NASA's 'green' planetary test lander crashes (Morpheus - cheap, environmentally friendly prototype)

Yahoo ^ | 8/10/12 | Seth Borestein - AP

[Lancey Howard]

Easy there, Mr. Anderson.

[Stormdog]

“Why is it that the ‘green’ things keep turning RED ?”

Because to be truly “green” you have to be like a watermelon; green on the outside and red on the inside.

[300winmag]

Pathetic beyond belief...”green”

NASA and the rest of government have been given "green" marching orders. NASA's PR departments, staffed by liberal weenies who have never been inside a lab, much less a launch facility, have to follow their script, even if they don't understand anything about what's really the purpose. Herds of junior Joe Bidens.

Leaving out "green", this is actually a very serious and important effort to do away with the poisonous and hard-to-handle assortment of propellants used in thrusters, APUs, and actuators with something much safer to use, store, and empty.

The holy grail is to make methane work, and then develop the institutional knowledge to make everything that uses it 99.99999% reliable. No hazardous leaks inside the cabin, and with a common fuel, designs could either run off a single common tank, or build in redundancy by being able to switch tanks among devices if a problem arises.

The cherry on top would be to produce this fuel out there, without having to pay the weight penalty of bringing it from earth. Just top off your methane when you're at a convenience store that produces its own propane and methane.

The big boosters will always run on some nastier chemicals to squeeze every bit of energy possible out of it. One you drop the booster, you'd like a worry-free cruise with all your fuel coming from something a lot human-friendlier, and more available.

[cydcharisse]

You mean like that laughingstock, total failure Robert Goddard?

[Yossarian]

Leaving out "green", this is actually a very serious and important effort to do away with the poisonous and hard-to-handle assortment of propellants used in thrusters, APUs, and actuators with something much safer to use, store, and empty.

Thank you for posting this - I was about to say the same thing. Just because something is labeled "green" doesn't mean that - IN THAT INSTANCE - that "green" is bad, or even not desperately needed

In NASA's case, all one has to do is look at the side effects of exposure to hypergolic propellants to see very wise motivation to developing alternatives. (Hypergolics are the rocket fuels used in landers and thrusters - they don't require any ignition source. To explode, all they have to do is be combined together.)

This link (PDF) shows all the hypergolic accidents that NASA has had to deal with.

Now compare that against this table, taken from this document (PDF) on emergency Astronaut treatment from a Cape Canaveral - area doctor.

I think you can see the benefits of developing alternatives.....

[Yossarian]

Sorry, I meant to address the reply post above to you FReepers, as well. Please read it and contemplate....

[waus]

Yes, thank you, I’ll follow the white rabbit.

[Lancey Howard]

Better go ask Alice.

[equaviator]

It’s only FAIR that we should give it the benefit of the doubt, right?

It wouldn’t bother me one iota if all of “green technology” were to crash and burn.

[rlmorel]

"...Just because something is labeled "green" doesn't mean that - IN THAT INSTANCE - that "green" is bad, or even not desperately needed..."

Of course, the exact obverse is also true...

"...Just because something is labeled "green" doesn't mean that - IN THAT INSTANCE - that "green" is bad good, or even not desperately needed at all..."

[rlmorel]

Case in point is the $26 per gallon of “biofuel” the Navy is buying, even though the country is going broke.

If you are Nazi Germany, and natural oil can’t be had at any price because you are being deliberately strangled, biofuel or any kind of fuel makes sense at nearly any price. But that obviously isn’t the case here.

The point is, making something “green” doesn’t necessarily make it less toxic. CO2 is very green, made by nature and we breathe it in, but if you walk into a room full of CO2, it will make you just as dead as a room full of cyanide gas.

[rlmorel]

I was watching a video last night of a new construction technique being developed for houses that basically uses a 3-D printer that has been scaled up to industrial size levels and basically builds a house the same way a small 3-D printer can fabricate parts. Very cool.

So far so good.

But then, the guy touting starts talking about how green it is compared to conventional construction techniques, and I just about spit out my drink.

I am sure it doesn’t use as many chili-eating, beer-drinking, methane-emitting construction workers, but...please. They have to bring “green” into everything, and I am sick to death of it.

I will actually go out of my way to purchase a product if it ever touts itself as not being green.

(BTW, this video was produced by TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) Ideas Worth Spreading which appears to my eye to be a wildly leftist and utopian organization. Part of it is that their intro always shows a clip of Al Gore pontificating about something, and their themes always seem to be along the lines of “we could make humans live together in peace, prosperity and harmony if we adopt this approach to something”, but just because they are utopians and present things that way doesn’t mean in itself they are bad ideas.

Lousy marketing for ideas doesn’t mean a product is bad, it just means the marketing is bad, and touting everything as a cure-all or being “green” doesn’t mean it is bad, but to me, it often says more about the people doing the advertising than it does about the product.

[rlmorel]

Here is the link: 3-D Printer Can Build a House in 20 Hours

Very interesting, but...screw the "green".

[1010RD]

If NASA bought “off-the-shelf” from the private market, then why do we need a NASA? That’s what they think. They’re not stupid; they’re rocket scientists.

[ontap]

Well! What about planetary warming!!!!!!

[equaviator]

“Lousy marketing for ideas doesn’t mean a product is bad, it just means the marketing is bad”...

Just how necessary ARE these green ideas? Much of the marketing and surrounding hoopla seems to employ a certain abuse of the power of suggestion which is how I view much of their propaganda.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Thanks for the great insights. So would thrusters be mini-rockets and use combustion?

[rlmorel]

Exactly. I view it the same way.

Apple Computer says they use environmentally safe things to manufacture their computers but that doesn’t make their product a bad product or decrease their performance. It is just gobbledy-gook greenspeak so they don’t get flogged. But I don’t care, since the product doesn’t seem to be changed because of it.

What I meant was that I don’t discount something out of hand because it says it is “environmentally friendly”, because that is just an advertising code phrase to try to ward off the environazis.

But when a dishwater detergent touts its entire reason for being as being “green”, and our damned dishes come out nearly as dirty as they went in, then I have to look and see the underlying reasons why it was made “green” freindly.

Now, in this example, they had no choice due to the EPA which mandated it (a prime example of why the EPA is unconstitutional) and forced the manufacturers to remove phosphates. Now that may be good or bad, but it is a reason to have to consider.

[300winmag]

So would thrusters be mini-rockets and use combustion?

Thrusters already are mini-rockets. The vey toxic chemicals they use were chosen because they ignite on contact with each other, are very reliable, and can be stored at ambient temperature for a long time. But it comes at a cost of being nasty to handle, and toxic.

Think how far the automobile would have come if every car had to be fueled and de-fueled like this.

[SuziQ]

Thanks for inserting some technical information into the thread. I like having DATA, which makes things easier to understand, rather than making assumptions.

Since the plan is to use fuels that are believed to be present and plentiful out in space, it IS important that they be tested to the max here on earth, and that IS going to mean failures along the way, some of which will be craptacular! ;o)