Printable View
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The Richat Structure, also known as the Eye of the Sahara
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Australia
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^ Wow!...I remember it well...The Bears won the SuperBowl, thrashing the Patriots...And Loretta Lombardi gave me the flu...
I also remember it well; the, radio, news came mid morning in Darwin (Australia).
I went into the office, turned on the TV and the phone rang. It was my mate in the RAAF (Oz air force), he said "What does NASA stand for?"
Need Another Seven Astronauts.
Maybe within five minutes of first hearing about it.
The aviation community has a very black sense of humor.
Posted to acclaim all those associated aviation pioneering, not to deride the tragedy.
Yes, ''their favourite drink was Seven Up with a dash of Teachers'' was another one.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nutznbolts
I had worked the graveyard shift the night before. I set the alarm clock in time for the launch and staggered downstairs making coffee and toast during the warm up to the launch, then sat there while the shuttle went up and blew up.
I couldn't believe it..I was hollering "It fucking blew up!!!!"
A buddy/coworker of mine was working on one of the booster recovery ships got a call through to me asking me to his wife he'd be out awhile longer. It sucked....
NASA says 1,284 new planets found outside our solar system by Kepler telescope - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
NASA says 1,284 new planets found outside our solar system by Kepler telescope
NASA has announced the discovery of 1,284 new planets outside our solar system, more than doubling the number of known exoplanets found with the Kepler space telescope.
Key points:
- 550 of new planets could be rocky like Earth
- Nine of potential rocky planets are in their sun's habitable zone
- Experts now say there could be more planets than stars
"This gives us hope that somewhere out there, around a star much like ours, we can eventually discover another Earth," said Ellen Stofan, chief scientist at NASA headquarters in Washington.
The unmanned Kepler space observatory, which launched in 2009, has been scanning 150,000 stars for signs of orbiting bodies, particularly those that might be able to support life.
It works by observing a dimming in the light of a star, known as a transit, each time an orbiting planet passes in front of it.
"Of the nearly 5,000 total planet candidates found to date, more than 3,200 now have been verified, and 2,325 of these were discovered by Kepler," NASA said in a statement.
Of the new trove, nearly 550 could be rocky planets like Earth, based on their size, the US space agency said.
Yes, I can understand. One second nothing, a bright white light, ............, a longer range image. Ummm, did the rocket land?Quote:
Originally Posted by Takeovers
A view from a distance would have cleared any question, for me.
Particularly tricky due to the thin atmosphere & high gravity.Quote:
Originally Posted by Takeovers
Exactly. The only way to land large payloads on Mars is the way SpaceX lands its first stages back here on earth now. This is a driving factor in Elon Musks plans.Quote:
Originally Posted by kingwilly
One must understand that he is driving the development path of SpaceX for one reason only. Getting people to Mars. Not Apollo style, a few people for flags and footprints. No, he wants to establish a pemanent base, with hundreds, then thousands, then 10s of thousands of people. He is going for broke. The only thing that can stop him now is SpaceX going bankrupt trying.
A gif of the latest SpaceX launch. It was taken by accident. The photographer was after the nightsky with the milky way.
The big long streak is the second stage burn. But there is a short red streak seen between the branches of that tree. That's the reentry burn of the first stage before landing.
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I heard on CNN that the booster that made that perfect landing (on a barge, was it?) was damaged beyond repair due to the high speed of the landing. Kind of a useless perfect landing?
Quote:
Originally Posted by wjblaney
Close to the truth, but not exactly. It was only said this is the stage that received the most damage through reentry yet. Not explicitly it cannot lauch again, though it won't. It will be used for ground tests. A rocket that can do a pinpoint landing cannot be that much damaged. Any damage was not due to landing but due to high speed atmospheric reentry. This may sound like a minor difference to you, but it really is a major one for the development path of reusable rockets.
It has a huge value as they can look at the damage and very likely can find simple and cheap improvements so the next ones will be in better shape. This is still dubbed as experimental.
The one before this landing was just recently again announced to fly again soon, very likely even with a paying customer.
Excuse me, did you happen to read this in my post?Quote:
Originally Posted by Takeovers
Quote:
Originally Posted by wjblaney
Quote:
Originally Posted by wjblaney
Yes I did. I refered to it by saying the high speed was in reentering the atmosphere. The landing was nominal, with zero speed at zero altitude. No damage there whatsoever.
An important difference between reentering and landing, two separate phases with two separate engine burns. I do see why you unlike me would not make that distinction.
Edit: I don't mean that in any way negative. It is just that I follow these things probably a lot closer than you.
Much closer.
So you're saying the reentry speed was way too fast and caused all the damage whereas the landing speed was slow and did no damage. Understood. :)
Quote:
Originally Posted by wjblaney
Right. The heat produced on entry follows a cube law with speed. Meaning they did enter twice as fast and got eight times the heat, compared to the flight before. That's a lot. They are confident though that with only minor upgrades and changes in their procedures they will be able to handle it. They need to because they want to fly payloads that heavy and recover the stages to reduce cost as much as they intend to do.
Edit: I don't know if it was exactly twice the speed, they don't release the numbers, but it is close.
In the meantime they do those tests with commercial flights. They make money on each launch even if they can not reuse the stage. They know how to make customers pay for their experiments and still be a lot cheaper than the competition. Even the Russians are more expensive despite the low Ruble and low labour cost.
A newly released photo of the landing.
https://teakdoor.com/images/imported/2016/05/1244.jpg
The next launch of SpaceX will be a communications satellite for Thailand, Thaicom 8. Launch is scheduled for this coming thursday, May 26. Thaicom 8 is less heavy than their previous payload so the first stage will be an easier recovey and hopefully less toasted.
SpaceX targeting Thursday afternoon launch, landing
https://teakdoor.com/images/imported/2016/05/1326.jpgQuote:
SpaceX may fire up a Falcon 9 rocket's engines on Monday in a test preparing for a planned 5:40 p.m. Thursday blastoff from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
The launch of a Thai communications satellite — and an attempted rocket landing to follow — should look much like SpaceX's May 6 launch of a Japanese communications satellite, but with the action unfolding in daylight instead of darkness.
The roughly 7,000-pound Thaicom 8 satellite built by Orbital ATK will beam TV channels and Internet service to Thailand, India and parts of Africa from a position 22,300 miles above the equator.
After separating from the rocket's upper stage, the Falcon 9 booster will dive toward an unpiloted SpaceX "drone ship" floating offshore in the Atlantic Ocean, hoping to make it three consecutive missions with successful booster landings at sea.
The Falcon 9 flies faster on missions launching communications satellites to high orbits, increasing landings' degree of difficulty.
The launch is SpaceX's fifth this year, and the 25th by a Falcon 9 since its debut in 2010, including one failure last summer.
Edit: adding the mission patch did not work for some reason
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A somewhat funny, interesting video on living in the ISS, with Astronaut Sunita "Suni" Williams. Remember the short video "How to look like a troll doll"?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhGydridbEA
The BEAM module that was installed in April will be expanded today. Live coverage on NASA TV begins at 5:30 EDT. Not necessarily a must to watch. It is a very long and slow process.
At NASAs ISS twitter a new short video on how BEAM was installed in April.
https://twitter.com/Space_Station
A slightly longer version with more details but not as easy and smooth to watch on YT.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8Q49Mss9iw
NASA being as ultra conservative and ultra cautios as they have become, will have that module attached but not used. Astronauts are planned to enter ~6 times a year for checks. At the end of the test period BEAM will be filled with trash and released from the station to deorbit and burn up in the atmosphere.
From memory, so maybe not 100% precise, the volume is 16m³. The astronauts would be happy to occasionally use it for some privacy away from the busy humming station but that is not the plan.
Thanks so much Takeovers, that was just a great video.
BEAM didn't inflate properly.
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NASA Hits Snag While Inflating New Room at Space Station
CAPE CANAVERAL, FLORIDA—
NASA hit a snag while releasing air into an experimental inflatable room at the International Space Station on Thursday and put everything on hold for at least a day.
Mission Control ordered astronaut Jeffrey Williams to call it quits after the operation had dragged on for more than two hours, with the compartment barely expanding - just a few inches. The inflation process could resume as early as Friday, depending on what engineers learn.
“Thanks for all your patience today, and we'll hope for better luck tomorrow,” Mission Control radioed.
“That's space business,” Williams replied.
It was supposed to take barely an hour for the commercial test chamber known as BEAM - the world's first inflatable room for astronauts - to swell four times in volume.
Everything went smoothly at first as Williams briefly opened a valve, allowing air to slowly flow into BEAM, short for Bigelow Expandable Activity Module. He did that four more times before Mission Control told him to stop because the room had barely inflated.
After a lengthy pause and another try, NASA called the whole thing off and engineers huddled at Johnson Space Center in Houston to try to figure out why BEAM hadn't expanded properly.
The operation must be conducted in daylight, with solid communications with Mission Control.
BEAM is the creation of Bigelow Aerospace, founded by hotel entrepreneur Robert Bigelow. NASA paid the North Las Vegas company $17.8 million to test the inflatable-habitat concept at the space station.
The soft-sided, multi-layered Beam measured 7 feet long and nearly 8 feet in diameter when delivered last month to the station by SpaceX, packed in the trunk of a capsule loaded with supplies.
When fully expanded, the compartment should exceed 13 feet in length and 10 1/2 feet in diameter. That's the beauty of inflatable spacecraft; they can be packed tightly for launch, then expand and provide lots of room once aloft.
Bigelow Aerospace hopes to launch even bigger inflatable habitats in the future for use by tourists orbiting Earth, as well as professional astronauts bound for Mars.
Williams and his five crewmates aren't allowed to go inside the empty BEAM until a week after it is fully inflated, so ground controllers can check for leaks. Except for when astronauts go in to take measurements every few months, the hatch will remain sealed.
BEAM is supposed to stay attached to the space station for two years.
NASA Hits Snag While Inflating New Room at Space Station
"BEAM me open, Scottie"...
An on board video of the latest SpaceX landing of a first stage. It is time lapse. Watching it at 0.25 of normal speed looks more natural. It is still only 2 minutes, worth it IMO.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jEz03Z8azc
This landing was at the maximum of design values. Some buffer material in the legs got crunched, which it is designed for and that material can be easily replaced.
Not sure if this has been posted before. Watch how a Falcon 9 first stage is transported on the highway. By a driver from hell, it seems.
These stages are their own trailer. They just put wheels under the front and the end of the stage and off they are pulled over the highway at breakneck speed. The stage supports itself during transport.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kK8FSTHYLOo
Cool...Nice to get that perspective of things...
Courtesy of dash board cams such pictures are available now.Quote:
Originally Posted by BaitongBoy
This to me is just mind numbing innovation. So incredible to really see something new after all the years of the same thing, other than the shuttle which is now gone.
Life's Building Blocks Found On Rosetta Comet
The discovery lends weight to the theory that comets "seed" planets with the essential elements to the origin of life.
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Scientists involved in the Rosetta probe mission say they have discovered the building blocks of life in a gassy atmosphere surrounding a comet.
They said the European spacecraft had found clear evidence of the amino acid glycine - a basic component of proteins - and phosphorus, which helps build DNA.
It lends weight to the theory that comets "seed" planets with the raw ingredients of life.
While simple organic molecules had already been found around the comet, this is the first time Comet 67P has yielded elements essential to the origin of life on Earth.
Life's Building Blocks Found On Rosetta Comet
The last remaining space shuttle external propellant tank is moved across the 405 freeway in Los Angeles on May 21, 2016. The ET-94 will be displayed with the retired space shuttle Endeavour at the California Science Center.
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Do they reuse those things? If so how are they not severely damaged after falling back to earth.Quote:
Originally Posted by bobo746
Good question. Let me Google that for you :
https://www.quora.com/What-happens-t...it-disconnects
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_..._external_tank
reuse - Were Space Shuttle External Tanks recoverable and reusable? - Space Exploration Stack Exchange
http://www.nasa.gov/returntoflight/s...system_ET.html
No, they did not reuse them. They were destroyed during reentry. The solid fuel boosters were reused though. Just for the sake of reuse. Building new ones would probably have been cheaper, or at least not more expensive.Quote:
Originally Posted by Cujo
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The International Space Station has added a unique new room to its configuration.
The U.S. space agency NASA successfully inflated and pressurized an add-on room that was installed on the outside of the outpost.
It took about seven hours Saturday for the pod to expand to its full capacity. Fully expanded, the module is 4 meters long by 3.23 meters wide.
A series of tests determining the structural integrity of the pod will be conducted before the space station crew is allowed to enter it next week.
In addition, NASA says the tests will gauge how well the inflated room will protect against solar radiation, space debris and the temperature extremes of space.
The benefit of the inflatable pod is that it takes up little space when deflated, but provides more living/working space when inflated.
The Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, or BEAM, was designed by Bigelow Aerospace, based in Las Vegas. The company received an $18 million contract to design the first-of-its-kind habitat.
The first effort to inflate BEAM Thursday was not successful. Scientists believe that since BEAM had been packed for so long, its fabric had trouble unfolding.
International Space Station Gets a New Room
A very blunt assessment of the state of the russian and international space industry by russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, the man who has said without Russia NASA can try a trampoline to get astronauts to the ISS.
Russian Space Industry Nine Times Behind U.S. Says Rogozin | News | The Moscow Times
Quote:
Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin has been left red-faced after telling reporters that “Russia will never catch up to the United States in the space race,” the Interfax news agency reported.
“Our space industry has fallen behind the Americans ninefold. All of our ambitious projects require us to up productivity 150 percent – and even if we manage that, we will still never catch up with them,” Rogozin originally said to Interfax Friday.
“We will be following the news about NASA and [Elon] Musk and licking our lips while trying to explain ourselves why we don't need what they are doing,” Rogozin said, the RIA Novosti news agency reported.
Rogozin took to Facebook later in the day to say that his quotes had been taken out of context.
In the field of space-rocket engine construction Russia are much more competitive than the US both in terms of quality and prices, he said.
"I said that, considering our ambitious plans of to increase labor productivity in the space industry, we will never catch up with the Americans in that regard," the deputy prime minister said.
"But this absolutely does not mean that we are behind them [the United States] in every other aspect of space exploration."
Igor Komarov, the head of Russian space agency Roscosmos, announced on April 12 that the organization would compete with SpaceX, a rocket company founded by tech billionaire Elon Musk. The claim came several days after Musk's Falcon 9 reusable rocket successfully landed on an ocean platform.
SpaceX?s latest booster back home as company mulls pricing, proof tests ? Spaceflight Now
Landing first stages after satellite launches is still in the experimental phase. The landing after deploying a Thaicom satellite had a slight problem. Landing speed was at the limit and a crumple zone built into the legs was crunched. That was as designed and protected the stage from damage. However the stage was not vertical and they did not have proper procedures in place to secure the stage and get into harbour. They did manage in the end and no doubt they will have a better handling ready next time.
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Quote:
The landing speed was close to the Falcon 9’s design limit, but a crushable aluminum honeycomb core embedded inside the booster’s four carbon-fiber landing legs absorbed the impact, causing the rocket to settle on to the barge with a noticeable lean.
Musk said the “crush core” is inside the landing legs to take the force of rough landings. It will be replaced if first stage ends up flying again.
“The crush core in the Falcon legs is reusable after soft landings, but needs to be replaced after hard (landings),” Musk wrote on Twitter.
More info in the linked article of Spaceflight Now.
The first stage landed will go on display in front of their factory in Hawthorne, California.
The second stage is scheduled to fly again - with a commercial payload.
The third stage, which is the one which received most damage, will not fly again but be tested to destruction. Though Elon Musk said even this stage could fly again. But it is more valuable in testing.
There is no information about what they will do with the Thaicom stage. They do need to find storage space for stages with the growing inventory. Meanwhile they are working on other aspects of reuse. They are in contact with insurance companies to invent procedures for reuse that convince the insurers it is safe. Even the most conservative of their customers, the Airforce, is now looking into recertifying used stages for flight.
Interesting update, Takeovers...Thank you...
Milky Way Fades Away
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The Babylonians thought it was the tail of their goddess Tiamat. The ancient Greeks believed it endowed Hercules with his godlike abilities. But it wasn’t until 1610, when Galileo used his telescope to take a closer look at the Milky Way that he discovered it was stars. All stars.
And now scientists say that our view of those stars is being washed out by human light sources that continue to brighten our skies.
Losing the 'Way'
An international group of scientists recently updated the World Atlas of Artificial Sky Brightness, which measures the amount of artificial light that reflects off the atmosphere back down onto Earth. High-resolution satellite data produced new maps of the world’s light pollution with 45 times more spatial resolution than before. A preliminary look at the new data reveals that one-third of humanity is now unable to see the Milky Way in the night sky. “We now have a couple generations of people that live in areas that are cut off from viewing of astronomical features," explains Dr. Chris Elvidge, a physical scientist at NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information and a member of the team that updated the atlas. “People no longer have that view and the connection that view gives them to the cosmos.”
As cities expand to accommodate rising populations, their artificial light output increases as well. This obscures the night sky from astronomers, hindering their ability to study the stars. The additional artificial lighting also has adverse effects on wildlife. “Every year the research just keeps coming in and the number of different species that are affected by light pollution just keeps growing and growing” says Cheryl Ann Bishop, Communications Director for the International Dark-Sky Association (IDA). A moth fluttering around a light bulb as if stuck in a trance is a common enough occurrence but it’s also an example of how artificial lights can impact local ecosystems," explains Cheryl. Bats prey on moths and artificial lights have eased their hunt for food. The bats are drawn towards the light, away from their normal habitats, changing the local ecosystem.
Safety concerns are a leading cause of the increase in artificial lighting but research on its effectiveness is inconclusive. Humans have an instinctual fear of what is lurking in the dark and it’s one of the biggest challenges when convincing municipalities to address light pollution. “Good lighting will make you safer but that doesn’t mean more light,” explains Cheryl. The human eye is designed to accept light but saturating it with bright, improperly shielded lights actually makes it more difficult to see in the dark.
Ways to bring the lights down
Things aren’t all bad though. Lighting manufacturers are increasingly being asked to produce “dark sky friendly” products such as shielded residential light fixtures and directional flagpole lighting. The IDA approves these devices and promotes them to consumers. “We’re not anti-light … we’re not going to go backwards, but we want to make sure it’s done responsibly,” says Cheryl. The scientists involved in the study hope that this atlas will help bring awareness to the issue. “There’s ... a lot of other things happening in the world,” notes Dr. Elvidge. “It’s really good we are aware of it (light pollution) and maybe over time we can improve the situation.”
The Milky Way may be lost to many humans now but there are people working to bring it back for future generations.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKm7ATVbsiE
Milky Way Fades Away