discovery launch

well, i planned on having great launch pictures for you from in front of my apartment building, but my picture phone took some lovely photos of the clouds and palm trees to the left instead (the sun was in the way and i couldn't see the screen). damn.

still, it looked cool, as always. although this one is special since it's the first since columbia.

Either way.

GODSPEED DISCOVERY!

Nce to see y'all back out there.

EDIT: how close are you BTW? Rumble close? Post launch rain close? :)

ANOTHER EDIT...speaking of rumble.....If I see one more TV company fake the sound on a launch I'm gonna lose my mind....same in Hollwood....for some reason people in the media have a real mental problem with the reality of light being "very fast" and sound being "very slow". I have an episode of Horizon with a launch on it, filmed from where the VIP stands are, and not dubbed....man the thing is GONE before you even hear the engines light....it's wonderful.

In a sick and twisted way I was waiting for it to crash.

Steve Campbell wrote:

EDIT: how close are you BTW? Rumble close? Post launch rain close?

i'm half an hour away from cape canaveral. you can hear the rumble clearly from here.

See, now I hate you. at that range the rumble would be SOOOOOO deeep, like an Orb gig :)

Am I tripping or did they dick up the launch again....debris yet again. Of course maybe it's nothing, like all the other pre-columbia ice/foam strikes. And presumably they sent up some spares and some glue this time.

That's NASA's damn problem, they have all the brains and guts in the labs and pads, but the offices are staffed by unimaginative retards. Sack every single non-flight person at NASA, and hire some Russians, with your money and know-how, and their abaility to fly a working space station built out of old moscow water heaters for ten years despite more accidents than the bleeding starship enterprise......you'll be on the moon by Christmas :)

Sigh - I would like to see a start of that thing one day...

Not as exciting as a shuttle, but here is the launch of NOAA-N

http://www-pao.ksc.nasa.gov/kscpao/videos/metafiles/van_052005_noaa_launch.ram

WITH some of my handiwork on board, dontcha-know...

Has NASA been privatised? Or is it still in national control. i presume it costs a lot to run - does it do any private contracts - TV satellites and the like?

Also: What is the average US tax take, on, say $40,000?

I’m just wondering how the adventures in Iraq, Israel, and Space get funded.

What aspects (if any) of US society are still socialised? For instance, do “High Schools” have fees and are all major roads tolled?, etc.

I know I could look this stuff up in a book , but I was just wondering what its like “on the ground”.

Steve Campbell wrote: See, now I hate you. at that range the rumble would be SOOOOOO deeep, like an Orb gig :)

Am I tripping or did they dick up the launch again....debris yet again. Of course maybe it's nothing, like all the other pre-columbia ice/foam strikes. And presumably they sent up some spares and some glue this time.

That's NASA's damn problem, they have all the brains and guts in the labs and pads, but the offices are staffed by unimaginative retards. Sack every single non-flight person at NASA, and hire some Russians, with your money and know-how, and their abaility to fly a working space station built out of old moscow water heaters for ten years despite more accidents than the bleeding starship enterprise......you'll be on the moon by Christmas :)

every launch has falling debris. it's a normal part of a shuttle launch. the only problem is, it never was a problem until columbia and no one made a big deal about it until columbia. for yesterday's launch they had numerous hi-definition cameras attached to the shuttle to monitor when and where the debris came off and where it hit. this way, they can repair it in space before re-entry if they think it might be serious enough to cause damage on re-entry.

you have to remember, the shuttle isn't like a normal aircraft. the material it's made out of is very light and porous...you can stick a pencil through it! if it were made of metal it would get too hot on re-entry. they've always had little problem with debris causing serious damage in the past, but now they need to rethink this aspect of the program.

yea but soem of the tiles fell off the shuttle

Clockwork C wrote: Has NASA been privatised? Or is it still in national control. i presume it costs a lot to run - does it do any private contracts - TV satellites and the like?

Also: What is the average US tax take, on, say $40,000?

I’m just wondering how the adventures in Iraq, Israel, and Space get funded.

What aspects (if any) of US society are still socialised? For instance, do “High Schools” have fees and are all major roads tolled?, etc.

I know I could look this stuff up in a book , but I was just wondering what its like “on the ground”.

i'll do my best here, but i could be wrong on some of it.

NASA is a federally-funded program and part of the US government, but the satellites, space shuttles, etc., are built by private contractors like boeing and northrup grumman. it is my understanding that communications satellites are put into space by NASA but are privately owned (unless the stations 'rent' space on the satellite, i don't know).

as far as taxes, it depends on what state you live in. new hampshire and florida, for example, don't have a state income tax, and some states don't have sales tax on certain items. as far as federal income tax, it depends on how much money one makes; this would be your 'tax bracket.'

as far as parts of society being socialized, its pretty much social security (which you get when you retire, but isn't enough to live on for most people), medicare (healthcare for retired people), medicaid, and AFDC (both for those living under or near to the poverty line who have children).

public high schools do not have fees, but those in better neighborhoods are generally better and have better resources (no surprise there). toll roads: some states have toll roads and some don't. the interstate highway system (the primary US highway system) is free to drive on, although some states have 'turnpikes' or 'expressways' which are tolled. the advantage to these is that they're usually less crowded than the interstates. most midwestern and western states do not have toll roads, as who would want to pay to drive on an endless stretch of road the size of new jersey when they can take the relatively unclogged interstate for free. public roads are paid for with taxpayer money and expansions and improvements on these roads must be approved by the state legislature, federal government (if it's the interstate system), or through a vote by the people.

in central florida we have numerous toll roads. for example, the main road to the kennedy space center is a toll road and the fastest route to miami (the florida turnpike) is a toll road. where i grew up, in colorado, we didn't get our first toll road until the early 1990s (E-470), and all it does is circle denver. it's still the only toll road in the entire state (which is larger than the island of great britain, by the way!).

Richie Soans wrote: yea but soem of the tiles fell off the shuttle

as i said, that's normal. it's where they hit that caused columbia to disintegrate.

Thanks agent. Having never been to the USA, and given that its pretty far down my “places to go see” list (NY aside), Its interesting to hear how it operates from the perspective of a citizen. Reading statistics, and even analysis is useful, but so too is what you’ve just said.

On the Shuttle I gather what happened was that debris fell off one of the external rockets or tanks during seperation, and that hit one of the ceramic tiles under the shuttle, which as a result wasn’t there during re-entry to stop the heat resultant from friction with the upper atmosphere affecting the mechanisms of the Shuttle. As a result, it gradually disintegrated, and then WOOP! I presume there would be numerous sensors (probably thousands) on the underside of the Shuttle anyhow – and would be surprised if this “hi-definition cameras” story wasn't just to please the media/public.

Clockwork C wrote: I presume there would be numerous sensors (probably thousands) on the underside of the Shuttle anyhow – and would be surprised if this “hi-definition cameras” story wasn't just to please the media/public.

i don't think there are any sensors. remember this shuttle is over 20 years old and i don't know where they would put the sensors so they wouldn't burn up in the atmosphere without dismantling most of the shuttle. the cameras would be the best way to determine where tiles fell off and landed. and if there were sensors i don't think NASA would keep it a secret--they would just say they used sensors!

Essentially the external fuel tank isn't terribly well insulated. The insulation that is there (whether this has been changed, I know not) is sort of "hairy" to give the ice that forms on it a purchase.....a bit like planting grass and shrubs on a new motorway verge. Chunks of it always fall off on launch as Agentwood said (in fact everythin she said is spot on). What particularly happened with the Columbia was that the leading edge tyle was damaged. This is the greyish corner section on her wingfronts that take the BIG ASS heat. I believe NASA-ese is a carbon-carbon panel whatever the fuck that is. No one ever thought to look at these cos they are hard as hell......but oddly enough, a NASA study on tyle strikes, had no data on large srikes to carbon-carbon panels....not because tests were not done, but because the damage was immeasurable. Therefor the computer model was based on BS assumptions. At the point the Columbia began to die, she was just beginning a series of speed losing manouvres.....vast S bends over the Southern US ( so vast I don't think you'd even see the manouvre from the ground)...at this time obviously airflow over the wing changes, presumably pushing things too far. Also there is a curve of atmospheric density vs speed, and the shuttle was at the wort part (highest relative values for both....where as, at insertion it's doing 17,500mph, but hitting only wisps of ionosphere, and at touchdown it's barely moving through treacle).

The air, at this point basically a plasma, gets into the wing, and vapourises her aluminium bones.

However....there is another startling piece of evidence I recently came accorss (note, BBC, not serious.cook.net). You may have heard of an atmospheric phenomenon called a "sprite". These are vast dispersed clouds much like an aurora that burst from the top of thunder clouds. They have been thought to be many things, but to cut a long story short, it now transpires they are related to a nasty thing called positive lighting, which is rare lightning that acts the way people think all lightning does until told otherwise....ie purely cloud to ground, or at least in a ground strike the cloud initiates the connection.....but FUCKING nasty. It CAN also happen high up.

Some dude has his hands on this old infrasound mic array that the spooks set up to listen to commie H bombs...and this thing gets a bloody good reception of the thinder let off by these HUGE discharges. Some guy has a camcorder shot of columbia APPARENTLY taking a lightning hit just before the breakup began. To be honest it could be a shakey camera ( it looks very like the bizzare trail off the record deck on the slightlynarrow site)....BUT, infrasound geezer confirmed a clap of UBERTHUNDER from the shuttles location just before it caught a few whisps of the actual breakup.

Why would NASA say they screwed up if they didn't? The theory is that if the public knew that the farraday cage effect that naturally protects all aircraft, does no good against something as intense as this (several planes are brought down by EXTREME lightning, whether positive or not, who can say, each year)....the airlines would freak out cos no one would fly. So NASA fell on it's sword for them.

I realy dunno about the "conspiracy theory angle"...but the actualy lightning thing seems to be true.

I believe it an edition of Horizon called "megalightning".

EDIT: as for "she's old", her avionics are fucked with CONSTANTLY. it's one of the sad things about the whole program. The shuttle is hopelessly over complex and over engineered and as Mr Scot said "the more you overthink the plumbing, the easier it is to block up the drains". We'll learn a lot from the shuttle. But for us to get anywhere in space we'll need to get real simple real fast. And the only people in the US doing that are privately funded crazies and people like Burt Routan or whatever you call him. NASA should fire about 50,000 suits full of fsck all, and hire some of them :)

All I know is, the next time I cross the pond, I'm walking over.

I for one am very excited about the possiblites of space travel...We should surely encourage the pumping of vast amounts of money into it instead of crazy wars...We owe it to the future generations to make these baby steps..after all there will need to be a mass exedus to some other inhabitabal planet,if the human race is to survive when earth is ready to go,and they aint doing that without spacecraft and knowledge of the galaxy...It may not seem urgent to the man or woman on the street,but its important as hell..God speed,come home safe,to the AstrosGood luck

bLuE oRdEr wrote: All I know is, the next time I cross the pond, I'm walking over.

I knew you had delusions of grandeur Blue, but FFS!

AND on an unrelated note...... (or at least unrelated to Blue's god complex, but VERY relevant to the thread)

CAN ANYONE SAY KNEEJERK

Boatraceface wrote: I for one am very excited about the possiblites of space travel...We should surely encourage the pumping of vast amounts of money into it instead of crazy wars...We owe it to the future generations to make these baby steps..after all there will need to be a mass exedus to some other inhabitabal planet,if the human race is to survive when earth is ready to go,and they aint doing that without spacecraft and knowledge of the galaxy...It may not seem urgent to the man or woman on the street,but its important as hell..God speed,come home safe,to the AstrosGood luck

That's why I keep thinking "don't push the button YET". If we die out now, it's all gone, not just us stupid monkeys who let it happen....but everything, Einstein, Marylin Monroe...New Order...GONE. Once there are humans off earth I don't really care what morons decide to do with it, it's only our playpen FFS.

Steve Campbell wrote:

bLuE oRdEr wrote: All I know is, the next time I cross the pond, I'm walking over.

I knew you had delusions of grandeur Blue, but FFS!

THAT oughta give the Northern Irish a new religious angle to argue.

Clockwork C wrote: Thanks agent. Having never been to the USA, and given that its pretty far down my “places to go see” list (NY aside), Its interesting to hear how it operates from the perspective of a citizen. Reading statistics, and even analysis is useful, but so too is what you’ve just said.

On the Shuttle I gather what happened was that debris fell off one of the external rockets or tanks during seperation, and that hit one of the ceramic tiles under the shuttle, which as a result wasn’t there during re-entry to stop the heat resultant from friction with the upper atmosphere affecting the mechanisms of the Shuttle. As a result, it gradually disintegrated, and then WOOP! I presume there would be numerous sensors (probably thousands) on the underside of the Shuttle anyhow – and would be surprised if this “hi-definition cameras” story wasn't just to please the media/public.

All the sensors are inside the wing....the first sign of trouble on the telemetry was a spreading of High Temp warnings in the landing gear area (Shuttles must keep their wheels very close to the body judging from where the hole was supposed to be), followed by the sensors going offline ( which is presumably why they have few outside)

Mind, there'll be none of this paradise with 40 virgins in the afterlife; I'll be havin' my paradise in this life. A-men! :D

That, and super-lightning striking the plane scares the bejeesus outta me. Or if I'm walking across the pond, maybe it's scared into me?

Hey, remember Columbia broke up in re-entry. Hate to be a downer, but let's not congratulate ourselves yet. Hopefully the re-entry will be boring and routine.

:topic: I'm watching Roadhouse on Spike TV right now, is that wrong?

bLuE oRdEr wrote:

Steve Campbell wrote:

bLuE oRdEr wrote: All I know is, the next time I cross the pond, I'm walking over.

I knew you had delusions of grandeur Blue, but FFS!

THAT oughta give the Northern Irish a new religious angle to argue.

Well yes, cos we're SO desperate for more :)

bLuE oRdEr wrote: All I know is, the next time I cross the pond, I'm walking over.

call richard branson. i'm sure he can sort you out with something for that.

for the transpond journey or the God complex?

Still fuming with that "grounded" story, they don;t eve know anything's wrong with her ffs. SOunds like someone wanted this to go wrong. Yeh, reallocate that wasted money for more baby bombers. should read ..... "Shuttles grounded until gravity gives up or water stops freezing"

I would presume (regardless of its age) the Shuttle would be lined with thousands of thermistors inside the airframe? I would also assume that the Shuttle doesnt have any "pierceable by pencil" parts - maybe it does when the doors open in space, but I cantimagine during takeoff or landing there would be anything but structurial loadbearing elements, and the tiles.

Steve Campbell wrote: for the transpond journey or the God complex?

Still fuming with that "grounded" story, they don;t eve know anything's wrong with her ffs. SOunds like someone wanted this to go wrong. Yeh, reallocate that wasted money for more baby bombers. should read ..... "Shuttles grounded until gravity gives up or water stops freezing"

It's bigger than even that I think...

Why no web-cam on the shuttle for us all to click onto? I'll tell you why - too many UFO's, or should that be IFO's (Identified and alien) zooming around...

Why also no mission to Mars yet? We should already have a colony on Mars seeing as it's forty years since we landed on the moon. I'll tell you why - relics of alien civilisation are there.

OK, now everyone is going tee-hee and is falling off their chairs, but that's just what the establishment want - they want us to believe their is no alien life out there as thats the only way to do that is to keep us down here!

RE: thermistors, those are the telemetry sensors inside the wing I referred to.. I have no doubt there are external snsors too, but would assume that.....

1.there would be few, since induction or short range radio based systems would be bugger all use during insertion (gasses at that temperature start to do looney things....hence the much mentioned radio blackouts during appollo returns.), and you want as few holes in the hull as poss thanks very much :) 2. They'd have registered very little out of the ordinary on the Columbia, as the outer temperature would have been nominal.

As regards the fragility of the tiles. It's well documented as far back as the Enterprise test vehicle. Indeed the good ship Columbia on her mainden voyage lost 3 (or was it more) as many times as many as the Engineers said would be safe, yet she returned to Earth totally undamaged. But these were the white and black tiles (the black being the more heat resistent of the two, hence their distribution), which are a kind of ceramic silicone foam, and really can be pencil pierced or snapped in twain by hand. The actually get tougher as they get hotter. But in flight, flakes of paint and stuff from earlier launches on opposing courses (The saturn V was a big villain with it's huge seperations prior to TLI....in fact one falke of paint from it shatter a shuttle window, cracked it right through., yet it held), can hit them at 20,000mph and tear them off. Losing a few tiles is no bother, the adjacent ones cover the hole pretty well for aerodynaimc reasons. But the Carbon/Carbon corner pieces are VERY hard. However, like many carbon materials they are brittle (look at F1 cars when they collide, the shatter like glass). When Nasa were testing these, a biggish chunk caused the test piece to disintegrate to the extent that it could not fit their data parameters so that data was left out of their strike model.

Good engineering: Saying she'll die if she loses 1% tile coverage.....when you know it's more like 10. Bad Engineering: leaving out vital data cos it wont fit your capture parameters

As for UFO's....not a terrific believer in them. No doubt there have been some that are genuine. But the moment anyone mentions bipedal aliens, I'm outta there. I cannot believe the crap that some people will swallow on this subject. Do not get me wrong.....I totally believe in alien life. Just have some basic problems....

1. You've just built a star ship....do you travel out into the galactic boonies where there are many lightyears between the stars? or inwards towards the closely packed galactic core?
2. Aliens will only be humanoid in appearance if they are related to us, which since there is very strong evolutionary evidence here, means they'd be from here too and therefor not aliens. Evolution has come up with billions of species on one planet which has one set of conditions, and of those billions, a few have reached intelligence, and of those few only one looks like us. Whay would someone from a completely different environment, or even an identical isolated one, look anything like us.
3. They never kidnap anyone with thumbs.
4. No one gives away this "startling evidence that PROVES CONCLUSIVELY THE US GOVERNMENT KNOWS ABOUT ALIENS AND THEIR PLANS"....it's always VERy expensive and some cunt's always getting rich.
5. NANCY
6. people who read a word that woman says, believe it and then do not self sterilize themselves for the good of the species.

As for Mars....something very odd going on there for sure.....surely the only reason we are not there isn;t that NASA used to be run be wild eyed crazies in the star trek business, and is now run by suits in the orbital trash parking business. Probes keep vanishing JUST as they approach, the ones that land are always the ones that are taretted on dull shit. I'm pulling this from memory so the figures may be off ( and 2-3 years out of date) but of 48 human attempts to land on mars on 4 have worked. Almost ALL failed in the VERY final stages. including many that just happily worked, fired thrusters into orbit and vanished.

And a thought for you. In a truly infinite universe, all possibilities exist, and since NOTHING is impossible merely infinitely improbable. There are DALEKS out there you know! especially since they are nowhere near an what you could call impossibility. EDIT: and of course same is true for Cybermen, Borg, asimov robots, luke skywalker. All with the proviso that they'd not be like they are in movies....cos you can't see fucking lasers in space and space craft make no sound (except under one or two very special circumstances).

BTW...watch 2001...every single thing in that movie except HAL and the monolith was buildable when that movie was made, arthur should bloody know too! As for HAL, we may not have a talking intelligent machine, but as long as macropshaft were kept away, we eaily have the computer power to control a ship like "The discovery"....in fact I doubt Clarke's is half as complex as the shuttle :)

Never heard of Nancy; the yahoo page seems to indicate a slight dis-hingement of mind though...

I wouldn't be surprised if some UFO loonies are actually on secret service payrolls so that the bulk of the population thinks - 'what a bunch of alien believing loonies they are; I don't want to be seen as a alien believing loony, therefore I won't believe in aliens'. :bag:

It is logical to expect the universe to be bursting with life**, some of it intelligent,** as everything in the universe comes from the same blob of big bang matter.

Scientists have found life in environments where they did not believe it to be possible (i.e. underground volcanoes where creatures live in boiling water), therefore I reckon there is life, maybe not intelligent, all over our solar system.

Many nuts talk about intelligent life on Mars - I don't think there is intelligent life there now, but I think that their might have been once...

And Daleks; yes going for the infinite universe, infinite possibilities theory, then yes, somewhere there is an Earth that has been conquered by Daleks!

I just read that nasa will be shelving all future flights. A proclaimed insider said that repairing shuttles is like constantly repairing a 1960 chevy. What they really need is a new fleet.

Fookin hell they change their story quick don't they. Ladies an gentlemen, here lies NASA.

EDIT: wrote that when I just woke, hadn;t sunk in yet. The ISS is finished, as without the shuttle it will fall ( brilliant bit or orbital calculation.....now I WONDER who did that....the Russians who kept mir up for a decade, or the yanks who did the same thing with skykab and made a big hole in australia.)

No more crazy scientists trying to talk to martians, spend that money killing people instead.

BTW, add "zetatalk" to the nancy search ( or look down the page like we did before google), for a true insight into Alien whacko territory.

EDIT: When's she due to return?

I'm with you on the "used to be" life on mars thing....but some new research just this week ( check slashdot, think that's where I saw it) reckons there could never have been liquid water there. Sounds like BS to me tbh.

I'm with Arthur C. Clarke, I think the best prospect of life in this star system is Europa. But why build a manned mission to jupiter when you can get another aircraft carrier. (note that's based on what it would really cost rather than NASA BS bugdets....20billion+ with DICK to show for it on their part of the ISS at one point)

EDIT:AGAIN ( sorry, don;t want to keep adding posts, makes it look like I'm talkin to myself) Leeharvey...what's with the pair of mid 1980's linear arithmetic synths in the middle of that scene....is this a comment on photo fakery? or just "hella kewl"