NASA Relies On Thrusters To Steer Space Station After Malfunction

AP via CNN ^ | December 6, 2003 | AP

[beezdotcom]

According to Microsoft Word (spit), muon = moon.
From the fury of the spellcheck, Lord preserve us.

Now THAT'S one heavy muon! Missing mass problem solved!

[farmfriend]

Screw the country, just stay in office.

Sad isn't it? Yes, this is the general mentality. I think Clinton brought that out very well.

[farmfriend]

Sorry for the rant,

Hahaha, keep that up and we will start getting you mixed up with SierraWasp.

[Brett66]

I liked the Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Program, NASA wastes so much money, spending a few million on such efforts is a drop in the bucket. It doesn't require any new funding, just eliminate a Gore-sat every now and then to free up the funds for it.

[RightWingAtheist]

A point of interest: I was reading Philip J. Hilts's Scientific Temperaments a while ago, and in the section on Robert R. Wilson (the founder of Fermilab), it noted that WIlson had invented the O-Ring, and that it was originally made as a vacuum seal for use in cyclotrons. Science proceeds not just through the invention of completely new ideas, but exaptiating ones used elsewhere. For this reason, it is difficult-possibly impossible-to determine which fields of basic science are most deserving of crucial funding when the benefits of research go on beyond the intended usages.

[SierraWasp]

Trite, but true... "I resemble that remark!"

[RightWhale]

I sat in one. It's like a Formula One race car the way you sit in a bucket seat down low. Suspension is kind of stiff.

[RightWhale]

I read many statements like; not with my taxes or it's unconstitutional, etc. Well they are FLAT WRONG!

They say: 'where in the Constitution does it say . . .?' As a rhetorical device it should lead to a sure loss to the one who employs it in a refereed debate.

[Alamo-Girl]

Well said, RadioAstronomer! I agree that we cannot afford to give up.

[Dimensio]

NASA's spending is less efficient than that of the Department of Defense? That's a scary thought.

[RightWhale]

NASA's spending is less efficient than that of the Department of Defense?

Just a couple years ago NASA was one of the 4 worst-run programs in the Federal government. The Senate said this. Is NASA better now? Hard to tell.

[Shryke]

Every left-wing spending program gets "justified" the same way ("We spend more each year on dog food than this little ol' program will cost!"), so it's the kind of argument that will justify literally anything.

I disagree, partially. One half of the argument - the cost - can be presented that way, and Democrats use it frequently. However, the other half of the argument - the gain - is completely different. This is not some "social sciene" garbage - this is a part of the technological foundation of our country. A critical one. It's my opinion that demonstrating just how little that cost is, particularly to simpletons that happen to be in congress or elsewhere, is critical to maintaining our lead. You must remember that although you and I, and others, may feel that money spent on space exploration, etc. , is money well spent, even if the amount is quite high, others don't feel the instant gratification they need from it, and are therefore critical. Simplifying that cost (in terms of a latte) is a rather effective tool in demonstrating just how little it is, especially to those who lack vision.

[PatrickHenry]

However, the other half of the argument - the gain - is completely different.

You're correct. I think the thing to do is to emphasize the size of our economy that has developed as a result of the relatively small cost of the space program. But still, I'd like to leave out the comparison of a program's cost to the comparable cost of some trivial personal expense, which is too much like what the dems do. So yes, emphasize the payoff compared to the cost, which is something the dems can't do for their programs.

[Shryke]

emphasize the payoff

Most people don't understand the payoff (just read through this thread). It's unfortunate.

[RightWhale]

emphasize the payoff compared to the cost

The payoff should be that more people know something about technogical things. The weird science that passes for scientific knowledge for a large percentage of the populace arose to fill the vacuum created by NASA's lack of a worthy program.

[XBob]

Many thanks Brett, finally a contribution to the original intent of the thread, and my original comment, about wasting money on the wrong projects (see also my next post):

http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/bpp/

Welcome to the
NASA Breakthrough Propulsion Physics (BPP) Project
Public Information Site

---

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

ABOUT BPP- In 1996, NASA established the Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Project to seek the ultimate breakthroughs in space transportation: (1) propulsion that requires no propellant mass, (2) propulsion that attains the maximum transit speeds physically possible, and (3) breakthrough methods of energy production to power such devices. Topics of interest include experiments and theories regarding the coupling of gravity and electromagnetism, the quantum vacuum, hyper fast travel, and super luminal quantum effects. Because the propulsion goals are presumably far from fruition, a special emphasis is to identify affordable, near-term, and credible research that could make measurable progress toward these propulsion goals.

[XBob]

http://www.lerc.nasa.gov/WWW/PAO/html/warp/scales.htm

The most obvious challenge to practical interstellar travel is speed. Our nearest neighboring star is 4.2 Light Years away. Trip times to reach our nearest neighboring star at conventional speeds would be prohibitively long. At 55 miles-per-hour for example, it would take over 50 million years to get there! I don’t think even the twinkies in the glove box would survive that long. At a more typical spacecraft speed, for example the 3-day trip time that it took the Apollo spacecraft to reach the moon, it would still take over 900 thousand years. I still don’t think the twinkies will make it. And even if we consider the staggering speed of 37-thousand miles-per-hour, which was the speed of the NASA Voyager spacecraft as it left our solar system years ago, the trip would still take 80,000 years. Maybe the twinkies would make it, but there would be nothing left on board to eat them. In conclusion, if we want to cruise to other stars within comfortable and fundable time spans (say, less than a term in Congress), we have to figure out a way to go faster than light.

Mass: Rockets use too much propellant - a less obvious challenge
A less obvious challenge is overcoming the limitations of rockets. The problem is fuel, or more specifically, rocket propellant. Unlike a car that has the road to push against, or an airplane that has the air to push against, rockets don’t have roads or air in space. Today’s spacecraft use rockets and rockets use large quantities of propellant. As propellant blasts out of the rocket in one direction, it pushes the spacecraft in the other -- Newton’s third law. The farther or faster we wish to travel, the more propellant we’ll need. For long journeys to neighboring stars, the amount of propellant we would need would be enormous and prohibitively expensive.
Rocket Performance

This chart highlights two critical features of a rocket, Thrust and Specific Impulse. Thrust is how much push a rocket can give. The higher up on the chart, the greater the push.

Specific Impulse can be thought of as a kind of fuel efficiency for rocket engines, analogous to the miles-per-gallon for cars. The farther right on the chart, the less propellant you’ll need. It really has to do with how fast the fuel blasts out of the rocket.

What you should notice is the red region. This is the range of rocket performance we can conceivably create with what we know today. And what we need for interstellar travel is in that desired region or even more fuel efficient.

Here are four examples [large graphic] of what it would take to send a canister about the size of a Shuttle payload (or a school bus) past our nearest neighboring star...and allowing 900 years for it to make this journey.

Well....If you use chemical engines like those that are on the Shuttle, well..., sorry, there isn’t enough mass in the universe to supply the rocket propellant you’d need.

So let’s step up to next possibilities, nuclear rockets with a predicted performance that’s 10 to 20 times better!

Well...it’s still not looking all that good. For a fission rocket you would need a BILLION SUPERTANKER size propellant tanks to get you there, and even with fusion rockets you would still need a THOUSAND SUPERTANKERS!

Even if we look at the best conceivable performance that we could engineer based on today’s knowledge, say an Ion engine or an antimatter rocket whose performance was 100 times better that the shuttle engines, we would need about ten railway tanker sized propellant tanks.

That doesn’t sound too bad, until you consider that we didn’t bring along any propellant to let us stop when we get to the other star system...or if we want to get there quicker than 9 centuries.

Once you add the desire to actually stop at your destination, or if you want to get there sooner, you’re back at the incredible supertanker situation again, even for our best conceivable rockets.

In conclusion, we’d really like to have a form of propulsion that doesn’t need any propellant! This implies the need to find some way to modify gravitational or inertial forces or to find some means to push against the very structure of spacetime itself.

===
NoteBob - Perhaps if we were to spend our limited funds in more reasonable manner, and cut down on the waste, we could afford to do some really basic research, instead of expensive, outdated, make work projects for ignorant, head in the clouds, ivy league physicists.

Somebody has to pay the bills.

[XBob]

73 - "If High-Tc superconductors are appropriate for accelerator dipoles, why aren't they using them for the dipoles being built for the LHC accelerator at CERN, which is not even due to be operational until late in this decade?
You are speaking out of near-total ignorance."

You must not know much about physics, then, as you keep asking me (a self proclaimed non-physicist) questions you should be providing answers for.

Contribute, or quit wasting our band width - you are about as useless as Teats on a Boar Hog.

RadioAstronomer, - "PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN" - your friend, Physicist, doesn't seem to know much, as he keeps issuing challenges to non-physicists and provides no answers.

No wonder theoretical physics has trouble getting funding.

[XBob]

75 - Good Rant!

"To this day, I wonder what discoveries of the very nature of the universe we live would have been revealed by the SSC. Who knows what may have come from this. IMHO, this is national tragedy that most will never even be aware of or worse even give a damn."

Physicist doesn't seem to know why high temperature superconducting magnets are not 'advised' for a super-collider. Perhaps you do.

So, they are ceramic, and brittle - so what? If they can run mag-lev trains sucessfully, why can't they be used on supr-colliders?

[XBob]

73 - "If High-Tc superconductors are appropriate for accelerator dipoles, why aren't they using them for the dipoles being built for the LHC accelerator at CERN, which is not even due to be operational until late in this decade?"

===
Could it be, that the socialist governments of Europe are even more behind than our government?

Could it be that they are building a new 'shuttle', like we did, with 1950's technology in the 1970's and 1980's, making it 40 years behind the times by the time it got into orbit? Core Computer technology, which wasn't fixed until the 1990's.

Why did we stop funding the American SuperSonic Transport?

Could it be, that it was leading no where - like the Concorde, just to transport very rich people around and save a little of their time?