Bush Cancels trip to Pluto.

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by faded glory

Btw didnt we put an engravement message inside for extra terreriastials? .

The plaque

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

The Pioneer 10 spacecraft, destined to be the first man-made object to escape our solar system, carries this plaque. It is designed to show scientifically educated inhabitants of some other star system-who might intercept it millions of years from now-when Pioneer was launched, from where, and by what kind of beings. The design is engraved into a gold-anodized aluminum plate, 152 by 229 millimeters (6 by 9 inches), attached to the spacecraft's antenna support struts in a position to help shield it from erosion by interstellar dust.

At the far right, the bracketing bars (1) show the height of the woman compared to the spacecraft. The figure indicated by (2) represents a reverse in the direction of spin of the electron in a hydrogen atom. This transition puts out a characteristic radio wave 21 cm long, so we are indicating that 21cm is our base length. The horizontal and vertical ticks (3) are a representation of the number 8 in binary form. Therefore, the woman is 8 x 21 cm = 168 cm, or about 5'5" tall. The human figures represent the type of creature that created Pioneer. The man's hand is raised in a gesture of good will.

The radial pattern (4) will help other scientists locate our solar system in the galaxy. The solid bars indicate distance, with the horizontal bar (5), denoting the distance from the Sun to the galactic center. The shorter solid bars represent directions and distances to various pulsars from our Sun, and the ticks following them are the periods of the pulsars in binary form. Pulsars are known to be slowing down and if the rate of slowing is constant, an other-world scientist should be able to roughly deduce the time Pioneer was launched. Thus, we have placed ourselves approximately in both space and time. The drawing at the bottom (6) indicates our solar system. The ticks accompanying each planet are the relative distance in binary form of that planet to the Sun. Pioneer's trajectory is shown as starting from the third
planet, Earth.

[Rogan Josh]

Originally posted by Big Crunch
The plaque

And what the hell is that supposed to be? ET will be thinking we are all a bunch of loonies!

[KrazyHorse]

Yep, as far as, but its not headed in the direction of the Centaurus system.

I'm aware, BC.

[General Ludd]

Edited because Big Crunch quoted it in his post.

[faded glory]

Well......in other space news which nobody has yet to mention: Cassini approaches jupiter- next stop......saturn

Am i the only one interested in this mission

[faded glory]

Aye hear is the beautiful pictures this baby is taking. Lets just hope those Huygen probe thingys the EU designed actually do there job this time


(erm-mars mission they boofed up)

http://ciclops.lpl.arizona.edu/ciclops/imaging_diary.html

[The Mad Monk]

Re: I'd rather mine an NEA than go to Pluto

Originally posted by DinoDoc


You're actually asking me why I think that something useful should arise from the government spending millions of dollars of my money. Do I understand you correctly?

'Fraid not...I don't consider 'applied science' to be the only useful result. A lot of applied science only gets applied after scads of 'pure' science has been produced, and even then only after considerable time has passed. Just because a line of research dosen't provide immediately applicable results, it dosen't mean the results are useless; it just means they aren't immediately applicable.

[aaglo]

Earlier in this thread was a "debate" about governments spending $ on military development. According to UNESCO: "Every year the world spends 100$ to teach a person to read and 8000$ to teach a person to shoot a rifle"

That's just sick.

Faded Glory:
No, you are not the only person interested about Cassini. It will arrive on orbit around Saturn onthe 1st of July 2004. I'm though more interested about Titan than Saturn itself.

IIRC it will send a probe to the moon Titan. It's a very interesting place, because it is one of the moons in the solarsystem, that has an atmosphere. Triton (moon of Neptunus) has an atmosphere too, but it is frozen solid part (if not most) of the year.

[Par4]

The US government wastes around a quarter of a dollar out of each dollar, you could fund a lot of spacecraft with a trillion dollars a year.

But it takes a hell of a lot of time to get to any of the these places, I read scientific american and they've had some recent articles about engines that could get to Mars in like 4 months IIRC, anyone know how those are going? I bet if the time span were cut to less than a year or so there would be a lot more enthusiasm for these projects. They don't hit home like the millitary does.

[aaglo]

IIRC

A few years ago I heard about a new type of engine (was it a particle engine, I don't know), which could propel a spacecraft to huge speeds, something like 100 000 miles per hour, or something of that magnitude (correct me if I'm wrong). The only downside of this engine was, that acceleration to such speeds would take very long time.

Maybe JPL (Jet propulsion laboratory) website can offer some information about this subject.

EDIT: the engine is called ion engine. If you're intrerested, go to www.jpl.nasa.gov and search for ion engine.

[Roman]

Originally posted by aaglo
Earlier in this thread was a "debate" about governments spending $ on military development. According to UNESCO: "Every year the world spends 100$ to teach a person to read and 8000$ to teach a person to shoot a rifle"

That's just sick.

I am sorry, but this information is plain wrong. Even at the height of the cold war, military spending 'only' reached $1 trillion per annum. Now it's down to 750 billion per year. According to your statistics:-


$8,000 * 6,000,000,000 = $48 trillion

Since the total world GDP is under $40 trillion you claim that the world is spending everything on the military (ie. nobody eats, nobody buys clothing, and nothing, absolutely nothing else is produced other than weapons) and since that still is not enough, the extra $8 trillion + just magically flows into the military.

Now don't get me wrong $750 billion per year is a vast amount of money that could be put to better uses, but there is no need to make up ridiculous statistics.

[Ted Striker]

Roland,

Can you mediate this argument?

[Roman]

Originally posted by aaglo
IIRC

A few years ago I heard about a new type of engine (was it a particle engine, I don't know), which could propel a spacecraft to huge speeds, something like 100 000 miles per hour, or something of that magnitude (correct me if I'm wrong). The only downside of this engine was, that acceleration to such speeds would take very long time.

Maybe JPL (Jet propulsion laboratory) website can offer some information about this subject.

EDIT: the engine is called ion engine. If you're intrerested, go to www.jpl.nasa.gov and search for ion engine.

The engine is not so new at all. It was developed and used on satellites by the Soviet Union in the 1960s. NASA had just tested the engine a few years ago on one of its probes.

As to the speed the engine can reach - this is very misleading. In theory, every engine can attain any possible speed, but needs varying amounts of fuel to do so. The point about the ion engine is that it is about 10 times as efficient as a standard chemical engine. However, the maximum thrust the engine provides is very low and that's why the acceleration is so low. On large spacecraft the problem would likely be even worse, because we don't know whether the engine scales well (most likely it does not).

[aaglo]

Well, if I understood the article correctly (and my translation was a bit poor):

In education (read: teaching a person to read) every year some 100$ is spent per student. In military training (read: teaching person to shoot a rifle) every year some 8000$ is spent per trainee.

I think that was the point of the article... sorry about the mix-up.

[Roman]

Originally posted by aaglo
Well, if I understood the article correctly (and my translation was a bit poor):

In education (read: teaching a person to read) every year some 100$ is spent per student. In military training (read: teaching person to shoot a rifle) every year some 8000$ is spent per trainee.

I think that was the point of the article... sorry about the mix-up.

Hey, no problem

That would make more sense. Military training is expensive, so the $8000 figure is probably accurate, but the $100 dollar figure for education is probably a large underestimate. Education is expensive too, albeit cheaper than military training. Statistics can be easily manipulated (eg. using PPP figures for the military spending, but only nominal figures for education and excluding private spending on education, etc.). I find that many agencies, especially NGOs do that to prove their point. Now, I do agree that military spending could be reduced, but one must always be careful/sceptical when one sees shocking figures.