorta like space ship one).
as for the space elevator its a good in theory idea, but in practice is a different story entirely. even after nanotubes evolve to the point where they can be used in heavy construction i still think that a structure of that magnatude is far beyond our capabilities to construct.
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it _has_ to be mounted at the equator, sort of a design requierment
and, why?
it's basicly launching a spool into geosyncronus orbit and unwinding it.
and you do know that cosmic rays pack the energy of a 90 mph soft ball into the mass of a proton right?
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so how do they manage to protect the astronaughts, cosmic rays are capable of devistating human cells as well as microelectronics. this tells me that the shuttle already has substatial shielding.
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Originally posted by Nuke
so how do they manage to protect the astronaughts, cosmic rays are capable of devistating human cells as well as microelectronics. this tells me that the shuttle already has substatial shielding.
It's good but it's not enough. Remember that humans can repair damaged cells. Electronic equiupment can't. While 1 cosmic ray hitting a person is unlikely to cause much damage (some risk of developing cancer if you're hit by enough of them but a single one should be okay), a single cosmic ray can easily fry electronic components.
As for the shutttle. The idea was obsolete from the day it was built. The result of the military pushing for a bigger craft than NASA originally planned. Instead of improving the shutttle lets build something new for space exploration and leave the spy satallites to something else.
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NB: apparently NASA has had problems for some time in tracking down replacement electronics for the shuttle, due to the age of the components.
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about 2 months ago our federal building got struck by lightning, it fried some components and took out all the phones in the building. the phone system in the building was so old that it was impossible to find replacement parts. so they spend thousands of taxpayers dollars to implement a workaround when a newer system yould cost nearly half that. if you knew how many social security buildings ran 10base2/10base5 networks, youd wish the governent would grow a brain and upgrade everything. and stop wasting out money hunting down old parts. the cosmic ray thing is a big issue but its not really a problem that cant be resolved. the hubble space telescope runs a 486 processor, which is old but still uses some pretty dence microelectronics. if they can make that work why not a xeon?
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Originally posted by ionia23
Let's hear it for awesome ship construction (and a little dumb luck) (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5962416/)
Also, regarding the space elevator thing, Ihave a general question.
Remember taking two magnets in school? Setting them pole-to-pole one way made them attract, the other way made them repel?
With an electromagnet you can control field strength.
Couldn't something like this be used for the 'elevator? Pushing against Earth's own natural magnetism?
Or is it a retarded concept. I'm picturing a huge platform with giant electromagnets on it where field strength can be controlled.
You're talking about anit-gravity drives. There have been some experiments with it, and supposedly some sucess was reported 1996, but after that I heard nothing.
Vaelinx - You know years ago I mentioned that Railgun idea to my physics profesor. In theors it sounds good, alltough the cost and power requirements should be claced to so how feasable it actually would be...
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Well... I've checked out alot of different "anti-gravity" devices, and even built a few. So far, most of them are wrong in their presumption, and usually use something along the lines of ion wind to work. However, there is one example from the mid 1900's that I've never looked into. If I ever get a mind/time to go back into expermenting on such things I'll have to check that one out.
Oh, and not anti-gravity, but a cool EM science experiment to look into: You can try and make your own conclusions, but be scientific and objective. (http://jnaudin.free.fr/html/lifter1.htm)
The guys in this link are looking for something, and they seem to see it everywhere they look, regardless of the validity/invalidity of the experiment... which is why I don't really trust their findings.
And the railgun... we have them, we make them, we're starting to mount them on ships as weapons. What we require is higher efficiency in order to get it to work for delivering payloads into orbit. That, and it would need to be built at the highest altitude possible, probably Asia... I'm not holding my breath, unless it can get you rich, or potentially kill people, then humans don't seem to care. Where's real Patriotism when you need it? ;)
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ah, youve seen eraser one too many times.
*takes away your dvd player*