While we're at it - what happened to SPHERES?

Three of the little volleyball sized, RF-linked microsapcecraft were
built and were supposed to be tested on the ISS, but, looking at what
I can find online, only one of them seems to have gotten there. Why?

Matt wrote:

Three of the little volleyball sized, RF-linked microsapcecraft were
built and were supposed to be tested on the ISS, but, looking at what
I can find online, only one of them seems to have gotten there. Why?

Despite all their promise, nobody found them useful enough in practice
to fund them.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

http://derekl1963.livejournal.com/

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

Derek Lyons wrote:

Matt wrote:

Three of the little volleyball sized, RF-linked microsapcecraft were
built and were supposed to be tested on the ISS, but, looking at what
I can find online, only one of them seems to have gotten there. Why?

Despite all their promise, nobody found them useful enough in practice
to fund them.

D.

From what I've read, everytime they used them the atmosphere
got a CO2 dump that had to be fixed over the next few days.
Now that ISS is bigger, and with more people, maybe they'll be used.

Mike Ross

From what I've read, everytime they used them the atmosphere
got a CO2 dump that had to be fixed over the next few days.
Now that ISS is bigger, and with more people, maybe they'll be used.

Mike Ross

Did they send all three to the ISS, or just the first one? NASA and
MIT claimed that first one's tests on the ISS were successful.

Thanks,
Matt
www.mattwriter.com

Matt wrote:
Three of the little volleyball sized, RF-linked microsapcecraft were
built and were supposed to be tested on the ISS, but, looking at what
I can find online, only one of them seems to have gotten there. Why?


They actually did get one up there? I thought the whole program had gone
belly-up after Sprint:
http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/station/assembly/sprint/

Pat

wrote:
From what I've read, everytime they used them the atmosphere
got a CO2 dump that had to be fixed over the next few days.
Now that ISS is bigger, and with more people, maybe they'll be used.


AERCam Sprint at least used nitrogen, not CO2, for its small thrusters.
If you were only going to use it inside the station, then small
propellers would make more sense than compressed gas thrusters.

Pat

Pat Flannery writes:

wrote:
From what I've read, everytime they used them the atmosphere got a CO2
dump that had to be fixed over the next few days.
Now that ISS is bigger, and with more people, maybe they'll be used.


AERCam Sprint at least used nitrogen, not CO2, for its small thrusters.
If you were only going to use it inside the station, then small
propellers would make more sense than compressed gas thrusters.

Like one of these... ;-)

http://www.draganfly.com/uav-helicop...allery/videos/


Jochem

--
"A designer knows he has arrived at perfection not when there is no
longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away."
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Jochem Huhmann wrote:
Like one of these... ;-)

http://www.draganfly.com/uav-helicop...allery/videos/


Considering just how small Air Hogs has gotten RC electrical-powered
helicopters to be, I think we all can see something pretty similar to
the Dune "Hunter-Seeker" assassination device coming down the line
inside of a decade, easy.
Just take a tiny drill bit, stick the shellfish poison the CIA uses as a
suicide device into the hollows in the drill bit, sharpen it up to a
needle point, stick it on the front of a tiny microcopter, and run it
into someone... inside of 30 seconds they are dead, and pretty much
painlessly at that..
The nice point about this all is that it would be legal.
Although the Geneva Conventions outlawed poisoned bullets, at no point
do they mention "tiny poisonous microcopters".
So that all that needs be done is put a tiny IR seeker head on it that
ignores anything with a temperature under 90 F. or above 105 F., and the
thing will self-home on any living person in the area and kill them dead
as hell.
....and again, as I said, pretty much painlessly.
The CIA suicide toxin makes your fingers and toes feel numb, then a few
second later, your tongue feels dry, and then a few seconds after that
you are unconscious and it's all over.
(Surprisingly, this is a lot more merciful than any means of execution
used in any US state that has the death penalty - which shows the world
how far we could bend over if we really wanted to in regards to killing
people, which I'm sure would up our respect in the world... although the
story I heard a couple of weeks ago about a North Dakota National
Guardsman shooting the Iraqi insurgent directly in the head with the
40mm full-auto grenade launcher had a really painless and instantaneous
effect in killing them, although it was a bit messy. ;-) )
Go over to the Air Hogs website: http://www.airhogs.com/
....and have a peek at what the soon-to-be released "Atom" microcopter is
going to be like.
They've already gotten the things down to the size of sparrows; now they
are heading for hummingbird size.
Not only are they tiny and neat looking, but venomous versions of them
are also okay to use by the Rules Of Kanly.

Pat