Comments on: Happy birthday, GLAST/Fermi!

By: Zach

Zach — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 22:45:54 +0000

@Quiet Desperation: how about GLAST’s blast-day?

By: Zach

Zach — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 22:04:22 +0000

@Gary7: Hey! My grandpa worked on those rockets! And it isn’t elegant to develop a system which can incrementally increase the payload of a rocket already in use as needed? The Castor rockets were a simple and inexpensive way to increase the scope of the Delta family’s capabilities. Adding more cryogenic or hypergolic fuel requires more hardware to be modified or added than adding these solid boosters, plus they are more expensive to produce. When you consider the variability these rockets have added to the Delta family, yeah, it’s pretty elegant.

/rant

By: Fizzygoo

Fizzygoo — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 17:10:58 +0000

@Michel The paper model is downloadable (the thick paper you print it on the better) from this page http://glast.sonoma.edu/teachers/index.php#print and it’s the second item down on the Printed Materials list, “Fermi paper model.”

By: Quiet Desperation

Quiet Desperation — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 14:19:24 +0000

Shouldn’t the birthday be the date that power was first applied to the craft for testing?

Or maybe the day it emerged from the womb, AKA the clean room.

By: MarkW

MarkW — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 12:01:11 +0000

Is it just me that sometimes gets GLAST confused with GLaDOS?

By: Michel

Michel — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 16:54:48 +0000

A paper model of GLAST? Were?
Downloadable?
I love models. One of those hobbies that never die.

By: Messier Tidy Upper

Messier Tidy Upper — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 00:35:14 +0000

So did they send Fermi up some birthday cake to celebrate?

Happy anniversary Fermi.

@1. Richard Drumm The Astronomy Bum : Ha! Very Fermi!

By: Gary Ansorge

Gary Ansorge — Sat, 11 Jun 2011 23:15:43 +0000

So, they strap 9 solid fuel boosters to the main rocket casing and ,,,zoom,,,off we go. That’s an elegant design(for a chemically fueled rocket).

I’m gonna ask you for the GLAST time,where’s my nuke thruster???

Ok, it’s time FERMI to go,,,now,,,finally,,,no, really,,,

GAry 7

By: Theramansi

Theramansi — Sat, 11 Jun 2011 22:34:54 +0000

To Richard Drumm:

How about, “We have, Glast off!”

By: DrFlimmer

DrFlimmer — Sat, 11 Jun 2011 21:42:18 +0000

antimatter particles annihilating each other

So… antimatter annihilates antimatter?
I know, what you mean, but it doesn’t sound that way…..

Btw: I prefer the name “FERMI” instead of “GLAST”. One could also note that, technically, there is even higher energetic radiation which is not observed by Fermi, but with “ground-based air Cerenkov telescopes” like HESS, MAGIC and VERITAS. They really observe the highest possible energies. Still, FERMI covers a very important regime, which was not really accessible before that satellite; at least not with such a precision.

By: Mike J.

Mike J. — Sat, 11 Jun 2011 19:41:52 +0000

Happy birthday, GLASTnost! Perestroika!

As a side note, Fermi came to the US before WWII – he left Italy because of their increasingly Nazi-esque racial laws. When he won the Nobel prize in 1938, he used it as an opportunity to escape with his family. They converted all the money they had into jewelry and a fur coat for his wife to wear at the Nobel ceremony – these could taken with them without raising suspicion, and then sold after the ceremony to recoup their savings. At the University of Chicago, in 1942, he helped orchestrate the first controlled nuclear fission. Fermi would become a major part of the Manhattan Project. He died in 1954, 54 years before GLAST would be launched.

By: Richard Drumm The Astronomy Bum

Richard Drumm The Astronomy Bum — Sat, 11 Jun 2011 18:39:46 +0000

From first to GLAST?
Let’s make it GLAST?
Thinking, thinking… Gotta be a punny slogan there somewhere…
Works Fermi!