I assume it scales with area, but there's probably a proviso regarding losses when combining the antennae - I'm not sure how much that is though.

http://trs-new.jpl.nasa.gov/dspace/bitstre...5/1/05-0738.pdf

http://trs-new.jpl.nasa.gov/dspace/bitstre...4/1/06-2024.pdf

Some help - but not definitive on how well it actually scales.

Doug

No, national interests.

Pride doesn't enter into it.

I don't think we're going to get any where with this debate. At this point, I'm considering the LV issue closed and any further posts on it will be culled.

Doug

PS: Clearly Geographer can't read what I just posted. Posts culled = 1.

$20m for 3 new 18m dishes - but assuming a scaling of the third dish costing half as much as the second which cost half as much as the first ish... perhaps only $3m each for future dishes

250 sq m

70m dish is about 15,400

61 dishes - call it $200m for a 70m class array...maybe. With HUGE flexibility.

Doug

Very large but quite dim in my Binos tonight - clearly diffuse to the naked eye as well - harder to find. It won't be visible to us humans for much longer, just those electron wells of the CCD world.

Doug

Falcon 9 is 9.9 to 10.4 tons to LEO

Atlas V is 10.3 to 20.5 (25 if you include the Atlas V heavy) to LEO

So really - the Falcon 9 fits inbetween the Delta II and Atlas V in terms of performance ( something of a sweet spot I would say - MRO took the cheapest Atlas V.a job that could perhaps have been done by an F9 in the future)

Now it gets exciting with the Falcon 9 heavy...27.5 ton to LEO.


Doug

All I've seen is MER sized vehicles, with a few more KG of payload derived from savings in mass elsewhere.

Doug

Actually - the Ariane V is a slightly less capable launch vehicle, from a better launch position, resulting in a similar performance.

I'm not going to start ( or allow ) a political debate here - but the fact of the matter is that US tax payers pay their taxes, some of which goes to NASA, so that America can do good science and exploration. As a US tax payer, is one going to be interested in science and engineering jobs in the USA, or in France?

The Ariane V is not significantly cheaper than the Atlas V, and any difference is probably offset entirely by figuring out how much of the cost of an Atlas V launch goes straight back to the US government as income tax.

Yes - ESA and NASA colaborate on projects ( SOHO, STEREO, C-H, JWST ) - but on a trade basis...we'll build a lander, you make the orbiter - or we'll make some instruments to fly, and you can use them sometimes, or we'll launch it if you let us use it for a while..... but NASA writing a cheque to Arianespace for a launch of an American project isn't going to happen, and nor should it. This entire debate is academic as we're now down a road whereby Juno IS launching on an Atlas V- fact. However - were we to wind back history 5 years and have a significant European contribution to the project in terms of instrumentation and scientists - then perhaps the responsibility of launching the mission could become a European affair (as is happening with JWST). Writing big trans-atlantic cheques just makes no sense, for either party, and is not a sensible way to spend the respective taxpayers money.


Doug

No Giotto, no MGS, no Stardust, no Deep Impact, no SOHO, no Pathfinder.....you could play that game all day.

Doug

LOL - a Top 10 that includes 15 spacecraft

Doug

An overnight run.

Blue line is the LDR - you can see a couple of overnight triggers of our security light, followed by the increase of the sunlight kicking in at dawn

Green is temp - chilled within 10 minutes when I put it in the conservatory, then it rose slightly when the sun rose.

The orange is humidity..I'm not sure what, if anything, is going on there. 9/10ths of 4/5ths of nothing. To be honest, I may have cooked it last night when wiring it up - there's no indication which way round it should be wired up. I'll do some testing using the kettle - see if I can switch up to 100% humidity etc etc.

Doug

They did some spectroscopy and identified it as TiO2 - the constituent of the white paint used on the those LV's.

Doug

I have a Picaxe data logger working - with Temp, LDR and Humidity (a 'maybe' on the humidity at the moment)I have a Picaxe data logger working - with Temp, LDR and Humidity (a 'maybe' on the humidity at the moment)

Just raw figures, not values yet - but I held the temp sensor, breathed on the humidity, and 'showed' my laptop screen to the LDR a few times - and stuff changed

Doug

Imagine the scene - I walk into the Phoenix centre in Leicester, up to the Box Office

"Hi, I'd like to order two tickets for In the shadow of the moon for the 30th please"
"Hmm - not heard of that, just a minute."
tap tap tap tap tap
"No, sorry, we don't appear to be showing it"

W
T
F?

Fortunately, a theatre not to far away in Loughborough is showing it as well!

Doug

And in the real world with real money and real national interests (that rightfully keep the $190m spend on the Juno LV within the US) ?

Doug

What, Birmingham?

Doug

Just a bit of fun - badly done (shadows wrong etc etc )

I might try and do one with the modules finished - as with Destiny we have a sutiable stand in for the Japan module (missing the external platform). Cut a segment out and it's Columbus

Doug

I would happily drive closer - but I wouldn't dare get within an IDD's reach. I wouldn't get closer to the base of the cliff than the height of the cliff ( a 45 degree local horizon ) - because that's when the power and comms start to get impacted.

Doug

A difficult trade - but I'm very very glad that MARDI is back. No word on MastCam though sadly.

Doug

Ahh - congratulations - to be honest, command line based makes a lot of sense as then we can write nice long batchfiles to process a whole load of it

Doug

Given that we know how hard the Oppy stuff is to work with - stunning work on that pan Hort!!

I'm not sure if/when they'll get the resources in place to better flat-field the images, it's really hard to do.

Images here
http://pancam.astro.cornell.edu/pancam_ins...true_color.html

and here
http://pancam.astro.cornell.edu/pancam_ins...alse_color.html

may fare slightly better than the default JPG's from JPL/Exp.

Doug

It was on a trajectory for that Earth flyby - but the spacecraft was turned off in July 1992. It has not been tracked for more than 15 years. There's no 'definite' about the status of Giotto. We have no idea what sort of state it's in.

Doug

There are as many opinions on that as there are moons. They're ALL interesting, they're ALL compelling.

Doug

An increase in image processing technology does not automatically mean new results from old data.

Doug

The problem is that the latent heat of evaporation of water is so huge -I don't know of anything else that can match it.

Doug

And the bottom ones as well.

Doug