The Pod Bay

kim holder

00:02

oh. well, i have no further ideas as to how to find it... there doesn't seem to be a way to look at all messages by one user, so if you don't have a clear sense of something that was said then, there is no way to find it other than just scrolling up : /

LocalFluff

04:43

Are there recordings of moon walkers describing their experiences on in the Moon's low gravity personally? As in trivial "everyday" details and emotions they noticed related to how things move and how the body feels.

Antzi

06:50

@kimholder How did that question turned into a buch of comment mixing up sexisme harassment and feminism issues ?

SF.

13:35

Russia Is Building a Nuclear Space Bomber. I wonder about the tech details.

XKCD

The SpaceX system carefully guides falling phones down to the surface, a process which the phones increasingly often survive without exploding.

SF.

Why does XKCD keep posting right after I do?

called2voyage

13:56

@Antzi I'm not sure, didn't see anything in the deleted comments. I cleaned up the thread.

Hohmannfan

"SpaceX impact protection: When dropped, phone lands on barge."

called2voyage

@Hohmannfan The dog whistle next to the sub woofer is funny too

Hohmannfan

The alt-text builds more on the SpaceX reference as well.

called2voyage

@Hohmannfan Can you copy here? I'm on my phone

Hohmannfan

alt="The SpaceX system carefully guides falling phones down to the surface, a process which the phones increasingly often survive without exploding."

called2voyage

14:01

I guess that should be xkcd phone 4 beta

Hohmannfan

Meh. If it compiles, it is ready for full release.

geoffc

@Hohmannfan That was a good Alt text.

RTLS mission Monday night! Woo Hoo! Day landing at LZ-1 would be cool, but night landings are cooler. You can see it coming from farther away.

Anyone watch Hans Konigsmann speech at NEAF?

Hans Koenigsmann | SpaceX, Exploration through Innovation | NEAF Talks

►

He was VERY good.

kim holder

14:15

@Antzi what? did i miss some fun?

called2voyage

14:37

@kimholder Check the deleted comments of your answer about managing the iss without America.

kim holder

@called2voyage oh. Hah, that's sort of sweet :)

i don't push for others to use the gender neutral, and i often use manned myself just out of sheer habit.

i sort of wish i could respond. i feel bad when people feel they need to be extra careful. and unfortunately even raising the subject still tends to lead to a long debate about it. i understand why you felt it better to delete the comments.

called2voyage

@kimholder Yeah, I knew that which is why I deleted the tangential conversation. I don't know how David got off on that, lol.

@kimholder Undelete one of David's comments and reply. You can move it to chat after you're done.

kim holder

@called2voyage i have been the flag-waver on this issue. i was the person who got manned changed to crewed in the tag list. after a bit of an argument with T - which was fine.

in fact i teased him about it at the slightest chance afterwards. :]

called2voyage

@kimholder I agree that in the context of tags it should be that way.

Phiteros

15:11

If any of you have any fancy VR gear, this may be for you:
http://www.airspacemag.com/daily-planet/vr-look-inside-juno-spacecraft-180959784/?no-ist

kim holder

16:12

@SF. gee, i hope that is just posturing...

Hohmannfan

Is saying that a spacecraft is 'manned' a problem? What kind of alien world is this?

called2voyage

@Hohmannfan Yes and no. No, there is no problem for us to say "manned". However, in the interest of public relations, there is very little harm done in using "crewed" for tags instead of a word which may be perceived as sexist.

kim holder

@Hohmannfan it's an inclusion thing. the idea is that when language is used that references one group to mean everyone, other groups are implicitly excluded, and this has a background impact that helps maintain marginalized groups on the margin.

using an alternative is a proactive step. So saying 'manned' isn't a problem, but if terms can be used that include everyone, it actively helps.

called2voyage

16:30

@Hohmannfan And to address a question you might have, yes, historically "man" originated as a word for human, and is still used that way, but these days since calling males weremen is out of fashion, "man" has been strongly associated with males, which presents an inclusion problem.

I find it incredibly ironic that the modern pronunciation of "woman" is closer to wereman (male human) than the origin of woman (wyfman - female human)

Hohmannfan

I am still unfamiliar with this language, and still looking out for pitfalls. I was just surprised that the terminology is this case was an issue. Do not worry though, my moral is in many cases very questionable, but I am not of the excluding type.

kim holder

todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/08/…

@called2voyage oh cool, i didn't know that :)

> Interestingly, the word ‘men’, meaning “to think” or “to have a cognitive mind”, was also gender neutral and connected to “man”, which meant “the thinker”. So we can see from that how “man” originally referred to all humans.

Hohmannfan

I speak the Southern Sami language. There are actually not different words for "he" and "she" in third person, everybody is "dihte".

called2voyage

@Hohmannfan Oh if only English had a non-awkward option as such.

Hohmannfan

The word for human/man is "almetje", related to the word for the sky/heaven ("elmie"). It kind of means "children of the sky".

called2voyage

16:44

@Hohmannfan I'm an eighth Finnish in heritage, by the way. I sadly don't know very much about Finnish culture.

Or Sami

Hohmannfan

@kimholder Nice webpage! I like this button the most:

kim holder

Ha - clicking that worked out well for me

> Perhaps the most unusual and famous custom attributed to Gagarin though is the one that involves urinating all over the bus that takes you to the Baikonur Cosmodrome, more specifically, it’s right rear wheel. Gagarin is said to have done exactly this shortly before climbing into the Vostok 1

todayifoundout.com/index.php/2016/04/…

Phiteros

wat

And I thought the whole JPL Mission Control peanuts thing was quirky

called2voyage

@Phiteros What about the "Attitude Adjustment instrument":

38

Q: What's the baseball bat for? (seen in CRS-8 berthing NASA TV broadcast)

Watching the CRS-8 Berthing live broadcast on NASA TV I noticed a baseball bat resting on top of a console in the front left part of the room, so I took some screenshots. Looking closer, it seems to be about a meter or two away from a large, delicate-looking model of the International Space Stat...

Sorry, "Attitude Control Device"

Phiteros

17:01

Nope, I'd say that the Gagarin one is still the weirdest.

called2voyage

@Phiteros I agree, I meant compared to peanuts.

Phiteros

Hmmm, but as far as I can tell, the ACD is just there as a kind of joke, whereas the peanuts are integral for mission success.

called2voyage

@Phiteros :)

Hohmannfan

I agree. There is a difference between a joke and carefully engineered spiritual rocket science.

3

Phiteros

I mean, without the peanuts, Curiosity might have crashed. After all, they were integral in the success of the Ranger missions.

geoffc

18:05

2

No reason, just think it is funny.

Phiteros

18:58

jwst.nasa.gov/webcam.html

Party at Goddard right now

imgur.com/jaOvyBn

Oh, they're raising the mirror up right now

kim holder

oh wow - that's cool!

Phiteros

19:22

They must be testing it or something. I wonder what exactly they're doing.

kim holder

called2voyage

@kimholder Don't drop it!

kim holder

i must admit, i immediately thought that too

Phiteros

Now they've got one of those little elevator carts raised

Phiteros

19:55

They turned it around and now we can see the back.

Phiteros

20:30

Awww

I am reading the paper on the JunoCam, and evidently it is only expected to last for 3 months into the science mission.

kim holder

well, they might feel there might not be enough targets of interest to amateurs that they can image well?

Phiteros

No, it has to do with the radiation degradation

kim holder

ahh. yes, of course

Phiteros

JunoCam wasn't very high priority, since Juno is spinning, and it has to be mounted with a view to the outside. So it did not receive too much emphasis, and they expect it to only function for ~3 months.

They expect it to last through 8 orbits. Each perijove pass takes 2 hours, and it takes 1 photo per minute. That means that we'll probably get at least 960 photos

More, assuming it takes pictures at times other than just the perijove pass.

kim holder

20:45

sure. and you might as well take as many as you can. as long as bandwidth isn't an issue, which maybe it is...

i imagine it is, especially since the science instruments have to have top priority

but maybe when it is far out, there is time to catch up because there isn't anything really to do

Phiteros

From Wikipedia:
"Due to telecommunications constraints, Juno will only be able to return about 40 megabytes of camera data during each 11-day orbital period. This photography downlink average data rate of less than 337 bit/s will limit the number of images that are captured and transmitted during each orbit to somewhere between 10 and 100 depending on the compression level used."

SF.

@kimholder: I'm not worried about them dropping the bomb on anyone (or at least on anyone who doesn't deserve to have it dropped). On the other hand, I'd be definitely happy to see return of nuclear technology to space. Maybe finally we'll see reactor-powered ion crafts.

Phiteros

@SF. I am not so sure about that last bit; it seems that the only relevance nuclear technology has to do with that spacecraft is in its capability of dropping bombs.

SF.

@Phiteros: Ion engines are awesome but too power-hungry to run anything heavier than a small probe. With a reactor in space we could see something like Hermes from The Martian becoming a reality - a fully reusable (non-landing) interplanetary shuttle.

Or get NTR un-mothballed and use it as propulsion for asteroids.

kim holder

21:01

yeah, that would indeed be great. but the article did sound like the only nuclear thing would be the bomb on board.

SF.

The craft is quite useless from technical progress viewpoint, but it breaches an old political crust.

The whole treaty about nuclear stuff in space was written precisely to prevent this kind of thing from happening, and simultaneously froze almost all non-military space use of nuclear power.

This thing renders the treaty null and void.

It's not sneaking something in through fine print or pleading a minor exception. It's a frontal blow - with nukes in space nobody will even frown at reactors in space.

Phiteros

Yeah, but it's them breaking a treaty and doing something which could resort in the militarization of space, as well as a dangerous new arms race.

SF.

Militarization of space happens whether we like it or not. Arms race still progresses, but tensions are much lower, there are no more twitchy hands on the buttons - it was all a game of finding loopholes in the treaties so far.

And it's not going to stop the civilian progress, but bolster it.

Phiteros

According to This Week @NASA, we can expect the first high resolution pictures from JunoCam on August 27

or thereabouts

@SF. Granted, there will be weapons in space at some point, whether we like it or not. But we have to ask ourselves: Are we ready for that yet? Is the current political climate one which would be able to deal with such a development calmly and peacefully? Or would it result in a crisis that, really, all of us would rather avoid?

SF.

Arms race is already past the point where its level mattered - we're completely assured to die if it comes to launching the nukes. It's now just changing how quickly and thoroughly we're obliterated, a completely aesthetic point. But the race is on, as no side can afford falling behind - and that means technological progress.

kim holder

21:16

i don't think it would play in the public's mind that way though

and they decide policy on this ultimately

at least in western democracies

Phiteros

http://jwst.nasa.gov/webcam.html
They've driven one of the elevator carts up to the mirror now.

SF.

Oh, of course the general public - at least of the West - won't be happy about it. But what can they do? Express outrage? put sanctions on Russia?

The most likely response is "we need to one-up them."

Phiteros

True. But, at least in the US, the current political climate is not one that is very open to doing so in a scientific fashion.

SF.

@Phiteros: what other recourse do they have?

Phiteros

Military.

I mean, we're currently facing a possible election race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Neither of which has proven themselves to be friendly to NASA.

SF.

21:23

Sure the US science suffers currently. Putin exploits that weakness, puts pressure on USA to shift its funds back from extended military operations back into R&D which will take time and money to restore back to former glory.

Military, as in 'bomb Russia'?

Phiteros

Yes, but I find it unlikely that either administration would choose to put money into R&D, but would prefer to just spend more money on the military.

I do not know what a military recourse would be.

But America is in the unfortunate position of having a public who thinks that NASA receives too much money. They do not understand the scientific and technological returns, and do not realize that NASA only gets less than 0.5% of the budget.

SF.

So, the administration would put money into producing more of obsolete equipment? The North Korea strategy?

Phiteros

They see money spent on exploring space as money wasted.

I would imagine that one possible thing would be a revitalization of programs designed to defend against nuclear bombs and missiles. Expansion of the Air Force and development of new fighter planes. Enhancement of our drone program

SF.

NASA doesn't need to receive more money. NASA will just put the finishing touches on what govt contracts Lockheed-Martin or Boeing for.

Phiteros

But likely new space programs would be low on the list.

I don't deny that that is the route to go. I simply think that the American people will not see it that way.

Page 11 of this report on JunoCam - evidently it will have an opportunity to get some photos of the Galilean moons. We're looking at 4 opportunities for Io, 3 for Europa, 2 for Ganymede, and 2 for Callisto.
https://www.missionjuno.swri.edu/pub/e/downloads/JunoCam_Junos_Outreach_Camera.pdf

SF.

21:32

Programs like Mars mission or Moon base or new deep space probes will be put on hold, but new propulsions, new navigation systems, these will flourish.

Breakthrough Starshot may get a green light. A mighty laser in orbit and tiny miniature spacecraft that if able to survive reentry, would make for great spy systems?

Phiteros

If the public allows the government to spend money on it. I don't doubt your reasoning, and, while I would prefer it if the Russians were just bluffing, I hope that it would work out as you say. It's just that, as an American, my view of the American public is rather low.

^and the American government.

SF.

The public will do what gets a favorable presentation. Remember, the American public had funded Al Quaida.

Phiteros

Yes. But I likewise mistrust the mainstream media in this case. As you say, remember that the American public funded Al Quaida.

SF.

Give it a positive spin, and the public will swallow it.

They currently don't, because science is given the negative spin.

Phiteros

Oh, certainly. I understand that. But the question is whether or not the media will want to give it a positive spin.

SF.

21:48

The country needs to accelerate the arms race. The media - megacorporations - are the ones running the country. Do you think they will be sabotaging own operation?

Phiteros

They haven't exactly given me good reasons to trust them.

SF.

There's one cheeky alternative. Drop the ball and pretend nothing happened. The North Korean way: "We are the mightiest country in the world, we have more tanks than any other country."

Don't pick Putin's bait, don't try to catch up in the arms race, fall behind, but pretend they didn't.

Phiteros

I mean, that is a definite possibility.

SF.

Of course that means USA ceases to be the superpower. But powers-that-be remain in tight control, and the public believes the lie that they are still the mightiest.

Phiteros

If you want an example of how terrible our media system is, consider that several major networks went on reporting about that missing Malaysia airlines flight for months. Long after there was any relevant information to share, they'd report on any piece of trash or wavetop that looked like it could've been a piece of the airplane.

They even started reporting on how their coverage had gone on for so long that some of their reporters in the field hadn't been home in weeks.

SF.

21:57

Is there a hidden agenda there, or was it just lousy journalism?

Phiteros

I'm inclined to think the latter. Most major television news networks are concerned with ratings and viewers. And sensationalism gets both.

SF.

Yep, but still, news are cherrypicked, the undesired slant to be buried deep if it's not in line with the current agenda.

Phiteros

Hence why I don't trust the media.

I simply do not believe that they have the best interests of the American public at heart. They are first and foremost out to make a profit.

SF.

Oh, that's for sure. It's just that at times their interest lines up with best interest of the humanity. Not very often, but even a broken clock shows the right hour two times a day.

And they are ambitious people. I doubt they'd willingly allow their puppy to cease to be the top dog.

Phiteros

(Depends on how the clock is broken). But you are correct, and we just have to hope that they choose the right side to back in this.

SF.

22:06

If that was a single, charismatic person, I'd think this would be unpredictable. But this IS a commitee and it can be manipulated and behave predictably, just like any.

kim holder

(if i wasn't entirely occupied with another conversation, i'd be right in this...)

Phiteros

I lack the understanding of our media to comment much further on this, unfortunately.

SF.

They want to maximize profit? Let's change the world game in such a way that them doing what we want maximizes their profit.

Phiteros

I will say, though, it remains to be seen whether or not Russia will follow through with this statement, if it is just a bluff, or if it has some other purpose behind it.

SF.

Personally, I believe Russia fell behind in the arms race and desperately wants to catch up.

No actual long-term secret master plan.

But that's just my feeling.

Phiteros

22:34

Good news everyone! Mars 2020 officially has the go-ahead from NASA
http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasas-next-mars-rover-progresses-toward-2020-launch

No news on the helicopter, though, so it looks like that may have been phased out.

jpl.nasa.gov/universe/archive/universe1607.pdf

Evidently Mars 2020 will have a microphone on it. That'll be really interesting.

PearsonArtPhoto

23:39

NASA has recently seen it's budget soar, military R&D is dropping.

Quite frankly, I think it's going to get cheaper for NASA to do a lot of things in the next decade, due to increasing privatization of space.

Phiteros

I dunno about soar

Budget of NASA

As a federal agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) receives its funding from the annual federal budget passed by the United States Congress. The following charts detail the amount of federal funding allotted to NASA each year over its past fifty-year history (1958–2009) to operate aeronautics research, unmanned and manned space exploration programs. == Annual budget, 1958-2015 == Seen in the year-by-year breakdown listed below, the total amounts (in nominal dollars) that NASA has been budgeted from 1958 to 2011 amounts to $526.178 billion—an average of $9.928 billion...

As a percentage of the national budget, it's actually been dropping

PearsonArtPhoto

That's the wrong way to look at it.

Phiteros

Adjusting for inflation, it hasn't really been changing.

PearsonArtPhoto

I guess the defense R&D budget is more level than I thought

Phiteros

Yeah, and that graph doesn't really say anything about NASA's budget.

I wouldn't really call any of those trends "soaring" except during 200-2002

2000-2002

PearsonArtPhoto

23:46

The US has a MAJOR spending problem.

Phiteros

You can say that again

PearsonArtPhoto

I'm surprised interest on the debt isn't higher...

Everything is going down as a percentage of the budget, except for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and now ObamaCare (Or whatever it's real name is...)

If interest rates go up really at all, the US will be crippled...

Phiteros

Well, there are two reasons for that. The first is because of the implementation of Obamacare - because of the Republican Party fighting it, both on the national and state level, it has not been as effective and has costed more than it might have otherwise. Secondly, the Baby Boomers are getting old now, and are starting to draw on Social Security. But the younger generation is not putting as much into Social Security because of their smaller population and income.

PearsonArtPhoto

The first I don't know enough. The second is true. The last, well, I might argue that one.

Millennials have a reasonable income, especially for their age.

The problem is that the payroll taxes, which were supposed to be saved, have been used in areas that they weren't intended to be used.

I'd be interested to see a Libertarian get into office to see if they could push forward some true fiscally conservative ideas for a while, and reduce the debt...

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