“I assume these rockets are filled with ice-cold fuel, like the recent abort.”

Technically, the Atlas V 401 is fueled by kerosene, liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen, so the fuel is actually way colder than ice (−423.17 °F/−252.87°C). When the liquid hydrogen leaks out (and it will) and mixes with the oxygen in the air, you get ice formations. And you’re right, heating it up only makes this process worse.

If something goes wrong in a launch, I guess these pictures (webcams? they got USB ports? there’s money, I think they strap iPhones to them zoomsticks) may be a big part of the available evidence on how to not do that again.

Sounds more like a space race situation then..

But do the various national teams talk & share info with each other at all?

Do they all cover the same ground with the same instruments?

If so, doesn’t that seem a bit of a waste & unnecesary duplication?

Personally, I’d rather see some co-operation, eg. we’ll cover this ground, you can cover that, we’ll use this instrument & you can use this other one, etc ..

Which nation will be the second to the Moon or the third and who will remember that?

Wouldn’t it be more memorable, more a “first” and, more importantly, more productive to be part of the first international joint mission to the Moon with, say, an Indian, a Japanese and a Chinese woman-man-woman all stepping out onto the regolith together?

The several Moon satellites from various nations as of late are all independent of each other.

& too, are all these recent lunar probe missions – LRO, Kaguya, Chang’e-1, Chandrayaan-1 completely separate and duplicating each others work and instruments or is there some co-operation, collaboration and deliberate focus on different areas and instruments for each?

Is this more a ‘space race’ type situation or more a ‘Babylon-5 /Deep Space 9′ type one???

Flying Sardines, I thought the answer to your question would be self-evident. Neil’s out there. He’s waaaaaaaaaaaaaay out there. He’s so out there that he’s tilting at Zionist windmills.

Yeah, I was setting things up for somebody to use that line!

Actually, ‘Neil’ is who seems to be one of the worst fruitcakes ever to post here was predicting the LRO to fail suspiciously – y’know so it doesn’t capture “evidence” that the Moon landings were all faked …’Neil’, for those who don’t know already, also seems to think the ISS and HST are fake “props”, that spacesuits don’t work, that 9-11 was done by the US gubermint, that the Holocaust never happened, that … well it would be easier to list the Conspiracy “theories” he doesn’t believe in. Assuming he’s for real & not just a very unfunny Poe ..

Anyway I was asking to see if “Neil’ still thinks its going to fail in suspicicous circumstances and what he “thinks” about the LRO-LCROSS mission so far.. It could prove entertaining in a head-shaking, face-palming sorta way!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reports_of_Streptococcus_mitis_on_the_moon

When they’re sending sterile probes to other Planets, moons, do they have a technique to make sure

I’m not a rocket scientist. But this question came up recently, and I found that there is an (international, IIRC) standard to this, and it doesn’t guarantee sterility for economical and practical reasons. What they do, IIRC, is clean room assembly and an outer alcohol wipe that, while efficient, still may leave many bacterias on these large surfaces.

It would be exceedingly difficult, long winded, costly and perhaps even impossible to change common materials to such that survive autoclaving or, say, UV sterilization. Electronics and sterilization are not really compatible.

For an atmosphere lander, as to Mars for example, I got that the large parachutes would contribute, IIRC, up to half a million organisms spread over the surface of the planet in a cloth. And inside the probes are anybodies guess, but probably hundreds of millions among cracks and crevices on circuit boards and what not.

Those organisms, which are riding inside most of the time, are especially protected. Viable bacteria spores have survived several years in this condition on the Moon to be later taken back and revived. (From a Surveyor, IIRC.) Bacterial spores are, I think, encapsulated with the chitin and/or cellulose that we can recognize from insect and plant eukaryotes. (At least their eukaryote equivalents are.) They are tough critters, and their metabolism is AFAIU kick-started by the slightest nutrient next to their pores.

OTOH I don’t think, but I can of course not say, that biologists would be especially concerned. Our bacterias aren’t adapted to the environments they will encounter. On top of which, if there is preexisting life, they would be out-competed, finally perhaps even used as nutrient, for the same reason. The most important reason for astrobiologists could be to hold the background contamination sufficiently low to not confuse results while one is looking for native organics or metabolism.

Btw, seeing those pics, can someone tell me again why it is cheaper to recirculate and eventually carry so much expensive ice to space than to try to run “dry”? OK, caveats, I assume engines like H2/O2 burners will make ice, and I dunno if jets are so much better at this.

But with that much power and especially heat available, why is it totally unfeasible economics in heating more surfaces? Or better yet try hydrophobic ones, such as one gets with some nanoscale treatments?

At one minute in, those are leprechauns wearing white cleanroom suits and hats.

We call those “scientists” where I’m from.

LOL! And pixies out of the atmosphere is then “theoretical scientists”, I take it?

In the semiconductor manufacturing industry, we used to call the workers monkeys in bunny suits.

Its interesting how the ice particles stay on the rocket long after the initial launch, and not instantly sublimate in direct sunlight.

http://homepage.mac.com/WebObjects/FileSharing.woa/wa/Pimp_My_Satellite.mp3.mp3-zip.zip?a=downloadFile&user=normsherman&path=.Music/Pimp%20My%20Satellite.mp3

At one minute in, those are leprechauns wearing white cleanroom suits and hats.

We call those “scientists” where I’m from.

So, are you saying scientists only exist in fairy tales and the imagination?

We call those “scientists” where I’m from.

When they’re sending sterile probes to other Planets, moons, do they have a technique to make sure that surface contaminants on the rocket don’t get onto the target planet?

The probes are actually inside the payload section, and the outer shell is not sent all the way to the planet, moon, etc. Plus, there are course corrections along the way, which would move the probe away from any trailing debris.

The probes themselves are assembled in a cleanroom environment (not sure what Class, probably only a Class 100 or Class 10). While that doesn’t preclude contamination, it greatly reduces the chances.

That is still a topic of concern for probes going to Europa and other icy moons that could possibly harbor its own life forms, but I’m sure scientists are working on it.

At one minute in, those are leprechauns wearing white cleanroom suits and hats. You see those while its still in the atmosphere (they need oxygen to smoke their wee little pipes.) Once out in the vacuum, what you see are pixies – little pink fairies. They make little bubbles around themselves to breath in space, and can zip around in different trajectories.

Its so plausible, I almost believe it!

My apologies. You’re absolutely right.

What I should have said was that it would have lifted off much faster if the fuel tanks had only been half full (as fuel is by far the largest weight component of any rocket).

And then there were the ghosts dancing around on the side of the rocket for a good while before they faded away.

This video has so much paranormal evidence in it!!!one!!11!!!

Flying Sardines, I thought the answer to your question would be self-evident. Neil’s out there. He’s waaaaaaaaaaaaaay out there. He’s so out there that he’s tilting at Zionist windmills.

A Delta IV Heavy would rise pretty much just as slowly. Payload mass is a small fraction of gross liftoff mass (so much of the rocket is propellant) so the rocket pretty much takes off with the same acceleration regardless of how heavy a payload it carries (within its capacity of course). It’s only once you burn off a good portion of the propellant that the rocket starts to “notice” it’s not pushing on a very heavy payload and accelerations really start to vary with payload mass. Lighter payload flights having a steeper acceleration buildup curve, but all starting at roughly the same initial accel.

This low liftoff acceleration is typical of the vanilla Atlas V, without solid boosters. I think it’s one of the slowest rockets with the lowest thrust to weight ratio. Even Saturn V was faster, but it was *huge* so it only seemed to crawl away from the tower. Remember the tower was over 100 meters high and Saturn covered that within 11 seconds.

nasa dot gov
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Drool
Bob