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Topic: Space Thread (Read 513833 times)
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01101010
Terracotta Army
Posts: 12003
You call it an accident. I call it justice.
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Aluminum.
That seems painfully inadequate given this is NASA. I get the budgets are woeful these days, but I'd hope they'd come up with something more durable than that for this type of project. I mean they would have to have data from the other rovers outlining the type of terrain.
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Does any one know where the love of God goes...When the waves turn the minutes to hours? -G. Lightfoot
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Teleku
Terracotta Army
Posts: 10510
https://i.imgur.com/mcj5kz7.png
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How do you know Aluminum wasn't the best option?
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"My great-grandfather did not travel across four thousand miles of the Atlantic Ocean to see this nation overrun by immigrants. He did it because he killed a man back in Ireland. That's the rumor." -Stephen Colbert
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Lantyssa
Terracotta Army
Posts: 20848
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Aluminum is light, strong, corrosion resistant, and easy to shape. It was a very good choice.
Keep in mind the rovers weren't expected to last more than a few months. The wheels still work, too, they just have some damage. It's only a problem if the damage inhibits movement.
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Hahahaha! I'm really good at this!
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01101010
Terracotta Army
Posts: 12003
You call it an accident. I call it justice.
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Aluminum is light, strong, corrosion resistant, and easy to shape. It was a very good choice.
Keep in mind the rovers weren't expected to last more than a few months. The wheels still work, too, they just have some damage. It's only a problem if the damage inhibits movement.
I only commented out of curiosity in reaction to seeing that much damage on one of the key parts in terms of mobility. I have no idea about this stuff... but it doesn't seem like it is strong enough for the mission if they look that shredded - maybe they did not expect the beating the wheels would take and took a chance on a thinner wheel construction. But hey, that is data to be used for future stuff. http://earthsky.org/space/curiosity-rover-is-having-wheel-problemsAnd I thought the mission for Curiosity was 2 years?
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Does any one know where the love of God goes...When the waves turn the minutes to hours? -G. Lightfoot
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Lightstalker
Terracotta Army
Posts: 306
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Aluminum is light, strong, corrosion resistant, and easy to shape. It was a very good choice.
Keep in mind the rovers weren't expected to last more than a few months. The wheels still work, too, they just have some damage. It's only a problem if the damage inhibits movement.
Aluminum also has no fatigue limit, so failure was a matter of when and not if.
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Ingmar
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Posts: 19280
Auto Assault Affectionado
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The light weight is a really important factor. They could have gone with titanium if they wanted something stronger, but titanium is like 60% or so heavier than aluminum, which would have all kinds of effects on the landing impact, energy needed to get it there, etc.
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The Transcendent One: AH... THE ROGUE CONSTRUCT. Nordom: Sense of closure: imminent.
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Chimpy
Terracotta Army
Posts: 10619
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Curiosity doesn't have solar panels, it has a radio-isotope battery like the Voyager probes.
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'Reality' is the only word in the language that should always be used in quotes.
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Ingmar
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Posts: 19280
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Whoops, got my rovers mixed up.
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The Transcendent One: AH... THE ROGUE CONSTRUCT. Nordom: Sense of closure: imminent.
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Morat20
Terracotta Army
Posts: 18529
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Curiosity doesn't have solar panels, it has a radio-isotope battery like the Voyager probes.
Cool. Surprised there wasn't bitching from environmentalists when that went up. I vaguely recall some about Cassini, but Cassini required an awful lot of...I dunno, plutonium or uranium. Something hot. As for aluminium: The guys at my work get very, very, very excited about any new aluminum alloy. Rockets, rotors, turbines, airframes -- lots and lots of aluminum, and some of the alloys are supposedly very impressive. (Fuck if I follow it. It's all metal fatigue and UTS and yield stress and shit). Of course the new hotness is composites -- some sort of nifty new layering process or something. It's coming up as something the fracture guys are looking into testing and creating models of. We've got a big ole' honking database of every material NASA has ever beaten into the ground to see how it bends, breaks, cracks, and fractures -- and there's lots and lots and LOTS of aluminum. Lots of steel too.
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Lantyssa
Terracotta Army
Posts: 20848
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When every gram matters for launch, Aluminum alloys are very difficult to beat.
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Hahahaha! I'm really good at this!
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Yegolev
Moderator
Posts: 24440
2/10 WOULD NOT INGEST
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As for aluminium: The guys at my work get very, very, very excited about any new aluminum alloy.
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Why am I homeless? Why do all you motherfuckers need homes is the real question. They called it The Prayer, its answer was law Mommy come back 'cause the water's all gone
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Morat20
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Posts: 18529
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Yeah, I pretty much feel that way when they get to talking about it.
Doesn't help that one of the new company's I've had to interact with is Sierra Nevada -- I keep wondering why beer maker's want our software. (Hint: Not the same company). I bet the beer company would also get excited about new aluminum's.
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MahrinSkel
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Posts: 10857
When she crossed over, she was just a ship. But when she came back... she was bullshit!
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As for aluminium: The guys at my work get very, very, very excited about any new aluminum alloy.
This was the first thing I thought of when I realized that the "Gorilla Glass", synthetic sapphire screens they put on high end smart phones are actual-for-real "Transparent Aluminum" (crystallized aluminum oxide). --Dave
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--Signature Unclear
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Mosesandstick
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Posts: 2474
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Man, that's like saying glass is "transparent sand".
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Count Nerfedalot
Terracotta Army
Posts: 1041
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almost. More like saying glass is transparent silicon.
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Yes, I know I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
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calapine
Terracotta Army
Posts: 7352
Solely responsible for the thread on "The Condom Wall."
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Restoration is a perfectly valid school of magic!
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Lucas
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Posts: 3298
Further proof that Italians have suspect taste in games.
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"Private Orbital Sciences Rocket Explodes During Launch, NASA Cargo Lost" (unmanned; video included): http://www.space.com/27576-private-orbital-sciences-rocket-explosion.htmlToday's launch was intended to kick off Orbital Sciences' third contracted resupply mission to the station. The Virginia-based company signed a $1.9 billion deal with NASA to complete eight such flights; the first two were successful. Damn.
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" He's so impatient, it's like watching a teenager fuck a glorious older woman." - Ironwood on J.J. Abrams
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Teleku
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Posts: 10510
https://i.imgur.com/mcj5kz7.png
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Yesh, they were already well behind Spacex in the commercial race. This could seriously fuck them, and the future of the Virginia launch pad (which has had a lot of people lobbying for it). At least nobody was hurt.
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"My great-grandfather did not travel across four thousand miles of the Atlantic Ocean to see this nation overrun by immigrants. He did it because he killed a man back in Ireland. That's the rumor." -Stephen Colbert
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Cyrrex
Terracotta Army
Posts: 10603
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I know launching shit into space is hard, but we've been doing this for more than fifty years, and still shit explodes spectacularly on the launchpad. We're never going to make it to Zagnar 7 at this rate.
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"...maybe if you cleaned the piss out of the sunny d bottles under your desks and returned em, you could upgrade you vid cards, fucken lusers.." - Grunk
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Merusk
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Posts: 27449
Badge Whore
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Controlled explosions go awry when every little variable isn't exact. Whoda thunk.
So long as our propulsion out of the gravity well is a controlled explosion, this shit is going to happen. When you add a for-profit motive it's going to happen more frequently due to not taking things to the nth degree of safety.
Morat has previously mentioned some of the NASA comments along the line of 'uh, we'd never be allowed to do that' stuff SpaceX did and they're better funded than OS, IIRC.
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The past cannot be changed. The future is yet within your power.
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Teleku
Terracotta Army
Posts: 10510
https://i.imgur.com/mcj5kz7.png
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Orbital Science has a really sort of sketchy rocket plan as well ( Elon Musk criticized it, but people wrote that off as him just being a dick to a rival). To save money, they bought a bunch of old soviet rocket engines from Russia that they built in the 60's, had them modified, and placed into their own rocket design. Its really seems kind of haphazard, and they've had a lot of them fail in testing. Then there is funding. SpaceX, which designs and builds its rockets from the ground up, has been redeveloping and advancing its own tech year after year, and has a recoverable payload capsule that can return cargo to earth, took 1.6 Billion for 12 launches. OS, which has a rocket that is totally destroyed after every launch, including the payload capsule upon leaving the ISS, got 1.9 Billion for 8 missions. Or in short, the company that is buying surplus Soviet era equipment to save money and hasn't developed any recoverable technology, is charging about $237 Million per launch. While SpaceX, which is the opposite of all that, is charging almost half rate at $133 Million per launch. Lots of issues with OS, but I can understand NASA's thinking since they were the next closest competitor after SpaceX and wanted a backup company. I do hope they're able to recover (And learn) from this for the sake of space flight. If anything they can hopefully develop their own homegrown rocket designs eventually, and more options are better.
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"My great-grandfather did not travel across four thousand miles of the Atlantic Ocean to see this nation overrun by immigrants. He did it because he killed a man back in Ireland. That's the rumor." -Stephen Colbert
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jakonovski
Terracotta Army
Posts: 4388
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POS rocket?
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Trippy
Administrator
Posts: 23620
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Suprise! Rocket science (engineering) is tricky business. Coincidentally this article was posted 3 days ago by the Mission Operations Director at the time, Wayne Hale, about a near disaster on launch with the space shuttle mission STS-93 on July 23 1999 which flew the Chandra X-ray observatory into orbit. Long but fascinating read. http://waynehale.wordpress.com/2014/10/26/sts-93-we-dont-need-any-more-of-those/
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Fabricated
Moderator
Posts: 8978
~Living the Dream~
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Virgin's SpaceShipTwo crashed, at least one of the pilots is dead.
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"The world is populated in the main by people who should not exist." - George Bernard Shaw
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Soln
Terracotta Army
Posts: 4737
the opportunity for evil is just delicious
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calapine
Terracotta Army
Posts: 7352
Solely responsible for the thread on "The Condom Wall."
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I posted that 8 posts ago, but no one noticed.
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Restoration is a perfectly valid school of magic!
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Abagadro
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Posts: 12227
Possibly the only user with more posts in the Den than PC/Console Gaming.
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Virgin's SpaceShipTwo crashed, at least one of the pilots is dead.
That sucks. Reading that they switched the fuel mixture between the last flight and this one. Likely culprit.
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« Last Edit: October 31, 2014, 03:00:08 PM by Abagadro »
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"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
-H.L. Mencken
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calapine
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Solely responsible for the thread on "The Condom Wall."
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Virgin Galactic spaceship crashes on test flightRichard Branson’s Virgin Galactic has crashed during a test flight in California.
Two pilots were onboard the suborbital spacecraft named SpaceShipTwo as it underwent its first powered test flight since January.
Reports say one person has died and another is seriously injured. Quite some mishaps lately: Cygnus exploding on Tuesday and in August we had an ESA Soyuz rocket malfunctioning and delivering it's Galileo satellites in the wrong orbits. e: mishap isn't the proper word on one dead and one wounded. Wasn't meant that way.
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« Last Edit: October 31, 2014, 03:08:13 PM by calapine »
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Restoration is a perfectly valid school of magic!
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Trippy
Administrator
Posts: 23620
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pxib
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Posts: 4701
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On a happier note, the Chinese Chang'e 5-T1 snapped this before it headed back to Earth:
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if at last you do succeed, never try again
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calapine
Terracotta Army
Posts: 7352
Solely responsible for the thread on "The Condom Wall."
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Restoration is a perfectly valid school of magic!
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HaemishM
Staff Emeritus
Posts: 42629
the Confederate flag underneath the stone in my class ring
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I didn't even know this was a thing. Fuck our news media, that's goddamn awesome and will be a huge achievement if they pull it off.
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calapine
Terracotta Army
Posts: 7352
Solely responsible for the thread on "The Condom Wall."
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I didn't even know this was a thing. Fuck our news media, that's goddamn awesome and will be a huge achievement if they pull it off.
Same, sort of. I planned to regularly follow the Rosetta blog after the waking-up phase, then promptly forgot about it... Two things stand out for me so far: First, the the mission duration. To launch something and go "Now we fly for 10 years and then land!" is...well, impressive. And Churyumov-Gerasimenko itself. To see dunes on a comet is eerie. Ignore the space background and it could possibly be an areal image from earth...
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« Last Edit: November 06, 2014, 10:28:25 AM by calapine »
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Restoration is a perfectly valid school of magic!
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01101010
Terracotta Army
Posts: 12003
You call it an accident. I call it justice.
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Just trying to remember where I was living 10 years ago and where I have lived since... sheesh
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Does any one know where the love of God goes...When the waves turn the minutes to hours? -G. Lightfoot
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pxib
Terracotta Army
Posts: 4701
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Those rocks are the size of houses and SUVs. So that set of dunes would make a substantial beach. More amazing to me, on a body that small (only a few kilometers across or around, even on the longest axis and the broadest diameter) gravity is more a concept than an experience. The correction burns that Rosetta has made are at angles practically to the perpendicular. Its orbital path looks more like a spirograph than a scribble. Plus, though it's reflective enough to look good in pictures, the surface is black as copier toner. Not at all the comet the mission was expecting, ten years ago. I cannot wait to see the body evolve as Rosetta follows it around the sun and it gains first an atmosphere and then a tail. This is going to be amazing.
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if at last you do succeed, never try again
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