Re: The Andromeda Strain (was Re: the latest splat)
I believe you are referring to the 1957 film 20 Million Miles to Earth, about a spaceship returning from Venus that crash lands off the coast ofSicily and lets loose a creature called the Ymir - which you will be rooting for before the end of the film because of course we humans do everything we can to annoy and destroy it, then are naturally shocked when it gets angry and aggressive. Now that there is growing support for life on Venus, you never know http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050084/ The title often gets mixed up with the 1953 film, the Beast from 20,000 Fathoms - about yet another creature alien to us that we of course annoy and destroy and it naturally gets upset with us. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0045546/ Larry - Original Message - From: Gary McMurtry To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, September 10, 2004 3:10 PM Subject: The Andromeda Strain (was Re: the latest splat) Michael, Larry, et al.,I didn't know that Jeff has apparently retired. He writes a good article, but why he thinks there are no Mars meteorites is beyond me. There are plenty of good, solid scientific reasons to believe so, and I think Jeff is in a tiny minority here. So being, then Zubrin's arguments about no need to worry about Mars microbes have some merit--we'd all be dead already. Then again, one could argue that we got lucky with the meteorite rocks being from a benign area, while our hapless recovery samples just happen to come from a hostile group that perhaps wiped out the rest of Mars' life and past civilization. There is no reason to assume microbial life on Mars (or Europa, etc.) should be homogeneously distributed; it's certainly not so on Earth. Humm, I feel a B movie script coming on here...GaryP.S. Larry, I liked The Andromeda Strain, also. I think the original "it came from outer space--failed sample return" movie was titled something like "It came from 20,000 light years" (circa 1955) and starred a T-rex-like creature that grows and reeks havoc after the spacecraft crash lands in Mexico. It very impressed certain kids in PJs watching from the back seat at the drive-in.==You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED]Project information and list (un)subscribe info: http://klx.com/europa/
Re: the latest splat
Michael, Yes, aerogel is the name. And Twin Palms, apparently, is the place to hang out, though Sharon and I met on the Internet. We're getting married this fall after being together for a year and a half. I'm told they might have used the kind of balloons they used on the recent Martian landings, but that would have greatly increased the weight -- and therefore the cost -- of what was supposed to be a relatively inexpensive return system. But I bet they're rethinking that now. -- Dick [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: -To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]From: "Michael Turner" [EMAIL PROTECTED]Sent by: [EMAIL PROTECTED]Date: 09/09/2004 09:04PMSubject: Re: the latest splat I was there in the hangar at Dugway Proving Grounds as we watched the capsule embed itself in the dry lakebed. My girlfriend works on theGenesis project at JPL and I was along as her guest.Gee, if I weren't married, I'd try to figure out what cafes to hang outin, around JPL ;-) It was a terribly sad moment, as you can imagine, and a long, sad afternoon. Through my girlfriend, I had met some of the key engineers and scientists involved. I saw that the project manager was on the verge of tears as he tried to answer reporters' questions about what had gonewrong. One scientist had been supporting the idea for 14 years, I believe hesaid, and some of the engineers had lived it with three or more years.One of the unfortunate things about this incident is that it casts a shadowover an the idea really sounds very sensible - it's just that the parachutesystem wasn't cooperating that day. Reentry survival equipment isn'treally "payload" - it's just the last stage of the overall sample deliverysystem. Why design the craft itself for soft landings when it costs somuch to send things into space? If some such soft-landing gearweighs, say, 100 lbs, the cost of retrieving by helicopter insteadseems like it would be cost-competitive even for the lower rangeof launch costs. I work in publishing for the IEEE Computer Society. Sometimes, one of the magazines I help launch doesn't do as we hoped, so over a period ofseveral months, we get the bad news. That's tough enough, but it must be really wrenching to see your dreams come crashing down in a matter of seconds.I got out of software development because I got so sick of the typical60-80% project failure rate. But at least I got to see some projectsgo to completion. I can't imagine what it must be like to see a projectend up in splinters after a decade or more. It must be a little likewatchinga home you built burn down. (Incidentally, I understand that the Stardust material would withstand the kind of impact that shattered the silicon and germanium wafers in Genesis to smithereens. The Stardust material is an almost lighter-than-air foam.I forget the name, but I got to hold a piece when my 10-year-old daughterand I went to JPL's open house this summer.)"Aerogel"?-michael turner[EMAIL PROTECTED]==You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED]Project information and list (un)subscribe info: http://klx.com/europa/=You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Project information and list (un)subscribe info: http://klx.com/europa/
Re: the latest splat
I'm told they might have used the kind of balloons they used on the recent Martian landings, but that would have greatly increased the weight -- and therefore the cost -- of what was supposed to be a relatively inexpensive return system. But I bet they're rethinking that now. Maybe the balloon shock absorber idea could be turned upside down - you could cover the target zone with balloons. Hmm, that would be a large area. OK, how about this: when you figure out where the sample return capsule is going to land (to within a couple hundred meters), send planes to carpet-bomb that area with bombs that produce huge masses of foam for the capsule to plunge into. Let's see, if you engineer the capsule to withstand 20 g deceleration, and the capsule comes in at maybe 400 mph terminal velocity, straight down, and the foam can resist at 20 g, that's maybe only 60-70 ft of foam. Hmm, but that foam is probably styrofoam-stiff. Maybe no foaming process is fast enough. Well, then(yes, I *do* have a million half-back ideas, thank you for asking) if the foaming gases are shock-reactive, you might get good deceleration even with a lighter foam. Plus, the whole foam pad self-disposes by combustion before you can say "environmentalist picketers." (Heat stress on the capsule? Yeah, but maybe no worse than what you get alreadywith reentry.) Call it "scorched-earth splashdown". Kinda crazy, but maybe not as crazy as trying to sift through a gazillion tiny shards of silicon and germanium to find a few that can still tell you something. And if Scorched Earth Splashdown cost $10 million a shot, well, this splat was a $260 million splat. Maybe it's worth experimenting with just as a backup to the James Bond Helicopter Retrieve. (And it would certainly be worthy of a scene from a James Bond movie if it worked.) OK, I'll go back to playing with matches now. -michael turner [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: - To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]From: "Michael Turner" [EMAIL PROTECTED]Sent by: [EMAIL PROTECTED]Date: 09/09/2004 09:04PMSubject: Re: the latest splat I was there in the hangar at Dugway Proving Grounds as we watched the capsule embed itself in the dry lakebed. My girlfriend works on theGenesis project at JPL and I was along as her guest.Gee, if I weren't married, I'd try to figure out what cafes to hang outin, around JPL ;-) It was a terribly sad moment, as you can imagine, and a long, sad afternoon. Through my girlfriend, I had met some of the key engineers and scientists involved. I saw that the project manager was on the verge of tears as he tried to answer reporters' questions about what had gonewrong. One scientist had been supporting the idea for 14 years, I believe hesaid, and some of the engineers had lived it with three or more years.One of the unfortunate things about this incident is that it casts a shadowover an the idea really sounds very sensible - it's just that the parachutesystem wasn't cooperating that day. Reentry survival equipment isn'treally "payload" - it's just the last stage of the overall sample deliverysystem. Why design the craft itself for soft landings when it costs somuch to send things into space? If some such soft-landing gearweighs, say, 100 lbs, the cost of retrieving by helicopter insteadseems like it would be cost-competitive even for the lower rangeof launch costs. I work in publishing for the IEEE Computer Society. Sometimes, one of the magazines I help launch doesn't do as we hoped, so over a period ofseveral months, we get the bad news. That's tough enough, but it must be really wrenching to see your dreams come crashing down in a matter of seconds.I got out of software development because I got so sick of the typical60-80% project failure rate. But at least I got to see some projectsgo to completion. I can't imagine what it must be like to see a projectend up in splinters after a decade or more. It must be a little likewatchinga home you built burn down. (Incidentally, I understand that the Stardust material would withstand the kind of impact that shattered the silicon and germanium wafers in Genesis to smithereens. The Stardust material is an almost lighter-than-air foam.I forget the name, but I got to hold a piece when my 10-year-old daughterand I went to JPL's open house this summer.)"Aerogel"?-michael turner[EMAIL PROTECTED]==You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED]Project information and list (un)subscribe info: http://klx.com/europa/= You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Project information and list (un)subscribe info: http://klx.com/europa/
Re: the latest splat
Jeff Bell is a bit depressed about this whole thing. http://www.spacedaily.com/news/oped-04z.html He slightly disparages mid-air helicopter retrieval, even though that seemed to be one of the bits of good news in this story: it can be done. He also has some rather unkind words for Robert Zubrin, but I guesshe's not exactly alone in that. The main thing I got from his op-ed is that sample return really is an important capability - we should be trying to get it down to, well, to a *science*. -michael turner [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Andromeda Strain (was Re: the latest splat)
I am rather surprised atBell's dumping upon of the 1971 SF film The Andromeda Strain, which is one of the very few SF films I have ever seen that strove hard to get the science and technology right (for the early 1970s, of course). And I thought the scientists in the film acted like scientists would. And I am not alone in this view: http://twtd.bluemountains.net.au/Rick/liz_as.htm He even got some of the facts wrong about TAS: The Scoop 7 return capsule was not torn open from an impact. It actually landed successfully. The problem began when some of the townsfolk in the little New Mexicocommunity it landed in took the capsule to the local doctor, who unwittingly opened it and released the extraterrestrial microorganisms that wiped out most of the population. Bell just seems to have some kind of vendetta against the film, or decided to make it look bad to get his point across about the Genesis crash and the dangers of releasing cosmic debris upon Earth. And of course he would have been bored with TAS as a child, since it wasn't aimed at children, but thinking adults; this wasn't Star Wars, after all. I do miss the golden age of Hollywood film in the 1970s when they actually tried to be and do something different from the FX dreck we get now. Rent and watch The Andromeda Strain for yourself and make up your own minds. I would love to know what Bell, as a proclaimedretired space scientist, really found wrong with this film as opposed to just calling it names. Larry - Original Message - From: Michael Turner To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, September 10, 2004 6:51 AM Subject: Re: the latest splat Jeff Bell is a bit depressed about this whole thing. http://www.spacedaily.com/news/oped-04z.html He slightly disparages mid-air helicopter retrieval, even though that seemed to be one of the bits of good news in this story: it can be done. He also has some rather unkind words for Robert Zubrin, but I guesshe's not exactly alone in that. The main thing I got from his op-ed is that sample return really is an important capability - we should be trying to get it down to, well, to a *science*. -michael turner [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: the latest splat
In the early manned space program, all of the capsules landed at sea. How well would a water landing work? --- Michael Turner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'm told they might have used the kind of balloons they used on the recent Martian landings, but that would have greatly increased the weight -- and therefore the cost -- of what was supposed to be a relatively inexpensive return system. But I bet they're rethinking that now. Maybe the balloon shock absorber idea could be turned upside down - you could cover the target zone with balloons. Hmm, that would be a large area. OK, how about this: when you figure out where the sample return capsule is going to land (to within a couple hundred meters), send planes to carpet-bomb that area with bombs that produce huge masses of foam for the capsule to plunge into. Let's see, if you engineer the capsule to withstand 20 g deceleration, and the capsule comes in at maybe 400 mph terminal velocity, straight down, and the foam can resist at 20 g, that's maybe only 60-70 ft of foam. Hmm, but that foam is probably styrofoam-stiff. Maybe no foaming process is fast enough. Well, then (yes, I *do* have a million half-back ideas, thank you for asking) if the foaming gases are shock-reactive, you might get good deceleration even with a lighter foam. Plus, the whole foam pad self-disposes by combustion before you can say environmentalist picketers. (Heat stress on the capsule? Yeah, but maybe no worse than what you get already with reentry.) Call it scorched-earth splashdown. Kinda crazy, but maybe not as crazy as trying to sift through a gazillion tiny shards of silicon and germanium to find a few that can still tell you something. And if Scorched Earth Splashdown cost $10 million a shot, well, this splat was a $260 million splat. Maybe it's worth experimenting with just as a backup to the James Bond Helicopter Retrieve. (And it would certainly be worthy of a scene from a James Bond movie if it worked.) OK, I'll go back to playing with matches now. -michael turner [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: - To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: Michael Turner [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent by: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 09/09/2004 09:04PM Subject: Re: the latest splat I was there in the hangar at Dugway Proving Grounds as we watched the capsule embed itself in the dry lakebed. My girlfriend works on the Genesis project at JPL and I was along as her guest. Gee, if I weren't married, I'd try to figure out what cafes to hang out in, around JPL ;-) It was a terribly sad moment, as you can imagine, and a long, sad afternoon. Through my girlfriend, I had met some of the key engineers and scientists involved. I saw that the project manager was on the verge of tears as he tried to answer reporters' questions about what had gone wrong. One scientist had been supporting the idea for 14 years, I believe he said, and some of the engineers had lived it with three or more years. One of the unfortunate things about this incident is that it casts a shadow over an the idea really sounds very sensible - it's just that the parachute system wasn't cooperating that day. Reentry survival equipment isn't really payload - it's just the last stage of the overall sample delivery system. Why design the craft itself for soft landings when it costs so much to send things into space? If some such soft-landing gear weighs, say, 100 lbs, the cost of retrieving by helicopter instead seems like it would be cost-competitive even for the lower range of launch costs. I work in publishing for the IEEE Computer Society. Sometimes, one of the magazines I help launch doesn't do as we hoped, so over a period of several months, we get the bad news. That's tough enough, but it must be really wrenching to see your dreams come crashing down in a matter of seconds. I got out of software development because I got so sick of the typical 60-80% project failure rate. But at least I got to see some projects go to completion. I can't imagine what it must be like to see a project end up in splinters after a decade or more. It must be a little like watching a home you built burn down. (Incidentally, I understand that the Stardust material would withstand the kind of impact that shattered the silicon and germanium wafers in Genesis to smithereens. The Stardust material is an almost lighter-than-air foam. I forget the name, but I got to hold a piece when my 10-year-old daughter and I went to JPL's open house this summer.) Aerogel? -michael turner [EMAIL PROTECTED] == You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list
Re: the latest splat
That a good idea A system can be designed to use a streamlined capsule that could hit the water at rather high velocity without jarring the payload. Make it bouyant and you get it back when it floats to the surface. If something goes wrong and it cracks when hitting the water, you would at least know where it is. The payload section would need a lot of reinforcement, but the mass penalty is definitely less than an airbag system. The question would be can you design a vehile to transition from air to water at 200+ miles per hour with minimum shock? Joe L. James McEnanly wrote: In the early manned space program, all of the capsules landed at sea. How well would a water landing work? --- Michael Turner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'm told they might have used the kind of balloons they used on the recent Martian landings, but that would have greatly increased the weight -- and therefore the cost -- of what was supposed to be a relatively inexpensive return system. But I bet they're rethinking that now. Maybe the balloon shock absorber idea could be turned upside down - you could cover the target zone with balloons. Hmm, that would be a large area. OK, how about this: when you figure out where the sample return capsule is going to land (to within a couple hundred meters), send planes to carpet-bomb that area with bombs that produce huge masses of foam for the capsule to plunge into. Let's see, if you engineer the capsule to withstand 20 g deceleration, and the capsule comes in at maybe 400 mph terminal velocity, straight down, and the foam can resist at 20 g, that's maybe only 60-70 ft of foam. Hmm, but that foam is probably styrofoam-stiff. Maybe no foaming process is fast enough. Well, then (yes, I *do* have a million half-back ideas, thank you for asking) if the foaming gases are shock-reactive, you might get good deceleration even with a lighter foam. Plus, the whole foam pad self-disposes by combustion before you can say environmentalist picketers. (Heat stress on the capsule? Yeah, but maybe no worse than what you get already with reentry.) Call it scorched-earth splashdown. Kinda crazy, but maybe not as crazy as trying to sift through a gazillion tiny shards of silicon and germanium to find a few that can still tell you something. And if Scorched Earth Splashdown cost $10 million a shot, well, this splat was a $260 million splat. Maybe it's worth experimenting with just as a backup to the James Bond Helicopter Retrieve. (And it would certainly be worthy of a scene from a James Bond movie if it worked.) OK, I'll go back to playing with matches now. -michael turner [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: - To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: Michael Turner [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent by: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 09/09/2004 09:04PM Subject: Re: the latest splat I was there in the hangar at Dugway Proving Grounds as we watched the capsule embed itself in the dry lakebed. My girlfriend works on the Genesis project at JPL and I was along as her guest. Gee, if I weren't married, I'd try to figure out what cafes to hang out in, around JPL ;-) It was a terribly sad moment, as you can imagine, and a long, sad afternoon. Through my girlfriend, I had met some of the key engineers and scientists involved. I saw that the project manager was on the verge of tears as he tried to answer reporters' questions about what had gone wrong. One scientist had been supporting the idea for 14 years, I believe he said, and some of the engineers had lived it with three or more years. One of the unfortunate things about this incident is that it casts a shadow over an the idea really sounds very sensible - it's just that the parachute system wasn't cooperating that day. Reentry survival equipment isn't really payload - it's just the last stage of the overall sample delivery system. Why design the craft itself for soft landings when it costs so much to send things into space? If some such soft-landing gear weighs, say, 100 lbs, the cost of retrieving by helicopter instead seems like it would be cost-competitive even for the lower range of launch costs. I work in publishing for the IEEE Computer Society. Sometimes, one of the magazines I help launch doesn't do as we hoped, so over a period of several months, we get the bad news. That's tough enough, but it must be really wrenching to see your dreams come crashing down in a matter of seconds. I got out of software development because I got so sick of the typical 60-80% project failure rate. But at least I got to see some projects go to completion. I can't imagine what it must be like to see a project end up in splinters after a decade or more. It must be a little like watching a home you built burn down. (Incidentally, I understand that the Stardust material would withstand the kind of impact that shattered the silicon and germanium
Re: the latest splat
The question would be can you design a vehicle to transition from air to water at 200+ miles per hour with minimum shock? Shape it to dive like a duck, then come back up to float on surface, with finder beacons. That a good idea A system can be designed to use a streamlined capsule that could hit the water at rather high velocity without jarring the payload. Make it bouyant and you get it back when it floats to the surface. If something goes wrong and it cracks when hitting the water, you would at least know where it is. The payload section would need a lot of reinforcement, but the mass penalty is definitely less than an airbag system. The question would be can you design a vehile to transition from air to water at 200+ miles per hour with minimum shock? Joe L. James McEnanly wrote: In the early manned space program, all of the capsules landed at sea. How well would a water landing work? --- Michael Turner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'm told they might have used the kind of balloons they used on the recent Martian landings, but that would have greatly increased the weight -- and therefore the cost -- of what was supposed to be a relatively inexpensive return system. But I bet they're rethinking that now. Maybe the balloon shock absorber idea could be turned upside down - you could cover the target zone with balloons. Hmm, that would be a large area. OK, how about this: when you figure out where the sample return capsule is going to land (to within a couple hundred meters), send planes to carpet-bomb that area with bombs that produce huge masses of foam for the capsule to plunge into. Let's see, if you engineer the capsule to withstand 20 g deceleration, and the capsule comes in at maybe 400 mph terminal velocity, straight down, and the foam can resist at 20 g, that's maybe only 60-70 ft of foam. Hmm, but that foam is probably styrofoam-stiff. Maybe no foaming process is fast enough. Well, then (yes, I *do* have a million half-back ideas, thank you for asking) if the foaming gases are shock-reactive, you might get good deceleration even with a lighter foam. Plus, the whole foam pad self-disposes by combustion before you can say environmentalist picketers. (Heat stress on the capsule? Yeah, but maybe no worse than what you get already with reentry.) Call it scorched-earth splashdown. Kinda crazy, but maybe not as crazy as trying to sift through a gazillion tiny shards of silicon and germanium to find a few that can still tell you something. And if Scorched Earth Splashdown cost $10 million a shot, well, this splat was a $260 million splat. Maybe it's worth experimenting with just as a backup to the James Bond Helicopter Retrieve. (And it would certainly be worthy of a scene from a James Bond movie if it worked.) OK, I'll go back to playing with matches now. -michael turner [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: - To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: Michael Turner [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent by: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 09/09/2004 09:04PM Subject: Re: the latest splat I was there in the hangar at Dugway Proving Grounds as we watched the capsule embed itself in the dry lakebed. My girlfriend works on the Genesis project at JPL and I was along as her guest. Gee, if I weren't married, I'd try to figure out what cafes to hang out in, around JPL ;-) It was a terribly sad moment, as you can imagine, and a long, sad afternoon. Through my girlfriend, I had met some of the key engineers and scientists involved. I saw that the project manager was on the verge of tears as he tried to answer reporters' questions about what had gone wrong. One scientist had been supporting the idea for 14 years, I believe he said, and some of the engineers had lived it with three or more years. One of the unfortunate things about this incident is that it casts a shadow over an the idea really sounds very sensible - it's just that the parachute system wasn't cooperating that day. Reentry survival equipment isn't really payload - it's just the last stage of the overall sample delivery system. Why design the craft itself for soft landings when it costs so much to send things into space? If some such soft-landing gear weighs, say, 100 lbs, the cost of retrieving by helicopter instead seems like it would be cost-competitive even for the lower range of launch costs. I work in publishing for the IEEE Computer Society. Sometimes, one of the magazines I help launch doesn't do as we hoped, so over a period of several months, we get the bad news. That's tough enough, but it must be really wrenching to see your dreams come crashing down in a matter of seconds. I got out of software development because I got so sick of the typical 60-80% project failure rate. But at least I got to see some projects go to completion. I can't imagine what it must be like to see a project end up in splinters after a decade
Re: the latest splat
Or rather a cone, weighted so that the apex points more or less in the direction of travel. Think of a high diver --- Gary McMurtry [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The question would be can you design a vehicle to transition from air to water at 200+ miles per hour with minimum shock? Shape it to dive like a duck, then come back up to float on surface, with finder beacons. That a good idea A system can be designed to use a streamlined capsule that could hit the water at rather high velocity without jarring the payload. Make it bouyant and you get it back when it floats to the surface. If something goes wrong and it cracks when hitting the water, you would at least know where it is. The payload section would need a lot of reinforcement, but the mass penalty is definitely less than an airbag system. The question would be can you design a vehile to transition from air to water at 200+ miles per hour with minimum shock? Joe L. James McEnanly wrote: In the early manned space program, all of the capsules landed at sea. How well would a water landing work? --- Michael Turner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'm told they might have used the kind of balloons they used on the recent Martian landings, but that would have greatly increased the weight -- and therefore the cost -- of what was supposed to be a relatively inexpensive return system. But I bet they're rethinking that now. Maybe the balloon shock absorber idea could be turned upside down - you could cover the target zone with balloons. Hmm, that would be a large area. OK, how about this: when you figure out where the sample return capsule is going to land (to within a couple hundred meters), send planes to carpet-bomb that area with bombs that produce huge masses of foam for the capsule to plunge into. Let's see, if you engineer the capsule to withstand 20 g deceleration, and the capsule comes in at maybe 400 mph terminal velocity, straight down, and the foam can resist at 20 g, that's maybe only 60-70 ft of foam. Hmm, but that foam is probably styrofoam-stiff. Maybe no foaming process is fast enough. Well, then (yes, I *do* have a million half-back ideas, thank you for asking) if the foaming gases are shock-reactive, you might get good deceleration even with a lighter foam. Plus, the whole foam pad self-disposes by combustion before you can say environmentalist picketers. (Heat stress on the capsule? Yeah, but maybe no worse than what you get already with reentry.) Call it scorched-earth splashdown. Kinda crazy, but maybe not as crazy as trying to sift through a gazillion tiny shards of silicon and germanium to find a few that can still tell you something. And if Scorched Earth Splashdown cost $10 million a shot, well, this splat was a $260 million splat. Maybe it's worth experimenting with just as a backup to the James Bond Helicopter Retrieve. (And it would certainly be worthy of a scene from a James Bond movie if it worked.) OK, I'll go back to playing with matches now. -michael turner [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: - To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: Michael Turner [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent by: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 09/09/2004 09:04PM Subject: Re: the latest splat I was there in the hangar at Dugway Proving Grounds as we watched the capsule embed itself in the dry lakebed. My girlfriend works on the Genesis project at JPL and I was along as her guest. Gee, if I weren't married, I'd try to figure out what cafes to hang out in, around JPL ;-) It was a terribly sad moment, as you can imagine, and a long, sad afternoon. Through my girlfriend, I had met some of the key engineers and scientists involved. I saw that the project manager was on the verge of tears as he tried to answer reporters' questions about what had gone wrong. One scientist had been supporting the idea for 14 years, I believe he said, and some of the engineers had lived it with three or more years. One of the unfortunate things about this incident is that it casts a shadow over an the idea really sounds very sensible - it's just that the parachute system wasn't cooperating that day. Reentry survival equipment isn't really payload - it's just the last stage of the overall sample delivery system. Why design the craft itself for soft landings when it costs so much to send things into space? If some such soft-landing gear weighs, say, 100 lbs, the cost of retrieving by helicopter instead seems like it would be cost-competitive even for the lower range of launch costs. I work in publishing for the IEEE Computer Society. Sometimes, one of the magazines I help launch doesn't do as we hoped, so over a period of several months
Re: The Andromeda Strain (was Re: the latest splat)
Michael, Larry, et al., I didn't know that Jeff has apparently retired. That's how his articles are signed - he has at least retired from space science in some sense. Isn't he still on the faculty though? He writes a good article, but why he thinks there are no Mars meteorites is beyond me. Did he say that somewhere in the article? He does write: Or Mars life is constantly falling on Earth in the form of Martian meteorites without causing epidemics. But here, the strongest supportable paraphrase, in context, is: Zubrin believes that cross-contamination is impossible either because Martian life is too different, or Martian life has survived the trip through space to Earth already, and hasn't made a problem for us. You can believe in life on Mars but also hypthesize that any life there has a vanishingly low probability of making it to Earth from having been blasted off the Martian surface and sent here meteorically. You can also hypothesize that it COULD survive the trip, but happens to be in forms that aren't problematic - maybe the only likely candidates for transport are Martian subsurface organisms that have to be planted deeply on Earth to survive at all. That still leave the possibility that there might still be life on Mars that does represent some kind of risk to us all - life that might be more likely to survive sample return. There are plenty of good, solid scientific reasons to believe so, and I think Jeff is in a tiny minority here. Well, make sure that's what he believes, first. -michael turner [EMAIL PROTECTED] == You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Project information and list (un)subscribe info: http://klx.com/europa/
Re: the latest splat
Word is, it was a problem with the explosive-driven chute release system. Maybe it just got too hot from the sun, and the chemistry of the explosive went bad somehow. If it's the same chute system on Stardust, and if it's not related to solar proximity - well, somehow I don't think Sean O'Keefe is going to scramble a robotic mission to save Stardust. ;-) A NASA old-timer going back to well before it was NASA (Max Faget, I think) said something smart once: it's really hard to make something work only from the laws of chemistry and physics, but if you can, you generally should. Ablative shielding, for example, is not mechanical at all. But something like a two-stage parachute system, designed to trigger on reentry and not before, is mechanically and electronically complex. Yet it's hard to imagine anything simpler that would give you a decently low rate of descent in the lower atmosphere. I think the Russians lost a couple cosmonauts to chute system failure. -michael turner [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Original Message - From: Joe Latrell [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, September 09, 2004 6:51 AM Subject: Re: Latest News from the Astrobiology Magazine Yeah, but what of Stardust? It uses the same recovery technique. I sense a lot of engineers scrambling right about now. Joe L. Reeve, Jack W. wrote: Sorry Larry, et al. Genesis tunneled into the desert sand unimpeded by a parachute. It's a mess. *Jack W. Reeve* **-Original Message- *From:* LARRY KLAES [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] *Sent:* Wednesday 08 September 2004 16:11 *To:* setipublic *Cc:* BioAstro; europa *Subject:* Fw: Latest News from the Astrobiology Magazine - Original Message - *From:* Astrobiology Magazine mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] *To:* [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] *Sent:* Wednesday, September 08, 2004 5:33 AM *Subject:* Latest News from the Astrobiology Magazine Time to Collect the Corona http://www.astrobio.net/news/article1183.html If all goes as planned, the sample capsule from the Genesis spacecraft will be returning to Earth on Wednesday morning. The spacecraft has spent the past two years collecting the solar wind. Rebuilding the Biggest Building http://www.astrobio.net/news/article1182.html One of the world's largest buildings sustained damage over the weekend as hurricane Frances pounded a natural scar on the face of a manmade wonder. Florida's Space Coast has witnessed many launches designed specifically to study and predict the damaging effects of hurricanes--one of the few storms so large that it can best be viewed from orbit. Death Star Lookalike http://www.astrobio.net/news/article1181.html Saturn's satellite, Mimas, can be imaged from afar and imagined up close, but its striking resemblance to the fictional Death Star from Star Wars gives the most dramatic view of its violent past. Giving Up the Galactic Ghost http://www.astrobio.net/news/article1180.html While a terrestrial view of a galaxy might disguise the turbulent, changing mergers that fuel their formation, a famous cluster called Stephan's Quintet shows that seemingly immutable stars are always in flux. Wednesday, September 08 For more astrobiology news, visit http://www.astrobio.net To unsubscribe, send subject UNSUBSCRIBE to [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] == You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Project information and list (un)subscribe info: http://klx.com/europa/ == You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Project information and list (un)subscribe info: http://klx.com/europa/
Re: the latest splat
They keep showing that crash over and over again on TV. My 6-year old asked if there were people inside, so I said No, but I'm sure there are NASA engineers that could fit inside right now! Gary Word is, it was a problem with the explosive-driven chute release system. Maybe it just got too hot from the sun, and the chemistry of the explosive went bad somehow. If it's the same chute system on Stardust, and if it's not related to solar proximity - well, somehow I don't think Sean O'Keefe is going to scramble a robotic mission to save Stardust. ;-) A NASA old-timer going back to well before it was NASA (Max Faget, I think) said something smart once: it's really hard to make something work only from the laws of chemistry and physics, but if you can, you generally should. Ablative shielding, for example, is not mechanical at all. But something like a two-stage parachute system, designed to trigger on reentry and not before, is mechanically and electronically complex. Yet it's hard to imagine anything simpler that would give you a decently low rate of descent in the lower atmosphere. I think the Russians lost a couple cosmonauts to chute system failure. -michael turner [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Original Message - From: Joe Latrell [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, September 09, 2004 6:51 AM Subject: Re: Latest News from the Astrobiology Magazine Yeah, but what of Stardust? It uses the same recovery technique. I sense a lot of engineers scrambling right about now. Joe L. Reeve, Jack W. wrote: Sorry Larry, et al. Genesis tunneled into the desert sand unimpeded by a parachute. It's a mess. *Jack W. Reeve* **-Original Message- *From:* LARRY KLAES [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] *Sent:* Wednesday 08 September 2004 16:11 *To:* setipublic *Cc:* BioAstro; europa *Subject:* Fw: Latest News from the Astrobiology Magazine - Original Message - *From:* Astrobiology Magazine mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] *To:* [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] *Sent:* Wednesday, September 08, 2004 5:33 AM *Subject:* Latest News from the Astrobiology Magazine Time to Collect the Corona http://www.astrobio.net/news/article1183.html If all goes as planned, the sample capsule from the Genesis spacecraft will be returning to Earth on Wednesday morning. The spacecraft has spent the past two years collecting the solar wind. Rebuilding the Biggest Building http://www.astrobio.net/news/article1182.html One of the world's largest buildings sustained damage over the weekend as hurricane Frances pounded a natural scar on the face of a manmade wonder. Florida's Space Coast has witnessed many launches designed specifically to study and predict the damaging effects of hurricanes--one of the few storms so large that it can best be viewed from orbit. Death Star Lookalike http://www.astrobio.net/news/article1181.html Saturn's satellite, Mimas, can be imaged from afar and imagined up close, but its striking resemblance to the fictional Death Star from Star Wars gives the most dramatic view of its violent past. Giving Up the Galactic Ghost http://www.astrobio.net/news/article1180.html While a terrestrial view of a galaxy might disguise the turbulent, changing mergers that fuel their formation, a famous cluster called Stephan's Quintet shows that seemingly immutable stars are always in flux. Wednesday, September 08 For more astrobiology news, visit http://www.astrobio.net To unsubscribe, send subject UNSUBSCRIBE to [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] == You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Project information and list (un)subscribe info: http://klx.com/europa/ == You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Project information and list (un)subscribe info: http://klx.com/europa/ == You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Project information and list (un)subscribe info: http://klx.com/europa/
Re: the latest splat
I was there in the hangar at Dugway Proving Grounds as we watched the capsule embed itself in the dry lakebed. My girlfriend works on the Genesis project at JPL and I was along as her guest. It was a terribly sad moment, as you can imagine, and a long, sad afternoon. Through my girlfriend, I had met some of the key engineers and scientists involved. I saw that the project manager was on the verge of tears as he tried to answer reporters' questions about what had gone wrong. One scientist had been supporting the idea for 14 years, I believe he said, and some of the engineers had lived it with three or more years. I work in publishing for the IEEE Computer Society. Sometimes, one of the magazines I help launch doesn't do as we hoped, so over a period of several months, we get the bad news. That's tough enough, but it must be really wrenching to see your dreams come crashing down in a matter of seconds. (Incidentally, I understand that the Stardust material would withstand the kind of impact that shattered the silicon and germanium wafers in Genesis to smithereens. The Stardust material is an almost lighter-than-air foam. I forget the name, but I got to hold a piece when my 10-year-old daughter and I went to JPL's open house this summer.) -- Dick Gary McMurtry [EMAIL PROTECTED] t.hawaii.edu To Sent by: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] cc com Subject Re: the latest splat 09/09/2004 10:51 AM Please respond to [EMAIL PROTECTED] They keep showing that crash over and over again on TV. My 6-year old asked if there were people inside, so I said No, but I'm sure there are NASA engineers that could fit inside right now! Gary Word is, it was a problem with the explosive-driven chute release system. Maybe it just got too hot from the sun, and the chemistry of the explosive went bad somehow. If it's the same chute system on Stardust, and if it's not related to solar proximity - well, somehow I don't think Sean O'Keefe is going to scramble a robotic mission to save Stardust. ;-) A NASA old-timer going back to well before it was NASA (Max Faget, I think) said something smart once: it's really hard to make something work only from the laws of chemistry and physics, but if you can, you generally should. Ablative shielding, for example, is not mechanical at all. But something like a two-stage parachute system, designed to trigger on reentry and not before, is mechanically and electronically complex. Yet it's hard to imagine anything simpler that would give you a decently low rate of descent in the lower atmosphere. I think the Russians lost a couple cosmonauts to chute system failure. -michael turner [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Original Message - From: Joe Latrell [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, September 09, 2004 6:51 AM Subject: Re: Latest News from the Astrobiology Magazine Yeah, but what of Stardust? It uses the same recovery technique. I sense a lot of engineers scrambling right about now. Joe L. Reeve, Jack W. wrote: Sorry Larry, et al. Genesis tunneled into the desert sand unimpeded by a parachute. It's a mess. *Jack W. Reeve* **-Original Message- *From:* LARRY KLAES [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] *Sent:* Wednesday 08 September 2004 16:11 *To:* setipublic *Cc:* BioAstro; europa *Subject:* Fw: Latest News from the Astrobiology Magazine - Original Message - *From:* Astrobiology Magazine mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] *To:* [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] *Sent:* Wednesday, September 08, 2004 5:33 AM *Subject:* Latest News from the Astrobiology Magazine Time to Collect the Corona http://www.astrobio.net/news/article1183.html If all goes as planned, the sample capsule from the Genesis spacecraft will be returning to Earth on Wednesday morning. The spacecraft has spent
Re: the latest splat
I was there in the hangar at Dugway Proving Grounds as we watched the capsule embed itself in the dry lakebed. My girlfriend works on the Genesis project at JPL and I was along as her guest. Gee, if I weren't married, I'd try to figure out what cafes to hang out in, around JPL ;-) It was a terribly sad moment, as you can imagine, and a long, sad afternoon. Through my girlfriend, I had met some of the key engineers and scientists involved. I saw that the project manager was on the verge of tears as he tried to answer reporters' questions about what had gone wrong. One scientist had been supporting the idea for 14 years, I believe he said, and some of the engineers had lived it with three or more years. One of the unfortunate things about this incident is that it casts a shadow over an the idea really sounds very sensible - it's just that the parachute system wasn't cooperating that day. Reentry survival equipment isn't really payload - it's just the last stage of the overall sample delivery system. Why design the craft itself for soft landings when it costs so much to send things into space? If some such soft-landing gear weighs, say, 100 lbs, the cost of retrieving by helicopter instead seems like it would be cost-competitive even for the lower range of launch costs. I work in publishing for the IEEE Computer Society. Sometimes, one of the magazines I help launch doesn't do as we hoped, so over a period of several months, we get the bad news. That's tough enough, but it must be really wrenching to see your dreams come crashing down in a matter of seconds. I got out of software development because I got so sick of the typical 60-80% project failure rate. But at least I got to see some projects go to completion. I can't imagine what it must be like to see a project end up in splinters after a decade or more. It must be a little like watching a home you built burn down. (Incidentally, I understand that the Stardust material would withstand the kind of impact that shattered the silicon and germanium wafers in Genesis to smithereens. The Stardust material is an almost lighter-than-air foam. I forget the name, but I got to hold a piece when my 10-year-old daughter and I went to JPL's open house this summer.) Aerogel? -michael turner [EMAIL PROTECTED] == You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Project information and list (un)subscribe info: http://klx.com/europa/
Re: the latest splat
At 12:18 AM 9/10/2004 +0900, Michael Turner wrote: A NASA old-timer going back to well before it was NASA (Max Faget, I think) said something smart once: it's really hard to make something work only from the laws of chemistry and physics, but if you can, you generally should. You know how we always say, NASA would work better if it were still run by engineers? Well, Max Faget was one of the ones who ran it when it did. It's hard to get information on how Genesis worked. That project may have the worst of all the Newspeak NASA web sites that have emerged in the last several years. It seems to me though that since solar wind particles are atom-sized or at most molecules, then whatever caught them could be folded tightly (checked to see if that was done right before reentry) and hard-landed, just like it did, only it could have worked if that's how they planned it. Gregg == You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Project information and list (un)subscribe info: http://klx.com/europa/
