BigSoccer IN SPACE!!! (The BigSoccer Space Exploration Thread)

Discussion in 'History' started by Macsen, Sep 19, 2012.

  1. Macsen

    Macsen Moderator
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    [​IMG]

    53 years ago today, the Titan III program began with the launch of the first Titan IIIA rocket from Pad 20, Cape Kennedy.

    It was also the first launch of the Transtage upper stage. The Transtage would fail to pressurize, and did not make it to orbit.

    The Titan IIIA would be used four times. Its other three launches succeeded.
     
  2. Macsen

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    56 years ago today, NASA took possession of the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, Louisiana, from the U.S. Government.

    Michoud began construction in 1940 under the direction of Higgins Indistries. It was designed to build the Curtiss-Wright C-76 cargo plane for World War II, a plywood-based aircraft anticipating shortages of metal alloys. It never got off the ground, and as aluminum production proved sufficient, the plane was canceled. The facility would also produce various landing craft.

    During the Korean War, Michoud would be used to produce engines for M4 Sherman and M46 Patton tanks.

    Once NASA took control of the facility, they would sublease it to Chrysler to produce the S-IB and S-IC first stages for the Saturn rocket series. After that, it would be sub-leased to Martin Marietta to produce the Space Shuttle External Tank.

    Currently, Boeing is using Michoud to produce liquid-fuel components of the Space Launch System. Portions of the facility are frequently sublet to Big Easy Studios for use as a soundstage. It has been used for Ender's Game, G.I. Joe: Retaliation, and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, among other productions.

    In addition to the tornado earlier this year, Michoud sustained some damage from Hurricane Katrina in 2005, but its levees held, keeping it from suffering the chronic flooding that plagued other portions of New Orleans. It was able to begin resuming operations within a month, and was fully operational within two months, with minimal impact to the Space Shuttle program.

    It is unknown what damage it sustained from Hurricane Betsy in 1965, or Hurricane Camille in 1969.
     
  3. Macsen

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    Cassini has met its end.

    This morning, the probe entered the atmosphere of Saturn. It began firing thrusters upon atmospheric interface, though its trajectory prevented the thrusters from doing much to resist its fate.

    The final signal was received at 7:55:46am EDT, approximately 82 minutes after being sent. It is believed to have burned up within 45 seconds of loss of signal.
     
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  4. Macsen

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    The International Astronomical Union has announced the first officially-accepted set of names for geological features on Pluto.

    Among the names officially accepted are Tombaugh Regio; Sputnik Planitia; Hayabusa and Voyager Terra; and Tenzing, Hillary, and al-Idrisi Montes.

    At the same time, New Horizons is preparing for a routine checkout of scientific systems in preparation for the 2014 MU69 encounter at the beginning of 2019. And the science team is looking for yet more targets for after that encounter. New Horizons is believed to have enough power to last for another 20 years.
     
  5. Macsen

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    25 years ago today, Mars Observer was launched atop a Commercial Titan III rocket from Pad 40, Cape Canaveral.

    Originally intended to be launched in 1990 aboard the Space Shuttle, its launch was moved to an expendable rocket following the Challenger disaster. They probably figured this particular mission could not be launched correctly using the solid-fueled Inertial Upper Stage.

    As I have noted very early on in this thread, Mars Observer failed two days before it was supposed to enter orbit around Mars. They never did figure out why or how, though they suspect it had to do with the propulsion system, which wasn't designed for the ultimate mission profile.

    This was the final use of the Titan III rocket.
     
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  6. Macsen

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    50 years ago today, the third prototype of the Soyuz 7K-L1 spacecraft, Zond 1967A, was launched atop a Proton-K rocket from Site 81/23, Baikonur Cosmodrome.

    The mission was intended to be the spacecraft's first unmanned circumlunar test flight. The first 7K-L1 launch in March went off without a hitch on a highly-elliptical Earth-bound orbit. The second launch suffered a fourth-stage issue and only achieved LEO, but otherwise performed alright.

    This launch suffered an issue with the first stage at T+97 seconds. The rocket was shut down, and the launch escape system (escape tower) rescued the spacecraft. The re-entry module was recovered intact 65 km downrange, about 15 km ahead of where the rocket itself ultimately crashed.

    The designers wanted five months to fully troubleshoot the issues with the new Proton-K rocket. OKB-1 director Vasily Mishin insisted on another launch within a month. The next launch, ultimately two months later, suffered a problem with the second stage, though again the spacecraft was recovered with the escape tower.
     
  7. Macsen

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    This is it. What I've never gotten to in-depth until now.

    [​IMG]

    60 years ago today, Prosteyshiy Sputnik (Simple Satellite, or simply Sputnik 1) was launched atop an R-7 intercontinental ballistic missile from Site 1/5, Tyuratam Missile Range, in Kazakh SSR.

    The Soviet Union wanted to make a splash for the United Nations' International Geophysical Year. However, their intended instrumentation package, the ISZ, was not yet ready. So they decided to put a transponder and a battery inside a small sphere.

    Pretty much the only science that could be derived from Sputnik was through tracking it, and deducing how drag from the tenuous upper atmosphere caused orbital decay. Otherwise, people around the world with an amateur radio could pick up its transponder, which only beeped. It transmitted at 20.005 MHz and 40.002 MHz.

    The launch was tracked by the UK's Lovell Telescope, a radio telescope at Jordell Bank Observatory in Manchester.

    The core stage of the R-7 rocket and Sputnik were placed in a roughly 130x600-mile orbit. The core stage stayed in orbit for 2 months, and Sputnik stuck around for 3 1/2 months.

    There are at least two contemporary duplicates of Sputnik in existence. One is at the corporate museum of RKK Energia in Moscow, and can be seen by appointment only. The other contains no actual components, but has battery residue consistent with it being a spare. It was bought at auction by an American in 2001, and now sits on public display at the Museum of Flight in Seattle.

    Astronaut Richard Garriott is believed to own another backup, but it is not known to be authenticated.
     
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  8. Macsen

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    #1183 Macsen, Oct 5, 2017
    Last edited: Sep 6, 2019
    [​IMG]

    24 years ago today, NASA attempted to launch Landsat 6 atop a Titan 23G rocket from Pad 4W, Vandenberg AFB.

    A failure occurred in the satellite's propulsion system during the upper stage's attempt to circularize a 438-mile sun-synchronous polar orbit. As a result, it tumbled during the burn, and ended up re-entering.

    Researchers at NOAA and Martin Marietta determined that there was a hydrazine leak.
     
  9. Macsen

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    17 years ago today, the High Energy Transient Explorer 2 (HETE-2) probe was launched on a Pegasus-H rocket, dropped from the L-1011 Stargazer carrier aircraft after takeoff from Kwajalein Atoll. It was the first orbital launch from the Marshall Islands.

    The probe was placed in a roughly polar 625-km orbit. It was a follow-on to the failed HETE-1 probe. While the original HETE had small telescopes that observed in the UV, X-ray, and Gamma ray spectra, HETE-2 replaced the UV sensor with a second X-ray sensor.

    The primary task for HETE-2 would be to detect gamma ray bursts, signatures of supernovae.
     
  10. Macsen

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    #1185 Macsen, Oct 12, 2017
    Last edited: Apr 6, 2019
    24 years ago today, the DFS-3 comsat was launched atop a Delta II 7925 rocket from Pad 17B, Cape Canaveral.

    The three DFS comsats were commissioned by Deutsche Bundespost to provide TV service to West Germany, and later the unified Germany. When Bundespost was broken up, control of the satellites was assumed by Deutsche Telekom, one of the successors of Bundespost.

    The first two satellites were stationed at 23.5°E and 28.5°E. When DFS-3 launched, DFS-1 was moved to 33.5°E, and DFS-3 was positioned at 23.5°E.

    All three satellites were retired by 2002, with Deutsche Telekom moving its services to SES's Astra satellites.

    ********

    Speaking of SES...

    [​IMG]

    Last night, the latest of the SES fleet, SES-11, was launched atop a Falcon 9 FT rocket from Pad 39A, Kennedy Space Center.

    It was the third time a Falcon 9 first stage was re-used, second time specifically for an SES launch. The first stage that was used, s/n 1031, was originally used for the CRS-10 Dragon launch. SES-11 is subleased to Echostar to augment Dish Network services in North America.

    The first stage was again recovered on the drone ship Marmac 304 Of Course I Still Love You.
     
  11. Macsen

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    44 years ago today, NASA contracted with Martin Marietta to purchase three additional Titan IIIE rockets. One would be used for a second Helios mission, and the other two would be used for the Voyager missions. This would be on top of an original three-rocket purchase for Helios A and the Viking missions.

    NASA's Lewis (now Glenn) Research Center was tasked with outfitting the Titan IIID base rocket with the Centaur upper stage to create the Titan IIIE. A special fairing was designed that enhanced insulation of the cryogenically-fueled Centaur. This enabled it to have a coast time of up to five hours, instead of the 30-minute peak coast time permissible for the original SLV-3D Atlas-Centaur.

    The Helios and Voyager missions would further have Star-37B solid fuel upper stages. These were considered part of the rocket for Helios, but part of the payload for Voyager.
     
  12. Macsen

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    15 years ago today, the International Gamma Ray Astrophysics Laboratory, or INTEGRAL, was launched atop a Proton-K rocket from Site 200/39, Baikonur Cosmodrome.

    INTEGRAL is a gamma ray telescope headed by ESA, but with cooperation from NASA and Roscosmos. It was placed in a very highly-elliptical.three-day orbit with an apogee of 153,000 km to lift it above most magnetospheric interference.,

    At the time of its launch, it was the most sensitive gamma ray instrumentation in orbit, though it was succeeded by the Fermi gamma ray telescope in 2008. INTEGRAL is vital to research into black holes and quasars.
     
  13. bostonsoccermdl

    bostonsoccermdl Moderator
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    While this isn't new news, I am still fascinated that 200K people applied for a one-way trip to mars.
    https://www.space.com/22758-mars-colony-volunteers-mars-one.html

    Such a high risk venture from I have watched about mars (wind storms that last for weeks, solar flares, -200 temps, high levels of radiation) just to name a few.

    Terraforming has been discussed to make an earth like environment, but it seems like doing this on a smaller, closer, less threatening environment (the moon) would be a more achievable goal?
     
  14. song219

    song219 BigSoccer Supporter

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    A principal goal to any terraforming is to change a body's atomsphere to a breatheable one but the moon doesn't have one at all.
     
  15. Pønch

    Pønch Saprissista

    Aug 23, 2006
    Donde siempre
    Not to mention water or any other mineral resources that would make it worthwhile to establish any permanent settlement there.
     
  16. Macsen

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    [​IMG]

    55 years ago today, Ranger 5 was launched atop an Atlas-Agena rocket from Pad 12, Cape Canaveral.

    It was the last attempt to launch the Ranger Mark II spacecraft, which would attempt to crash into the Moon and rough-land an experiment package. In this case, several malfunctions befell the launch. The Agena fired for too long, and Ranger 5 was given incorrect commands to orient itself, causing its solar panels not to receive any energy.

    Ranger 5 flew by the Moon at a distance of 745 km and entered solar orbit. It only had enough battery power to last 8 hours.
     
  17. Macsen

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    11 years ago today, the MetOp-A satellite was launched atop the first Soyuz-2 rocket from Site 31/6, Baikonur Cosmodrome.

    After a suborbital test flight nearly two years previous from Plesetsk Cosmodrome, there were many technological delays before this launch could be completed. Soyuz-2 was Russia's first rocket with a digital computer. To this day, they still don't trust it with manned launches, instead using the analog Soyuz-FG rocket.

    MetOp-A is part of EUMETSAT, the European Union's meteorology satellite system, and is intended particularly to observe the polar regions.
     
  18. Macsen

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    17 years ago today, BeiDou 1A, the first satellite in the Chinese BeiDou global positioning system, was launched atop a Long March 3A rocket from Pad 2, Xichang Satellite Launch Center.

    The initial BeiDou 1 service was to consist of a series of four geostationary satellites. BeiDou 2 replaced this with a series of 27 GPS-style MEO satellites, along with three geosynchronous satellites hovering around China, and five geostationary satellites for backward compatibility with BeiDou 1.

    While BeiDou 2 was regionally-focused as well for eastern Asia, BeiDou 3, which began deployment in 2015, is intended to be a global system that will compete with the US's Navstar GPS, Russia's GLONASS, and the European Union's Galileo.
     
  19. Macsen

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    99 years ago today, Robert Goddard conducted a demonstration of his solid-fuel cartridge rockets for several American military dignitaries.

    He admitted that his systems had not been perfected yet, but they were actually impressed by his work. The representative from the Army Ordnance Corps particularly said that his rocketry experiments had the potential to revolutionize warfare.

    World War I ended five days later, and this went nowhere.

    *********

    SpaceX appears set to finally test the Falcon Heavy system.

    After a highly secretive launch codenamed "Zuma" scheduled for November 15, SpaceX will put the final touches on preparing Pad 39A for the Falcon Heavy. The RTF launch for Pad 40 will be the launch of CRS-13 on December 4.
     
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  20. Macsen

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    60 years ago today, the US Air Force diverted three PGM-17 Thor intermediate-range ballistic missiles to a new program to study its feasibility as an orbital rocket.

    The first successful orbital launch of a Thor rocket, with the Agena upper stage, would take place 17 months later.
     
  21. Macsen

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    [​IMG]

    Happy 70th birthday to former NASA astronaut Dr. Margaret Rhea Seddon.

    A native of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, she got her MD from Tennessee in 1973 after a bachelors in physiology from Cal in 1970. Following her internship, she specialized in emergency medicine, while doing clinical research in the effects radiation therapy on nutrition in cancer patients.

    She was selected as part of Astronaut Group 8 in 1978 in the first mission specialist track. She took part in medevac procedures for abort rescue contingencies, and helped design the Space Shuttle medical kit.

    After being part of the support crew for STS-6, she flew aboard Discovery on STS-51-D., where she conducted medical experiments, and was also enlisted to operate Canadarm as part of the abortive first Syncom IV-3 repair attempt.

    Dr. Seddon also flew on Columbia twice: on STS-40 for Spacelab Life Sciences 1, and STS-58 for Spacelab Life Sciences 2, for which she was payload commander.

    She was detailed to Vanderbilt University in 1996 to assist in developing experiments for Neurolab and STS-90. She retired from NASA in 1997.

    After leaving NASA, Dr. Seddon spent 11 years as assistant chief medical officer at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. She currently works with LifeWings, an organization that applies military medical concepts to improve patient safety in civilian hospitals.

    Dr. Seddon married fellow Group 8 recruit Robert Gibson in 1981. They have four children together.
     
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  22. song219

    song219 BigSoccer Supporter

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    i assumed when i saw activity on this thread it would have been this.

    Richard Gordon, who undertook what became a harrowing and abortive spacewalk in a 1966 NASA mission, then orbited the moon three years later, but never achieved his dream of walking on the lunar surface, died on Monday at his home in San Marcos, Calif., near San Diego. He was 88.
    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/07/....html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20171108
     
  23. Macsen

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    47 years ago today, Luna 17 was launched atop a Proton-K rocket from Site 81/23, Baikonur Cosmodrome.

    It was placed in lunar orbit four days later, then shortly after landed at Mare Imbrium. Once landed, tracks were extended, and its primary payload, a solar-powered autonomous rover named Lunokhod 1, was deployed.

    Lunokhod 1 would spend the next 10 months motoring around the vicinity of its landing site, travelling a total of 10.5 km. It would take over 20,000 photos, as well as 206 panoramas.

    Lunokhod 1 would also carry a laser retroreflector designed in France for laser-ranging. When the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter photographed its landing site, which included its exact track, the Apollo Point Observatory Lunar Laser-ranging Operation (APOLLO) confirmed the exact location of Lunokhod 1 within a month.
     
  24. Macsen

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    #1200 Macsen, Nov 23, 2017
    Last edited: Nov 23, 2017
    Kyrie Irving certainly thinks so.

    ********

    Although the Soviet Union's Venera program was wildly successful, it was not without its share of failures. Out of 28 launches from 1961 to 1984 (including the two Vega probes that left balloons at Venus and encountered Halley's comet), 10 failed to leave low Earth orbit.

    The first three Venera probes, additionally, failed before reaching Venus.

    53 years ago today, one such Venera probe was launched atop an R7-Molniya rocket from Site 31/6, Baikonur Cosmodrome. It was the second of two atmospheric probes (the other being Venera 3) meant to join the Venera 2 flyby probe.

    As for this one, ultimately designated Kosmos 96, its Blok L upper stage failed. The probe re-entered on December 9, and sparked the Kecksburg incident when its burn-up was observed in Kecksburg, Pennsylvania, leading to a major UFO incident.

    The other two probes failed before reaching Venus.
     

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