DescentBB

Damn it. The Genesis capsule containing samples of the solar wind crashed into the desert floor. Apparently, the parachute and drogue didn't properly deploy. The stunt pilots who were supposed to catch it didn't even get a shot. It's likely that those samples are completely destroyed. There goes several years of planning and years of potential research .

Source: NASA

I bet its the feet -> meters blunder striking again.

that had to hurt!

OOOH. That's gonna leave a mark.

And to think all the money put into this could've been put to better use....like fixing the shuttles (or building brand new ones).

^
Indeed.

I just wonder what got set loose.

Particles that hit our atmosphere daily?

MD, I think the budget for this project was $280 million or so. That doesn't even cover the cost of one shuttle launch, much less building a new one/refurbishing the current ones. This would have been invaluable to science...an actual sample of the solar wind. Damn, I wanted this thing to work .

Woodchip, it's just a bunch of charged particles, not an alien retrovirus .

Well that sucks.

I saw this on the news. As it hit the ground at 100+ MPH, I pictured the flying dirt/debris as dollar bills.

cool Video. First identifiable flying saucer, well ... tumbling saucer.

It's always a bummer when something like this happens. Glad it wasn't manned.

Top Gun wrote:That doesn't even cover the cost of one shuttle launch, much less building a new one/refurbishing the current ones.

how much does a single Shuttle cost?



EDIT: Nvm 2.2 Billion

What a waste of government money.

"He fall down go BOOOOM!!!!" - Tweety Bird

Jagger wrote:What a waste of government money.

F8ck knowledge and research in the ass, man, seriously.

[/sarcasm]

Jagger wrote:What a waste of government money.

Waste? It would be a waste if they were launching it into orbit. every dime goes into the world economy, not a bad thing in my opinion.

These science missions are a drop in the barrel of the space shuttle pork-barrel boondoggle. Additionally, they accomplish something other than PR, unlike the Space Shuttle.

Time to get a cost-effective SSTO system into place before it is too late.

i say take all that money that was wasted and put it into a system dedicated to the ISS.

a vehicle thats reusable, can carry both supplies and personel to and from the Station.

it is unfortunate that exploartions cost so much, and i do support space exploartion and such, but the amount of money spent for whats ends up as charred metals? maybe its time for NASA to explore their flight plans until they are perfect.

thats a lottttta tax dollas..

Otherwise we have a really expensive paper weight on our hands now.

JMEaT wrote:I saw this on the news. As it hit the ground at 100+ MPH, I pictured the flying dirt/debris as dollar bills.

It hit around 190MPH. Whatever's in there is almost certainly trashed.

MD-2389 wrote:

JMEaT wrote:I saw this on the news. As it hit the ground at 100+ MPH, I pictured the flying dirt/debris as dollar bills.

It hit around 190MPH. Whatever's in there is almost certainly trashed.

its funny how, it was only going 190 MPH, when the Space Shuttle Touches down at Edwards AFB or Kennedy Airfield @ 298 MPH

AceCombat wrote:

MD-2389 wrote:

JMEaT wrote:I saw this on the news. As it hit the ground at 100+ MPH, I pictured the flying dirt/debris as dollar bills.

It hit around 190MPH. Whatever's in there is almost certainly trashed.

its funny how, it was only going 190 MPH, when the Space Shuttle Touches down at Edwards AFB or Kennedy Airfield @ 298 MPH

the space shuttle is more aerodynamic than a flying pot.

Battlebot wrote:

AceCombat wrote:

MD-2389 wrote:

JMEaT wrote:I saw this on the news. As it hit the ground at 100+ MPH, I pictured the flying dirt/debris as dollar bills.

It hit around 190MPH. Whatever's in there is almost certainly trashed.

its funny how, it was only going 190 MPH, when the Space Shuttle Touches down at Edwards AFB or Kennedy Airfield @ 298 MPH

the space shuttle is more aerodynamic than a flying pot.

but at the same time, what speed would a Apollo capsule hit the earth if it failed to deply its chutes? probably in the area of 800+ MPH

the shuttle has speed brakes that its using on pretty much its entire glide back to a landing, after its gone through the atmosphere above speeds of 800MPH, its the only way to keep it from overshooting a runway.

AceCombat wrote:

MD-2389 wrote:

JMEaT wrote:I saw this on the news. As it hit the ground at 100+ MPH, I pictured the flying dirt/debris as dollar bills.

It hit around 190MPH. Whatever's in there is almost certainly trashed.

its funny how, it was only going 190 MPH, when the Space Shuttle Touches down at Edwards AFB or Kennedy Airfield @ 298 MPH

The tumbling probably slowed it down a little. Besides, the large surface area on the bottom added alot of wind resistance into the equation, which undoubtedly slowed it down quite a bit.

but at the same time, what speed would a Apollo capsule hit the earth if it failed to deply its chutes? probably in the area of 800+ MPH

The Apollo capsules have a HELL of alot more mass than a dinky little pot. The larger mass + pull of gravity = faster rate of descent.

HaAGen DaZS wrote:it is unfortunate that exploartions cost so much, and i do support space exploartion and such, but the amount of money spent for whats ends up as charred metals? maybe its time for NASA to explore their flight plans until they are perfect.

thats a lottttta tax dollas..

My point exactly. Though I don't particularly care. I'll pay my taxes anyways, just seems to me there's better things they could be doing than collecting sun particles...

what really matters isn't the mass -- it's the terminal velocity, which is a function of mass and surface area. Basically, it's the speed at which the air resistance exactly cancels out the force of gravity. If an object reaches that speed when falling, it will stay at that speed. If it's moving faster, the air will slow it down; if it's moving slower, gravity will speed it up.

I seriously doubt the Apollo capsule would have had a terminal velocity of 800+ MPH. But if anyone is curious, you can certainly do the research and do the math.

im not very good with math like that, ill pass

MD-2389 wrote:The larger mass + pull of gravity = faster rate of descent.

Oh, no! Galileo was wrong!

"The larger mass + pull of gravity = faster rate of descent."

/me smacks MD with a physics lesson

All objects, regardless of mass, fall at the same rate of descent.

why do you think a feather falls as fast as an anvil in a vacuuum? or when a baseball pitcher, no matter the speed he throws the ball at, ends up at the ground at the same time?

MD, try this simple experiment:

Stand on a chair and drop a piece of paper. Then pick up the paper, crumple it into a ball, and drop it again. Did you change the mass of the ball? Then why'd it fall faster the second time?

Mass will affect inertia and momentum, but that comes into play after the force (in this case gravity) is removed from the object.

DC your readers digest physics never ceases to amuse me. You dance a fine jig with the point, narrowly avoid it, and manage to leave your position attackable. No offense though mate

MD: Gravity pushes everything just as hard. But it's not the only force at work. The most important with falling objects is resistance created by the medium the oject is passing through (air, if it falls from sky to ground). Air does NOT push everything just as hard, chiefly because it can only push surface area.

Big things get slowed down by air (any gas or liquid, solids for that matter) more than small things, but big things don't get sped up by gravity more than small things.

Right, kinda. On a cosmic level, the force of attraction between two objects is directly related to the product of the two masses, and inversely related to the square of the distance between the CMs of the two objects. link

From Newton's 2nd law, we get F = ma, therefore (through a little algebra) we see that the acceleration of an object, due to earth's gravitational pull, is independant of the object's mass. (a = G * M earth/distance^2) Note: the acceleration of the object relative to the earth technically is related to its mass, because the earth accelerates slightly toward the object, increasing their relative acceleration slightly. The only time that anyone cares is when the mass of the object approaches the same order of magnitude as that of the earth - I.E. anything smaller than the moon won't result in any readable difference. Also, the acceleration due to gravity is affected by distance from the center of the earth, but again noone cares till you're well out in space. (I think satellites see about .01m/s^2 difference)

That being said- the paper analogy has to do with aerodynamics - the surface area and shape of the surface effect the way the air flows around the object as it drops. The more the object disrupts the flow, the more force the air will exert on the object. Note that this force is related to velocity, also, so the faster you try to go, the more it resists. "Terminal Velocity" is the term they use for the speed something is falling when the air resists gravity with the same force as gravity is "pulling" - depending on the shape of your object the terminal velocity will be different. That's a bit more extensive way of saying what PR did. Note that Surface area isn't really the issue with fluids - it's shape/orientation. (if I get any more complicated about that I'll have to throw in laminar/turbulent, and that gets ugly really fast) And, sorry Lothar, but terminal velocity could care less about mass, too. It's a function of geometry, viscosity & density of the fluid, and velocity (vector) of the flow.

Actually Stuart... Terminal Velocity should depend on mass, because it's the point at which the two forces (gravity and air resistance) balance. Gravitational force depends on mass, and resistance doesn't, so the mass will stick around in the final equation:

F_grav = m*g
F_air = A/2*d*r*v^2
where A = area, d = drag coeff, r = air density

When those two are equal, you get terminal velocity.

m*g = A/2*d*r*v^2

Solve for v, and you get
v = sqrt(2*m*g/A*d*r)

Which does, in fact, depend on mass. On the NASA site I linked to, it replaces m*g with W, the weight.

Hm, an equation for air resistance. Cool.

By the way, when the space shuttle lands at 300 or so MPH, hardly any of it is vertical velocity. That's how it stays in one piece.

On the other hand, if you have probes falling from the sky like meteorites, chances are most of their velocity will be vertical.

Looking (in a flawed way) on the bright side: how many jobs does NASA create?

I love it when you guys get all sexy and talk science

$280m isn't that much, in perspective. That's what..a week in Iraq? The gains in knowledge are worth it. Too bad it goofed.

this mission was using aerogel to catch the solar wind right? nifty stuff.


good thing they had their cameras' sights on it while it plummeted to the ground. coz it sure did look cool how it splatted into the ground like that.

so it's not all bad news, we got some cool splat footage. cool splat footage always makes people smile a little.