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.

[PatrickHenry]

It may be a dumb question, but I was wondering about that myself. And "quark valence" is a whole new concept for me.

[RightWhale]

In reality, the proton is composed of a sea of quarks, antiquarks and gluons

Does the sea metaphor refer to a wave-like character of the interactions of constituents of the resultant particle?

[betty boop]

Thank you so much, Physicist, for an outstanding and enormously informative post. I sure do hope SSC will come on-line soon.

I'm reading a fascinating new book that may give a general indication of what a possible new physics might look like: Lynne McTaggert's The Field (2003) The book has a most embarrassing subtitle that I will not even quote you. It's bound to put off all "serious" scientists. I hope you will not be repelled by it, for the book gives excellent accounts of the work of Popp, Puthoff, Jahn, Laszlo, et al.; and details their experimental methods. You might find it interesting.

[XBob]

119 - "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, "

Well, good - now you are at least coming out on the balcony of your ivory tower to talk to those of us taxpayers who pay your salary.

As far as 'marginally cheaper', that was a big concern at the time, when the building costs were escalating by 100% every few months. And, particularly, operations costs - which were rumored to (if my memory serves correctly) take 2/3 of the electricity generated by the whole state of Texas to get it started. Never did get it straight though, if that was just to get it started up, or if it was to be each time it was 'fired', or what ever you call it.

Talk about powerful - yes - that certainly is - wow. Perhaps unnecessarily so.

What kind of payoff could we expect? Is it worth it?

[XBob]

121- "
Taxpayers and votors ought to take some responsibility for getting a little education for themselves. Otherwise they are just cattle. "

Those 'cattle' pay for the physicist's salaries and expenses and educations with their hard work.

[XBob]

122 - "To the average taxpayer, there's no difference between a physicist and a stock broker. You might as well lay the responsibility for ImClone at our feet."

Well, with all the corruption going on, and being spread to the academicians who apparently now regularly fake data, what makes 'physicists' different?

I realize that it is harder to 'fake' numbers (math) when they deal with formulas and axioms, than with social sciences, however, apparently with the takeover of the universities by the liberals it is becoming fairly standard operating procedure.

Remember, 'statistics don't lie'. But when you are dealing with such esoteric things, that the only ones who can understand them have to have many many years of education and experience, who is going to know?

ImClone is a good example, though not physics. Only physicists really have enough education/experience to really challenge other physicists.

Why should physicists be exempt?

[betty boop]

The big question is, if this program does get underway, will the next congress kill it not unlike the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC)?

They'd better not Radio Astronomer, IMHO. And when/if people understand this, not only this funding would be restored, but the SSC would be back, big time.

Clamping on my tin-foil beanie, here's how I see it FWIW: China is going to the Moon. I bet President Bush is going to set a higher bar: a manned mission to Mars. If that's the case, "old" research and technology probably ain't gonna get us there. Hello SSC! (Start writing your congress-crittur.)

Speaking as a taxpayer, I haven't got the least resistance to the idea that science and technology are national priorities, for both economic and national security reasons. I don't mind any tax dollar of mine going to R&D: It pays huge dividends in terms of future well-being across the board.

I mentioned the Chinese ambition of Moon-stomping sometime within the next five years. China is making itself increasingly felt in the world. Did you know that Chinese science in the field of biophoton research is preeminent in the world today? Their prestige is so high that China sponsors virtually all of the international symposiums in this field, drawing cutting-edge thinkers from Eastern Europe, Russia, India, and Canada into its orbit – for the purpose of picking their brains clean, I’m sure. (No wonder they are “pre-eminent.”)

American science tends to be not present at such proceedings. But I don’t know the reason why.

Here’s the deal: biophoton research is firmly grounded in the emerging theory of the primary universal vacuum field, the “zero-point” field, which looks very much to me like an inexhaustible energy source. Already I have read about speculations that the zero point field can be manipulated and exploited by humans for human purposes – be they for “fun and profit,” national security, or even world conquest.

America must not be blind-sided by her own scientific “prejudices” in a way that marginalizes us – and our national security – and leaves us vulnerable in a future shaped by the New Physics.

Speaking as an American taxpayer (among other things), at the end of the day, the New Physics must have an American flag firmly planted in it – not the Chinese. JMHO, FWIW.

[XBob]

126 - Good talk. Glad you finally came down from your ivory tower.

Perhaps youall won't be so 'blind sided' if youall actually talk to 'real people' next time.

The hollywood leftists are beginning to find that out too, that their salaries are paid by the 'cattle' who pay to see their movies, voluntarily. And they don't have to 'volunteer'.

[XBob]

133 - "Note that the simple and straightforward language is intended not for you, but for the lurkers who may believe that we actually send "dollars into space". "

I am not a 'lurker', but I am one of the ones who actually did send 'dollars into space' - literally.

I had to provide o-rings for seals for two jobs, the same o-rings. The ones which were used on the ground cost me $3.00 each. For the very same o-rings, in the very same packages, from the very same manufacturer, if they went into space, we had to pay $300.00 each.

I also once bankrupted a whole department, when I ordered and got a box of sheet metal screws, which used to secure face plates for instrument panels in the orbiter, without first checking the price (it was only 1" sheet metal screws), but since they were going into space, we paid $89.00 for one screw.

I would call that a screw-job, literally. And those are just a few simple examples, among many many I have of 'sending money into space'.

The amount of money wasted by 'government' scientists and engineers is just extraordinary, because they pay no attention to it.

Why do you think each shuttle launch cost $500 million dollars? What could we do with the extra $490 million if we could get that cost down to $10 million per launch?

[XBob]

133- How about if we saved some of the money and used it to kill the terrorists who are trying to blow us and our society into the dark ages, back 1000 years?

Or is it more important to blow up protons rather than get blown up ourselves?

Or, personally, as a diabetic, I would prefer that they use some of the money to figure out how insulin works (we don't know that yet) or how to stop the cancer that killed my wife(we don't know that yet), rather than finding out how many quarks are in a proton.

Somebody has to make some decisions about where the priorities lie, and where we should spend our money. We only have so much money.

In fact, we are spending a lot more on particle physics than I had ever dreamed of, as it is not well publicized:


http://www.osti.gov/portfolio/ScienceHtml/Chap11.htm

Chapter 11
Instrumentation for the Frontiers of Science

Conceiving and constructing the instrumentation of scientific research is at least as challenging as developing or proving any scientific theory and occupies a significant fraction of the research activity. A distinctive contribution of the Department of Energy and its predecessor agencies to science in the United States has been the construction and operation of leading-edge facilities for scientific research. Through universities and national laboratories, the Office of Science has maintained the United States' world leadership position in developing accelerators, reactors and accelerator-based neutron sources, synchrotron light sources, electron beam microcharacterization centers, plasma physics devices, supercomputers, and other special-purpose facilities such as the Joint Genome Research Institute, the Combustion Research Facility, and the William R. Wiley Environmental Molecular Science Laboratory.
These facilities enable scientists to acquire new knowledge required to achieve the Department's missions and, more broadly, to advance the U.S. scientific enterprise. The Office of Science continues to explore the frontiers of research through its stewardship of the most advanced scientific facilities in the world.
Accelerators for High Energy and Nuclear Physics
Description, Objectives, and Research Performers
Over the past 70 years each generation of accelerators has allowed scientists to answer a set of questions, make fundamental discoveries, and establish the questions to be answered by the next generation of accelerators. The Berkeley Bevatron, for example, was built in the 1950s to discover the anti-proton, long predicted by the Dirac Equation, and went on to become the discovery site for a host of new "particles." They were, in fact the first clues to the existence of quarks, but were not recognized as such until 1964 when the Omega-Minus particle was discovered at the Brookhaven AGS, a much more powerful accelerator than the Bevatron. The Bevatron itself was combined with a heavy ion linear accelerator in the 1970s to initiate the field of heavy-ion nuclear physics at intermediate energies. In more recent times, the discovery of the J/y meson and the tau lepton at SPEAR, the discovery of the W and Z bosons at the CERN Sp p S, and the discovery of the top and bottom quarks at the Fermilab Tevatron have established the Standard Model of particle physics. The discovery potential of these machines has been dramatically increased by colliding energetic beams of protons with one another or with anti-proton beams. This greatly increases the energy available for the creation of new particles, or new physics.
Alongside the development of high-energy proton accelerators has been the extension of electron accelerators to higher energies. The electron linac at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) produced the second line of evidence for quarks as the basic constituents of neutrons and protons when researchers discovered the scaling phenomena in deep inelastic electron-proton scattering. SLAC has also been a pioneer in electron-positron collisions for particle physics with the SLAC Linear Collider (SLC), which accelerates electrons and positrons to 50 GeV and then brings them into collision with one another.
Today two new major nuclear physics accelerators are beginning operations: the Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility (CEBAF) in New port News, Virginia; and the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Each is a unique, world-class facility that promises new knowledge about the nature of nuclear matter and structure.
Research Challenges and Opportunities
High energy physics accelerators enable a wide range of inquiry: observing and understanding charge conjugation-parity (CP) violations; characterizing and determining the nature of neutrinos; observing rare particles in the collisions of protons and antiprotons, or of electrons and protons; measuring high energy phenomena in the universe from the early moments of the Big Bang and those observable today from distant stars and galaxies; and similar complex endeavors.
A specific challenge for research personnel at high energy physics accelerators is to build vertex and tracking systems that can withstand the high particle fluxes and high radiation exposure near beam pipes and interaction points. These conditions are expected with improved Fermilab Tevatron Run II-III upgrades and with the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. Work on LHC detectors (ATLAS and CMS), BaBAR at SLAC, and Run II upgrades of CDF and D-Zero at Fermilab includes new developments in silicon pixel imagers, silicon vertex detectors, micro-strip gaseous detectors, radiation hard electronics for signal and data processing, and advances in superconducting magnet technology. Advances in science will require international collaboration in the construction and operation of future accelerators and detectors.
Researchers will continue to exploit the highly successful B-factory at SLAC, achieving luminosity beyond design for the asymmetric electron-positron collisions, reducing unwanted background radiation in the experimental zone, and maintaining the high level of operational readiness in order to further the experimental goals of the program. The linear accelerator will be operated to supply positrons and electrons simultaneously to the B-factory, End Station A, and the advanced accelerator physics experiments. Related challenges are the production of a highly polarized, extremely stable beam of particles to study Moller scattering in a hydrogen.
Other challenges for researchers using the high energy physics accelerators include using lasers, plasmas, and very high frequency radio sources to accelerate charged particles; applying advanced superconducting materials and new geometrics to build superconducting magnets for particle beam optical systems that operate with pole tip fields in excess of 16 Tesla; developing new high frequency, high power radio frequency sources; to develop higher current, higher brightness particle beam sources; formulating advanced software for computer modeling and simulation; and pushing forward theoretical charged particle beam dynamics and plasma physics as related to charged particle acceleration and control.
Nuclear physics accelerators are the sites for researchers to pursue various major challenges: investigating the quark/gluon substructure of nuclei: creating and understanding nuclei taken to their limits of deformation, excitation, and isotopic stability; understanding stellar burning and supernovae processes; performing nucleosynthesis of elements; studying the structure of nuclei that are far from beta stability, previously unavailable for experiment; investigating neutrino oscillation; and studying polarized ion nuclear reactions for unique high resolution spectroscopic information. A specific challenge is to provide electron and photon beams needed to probe various aspects of nucleon, meson, and nuclear structure. The nuclear physics accelerators will provide heavy ion beams needed to probe and understand the structure of nuclei and the various phases of nuclear matter, and a variety of unstable and stable particle beams needed to probe various aspects of nuclear astrophysics and nuclear structure.
Research Activities
At Fermilab, experiments are ongoing to study neutrinos, B-mesons, known and new particles, and unusual states of matter. Fermilab has a large and well-equipped facility for assembling silicon microdetectors, a world-class data processing center, and an active group of theoretical physicists. It also serves as the host center for the U.S. efforts on the CMS detector and on the magnet development program for the LHC accelerator. Brookhaven National Laboratory serves as the host center for U.S. efforts on the ATLAS detector for the LHC accelerator. SLAC research facilities produce electrons and positrons, support the operation of the B-factory, and detect and measure the particles resulting from the collisionstherein. The Alternative Gradient Synchrotron (AGS) facility accelerates protons at 24 GeV, providing the world's highest intensity proton and kaon beams. These beams are used for forefront high energy and nuclear physics fixed target research aimed at understanding the fundamental structure of matter and energy.
Four major accelerators have either just started operations or will be operating by the year 2000: the CEBAF at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (TJNAF), which will open a new window on the role of quarks in nuclei; the RHIC, which will collide gold nuclei at 100 GeV per nucleon in search of the quark-gluon plasma which existed a hundredth of a second after the Big Bang; the Main Injector at Fermilab, which by raising the intensity of the beam by a factor of 5-10, will provide the opportunity to exploit the discovery of the top quark and search for other new particles such as a light Higgs; and the B-Factory at SLAC, which is studying the properties of the interaction that breaks the symmetry between matter and anti-matter, called charge-parity violation. Together, these leading-edge facilities will allow a significant improvement in the fundamental understanding of the nature of matter.
Modern physics research, in many cases, requires probe particle beams of great energy (billions and trillions of electron volts), very high currents, and exceptionally precise optical control. The science and technologies fundamental to building and operating such machines are highly specialized; ongoing R&D supports continual improvements in advanced computer modeling simulation and control software, and instrumentation for measuring particle beams.
Accomplishments
· Researchers at Stanford developed a germanium transition edge sensor that will be used for the search for galactic dark matter.
· The Tevatron collider is Fermilab's major accomplishment: 1000 superconducting magnets, all operating flawlessly, cooled by a 4-mile liquid-Helium system with refrigeration capability; and industrial-strength antiproton beams. During Run I of the Tevatron collider, which ended in 1996, there were about 1013 proton-antiproton collisions. Run I produced a tremendous amount of data, which led to the discovery of the top quark.
· The g-2 experiment at BNL usesthe largest superconducting magnet ever built, 15 meters in diameter, with field uniformity of 1 part per million along its circumference and a stability of 1 part per 10 million.
· The introduction of Lie Algebra techniques and symplectic (area preserving in phase space) requirements into the computation of accelerator and collider optical systems by a researcher at the University of Maryland enabled the modern million-turn simulation of storage rings that is now considered a major contribution to defining new machines.
· The demonstration of critical current densities of 5000 amperes per square centimeter in magnetic fields of 5 Tesla by a researcher at the University of Wisconsin shows the room for additional performance improvement over the current commercially available superconductor, which operates at about 3000 amperes per square centimeter.
· The invention of the laser wakefield and laser beat wave plasma acceleration concepts by researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles has opened up an entirely new means for charged particle acceleration.
· The proof-of-principle demonstration of the self-modulated, laser-driven plasma wakefield accelerator at accelerating gradients of greater than 100 GeV per meter and the laser driven plasma beat wave accelerator at accelerating gradients of 3 GeV per meter open a possible new path to ultra high gradient charged particle acceleration and the possible construction of accelerators of energy otherwise not economically feasible.
· The proof-of-principle demonstration of the particle driven plasma wakefield accelerator showed an alternative to lasers which does not require the development of optical channeling techniques to accelerate over long distances.
· Successful proof-of-principle demonstration of the Inverse Free Electron Laser shows that this device can provide very short (millionth of a meter) long bunches, and can probably be used as a quasi-linear, radiation-based transverse beam cooler.
· Successful proof-of-principle demonstration of inverse Cerenkov acceleration shows that by using a medium to control phase velocity of the laser, acceleration can be achieved at high gradients over centimeter distances.
· The successful application of NbTi superconductor technology in the construction of Fermilab's 1000 GeV Tevatroncontributed significantly to the industrialization of the underlying superconducting magnet technology later adapted for use in MRI imaging devices.
· The world's first full superconducting electron accelerator facility was completed at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (TJNAF). The high intensity, continuous wave, 4 GeV accelerator is being used to study the transition from the hadronic picture to the quark-based picture of nuclear physics.
· Major instrumentation has been built for the three experimental halls at TJNAF (with high resolution superconducting spectrometers, the CEBAF Large Acceptance Spectrometer (CLAS), a high momentum superconducting spectrometer, and a short-orbit spectrometer for measurement of short-lived reaction products.
· The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) was completed and in FY1999 and is now being commissioned. The world's highest energy heavy ion collider facility will be used to search for the quark-gluon plasma, the state in which nucleons are melted into a soup of quarks and gluons-a state that only occurred previously at the instant after the Big Bang.
· A major upgrade and accelerator improvements to the pulse stretcher ring at the MIT Bates Linear Accelerator have recently been completed. The ring will be used to provide circulating continuous wave polarized beams for a new program of few-nucleon studies using internal gas targets.
· A new world-class Gammasphere detector is now in use to observe, with high precision, rare nuclear processes involving the emission of many gamma rays.
· The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory, located in a 7000-foot-deep mine, will be available for experiments in FY1999. The observatory will be used to resolve the question of the existence of a neutrino mass.
· At Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the Radioactive Ion Beam facility is enabling the first-time measurements of nuclear reactions that fuel the explosion of stars.
· The Next Linear Collider Test Accelerator (NLCTA) is used to demonstrate several technologies for use in high-frequency, microwave-driven linear accelerators and will be adapted as a gneral user facility for advanced accelerator physics and technology research.
· At the Multi-Particle Spectrometer Facility at Brookhaven National Laboratory scientists discovered the first definitive examples of exotic states: particles that are not totally composed of quarks.
· At the positive kaon spectrometer at Brookhaven National Laboratory scientists have recently discovered the rarest Standard Modelallowed decay ever observed at a branching ratio of 1 part in 100 billion. Another rare kaon experiment made the first observation of a decay that holds promise for determining a key quark mixing parameter of the Standard Model.

[PatrickHenry]

P L A C E M A R K E R

[XBob]

147 - "Speaking as an American taxpayer (among other things), at the end of the day, the New Physics must have an American flag firmly planted in it – not the Chinese. JMHO, FWIW."

Good rant, and I agree - particularly about the NEW part.

We really need some quantum leaps in our efforts and particularly in our thinking.

[edwin hubble]

your #150: "Somebody has to make some decisions about where the priorities lie, and where we should spend our money. We only have so much money. "

OK, XBob, The perspective of a purchasing officer is a good one for thinking in terms of triage. I know you are not opposed to all space exploration as a matter of principle, but a matter of balance and effectiveness of dollars invested.

Agreed that we have only so much money (our tax dollars)...
You certainly agree that it is a choice between competing, desirable initiatives.

If we could do all these things it would be great:
* cure cancer (Manhattan Project-sized investment in biotech)
* find new energy sources (clean fusion may depend on a better understanding of particle physics)
* find a better launch system (space elevator or microwave energy transfer for launch-to-orbit) Yes, we could use research to find more cost-effective launch systems.
* Security for our nation and borders. (vs. N. Korea, etc).

Many more goals to spend money on.

Agreed that our decision making process is also a rationing of limited resources...

[betty boop]

We really need some quantum leaps in our efforts and particularly in our thinking.

Damn straight, XBob!

We are privileged to live in exciting times, XBob. Somehow I think we Americans can and will rise to the occasion. I have historical precedent to rely upon in this view.

[MikeD]

One of the reasons space things cost so much is the extra paperwork. As an example, my company built a UV spectrometer for an upcoming ESA mission. The pricetag was $4 million. My company is building an almost, but not quite, identical clone of that spectrometer using spare optics for an upcoming NASA mission. The price tag will be at least $6 million. Why the difference if most of the "hard" work has been done already? NASA paperwork & documentation.

MD

[XBob]

147 - biphoton research - wow - that is interesting. I didn't know there was a science, but it makes sense.

I wonder if there is any connection between the 'Kirlian Effect" and dogs which can 'smell' cancer.

so, just as you can 'smell' the difference between good and bad food cooking, the light emissions of healthy versus unhealthy cells/organisms are different. Amazing.

And I never even heard of it. Well, I learn something new every day.

[XBob]

153 - "it is a choice between competing, desirable initiatives. "

Well put.

[XBob]

154 - "We are privileged to live in exciting times, XBob. Somehow I think we Americans can and will rise to the occasion. I have historical precedent to rely upon in this view."

We do live in exciting times, and I certainly hope you are right, that we will once again rise to the task.

However, with the current idiodicy of our liberal demonRAT candidates, seeming intent of Bush2 to export all our jobs and import all our workers, it seems like Arnold Schwartenegger is the only national figure with any great sense - and how sad is that, when a muscleman is the best 'brain' we have got.

[XBob]

155 - "One of the reasons space things cost so much is the extra paperwork."

How true, and that is only part of the problem.

I have had the 'priveledge' of doing the same type of work for both civilian companies on private projects and for government and government projects. The difference is just amazing, to do the same work.

I found that generally, as a rule of thumb, it takes a minimum of 3 times as much effort, an average of 7, and up to 12 times the personnel and effort to do the same work for government (including NASA) as it does for a civilian company to accomplsh the same thing. (and this has nothing to do with the amount of effort or laziness on government work). It has to do with attitude - no one in government wanting to take responsibility for anything, so they build in so many hurdles, that by the time the task is so convolutedly accomplished, no one can be blamed for anything if it goes wrong. Notice, for example, how NASA killed 7 astronauts, and yet no one is to blame, and no one was fired (just a few, transferred to other, perhaps higher paying jobs.

So, if you are only charging 50% more for the same 'item'
and the work is already basically done, you are really giving them a bargain.

[Aracelis]

[Geek alert: The canonical cartoon of a proton is that it contains three quarks (two up quarks and a down quark). In reality, the proton is composed of a sea of quarks, antiquarks and gluons; the three "valence" quarks represent the excess of quarks over antiquarks inside the proton. Likewise, an antiproton will have three "valence" antiquarks.]

OMG! I understood all that...lol