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Author	Topic: SPACE SCIENCE THREAD
MasterAero Registered: Aug '02	Date Posted: 10/9/03 12:15pm Subject: RE: SPACE SCIENCE THREAD
	The Wal-mart paint brushes may work for testing but my guess is they'll go with a more expensive foam brush for flight. Anything that is 'flight hardware' usually has to meet certain quality standards. Maybe the Wal-mart brush will already meet the standards. Office supplies are just ordered from a normal bulk supplier where it's cheaper than Office Max. I think its a myth that NASA pays $5000 for a simple drill and other items. The drills astronauts use on spacewalks may cost that much because they're really accurate, complex and reliable. A lot of things cost so much because they are one of a kind. One fact I read once is that it cost more to develop/research the new Ford mustang model than it did to develop the F-117 Stealth Fighter. When you spread that cost over a couple hundred thousand cars over many years the cost/unit is low versus one or two prototypes of f-117's. There is a lot of money spent/wasted meeting over-stringent criteria for making/flying hardware. I think most of NASA's budget is published somewhere. -----signature----- My whole life all I've wanted to do is fly, bomb stuff, shoot people down.
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VadersLaMent Registered: Apr '02	Date Posted: 10/10/03 5:25am Subject: RE: SPACE SCIENCE THREAD
	Oh the NASA budget is on the WWW, it is a 32 megabyte pdf download. Yikes. I'll pass for now. Keep the name 37 GEM in mind, it is at the top of a list for stars with Earth-like worlds: Ananova: Star to be investigated for alien life Astronomers say a star called 37 Gem offers the best chance of finding alien life. The star, a little hotter and brighter than the sun, is on a list of 30 to be investigated by a future generation of life-seeking telescopes. Situated a relatively close 42 light years away, it is the 37th brightest star in the constellation of Gemini. Scientists are looking for targets for the Terrestrial Planet Finder and Darwin telescopes planned by Nasa and the European Space Agency. Both are due to be launched in about 10 years and will be capable of finding habitable planets outside the Solar System. Astrobiologist Maggie Turnbull, from the University of Arizona in Tucson, USA, compiled a set of criteria for choosing which stars to observe. These included the amount of heavy metals present when a star formed and its age. Young stars emitting bright X-rays were excluded, as were small "double" stars. Turnbull narrowed the 5,000 or so stars within 100 light years of Earth to a shortlist of 30 and presented the list to scientists from TPF and Darwin, New Scientist magazine reported. Her favourite was 37 Gem because it most closely resembled our sun. "The closer we look, the more we realise how most other stars are different from the sun," she said. This can be found just about anywhere, but I am wondering about this solar systems structure which is not talked about. For example, 55 Cancri is a star that has one rouphly Jupiter sized planet orbiting at .11 AU, it may have another planet 5 times the mass of Jupiter at 4 AU, this leaves a space ebtween the two for an Earth-like world to orbit while the two larger worlds suck up all the debris. All that is needed is a stable orbit. 55 Cancri is a G class star like our Sun, less massive, and is about 41 lightyears away. -----signature----- Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic-Arthur C. Clarke Any sufficiently advanced extraterrestrial intelligence is indistinguishable from God-Michael Shermer I'm a sexy shoeless GOD OF WAR! #347 on SLG's List Of Sexy Men
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VadersLaMent Registered: Apr '02	Date Posted: 10/12/03 5:32am Subject: RE: SPACE SCIENCE THREAD
	Russia has been helping China, from ABCnews.com: Sunday, October 12, 2003. 2:25pm (AEST) Russia has played a significant role in helping China prepare for its first manned space mission, its experts providing training facilities for cosmonauts and the Soyuz spaceship inspiring China's Shenzhu spacecraft. "Russian enterprises have been cooperating with China in space construction since the late 1950s," Yury Grigoriev, deputy technical director at the Russian space constructor RKK Energia, said. "The Chinese have used our experience, but they have not blindly copied our technology." He says preparing the manned flight, scheduled for between October 15 and 17, "the Chinese respected the principle that all the technical equipment must be produced in China". Russia offered to sell China a scale model of the Soyuz in 1995, but the Chinese only bought the landing capsule. "Taking our landing capsule as a basis, they created their own capsule," Mr Grigoriev said. The Chinese spacecraft is "different from the Soyuz". Where the Soyuz orbital module - the section manned by cosmonauts during the flight - burns up in the atmosphere on re-entry after detaching itself from the landing capsule, the Shenzhu's orbital module can continue to fly independently and can be considered as "the predecessor of an orbiting station." Mr Grigoriev says the Chinese "are likely to create their own orbiting station rather than sign on for the International Space Station." The deputy director of the Star City training centre for cosmonauts near Moscow, says the centre trained two future Chinese cosmonauts, or "taikonauts," Wu Jie and Li Jinlong, from November 1996 to November 1997. Russian Space Agency spokesman Sergei Gorbunov says Mr Wu and Mr Li would be the first Chinese men in space. "We hope everything will go fine and that China will become the third member of the "space pilots' club" after Russia and the United States, he said. An expert on the Chinese space program, Brian Harvey, says although Russia exercised "some influence" on Beijing, China "has developed its space program very much by itself." Russian reporters in the Chinese capital say Russian space officials had asked to be invited to the Shenzhu launch but were turned down. This is a good thing and a bad thing. Good=Space unity. Multiple space agencies putting recourses together for a common goal. Many people will try and tell you that the exploration of space is impossible otherwise. I don't know about impossible, but it sure helps. Bad=Wasn't Russia supposed to be helping with the International Space Station? What happened to that unity? I am also curious as to why they would get such help from Russia then not allow them to be present at the launch. -----signature----- Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic-Arthur C. Clarke Any sufficiently advanced extraterrestrial intelligence is indistinguishable from God-Michael Shermer I'm a sexy shoeless GOD OF WAR! #347 on SLG's List Of Sexy Men
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VadersLaMent Registered: Apr '02	Date Posted: 10/13/03 7:31am Subject: RE: SPACE SCIENCE THREAD
	Before the Planet Finder will come Kepler. Space.com: By Diane Stresing Special to SPACE.com posted: 07:00 am ET 09 October 2003 The Earth really unique in its ability to support life? Right now, that’s a $300 million question. When NASA’s Kepler Mission launches in 2007, we may find the answer. Started more than a decade ago, the Kepler Mission (www.kepler.arc.nasa.gov/index.html) is the first program to search for Earth-sized planets. What’s more, it will look for planets that, based on their orbits, are capable of supporting life. Named in honor of 16th-century German mathematician and astronomer Johannes Kepler, the project bears his name primarily because Kepler proved that planets travel in an ellipse (not a circle) around the sun. The name is also appropriate because Kepler’s laws of optics are still used in telescopes. The Kepler Mission will look at the "habitable zone" of stars, where planets maintain orbits a sufficient distance from their star so that they remain relatively temperate and, therefore, may contain water. The key to this mission is the telescope. When the telescope is launched it will be the largest Schmidt telescope to orbit the sun with a .95-meter (a little over 3 feet) optical corrector and a 1.4-meter mirror to simultaneously observe over 100 square degrees, said William Borucki, principal investigator for the Kepler Project at NASA’s Ames Research Center. Tim Kelly, senior program manager for the Kepler Project at Ball Aerospace & Technologies, pointed out that we shouldn’t call it a telescope. "When we talk about telescopes, we have this mental image that it takes pictures of stars." Kepler won’t take pictures. Kepler, more precisely, is a photometer. It will measure the brightness of approximately 100,000 stars. A transit occurs when a planet crosses the line of sight between its parent star (in Earth’s case, the sun) and the observer. With each transit, some of the light from the star is blocked. Kepler will measure that dimming; readings on periodic flickers will be used to determine the planets’ sizes and orbits. When that information is combined with the known energy output of a star, the likelihood of liquid water on the planet can be deduced. Launching in ‘07 Still in the design phase, the Kepler project will come together in pieces over the next few years. Optics specialists at Brashear, in Pittsburgh, are designing and fabricating Kepler’s primary mirror, about 1.5 meters (4.9 feet) in diameter, and a special lens about 1 meter in diameter. Meanwhile, Kelly’s team in Boulder, Colorado, is building the photometer (which includes about 1,000 pieces, not counting washers, nuts, and bolts) and the spacecraft. Borucki said about 60 people at NASA and Ball Aerospace & Technologies are currently at work on the project, most of them involved in telescope operation and designing and building communications and ground control systems. Before Kepler’s launch, the size of the team will double, according to Borucki. After it is launched, a crew of about 30 will be assigned to operate the telescope and analyze the resulting data. Borucki’s team will begin to interpret the data sent back from the Kepler Mission within a few months of launch. "Within six to twelve months, we’ll know if there are other ‘Earths,’" Borucki told us. "Three to four years after the start of the mission, we’ll be able to see if they are in the habitable zone. "If we find out we’re the only Earth, there can never be a Star Trek," Borucki cautioned. There simply wouldn’t be anyone to visit. "On the other hand, we might find many [other habitable planets]." Borucki won’t guess about the mission’s possible finds, but other experts speculate we might find more than 50 Earth-like planets. It is a good thing about scientists that they make searches because there are possibilities, yet still make comments like "if we find we are the only one." It is easy to assume that if there are Jupiter-like worlds, then there will be Earth-like ones. I think most certainly astronomers will find Earth sized planets within the habitable zones of various stars which will become targets for much more sophisticated telescopes, and later on interstellar probes dispatched in swarms. Finding an organic world seems to be a given. Most scientists are quite optomistic that they will be able to take a measure of a world's atmosphere and find Earth-like qualities. It is still not a given that intelligence pervades the Universe, it is quite a jump from fungus to technology, but with the possibility of primitive life off the Earth, the possibilityof intelligent life becomes just a little more viable. -----signature----- Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic-Arthur C. Clarke Any sufficiently advanced extraterrestrial intelligence is indistinguishable from God-Michael Shermer I'm a sexy shoeless GOD OF WAR! #347 on SLG's List Of Sexy Men
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VadersLaMent Registered: Apr '02	Date Posted: 10/14/03 5:14am Subject: RE: SPACE SCIENCE THREAD
	On the previous pages is alot of talk about China's space access and what NASA's answer might be. It seems at least some kind of kick in the pants is taking place and as many are hoping, it may cause a new space race. From Scifitoday.com: By apsmith, Section News Posted on Mon Oct 13th, 2003 at 06:30:45 PM PST This week will see China join the ranks of nations that have sent human beings into orbit; meanwhile the US House of Representatives will hold a full Science Committee hearing this Thursday morning on The Future of Human Spaceflight. As was noted here last month, there is one pending bill that proposes a new vision statement for the US space program. Now the National Space Society has released a new Position Paper on the next steps for humans in space. NSS has had extensive contacts with both the White House and Congress on space policy in recent months; there's some chance this could become a real proposal for the future of space in the US. This statement goes well beyond NASA's domain in calling for a revitalized space focus across many federal agencies, including the Department of Transportation (with new private space ventures coming online over the next year), the Department of Commerce, Dept. of Energy, and the Dept. of Defense. Three specific goals are stated for the near term for human spaceflight: increased reliable access, establishing a Moon base, and focusing on the threat from Earth-crossing asteroids and comets. The recommendations follow: 1. REVITALIZED POLICY. The U.S. should strengthen its leadership in human space exploration by building on the principles in the 1988 National Space Policy. Accordingly, the U.S. government should once again direct federal departments and agencies to permanently open the space frontier to enable the U.S. and humanity to receive the enormous benefits from the exploration, development, and settlement of space. 2. LOW COST SPACE ACCESS. Low cost, robust, and reliable access to space is the single largest barrier to further advancement in space exploration and development. Therefore, NASA and the Departments of Defense and Transportation should be directed to place a priority on work to develop the technology and regulations for affordable, reliable, and frequent human access to and from space. Wherever possible, these technologies should share a common architecture and engage the private sector - ranging from entrepreneurs to existing aerospace companies - to ensure that a broad range of approaches are considered. Included in this recommendation is clarification of regulations and policies related to suborbital launch activities. 3. PERMANENT LUNAR BASE. NASA should be assigned the task of preparing for and, immediately after completion of the International Space Station (ISS), establishing a permanent human presence on the Moon. A lunar base would enable the long-term exploration of the Moon, utilization of lunar resources (including energy, oxygen, and metals) to reduce the cost of space operations, and development of infrastructure and test facilities to support the industrialization/commercialization of space and exploration of the solar system. A permanent lunar facility also provides a low gravity, isolated, stable, magnetic-field free, vacuum environment to perform cutting-edge physics, medical research, astronomy, sensitive biological/genetic investigations, and industrial research that could lead to major breakthroughs. A focused but incremental effort to return to the Moon would also give the ISS a renewed objective for testing new hardware, software, human operations, logistics, assembly, and medical safety protocols. This effort would also help drive design and operations choices for the Orbital Space Plane and next generation launch vehicle programs; the use of common architecture in these efforts will save time and money in the long-term. 4. PLANETARY PROTECTION. The Department of Defense should be assigned the task of developing protections for American space assets and the nation from terrestrial and extra-terrestrial threats, including orbital debris and Earth-crossing asteroids and comets. Of course there are many other voices out there calling for changes in the way we handle human spaceflight - does space flight make sense as a rapid deployment capability for our armed forces? Or are we just not technologically ready for people in space at all yet? From my experience with NSS, a lot of years of knowledge about space development goes into these statements, and they represent a very realistic view of what actually is possible in the near future. Other National Space Society policy statements, on a variety of topics are available on the NSS chapters web site. There are rumblings. -----signature----- Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic-Arthur C. Clarke Any sufficiently advanced extraterrestrial intelligence is indistinguishable from God-Michael Shermer I'm a sexy shoeless GOD OF WAR! #347 on SLG's List Of Sexy Men
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Iconic Registered: Aug '03	Date Posted: 10/14/03 12:12pm Subject: RE: SPACE SCIENCE THREAD
	Space Seen as Finite, Shaped Like a Soccer Ball By Robert Roy Britt Senior Science Writer posted: 01:00 pm ET 08 October 2003 Scientists have kicked around many possibilities for the shape of the cosmos and whether or not it has a boundary. Now one group says the big house is set up something like the surface of a soccer ball, with cosmic patches stitched together to form a decidedly finite universe. The structure can also be likened to a funhouse of perplexing mirrors generating multiple images of one reality. But the new theoretical conjuring is no joke. It's based on real-world observations of radiation leftover from the Big Bang, data that do not fit the current leading view of an infinite universe. The strange geometry has been suggested before. What's new is how neatly it fits with the latest data. After some two millennia of speculation, the scientists involved in the work say, observations may be on the verge of determining whether the universe is infinite or finite. An infinite or open universe would result from an infinite amount of matter. A finite amount of matter would generate a finite, or closed universe. Back to where you started The new idea involves blocks of space "with opposite faces abstractly glued together," the researchers write in the Oct. 9 issue of the journal Nature. An object sliding off an edge of one block will instantly slide into view at the edge of its opposing block. In a telephone interview, researcher Jeff Weeks, a freelance mathematician and co-author of the Nature paper, explained the geometry. Imagine a sheet of paper with the left and right edges rolled toward one another to make a cylinder, Weeks suggests. Suppose you could shrink and stand on the paper. Start at the seam and walk west in a straight line. "Nothing funny happens along the way." Weeks says. "Then lo-and-behold you're back at the starting point and surprised to be there." Now if you could roll the sheet of paper in two directions -- without the inevitable crumpling -- so that things moving off the top would appear at the bottom, then you'd have created a universe much like the one Weeks and his colleagues imagine. The real universe is more complex than a sheet of paper, of course. The new study, led by Jean-Pierre Luminet of the Paris Observatory, suggests the universe is a dodecahedron -- a complex pattern of 12 pentagonal shapes -- with opposite faces connected up in pairs, like the opposite edges of the sheet of paper described above. A traveler exiting the dodecahedron through any face returns from the opposite face. The dodecahedron is geometrically tweaked so that it makes a spherical universe -- one that can be likened to the look of a soccer ball. Multiple images If the theory is right -- and the researchers say more work is needed to bear it out -- then light should experience the same travel patterns as you did while walking around the paper cylinder. That would mean astronomers should be able to find multiple images of a single object in space. Weeks thinks of it this way: On the paper cylinder, a person could look east and west and, in both directions, see light coming from a single object that's on the far side of the cylinder. The concept has implications for space travel, or at least for pondering its potential extremes. "Hypothetically speaking, if you head off into space you can travel in a straight line and come back to the starting point," Weeks said. "But it would take a long time." This latest twist on decades-old theory arose from observed density fluctuations in cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, a leftover of the early days of the universe. The density fluctuations are in essence the vibrational overtones of space, the researchers say. Just as the vibrations of a bell can't exceed the size of the bell, the density fluctuations of space can't be larger than space itself. But measurements of the CMB, provided recently by NASA's WMAP probe, do not match up with expectations set by cosmology's leading model, which maintains the universe is geometrically flat, but infinite. Some fudge factors are needed to reconcile theory with what's been observed. No boundaries The dodecahedral model explains the observations with no fudging required, says George Ellis, a mathematician at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. For anyone who is bewildered by the idea of infinite space, the new model could prove slightly comforting. It suggests we live in a relatively small, closed universe, Ellis writes in an accompanying analysis for Nature. "This topology, unlike many others, is supported by" the WMAP data, says Ellis, who was not involved in the study. If the universe is closed, though, then what is beyond the universe? Weeks took his best shot at answering this confounding question: "The universe is finite," he said, "but there's no boundary to it," implying that there is no beyond, or that if there is, then its nature is left to your imagination and is outside the closed system that astronomers can ever hope to see. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- How the universe works Visualized here in 2-D, an object exiting a seam of the universe reappears on the opposing face. The geometry is known as a flat torus. Adding complexity In a 3-D universe, the flat torus is mathematically extended to the far more complex dodecahedron, with six opposing pentagonal pairs, as shown here. In real space, according to the new theory, the faces and the edges do not actually exist, but if you could cut the universe open, the dodecahedron would become apparent. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -----signature----- Any Time I See Something Screech Across A Room And Latch Onto Someone's Neck, And The Guy Screams And Tries To Get It Off, I Have To Laugh, Because What Is That Thing?
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VadersLaMent Registered: Apr '02	Date Posted: 10/14/03 8:50pm Subject: RE: SPACE SCIENCE THREAD
	I just posted this on the previous page, but it's cool you have the gifs there, it's a beter explanation. There is something confusing there; in real space the egdes and faces to not exist, yet it is a finite, closed universe; you could go in one direction and end up at your starting place. At some point then there is a cross over where you are no longer heading in one direction but are heading 'back' to your starting point. A very perplexing boundry if I must say so. A center? I always hear that everywhere in the Universe is the center. Since the expansion began the center of the Universe is where I sit, where you sit, the other side of the galaxy, the other side of the Universe; every point is the center since the center was everywhere at the beginning. Twists the brain a little doesn't it? But still, if there is a 'boundry' where you cross over to start 'back' towards your starting point, is that an indication that there is a middle point to it all? Maybe. However most theories I have read concerning this will liken the singularity of the Big Bang to the singularity of a black hole in name and the idea that the conditions were similar. However, the Bing Bang is also called a time-like sigularity; time began with the BB where a black hole sigularity starts in a place where time already exists. Nothing goes faster than light, if it did(other than certain loopholes) it would experiance time in reverse. This may be the ultimate censor, if there is a center, and that center was a part of a time-like sigularity, without FTL you can never 'see' the center of the Universe other than that which exists around you right now. I wonder though, as we look out into space we are seeing things as they once were not as they are since the light had to take time to get here. An interferometer telscope with a set up diameter equal to the orbit of Pluto would be able to take a picture of your face from about 30,000 light years, not to mention taking pictures of planetary systems from other galaxies. A KT-II civlization could do this very easily and have a hands on view of histories of worlds. Perhaps a KT-III civilization took the time to build an interferometer with a circumferance equal to a galaxy, could it peer into the heart of the beginning itself? The beginning was opaque, but I would wonder what quantum effects could be applied to a telescope by a powerful species to look at what cannot be looked at. -----signature----- Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic-Arthur C. Clarke Any sufficiently advanced extraterrestrial intelligence is indistinguishable from God-Michael Shermer I'm a sexy shoeless GOD OF WAR! #347 on SLG's List Of Sexy Men
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VadersLaMent Registered: Apr '02	Date Posted: 10/15/03 11:56am Subject: RE: SPACE SCIENCE THREAD
	And this is why we stagnate: Space.com: China Launch Won't Ignite New Space Race, Analysts Say By Brian Berger Space News Writer posted: 09:30 pm ET 14 October 2003 WASHINGTON -- Although China has now joined Russia and the United States as the only nations on Earth capable of launching its citizens into space, U.S. analysts following the Asian space program say they don't see a three-way space race in the making. More than 40 years after the Soviet Union and the U.S. launched its first men into orbit, China has finally followed suit. And like the U.S. and the Soviet Union before it, China has drawn its first corps of space travelers from among the best fighter pilots its military has to offer. Policy analysts here say they see the launch itself as something of a belated coup for a nation eager to build up its prestige on the world stage. Much like Beijing being picked to host the Olympic Games in 2008, one analyst said, the successful launch of Shenzhou 5 says to the world, "we have arrived." "The Chinese have long aspired to be a space power," said Dean Cheng, an Asian affairs specialist at the Center for Naval Analysis here. "This is not some 'Johnny come lately' effort but a program that has consistently received support from the highest levels of Chinese government." The launch of Shenzhou 5, Cheng said, is the first-step in a long-term Chinese space program that is to include a space shuttle, space station and aerospace planes that blur the distinction between launch vehicle and aircraft. Although China is not exactly open about what it spends on space, Cheng estimates that the Chinese space program receives about $1.5 billion to $2 billion annually. That makes China's space spending comparable to Japan's and several times greater than that of cash-strapped Russia. But it is a fairly modest budget, he said, compared to the $6 billion a year the European Space Agency spends and the $15.5 billion a year NASA gets. Unclassified U.S. military space programs command a further $8.5 billion a year in federal spending. China's entry into the exclusive club of spacefaring nations comes as the U.S. is questioning the value of human space flight in light of the space shuttle Columbia tragedy. "This launch is an important achievement in the history of human exploration," NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe said Tuesday in a release. "The Chinese people have a long and distinguished history of exploration. NASA wishes China a continued safe human space flight program." O'Keefe, who is currently participating in a White House-led effort to hash out space policy issues in light of the Columbia accident, recently told reporters that China's entrance into the human space flight arena, while historically significant, is not exactly a call to action for the U.S. Even fervent China hawks are downplaying the strategic significance of the Shenzhou 5 launch and doubt it will prompt the same kind of reaction that Sputnik did forty six years ago. At a Sept. 30 panel discussion at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank here, there was widespread agreement that China's human space flight program does not warrant a direct response from the U.S. Of greater concern, panelists said, are Chinese advances in the military use of outer space. U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Michael Stokes, a Chinese aerospace analyst at the U.S. Department of Defense, said China's entry into the human space flight arena does not warrant a revamping of the U.S. human space flight program. However, Stokes said the Chinese human space flight program is part and parcel of the nation's broader ambitions in space that have very clear implications for U.S. national security ten to 20 years in the future. He cited as a prime example Chinese strides in long-range ballistic missiles, a capability that, at least in the case of the U.S. and the Soviet Union, has gone hand in hand with the development of sophisticated space launch capabilities. Stokes said China also has paid close attention to the critical role space-based assets have played in U.S. military engagements since the 1991 Gulf War and, most recently, the ongoing campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. Stokes said he is less concerned about China joining the human space flight club then he is about China's efforts to develop a robust network of military satellites of its own, while at the same time researching ways to take out the other's satellites in the event of a conflict. Larry Wortzel, vice president for foreign policy and defense studies at the Heritage Foundation, sees the Asian nation's focus on human space flight as a positive development for U.S. national security. "I think its great for them to throw money at it," Wortzel said during a recent panel discussion on China's space program here. "Every yaun spent on the Shenzou program," Wortzel said, "is a yaun not available to China's military space programs." Wortzel cautioned U.S. policy makers against knee-jerk reactions to China's burgeoning human space flight capabilities. "This is more a domestic issue than it is a national security or military issue," Wortzel said. "I hope the utility and viability of the U.S. manned space program will be evaluated on its own merits and that we will not be foolish enough to think that this is like Sputnik in [1957]." So, we lack cheap access, had an overly complex machine take the lives of 14 astronauts total, we may not launch again for another year, we have a space station on hold from completion that we should never had started to begin with, another country has become space active and has definite long range plans. And nothing is going to spark a space race. Nothing is kicking Washington in the pants and saying, "Hey, um, maybe we should get our space act together." This really pisses me off. Merits. Base it all on our own merits. I just listed our most recent "merits", not too merit-like is it? Burt Rutan and gang have successfully tested their launch vehcle for the third time. SpaceDev is building them a rocket motor. Go to the X Prize page and you will see people with merit hoping to get others to orbit. NASA is very good with its science, great in fact. But right now they are not much of a space agency. Projects are being worked on, and I hope those projects take off and don't get examined and then cancelled as so many others have been in the past. -----signature----- Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic-Arthur C. Clarke Any sufficiently advanced extraterrestrial intelligence is indistinguishable from God-Michael Shermer I'm a sexy shoeless GOD OF WAR! #347 on SLG's List Of Sexy Men
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MasterAero Registered: Aug '02	Date Posted: 10/15/03 1:14pm Subject: RE: SPACE SCIENCE THREAD
	Yeah..working on projects that get cancelled stinks. Hopefully OSP will make it all the way to operation and bridge the gap until more cool vehicles such as SSTO or full RLVs can be made. I saw where the contract for the X-43C has been awarded so at least that's one cool project that is still going. Rutan definitley looks like he's going to win the X-Prize. -----signature----- My whole life all I've wanted to do is fly, bomb stuff, shoot people down.
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obi_wan_kanathan Registered: May '01	Date Posted: 10/15/03 3:59pm Subject: RE: SPACE SCIENCE THREAD
	Yeah, it does look like he'll be the one to do so. I would be surprised if China's manned mission to space created a space race. They may be only the third nation to cross that barrier, but they're 40 years behind us. I suspect that it won't be until they militarize space, or start to seriously catch up to our technology that we'll start to act. And China could probably do either of those things by the next 10 years. Oh yeah, and here's a site for your list of links. www.badastronomy.com The site mainly covers bad astronomy seen in movies, and has a few articles disproving the moon hoax people and other space related conspiracies. But there's also some other stuff there that's interesting. -----signature----- Dark Lord of the JC \|\| JC/DLC Ambassador ~~The NEW Dark Lords' Council~~ http://www.thedarklordscouncil.com/
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VadersLaMent Registered: Apr '02	Date Posted: 10/16/03 1:04pm Subject: RE: SPACE SCIENCE THREAD
	OSP looks like a keeper, and I knew nothing about the X43, so I'll have to go take a look at that one. That's two good things I think most folks don't hear about, kinda like how the daily news usually focuses on the negative so we don't see much positive. I've seen Badastronomy.com, don't know why I never thought to add it, AmazingB is gonna be who I bug to add links. -----signature----- Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic-Arthur C. Clarke Any sufficiently advanced extraterrestrial intelligence is indistinguishable from God-Michael Shermer I'm a sexy shoeless GOD OF WAR! #347 on SLG's List Of Sexy Men
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VadersLaMent Registered: Apr '02	Date Posted: 10/17/03 10:31pm Subject: RE: SPACE SCIENCE THREAD
	I like this, from space.com: Expert Panel Tells Congress: NASA Needs New Direction By Brian Berger Space News Staff Writer posted: 02:00 pm ET 16 October 2003 WASHINGTON -- NASA’s space shuttle and space station programs took a drubbing before a congressional committee contemplating a new direction for U.S. human space flight endeavors. A panel of five witnesses, including several former NASA officials, complained to the House Science Committee Thursday that the U.S. space program is floundering in Earth orbit and needs to be set upon a new course. “The whole point of leaving home is to go somewhere, not just to endlessly circle the block,” said Wesley Huntress, NASA’s space science chief during the 1990s. He criticized the space shuttle and space station programs as too costly for what they deliver and encouraged U.S. lawmakers to view them as “the legacy of a long-past era in which the space program was a weapon in the Cold War” with the Soviet Union. Alex Roland, a Duke University history professor and frequent critic of NASA’s human space flight program, urged lawmakers to support permanently grounding the space shuttle fleet and mothballing the space station until both systems can be operated with little or no human intervention. Roland, who called the space shuttle “the world’s most expensive least robust and most deadly launch vehicle”, said NASA’s priority ought to be building a new vehicle that can make the trip to orbit much more safely and affordably. “Before we can fly to Mars, we must first master flight to low earth orbit,” he said. Roland was joined in criticizing one of NASA’s main rationales for the shuttle and space station programs -- that its about science -- by a college professor who has seen his experiments fly on no fewer than three shuttle missions. Mathew Koss, an associate professor of physics at the College of Holy Cross, said he felt personally responsible for the loss of Columbia keeping quiet about his long held belief that astronauts are not necessary to conducting a vigorous microgravity science program. “I was responsible for not saying what I had known privately and discussed with other scientists -- that we did not need human beings to participate in the exercise of these experiments,” Koss said. “Almost all the physical science experiments done on orbit could be done autonomously or remotely.” NASA had no witnesses present to defend its programs or current vision, which calls for taking a stepping stone approach to unspecified destinations. In NASA’s current plan, space shuttle and space station are important technology proving grounds and laboratories for learning about living and working in space. Most of the witnesses agreed that NASA needed a clearer vision and that any new course for NASA ought to include sending humans to Mars. There was also wide agreement that “destination specific visions have the best chance of concentrating resources and producing results. But opinions varied on just how and when to go about making such a trip a reality. Huntress was among those who reasoned that a “Mars or Bust” crash effort like the Apollo moon program is neither necessary nor politically feasible. “The Apollo program was not primarily the science or exploration program we are all fond of remembering, it was a demonstration of power and national will intended to win over hearts and minds around the world and to demoralize the Soviet Union” Huntress said. “Exploration is not what motivated Kennedy to open the public purse. Beating the Russians did.” Mike Griffin, a former senior NASA manager and aerospace industry executive, presented the most charitable assessment of NASA's human space flight efforts, ranking it second in priority only to building a new, more reliable heavy lift launcher.Griffin advised following through with space station, which means returning the shuttle to flight, while setting a new course that includes Mars. To accomplish this, Griffin recommends increasing NASA's budget from $15 billion a year to $20 billion. "NASA costs each American 14 cents a day. A really robust program could be had for about 20 cents a day," Griffin said. "Americans spend more on pizza then they do on space." 14 cents a day. I do eat alot of pizza. Maybe if we all take some of our pizza budget we canmake a differance. So, this means each of us pays $1.40 a day for the DOD. Space just isn't cheap. "Faster, better, cheaper" has been outshown many times by the more expensive probes as an example. Galileo was over a billion dollars and was one of the most successfull pieces of space technology in history. I want to be secure in my bed at night, but I'd love to know that some more of my tax dollars goes to an enlarged NASA budget. -----signature----- Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic-Arthur C. Clarke Any sufficiently advanced extraterrestrial intelligence is indistinguishable from God-Michael Shermer I'm a sexy shoeless GOD OF WAR! #347 on SLG's List Of Sexy Men
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VadersLaMent Registered: Apr '02	Date Posted: 10/19/03 1:31pm Subject: RE: SPACE SCIENCE THREAD
	This is an older article, but interesting. I had never heard of this before today: July 10, 2003: Long before our Sun and Earth ever existed, a Jupiter-sized planet formed around a sun-like star. Now, almost 13 billion years later, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has precisely measured the mass of this farthest and oldest known planet. The ancient planet has had a remarkable history, because it has wound up in an unlikely, rough neighborhood. It orbits a peculiar pair of burned-out stars in the crowded core of a globular star cluster. The new Hubble findings close a decade of speculation and debate as to the true nature of this ancient world, which takes a century to complete each orbit. The planet is 2.5 times the mass of Jupiter. Its very existence provides tantalizing evidence the first planets were formed rapidly, within a billion years of the Big Bang, leading astronomers to conclude planets may be very abundant in the universe. The planet lies near the core of the ancient globular star cluster M4, located 5,600 light-years away in the northern-summer constellation Scorpius. Globular clusters are deficient in heavier elements, because they formed so early in the universe that heavier elements had not been cooked up in abundance in the nuclear furnaces of stars. Some astronomers have therefore argued that globular clusters cannot contain planets, because planets are often made of such elements. This conclusion was seemingly bolstered in 1999 when Hubble failed to find close-orbiting "hot Jupiter"-type planets around the stars of the globular cluster 47 Tucanae. Now, it seems astronomers were just looking in the wrong place, and gas-giant worlds, orbiting at greater distances from their stars, could be common in globular clusters. "Our Hubble measurement offers tantalizing evidence that planet formation processes are quite robust and efficient at making use of a small amount of heavier elements. This implies that planet formation happened very early in the universe," said Steinn Sigurdsson of Pennsylvania State University. "This is tremendously encouraging that planets are probably abundant in globular star clusters," agrees Harvey Richer of the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver. He bases this conclusion on the fact a planet was uncovered in such an unlikely place: orbiting two captured stars, a helium white dwarf and a rapidly spinning neutron star, near the crowded core of a globular cluster. In such a place, fragile planetary systems tend to be ripped apart due to gravitational interactions with neighboring stars. The story of this planet's discovery began in 1988, when the pulsar, called PSR B1620-26, was discovered in M4. It is a neutron star spinning just under 100 times per second and emitting regular radio pulses like a lighthouse beam. The white dwarf was quickly found through its effect on the clock-like pulsar, as the two stars orbited each other twice per year. Sometime later, astronomers noticed further irregularities in the pulsar that implied a third object was orbiting the others. This new object was suspected to be a planet, but it also could have been a brown dwarf or a low-mass star. Debate over its true identity continued through the 1990s. Sigurdsson, Richer, and their co-investigators settled the debate by at last measuring the planet's actual mass through some ingenious detective work. They had exquisite Hubble data from the mid-1990s taken to study white dwarfs in M4. Sifting through these observations, they were able to detect the white dwarf orbiting the pulsar and measure its color and temperature. Using evolutionary models computed by Brad Hansen of the University of California, Los Angeles, the astronomers estimated the white dwarf's mass. This in turn was compared to the amount of wobble in the pulsar's signal, allowing the team to calculate the tilt of the white dwarf's orbit as seen from Earth. When combined with the radio studies of the wobbling pulsar, this critical piece of evidence told them the tilt of the planet's orbit, too, and so the precise mass could at last be known. With a mass of only 2.5 Jupiters, the object is too small to be a star or brown dwarf and must instead be a planet. The planet is likely a gas giant without a solid surface like the Earth. At 2.5 times Jupiter's size a world like this may generate energy more so than Jupiter does. It would be unlikely yet still possible for a life bearing, Earth sized world to orbit it. If you have ever read the MBrain link in the head post you know that globular clusters are great places for MBrains to either originate or migrate to with stars so close together. Recourses would be abundant and multiple MBrian "oracles" might be inclined to make their homes there. There are no clusters like this near us, which is too bad as they would potentially be great objects to study with the limits of todays telescopes. It is all another enforcement to the idea that planets are the norm rather than the exception. So much stuff is left over from the formation of our own solar system, I don't think it is a stretch at all to think there is at least one planet for every star if planets can form around the hostility of a white dwarf and a neutron star. -----signature----- Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic-Arthur C. Clarke Any sufficiently advanced extraterrestrial intelligence is indistinguishable from God-Michael Shermer I'm a sexy shoeless GOD OF WAR! #347 on SLG's List Of Sexy Men
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VadersLaMent Registered: Apr '02	Date Posted: 10/20/03 12:42pm Subject: RE: SPACE SCIENCE THREAD
	Cool. According to various spacenews pages the OSP is now a team effort between Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. Lockheed Martin will lead the new team as the system prime contractor while Northrop Grumman will serve as Lockheed Martin's principal teammate and subcontractor. NASA expects to select a prime contractor team for the full-scale OSP development by August 2004. NASA has specified that the OSP must provide a crew rescue capability for the International Space Station by 2008, a two-year acceleration in the OSP development schedule outlined last spring. A two-way crew transfer OSP is also required by 2012. OSP will be launched on either an Atlas V or Delta IV rocket. According to NASA "The plane will be operable through at least 2020, although it will be designed for longer life." Here are a couple pics from the slinews.com page from the Marshall Center(Where MasterA works): -----signature----- Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic-Arthur C. Clarke Any sufficiently advanced extraterrestrial intelligence is indistinguishable from God-Michael Shermer I'm a sexy shoeless GOD OF WAR! #347 on SLG's List Of Sexy Men
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MasterAero Registered: Aug '02	Date Posted: 10/20/03 1:35pm Subject: RE: SPACE SCIENCE THREAD
	My ears are burning... Yep Northrup and Lockheed have joined forces to compete for OSP. Its now a 2 way race instead of 3. Boeing is competing against them. The winner/concept should be announced early next year sometime. One interesting thing is the requirements say it should "initially" launch on an ELV. Maybe a RLV will be developed to launch it at a later date. (Similar to 2nd picture) A focus is certainly being put on designing versatility into the system. -----signature----- My whole life all I've wanted to do is fly, bomb stuff, shoot people down.
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