BlueHeronDruid wrote: 
Well, they are gone by now, so ... I hope you have better luck on your coast. I would have loved to have seen them.

 Antigone wrote: 
I think that may be the case here, too. Oh well. We had an accidental sighting a few nights ago - just walking on the beach, kinda gazing WNW, saw the light. "hobbitt, what's that?"



heh.

There's still something special about watching one "draft" the other.

Moderately thick cloud cover here so it's a no-see-um.

 GeneP59 wrote: 

You're kidding, right?

The total cost that has been sunk into what was originally meant to be an "economical" means for space travel for use by NASA, DOD, and commercial and scientific users is about $174 billion.  By comparison, Hubble's cumulative costs are estimated to be about $4.5-6 billion.  The life-cycle cost of Hubble's replacement , the JWST, is estimated to be in about the same neighborhood (somewhere around 5 billion).  It will be launched in a couple of years by an unmanned, expendable Ariane 5 launch vehicle at a cost of about $120 million.  So if there never had been a space shuttle program, the flaw in the Hubble could have been resolved by either building an entire replacement with corrected optics or advancing the development schedule of the JWST (let's say by doubling or tripling the budget to get those contractors to work fast) and you would have had enough money left over to launch another 12-14 space telescopes, providing over a century's worth of astronomical observations and data.

Like most tail-end baby boomers (or Tweeners or members of Generation Jones), I grew up a fan of Tom Swift, and was delighted with the success of Apollo 11.  The success of the Mars Rover, Galileo, and other unmanned missions has demonstrated conclusively that we don't need (and right now can't afford) the luxury of sending people unnecessarily into space to breath, vomit, pee and poop and monitor sensors and equipment that can more affordably be monitored from the earth.  In this era of unmanned drones or UAVs on the battlefield, it makes no sense to continue to send manned spacecraft onto the "battlefield" of the quest for extraterrestrial knowledge, no matter how romantic astronaut diapers are.

 GeneP59 wrote: 
Talking of plumbers in space......   apparently there is sufficient human waste in orbit now that it is becoming a hazard. Speculation on QI last night was that the real reason for the shuttle missions is to clean the muck of the Hubble's lens..... Visions of an astronaut with a bucket and a squeegy sticking his outstretched hand through the hatch "Quid, mate".

 aflanigan wrote: 
What about the Hubble repair/upgrade jobs?

That alone was worth it, and it was cheaper than getting a plumber out to my house.

Maybe, if Discovery takes on some skywriting contracts, we can actually point to something useful all the millions of dollars wasted on the manned space shuttle program has produced.

 BlueHeronDruid wrote: 
Maybe Middy and I will have to take a drive to the town park. From the house I think the view will be obstructed by houses and trees.

Thanks for the head's up!

Last chance to see Discovery in the sky, folks!

Tonight and tomorrow many of us will have the opportunity to see a double fly-over of the ISS and undocked shuttle. If you haven't seen it, it's worth putting your coat on and stepping outside. About 200 miles overhead, and traveling at 17,500 mph - anyway I still find it awe-inspiring.

Check out this NASA site or heavens-above.com (which doesn't seem to be working at the moment) to check it out. 

WTF-We go broke  beating up on Afghanistan just like they did, and now we are paying Russia to get taken into space? Is anyone in charge of this country? Anyone? Bueller? Bozo? Beavis? Invading Afghanistan just doesn't work. Never has. Never will. It's called history.

      If we'd just be nicer to the Asian countries the CIA wouldn't have to get their heroin from the Afghanistan area and we could leave the place.
*******************************************************************************************************************************************************
NASA is under presidential direction to turn over orbital trips to private business and
focus on expeditions to asteroids and Mars. Until private spacecraft are ready to start hauling
up space station crews, U. S. astronauts will have to continue hitching rides on Russian Soyuz capsules for a steep price.

A world wide wave as the International Space Station soars overhead

 

 Zep wrote: 
Wow.

Solar Transit of ISS and a docked Atlantis — 22 May 2010.


In the full-sized image, you can easily make out the shuttle docked to the left of the ISS central core.

Saw a great ISS pass last night, right overhead.
 
Looking forward to the next one at 19.30 UTC tonight.

The space station is about to coast down over California.
I don't know if it's dark enough yet to see it there.
http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/tracking/

Just came out of a briefing on this... Some quick notes:

first-ever accidental satellite collision
large debris field that is still being tracked and mapped
threat mostly to "high orbit" satellites (high inclination: e.g. polar orbiters)
iridium sat is a comm sat that has a polar orbit
iridium was the first-ever sat phone (mobile not cell technology)
other vehicle was decommissioned russian sat
no current threat to ISS, STS orbits
major threat to other sats
no threat to comm or wx sats
much of the debris is "high energy" which means it will be in orbit for a long time
backyard observers being asked to watch for debris reentry along original orbital path
debris field mostly travelling along both original orbital paths; some in new orbits
larger pieces will remain aloft longer
smaller pieces have lower inertia; their orbit will decay sooner
pieces in orbits ranging from 300 miles to 800 miles
iridium still undecided on seeking damages
iridium has a spare sat in orbit
iridium had the active sat and Russia the dead one - may go to adjudicating a settlement, if there is one
everybody agrees Something Must Be Done About Space Junk but nobody has time/money

Fascinating stuff. Russia reportedly warned this would happen.

February 12, 2009

When Satellites Collide: Iridium 33 Meets Kosmos 2251

Orbital debris expert Nicholas Johnson of the Johnson Space Center in Houston, was quoted by the Associated Press as saying that the Hubble Space Telescope and Earth-observing satellites which operate at higher orbits (and thus closer to the impact site) were at greater risk of damage from the debris cloud.

Story here.

 Beaker wrote: 
Wow. That is just beautiful.

 Beaker wrote: 
it doesn't even look real.  wow.

 Beaker wrote: