Did you answer it?

no, i just read it. and it had a good answer as i recall that would be relevant to sarah's question.

no, i found it, and i was mistaken. i remember it because i had to think about it, but the answers are short and not particularly explanatory of the orbital mechanics

@duzzy so you are doing your coursework through the summer too, are you? you mention homework. online course?

Yeah, I'm doing a trig refresher course at the local community college, and also doing my IT security degree online.

you're going into security too? geez, this place is lousy with you guys.

@briligg celestial mechanics is difficult to explain in language, it might be easier with dance notation :)

How do you capture things into orbit? Like this:

@briligg I chose the security emphasis because for that degree, the tuition also pays for several certifications, including CCNA routing & switching, and CCNA security.

oh, eventually there will be an adequate video demonstration.

is security a hot thing, or do you just need to know all the rest to do it?

Also, security is extremely important. In my opinion, regardless of what you do in IT, a strong understanding of security is vital.

Well, it's just very important to know.

Anything, from programming to web development, networking, sysadmin, management, anything... if you're in IT, you should have an understanding of security.

That's my opinion, at least.

Security and networking. Those are the two things I think everyone who works in IT should know... at least at a foundation level.

makes sense

@TildalWave that really is quite complex. i'm certainly having trouble sorting it out. i think i'd rather memorize how to program a burn.

@duzzy ah yes October, not August sorry

so 3 months later

hello everybody

@SpringLearner o/

@DavidFreitag o/ means?

@SpringLearner It's meant to symbolize me waving to you, the o is the head and the / is the outstretched arm.

@DavidFreitag thanks,i did not know that

looks like you dont participate in SO

last time you answered on may 9,14 that is a year back

that would probably be less time ago than my last post on SO

yup, Jul 13 '13

I win :)

if we dont get answers from you genious persons

then how can we solve our problem

SO doesn't really lack people ready to help

SO is somewhat of a monster...

SO has more and more users but still ...........

SO has lots of users, some rules, but it isn't really a community.

Hmmm, my work blocks SO chat, but not SE chat...

@PearsonArtPhoto sorry I did not understand what you mean

There are 3 chat servers run by Stack Exchange. One for SO, one for MSO (Not sure if it still exists...), and one for everything else.

My work allows this one (Generic SE), but not the SO chat.

my work .... what is your work?

I'd rather not say.

ok no problem

Okay, so MSO is now MSE, and MSE uses the generic SE chat server.

Not sharing allows me to say some things that I wouldn't otherwise be able to say.

ok

I will say that my previous company was a satellite company of some kind, and my current one is a defense (And other government) contractor.

@SpringLearner It is a matter of some guessing and speculation. SPECTRE has come up. UNCLE was thrown out as a possibility. Hydra is still in the runnning.

@geoffc ?????????????????????????????//

@SpringLearner Pearson's employers. As I said, it is a matter of much debate. He is very quiet on its nature. I think he is Dr. Evil personally.

@PearsonArtPhoto And protect you from detection by Bond, Powers, or Coulson.

ohh now I undestand

@SpringLearner Twas a joke.

I didnt know he is reffering to his actual work

@SpringLearner Or not referring to his actual work, as the case may be.

he said work so I thought its moderator work

More like referring to not working at my actual work, but...

@geoffc you know it's not really all that difficult to find out who he works for, it took me about 2 minutes to find out

I'm not saying it tho :)

Who I work for now, or who I worked for?

both

The company I used to work for might be guessable, but the one I work for now, if you knew it, I'd suspect you were spying on me;-)

Actually, I suspect you might know a way to figure it out, but...

not spying, it's just a matter of ruling out all the other options with the limited info you gave

BTW I don't spy on people, I don't even follow most of the things about my own life LOL

I'm in infosec but not that kind of infosec

sheesh - what to do when I get two great answers to the same question

I want to give one of these the accept, but right now I'm torn

@DigitalTrauma Use an rng.

@DavidFreitag :)

I can't even us the upvotes as a guide - there is is a difference of only one, which is too close to make a good call

I guess I'll leave it for a bit

Upvote both, accept the lower reputation user?

Most high reputation users would rather have an upvote than an accept.

@PearsonArtPhoto yes, I already upvoted

@PearsonArtPhoto And they're both in the top-10 all-time users :)

@DigitalTrauma I'd wait a bit and see what other answers you get. Sometimes, it takes a bad answer to help you decide which one of the good ones is better. And I wouldn't exclude the possibility of getting even more good ones either. There's a historic perspective that wasn't touched much yet.

@TildalWave yes, I think I'll wait-and-see on this one

it all basically starts with the mass and size of Soviet nukes (being much heavier than US ones)

Like almost all things in the Space Race do.

@TildalWave sounds like the start of another good answer :)

Redundancy and existing parts, that's the common threads.

there's a few excellent overviews of this by BBC if you can find them, one is a three part documentary titled "Space Race" and another is a one part "How Russia Won The Space Race"

@DigitalTrauma Pick me! Pick Me!

@DigitalTrauma I started writing it but I didn't have the time for it... maybe during the weekend, but can't promise (I'm researching something completely different now, about libration point stationkeeping)

problem with my research about pretty much anything space related is that I find everything so interesting I end up reading 20 other things at the same time

it would actually be easier if I did this professionally, then you're always running out of time and you're forced to focus

e.g. so I was researching Target Point and Floquet Mode stationkeeping methods, then all of a sudden I end up reading about Saros Series... borderline related, but it doesn't let you get back to where you came from, oh no not by a long shot, you then end up reading about the Metonic Cycle, and then about some BC calendars, history of astronomy, and so on :)

I'm glad you are researching the libration point stationkeeping, that sounds really interesting.

oh it is, invariant manifolds, monodromy matrix, weighted cost function,... I have so many questions now since I started reading that LOL

e.g. I know there's some invariant manifolds for L-points available that are a product of extremely costly computations done by NASA I think ... but I dunno for which points we have those... yet. It's on my list to find out.

I need the rep more. ;)

@RussellBorogove we could use some more questions today, and you asked some really good ones recently... that's rep too you know? :)

owww and I lost him :)) come back @Russell I'm not done with you!! :)))

lol!

hehe yeah I wanted to suggest there's ways to earn rep in even smaller steps of 2, but I then realized he's over that rep and can't suggest edits any more, they're applied immediately

@OrganicMarble say, could i ask you about a comment you made on a Q of mind that i never really understood?

Sure.

Remember the one about packing for the ISS? You said it was too broad, and i can't picture why. DeerHunter had already gotten me to make it more specific, so it seems to be a theme.

I think you asked like 1) what were the rules/allocations and 2) what do people actually take, plus more. It might be possible to find out the rules/allocations, but finding out what people actually take would be quite difficult (their personal articles). Those two things at least seemed to be 2 questions to me. But I'm pretty new at this.

Hm. It's just so closely related, and seemed like it wouldn't be too long an answer - but i don't know either.

It kinds of takes an actual person in the program to answer, i guess. I looked for examples and didn't find much.

You said once you had worked with the cosmonaut who was in the aborted Soyuz mission.

Yes, I was on the training team for STS-86, and he was a crewmember on that flight.

I guess considerations like these were a lot different back then?

No questions coming to mind today! I'm still waiting for someone to take my "Who Smelt It, Dealt It" lunar aromatic hypothesis seriously.

In regards to flying personal articles?

yeah. I did find a reference for that, that showed a sort of little bag each astronaut was allowed to fill, with specific dimensions.

@RussellBorogove i quite like that question :)

Yes, on shuttle it was pretty limited. I think it was called the Personal Preference Kit. If you were very lucky a crewmember would offer to fly something for you. One flew a little laminated copy of my diploma for me on STS-88. The articles had to be very small.

:D that's very cool.

I've gotten the feeling from elsewhere that a lot of what an astronaut / cosmonaut brings is as a favor to someone :)

I would say that's correct...there is probably lots of stuff like checklists, etc they can keep for their own souvenirs, if they care about such stuff.

Would Mikhail Kornienko and Scott Kelly be allowed to take more than usual?

I don't know much about ISS.

@RussellBorogove do you think maybe adding an edit to make clear Mark's answer is about monopropellant, and that you've now updated to clarify it is about hydrazine + oxidant would help?

The thing is these days taking personal effects is such a different matter - one good tablet has all the movies, books, games, and music you could want.

I'd rather not make the Q harder to read. It's frustrating that the only answer there is such a canard, though.

@briligg Are they limited to a certain amount of bandwidth for personal reasons?

Do they have Netflix on the ISS?

@RussellBorogove I don't know, it isn't very long. In fact, most of my interest in the question has to do with what lunar dust really smells like, which doesn't come from the title.

@duzzy oooo, go ask! :D

lol

There actually are a couple ways I'm thinking something like that could be asked. It actually made me curious about a couple things... but I have to go to school. I'll ask something about it in a few hours.

@OrganicMarble went and looked up STS-86. One of the Mir missions. Those must have been fascinating.

It was pretty crazy. The MIR computers started crashing all the time and the station would lose attitude control. A few days before the crew left for the Cape, they had a simulator session to see if docking with Mir was possible if it lost attitude control when they were just about to dock.