Next time you think sci-fi, think again

[denoir 0]

http://www.flashpoint1985.com/cgi-bin....;st=120

(Perhaps those two threads could be merged? )

[Apollo 0]

Here you can find the official site of huygens-Cassini.

It's due to arrive at Saturn in june.

[SpecOp9 0]

lol.. I already said that Hellfish

People seem to be interested in this space travel crap. I would suggest downloading Black barons space beta addon.

Ofp.info news Post

[denoir 0]

Opportunity touch down

They're expecting the first data in a couple of minutes. Right now the package is still rolling around (they're getting periodic doppler rates).

Edit: They just got a no-fault tone, which means that the space craft is in good condition.

[SpecOp9 0]

Good stuff.. I just read about it too as I woke up just now.

[denoir 0]

First photo-op

[high rez]

[Badgerboy 0]

Not sure if any one wants to take a look, but here's a neat little movie.

I would highly recommend it! Gives you a perfect overview of how the rovers were lauched and deployed.

(Except the music in the first segment. Bloody awful! The rest is better!)

[denoir 0]

Very cool video - I have only seen bits of it earlier. Anyway, here's a faster mirror:  mer2003.mov

[Acecombat 0]

Is that the vid where they animate how the rover lands in a sort of a bag all filled with air which bounces up and down and cushions its fall?

I think i saw it on TV  

[denoir 0]

They've shown bits and pieces of it on TV. This is the full version, starting with launch of the rocket and ending with the MER drilling a rock on Mars.

[denoir 0]

ESA announces plans for manned Mars mission

Quote[/b] ]

European scientists plan Mars missions

LONDON, England (AP) -- European scientists set out plans Tuesday for manned missions to Mars that aim to land astronauts on the Red Planet within 30 years.

Like President Bush's proposed mission to Mars, the outline put forward by the European Space Agency involves a "stepping stone" approach that includes robotic missions and a manned trip to the moon first.

"We need to go back to the moon before we go to Mars. We need to walk before we run," Dr. Franco Ongaro, who heads the ESA's Aurora program for long-term exploration of the solar system, said at a meeting of Aurora scientists in London.

"These are our stones. They will pave the way for our human explorers."

The ESA has planned two flagship missions to Mars -- ExoMars would land a rover on the planet in 2009, and Mars Sample Return would bring back a sample of the Martian surface in 2011-2014. Other test missions will include an unmanned version of the flight that would eventually carry astronauts to Mars to demonstrate aerobraking, solar electric propulsion and soft landing technologies.

A human mission to the moon, proposed for 2024, would demonstrate key life-support and habitation technologies, as well as aspects of crew performance and adaptation to long-distance space flight. The program is expected to cost $1.13 billion over the next five years.

Colin Pillinger, the British scientist behind the recent ill-fated Beagle 2 expedition, said it was important to determine whether life existed on Mars before pressing ahead with a manned mission.

"Would it be right for us to tamper with the ecology on another body?" he asked. "My opinion is that it probably wouldn't."

The ExoMars rover would use solar arrays to generate electricity and travel several miles across the surface of Mars. It would have onboard software enabling it to operate autonomously and, like Beagle 2, a set of scientific instruments designed to search for signs of past or present life.

Mars Sample Return would be a more complex mission requiring five spacecraft -- an interplanetary transfer stage, a Mars orbiter, a descent module, an ascent module and an Earth re-entry vehicle. The module would contain a drill to collect soil samples and was expected to send back around a pound of Martian soil.

Scientists hope the expedition has a better outcome than the Beagle 2 trip. The British built lander, due to land on Mars on Christmas Day, has not been heard from since it separated from the ESA's mother ship, Mars Express, in mid-December, despite several efforts to contact it.

Mars Express itself has functioned as intended, orbiting the planet. ESA scientists said last month it found the most direct evidence yet of water in the form of ice on Mars, detecting molecules vaporizing from the Red Planet's south pole.

By contrast, NASA's twin rovers are reaching out to scoop and analyze the Martian surface some 6,600 miles apart, both using their robotic arms as intended following a software glitch.

Bush last month sought to chart a new course for NASA, focusing on a return to the moon by 2020 in preparation for manned missions to Mars and beyond.

[Balschoiw 0]

ESA has a great advantage to the NASA. They already have a working carrier system to transport big payloads while NASA has no appropriate rocket system to do it. Titan rockets are not suitable for it and the rockets from Apollo program are either in museum or totally worthless as noone knows how to reactivate them. I´ve seen an intersting interview with ESA chief lately. He said that noone by now is able to bring up men to mars as the biggest problems are space radiation and water and the way back . The amount of water (7-10 litres per person and day) can not be provided for a long flight and mission to mars. Even by regenerating water onboard the mission can not be fulfilled. So basically talking about men on mars is really far away right now but initiatives to reach the goal will produce progress.

[denoir 0]

ESA has a great advantage to the NASA. They already have a working carrier system to transport big payloads while NASA has no appropriate rocket system to do it.

It depends how you look at it. ESA has a cheap way of putting larger things into LEO (Low Earth Orbit), but nothing suitable for longer voyages. That's why for instance for Mars Express, a Russian launch vehicle was used.

The only ones that have a sem-recent system that they know how to build is the Russians, with their Energia rocket, which can is larger than the huge Saturn (Apollo) rockets. Unfortunately most of the schematics of the Saturn rockets have been lost and there is no way today of reproducing them.

(tons to LEO)

Energia: 150 ton (RU)

STS/Space Shuttle: 30 ton (US)

Proton: 20 ton (RU)

Titan IV: 18 ton (US)

Ariane: 12 ton (EU)

Delta: 6 ton (US)

Soyuz: 5 ton (RU)

The big advantage that the Ariane-5 series has is that it gives the best price per ton in LEO. For heavy lift and reliability, Proton is the best today.

It all depends on where you want to build the spaceship for mars: on earth (huge rocket required), in orbit or somewhere else (like the moon).

Quote[/b] ]So basically talking about men on mars is really far away right now but initiatives to reach the goal will produce progress.

When Kennedy announced that the US would be going to the moon within a decade they had barely the capability of launching satellites. At the time the longest an American had been in space was less than five minutes.

I'd say that going to the moon was a much greater challange at that time than going to Mars is now.

Sure, we need new technologies and brand new solutions, but that is evolved through the space program.

While it's good that they are planning something, I'm still not very impressed by the 30 year time-frame.

[ralphwiggum 6]

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/02/09/space.hubble.reut/index.html

Quote[/b] ]WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- The verdict seems final: NASA says it is just too risky for shuttle astronauts to fix the Hubble Space Telescope, which means an early death for the world's premier astronomical eye in the sky.

But two reports by NASA engineers maintain it is no riskier to service the orbiting telescope than to use shuttle astronauts to finish building the International Space Station, which will require some 25 shuttle flights.

The engineers' reports, provided to Reuters by an astronomer familiar with the case, dispute NASA's January 16 decision to forgo a scheduled shuttle mission to repair and upgrade Hubble in 2005 or 2006.

"The final planned HST (Hubble Space Telescope) servicing mission, SM4, will be at least as safe as shuttle flights to the International Space Station," one of the reports said.

The other report argued that missions to Hubble would have the same ability as those to the station to deal with possible damage to the shuttle's thermal protection system. Damage to this system on liftoff doomed shuttle Columbia to break up on re-entry on February 1, 2003, killing all seven astronauts.

Both reports were written by NASA engineers who feared they would lose their jobs if their names were made public, said the astronomer, also requesting anonymity.

Without the servicing mission, the gyroscopes that enable Hubble to point at specific objects will eventually fail and the spacecraft's batteries will fade. When that happens, Hubble will be nudged out of orbit and down toward Earth, where it will burn up on re-entry.

The servicing mission -- which would also install a new camera and another instrument -- could give Hubble six more years of effective life, said Steve Beckwith, director of the Space Telescope Science Institute, which manages Hubble.

[ralphwiggum 6]

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/02/11/moon.mars.ap/index.html

Quote[/b] ]CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (AP) -- The man in charge of setting the president's moon-Mars vision into motion said Wednesday he's looking to the aerospace industry and ordinary Americans for advice on sustaining interest in the program.

The process began with the first in a series of public hearings on the space exploration policy put forth by President Bush a month ago.

"We are here because the president has asked us to chart the course that makes it possible to successfully sustain the journey to the moon, to Mars and beyond," said Edward "Pete" Aldridge, chairman of the president's new space commission.

"The commission also understands that its customer is the president and the American people," he said in his opening remarks.

American taxpayers must be consulted -- and politics sidelined -- if astronauts are to travel to the moon, Mars and beyond, Aldridge had said in an interview before Wednesday's hearing in Washington.

translation:

[theavonlady 2]

Stop wasting our money going to Mars. Spend it wisely:

Quote[/b] ]Astronomers Spy Massive Diamond    

Fri Feb 13, 5:14 PM ET

LOS ANGELES - If anyone's ever promised you the sun, the moon and the stars, tell 'em you'll settle for BPM 37093. The heart of that burned-out star with the no-nonsense name is a sparkling diamond that weighs a staggering 10 billion trillion trillion carats. That's one followed by 34 zeros.

The hunk of celestial bling is an estimated 2,500 miles across, said Travis Metcalfe, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

"You would need a jeweler's loupe the size of the sun to grade this diamond," said Metcalfe, who led the team that discovered the gem.

The diamond is a massive chunk of crystallized carbon that lies about 300 trillion miles from Earth, in the constellation Centaurus.

The galaxy's largest diamond is formally known as a white dwarf, or the hot core of a dead sun.

Astronomers have suspected for decades that white dwarfs crystallized, but only recently were able to verify the hypothesis.

A paper detailing the discovery has been submitted to The Astrophysical Journal Letters for publication.

[Badgerboy 0]

Hurrah! Start building your space ships!

[Gollum1 0]

Now that's a whole lotta bling.

[Tamme 0]

I'd find a nice spot somewhere, bring the asteroid there and hire lots of construction companies to turn it into a palace. And all the costs would be payed with all what's left over of it.

[Balschoiw 0]

Already found some guys showing interested:

Or this one :

[Supah 0]

Interesting paradox, the moment you bring that back to earth it will be worth nothing because you will flood the market

[Tamme 0]

Interesting paradox, the moment you bring that back to earth it will be worth nothing because you will flood the market

Kinda like in Donald Duck. There was a lunatic who wanted all the gold in the world and they found an asteroid full of gold, so they used Donald to fake a landing on the asteroid to drop the golds price so he could get it all.

[theavonlady 2]

Interesting paradox, the moment you bring that back to earth it will be worth nothing because you will flood the market

Kinda like in Donald Duck. There was a lunatic who wanted all the gold in the world and they found an asteroid full of gold, so they used Donald to fake a landing on the asteroid to drop the golds price so he could get it all.

I was thinking along the lines of a Daffy Duck cartoon, where Daffy rubs a Genee the wrong way. Keywords: Consequences, Shmonsequences - so long as I'm rich!

[EiZei 0]

Umm, arent diamonds pretty worthless in reality anyways? Ever heard of DeBeers?

[theavonlady 2]

Umm, arent diamonds pretty worthless in reality anyways? Ever heard of DeBeers?

Sure. Just send me your worthless diamonds, folks.