The Pod Bay - 2013-12-19

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Undo the Snowman

12:28 AM

Psst. @TildalWave.

1 hour later…

1:55 AM

hello @Everyone

okay then...

'ello

thought i'd explain why I left Space and Astro (despite having 1.8K and 3.3K rep respectively), without going into the gory details - I fet I was getting chased out of space and to a lesser extent astro... came to the realisation that I don't need to be in a place where I am potentially disrespected, nor do the sites need me... so thought as the questions and answers will still remain, I do not need to be (and probably best if I didn't).

I went quiet for 2 months as reallife was hell - including a second cancer scare for the year.... and moving house and job

Not fun. A dear friend reported yesterday his brother's suffered a relapse; it's spread to the maxilla

it's not fun at all - thankfully I have been cleared... but it did slam my motivation and such - including from these sites

I think some assumed other reasons for my absence and lack of activity

glad for you. motivation is a good word touse in context of relapse, or even it's shadow probably ; it didn't occur to me yesterday when I needed it.

2:10 AM

well, as I am no longer a member of space or astro, I am probably not welcome in the respective chats either

so I bid you good tidings and all that

Why do you think 'not welcome'? The rep you gained is proof of the respect you have from those communities

I have togo; start the day, and all. back later.

ciao

5 hours later…

7:29 AM

Live stream for the launch of Arianespace Soyuz 2-1B with Gaia space observatory is now available on ESA LIVE and ESA on LiveStream.com, including pre-launch video presentation of ESA's Gaia mission that will catalog a billion stars, promising to be a prolific discoverer of planets, asteroids and supernovas for generations of astronomers. Launch is set for 09:12 GMT (4:12 a.m. EST)

user image

Full stories on Spaceflight101, SpaceflightNow and ESA

1 hour later…

8:59 AM

We're live with the broadcast from French Guiana

T-8 min

liftoff

1st stage boosters separation complete

some nice cams

huge zoom IR cam now

9:16 AM

that's pretty

yup never saw that before like that

Chinese had something similar for Chang'e 3 launch tho

not as good zoom

approaching first Fregat burn

of two

@TildalWave what is a Fregat

18 more Ariane 5 were ordered to be built by Astrium

@RoryAlsop Fregat upper stage, it looks similar to Morpheus lander, with round tanks for propellants

Fregat (, frigate) is a type of rocket stage developed by NPO Lavochkin in the 1990s. Its main engine is a liquid propellant rocket that uses UDMH and N2O4 as propellants. Specifications The dry mass of a Fregat (as of October 2006) is 924 kg; with fuel the mass is up to 5350 kg. Current modification of the main engine has a specific impulse of 332 s and a thrust of 2018 kg. The reaction control system includes 12 engines, each having 5 kg thrust, 225 s Isp, using pure hydrazine, with mass up to 42 kg. Height: 1,500 mm, Diameter 3,350 mm, Fueled Mass: 6,415-6,535 kg., Firing Duration...

@TildalWave gotcha - I'm guessing they explained that on the audio

@RoryAlsop Not much, they're busy brainwashing us with whatever politicians have to say :)

now some industry news

9:29 AM

it looked like Ariane adverts almost?

OK we have some telemetry on the left

@RoryAlsop Yes, they've ordered 18 more, not sure what for but that seems that they're delaying Ariane 6, need to check

or they just managed to steal business from someone else

Sealaunch is in trouble a bit because it's too expensive, could be that

Interesting thing about Gaia is that it'll produce way more data that they'll be ever able to transmit back to Earth, so they'll have to cherry pick it and heavily compress

they expect about a 100 million CDs worth of data from it

will map about 1 billion stars (~ 1% of the Milky Way)

will be placed in Lissajous L2 orbit

so something like this

user image

I always called those L2 halo orbits, what's the difference?

Ah wiki answers... Lissajous orbit isn't periodic

some new transmission antenna tech, didn't quite catch what it is

two cameras have angular resolution of 10 microseconds

that's enough to see a 1 euro coin from Earth if it was placed on the surface of the Moon

will track movement of stars to try and prove the theory that Milky Way increases in size by cannibalizing smaller galaxies in its vicinity

uses 1000 MP sensors

OK what we saw, for those that missed it:

user image

The Fregat Upper Stage is now performing a re-orientation for Gaia spacecraft separation

separation completed successfully

now replay of the launch

from different cams

ESOC confirms acquisition of signal from Gaia AOS

9:58 AM

astrobites: The Changing Faces of Active Galactic Nuclei

posted on December 19, 2013 by Becky Smethurst

Has a multi-wavelength study of AGN across a large redshift range revealed that these energetic giants do not impact upon their host galaxy as significantly as previously thought?

10:33 AM

@TildalWave wow

@RoryAlsop hehe your sockpuppet hat :)

@TildalWave my sockpuppet beard, you mean

@RoryAlsop aye it's funny... especially knowing your luck with rep trains

or lack thereof

@TildalWave that reptrain wasn't even supposed to happen. It was a joke question to get a hat...

I still dunno exactly what means that an orbit is "quasi-periodic"?

10:38 AM

and then I thought I might as well answer it to get another hat. I could have answered it straight away and got more votes

@TildalWave quasi = kinda-like

@RoryAlsop I know :) Some interesting answers tho

@RoryAlsop I know what it means in Latin :P I mean, I can't imagine it

that may help

this one is better:

@TildalWave Oooh - I like the way one of those electrons never passes between the other two

cool, so in a sense, it is periodic, it only has more than one axis?

@TildalWave I think some of the Lorentz attractor graphs can also be quasi-periodic

hey - what's that cool hat you have?

@RoryAlsop Archaeologist

10:45 AM

oh, of course

Indiana Jones

winterbash2013.stackexchange.com/archaeologist

do you like my bow

@RoryAlsop yup :)

:-)

I think that is the only way to wear it on my mask

:-)

looks silly either way

@RoryAlsop hmmm ... not really, I liked your "sockpuppet" and "boater"

@RoryAlsop that's the point isn't it? :D

10:46 AM

@TildalWave yeah the boater was nice

I think I need to wear the 42 hat - they made one for my age :-)

@RoryAlsop hehehe yes your age is the answer to all of it :P hey you have the "before it was cool" hat

not that I have any clue how to get those

@TildalWave heh - yep

was a bit of work to get that one

@RoryAlsop how do you get it?

by being one hoopy frood who really knows where his towel is.

@RoryAlsop I'm not sure I have one

10:50 AM

@TildalWave that line works better with my edit

nope :(

try a lower number of upvotes and see what happens

it may need an upvote afterwards too, not sure

@RoryAlsop OK, will do

ping me if you need an upboat

@RoryAlsop I don't have many questions at all, only 2 on secse and here they're not so upvoted

10:55 AM

may be a tricky one then :-)

could I add a new tag to secse named "defalcation" that would be there for all the money theft schemes like skimming, or is that already represented in "fraud" well enough?

This article is about the financial crime. For the bodily process, see Defecation. A defalcation is an amount of funds misappropriated by a person trusted with its charge; also, the act of misappropriation, or an instance thereof. The term is more specifically used by the United States Bankruptcy Code to describe a category of bad acts that taint a particular debt such that it cannot be discharged in bankruptcy. Defalcation occurs when a debtor commits a bad act while acting in a fiduciary capacity. The classic example of defalcation is when a trustee recklessly invests trust funds and l...

therre may be a range of tags that don't survive into the new year...

:-)

yeah... plus if it would be used it'd need loads of synonyms otherwise who'd know what it means LOL

meh, I won't push it just for a hat, seems wrong

@RoryAlsop I found one here that only had one tag before, so I added a few more... plus it has an answer from The Big Bear :) space.stackexchange.com/questions/930/…

upvoted

let's see if that works

@RoryAlsop thanks! :)

I need to think of new questions, seems we're really being hit badly by December :(

11:10 AM

@TildalWave it does that to most sites - the usage graph just plummets - especially on any that could come under academic - guessing space is partially in that category

@RoryAlsop It is, especially to me more interesting questions are of that type, and Aviation.SE went to private beta so some might be busy there from our regulars too, dunno

the good thing is - it picks up in January

@RoryAlsop yup, goes back to normal then... decembers are by far the worst, check these stats for example quantcast.com/p-c1rF4kxgLUzNc?country=GLOBAL (drag the start date slider to say 2012, you'll see huge dips on decembers

1 hour later…

12:53 PM

What?!?! How is it I don't get any new hats?

2

there you go

Smacks of partiality to me

2

sniffle

go on, put on your new snow hat

Where? It's not appeared on me dash-board yet

hmmm - wonder how long it takes

maybe it needed a couple of them there stars

12:56 PM

Ah

Wheeee!!!

Do I have to leave for the change to reflect?

Nope ... weird

I heard the UK is experiencing unusually warm weather ... ?

@Everyone snow here this morning

so not that warm

Hmm. Who was it mentioned 0C? Brb. Sir Dumpty is hungwy

1 hour later…

2:20 PM

Videos! Band-width hogs!

pouts

but ty

@TildalWave The closing paragraph begs the question

@Everyone which one?

On your DSN question? Well, it's kinda tricky to answer, because they can be managed differently at each station. They have different hardware... and some might be suitable, some not... or some might be operational, some not. And so on... but yes, if you're asking if they do the "dance", they do. Slow tracking, and then relatively fast "reset" of their initial position. There's many such time lapse videos online, pretty cool

2:45 PM

Back. Sorry. Sir Dumpty wanted to play (+:

How about acquisition time? i.e.

How frequently does a DSN station lose the header on a signal and have to wait for it to be cycled?

3:15 PM

Packet loss? Dunno, probably not much with all the ECC and whatnot redundancy built into comms these days. And you can have multiple antennae too, so plenty of redundancy if it's needed. I've seen some document somewhere regarding acceptable packet loss rate, but I can't search for it now... don't have the time

3:31 PM

NASA Image of the Day: Goldstone's Antenna Tracks Spacecraft

posted on December 19, 2013

Late night in the desert: Goldstone's 230-foot (70-meter) antenna tracks spacecraft day and night. This photograph was taken on Jan. 11, 2012. The Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex, located in the Mojave Desert in California, is one of three complexes that comprise NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN). The DSN provides radio communications for all of NASA's interplanetary spacecraft a…

3:42 PM

hahaha ^ how convenient :)

BTW here's a replay video of the Soyuz / Gaia launch: spaceinvideos.esa.int/Videos/2013/12/Gaia_launch_-_Lift-off

4:21 PM

who needs the winter is coming hat!!

4:39 PM

@TildalWave What the ... You got some pull with the exchange? How did those antenna tracks get posted just now??

@Everyone I haz connexiones

and you got a better answer there too, mine was ... meh

Mark's? Yep; just going through it. It complements your answer

Pity I can't accept both, but it's early days yet (+;

@JohnB everyone here need to get it, so star at least one post from anyone.... so the site gets more hats :)

Wait a minute. I'm the one that needs the hat; why should @John star a post from anyone instead?

you've got yours! quit hogging them all

4:44 PM

@Everyone because you can get the same hat on multiple sites and it counts for the site-wide hats statistics ... we're competing with all other sites who's the coolest / silliest :P

I'm not hogging! I just want my hat! Why should Anyone get my hat?

@Everyone draw your own then :P

@Everyone if you want, I can make you a hat, but later

Not the point. Why should he star a post from Anyone, and give Anyone my hat? Let Anyone get his own hat; I don't mind - but I'm not giving him/her mine, period.

I think this new hat fits me nicely

I like the Indiana Jones one the most so far

suits me well I think

Undo the Snowman

5:05 PM

The more I look at it, Mark Adler is probably our Jon Skeet.

He'll pass me within a week or two.

(me going on a vacation this week doesn't help, either)

(starring those so you get hats, not for spite or anything... :P)

Undo the Snowman

Heh

Hat fraud.

You're typing through your hat

Undo the Snowman

@Everyone Gah!

I don't even have a hat, I have horns!

(or at least one horn, with a couple of ears)

Ehrm.

:D

Heh

Undo the Snowman

5:15 PM

Is it bad that when I read this answer, I misread this portion:

Not my fault; it begged the question (+:<

Undo the Snowman

> These days you're going further than just online behavior. Shops know what you buy in what amounts, because nobody buys all the same brands you are getting fingerprinted constantly. This is used for targeted advertising, but it can also theoretically be used to track you.

To say:

> These days you're going further than just online behavior. Shog knows what you buy in what amounts, because nobody buys all the same brands you are getting fingerprinted constantly. This is used for targeted advertising, but it can also theoretically be used to track you.

Happens to me all the time; esp nowadays that I'm a little hard of hearing

@MarkAdler Assuming the target space-craft is far enough for communication to be necessarily asynchronous, does the space-craft transmit in a loop until it receives an acknowledgement? How is any signal lost during lock acquisition reconstructed?

Undo the Snowman

@Everyone I've never seen Mark in here.

I think he's smarter than us.

He just visits the site for 15 minutes a day, uses his amazing knowledge to post a bunch of amazing answers, and then gets back to work

I think he's more interested in the QA part, rather than the moderationy part.

I've seen him close really bad questions and occasionally vote to delete NAA's, but that's about it.

@Undo I'm guessing the chat-engine will dump it into his inbox (+:

He's definitely smarter than me; I only know how to ask inane questions - he knows how to answer them.

Undo the Snowman

5:25 PM

@Everyone Nope. You could go make a new chatroom and ping me. If I've never been in it, the chat thingy won't dump it in my inbox.

Uh oh

@UndotheSnowman you realize that most of us in the room can see deleted posts, right? :D

Undo the Snowman

@TildalWave Yes...

@UndotheSnowman hehe

Undo the Snowman

What's wrong with that?

5:26 PM

nothing ...

cough

@Tilda She/he only wanted to make sure I don't get any ideas in the future

Undo the Snowman

jumps to 10k tools

( I think )

@Everyone she?

@TildalWave I may be wrong ...

brb; need to change

and my ears are itchy

Undo the Snowman

5:27 PM

hehehe

you're gonna slip into something more comfortable?

while we discuss sex of our members?

that seems wrong ...

Undo the Snowman

It does...

@UndotheSnowman and you ... where did you get the horn? :))))

Undo the Snowman

@TildalWave Not sure.

I got it on SO.

Unlike everyone else getting it on mSO.

secret hat?

Undo the Snowman

5:29 PM

@TildalWave Yeah.

@TildalWave Poke around my SO profile if you want, I got it yesterday.

@UndotheSnowman well it's named "I see your point" so I'd guess it's got something to do with upvoting, probably on comments too?

Undo the Snowman

@TildalWave I would assume so... but I didn't really do anything on SO. I was reviewing close votes and cleaning up xcode. I didn't even leave more than about two comments.

or maybe editing an answer after a comment on it that you upvoted?

Undo the Snowman

I certainly didn't do that.

hmmm

Undo the Snowman

5:32 PM

Or wait...

@TildalWave Make a comment on one of my space.se posts.

You might be right.

(try to find one that needs editing)

and funny enough I now found one question I didn't even see before

must be the acronym :P

Undo the Snowman

There. Edited.

@TildalWave Now we wait.

OK now I'll also upvote

@UndotheSnowman I delete my comment or you wanna flag it as obsolete or we wait or what?

Undo the Snowman

I hope this works...

@TildalWave Let's wait.

It's kinda funny.

There, I've replied to it. Maybe that's the other thing needed.

I wonder how many will google for WAAD :D

Undo the Snowman

5:38 PM

Hehehe

it's really funny that I found one questions I didn't even vote on before

I really didn't have much time this week it seems

Back

I still have more votes on questions than we even have questions :)

Undo the Snowman

@TildalWave You... what?

There ought to be a hat for that

5:40 PM

> Voted on: 956 questions

Undo the Snowman

@TildalWave Wow.

kicks self for not voting more

Of course, as always (+; it's possible you're talking through your hat

Oh funny, that's how many questions we now have

there must be more I missed then

@Undo We can always do that for you

Undo the Snowman

@Everyone Yeah, but I prefer to do it myself for quality assurance purposes.

5:43 PM

@Undo We can set the bench-mark for your quality; even set several bench-marks as per demand

Undo the Snowman

hah

Still no hat, @TildalWave

D:

hehe

OK I voted on 957 questions and I have 37 questions of my own

and we have 956 questions in total

so 38 were deleted or migrated

but not before I voted on them :P

no question escapes!

http://space.stackexchange.com/questions/2611/how-do-astronauts-battle-loss-in-blood-volume-in-microgravity
Does that mean astronauts pass urine more frequently in micro-gravity whilst they adjust?

Undo the Snowman

sigh

I need to vote more.

5:51 PM

If there were a "Don't want to vote on this question" button up there, you could vote to abstain

Undo the Snowman

I want that button.

Eh?

Undo the Snowman

A no vote button

Right now I'm plowing through the new questions list, voting on each one.

Me too; 'cept I'm not ploughing

Undo the Snowman

...And I've used all my votes except for three.

6:03 PM

nini

what on eath is the matter with gmail? I've logged out ages ago, and it still says i'm signed in!

Undo the Snowman

@Everyone You have to send them a letter saying you want to be logged out.

But that's what the 'logout' button is for

Undo the Snowman

Yes.

But the logout button is just a placebo.

Oh

Undo the Snowman

You need to send Google a letter saying this:

6:10 PM

ugh. I just ht the 'cant keep eyes open' level

what letter?

Undo the Snowman

@Everyone I'm typing it.

must sleep; leave it in me inbox please

Undo the Snowman

> Dear Google,

> I have attempted on multiple occasions to log out of my account. These have failed. I would like to formally request that you log me out of my account.

> As a security measure, my birth certificate, driver's license, and credit card are enclosed. These identify me as me.

> Thanks,

> Everyone

@Everyone ^

I'm half tempted to try it, actually.

6:23 PM

@UndotheSnowman you're on a questions voting frenzy?

Undo the Snowman

@TildalWave Was. Now I'm almost out of votes (I save a few back)

@UndotheSnowman I did add an answer to one of your questions you know? :P

Undo the Snowman

@TildalWave Where's my ping?

Grrr

Oh hey, there it is!

I've become too popular.

@UndotheSnowman ah you too? yeah... dunno, it did work before but I also saw (or didn't see, better said) that it didn't

Undo the Snowman

when I wake up I have like 6 things in my inbox and I inevitably miss one.

6:27 PM

@UndotheSnowman well, you had me worried

joking

Undo the Snowman

click Have some meaningless Internet points!

click T click H click A click N click K click S click !

Undo the Snowman

hehehe

well, about the questions ... I thought it's a bit strange asking how many "Near Earth Missions" does "Deep Space Network" support :)

it's a bit like killing a mosquito with a cannon

sure, you can... but WHY??? :D

poor mosquito

Undo the Snowman

@TildalWave Well... it did say it did on the DSN page.

6:34 PM

@UndotheSnowman Ah yes... I think they offload now and then, but NEN was under development then, this likely changed by now. They did use it to communicate with ISS and Hubble I think

Undo the Snowman

Ahh

it now has way more tracking locations than DSN

it's just cheaper so, and you can use DSN hardware for what it was built for while using smaller sites and easier to operate and maintain hardware for near-Earth comms.

plus, most of NEN is actually contractors

Undo the Snowman

makes sense

NASA has about 4 NEN sites of their own, rest are just contractors throughout the world. So they get better coverage of the skies with smaller and cheaper equipment. More for less ;)

some pages of DSN are annoying, they still have that Netscape design and they seem to have been updated last when Netscape was still cool too

Undo the Snowman

hehe

6:45 PM

check this one, then try to open a link to their own landing page at the end: deepspace.jpl.nasa.gov/advmiss/index.html

under RELATED WEB SITES, click on " Deep Space Network (DSN)"

Undo the Snowman

> Last Updated: September 20, 2012

@UndotheSnowman yeah what? they changed the name and email of the contact?

most links to documents are from 2008-2010

Undo the Snowman

7:02 PM

Heh

7:55 PM

0

Q: Collection of space exploration related infographics

Infographics can be quite convenient sometimes, collating information from multiple sources and/or describing complex concepts in easy to understand and often visually pleasing way. Problem is, there is many of them and I find it difficult to remember where I saw some that I might later want to u...

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Dec '1319

The Pod Bay

General discussion for space.stackexchange.com. Check our sche...

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