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Rocket Lab Launches 13 Cubesats on 1st Mission for NASA
Rocket Lab's ramp-up is going well so far. The spaceflight startup launched 13 tiny satellites on its first-ever mission for NASA early this morning (Dec. 16), just a month after acing its first commercial flight.
A Rocket Lab Electron booster lifted off from the company's launch site on New Zealand's Mahia Peninsula at 1:33 a.m. EST today (0633 GMT and 7:33 p.m. local New Zealand time), kicking off the ELaNa-19 mission for NASA. Fifty-three minutes later, all of the payloads had separated from the Electron's "kick stage" and settled successfully into a circular orbit about 310 miles (500 kilometers) above Earth.
Educational Launch of Nanosatellites.
Also at Engadget.
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Rocket Lab Mission for NASA Successfully Launches 13 CubeSats
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New crypt. See /usr/news/crypt.
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Monday December 17 2018, @08:06PM (7 children)
https://www.space.com/34324-cubesats.html [space.com]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Cube_One [wikipedia.org]
Most of what you said isn't true. Or was it a "joke"?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Monday December 17 2018, @08:09PM (6 children)
Yeah you can get some low-grade utility from them, but, from your own article
Their payoff-to-space-junk ratio is real real real bad.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday December 17 2018, @08:20PM (5 children)
IDK the specifics, but it seems that a radar retro-reflector would be a reasonable thing to require a cube-sat to implement, making their radar signature MUCH larger than their actual size.
I also feel that it is past time to start a space junk collection and disposal initiative, either collect it as a resource, or send it into the ocean to get it out of the way. There are still booster stages from the 1960s up there, clearly visible from the ground with the naked eye. Cubesat sized ;-) solar powered ion engines could be attached to stabilize their roll and slowly collect them into a common orbit.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Monday December 17 2018, @08:29PM (4 children)
It's not that it can't be done, but I feel like your solution is simplistic and has unanswered questions.
Changing orbits with discrepancies measured in the 10s of thousands of kph using solar ion engines? And where's the particle source for this ion engine? Are we launching a dozen Olympic swimming pools of water? Or do we have some magic space-based recycling program that chops the space debris into atom-sized pieces and ionizes them and ejects them? Maybe if we put a couple percent of world GDP into space development?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday December 17 2018, @09:41PM (3 children)
Yeah, that's my favorite idea, but a big bag of fuel attached to the engine is probably more practical.
That's long overdue, as Stephen Hawking would tell you if he could.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Monday December 17 2018, @09:50PM (2 children)
I like it, but my own list of megaprojects that require several percent of world output (each) isn't short:
*eradicate worldwide poverty
*solve the upcoming antibiotic failure
*create worldwide managed fisheries
*cut energy-based-carbon emissions to zero in 20 years(cows and concrete are followups), with some first world subsidization of the third world getting green energy infrastructure
*Maintain and expand status quo good ideas, like national parks and mass transit
*And yes, space development
It's easy to say "Space is the future" but not baking the earth to death is a pretty good trial run for being able to terraform effectively.
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Tuesday December 18 2018, @12:29AM
Nonsense! It is precisely the demonstrated ability to completely alter the entire ecosystem, atmosphere and weather patterns on this planet that we can be convinced we can pull it off on another one!
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday December 18 2018, @12:31AM
Social science has a long way to go to catch up with rocket science in terms of predictable and controllable outcomes.
The failure itself is rooted in social problems, this brief 50 year period of "mastery over the microbes" might be destined to wink out just as fast as it winked in if we can't get control over our use of antibiotics.
Amen. https://www.half-earthproject.org/ [half-earthproject.org] Massive investment not really needed, massive social change however is essential to success.
That's a lot of specifics for things that are notoriously difficult to quantify on global scale. We need to move in that direction (social/economic problem) quickly (bigger social/economic problem), but even if I were grand emperor of Gaia and everybody did what I said just because I said it, this would be a tough thing to pull off without major ego bruising of today's power elite.
Repeating: https://www.half-earthproject.org/ [half-earthproject.org] and mass transit really only makes sense in dense cities, which, if we pack all the people in half the land area should be a natural outcome.
🌻🌻 [google.com]