spacetoday.net: Ares 1 vibration worries eased
Uh, yea. The vibrations aren’t strong enough to cause problems but they are looking into shock absorbers both on the engine and even on the seats. If the problems are severe enough for the seats to need vibration damping, what is gonna be the effect on EVERYTHING else thats on board? Something tells me that there is more to this that they are trying to gloss over.
The links to newspaper articles give a LOT more info on both the problem and the proposed solutions. Seems the same general type of oscillations caused one of the early unmanned Saturn V test rockets to fail.
ATV Jules Verne automated ship docks to the ISS
ATV Jules Verne, the European Space Agency’s first resupply and reboost vehicle, has successfully performed a fully automated docking with the International Space Station (ISS). This docking marks the beginning of Jules Verne’s main servicing mission to deliver cargo, propellant, water, oxygen and propulsion capacity to the Station, as well as ESA’s entry into the restricted club of the partners able to access the orbital facility by their own means.
Getting closer to Skynet every day… 🙄 😉
Boomerang works in space: Japanese astronaut
I’m assuming this was inside the space station rather than outside.
Ignition of third ion engine boosts asteroid probe – space – 24 August 2007 – New Scientist Space
Glad to see that they are still working on getting it back. Only a bit over 2.5 years to go to see if it caught anything.
Relativity drive: The end of wings and wheels? – fundamentals – 08 September 2006 – New Scientist Tech
Shades of Sci-Fi! I’ve read several stories over the years that delve into something simular. Still got to read the paper. Interesting stuff for sure!
New Scientist Technology Blog: Spaceflight on the cheap
I remember a russian SciFi story (can’t remember the name though) where the people launched rockets off of high altitude balloons to get to an (almost) abandoned space station and then boosted it back into orbit. Wish I could remember the name of the story now. There was a russian cosmonaut on board that had suffered such bone and muscle degeneration that he couldn’t go back to earth and was gonna die when the station deorbited.
Love these bits and pieces of memory…
Glad to see this anyway. Suspect the FAA and probably NASA will move in to stop this on the grounds of national security or something equally lame.
ESA Portal – SMART-1 maps its own impact site
This mosaic of images, obtained by the Advanced Moon Imaging Experiment (AMIE) on board ESA’s SMART-1 spacecraft, shows the SMART-1 landing site on the Moon.
Interesting article explaining a bit about how and why. Good stuff!
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