The OMV was intended to go out and grab satellites in higher orbits than the Shuttle could get to, and bring them back to the Shuttle or Station for servicing. It would then take responsibility for boosting them back up.
OMS vs. Space Station is really not an apt comparison. Apples and Wingnuts. The OMV was to be remotely piloted--no humans on board.
Posts: 1862 | Registered: Mar 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
Wow, busy day. I can't believe that I'm only now getting a chance to check my regular science sites. NewScientist has an article on the NASA's successful near-Mach 10 flight.
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
It's hard to believe those B-52s keep on trucking after all these years. What a durable design.
Posts: 6316 | Registered: Jun 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
I'm happy that the Mars lander is doing so well. I'll post a thread on how it'll only cost 22 billion$ to send a team of 4 to Mars. (And trust me, my sources are from NASA itself, however a certain faction of NASA wants to use a plan that will cost 450 billion dollars for less results)
Posts: 1567 | Registered: Oct 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
You know, I don't have any idea how that's actually measured FarmGirl. That's a good question.
As for the top speed a human body can endure, I think Dag's right--it's more about the rate of accelleration than it is the speed itself. We're all moving at mind boggling speeds already, if you think about it.
Steve, can you shed any light on Farmgirl's question?
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
Saw a great article in the paper today. It's written by an advisor to the company who wants to build the solar sats, so it's totally biased. But I'm all for any plan that gives me the potential to be a weather girl for another planet. "The travel forcast for Jupiter today is..."
quote: But it turns our that two of the Sunshine State's most famous attributes, space vehicles and sunshine itself, could create permanent "hurricane shields" for the southeastern U.S., and Florida's leaders could begin encouraging insurers to finance these shields during their special legislative session this month.
The Space Island Group (SIG) in California is proposing to build a new type of rocket and 40 passenger space planes using the same engines and fuel tanks now built for NASA's space shuttle. SIG's economics secret is that they'll leave each rocket's hollow 747-sized fuel tanks in orbit when empty, outfit their interiors as living and working quarters, and lease them to commercial tenants. These lease revenues will let them carry solar satellites components and assembly personnel to orbit at no charge.
Hurricane protection and space tourism in one package deal?! What's not to love? I need to write my state rep.
Posts: 2283 | Registered: Dec 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
How about a logistical nightmare when these things eventually have to be brought back to earth, and just generally all the space garbage that may be added (which is already pretty bad).
posted
You know you've been spending too much time at LiveJournal when you see that headline and your first reaction is to wondering if http://www.livejournal.com/users/spiritrover/ has posted about it yet.
Posts: 1805 | Registered: Jun 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
West Wing on NBC is going to have something on asteroids tonight. I don't have any details, just have seen "asteroids" on their trailers this week.
Posts: 6316 | Registered: Jun 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
The Boeing Delta 4 didn't get the satelite into orbit. Boeing thinks it can fix the problem before this fall when it's supposed to begin carrying satelites into space. Here's hoping.
Posts: 2283 | Registered: Dec 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
How the earthquake changed earth not only did the North Pole move 2.5 centimeters, but our days are 3 microseconds shorter too! Satyagraha
Posts: 359 | Registered: Jun 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
I hadn't heard about the deep impact mission. That's what I get for not keeping closer tacks on the space related news.
Posts: 666 | Registered: Dec 2003
| IP: Logged |
Why did they have the small transmitter on Huygens transmit directly back to the dish on Earth -- instead of having it transmit back to the Cassini mothership, which could then boost the signal back to Earth?
posted
Yeah Farmgirl, I'm a little confused too. In the article I linked to on the 11th, the final paragraph read
quote:The Cassini spacecraft has a three-hour window to listen to the signals transmitted from Huygens; after that time has elapsed, Cassini’s trajectory will have carried it out of sight of the probe (and the probe’s battery will be used up soon after). Cassini will then turn its antenna toward Earth and start transmitting what it has received from Huygens.
The New Scientist article that I just linked to today, though, clearly indicates that the probe is transmitting directly back to Earth. Hmmm.
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
Most deep space probes have a low-energy ID signal, that it sends back to earth (or maybe just non-directional) to give the team info as to it's status. It's a usually a slow data stream. Likely it's data antenna was set up to send to Cassini to save power/increase throughput.
I found a kind of interesting article on Space.com talking about the possibility of aliens actually having visited Earth, among other things. Some of their assumptions are unbelievably poorly thought through, I think, but it's interesting nonetheless. Here it is.
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
Yep, Huygens is very cool. -290 degrees F to be precise.
The Washington Post had this in their article today:
quote:Titan holds a particular fascination for scientists. Not only is it the only moon in the solar system known to have a significant atmosphere -- about 1 1/2 times as dense as Earth's -- but it is also regarded as "pre-biotic," with characteristics that Earth probably possessed before life evolved.
Very exciting.
A few heat lamps A bit of God's Starter Mix® And who knows!!!
posted
Don't know if this has been linked yet, saw it on slashdot.com:
quote: NASA officials have claimed they performed a risk analysis before deciding to cancel the last space-shuttle servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope, but no such analysis was ever done.
Worse, sources told UPI's Space Watch that NASA also has ignored at least one proposal to reduce the risk of sending a shuttle crew to Hubble - in order to justify its decision. Over the past few weeks, several NASA officials have stated publicly the agency's decision to cancel further servicing to Hubble was made on safety issues alone, not cost. [..cut]
Yet, one day later, NASA historian Steve n Dick gave a presentation at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Washington, in which he described the process by which that decision was made and revealed that, in fact, no formal risk analysis had been completed.
What crap Apperently, safety is a catch-all for ???? I don't know. If no study was done, I don't know what criteria was used by former NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe to cancel the Hubble rescue missions. Manufactured BS? Hubble has only been the most productive optical telescope in history, it's not like it's worth salvaging. :roll-eyes don't do it, maybe disgust-eyes: What a complete cop-out from a once-proud and productive gov't agency. Posts: 327 | Registered: Oct 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
As if asteroid or comet impacts and global warming weren't enough causes of the apocalypse to worry about, I just saw a new one: dark matter clouds could have been the cause of previous mass extinction events. I already knew that ordinary matter clouds could cause devasting climate change.
Wow, my rant about NASA Sunday morning was surprisingly coherent considering I was up all night drinking vodka. Morbo
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
![[Eek!]](eek.gif)
![[Angst]](graemlins/angst.gif)
![[Frown]](frown.gif)
![[Mad]](mad.gif)
