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#11
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STUPID To Crash Cassini Probe
On Sat, 21 Oct 2017 14:00:58 -0700, Fred J. McCall
wrote: Mr. B1ack wrote: On Sat, 21 Oct 2017 12:25:38 -0400, SteveGG wrote: I couldn't agree more ! The contamination issue would be totally laughable, if it wasn't so sad and ridiculous, but that's the official "reason". What a waste. It could have been parked in a stable orbit and made available for future science, historians, etc. Hey, it's got some memory space onboard ... it could be instructed to save up periodic observations so every once in a while we could download the stash. Doesn't hurt to have an eye way "out there" either in case something interesting happens. How much memory do you think it has on board? How do you think we normally talk to it. It was already extended for NINE YEARS. We could get some useful stuff form it NINTEEN years from now. Why did we waste that opportunity ??? The Voyagers seemed useless relics too ... until we got all interested in the heliopause. Surprise, we had usable spacecraft in the vicinity because nobody'd bothered to crash them into anything. The "contamination" thing is one of the worst excuses I've ever heard. MIGHT, under some circumstances, have some merit for Mars if we were worried about mold spores or whatever, but Saturn ... nah. A nice safe orbit was possible. Not Saturn. The moons. Which we might decide to inhabit some day. In some ways they're better than Mars. You can't just park it and forget about it. How long have those moons been there ? Yes, we could have parked it and pretty much forgotten about it. And if grey aliens kicked it into a moon, so what ? It's a flyspeck. Those moons get bombarded with random galactic crap all the time. I think somebody said "Hey, let's CRASH it into Saturn, that'd be like SO cool !" ... and there went a taxpayer gigabuck. I think you should let someone else do the thinking. That's a preposterous notion. Um ... not so much actually ......... socialize with some tech-nerds for awhile and you'll see :-) Hmm ... Pence is now nominally the top dog of the US space effort so it might not hurt to complain to him about this sort of thing. Policy CAN change. Gigabuck probes should not be considered part of a first-person-shooter game by JPL nerds. If it still mostly works, KEEP it around. Policy CAN change but this one wouldn't have. A number of studies were done to figure out a 'safe' way to dispose of or park the thing. It didn't need to be disposed of AT ALL. |
#12
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STUPID To Crash Cassini Probe
Mr. B1ack wrote:
On Sat, 21 Oct 2017 17:24:52 -0400, "M.I.Wakefield" wrote: "Mr. B1ack" wrote in message . .. Still, he's a conservative ... so appeal to the penny-pincher aspect you usually see with conservatives. Crashing Cassini was A BIG WASTE OF MONEY. I don't know if he thinks the universe is only 6000 years old, but he WILL understand WASTED $$$. No, Cassini was well into bonus time ... the original mission was supposed to end in 2008. Irrelevant ... the only "problem" was the fuel supply. It could have been put in a parking orbit and continued to return lots of good data for many more years. There is no such thing as a 'parking orbit' in a system like Saturn's. They looked at doing that and came to the conclusion that they couldn't be sure it wouldn't be perturbed into hitting something we might care about someday. And 'collecting data' is the expensive bit. Requires time on the DSN and a dedicated crew to collect and analyze data. They're going to be analyzing the data they already have for years and years. NASA tends to over-engineer ... Opportunity is closing in on 14 years on Mars ... a mission that was scheduled for 3 months. And they made use of it the whole time. Even its relatively limited data was STILL useful/interesting data. Don't bitch when your craft delivers dividends. And who knows, the winds may eventually free Spirit. If so, USE it. Hell, let some college use it, train tomorrows space-probe drivers. And how does this team of amateurs talk to it? Telepathy, perhaps? BTW, most 'religious'/conservative people are NOT young-earth/no-evo ultra-fundies. The few that are tend to get all the press, makes them SEEM like a bigger bloc. They tend to be loud about it. They like to thump their bibles really loud as if that's proving something .... But it ain't. Ignore them. Starved of fame they'll slowly wilt and die, become the mulch of history like the flat- earthers. I'm waiting for you folks who don't even have religion as an excuse for your ignorance to "slowly wilt and die", but it just never seems to happen. The universe appears to love stupidity. Like viewing stars and planets, more local 'truths' often depend on what wavelength filter you view them through :-) Speaking of which ... if you have the right combination of binoculars and darkness, you can try and see the planet Uranus ... a blue-green dot currently in the constellation of Pisces ... the first planet discovered after the Babylonians looked up. https://in-the-sky.org/skymap.php -- "Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong." -- Thomas Jefferson |
#13
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STUPID To Crash Cassini Probe
Mr. B1ack wrote:
On Sat, 21 Oct 2017 14:00:58 -0700, Fred J. McCall wrote: Mr. B1ack wrote: On Sat, 21 Oct 2017 12:25:38 -0400, SteveGG wrote: I couldn't agree more ! The contamination issue would be totally laughable, if it wasn't so sad and ridiculous, but that's the official "reason". What a waste. It could have been parked in a stable orbit and made available for future science, historians, etc. Hey, it's got some memory space onboard ... it could be instructed to save up periodic observations so every once in a while we could download the stash. Doesn't hurt to have an eye way "out there" either in case something interesting happens. How much memory do you think it has on board? How do you think we normally talk to it. It was already extended for NINE YEARS. We could get some useful stuff form it NINTEEN years from now. Why did we waste that opportunity ??? The Voyagers seemed useless relics too ... until we got all interested in the heliopause. Surprise, we had usable spacecraft in the vicinity because nobody'd bothered to crash them into anything. Because it was done. It had no fuel. The team supporting it already has more years of data to work with than they can handle. It was a hazard to other things in the Saturn system. DSN is a scarce resource and is needed for other things. I could go on. Voyager never went inactive and was always intended to keep going out. The "contamination" thing is one of the worst excuses I've ever heard. MIGHT, under some circumstances, have some merit for Mars if we were worried about mold spores or whatever, but Saturn ... nah. A nice safe orbit was possible. Not Saturn. The moons. Which we might decide to inhabit some day. In some ways they're better than Mars. You can't just park it and forget about it. How long have those moons been there ? Yes, we could have parked it and pretty much forgotten about it. And if grey aliens kicked it into a moon, so what ? It's a flyspeck. Those moons get bombarded with random galactic crap all the time. Congratulations on demonstrating that you don't know **** about orbital mechanics. No, you can't just 'park it and forget it'. And if you could, it quickly goes out of communication and you can't get it back again. And no, they don't get "bombarded with random galactic crap all the time" and what little they do get is not from Earth. I think somebody said "Hey, let's CRASH it into Saturn, that'd be like SO cool !" ... and there went a taxpayer gigabuck. I think you should let someone else do the thinking. That's a preposterous notion. Um ... not so much actually ......... socialize with some tech-nerds for awhile and you'll see :-) Well, actually, I AM a rocket scientist. The people doing this work are very different from your random semi-literate nerd friends. Hmm ... Pence is now nominally the top dog of the US space effort so it might not hurt to complain to him about this sort of thing. Policy CAN change. Gigabuck probes should not be considered part of a first-person-shooter game by JPL nerds. If it still mostly works, KEEP it around. Policy CAN change but this one wouldn't have. A number of studies were done to figure out a 'safe' way to dispose of or park the thing. It didn't need to be disposed of AT ALL. You're in denial of reality at this point. -- "Some people get lost in thought because it's such unfamiliar territory." --G. Behn |
#14
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STUPID To Crash Cassini Probe
On Sun, 22 Oct 2017 01:12:39 -0700, Fred J. McCall
wrote: Mr. B1ack wrote: On Sat, 21 Oct 2017 17:24:52 -0400, "M.I.Wakefield" wrote: "Mr. B1ack" wrote in message ... Still, he's a conservative ... so appeal to the penny-pincher aspect you usually see with conservatives. Crashing Cassini was A BIG WASTE OF MONEY. I don't know if he thinks the universe is only 6000 years old, but he WILL understand WASTED $$$. No, Cassini was well into bonus time ... the original mission was supposed to end in 2008. Irrelevant ... the only "problem" was the fuel supply. It could have been put in a parking orbit and continued to return lots of good data for many more years. There is no such thing as a 'parking orbit' in a system like Saturn's. Gee ... so those moons are poised to fall like next tuesday or something ??? Yes, there ARE stable orbits around Saturn. There are stable orbits around the larger moons too. They looked at doing that and came to the conclusion that they couldn't be sure it wouldn't be perturbed into hitting something we might care about someday. I think they just wanted to crash it. And 'collecting data' is the expensive bit. Requires time on the DSN and a dedicated crew to collect and analyze data. They're going to be analyzing the data they already have for years and years. Cassini had gobs of onboard memory, a lot of it for holding high-rez photos until the antenna was pointed in the right direction again. Data from lots of the other instruments would be a relative flyspeck compared to high-rez photos ... you could stash a HUGE amount and then, at your leisure and convenience, download it every so often. So the 'expense' aspect is a false flag. And when don't scientists want even MORE data, even if they already have a lot of it ? A longer-term record of magnetic fields alone would have been very interesting. NASA tends to over-engineer ... Opportunity is closing in on 14 years on Mars ... a mission that was scheduled for 3 months. And they made use of it the whole time. Even its relatively limited data was STILL useful/interesting data. Don't bitch when your craft delivers dividends. And who knows, the winds may eventually free Spirit. If so, USE it. Hell, let some college use it, train tomorrows space-probe drivers. And how does this team of amateurs talk to it? Telepathy, perhaps? Rent dish time, like everyone else. A few schools have their own dishes. BTW, most 'religious'/conservative people are NOT young-earth/no-evo ultra-fundies. The few that are tend to get all the press, makes them SEEM like a bigger bloc. They tend to be loud about it. They like to thump their bibles really loud as if that's proving something .... But it ain't. Ignore them. Starved of fame they'll slowly wilt and die, become the mulch of history like the flat- earthers. I'm waiting for you folks who don't even have religion as an excuse for your ignorance to "slowly wilt and die", but it just never seems to happen. The universe appears to love stupidity. IQ requires defeating a lot of entropy :-) I think those in charge of Cassini fell behind that curve and wasted a still-valuable asset. Like viewing stars and planets, more local 'truths' often depend on what wavelength filter you view them through :-) Speaking of which ... if you have the right combination of binoculars and darkness, you can try and see the planet Uranus ... a blue-green dot currently in the constellation of Pisces ... the first planet discovered after the Babylonians looked up. https://in-the-sky.org/skymap.php |
#15
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STUPID To Crash Cassini Probe
"Mr. B1ack" wrote in message
... On Sun, 22 Oct 2017 01:12:39 -0700, Fred J. McCall wrote: Mr. B1ack wrote: On Sat, 21 Oct 2017 17:24:52 -0400, "M.I.Wakefield" wrote: "Mr. B1ack" wrote in message m... Still, he's a conservative ... so appeal to the penny-pincher aspect you usually see with conservatives. Crashing Cassini was A BIG WASTE OF MONEY. I don't know if he thinks the universe is only 6000 years old, but he WILL understand WASTED $$$. No, Cassini was well into bonus time ... the original mission was supposed to end in 2008. Irrelevant ... the only "problem" was the fuel supply. It could have been put in a parking orbit and continued to return lots of good data for many more years. There is no such thing as a 'parking orbit' in a system like Saturn's. Gee ... so those moons are poised to fall like next tuesday or something ??? You're actually looking at a classic case of Survival Bias. You only see the items in a fairly stable orbit because all the others have already decayed. Yes, there ARE stable orbits around Saturn. There are stable orbits around the larger moons too. Actually there aren't. We haven't solved the 3-body problem, let alone the dozen+ body problem. They looked at doing that and came to the conclusion that they couldn't be sure it wouldn't be perturbed into hitting something we might care about someday. I think they just wanted to crash it. There actually was some science obtained from doing this. And 'collecting data' is the expensive bit. Requires time on the DSN and a dedicated crew to collect and analyze data. They're going to be analyzing the data they already have for years and years. Cassini had gobs of onboard memory, a lot of it for holding high-rez photos until the antenna was pointed in the right direction again. Data from lots of the other instruments would be a relative flyspeck compared to high-rez photos ... you could stash a HUGE amount and then, at your leisure and convenience, download it every so often. 4 GB isn't bad, but it's not great. and the longer stuff stays in memory in that environment, the more memory upset errors you will have. So the 'expense' aspect is a false flag. And when don't scientists want even MORE data, even if they already have a lot of it ? A longer-term record of magnetic fields alone would have been very interesting. NASA tends to over-engineer ... Opportunity is closing in on 14 years on Mars ... a mission that was scheduled for 3 months. And they made use of it the whole time. Even its relatively limited data was STILL useful/interesting data. Don't bitch when your craft delivers dividends. And who knows, the winds may eventually free Spirit. If so, USE it. Hell, let some college use it, train tomorrows space-probe drivers. And how does this team of amateurs talk to it? Telepathy, perhaps? Rent dish time, like everyone else. A few schools have their own dishes. Are there any that can pick up a signal from that far away? Also as pointed out, with the ability to point the craft, you're pretty much SOL in terms of being able to retrieve your precious data from it. At this point, you're probably far better off finding the money for a new graft and launching on Falcon Heavy. You'd have better instruments, more storage capacity, more mass you can throw at it. BTW, most 'religious'/conservative people are NOT young-earth/no-evo ultra-fundies. The few that are tend to get all the press, makes them SEEM like a bigger bloc. They tend to be loud about it. They like to thump their bibles really loud as if that's proving something .... But it ain't. Ignore them. Starved of fame they'll slowly wilt and die, become the mulch of history like the flat- earthers. I'm waiting for you folks who don't even have religion as an excuse for your ignorance to "slowly wilt and die", but it just never seems to happen. The universe appears to love stupidity. IQ requires defeating a lot of entropy :-) I think those in charge of Cassini fell behind that curve and wasted a still-valuable asset. Like viewing stars and planets, more local 'truths' often depend on what wavelength filter you view them through :-) Speaking of which ... if you have the right combination of binoculars and darkness, you can try and see the planet Uranus ... a blue-green dot currently in the constellation of Pisces ... the first planet discovered after the Babylonians looked up. https://in-the-sky.org/skymap.php -- Greg D. Moore http://greenmountainsoftware.wordpress.com/ CEO QuiCR: Quick, Crowdsourced Responses. http://www.quicr.net IT Disaster Response - https://www.amazon.com/Disaster-Resp...dp/1484221834/ |
#16
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STUPID To Crash Cassini Probe
Mr. B1ack wrote:
On Sun, 22 Oct 2017 01:12:39 -0700, Fred J. McCall wrote: Mr. B1ack wrote: On Sat, 21 Oct 2017 17:24:52 -0400, "M.I.Wakefield" wrote: "Mr. B1ack" wrote in message m... Still, he's a conservative ... so appeal to the penny-pincher aspect you usually see with conservatives. Crashing Cassini was A BIG WASTE OF MONEY. I don't know if he thinks the universe is only 6000 years old, but he WILL understand WASTED $$$. No, Cassini was well into bonus time ... the original mission was supposed to end in 2008. Irrelevant ... the only "problem" was the fuel supply. It could have been put in a parking orbit and continued to return lots of good data for many more years. There is no such thing as a 'parking orbit' in a system like Saturn's. Gee ... so those moons are poised to fall like next tuesday or something ??? Gee ... so a lot of them have over the past million years or so. The stable ones are the only ones left. Unfortunately, you can't find a 'new' stable orbit. Yes, there ARE stable orbits around Saturn. There are stable orbits around the larger moons too. Of course there are. Now all you need to do is find one that doesn't already have something in it. Putting the thing around a large moon is exactly what you DO NOT want to do, since it is having it crash into a large moon and contaminate it that was the concern. They looked at doing that and came to the conclusion that they couldn't be sure it wouldn't be perturbed into hitting something we might care about someday. I think they just wanted to crash it. I think you're a moron. And 'collecting data' is the expensive bit. Requires time on the DSN and a dedicated crew to collect and analyze data. They're going to be analyzing the data they already have for years and years. Cassini had gobs of onboard memory, a lot of it for holding high-rez photos until the antenna was pointed in the right direction again. Data from lots of the other instruments would be a relative flyspeck compared to high-rez photos ... you could stash a HUGE amount and then, at your leisure and convenience, download it every so often. How many terabytes in a 'gob'? Cassini had around 60 pounds of fuel left at end of mission. The problem is that you CAN'T do any of the things you say because you can't point the instruments, you can't find the Earth, and you can't point the antenna. So the 'expense' aspect is a false flag. Your underpants are a false flag. And when don't scientists want even MORE data, even if they already have a lot of it ? A longer-term record of magnetic fields alone would have been very interesting. Why, when it costs them other data and they already have enough to close out their careers. DSN is a finite resource. NASA tends to over-engineer ... Opportunity is closing in on 14 years on Mars ... a mission that was scheduled for 3 months. And they made use of it the whole time. Even its relatively limited data was STILL useful/interesting data. Don't bitch when your craft delivers dividends. And who knows, the winds may eventually free Spirit. If so, USE it. Hell, let some college use it, train tomorrows space-probe drivers. And how does this team of amateurs talk to it? Telepathy, perhaps? Rent dish time, like everyone else. 'Dish time'? Do you have any clue what it takes to talk to something as far away as Saturn? Your 'touching' is going to cost millions of dollars per year. I hope your amateurs are well heeled. A few schools have their own dishes. But nothing that can talk to something out by Saturn. NASA only has three dishes that are large enough. BTW, most 'religious'/conservative people are NOT young-earth/no-evo ultra-fundies. The few that are tend to get all the press, makes them SEEM like a bigger bloc. They tend to be loud about it. They like to thump their bibles really loud as if that's proving something .... But it ain't. Ignore them. Starved of fame they'll slowly wilt and die, become the mulch of history like the flat- earthers. I'm waiting for you folks who don't even have religion as an excuse for your ignorance to "slowly wilt and die", but it just never seems to happen. The universe appears to love stupidity. IQ requires defeating a lot of entropy :-) I think you lost the battle. I think those in charge of Cassini fell behind that curve and wasted a still-valuable asset. But you're a 'know nothing' and they're the experts. Even someone moderately informed can figure it out. No fuel. Down to three quarters of electrical power. Low bit rate requiring long contact times on very expensive equipment. Required contact times are even longer because Cassini can no longer point either its instruments or its antenna. We don't want it hitting a moon, some of which are actually candidates for native life, but there's no way to guarantee that it won't without doing something drastic with it. -- "Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong." -- Thomas Jefferson |
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