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Index » Radio Paradise/General » General Discussion » Shuttle, ISS and other Real Space Ships Page: Previous  1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6  Next
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Antigone

Antigone Avatar

Location: A house, in a Virginian Valley
Gender: Female


Posted: Mar 7, 2011 - 4:06pm

 BlueHeronDruid wrote:

I think that may be the case here, too. Oh well. We had an accidental sighting a few nights ago - just walking on the beach, kinda gazing WNW, saw the light. "hobbitt, what's that?"



heh.

There's still something special about watching one "draft" the other.
 
Well, they are gone by now, so ... I hope you have better luck on your coast. I would have loved to have seen them.

BlueHeronDruid

BlueHeronDruid Avatar

Location: Заебани сме луѓе


Posted: Mar 7, 2011 - 4:02pm

 Antigone wrote:
Moderately thick cloud cover here so it's a no-see-um.

{#Grumpy}

 
I think that may be the case here, too. Oh well. We had an accidental sighting a few nights ago - just walking on the beach, kinda gazing WNW, saw the light. "hobbitt, what's that?"



heh.

There's still something special about watching one "draft" the other.

Antigone

Antigone Avatar

Location: A house, in a Virginian Valley
Gender: Female


Posted: Mar 7, 2011 - 3:56pm

Moderately thick cloud cover here so it's a no-see-um.

{#Grumpy}
aflanigan

aflanigan Avatar

Location: At Sea
Gender: Male


Posted: Mar 7, 2011 - 1:02pm

 GeneP59 wrote:

What about the Hubble repair/upgrade jobs?

That alone was worth it, and it was cheaper than getting a plumber out to my house. {#Lol}

 

You're kidding, right?

The total cost that has been sunk into what was originally meant to be an "economical" means for space travel for use by NASA, DOD, and commercial and scientific users is about $174 billion.  By comparison, Hubble's cumulative costs are estimated to be about $4.5-6 billion.  The life-cycle cost of Hubble's replacement , the JWST, is estimated to be in about the same neighborhood (somewhere around 5 billion).  It will be launched in a couple of years by an unmanned, expendable Ariane 5 launch vehicle at a cost of about $120 million.  So if there never had been a space shuttle program, the flaw in the Hubble could have been resolved by either building an entire replacement with corrected optics or advancing the development schedule of the JWST (let's say by doubling or tripling the budget to get those contractors to work fast) and you would have had enough money left over to launch another 12-14 space telescopes, providing over a century's worth of astronomical observations and data.

Like most tail-end baby boomers (or Tweeners or members of Generation Jones), I grew up a fan of Tom Swift, and was delighted with the success of Apollo 11.  The success of the Mars Rover, Galileo, and other unmanned missions has demonstrated conclusively that we don't need (and right now can't afford) the luxury of sending people unnecessarily into space to breath, vomit, pee and poop and monitor sensors and equipment that can more affordably be monitored from the earth.  In this era of unmanned drones or UAVs on the battlefield, it makes no sense to continue to send manned spacecraft onto the "battlefield" of the quest for extraterrestrial knowledge, no matter how romantic astronaut diapers are.
beamends

beamends Avatar



Posted: Mar 7, 2011 - 12:08pm

 GeneP59 wrote:

What about the Hubble repair/upgrade jobs?

That alone was worth it, and it was cheaper than getting a plumber out to my house. {#Lol}

 
Talking of plumbers in space......   apparently there is sufficient human waste in orbit now that it is becoming a hazard. Speculation on QI last night was that the real reason for the shuttle missions is to clean the muck of the Hubble's lens..... {#Wink} Visions of an astronaut with a bucket and a squeegy sticking his outstretched hand through the hatch "Quid, mate".


GeneP59

GeneP59 Avatar

Location: On the edge of tomorrow looking back at yesterday.
Gender: Male


Posted: Mar 7, 2011 - 11:44am

 aflanigan wrote:
Maybe, if Discovery takes on some skywriting contracts, we can actually point to something useful all the millions of dollars wasted on the manned space shuttle program has produced.

 
What about the Hubble repair/upgrade jobs?

That alone was worth it, and it was cheaper than getting a plumber out to my house. {#Lol}
aflanigan

aflanigan Avatar

Location: At Sea
Gender: Male


Posted: Mar 7, 2011 - 11:35am

Maybe, if Discovery takes on some skywriting contracts, we can actually point to something useful all the millions of dollars wasted on the manned space shuttle program has produced.
Antigone

Antigone Avatar

Location: A house, in a Virginian Valley
Gender: Female


Posted: Mar 7, 2011 - 11:34am

 BlueHeronDruid wrote:
Last chance to see Discovery in the sky, folks!

Tonight and tomorrow many of us will have the opportunity to see a double fly-over of the ISS and undocked shuttle. If you haven't seen it, it's worth putting your coat on and stepping outside. About 200 miles overhead, and traveling at 17,500 mph - anyway I still find it awe-inspiring.

Check out this NASA site or heavens-above.com (which doesn't seem to be working at the moment) to check it out. 

 
Maybe Middy and I will have to take a drive to the town park. From the house I think the view will be obstructed by houses and trees.

Thanks for the head's up!


BlueHeronDruid

BlueHeronDruid Avatar

Location: Заебани сме луѓе


Posted: Mar 7, 2011 - 11:29am

Last chance to see Discovery in the sky, folks!

Tonight and tomorrow many of us will have the opportunity to see a double fly-over of the ISS and undocked shuttle. If you haven't seen it, it's worth putting your coat on and stepping outside. About 200 miles overhead, and traveling at 17,500 mph - anyway I still find it awe-inspiring.

Check out this NASA site or heavens-above.com (which doesn't seem to be working at the moment) to check it out. 
bokey

bokey Avatar

Gender: Male


Posted: Feb 22, 2011 - 7:11am


WTF-We go broke  beating up on Afghanistan just like they did, and now we are paying Russia to get taken into space? Is anyone in charge of this country? Anyone? Bueller? Bozo? Beavis? Invading Afghanistan just doesn't work. Never has. Never will. It's called history.

      If we'd just be nicer to the Asian countries the CIA wouldn't have to get their heroin from the Afghanistan area and we could leave the place.
*******************************************************************************************************************************************************
NASA is under presidential direction to turn over orbital trips to private business and
focus on expeditions to asteroids and Mars. Until private spacecraft are ready to start hauling
up space station crews, U. S. astronauts will have to continue hitching rides on Russian Soyuz capsules for a steep price.

hobiejoe

hobiejoe Avatar

Location: Still in the tunnel, looking for the light.
Gender: Male


Posted: Dec 23, 2010 - 4:28pm

A world wide wave as the International Space Station soars overhead

 
{#Wave}

rosedraws

rosedraws Avatar

Location: close to the edge
Gender: Female


Posted: May 23, 2010 - 7:06pm

 Zep wrote:


In the full-sized image, you can easily make out the shuttle docked to the left of the ISS central core.
 
Wow.
Zep

Zep Avatar

Location: Funkytown


Posted: May 23, 2010 - 7:04pm

Solar Transit of ISS and a docked Atlantis — 22 May 2010.


In the full-sized image, you can easily make out the shuttle docked to the left of the ISS central core.
hobiejoe

hobiejoe Avatar

Location: Still in the tunnel, looking for the light.
Gender: Male


Posted: Mar 12, 2010 - 10:08am

Saw a great ISS pass last night, right overhead.
 
Looking forward to the next one at 19.30 UTC tonight.

onlylynne

onlylynne Avatar

Location: On a bluff near the Missouri River
Gender: Female


Posted: Aug 1, 2009 - 7:14pm

The space station is about to coast down over California.
I don't know if it's dark enough yet to see it there.
http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/tracking/
Zep

Zep Avatar

Location: Funkytown


Posted: Feb 12, 2009 - 4:50pm

Just came out of a briefing on this... Some quick notes:

first-ever accidental satellite collision
large debris field that is still being tracked and mapped
threat mostly to "high orbit" satellites (high inclination: e.g. polar orbiters)
iridium sat is a comm sat that has a polar orbit
iridium was the first-ever sat phone (mobile not cell technology)
other vehicle was decommissioned russian sat
no current threat to ISS, STS orbits
major threat to other sats
no threat to comm or wx sats
much of the debris is "high energy" which means it will be in orbit for a long time
backyard observers being asked to watch for debris reentry along original orbital path
debris field mostly travelling along both original orbital paths; some in new orbits
larger pieces will remain aloft longer
smaller pieces have lower inertia; their orbit will decay sooner
pieces in orbits ranging from 300 miles to 800 miles
iridium still undecided on seeking damages
iridium has a spare sat in orbit
iridium had the active sat and Russia the dead one - may go to adjudicating a settlement, if there is one
everybody agrees Something Must Be Done About Space Junk but nobody has time/money

Fascinating stuff. Russia reportedly warned this would happen.


Zep

Zep Avatar

Location: Funkytown


Posted: Feb 12, 2009 - 3:02pm

February 12, 2009

When Satellites Collide: Iridium 33 Meets Kosmos 2251

Iridium started out as Motorola’s (News - Alert) amazingly ambitious satellite project “to bring personal communications to every square inch of the earth.” The idea was that you could use an Iridium phone pretty much anywhere — so long as you were outside and could “see” one of the Iridium satellites. (It’s called Iridium after the element iridium, which has 77 electrons, which was originally the number of satellites needed. In 1994, they realized they could do the job with 66 satellites. But the name stuck.)

According to Motorola, “for the first time, anyone, anywhere, at any time can communicate via voice, fax, or data.” Iridium started launching satellites in November of 1997 and started service sometime in 1999, after many delays and several launches of new satellites to replace those that had failed. This advanced satellite/phone pager network uses TDMA in the 2 GHz band for inter-satellite links so as to maintain coverage worldwide.

And now, Iridium, of Bethesda, Maryland, has announced that it “lost an operational satellite” (one of the original 1,234 lb Iridium 33 satellites launched in 1997) after it was struck on Tuesday, February 11, 2009 by in a collision with a defunct 2,094 lb Russian Kosmos 2251 military satellite that had been launched in 1993 and ceased functioning two years later.

Iridium said that some of its client could experience brief outages until it had temporarily fixed the problem by Friday by calling into service an in-orbit “spare” satellite sometime over the next 30 days.

Americans are now following the debris path spewed forth from the collision. Although most of it should fall to Earth and burn up in the atmosphere up re-entry, there is however a small possibility (“very small and within acceptable limits” according to NASA) that some bits of debris from the impact may endanger the International Space Station (ISS) which orbits Earth about 435km below where the collision occurred.

Orbital debris expert Nicholas Johnson of the Johnson Space Center in Houston, was quoted by the Associated Press as saying that the Hubble Space Telescope and Earth-observing satellites which operate at higher orbits (and thus closer to the impact site) were at greater risk of damage from the debris cloud.

Story here.


winter

winter Avatar

Location: in exile, as always
Gender: Male


Posted: Jan 12, 2009 - 8:48am

 Beaker wrote:
Bump for the morning crew.  Click on the large photo and look for the little bright dot at the image left - just above the rings.
 
Beaker wrote:
WOW!

Via APOD:

Cassini spacecraft, in orbit around Saturn, via APOD.
full size
Explanation: In the shadow of Saturn, unexpected wonders appear. The robotic Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn recently drifted in giant planet’s shadow for about 12 hours and looked back toward the eclipsed Sun. Cassini saw a view unlike any other. First, the night side of Saturn is seen to be partly lit by light reflected from its own majestic ring system. Next, the rings themselves appear dark when silhouetted against Saturn, but quite bright when viewed away from Saturn and slightly scattering sunlight, in the above exaggerated color image. Saturn’s rings light up so much that new rings were discovered, although they are hard to see in the above image. Visible in spectacular detail, however, is Saturn’s E ring, the ring created by the newly discovered ice-fountains of the moon Enceladus, and the outermost ring visible above. Far in the distance, visible on the image left just above the bright main rings, is the almost ignorable pale blue dot of Earth.
 

 
Wow. That is just beautiful.
Red_Dragon

Red_Dragon Avatar

Location: Dumbf*ckistan


Posted: Jan 11, 2009 - 7:48pm

 Beaker wrote:
WOW!

Via APOD:

Cassini spacecraft, in orbit around Saturn, via APOD.
full size
Explanation: In the shadow of Saturn, unexpected wonders appear. The robotic Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn recently drifted in giant planet’s shadow for about 12 hours and looked back toward the eclipsed Sun. Cassini saw a view unlike any other. First, the night side of Saturn is seen to be partly lit by light reflected from its own majestic ring system. Next, the rings themselves appear dark when silhouetted against Saturn, but quite bright when viewed away from Saturn and slightly scattering sunlight, in the above exaggerated color image. Saturn’s rings light up so much that new rings were discovered, although they are hard to see in the above image. Visible in spectacular detail, however, is Saturn’s E ring, the ring created by the newly discovered ice-fountains of the moon Enceladus, and the outermost ring visible above. Far in the distance, visible on the image left just above the bright main rings, is the almost ignorable pale blue dot of Earth.


 
it doesn't even look real.  wow.

Leslie

Leslie Avatar

Location: Antioch, CA
Gender: Female


Posted: Jan 11, 2009 - 7:47pm

 Beaker wrote:
WOW!

Via APOD:

Cassini spacecraft, in orbit around Saturn, via APOD.
full size
Explanation: In the shadow of Saturn, unexpected wonders appear. The robotic Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn recently drifted in giant planet’s shadow for about 12 hours and looked back toward the eclipsed Sun. Cassini saw a view unlike any other. First, the night side of Saturn is seen to be partly lit by light reflected from its own majestic ring system. Next, the rings themselves appear dark when silhouetted against Saturn, but quite bright when viewed away from Saturn and slightly scattering sunlight, in the above exaggerated color image. Saturn’s rings light up so much that new rings were discovered, although they are hard to see in the above image. Visible in spectacular detail, however, is Saturn’s E ring, the ring created by the newly discovered ice-fountains of the moon Enceladus, and the outermost ring visible above. Far in the distance, visible on the image left just above the bright main rings, is the almost ignorable pale blue dot of Earth.


Frickin' spectacular!

 


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