Buzz Lightyear em órbita!

Tal como disse aqui aquando do lançamento da missão STS 124, o herói de 'Toy Story' Buzz Lightyear entrou em órbita, e aqui está a prova!

Vídeo do lançamento do Discovery STS-124

Em breve colocarei neste blog a minha selecção do costume de vídeos amadores.

Neste lançamento é notável a nitidez com que foi focada a separação dos motores auxiliares de combustível sólido (SRBs - Solid Rocket Boosters). É incrível a qualidade das ópticas dos dias de hoje!

Esta missão levava como passageiro Buzz Lightyear, conhecido pela sua participação no filme 'Toy Story'. Adequadamente, passou por uma bateria de testes, com a orientação do astronauta Buzz Aldrin (o segundo astronauta a andar na Lua!)

Já viram se isto tivesse acontecido durante a aterragem da Phoenix?

Inevitável! Marcianos manifestam-se contra a invasão americana de Marte!

Um iPod em órbita!

Só espero que tenham boas colunas!

Clique na imagem para a aumentar, e olhe bem para a segunda janela da esquerda! Vê-se perfeitamente um iPod, que parece de uma geração já mais antiga. Aparentemente, os astronautas também gostam de ouvir música enquanto trabalham! Lindo!

Já houve mais iPods em órbita, uma vez que poupam muito espaço em comparação com os leitores de CD. Como as baterias de lítio têm por vezes problemas, como por exemplo... incendiarem-se, são retiradas dos iPods e substituídas por pilhas alcalinas normais, como as que podemos comprar em qualquer supermercado.

Fonte: TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Link: ABC News

Inventor canadiano quer pôr um foguete de garrafas de plástico em órbita!

Neste momento, a tecnologia revolucionária que desenvolveu permite-lhe já fabricar um foguetão de dois andares que atinge cerca de 200 metros de altitude! Só com ar comprimido, água e um pouco de detergente de louça! Já falta pouco para atingir a órbita! Visitem o site, tem por lá muita coisa gira para ser vista! E pode encomendar o seu próprio foguetão!

Fonte: CBC

Link: Antigravity Research Corporation


B.C. inventor wants to put pop bottle rocket into orbit
Published: Sunday, February 17, 2008 | 3:42 PM ET
Canadian Press: Scott Sutherland, THE CANADIAN PRESS

CHILLIWACK, B.C. - Mr. Widget wants to go to space.

Ken Schellenberg, who has adopted the alter-ego on his company website, wants to put a simple but highly engineered bottle rocket into orbit.

Ken Schellenberg, shown in a handout photo, wants to put a simple but highly engineered bottle rocket into orbit. This could be impossible, but the CEO of antigravityresearch.com already holds the altitude record for boosting an elongated pop bottle - propelled by a bicycle pump, water and a bit of soap - into the air. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO

This could be impossible, but the CEO of AntiGravity Research already holds the altitude record for boosting an elongated plastic pop bottle - propelled by a bicycle pump, water and a bit of soap - into the air.

Firing the ubiquitous, two-litre plastic container usually consigned to the recycle bin into space might create a whole new definition for space junk, but the dream keeps Schellenberg going.

"I got side tracked off what I should have been doing, which is electrical engineering," said the red-headed, 49-year-old father of five.

"I named the company before I had anything to do and people still call wondering if we've got a (Star Trek-style) transporter ready or if we've been able to defy gravity in the way that people think of anti gravity.

"I tell them 'No,' but we're hoping to stumble across that sometime soon."

From a large workshop in a pasture behind his home on a wooded mountain plateau high above the Fraser River valley, Schellenberg designs and builds "state-of-the-art-technology" pop-bottle rockets.

They're made by attaching plastic or cardboard fins to an empty bottle, punching a hole in the bottle top to act as a nozzle and pressurizing the bottle with air from a bicycle pump.

Add some water before pumping in the air and the bottle will go higher. Add a squirt of dish soap to the water and it goes even higher.

Schellenberg's two-stage model is easily capable of reaching altitudes of well over 200 metres.

Several years ago, one of his "toy" rockets - actually a Kevlar-reinforced, experimental, single-stage missile pressurized with compressed nitrogen and packing high-tech instruments - flew to just under 379 metres.

Based on that research, Schellenberg is now convinced that it will be possible to put a bottle rocket into orbit. In preparation, he's working on sending a modified two-stage rocket - reinforced with ultra-strong carbon-fibre and fuelled by liquid CO2 - up about five kilometres.

"I've already got the thing half-built," he said.

But he won't be launching that from his pasture near Chilliwack.

He acknowledged he'll need a proper site where passing airplanes would not be at risk - something along the lines of the military test facility at Cold Lake, Alta.

He said he'd definitely look for an organization to sanction the attempt at a new record, but he said these things always take time.

"It always takes me 10 times longer than I thought," he admits. "On the last world record I figured it would take a month, and it was about two years."

The first record-setting launch is documented at antigravityresearch.com, where Schellenberg sells a variety of one-and two-stage rocket kits, plus accessories like his China-built bicycle pump which he says "is the best in the world."

The website also features a dozen or so madcap movies, featuring Schellenberg as Mr. Widget in a white lab coat and heavy-framed glasses with the pre-requisite adhesive tape repairs.

In person, however, Schellenberg is soft-spoken and extremely self-effacing.

A graduate of the British Columbia Institute of Technology, he spent more than 20 years as a designer in the digital world, focusing mainly on micro-controller data loggers.

But he said he got bored with the work, while becoming fascinated by bottle rockets.

"They're simple," he said.

"You fill them with a little bit of water and you pump them up with air and then they fly way up and then come back down."

His shop is filled with machines he has modified or built himself.

Think Wallace and Gromit without Gromit.

One homemade contraption turns out the rocket's three stabilizing fins. It's pieced together with masonry nails welded to motorcycle chains that pull a sheet of meat-tray material through modified, $40 pancake griddles from Wal-Mart.

The griddles heat the thin-foam plastic, then the plastic advances to where a tiny vacuum tube holds on while a heated wire cuts the outline of the piece.

The vacuum then reverses to blow the completed component into a bin. The waste is sent off the end of the machine into another bin to be recycled.

The machine isn't pretty and plywood and auto-body filler are used extensively.

"If there was a place to go and buy a machine like this I would have. But there isn't, so I had to figure it out myself."

A metre away, another contraption heats a standard two-litre bottle and an extendible steel rod stretches it into a more aerodynamic shape. The bottle is then cooled to keep its shape.

Schellenberg has been making his primary living with AntiGravity for seven years through sales almost entirely on the web, although he does some consulting and still considers himself a part-time hay farmer.

He said schools are among his customers - the rockets are ideal for teaching physics.

"Acceleration, velocity, mass, thrust, all those good things that teachers try so hard to teach the kids," he says.

He has also sold large numbers of rockets to American Honda Corp. for use in management training courses, to Whirlpool Corporation for a program with the Boy Scouts, to mechanical engineering departments of universities, and to the U.S. Army.

Part of the selling point is safety.

"With (my) rockets, there's no burning fuel. The pressurized bottle is 25 feet away from you and the pump, so if the bottle should burst it's a good safe distance and at only 60 grams, if falls and hits anyone it doesn't hurt."

He knows because he's tested it himself with rockets falling from as high as 100 metres.

"I tested it in stages," he said. "If a baseball falls 6 inches on to your head, that really hurts, whereas a rocket of this type falling 300 feet doesn't hurt a bit."

AntiGravity's motto is: "Ongoing research projects of little or no gravity."

Orbit would be the best fulfillment of that. And Schellenberg says he sincerely believe's he'll get there.

"Well, perhaps sincere might be the wrong word. Overly optimistic might be better. It certainly looks possible," he says with a grin, trailing off.

A imagem do dia!

Acabei de descobrir isto num site de t-shirts. Lembrei-me daquelas pessoas que diziam que acharam obsceno o espetáculo dos astronautas a colocarem a bandeira americana na Lua... Bom, o facto é que quem lá foi... foram eles :)

Space Shuttle Atlantis atacado por aranha gigantesca!

Pelo menos era o que parecia na NASA TV! Uma aranhita andou por momentos na objectiva de uma das cameras que irá cobrir o lançamento da próxima missão do Atlantis, adiada para 10 de Janeiro, na melhor das hipóteses, devido a vários problemas nos sensores de combustível do grande tanque externo.

Stephen Hawking nos Simpsons

O Prof. Hawking é, apesar da sua doença, um homem muito bem humorado!

Quem é que atirou o meu laptop pela borda fora???

Não, isto não se passou no meu emprego! Passa-se na NASA!

Aparentemente a NASA controla tão mal o seu inventário de equipamento que andam a desaparecer toneladas de computadores, impressoras e similares, sem que nada seja feito para investigar.

Uma investigação do Government Accountability Office (GAO) concluíu que nos últimos 10 anos desapareceram 94 milhões de dólares de equipamento! Pior, quando a NASA descobriu, em vez de apertar o controlo sobre o equipamento, simplesmente subiu a fasquia acima da qual seria obrigada a investigar esses desaparecimentos!

E ainda pior, cerca de 199 milhões dólares de equipamento nunca foram inventariados!!! Por isso nem se sabe se estão a uso da NASA ou se foram levados para casa de alguém...

Nas investigações feitas a estas discrepâncias, houve explicações absolutamente surreais, como um caso em que um indivíduo afirmou que o seu portátil teria sido levado para a Estação Espacial Internacional, e deitado pela borda fora, para arder na alta atmosfera, quando deixou de funcionar!

Boa! Já viram se eu levasse daqui do meu escritório um portátilzito todo XPTO, e depois me viessem perguntar por ele? Eu dizia que tinha sido levado por engano para a Lua... E ninguém fazia mais perguntas!

Mais uma vez a NASA encara os erros com o mesmo padrão de comportamento - aumentando a margem aceitável para esse erro. Foi assim que perderam o Challenger. E uma tonelada de equipamento de escritório!!!

Fonte: NASAWatch

Link: SpaceRef


Property Management: Lack of Accountability and Weak Internal Controls Leave NASA Equipment Vulnerable to Loss, Theft, and Misuse
STATUS REPORT
Date Released: Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Source: Government Accountability Office

What GAO Found

Over the past 10 years, NASA reported that it lost over $94 million of equipment. The high equipment losses are due mainly to a weak internal control environment. Although some equipment was located during subsequent physical inventories, NASA's failure to keep track of these items leaves them vulnerable to theft and misuse. When faced with high equipment losses, instead of tightening controls, NASA raised its threshold for tracking and controlling equipment. Also, NASA management was unresponsive to prior equipment management recommendations, frequently did not investigate equipment losses, and was reluctant to hold employees accountable for loss--as shown in the following examples.

Explanations Provided for Equipment Loss in Which No One Was Held Accountable

(Equipment description - Equipment value (dollars) - Explanation provided)

• Desktop computer and laser printer - 4,855 - My wife needed a computer at home to perform her work as a real estate broker so I checked one out from the surplus stock available. I turned the computer back in when she was done using it but never received a receipt.
• Laptop computer - 4,265 - This computer, although assigned to me, was being used on board the International Space Station. I was informed that it was tossed overboard to be burned up in the atmosphere when it failed.
• Various missing property, 65 items - 850,321- A thorough and reasonable search was conducted but we were unable to locate the missing property. In general, the missing items consist of older equipment that has been replaced or is no longer necessary for standard operations.

Source: GAO analysis of NASA's fiscal year 2006 equipment loss reports.

NASA also lacks the integrated systems and processes needed to provide reasonable assurance that equipment purchases are recorded in the property management system. As a result, over the past 10 years, NASA reported that it failed to enter $199 million of equipment purchases into its property management system. Equipment not tracked in NASA's property management system is not subject to the same physical inventory procedures as other controlled equipment items and, as a result, is at much higher risk of being lost or stolen without NASA being aware of it. Because NASA uses the amounts recorded in its property records as the basis for reporting equipment amounts in its financial statements, NASA did not report the full cost of this equipment on its financial statements. Although NASA expects its system modernization effort to improve controls for ensuring that equipment purchases are recorded in the property system, NASA cannot rely on technology alone to solve its equipment management problems. These problems are deeply rooted in an agency culture that does not demand accountability or fully recognize the value of effectively managing government assets.

Why GAO Did This Study

For years, GAO and others have reported that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) does not maintain effective control over the $35 billion of property, plant, and equipment (PP&E) and materials that it reports on its financial statements. GAO's report, the first in a planned series, addresses whether NASA's control environment and internal controls over NASA-held equipment provide reasonable assurance that (1) these assets are not vulnerable to loss, theft, and misuse and (2) all equipment costs are appropriately recorded in the agency's financial statements. GAO evaluated the design of NASA's property management controls by reviewing agencywide and local policies, obtaining equipment loss reports for all NASA centers, and evaluating actions taken to hold employees accountable. To confirm its understanding of the design of NASA's property controls, GAO conducted on-site visits at two NASA centers and interviewed property management officials at the remaining seven NASA centers.

What GAO Recommends

GAO is recommending 10 actions aimed at strengthening users' accountability for equipment loss and improving internal controls over equipment. NASA concurred with 8 of GAO's 10 recommendations and partially concurred with 2. NASA also provided technical comments that have been incorporated as www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-07-432

Na NASA há quem não saiba escrever!!!

Por esta e por outras é que eu não acredito que a NASA seja capaz de voltar à Lua.

Talvez notem que o nome do Space Shuttle Endeavour está mal escrito... Falta o 'u'... Quando deram por isso, mandaram alguém com um letreiro corrigido para o substituir... Não foram foi a tempo de evitar algumas fotografias inoportunas... Ai Jesus...

Será que sabem fazer contas? É que é preciso saber fazer contas para calcular órbitas e cenas assim...