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STS-107 Poster (from NASA)
NASA e-mail ^ | 2/3/3 | NASA e-mail

Posted on 02/03/2003 11:54:12 AM PST by Mark Felton

I also received this poster from NASA.



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1 posted on 02/03/2003 11:54:12 AM PST by Mark Felton
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To: Mark Felton
A bit eerie I would imagine. None the less - something you will treasure, I'm sure. :o)
2 posted on 02/03/2003 11:56:18 AM PST by Txslady
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To: Mark Felton
Cool. What is required to get NASA to send one a poster like this? How much $$$ and where do you go/who do you call?
3 posted on 02/03/2003 11:58:46 AM PST by Joe Brower (http://www.joebrower.com/)
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To: Mark Felton
Aboard Columbia, ~morning has broken~


4 posted on 02/03/2003 11:59:56 AM PST by freepersup (Put That Bur qa On ! Put That Bur qa On ! Put That Bur qa On !)
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To: Mark Felton
Ouch. As Bush takes time out from war planning to lead tomorrow's memorial service and manage political damage control resulting from Columbia, I'm sure he appreciates being put into his current predicament by NASA research into the physics of sandcastles.
5 posted on 02/03/2003 12:01:00 PM PST by Man of the Right
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To: Mark Felton
I hope this doesn't become the source for tasteless joke material.
6 posted on 02/03/2003 12:06:50 PM PST by G Larry ($10K gifts to John Thune before he announces!)
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To: Mark Felton
I have an original safety poster from 1967 that was hanging in one of the NASA's engineering labs during project Apollo. It's a beautiful painting of a smiling Gus Grissom saying "Saftey First, All I ask is do good work...." emblazed on the bottom.....

Anyone ever seen this before?

7 posted on 02/03/2003 12:06:59 PM PST by zarf
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To: Man of the Right
Not to mention "Floating Flame Balls"...


8 posted on 02/03/2003 12:10:29 PM PST by Joe Brower (http://www.joebrower.com/)
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To: Mark Felton
Amazing, these American heros sacrificed their lives for:

The Physics of Sandcastles

9 posted on 02/03/2003 12:24:15 PM PST by Hunble
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To: Hunble
Also amazing, that NASA didn't consult these experts who have come out of the woodwork here at FR...</Sarcasm>
10 posted on 02/03/2003 12:29:36 PM PST by petuniasevan (RIP Columbia crew - you were the "Right Stuff")
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To: Hunble
The Physics of Sandcastles

Let the record show that when told that moving a wire through a magnetic field could cause a compass needle located elsewhere to also move, some people thought that was a useless novelty. Instead, it is the basis for electric motors and generators, as well as magnetic tape and disc recording and playback, the TV picture tube deflection, and a lot of other things, including the elucidation of the electromagetic theory, the basis for radio, lasers, microwaves, and ultimately the quantum theory enabling nuclear energy. The discovery with the wire and compass needle was huge.

Though the benefits of zero-G sand castle research presently elude me, it is possible that things like avalanche and erosion control, roadbed safety, fluidized-bed power plants, grain elevators and railcar-filling hopper technology could benefit from these studies.

11 posted on 02/03/2003 12:36:34 PM PST by coloradan
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To: petuniasevan
Also amazing, that NASA didn't consult these experts who have come out of the woodwork here at FR...</Sarcasm>

Back in '86 when Challenger crashed, my wife was riding in a carpool to work. Remember that the launch had been CANXd for several days running due to weather problems (IIRC). Anyway, the van driver said, "...it won't get off the ground today". Of course, after the crash that day, she swore that she had predicted the crash. She told my wife, “Remember, I said that it would crash today? Well, it did!”.

Just another Ms Cleo type expert. She's probably posting here on FR as we speak.

12 posted on 02/03/2003 12:37:32 PM PST by TankerKC (If all else fails, blame it on a lack of patriotism.)
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To: petuniasevan
I understand your point, but seriously, our space science program is run by a bunch of school children.

Yes, it is nice to involve school children, but how many times have we done the same stupid experiments in the last 25 years?

Many of the experiments conducted with STS 107, were conducted on Space Lab back in the 1970s.

I love the space program and have supported it all my life. Actually, it is because I have watch NASA so closely over the years, that I recognize the exact same experiments.

Oh I am sure they can justify their experiments. But seriously, have they not learned a darn thing in all this time?

13 posted on 02/03/2003 12:40:01 PM PST by Hunble
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To: coloradan
Though the benefits of zero-G sand castle research presently elude me, it is possible that things like avalanche and erosion control, roadbed safety, fluidized-bed power plants, grain elevators and railcar-filling hopper technology could benefit from these studies.

Hint: The sand is held together because of the surface tension of water. Something that has been fully know for a very long time.

14 posted on 02/03/2003 12:43:54 PM PST by Hunble
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To: Hunble
Hint: The sand is held together because of the surface tension of water. Something that has been fully know for a very long time.

Another hint: Suppose where you are going doesn't have any viable water and you need to create a structure for habitation.

15 posted on 02/03/2003 12:47:55 PM PST by Archangelsk (Remember the Apollo I 3, the Challenger 7, the Columbia 7 and above all the heroes of 911)
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To: Mark Felton
NASA Mission Posters also downloadable at

http://www-pao.ksc.nasa.gov/kscpao/briefing/sts107/

So9

16 posted on 02/03/2003 12:49:35 PM PST by Servant of the Nine (We are the Hegemon. We can do anything we damned well please.)
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To: Archangelsk
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An upcoming shuttle mission will carry small columns of sand into space -- and will return with valuable lessons for earthquake engineers, farmers and physicists.

 
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Link to story audio Listen to this story via streaming audio, a downloadable filesee captionJuly 11, 2002: Give a plastic bucket and a shovel to a child, then turn her loose on a beach full of sand. She'll happily toil the day away building the sandcastle to end all sandcastles. It's pure fun.

It's also serious physics.

Sandcastles are built from grains--billions of tiny sharp-edged particles that rub and tumble together. The strength of a sandcastle depends on how the grains interact. What happens when they're wet? How do they respond to a jolt? It's not only beachgoers who are interested; farmers, physicists and engineers want to know, too.

Above: "A sand fortress, July 1980." Photo by George Vetter, for "Cannon Beach Sand Castle Contest," an Oregon Local Legacies project.

When kids work on a sandcastle, they begin by gathering water from the ocean to wet the sand. Not too much--just enough to make sand stick together without oozing. (Emergency planners: think of predicting a devastating mudslide.) Next they pack the damp sand into a bucket, and flip it over to create an extra-strong base for a tower (Engineers: think of designing compacted road foundations.)

Kids love to build the towers taller and taller--until a wall suddenly caves and the tower slides into the moat. (Farmers: think of grain in a silo sticking together, then suddenly collapsing and destroying the silo.) They might even decorate the castle by letting watery sand drip from their fingertips, solidifying in place to form odd-looking stalagmites. (Artists: don't forget, physics is beautiful.)

Scientists mostly understand why sand on a beach behaves as it does. Damp sand sticks together because water forms little grain-to-grain bridges. Surface tension--the same force that lets some insects walk on the surface of a pond--acts like rubberbands between the grains. Adding water to damp sand fills spaces between the grains. The bridges vanish and the sand begins to flow more easily.

Sounds simple, but wet sand can still puzzle researchers.see caption

For example, when an earthquake strikes, wet soil underground sometimes "liquefies"--suddenly becoming more like quicksand than the sturdy walls of a sandcastle. This happened during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake in San Francisco. Vibrations liquefied water-soaked soil in the Marina District, causing buildings to sink until their third floors were at ground level.

This transition is rapid and poorly understood.

Left: An automobile lies crushed under the third story of this San Francisco apartment building after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. [more]

During an earthquake, shockwaves compress the soil faster than water can escape, raising the pressure of the water. As the water pressure increases, the water bears more and more of the load; the sand bears less and less. Ironically, this sudden compression reduces the pressure between individual sand grains--sometimes even beneath tons of rock and dirt.

"That much is understood," says Stein Sture, a professor of engineering at the University of Colorado-Boulder, "But how exactly do the grains interact as the pressures between them approach zero?"

"Studying this process in ground-based laboratories is difficult because the sand's own weight creates stress on the grains," he continued. If experimentors could remove that stress (and do so for a long time), they could more easily probe soil liquefaction.

That's why Sture is sending sand to space. He's the lead investigator for an experiment called Mechanics of Granular Materials-III--"MGM-III" for short--slated to fly onboard space shuttle Columbia (STS-107) later this year.see caption

The experiment is deceptively simple: A column of water-saturated sand in a latex sleeve is repeatedly squeezed between two plates. (In sandcastle terms, the consistency of the sand is more like the watery sand dripping from your fingers than the damp sand packed to make a strong tower base.) A full cycle of "squeeze and release" takes about ten minutes. This compression mimics what happens to water-filled soil during an earthquake.

Above: A sand column is compressed during an earlier MGM experiment onboard shuttle flight STS-79. The speed of the movie is misleading; the complete sequence takes about an hour.

Three cameras on the space shuttle will document how the column deforms. After the experiment is returned to Earth, scientists will use Computed Tomography scans (CT scans) to study the internal structure of the sand column. Then they will inject epoxy to harden the sand, preserving internal patterns for further analysis under the microscope.

"This will be the first time that we've had a window into this important process," Sture says.

Earlier flights of the MGM device onboard shuttles Atlantis (STS-79) and Endeavour (STS-89) revealed surprising things about dry sand. Lacking real data for low-pressure soils, scientists had assumed that trends seen at higher pressures would simply continue to lower pressures as well. But MGM-I and II showed otherwise.

Below: Computed Tomography scans (CT scans) of the sand column after it's returned to Earth reveal important clues about the behavior of the sand under compression. [more]see caption

"We found, for example, strength properties that are nearly twice what we would have normally thought," says Sture, which means that at low pressures a layer of sand can support twice as much weight as previously thought possible. Yet if you reduce the pressure a little more so that it approaches zero, that strength evaporates completely. Puzzling!

Maybe similar surprises await MGM-III. No one knows.

Sture notes that "understanding this soil liquefaction process will help engineers decide when a site is safe for construction, and perhaps lead to designs for building foundations that help prevent liquefaction from occurring."

The practical benefits of these experiments will reach beyond soils. Grain in a silo is also a granular material, as are bulk cereals, many fertilizers, and coal and ash. In all these cases, knowing how to coax the material into smoothly flowing or staying in place would be a good thing.

It's something to ponder the next time you're building a sandcastle: inside the moat lies some far-reaching physics.

 
 
 

Web Links

Space Research and You -- information about other microgravity experiments flying aboard shuttle flight STS-107, from NASA's Office of Biological & Physical Research

Mechanics of Granular Materials -- home page for the series of experiments. Information is also available from the University of Colorado at Boulder MGM Web site.

Castles in the Sand -- a page from The Why Files explaining why damp sand sticks together

Flowing Sand in Space -- Science@NASA article: NASA scientists are sending sand into Earth orbit to learn more about how soil behaves during earthquakes. Their results will help engineers build safer structures on Earth and someday on other planets, too.

Soil Mechanics Experiment Yields New Information -- Science@NASA article discussing results from the first two MGM experiments.

What Keeps Sandcastles Standing? -- article from Discovery Channel Canada that looks at why moist sand is sticky

 
  Author: Patrick L. Barry
Editor: Dr. Tony Phillips

This news article is a co-production between OBPR and Science@NASA.

How do the same stories look different on the OBPR and Science@NASA Web sites?

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17 posted on 02/03/2003 12:56:32 PM PST by Hunble
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To: Hunble
You know that and I know that, but you won't find out anything new if you don't do any experiments to see what actually happens. Removing g to see what influences remain is interesting and could possibly be useful. It is perfectly obvious that heavier things fall faster than light ones, so why bother dropping things off the leaning tower of Pisa, right?
18 posted on 02/03/2003 12:57:29 PM PST by coloradan
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To: Hunble
The Physics of Sandcastles


I'm reminded of this quotation. It resonates on multiple levels:

"If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost, that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them."

-- Henry David Thoreau

19 posted on 02/03/2003 1:00:12 PM PST by TrappedInLiberalHell (I'm against tags -- that is, I'm antagonistic.)
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To: Mark Felton
What do you have before the also?
20 posted on 02/03/2003 1:00:19 PM PST by Nitro
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