Quirks & Quarks

After reading your blog entry, I have to ask the questions - why is the station in the low orbit that it is, and not higher up? Did NASA realize that these computers would have a problem before they experienced the problems they had, but figured the problems wouldn't occur just yet, or did NASA believe these computers would do it for the life of the station - whatever that will be assuming it doesn't go spinning out of control as you say it so easily could?

Also, when is the replacement for the shuttle coming - or do we even really need the shuttle anymore now that the ISS has many components like its own arm? Couldn't NASA just be using rockets to deliver the large parts, and if it wants a flashy shuttle that can take off and return, just build a specialized ship that only carries people back and forth?

Also, if we never had the shuttle, couldn't we still have built and maintained the station just as well (if not better since no one would be relying on those old things? If so, are the shuttles just being used because NASA has some strange preference for them over single, or multiuse rockets?

Thank you for your time

Regards,

The space community needs to pull itself away from government funding. The simple and easy solution to these problems is to allow business to take over research and development. Let them strive for profit and we will all eventually benefit. Just look at the way we do things on Earth - it is mainly corporations that lead the way in producing things like medical equipment. Sure, they are using the brain power of universities to get the 'heavy' work done, but it is big business that pays for most of that work. Once the infrastructure is in place, then we can let the scientists get in there and do their experiments. If there is one thing that governments have consistently shown to be inept at, it is building infrastructure in a reasonable amount of time, and with a reasonable amount of money.

I believe the main answer to 'why is the station in the low orbit that it is, and not higher up?' is limits based on the requirement of docking the Shuttle with it. The higher the shuttle is expected to go, the less cargo it can carry: and some of the ISS maintenance missions have been pretty cargo-heavy, including entire modules to attach to the station.

The Hubble Space Telescope is half again higher up, about 590km, but those tend to be fairly low-payload missions and there's relatively little room for error in fuel consumption. This was part of why the Hubble maintenance mission was delayed after the Columbia disaster, the shuttle wouldn't have had enough fuel to get safely to the ISS from the HST orbit if anything went wrong.

Electrical interference is a fact of life for any piece of computer equipment, and there are numerous solutions for countering, and compensating.

Something as simple as a faraday cage will stop those electromagnetic eddy currents from reaching important components; this has also been known and well understood since the 1800s.

The problem Bob is describing seems to relate to the power supplies; any computer that is soaking up that much inductive interference just wouldn't work at all. That it is a "new" problem, and that they work with just a "jumper cable" suggests that the interference isn't actually affecting the computers, but that it's reached the point (via growth) where it's causing the safety systems to falsly detect surge conditions.

Jamming the breakers open certainly isn't the best option--as it leaves the system open to the failures the breakers are designe to prevent--but I don't believe it's any real reason to condemn the ISS project as a waste of time or resources.

As for the Space Shuttle? Ha! No comment. I wouldn't even trust my 1984 Pontiac to get me 2500km to BC without losing parts on the way. That the space-shuttle is still operational baffles the imagination. It's not like we lack the technology to develop something better... But we certainly seem to lack the political will to pay for it.

I see Bob has become a type of space jockey in that he recently experienced none gravity.

Back in the old day's flying Water Resources around the North, from time to time there would be a request to pass a cigarette to some one in the back. This was my que to power back and climb. Just before the stall you push the nose down creating free fall. The cigarette is released and it gently floats to the person in the back. This is all fine and great until noticing the contents of the ashtrays and most of the sand and stuff that I have neglected to clean also floating. Point being is that you soon learn.

The potential discovery in any subject is endless. I for instance realized while flying a high cambered Aircraft upside down that flight was really all about thrust and atmospheric controlled free fall.

As the Earth tips so does its atmosphere and the International Space Station, all subject to lead and lag.

WOBBLING of the EARTH

Has been explained by science as like a spinning top slowing. My science explains the flip flop tipping of our Earth in its annual orbit around the Sun. Until recently the interaction of the Earth and Sun’s magnetic poles, that give us our four seasons, has been subtle.

Explained in other papers, the Earth’s tipping causes an equal and opposite movement of the Equator, causing both north and south magnetic poles to relocate in the opposite direction and distance of the Earth’s tipping.

It’s too early (February 2006) to determine regularity in the extreme flip flopping (tipping of the Earth).

The Equator has moved one thousand miles north on Earth’s North and South America side and one thousand miles south on Asia and Australia’s side.

Earth’s climate is determined by sun exposure, cold secreting from Earth’s magnetic North and South Poles – the secretion of Earth energy evolving to interact with air and water (weather). Secondary to these would be cold producing molecules (chips) of snow and ice, heated water and air.

Like Australia, Arizona gains the heat of the now closer Equator (sun exposure) and Japan loses the heat of the Equator. Cold produced from the poles has little effect on these, and climate transition is quick. Russia gains cold from its Arctic and loses the heat of the Equator – its transition is quicker than ours.

Waiting for the ice to melt, Canada’s warming will be more gradual. If this extreme flip flopping becomes the norm, we in Vancouver, B.C. will enjoy the weather of Los Angeles, C.A. and they will endure the heat of Mexico – in a boat – hmmm.

Now after that has been said, I have put a little more effort into researching this subject and conclude that:

In the orbital interaction of both the Sun and Earth’s magnetic poles there exists two dramatic, annual movements. One in the fall when the Earth’s repelling North Pole is severed from the Sun’s North Pole, and one in the spring when the two repelling South Poles are severed.

I believe that it’s a star, other than our Sun, that allows stability of the above. For whatever reason it appears lately that things are not working the way they should.

In contact with Natural Resources, Canada, I was advised that money allotment is minimal for magnetic pole research, that the last time on location was May 2001 with readings of 81.3N 110.8W. The next scheduled trip is May of 2007; in the meantime computer readouts estimate a one degree per year change to 82.7N 114.4W for 2005. This year, 2006, the magnetic north pole is estimated at 83.7N 120.W. It would not be necessary to be on location to determine 120°W longitude. A longitude change of 3.6 was expected, but is a change of 9.2 – Wow! Computer estimated location to be moving NW at 40km per year.

Someone not respecting our arctic sovereignty, and who measures in other than metric, recently discovered that the magnetic north pole has relocated one thousand miles towards Siberia – Wow!

When the Canadian government realizes the importance of this and puts up funding they will discover and confirm the things I am saying. Another for instance: In Earth’s two annual erratic tippings, it will be necessary to know the continent location in relation to the Sun when this instant phenomenon takes place. It’s this that causes the Earth to appear to wobble. THE AXIS OF THE EARTH RUNS THROUGH THE MEANDERING NORTH AND SOUTH MAGNETIC POLES – NOT the TRUE global North and South poles!

This late summer (fall) 2005 the Earth tipped away from the Sun at the time Asia was facing the Sun. So what, you say! Well, this is so what: Severe cold in Russia, severe heat in Australia, Arizona etc.

If the Earth flips and flops (hold it) one at a time. If the Earth flips away from the Sun every year on the same side facing the Sun, the continents will eventually rotate in relation to Sun exposure. Except for a bit of tipping, the Earth’s axis stays constant.

Over time, geologically this would indicate pole shifts “(NOT)”.

A pole shift is when a magnetic source (much stronger than ours) immediately reverses the Earth’s nucleus direction. This will happen again in about sixty-five million years. The above is all explained in The VOIGT Papers.

P.S. I’m just guessing at this time, but I’m just wondering if the Earth may be getting pulled closer to the north star, stretching the oval orbit of Earth; something like this would account for a closer, stronger, magnetic Earth-Sun interaction.

Bruce Voigt 14 February 2006

PS--May 2007 Natural Resources Canada reported the meandering north magnetic pole to be at 84.0 N and 123.4 W
Oh yes and when we in Western Canada inherit Californias lovely weather she also brings her bagage (earthquakes)!

I rode in a small Cessna the other day, and found out that it was 20 plus years old. Well-maintained. When I was in the military, I fired a howitzer that was 40 years old, and then a self propelled howitzer that was 20-25 years old. Well-maintained.

It is sad how the media casts dispersions and insinuates incompetence when discussing minor events which happen on space flights like they are catastrophic. And they discuss the repairs as if the keystone cops are performing them.....shame on you. It is the brave men and women who work to keep these ships well-maintained. And they work hard because they know that it is someone's husband going up there, somebody's daddy, somebody's son.

NASA Engineering, keep up the great work. And God bless you.

As for the media, get back to work, there's a story out there....a real one.

Is there a location to find out when the space staion will fly overhead so that I can try and see it?