Shuttle Lanch!

[Balschoiw 0]

Quote[/b] ]On the last pic you can see my son

Are you sure you don´t confuse your "son" with yourself ?

Quote[/b] ]Model IBM 760XD P6300

CPU 166 mHz 366 mHz

Memory 64 Meg Ram 144 Meg Ram

OS Windows-95 Windows 2000

That´s the laptop specification for the computers used on ISS.

[Katzelowski 0]

---

[EiZei 0]

Using windows 2000 with 64 megs of ram?

Screw exploding shuttles, now theres something to be afraid of.

EDIT: Oh well, it was 144MB but still pretty painful.

[Ex-RoNiN 0]

Bring back Hermes!

[denoir 0]

Using windows 2000 with 64 megs of ram?

Those ar of course just the computers that the astronauts use for email etc.. The ISS' systems are all custom made hardware and software.

Very little space technology uses commercial software. I think that the Ariane booster was one of the first to do so. Later, the Mars Pathfinder, Mars Express, Beagle 2 and the Mars Rovers used commercial software and hardware. In all cases they were/are based on the VxWorks real-time operating system. Incidentally, the Mars Pathfinder ultimately failed because of a bug in the operating system.

In general however, it's a pretty solid system. I've had some experience with it, working with control systems for industrial robots that use it as well.

Quote[/b] ]Bring back Hermes!

Yeah, missed opportunity. Now this may sound very cynical, but I think that Europe is in a unique position right now to do manned space flight. If an American astronaut dies on a mission, it's a national tragedy and NASA suffers directly. Same goes for Russia and China. Europe on the other hand does not have an established national identity, so there's quite an opportunity there, both for accepting greater risks as well as reaping the political benefits of successful missions. If a German astronaut dies on a mission, people will be sad, but it will for the other European countries be a far smaller impact than had one of their own died. So if a Briton dies, it will hurt British pride, but the European project will have a fairly good chance of continuing, despite the loss. If on the other hand the mission is successful, then they're all Europeans, and the credit can be taken on that level. And such common projects that all Europeans can understand and take pride in are very much needed.

[Balschoiw 0]

Quote[/b] ]Those ar of course just the computers that the astronauts use for email etc.. The ISS' systems are all custom made hardware and software.

Not only that. They use those about 50 laptops aboard the ISS for maintenance and controlling purposes of the ISS. As there are issues with the displays of the onboard ISS systems they use the laptops as replacements for the malfunctioning displays. They are also use to operate radios and to conduct experiments. As the ISS has only extremely limited maneuver abilities the complex issue of calculating such is not existant, unllike in a space shuttle where such operations have to be calculated by stone-old, particle save and triple secured computer-ancients.

The basic ISS systems are still running on that pattern as the space itself is a dangerous resort for electronical components. Either you use massive blocking materials that don´t qualify because of their weight or you try to make it as simple as possible with a dual or triple layout. The weight factor makes the second choice the only choice.

How vulnerable ISS is, shows the capacity of their energy system. If anthing would happen to the solar panels it would be lights out, freezer on

[Katzelowski 0]

---

[hellfish6 7]

The Mars Recon Orbiter is launching in a couple of minutes...

Watch it HERE while I go outside to watch it.

Nevermind- they scrubbed itbetween the time I left my apartment and the time I got to work.

24 hour delay.

[Balschoiw 0]

Quote[/b] ]I won't comment this but where have you got these information from?!

Speaking in your words:

Quote[/b] ]secret stuff you know...

Public accessible knowledge. Nothing special.

Quote[/b] ]There have been discussions about an own spacecraft, which should have been similiar to hermes, due to our Aurora program. Now, we'll first see what we can do with clipper. On the ministerial conference in december it will be decided whether will ESA participate in Clipper or not

The roadmap has already been laid. Clipper plans are to be fixed within the next two years. The overall budget will be about 290 million Euro and the russian Onega, a pimped up Sojus rocket will most likely be the carrier.

Share of costs is still to be debated, but it looks like this program is already running as both sides, ESA and Roskosmus are already working on it.

Quote[/b] ] Infact, this space agencies only give contracts to industrial companies, in ESA's case mostly to EADS.

Where is the surprise ?

ESA is only :

Quote[/b] ]The European Space Agency is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe.

ESA has 17 Member States. By coordinating the financial and intellectual resources of its members, it can undertake programmes and activities far beyond the scope of any single European country.

It´s the administrational organization. Like NASA is.

Where is the surprise ?

Or do you really think that we think that 1907 employees of ESA are able to build rockets, engines, explore space, deal with space debris and all that on their own ?

Anyway, what kind of job do you have there ?

About the things you said about ATV. They are plain wrong. Sorry.

But the ATV neither has consoles nor operational navigation sets that would allow Astronauts to operate the ATV from inside or outside. It is fully automatic. The only way of interfering is that the guidance comp itself detects that something is going wrong and switches to independant emergency programs, that for example avoid a collission with ISS. ATV will never fly into space manned. Neither will there be a remote control for ISS personel. The ISS personel only can trigger the same emergency programs that the onboard comp can trigger. The only reason why the ATV carries the MPLM is that astronauts have to be able to enter it, once it´s docked to ISS, to unload the cargo.

[Katzelowski 0]

---

[denoir 0]

Space record broken by Russian [bBC]

Quote[/b] ]

The Russian cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev has broken the record for the most cumulative time in space - clocking up 748 days in orbit on Tuesday.  He beat a previous record of 747 days, 14 hours, 14 minutes and 11 seconds held by fellow Russian Sergei Avdeyev.

Krikalev is the current commander of the International Space Station (ISS) and is scheduled to stay on board the orbiting platform until October.

He has also stayed aboard the Mir space station during his 20-year career. The cosmonaut is serving out a stint on the ISS that began on 14 April. Together with Nasa astronaut John Phillips, he hosted the crew of space shuttle Discovery when they arrived at the station in July.

Long duration

Sergei Krikalev was born in Leningrad (now St Petersburg), Russia, in 1958.

He has been a member of the Russian and Soviet national aerobatic flying teams and has been awarded various titles, including Hero of the Soviet Union and the Order of Lenin. The 46-year-old was selected as a cosmonaut in 1985 and completed his basic training in 1986.

He made his first long-duration mission to the Russian Mir space station in 1988.

The cosmonaut flew aboard space shuttle Discovery on STS-60, the first joint US/Russian shuttle mission in 1994. He was also part of the first crew to stay aboard the International Space Station. Krikalev and Phillips are due to return to Earth on 7 October. But they are currently preparing for two spacewalks, the first of which takes place on Thursday.

They will replace experiments, install a television camera, and move equipment during the scheduled six-hour extra-vehicular activity (EVA).

Lucky bastard. Once the commercial thing gets running, it will cost an arm and a leg to get a few minutes suborbital space flight. This guy has been up there a total of over two years!

[hellfish6 7]

I wonder what his bones and overall health are like.

[Balschoiw 0]

Maybe something like this ?

[D.murphy man 0]

now thats a party trick!

hey what ever happend to all these moon citys and common place space holidays that people predicted we'd have by the year 2000! i awlays looked forward to that when i was a wee young one

massive budget cuts to space programs and lack of any thing profitble in space i presume

Although saying that i was watching discovery science the other day and a programe was on where this guy had a plan to turn the moon into a giant solar power plant and then transmit the power made back to earth my microwaves, then once the industry got set up it would attract other business's and such to the moon (hey these power station operators need clothe shops,cafes and entertainment right?! ) and eventually they reckon entire citys would spring up not much different from las vagus and generate big ÅÅÅ. Although i doubt it happen in our life time but still cool stuff.

[Tovarish 0]

Space record broken by Russian [bBC]

NASA has a bio on him. If you didn't think the accomplishments listed in the article were impressive enough, there's more!

http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/krikalev.html

Quite a life to be living

[denoir 0]

hey what ever happend to all these moon citys and common place space holidays that people predicted we'd have by the year 2000! i awlays looked forward to that when i was a wee young one    

Yeah, not much chance of that. NASA plans to get men on the moon sometimes by 2020 while ESA plans to get men on Mars by 2030. By 2030 I'll be over 50 years old, which means not much of a chance of me ever setting my foot on Mars.

If by any chance, the moon venture sparks great commercial interest, then perhaps, just perhaps I might as senior citizen visit Luna.

Commercial low earth orbit shouldn't be impossible though. Virgin Galactic is starting its services by 2008. Of course, that kind of trip is rather lame (few minutes of space time) and costs quite a bit (~€170k). But they are already planning the next stage which would be orbital flight - something that would be much more interesting.

It really sucks that the Apollo program was just shut down.

[D.murphy man 0]

heh well if they *some how* got massive comecial intrest into space travel and tourisim id say they could make giant leaps in space travel and colonisation within a short ammount of time, but of course i doubt itll happen any time soon with the world being what it is no one really wants to risk potential billions on somthing as unpredictble as space. But the technology is deffinitly there today!

[Tovarish 0]

But they are already planning the next stage which would be orbital flight - something that would be much more interesting.

Quote[/b] ]Russia's federal space agency took a giant leap in the field of cosmic tourism yesterday with the announcement it will offer a $100m (Å57m) trip to the moon.

Roskosmos leaked details of the project as Nasa's space shuttle Discovery prepared for launch from the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida. A source at the Russian agency confirmed to the Guardian that the technology was in place for a flight to be launched within 18 months of a down payment.

The fortnight-long trip would include a week at the International Space Station (ISS) before blasting off to the moon and completing a full orbit 100 miles above its surface.

The only two space tourists so far, American Dennis Tito and South African Mark Shuttleworth, got no further than the ISS for $20m each and no Russian cosmonaut has ever orbited the moon.

A single tourist accompanied by one astronaut could go on each trip in a modified Soyuz-TMA capsule to be launched from Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

"The tourist would go up in that capsule and spend the first week on the ISS," said the Roskosmos source. "Then a powerful booster like Proton would be launched from Earth with an accelerator block to dock with the craft at the space station."

That accelerator block - basically, an engine with fuel tanks - would then be used to propel the spacecraft towards the moon.

The Soviet Union sent the first unmanned probe to land on the moon in 1959. It came close to launching a manned flight to the moon but dropped its programme when the Americans got there first a decade later.

Space tourists will not land on its surface but will circle its dark side and orbit close enough to examine its cratered lunar crust. They would live in two cramped modules about three metres across and eat biscuits and food in tubes.

Any candidate for the expedition would have to undergo several months of intensive training at Star City near Moscow.

It is thought the flight to the moon would be a commercial exercise to raise funds for the cash-strapped Roskosmos. Russia's space programme has about a tenth of Nasa's budget and has been struggling to finance the ISS in the absence of the US space shuttle fleet.

A trip to the moon poses far greater technical risks and danger than a relatively short flight to the ISS. The space station is only 220 miles from the Earth's surface in low orbit whereas the moon is almost 240,000 miles away and would take about three days to reach.

But Vitaly Golovachyov, a space analyst at the Trud newspaper, said the mission was realistic. "We've had the necessary technology for many years," he said. "The only problem will be finding someone prepared to pay that much."

Many Russians maintain a fierce pride in the country's legacy of space exploration, which reached its pinnacle when Yuri Gagarin was the first man in space in 1961.

American and Russian astronauts were meeting in the Russian capital yesterday to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Apollo-Soyuz mission which soothed tensions between the two superpowers at the height of the cold war.

China will put a woman in space no later than 2010, the China Daily reported yesterday. The world's third country to put a man into space would start choosing pilots, scientists and engineers for its first wave of female astronauts next year.

http://www.tiscali.co.uk/travel....ip.html

[BlackScorpion 0]

Hmmm... They mentioned nothing about getting the moon orbiters back to Earth...