17172442
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cybrpnk2 writes:
In a Friday news release, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center has issued Part 1 and Part 2 of an excellent and very interesting failure review on the April 28 failed balloon launch of the Nuclear Compton Telescope at Alice Springs, Australia. Bottom line: make sure you don't need a gorilla to pull the payload release handle at balloon launch; if the release mechanism does fail then make sure your safety cables are sized for lift loads and a swinging payload, not just static hanging payload weight; and oh yeah — keep people and vehicles out of the downwind flight path. One spectator was nearly crushed while running from his SUV that was hit and flipped (Figure 29, Vol I). At least nobody ordered video evidence destroyed.
9178390
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cybrpnk2 writes:
It's time to pick a new career for Barbie. She's had over 125 so far, and Mattel is letting the public vote for her next one. Results are announced February 12, with a plastic Barbie incarnation coming soon therafter to a toy store near you. The choices are environmentalist, surgeon, architect, news anchor and COMPUTER ENGINEER. Hmmmmmm......
497110
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cybrpnk2 writes:
Fifty years ago on this day America boldy entered the Space Age by launching Explorer 1. Today NASA and the Air Force shut down a planned commemorative launch of fifty 2-oz. model rockets at the historic Explorer 1 launch site as being too dangerous.
358329
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cybrpnk2 writes:
NASA is currently (if you'll pardon the pun) faced with a major crisis on the STS-120 flight to the International Space Station. At ISS, one new solar array has metal shavings from an unknown source jamming up the 10-foot diameter rotary gear that enables solar tracking. Meanwhile, a seperate older solar array that was partially re-extended in a new location has ripped and lacks the structural integrity for solar tracking either. An upcoming emergency spacewalk will have an astronaut at the end of a shaky boom applying a metal brace to the fully charged ripped array which he dares not touch directly at risk of electrocution to him or destruction to it. Failure threatens a scheduling trainwreck on upcoming flights to deliver power-hungry European and Japanese laboratory modules before President Bush's mandated 2010 Shuttle retirement.
236693
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