mush thought #2: Space Flight (730 hits)
Category: Science & EnvironmentalRating: 1.5 on 15 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by mush (View user info) at 2005-06-23 22:12:39 EDT
If you read Wired News, you have been following the progress of Cosmos 1. If not, the readers digest version is that Cosmos 1 was a Russian experiment in using solar sails for propulsion (funded entirely by donations, $4million USD in all). It 'was'. They launched it yesterday, and now it is missing.
That's right.
Missing.
Now my first question went something like this: Missing? Aren't you watching this thing while it launches? I don't expect you to have the on-screen viewer like on Star Trek (like you could REALLY see those damn whales from miles above the ocean), but you'd think they were watching the thing somehow. I mean maybe they dont even track the thing on radar for the whole time... maybe that's just not the way it happens... but my god. Missing?
I guess a second stage failed to fire and now they have no idea where it is. So much for Cosmos 1.
Anyway, I'm past that. What I wonder now is this: How hard is it to actually put something in space? As an undergraduate, I helped my university built a satellite. Nobody had any experience doing anything of the sort, but in 2 years 50 students and 6 professors built a satellite. Now to be honest, the thing didn't launch. We lost a competition to UT-Austin (bastards) who were just lightyears ahead of us in building spacecraft (they're currently monitoring 3 of their own satellites from their campus right now). So I do have some idea of how insanely complicated this stuff can get. I can only imagine how much more complicated it gets when instead of saying "hey our satellite's radio works" you have to say "this will not kill 10 astronauts." So dont take what I'm about to say as a lack of respect for how intelligent one needs to be to work on a spacecraft.
However, I really have a problem with what I've been seeing lately in terms of spaceflight. I haven't spent much (read: "any") time in industry, and I have no illusions about my place as an idealist on most issues, but to me it seems like the space industry is just rampant with incompetance. I really don't think it should be very hard to 1) hire 100 PhDs, 2) lock them in a room, and 3) have them build a spacecraft that works every time (without losing it). I'm not talking any PhDs... but the good ones. "How do you tell a good PhD from a bad one?" Well I don't know... there should be someone good at doing that too.
My point is that the amount of fuck ups that happen in space have to be avoidable. I just got finished reading Atlas Shrugged, so maybe I'm in a SUPER-idealistic state. Hell, maybe I just have too much faith in humanity.
Does anyone else feel this way? Does anyone else know more about this than I do? Why doesnt some private company pull a Gates or a Trump and just take over space? It seems like the governments of the world are screaming for it to happen.
Thoughts?
User Reviews
Submitted by mush (user info) at 2006-01-29 23:53:03 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by TigerLilly (user info) at 2005-11-11 02:55:30 (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by MyNameIsTim (user info) at 2005-06-24 10:08:17 (#)
Ranking: 2
good post. i'm going to go out on a limb and say that mush is by far the smartest person on ubersite.
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I'm going to go out on a limb and say you're sucking the wang.
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Lil, it's scary how much you want me.
Submitted by TigerLilly (user info) at 2005-11-11 02:55:30 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by MyNameIsTim (user info) at 2005-06-24 10:08:17 (#)
Ranking: 2
good post. i'm going to go out on a limb and say that mush is by far the smartest person on ubersite.
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I'm going to go out on a limb and say you're sucking the wang.
Submitted by mush (user info) at 2005-06-25 07:54:26 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
And just so I dont get harped on for a fucking typo... when I said the probability of an SEU was 10^-45 / 10^-60 I meant the probability of a majority SEU resulting in an SEU propagation was that low. The actual frequency of SEUs (minority and correctable) in LEO is 7 per 90 minutes.
Submitted by mush (user info) at 2005-06-25 07:52:10 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Dude. Get a life.
http://telemetry.nmsu.edu/Nanosat3_page.html
http://www.admin.mtu.edu/urel/news/media_relations/349/
http://www.admin.mtu.edu/urel-cgi-bin/print.pl?story=349
http://www.collegian.psu.edu/archive/2003/11/11-04-03tdc/11-04-03dscihealth-03.asp
http://utahstatetoday.usu.edu/archives/august2003/08-22-03/feature-08-22-03.cfm
http://fastrac.ae.utexas.edu/
And by far the best one, in case you dont feel like looking around yourself:
http://fastrac.ae.utexas.edu/our_project/overview.php
Unfortunately for you, I must be a l33t h@x0r who just broke into 5 different university websites to create all this information to prove my crazy fantasy.
As far as TMR goes... I never said the patent was under the term "TMR." As far as Quad vs. Triple, the probability of an SEU in a TMR is around 10^-45. In a quad, around 10^-60 (Assuming a 10e-6 time constant for synchronization). Most statiticians will concede that probabilities below 10^-35, although non-zero, can safely be considered representative of an impossibility so there is little benefit to a straight quad. However, my guess is that you are talking about the quad (or the quint) on the space shuttle... well that isnt straight TMR or 4/5-MR. The space shuttle goes a step above and beyond because they're trying to save lives and need protection against Byzantine failures, whereas a small nanosat flight computer does not.
I guess I don't know what your hard-on about disproving my "crazy fantasy" is... but checkmate. Thank you for calling.
Submitted by sword (user info) at 2005-06-24 19:14:14 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Unfortunately for you Mush I happen to have an internet connection which allows me easy access to all the information required to disprove your crazy fantasy. In fact the only difficult part is in deciding where to begin proving you wrong, but I did that as well.
1) Cost - NASA has a rather large doccument on their website under the title "Parametric Cost Estimating Handbook" which describes the cost of an "Aerospace Small Satellite Cost Model (SSCM)" at being in the neighborhood of 200 million dollars. See the related articles for yourself here http://search.nasa.gov/nasasearch/search/search.jsp?nasaInclude=satellite+cost
Needless to say a small satellite would far exceed your paltry budget of 100,000.
2) Funding - The AFRL has been known to fund Universities for research. The AFRL has never given a grant of 100,000 dollars since its inception. Almost the entirety of their donations are several million dollars. Feel free to verify my findings at http://www.if.afrl.af.mil/pls/oradata/owa/rlpress
3) Patents - The United States patent office has confirmed my suspicions that there are presently zero patents pending that relate to TMR architecture.
4) "flight computer based on TMR architecture" - Its strange that you would build your entire flight computer would be based on an outmoded Safety system. It is an interesting point of fact that Quad Architecture is widely acknowledged as being three times safer then your Tripple Modular Redundancy program and so even if you did hold three new patents relating to TMR they would be worthless as Quad Architecture is better.
I don't really have any good way to conclude so
Submitted by satchel (user info) at 2005-06-24 14:15:37 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
For a cool series about a CEO taking over space, read Stephen R. Donaldson's Gap series.
Submitted by satchel (user info) at 2005-06-24 14:14:37 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by indoninja (user info) at 2005-06-24 13:59:08 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
There is something that happens in beuracracies that makes fuckups happened. When the challenger blew it was because of a faulty O-ring that wasn't rated to the right temp, how retarted and basic is that? I used to work with explosives in oil wells, and the team of monkeys I had working for me knew to use the right O-rings.
Submitted by mush (user info) at 2005-06-24 12:35:15 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Update:
They *might* have found it.
Not exactly sure how you *might* have found a satellite -- but they think they have. Imbeciles.
Submitted by Deidra (user info) at 2005-06-24 10:54:09 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Too many damn humans involved in the process.
Submitted by MyNameIsTim (user info) at 2005-06-24 10:08:17 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
good post. i'm going to go out on a limb and say that mush is by far the smartest person on ubersite.
i say they start advertising in space. make a big neon satellite shaped like a billboard and have it orbit so that everyone in the world can look up at the stars and instead see "Just Do It" in big green letters. They can even bring back the nike ads from back in the day with Marvin the Martian. there's a revenue idea right there.
private space flights are bound to cost far less than the billions upon billions that nasa spends. deregulate the shit, let millionaire risk takers fly up there and start putting claims on the big asteroids and shit. if they die, fuck em...who cares. but some will survive, people will learn shit, and it will gradually become cheaper. there are a lot of smart people in the world. of the '100 phds,' eventually someone's going to figure out something that nasa hasn't thought of, and revolutionize the ensuing industry.
Submitted by mush (user info) at 2005-06-24 09:57:29 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
When I said NASA... I meant AFRL (Air Force Research Labs) in conjunction with AIAA and NASA. Nanosat3 program -- google it.
Submitted by mush (user info) at 2005-06-24 09:53:47 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
"As you probably already know you did not, in fact, build a satellite as an undergraduate. Satellites are fairly complicated peices of electronics that cost millions of dollars. Not only is it supremly unlikely that your university could fund such a project but it is much more unlikely that if your university did, it would not trust completely inexperianced students and staff to execute the project. Nevermind the fact that you would need a fantastically expensive rocket to launch the satellite."
It was a 30kg satellite aimed at testing a fault-tolerant flight computer based on TMR architecture (which I have 3 patents pending for) and a GPS-based orientation (not position) estimation system. We received $100k from NASA for the project, and they promised to fund the launch of the winner (which they are... UT-Austin... in August 2006). Don't make assumptions on stuff you know nothing about -- it makes you look silly.
Oh that note, I liked the reply... I would have been a much bigger dick above if I didn't appreciate the thought you put into it.
Submitted by sword (user info) at 2005-06-24 01:45:42 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Also I realize the irony of calling you an idiot while I consistently misspell words like "you're" but you know what? Fuck you
Submitted by sword (user info) at 2005-06-24 01:44:31 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Its a shame that honest, content filled posts like these are covered up in the hail of mind numbing stupidity that ubersite is mass producing these days. That said your post sucked and you personally are an idiot, but at least your trying and your an interesting idiot and for that + 2.
As you probably already know you did not, in fact, build a satellite as an undergraduate. Satellites are fairly complicated peices of electronics that cost millions of dollars. Not only is it supremly unlikely that your university could fund such a project but it is much more unlikely that if your university did, it would not trust completely inexperianced students and staff to execute the project. Nevermind the fact that you would need a fantastically expensive rocket to launch the satellite.
"I really don't think it should be very hard to 1) hire 100 PhDs, 2) lock them in a room, and 3) have them build a spacecraft that works every time (without losing it)."
First of all NASA or your foreign (read: inferior) equivalent would need the funding to hire experts. There is a huge difference between theoretical ideas and working practice. While it is easy to say we should build a space ship that works everytime it is impossible in practice. Hell cars don't even work all the time and far more then "100 PhDs" have gone into engineering them.
Space travel is something new and innovative and that means it is something that is risky. Nobody really knows how to traverse space because we are just learning and the only way to continue learning is to commit resources and manpower to the effort and accept the inevitable losses.
"Why doesnt some private company pull a Gates or a Trump and just take over space?"
To start a Space capable travel program a company would need to invest billions even if it were buying technology from NASA, which is illegal by the way. After the billions of dollars invested the company could expet to continue paying massive upkeep and maintence in exchange for virtually no revenue. Space travel is not profitable.
There are two options for making money in space and neither of them are very good. I'll explain
1) Mineral Extraction - Near Earth asteriods are actually cheaper to visit then the moon and they could potentially contain large concentrations of valuable minerals, like gold. Unfortunately nobody really knows how likely that is. It would be really hard to extract the metals and cost far more then they were worth to transport them. It would be dangerous for the miners.
2) Tourist travel - a very small number of people can afford to pay the exorbitant sum required to hoist their weight into space. This number, multiplied by the number of tourists, is not enough to ensure or even suggest profitability.
"It seems like the governments of the world are screaming for it to happen."
No, National Space flight programs are deterrants to privatized space industry.
Well that is about it. Please don't revert to writing crappy content-less posts like most other people here. Also get a clue, people with your intelligence have no business in college let alone constructing imaginary satellites.