Friday - January 27, 2012
Ro/Ro Row Your Boat
The Foss M/V Delata Mariner, launched in 1999, is a 312 foot long, 50 foot tall, 80 foot wide Roll On/Roll Off (Ro/Ro) carrier ship with an 8,000HP engine and just one job: it ferries giant missile engines, the Delta IV boosters used on the Space Shuttle and other rockets, from the Boeing factory in Decatur, Alabama down the Tennessee-Tombigbee waterway, into the Mississippi, past New Orleans and then across the Gulf of Mexico either around Florida and up to Cape Canaveral, or through the Panama Canal and north to Vandenburg AFB in California. And that is all that it does. It’s a rocket ship, even though it has a top speed of just 15 knots. Rocket transport ship that is.
Thursday night the ship was heading upriver, and it looks like it tried to go under the wrong span of the Eggner Ferry Bridge. Big mistake. The impact tore out one span of the bridge and rolled it up like a rug, roadway and all. Some hours later another span of the 1932 bridge also fell. No deaths or injuries; the old bridge doesn’t see much traffic and was nearly empty in the middle of the night when the accident occurred. One local man was driving on the bridge, but he managed to stop his pickup truck just in time.
The ship doesn’t even look all that damaged, but it will take some time to clean up the mess and fix the bridge.
AURORA, Ky. – State officials are inspecting what’s left of a southwestern Kentucky bridge that partially collapsed when it was struck by a cargo ship that was too tall to pass under the structure.
Pieces of the Eggner Ferry Bridge at Aurora, Ky., are strewn across the front of the motor vessel Delta Mariner as it sits at the site of a Thursday accident.
Two spans of the Eggner Ferry Bridge at US 68 and Kentucky 80 were destroyed Thursday night by the Delta Mariner. No injuries were reported on the bridge or in the boat.
The ship was traveling upriver toward the Kentucky Lock and Dam when it hit the aging steel bridge, which was built in the 1930s and handles about 2,800 vehicles a day.
On Friday morning, the front of the ship remained tangled with steel from the bridge and hunks of asphalt from the roadway. Kentucky Transportation Cabinet officials said inspectors began an in-depth review of the bridge at daylight.
“There is a point where they may have to disassemble the structure completely or use a crane to move the debris,” Jim LeFevre, highway department chief engineer, told The Paducah Sun. “That ship is going to be there for some time.”
Transportation Cabinet spokesman Keith Todd said he believes most [italics: Drew458] of the navigational lights were functioning on the bridge at the time of the impact.
“Our people talked to the Coast Guard as recently as Tuesday to update them on the navigational lights, and we believe most of them were working at the time of this wreck,” Todd said. “Although the green bridge marker lights on the bridge should have been visible from both sides of the bridge.”
The 312-foot-long cargo ship was built to navigate shallow waterways and was carrying empty rocket booster cores, Coast Guard Lt. Jason Franz told The Sun.
Interestingly, but only as one of those odd coincidences, the Foss company, which is a shipbuilder, a transportation support conglomerate, and the largest barge company on the west coast, also supports bridge construction. They helped build the Tacoma Narrows bridge, and they’ve also just released their new “green” hybrid tugboat, which utilizes their new and patented hybrid propulsion system.
The Eggner Bridge is in western Kentucky, southeast of Paducah, in that thin corner of the state between Tennessee and Illinois. No blame is being assessed at this point; perhaps the green lights were not lit under the higher spans of the bridge where this ship should have gone.
The transportation cabinet said the bridge was in the process of being replaced, and pre-construction work began months ago.
Another one of those happy coincidences I guess.
Posted by Drew458
on 01/27/2012 at 04:00 PM
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Permalink • Friday - December 16, 2011
Space Scientists: We’ll Use The Chewbacca Defense On This One, Thanks
“If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must acquit”
Just so you know, a comet generally goes along at about 18 miles a second. Ignoring for a moment the parts of it’s trajectory close to the corona on both the entry tangent and the exit tangent, it still took about 22 hours for comet Lovejoy to zip halfway around the sun just 87,000 miles about the surface (about a third of the distance between Earth and the Moon). A ball of ice. Flying through 2 million degrees of Hell for a whole day. And there was something left, AND it managed to break away from the Sun’s gravitational field. Now, getting back to those tangents: Mercury, the nearest planet to the Sun, has a wobbly orbit that averages a radius of about 36 million miles. 36 million miles out (23 days travel for a comet) the surface temperature of Mercury is 800° F, hot enough to melt lead and tin. And every mile closer to the Sun it gets hotter. Do your own math to figure out how far out from the Sun you have to go to find the point of state transition, when the temps get hot enough to melt ice and boil it away in the relative vacuum of space. Probably at least a week’s additional journey, both coming and going.
Oh, and all you Star Trek fans will know that to come out the other side, the comet had to pick up enough velocity to achieve solar escape velocity. Which is 384 miles per second. Which just also happens to be the escape velocity of the solar system, so this baby ain’t coming back.
Homework problem: assume what was left weighs in at 10 million tons on Earth. Traveling in an semi-circular arc of RSun + 87K miles at 384mps and in a gravitational field of GSun (the sun’s surface gravity is 28 times ours), compute the centrifugal forces applied to the comet on it’s trip. Try to rationalize how the comet held together when those forces were greater than the bond strength holding the atoms together.
Comet Lovejoy Survives Fiery Plunge Through Sun, NASA Says
A newfound comet defied long odds on Thursday, (Dec. 15), surviving a suicidal dive through the sun’s hellishly hot atmosphere, according to NASA scientists.
Comet Lovejoy plunged through the sun’s corona at about 7 p.m. EST (midnight GMT on Dec. 16), coming within 87,000 miles (140,000 kilometers) of our star’s surface. Temperatures in the corona can reach 2 million degrees Fahrenheit (1.1 million degrees Celsius), so most researchers expected the icy wanderer to be completely destroyed.
But Lovejoy proved to be made of tough stuff. A video taken by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) spacecraft showed the icy object emerging from behind the sun and zipping back off into space.
Naturally, stargazers and their gangs were expecting a fast melt and a puff of steam. What the hey, right, it’s only the sun. Um, nope, not this time.
SDO is one of many instruments that scientists — eager to record and study the comet’s presumed demise — trained on Lovejoy as it streaked toward the sun.
“We have here an exceptionally rare opportunity to observe the complete vaporization of a relatively large comet, and we have approximately 18 instruments on five different satellites that are trying to do just that,” Karl Battams, a scientist at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., wrote on the Sungrazing Comets website, before Lovejoy’s closest solar approach.
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Battams greeted news of Lovejoy’s improbable escape with surprise and delight.“I expected a diffuse dust tail to survive (for several hours) before fading away but NOT any kind of nucleus!” he tweeted. “I’ve worked with sungrazers for 8yrs; today was the most amazing day I’ve ever had with them!”
Lovejoy has a core about 660 feet (200 meters) wide. It belongs to a class of comets known as Kreutz sungrazers, whose orbits bring them very close to the sun.
...
Lovejoy is quite large for a sungrazing comet, and experts expected it to die an impressive death. The website Spaceweather.com, for example, predicted Lovejoy would blaze as brightly as Jupiter or Venus in the sky as it neared the sun.Battams also expected a good show, saying the comet might even be visible from the ground around sunset today in the Northern Hemisphere.
“I do think that it will put on a spectacular show for us and will be the brightest Kreutz-group comet that SOHO has ever observed,” Battams wrote last week.
Though the early returns are still coming in, those forecasts appear to be on the money. Observations from various spacecraft do indeed show Lovejoy flaring up significantly as it neared our star.
Seems the comet left it’s tail behind. What’s just so darned amazing is that anything, anything AT ALL, came out the other side. Nearly a full month of ice melting temps coming in, and nearly a full month of temps hot enough to vaporize anything while going around. And there’s still a significant chunk of something left. If we still had a functioning space program, I’d want to send up a catcher satellite and grab a piece of whatever is left. That’s the stuff you want to build spaceships with, fer shure.
Lovejoy didn’t exactly come out of its hellish adventure unscathed. Only 10 percent of the comet — which was probably millions of tons — survived the encounter, said W. Dean Pesnell, project scientist for NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, which tracked Lovejoy’s death-defying plunge.
And the comet lost something pretty important: its tail.
“It looks like the tail broke off and is stuck” in the sun’s magnetic field, Pesnell said.
Yeah, but something made it, when nothing should have. Scientists don’t have that answer yet, although they’re trying the “Gee, it must have been much much bigger than we thought” Giant Mass Excuse. Which is pretty much the Wookie Defense. Which means they just don’t know. “If the glove don’t fit, you must acquit.” Besides, the bigger the comet was, the larger the acceleration forces there would be as it went around.
Posted by Drew458
on 12/16/2011 at 08:43 PM
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Permalink • Friday - September 16, 2011
Gee it’s good to be back home again
A Russian Soyuz capsule carrying three returning astronauts from the International Space Station touched down safely Friday in the central steppes of Kazakhstan, but not without rattling nerves after a breakdown in communications.
NASA astronaut Ron Garan and Russian cosmonauts Andrei Borisenko and Alexander Samokutyayev landed some 150 kilometers (93 miles) southeast of the city of Zhezkazgan at 10 a.m. local time (0400 GMT) after 164 days in space.
Repeated calls to the Soyuz TMA-21 capsule from Mission Control in Korolyov, outside Moscow, went unanswered for several minutes, well after the craft had de-orbited. Communication was eventually established between the crew and an Antonov fixed-winged aircraft circling the landing site.
The landing was smooth in the area planned seconds before the expected arrival time.
Russian cosmonaut Sergei Volkov, NASA’s Michael Fossum, and Satoshi Furukawa of Japan’s JAXA space agency remain onboard the international space station and are due to return to Earth on Nov. 22.
There will be some taut nerves in the run-up to that return, which Roscosmos announced Friday should be preceded by a manned Soyuz launch from Baikonur on Nov. 14. Earlier this week, Roscosmos announced that the launch was to take place on Nov. 12.
Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, had to postpone that launch from October amid concerns over a failed supply mission last month. Another delay would almost certainly mean the space station would have to be left unmanned. Astronauts have been living aboard the station, without interruption, for almost 11 years.
Since phasing out the U.S. space shuttle program earlier this year, NASA is relying entirely on Russia to get American and other astronauts to the international space station.
The capsule landed gently around 30 seconds before 10 a.m. local time (0400 GMT) in the barren steppe, throwing up a puff of dust, before rolling onto its side.
While it is not unusual for the capsule to be pulled onto its side, it makes pulling out the crew a slightly lengthier process.
Good. Glad to hear this. And I’m sure their Space Pens are still working just fine too.
Meanwhile NASA - the New American Special muslim outreach Association - continues to bleed geeks, and it looks like their future will now be robotic instead of manned space flight. That is, when they aren’t busy learning how to bow towards Mecca.
Posted by Drew458
on 09/16/2011 at 11:03 AM
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Permalink • Monday - May 16, 2011
Once More Into The Blue
On its 16-day mission, Endeavor will deliver a cosmic ray detector to the space station, which scientists hope will give them a glimpse into the very first moments of the universe, just after the big bang. On board, the astronauts are all wearing the blue bracelets celebrating Giffords life.
The liftoff of Endeavor marks the beginning of the end of an era for the shuttle program. It’s the next to last launch. Atlantis lifts off in June, bringing the 30-year shuttle program to an end.
Hard to believe the US Space Program is getting ready to close down. Harder to believe what NASA’s new “mission” will be. Damn. I grew up with the voice of Mission Command and that age of glory. And now it’s all coming to an end. Budget cuts: the Democrats have always been against the space program, always. And honestly, after the moon landings, they’ve kind of been stuck in neutral for decades. As a junior rocketeer and a huge reader of sci-fi, I would have figured we’d have a profit making lunar colony by now, and men on mars. Alas no.
At T-9 minutes and holding, the STS-134 launch countdown continues its march toward liftoff of space shuttle Endeavour at 8:56:28 a.m. EDT.
During this hold, the mission management team will conduct their final “Go-No-Go” poll, and the countdown enters the home stretch.
“T minus 9”. Will future children even understand what that means?
The crew members for space shuttle Endeavour’s STS-134 mission are Commander Mark Kelly, Pilot Gregory H. Johnson and Mission Specialists Michael Fincke, Greg Chamitoff, Andrew Feustel and European Space Agency astronaut Roberto Vittori.
During the 16-day mission, Endeavour and its crew will deliver the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) and spare parts including two S-band communications antennas, a high-pressure gas tank and additional spare parts for Dextre.
Final words from Commander Kelly: “We have always been a nation that reaches for the stars. We must not stop.”
Aw crap I’m getting all weepy here.
Godspeed, Endeavor.
All systems are go, the countdown runs down to zero, and we have ignition. And it’s a picture perfect launch. Endeavor blasts through some low level clouds and punches a hole in the sky, accelerating to faster than a speeding bullet within a minute, and reaching escape velocity in under 8 minutes. The boosters fall away without issue, and two minutes later the liquid fuel tank lets go without a hitch. After only 10 minutes flight Endeavor is in space, hundreds and hundreds of miles downrange. Now the steady 3G acceleration eases, and the computers arc the ship from an elliptical orbit into a circular one, 136 miles up above the sky.
For this, the 26th Shuttle mission, everything is nominal. That’s another word that is going to fade out of our language, or at least that usage. Only NASA could make “being trifling in comparison with the actual value; minimal” mean “letter perfect in every way shape or form” because with good engineering that’s only to be expected. No magic, no miracle, merely working as designed. Nominal. Even though a miracle is occurring. No wonder the Space Program was a reflection of national confidence. And no wonder such a program had to be eliminated by our twisted leaders, if for no other reason than that.
Posted by Drew458
on 05/16/2011 at 07:29 AM
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Permalink • Tuesday - April 05, 2011
A Close Shave In Space
A new analysis of a piece of Chinese space junk zooming so close to the International Space Station today that its crew prepared to take shelter in a Russian lifeboat has revealed that the satellite debris poses no risk to the orbiting lab or its astronauts, NASA officials said.
“Tracking data now indicates that a piece of orbital debris being monitored by Mission Control Houston will not pass close enough to the International Space Station to warrant the Expedition 27 crew members taking safe haven within their Soyuz TMA-20 spacecraft,” NASA officials said in an afternoon status update.
The space junk is a piece of China’s defunct weather satellite Fengyun-1C, which was destroyed during a Chinese anti-satellite test in 2007 that created a vast cloud of orbital debris, NASA officials said.
Based on the refined analysis, NASA officials said the satellite debris will fly within about 3.3 miles (5.3 kilometers) during its closest approach to the space station at 4:21 p.m. EDT (2021 GMT). It is approaching the space station from the front, but poses no danger of impacting the spacecraft.
Flight controllers had been tracking the debris all day from NASA’s space station Mission Control room at the Johnson Space Center in Houston to determine the potential risk it posted to the station and its crew. At about 7 a.m. EDT (1100 GMT), Mission Control radioed the station astronauts to tell them they may need to seek shelter in the Soyuz until the debris passes the space station.
“The probability of a collision became low enough that it wasn’t a high enough risk that we would need to shelter in place,” NASA spokesman Kelly Humpries told SPACE.com. Mission Control radioed the all-clear to the crew at 2:41 p.m. EDT (1841 GMT) as the space station sailed 220 miles (354 km) above eastern Asia.
Sure, sure, that’s what they say now. Earlier today it was lifeboat drill time.
A piece of space junk from a Chinese anti-satellite test will fly uncomfortably close to the International Space Station today, forcing the outpost’s crew to take shelter in a Russian lifeboat as a safety measure, NASA officials said.
The threatening space debris will zoom within 2.7 miles (4.5 kilometers) when it makes its closest approach at about 4:21 p.m. EDT (2021 GMT) today, NASA spokesman Josh Byerly told SPACE.com from the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
The station’s three-person crew includes NASA astronaut Cady Colman, Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli and Russian cosmonaut Dmitry Kondratyev, who is commanding the mission. The astronauts and cosmonaut will close hatches between modules of the station’s U.S. segment, and take shelter in their Soyuz TMA-20 spacecraft, which can double as a lifeboat in case the debris actually strikes the space station and forces the crew to flee.
NASA is keeping a close eye on the space debris to make sure it passes by the space station without incident.
The space debris is a piece of China’s defunct weather satellite Fengyun-1C, which was destroyed during a Chinese anti-satellite test in 2007 that created a vast cloud of orbital debris, NASA officials said.
There are something like 22,000 bits of garbage floating around up there. Any one of them can cause a lethal impact, seeing as they’re flying around at thousands of miles an hour. Even when countries are nice and take out the trash, like Japan did last week there’s still a lot left. We need some kind of zero gravity litter picker up there.
Posted by Drew458
on 04/05/2011 at 04:15 PM
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Permalink • Friday - February 11, 2011
Oh GAK
NASA takes first step in their new role as islamic ambassadors.
Cairo, 10 Feb. (AKI) - The United States space agency NASA has okayed the naming of one of its spaceships after a young Egyptian woman killed in late January during an anti-goverment protest, according to Egyptian daily Al-Masry-al-Youm.
The paper quoted Essam Mohamed Haji, a young researcher at NASA as saying on Thursday he had received approval to put the young woman Sally Zahran’s name on a spaceship heading for Mars.
Zahran, a 23 English graduated and translator died after she was beaten about the head on 28 January with a truncheons during clashes with security forces in in the Upper Egyptian governorate of Sohag. Anti-government protesters claim her killers were thugs in the pay of police.
“This is the least we could provide to Egyptian youth and revolutionaries. This step represents transferring the dreams of Egyptian youth from a small stretch of earth to the enormous expanse of space,” said Haji was cited as telling Al-Masri Al-Youm by phone from California.
What the fuck is this saccharin dhimmi bullshit? Will the Navy now be naming it’s next ship the USS St. Pancake?
Posted by Drew458
on 02/11/2011 at 09:29 AM
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Permalink • Wednesday - December 15, 2010
Up, up, and away!
While the utterly disgusting, 2000 page, rape of the American-people, 20,000+ earmark filled pile of waste wends it’s way through the legislature, weighed down with nearly HALF A TRILLION DOLLARS in pork spending ($300 billion as of last night, $417 billion as of this afternoon, by tomorrow, who knows?), a boring, dull, and completely unspectacular Soyuz rocket launch has just taken place at the Baikonor Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft blasted off on its latest mission, to deliver Russia, European, American and Japanese astronauts to the International Space Station.
The launch, which took place at 2:09 pm EST from the Baikonur cosmodrome on the steppes of Kazakhstan, came despite worries about the re-entry module of the Soyuz craft, which was hastily replaced earlier this month after it was damaged during unloading at the remote Russian launch site.
Russia’s Dmitry Kondratyev, NASA astronaut Catherine Coleman and the European Space Agency’s Paolo Nespoli of Italy will spend five months at the space station, which has a full schedule for 2011, with the arrival of several cargo craft delivered by the U.S., Russian, European and Japanese space agencies.
To this 60’s child of the Cold War and the Space Race, the whole event was both chilling and boring. The Reds wheeled out their gigantic rocket, broke it while setting it up (typical), so they rooted around their closet and got out another one. They have whole piles of these things just sitting around? Yikes. So they truck one out yesterday, and this afternoon they light it off. And it works just fine.
Am I the only one who finds this a bit disquieting? Seems to me that NASA always built theirs right on site, and then spent a couple days moving the thing, standing up on it’s launchpad, the mile or two to the ignition spot. Readying the massive rocket for flight then took several more days. Not the Russkis. Hell no. They just drive one in on a truck, tip it up, gas it and go. That fast. Glad it’s only people that they’re putting up. This time.
During their long-duration mission, Coleman, Kondratyev and Nespoli will participate in a range of scientific research and experiments, including fluid physics, radiation, biology, technology demonstrations and education outreach. Cosmonauts Kondratyev and Skripochka are also scheduled to perform at least one spacewalk to perform maintenance activities on the station’s exterior.
The whole liftoff scene was a let down too. Olga from Tractor Factory #4 was the voice of Mission Control. No countdown. No multiple camera angles. No interview with officials inside the Command Center with all those guys smoking in front of their computer monitors. No big orbital map with that sinusoidal launch path done up in little lights. This was a night launch, in Kazakhstan, so I’d expect either total darkness, one bare ass light bulb on a wire, or bank after bank of stadium lights. Nope. One rack, 20 bulbs. No “[beep] We have ignition. [beep]”. Nyet. The engines fired up, and 3 seconds later the gantries jumped away and the beast took flight. From the one fixed camera we had about 6 seconds of launching rocket footage, then nothing but a big white flair of rocket exhaust. Up, up, up ... and gone. And that was that. No 2nd stage ignition camera either. And Olga didn’t even ask “What about moose and squirrel?”! Sigh.
Our own TV people didn’t provide any color either. Not that they were there. No one was actually there. Probably forbidden, even if anyone could actually find Kazakhstan and figure out how to get there. But they could have mentioned at least that some school kids who had won some contest were on hand to watch, or that Italian astronaut Paolo Napoli was a bit upset that the Russians overcooked his pre-flight fettuccine until it was like chewing gum.
“The problem is that, as Italians, we have a very strict way of eating, and that breakfast broke every single rule that we have,” Mr Nespoli said at the Baikonur launch site in Kazakhstan.
Maybe he should have asked for turnips and potatoes.
And how is Obama’s decision to save money by turning NASA into a zero gravity muslim outreach community center working? Um, it’s doubled the costs, so far!
Russia profited handsomely from that monopolist position when it signed contracts for carrying NASA astronauts to the space station up to the end of 2014. A round-trip ticket to the space station in 2011 and 2012 will cost NASA as much as $51 million, up from the current $26 million. The price will jump to $56 million in 2013 and 2014.
And the budget bill? It’s just gross. It looks like the powers that be in DC think they can ignore the message the Tea Party sent them in November. Bloat, fat, graft, and nonsense. Oh, we’ll keep the evil Bush Tax Cuts For The Rich, but with a few caveats, like a 35% Inheritance Tax. And they’re keeping that idiotic corn liquor Ethanol subsidy, that costs you 45¢ a gallon at the pump. You know, the farm subsidy program that was at the very top of the list of Things To Cut? Yup, it’s still there. Plus, now we learn that the Feds are trying to steal a whole bunch of land as part of the deal too. Does that look like “message received” to you?
Tea Party: our work is just beginning.
Posted by Drew458
on 12/15/2010 at 02:25 PM
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Permalink • Wednesday - May 26, 2010
Gliding Into Retirement
After 32 flights, space shuttle Atlantis returned safely to earth this morning. The Atlantis will now be retired, although it will be prepped as the backup/rescue flight for the final two remaining shuttle missions .
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla-- Space shuttle Atlantis, switching from spacecraft to aircraft, landed successfully in Florida this morning at 8:48 am, wrapping up what could be its final voyage into space as NASA’s shuttle era draws closer to its end.
The landing marked the conclusion of a 12-day resupply mission to the International Space Station. It was the third-to-last mission for the U.S. shuttle program and is scheduled to be the last for Atlantis. NASA’s other two shuttles, Discovery and Endeavour, will make their final flights in September and November.
On its path to Kennedy Space Center, Atlantis crossed the Florida Everglades and headed north, passing over Lake Okeechobee where it triggered dual sonic booms as it slowed to subsonic speeds. Commander Ken Ham aligned Atlantis with Kennedy’s southeast to northwest runway 33, where the ship touched down.
Aboard Atlantis with Ham were five astronauts—pilot Dominic “Tony” Antonelli and mission specialists Garrett Reisman, Piers Sellers, Stephen Bowen and Michael Good.
“The odometer currently reads about 120 million miles,” Bowen said of the well-traveled orbiter.
While this is the last scheduled flight for Atlantis, there is a chance the shuttle could fly again. The orbiter is slated as the emergency rescue vehicle for the final planned shuttle flight, the STS-134 mission of Endeavour. If something goes awry during that trip, Atlantis could be launched to rescue the crew.As soon as Atlantis hit the ground, crews began work to refurbish the vehicle to ready it for that potential rescue launch.
NASA and some lawmakers have been lobbying to turn that rescue mission into a full-fledged extra shuttle flight, one which could deliver more spares and supplies to the space station in June 2011. But the White House has not yet approved adding the extra shuttle flight to NASA’s current mission roster.
Atlantis’ current mission, STS-132, is NASA’s 132nd orbiter flight and the third of five shuttle missions planned for this year.
Well done.
Posted by Drew458
on 05/26/2010 at 08:09 AM
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Permalink • Friday - May 14, 2010
Last Of The Few
The space shuttle Atlantis has just launched. No problems, everything right and right on schedule.
This will be the last flight for the Atlantis, and just 2 more flights for the shuttle program after 30+ years. That can’t be right. I thought we’d have Moonbase Alpha and be exploring Mars by now. Rats.
Posted by Drew458
on 05/14/2010 at 01:27 PM
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Permalink • Thursday - November 12, 2009
Close Call
23 foot diameter Asteroid passes just 8,700miles from Earth - we had only 15 hours warning
Although no one noticed at the time, the Earth was almost hit by an asteroid last Friday.
The previously undiscovered asteroid came within 8,700miles of Earth but astronomers noticed it only 15 hours before it made its closest approach. Its orbit brought it 30 times nearer than the Moon, which is 250,000 miles away.
Nasa’s Near Earth Object Programme plotted the orbit of the object and determined that although it would fly extremely close to our planet it wouldn’t hit us.
It was the third-closest known (non-impacting) Earth approach on record for a cataloged asteroid.
The Nasa NEO programme aims to detect and track at least 90 per cent of the 1,000 asteroids and comets that approach Earth and are larger than 0.6miles in diameter, by 2020.
They monitored a 100ft asteroid that whizzed 45,000 miles above the Earth’s surface on March 2 this year. A similar sized object slammed into Tunguska, Siberia in 1908. The impact created a blast so powerful it levelled 1,200 square miles of forest.
Astronomers believe the object, called 2009 VA, would have almost completely burned up while entering Earth’s atmosphere, causing a brilliant fireball in the sky but no major damage to the surface.
Posted by Drew458
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Permalink • Wednesday - October 28, 2009
Grey skies are gonna clear up
Couldn’t do it yesterday. Try again today at 8am. 8:20am. 9am. 10:20am. 11am. 11:20am. Delay delay delay ... and finally a big enough break in the clouds, a window of blue sky all the way up through the atmosphere.
T minus 10 ... 9 ... 8 ... ... ... 3 ... 2 ... 1. We have ignition. And away it went, a long white pencil on a pillar of fire. With half the thrust of the Saturn V, but less than a third of the weight, veteran rocket launch watchers saw that this takeoff really was a takeoff. Zoom! Within a handful of seconds Ares was 2 miles up and going trans-sonic. Definitely moving.
The whole event lasted just a little over 2 minutes, and the booster engine test seemed to go perfectly. The vectored thrust ring worked just fine, the unusual missile shape wasn’t wiggling or warping, and the upper stage separation went off without a hitch. Nice job NASA!
The booster engine shell deployed a parachute and will be recovered for reuse. The upper stage for this test flight was a dummy, so they let it fall into the ocean, about 125 miles downrange.
And the super bestest part of the whole event was that the news crews were forced to cut off Obama giving some long winded speech where he was giving a Congressional Gold Medal to a retired Senator, Edward William Brooke (R-MA), 93, who got the prize for being the first black to get elected there. [ Well, except for Mississippi Senator Hiram Wells, who was elected nearly 100 years before that, in 1870. But he was only an interim Senator, as Mississippi had not yet rejoined the Union at that time. So Wells served for only a little over a year ]. Hey, good for old Senator Brooke, really. But news-wise, this was just a fill piece. And when NASA lit the fuse, even MSNBC cut away from him, and they never cut back. Nyuk nyuk nyuk.
Posted by Drew458
on 10/28/2009 at 10:43 AM
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Permalink • Tuesday - October 27, 2009
No Rockets Today
Try again tomorrow, perhaps the day after that if necessary.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — A series of delays led NASA to postpone the launch of its new Ares 1-X rocket by 24 hours.
Clouds, snagged tethers and even a misdirected cargo ship within the danger area in the Atlantic Ocean contributed to delays in the launch of the Ares 1-X, a trial version of the rocket NASA hopes will ferry astronauts to low-Earth orbit aboard an Orion spacecraft.
Launch Control reported that severe winds, with gusts over 20 knots and peaking at 22 knots, were a key factor that preventing the rocket launch.
According to Launch Control, the weather tomorrow should be somewhat better than today, with decreased cloudiness and lower winds, both on the launch pad and in the upper levels. NASA set the likelihood of launch tomorrow at 40 percent.
So we wait another day. Tune into your TV news in the morning, or go online, either to NASA’s site here or to one of the UStream sites like this one here. NASA is looking for an 8am shot:
RELEASE : 09-251
NASA’s Ares I-X Launch Rescheduled for Wednesday
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.—NASA mission managers canceled Tuesday’s scheduled launch of the Ares I-X flight test because of weather concerns at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Another launch attempt is targeted for Wednesday. A four-hour launch window opens at 8 a.m. EDT.
The launch was delayed for 24 hours because of winds at the launch pad that exceeded the 20-knot limit and concerns about clouds with moisture that could have caused static build-up on the rocket and led to communication issues. Forecasters predict a 60 percent chance of favorable weather Wednesday.
The Ares I-X is part of a larger flight test program that will provide data for future launch vehicles and give NASA an opportunity to test and prove hardware, facilities and ground operations.
For information about Ares I-X, visit:
To follow the Ares I-X flight test on Twitter, visit:
http://twitter.com/NASA_Ares_I_X
Date: Oct. 28
Mission: Ares I-X Flight Test
Launch Vehicle: Ares I-X
Launch Site: Kennedy Space Center - Launch Pad 39B
Launch Time: 8 a.m. EDT
Description: The Ares I-X flight test is NASA’s first test for the Agency’s new Constellation launch vehicle—Ares I. The Ares I-X flight will provide NASA with an early opportunity to test and prove flight characteristics, hardware, facilities and ground operations associated with the Ares I.
Live coverage begins at 5am EDT for you early risers.
Posted by Drew458
on 10/27/2009 at 03:21 PM
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Permalink • Tuesday - August 25, 2009
Neat-o Space Stuff, Part 2
South Korea launched its first rocket Tuesday, just months after rival North Korea’s launch drew international anger, but space officials said the satellite it carried failed to enter its intended orbit.
A Science Ministry statement called the launch a “partial success,” as the satellite separated from the rocket normally before entering a different orbit.
The launch could boost South Korea’s space ambitions, but the North warned it would keep a close eye on the international response. There was no immediate comment from North Korea.
The two-stage Naro rocket — delayed several times since July due to technical glitches — lifted off Tuesday from South Korea’s space center on Oenaro Island, about 290 miles (465 kilometers) south of Seoul, about 5 p.m. (0800 GMT, 4 a.m. EDT).
It was South Korea’s first launch of a rocket from its own territory. Since 1992, it has launched 11 satellites, all on foreign-made rockets sent from overseas sites.
The rocket, built with Russian help, was carrying a domestically built satellite aimed at observing the atmosphere and oceans.
South Korean President Lee Myung-bak said though the satellite failed to enter its planned orbit, it was a “half success.”
Naturally the NorKs were all pissy and cagey, since their rocket was a sham attempt to test a ballistic missile. And they sucked at it too. Whereas our allies in South Korea put their satellite right up into orbit, although not quite the orbit they wanted. And I bet the satellite is working just fine. Heck, it’s probably made by LG. Everything else there seems to be, other than the cars and trucks!
Posted by Drew458
on 08/25/2009 at 11:05 AM
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Permalink • Monday - August 10, 2009
Me so ronery? Me so Jealous!!
Will put small satellite into low earth orbit
(typhoons and earthquakes permitting, of course)
South Korea has rescheduled its first space rocket launch from its soil to August 11 after repeatedly postponing it due to technical reasons, officials said Saturday.
The Ministry of Education, Science and Technology said South Korea and Russia, a co-builder of the rocket, set the new launch date after talks.
“Both sides have set August 11 for blast-off,” Kim Hong-Gab, a spokesman for the Korea Aerospace Research Institute affiliated with the ministry, told AFP.
He added weather conditions on the day would be “a decisive factor” to determine if the launch would go ahead as scheduled.
The previously-scheduled launch for around July 30 was postponed—for a third time—as Russians who had built the first stage of the Korea Space Launch Vehicle-1 called for more time for testing.
Blast-off had already been delayed from late 2008 to late June this year after China’s Sichuan earthquake last year caused problems securing key parts.
South Korea plans to put a satellite weighing 100 kilograms (220 pounds) into a low earth orbit with the planned launch from the newly-built Naro Space Centre in Goheung, 475 kilometres (300 miles) south of Seoul.
South Korea is eager to join Asia’s space race. In November 2007 it announced a plan to launch a lunar orbiter by 2020 and send a probe to the moon five years after that.
Posted by Drew458
on 08/10/2009 at 09:18 PM
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Permalink • Five Most Recent Trackbacks:
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