NASA Relies On Thrusters To Steer Space Station After Malfunction

AP via CNN ^ | December 6, 2003 | AP

[John W]

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (AP) -- NASA is relying on Russian-made thrusters to steer the international space station following a new malfunction with the U.S. motion-control system, officials said Friday.

Flight controllers detected spikes in current and vibration in one of the station's three operating gyroscopes on November 8. Last week, when the gyroscopes were used again to shift the position of the orbiting outpost, all three worked.

[XBob]

75 - "To this day, I wonder what discoveries of the very nature of the universe we live would have been revealed by the SSC. "

Probably the same discoveries that could be made today, much faster and cheaper if we would get off our collective butt's and do something, instead of just bitching about a screwed up project 10-15 years ago.

Sometimes it is better to cut your losses and try again, later.

If you notice the history of the super-collider, the world was with us, as long as the US paid for it. The billions of funding from other sources never materialized. As long as we were paying, there was plenty of participation - similar to the situation in Iraq today - they all want to share in the glory (pay off) but few want to step up to the plate and actually support the project with hard cash -

Bravo for Bush for telling France and Germany and Russia and those who failed to support us in the war on terrorism, to 'GO STUFF IT'.

[XBob]

76 - "Dilbert ran a cartoon"

LOL - good one.

[XBob]

54 - "I was doing detector development work for the SSC here at Penn when the project was cancelled. I'm orthogonal to your insults."

You are so orthogonally obtuse, it doesn't surprise me you know so little about the subject. Have you ever considered a career laying bricks?

===

http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/PAO/html/warp/brakthru.htm


Breakthrough Technologies
What are THE 3 breakthroughs we’d like to achieve?
To enable practical interstellar travel, here are THE 3 breakthroughs that we’ll need. These are the goals of the new NASA Breakthrough Propulsion Physics program:

Discover new propulsion methods that eliminate or dramatically reduce the need for propellant. This implies discovering fundamentally new ways to create motion, presumably by manipulating gravity or inertia or by manipulating any other interactions between matter and spacetime.

Discover how to attain the ultimate achievable transit speeds to dramatically reduce deep space travel times. This implies discovering a means to move a vehicle at or near the actual maximum speed limit for motion through space or through the modification of spacetime itself.

Discover fundamentally new on-board energy production methods to power propulsion devices. This third goal is included in the program since the first two goals could require breakthroughs in energy generation to power them and since the physics underlying the propulsion goals is closely linked to energy physics.

What is a breakthrough?
Figure adapted from Innovation, the Attacker’s Advantage, R. Foster, 1986.
A breakthrough is when the performance limits of an existing device or method are exceeded by a new, different device or method. The key word: different.

As technology evolves, a given device or method will reach a point when it can no longer be improved. At this point it has reached the limits of its underlying physical principles. To exceed this performance limit, a totally different device or method with different underlying physical principles is required. Examples:


The limits of sailing ships were exceeded with steam ships.
The speed limits of propeller aircraft were exceeded by jet aircraft
The altitude limits of aircraft were exceeded by rockets
The travel limits of rockets will be exceeded by... (to be determined)
The S-Curve figure illustrates both the evolution of a given technology, and the breakthrough event when a new, superior technology becomes viable. For a given technology, the evolution is as follows: Initial efforts result in little advancement and then the technology becomes successful. This success point, at the lower knee of the curve, is where the technology has finally demonstrated its utility. After this point significant progress and improvements are made as several embodiments are produced and the technology becomes widely established. Eventually, however, the physical limits of the technology are reached, and continued effort results in little additional advancement. This evolution (effort expended versus performance gains) takes the form of an S-Curve. To go beyond the limits of the top of a predecessor’s S-Curve, a new alternative must be created. This new alternative will have its own S-curve and will eventually require yet another new approach to surpass its performance limits. The breakthrough event, is when the new method demonstrates its viability to exceed past the limits of its predecessor.

Paradoxically, it is at the point of diminishing returns of an existing technology when it is most difficult to consider alternatives. Institutions that grow up with a technology become too established, too uniquely adept at their technology to consider alternatives. Alternatives are outside their area of expertise. Established institutions prefer to modify, augment or find new applications for their technology rather than to search for ways to go beyond their technology. Historical evidence shows that this refinement approach does not guarantee sustained market superiority (Innovation, the Attacker’s Advantage, R. Foster, 1986). If an existing organization wants to avoid its own obsolescence, it must be willing to explore alternatives.

Steam ships were not created by mastering the technologies of sails and riggings. Jet aircraft did not result from mastering piston-propeller aircraft. Transistors were not invented by mastering vacuum tubes. Photocopiers did not result from mastering carbon paper. And breakthrough space drives will not be created by mastering rocket engines.

The work style of pioneering for alternatives is different than the style for building mastery. The main emphasis of day-to-day engineering is to be a master of your chosen technology. Mastery is achieved through continuous improvements; refining, augmenting and finding new applications while sustaining expertise throughout this process. The work style depends on established knowledge and tends to be systematic, relatively predictable, and has a relatively short-term return on investment. Creating new and superior technologies, however, is a wholly different type of work. Going beyond the limits of an existing technology requires a pioneering spirit. It requires imagination to envision future possibilities. Pioneering requires confronting ignorance and creating new knowledge rather than just apply existing knowledge. It requires intuition and subjective judgments to navigate in the absence of an established knowledge base. And because progress is unpredictable and the returns on investment are long-term, it requires the ability to take risks.

[LasVegasMac]

The science will continue.

But the military will play a much larger role, thanks to the way NASA has done (not done) business these past years.

I still cannot comprehend how that organization has managed to stay in existence.

We had the Cold War, and we won.

Next up?......the Space War.

If Hitlery gets elected Pres, forget everything I just said. We will assume the role of "target" for anybody that manages to get a weapon in orbit.

LVM

[Physicist]

You are so orthogonally obtuse

Extraordinary! There's a Fields Medal in it for you if you can prove it.

[Aracelis]

Rant away...you know I agree with you.

[longshadow]

Hey, didn't you guys get the memo: the purchasing department is always the final arbiter of any scientific dispute.

;-)

[XBob]

105 - "Extraordinary! There's a Fields Medal in it for you if you can prove it."

Way out of my league, and yours too, however, we do need more people like Vladimir Voevodsky, and his work with cohomology and Minkowski space to solve this problem.

[XBob]

107 - "Hey, didn't you guys get the memo: the purchasing department is always the final arbiter of any scientific dispute.
;-)"

You are trying to make a joke, but you are learning.

There is only so much money, and purchasing is tasked with separating the wheat from the chaff. And believe me, there is a whole lot of chaff.

Scientific types don't have to worry about minor things, like figuring out how to pay their bills.

So, you have learned the number 1 rule -
"Follow the money".

Remember - the world was flat until Queen Isabella pawned her jewels.

And also remember, just like scientists, some purchasing agents are better than others.

[XBob]

107 - Also remember, that the most expensive part of any project is the engineer who has 'not quite finished' with his final design.

[XBob]

Just in case youall missed this -

"96 - NEWS (January 31, 2003): There is no funding available for the Breakthrough Propulsion Physics (BPP) Project."

[XBob]

104 - re NASA - "I still cannot comprehend how that organization has managed to stay in existence."

It's basic physics - called inertia.

[Physicist]

Scientific types don't have to worry about minor things, like figuring out how to pay their bills.

All jokes aside, while I can see how a cynic might fantasize that scientists will go out of their way to waste money wherever possible, just for the fun of it, do you really believe that we'd knowingly compromise the physics for the sake of wasting money? What's supposed to be our motivation, here?

[XBob]

To: XBob
Scientific types don't have to worry about minor things, like figuring out how to pay their bills.
All jokes aside, while I can see how a cynic might fantasize that scientists will go out of their way to waste money wherever possible, just for the fun of it, do you really believe that we'd knowingly compromise the physics for the sake of wasting money? What's supposed to be our motivation, here?

113 posted on 12/11/2003 4:24:53 PM CST by Physicist


“do you really believe that we'd knowingly compromise the physics for the sake of wasting money?”

No, not really, though in the past few years (xlinton era) academic fraud and forging/faking data has been growing greatly in prominence, when it has come to MAKING money – eg securing grants, endorsements, endowments, publication, continued employment, etc; etc; etc. eg – the cold fusion fiasco (or was it?) cold fusion, by Pons and Fleischmann in 1989.

In addition, the thing that makes you good at your job (ability to focus on fine details and follow long and abstruse logics) makes you unaware of many of the other things that are going on. (I understand for example that Einstein often didn’t match his pair of socks – It was totally unimportant to him).

You are a ‘tree’ man. I am a ‘forest’ man. It takes both types. While you are focusing on curing a minute fungus infecting the trees (so the trees may grow better), you are missing the forest fire I see burning, and so I busily get after chopping a fire break so you can continue your work. (and I make some money out it too, by selling the lumber before it burns up).

In procurement, we are very aware of the finite resources, and are constantly comparing, questioning, juggling, to get the ‘mostest for the leastest’. Constantly asking, is there a better, a cheaper way to do it, so that we can do more. If we focus on details too much, we miss our main goal. If you spread your focus too much, you miss your main goal.

In other words, we should be complimentary (yin and yang) versus adversarial.

[XBob]

however:

“do you really believe that we'd knowingly compromise the physics for the sake of wasting money?”


http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/6.11/coldfusion.html

Issue 6.11 - Nov 1998 Pg 1 of 11 >>

What If Cold Fusion Is Real?


It was the most notorious scientific experiment in recent memory - in 1989, the two men who claimed to have discovered the energy of the future were condemned as imposters and exiled by their peers. Can it possibly make sense to reopen the cold fusion investigation? A surprising number of researchers already have.

By Charles Platt


PLUS
Cold Fusionaries


Almost four stories high, framed in steel beams and tangled in pipes, conduits, cables, and coils, the Joint European Torus (JET) claims to be the largest fusion power experiment in the world. Located near Oxford, England, JET is a monument to big science, its donut-shaped containment vessel dwarfing maintenance workers who enter it in protective suits. Here in this gleaming nuclear cauldron, deuterium gas is energized with 7 million amperes and heated to 300 million degrees Celsius - more than 10 times hotter than the center of the sun. Under these extreme conditions atomic nuclei collide and fuse, liberating energy that could provide virtually limitless power.

Maybe.

High-tension lines run directly to the installation, but they don't take electricity out - they bring it in. For a few magic seconds in 1997, JET managed to return 60 percent of the energy it consumed, but that's the best it's ever done, and is typical of fusion experiments worldwide. The US Department of Energy has predicted that we'll have to wait another five decades, minimum, before fusion power becomes practical. Meanwhile, the United States continues to depend on fossil fuels for 85 percent of its energy.


Many miles away, in the basement of a fine new home in the hills overlooking Santa Fe, New Mexico, a retired scientist named Edmund Storms has built a different kind of fusion reactor. It consists of laboratory glassware, off-the-shelf chemical supplies, two aging Macintosh computers for data acquisition, and an insulated wooden box the size of a kitchen cabinet. While JET's 15 European sponsor-nations have paid about US$1 billion for their hardware, and the US government has spent $14.7 billion on fusion research since 1951 (all figures in 1997 dollars), Storms's apparatus and ancillary gear have cost less than $50,000. Moreover, he claims that his equipment works, generating surplus heat for days at a time.

Storms is not an antiestablishment pseudoscientist pursuing a crackpot theory. For 34 years he was part of the establishment himself, employed at Los Alamos on projects such as a nuclear motor for space vehicles. Subsequently he testified before a congressional subcommittee considering the future of fusion. He believes you don't need millions of degrees or billions of dollars to fuse atomic nuclei and yield energy. "You can stimulate nuclear reactions at room temperature," he says, in his genial, matter-of-fact style. "I am absolutely certain that the phenomenon is real. It is quite extraordinary, and if it can be developed, it will have profound effects on society."

That's an understatement. If low-temperature fusion does exist and can be perfected, power generation could be decentralized. Each home could heat itself and produce its own electricity, probably using a form of water as fuel. Even automobiles might be cold fusion powered. Massive generators and ugly power lines could be eliminated, along with imported oil and our contribution to the greenhouse effect. Moreover, according to some experimental data, low-temperature fusion doesn't create significant hazardous radiation or radioactive waste.

Most scientists laugh at these claims. "It's pathological science," says physicist Douglas Morrison, formerly employed by CERN in Geneva. "The results are impossible."

Yet some highly qualified researchers disagree.


George Miley, who received the Edward Teller medal for innovative research in hot fusion and has edited Fusion Technology magazine for the American Nuclear Society for more than 15 years: "There's very strong evidence that low-energy nuclear reactions do occur. Numerous experiments have shown definitive results - as do my own."


John Bockris, formerly a distinguished professor in physical chemistry at Texas A&M University and a cofounder of the International Society for Electrochemistry: "Nuclear reactions can occur without high temperatures. Low-energy nuclear transformations can - and do - exist."


Michael McKubre, director of the Energy Research Center at SRI International: "I am absolutely certain there is unexplained heat, and the most likely explanation is that its origin is nuclear."


Arthur C. Clarke, science fiction writer, futurist, and funder of Infinite Energy magazine: "It seems very promising to me that nuclear reactions may occur at room temperatures. I'm quite convinced there's something in this."

Statements like these prompt an obvious question: If nuclear fusion can be demonstrated in anyone's basement workshop for a few thousand dollars, and could revolutionize society - why haven't we heard about it?

We have. On March 23, 1989, Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann announced their discovery of "cold fusion." It was the most heavily hyped science story of the decade, but the awed excitement quickly evaporated amid accusations of fraud and incompetence. When it was over, Pons and Fleischmann were humiliated by the scientific establishment; their reputations ruined, they fled from their laboratory and dropped out of sight. "Cold fusion" and "hoax" became synonymous in most people's minds, and today, everyone knows that the idea has been discredited.

Or has it? In fact, despite the scandal, laboratories in at least eight countries are still spending millions on cold fusion research. During the past nine years this work has yielded a huge body of evidence, while remaining virtually unknown - because most academic journals adamantly refuse to publish papers on it. At most, the story of cold fusion represents a colossal conspiracy of denial. At least, it is one of the strangest untold stories in 20th-century science.

[Physicist]

No, not really, though in the past few years (xlinton era) academic fraud and forging/faking data has been growing greatly in prominence, when it has come to MAKING money – eg securing grants, endorsements, endowments, publication, continued employment, etc; etc; etc. eg – the cold fusion fiasco (or was it?) cold fusion, by Pons and Fleischmann in 1989.

You're wrong to tar physicists with the cold fusion brush. Pons and Fleischmann were electrochemists. The physicists smelled through the science immediately, and were outraged by the financial shenanigans.

In other words, we should be complimentary (yin and yang) versus adversarial.

Then perhaps you shouldn't have jumped down my throat about the magnet issue, which (being a tree) is something I know about and you don't.

[XBob]

116 - "Then perhaps you shouldn't have jumped down my throat about the magnet issue, which (being a tree) is something I know about and you don't."

sorry - you have failed to give any adequate justification for using high temp super conducting magnets, and remember, I am the 'purchasing agent' (the taxpayer) who was holding the purse strings.

Why do you think it was cancelled? - because the backers (physicists) failed to present any adequate defense/justification for the stupendously skyrocketing (no end in sight) cost of the project.

I ask you again, for the umpteenth time - why won't the cheaper magnets work?

[XBob]

BTW - to the taxpayer, there is not a fig-newton of difference between an ivory tower electrochemist and an ivory tower physicist.

Neither one of youall are 'aware' of money, it is like 'mis-matched socks' to youall.

[Physicist]

The cheaper magnets do work, and that's what we use. High-Tc accelerator magnets if they existed at all, which they don't, would be much more expensive objects (although marginally cheaper to operate). I hope that will change, eventually. I know one group is working on a prototype High-Tc quadrupole (focusing magnet) for the LHC, but they have a long road ahead of them. I don't think anybody is working on High-Tc dipole magnets (i.e., the "bend" magnets for the accelerator). Too expensive.

[Hacksaw]

A fourth gyroscope broke in 2002. Only two good gyroscopes are needed at any given time to control the space station.

"Scientists later discovered that the gyroscopes were jammed with Russian vodka bottle caps and cigarette butts."