New Analysis Video of the STS-75 Tether Incident

Originally posted by Skeptical Ed
reply to post by JimOberg

 

Jim: for the third time: please comment about whether the shuttle is a capable vehicle to send astronauts to the moon including landers in its vast storage space, or not.

That question seems to be off topic in this thread, but on topic in the following thread:

Why not take the Shuttle to the moon?

But someone just answered that with details about fuel capacity of the shuttle vs Saturn V etc. Seems like it was Phage but I can't find his post. There are answers in the other thread and if those don't satisfy you, then you can always invite Jim over there for an on-topic answer in that thread.

[edit on 2-10-2009 by Arbitrageur]

reply to post by Arbitrageur


Thanks for that, it didn't occur to me that others would think of it enough to have a thread(s) on it. I'm heading over there as it is of interest to me.

Originally posted by Skeptical Ed

Nice try, but no cigar. Your video example is a nice attempt but those ice particles are near the shuttle, not 100 miles away in which case the lens would have focused past them and even if they were seen they would be ghostly images, not detailed as these ice particles are.

In my example, ice particles are indeed near the shuttle. But from where did you understand they are near the shuttle? From the particles itself? No, but knowing they are ejected from the thrusters, which you see them in the image, astronauts described them, give you the final clue: they are close for sure.

And if the lens is focused at infinity like in STS75 it is (by the way, it is wrong to assume and to say 1 mile or 10, or 100 miles or 1000 miles away, there is no difference in focus terms given the huge distance/focal ratio, if you really understand what depth of field is), indeed closer particles than the near limit of the depth of field, will appear out of focus. Something like here:




And you should know, out of focus points of light, which is called bokeh, take shape from internal iris or constructive elements, and in case of catadioptric lens, the shape is a disc with dark center, the "donuts".
One example:
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/84731159ece2.jpg[/atsimg]


The principle is this:
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/31fb04430d76.gif[/atsimg]
and here a bigger version (use it!): files.abovetopsecret.com...


detailed explanation taken exactly from the current thread, from here: www.abovetopsecret.com...





And maybe you missed it, closer and out of focus points of lights, bokeh, together with those cool notches, directly from the shuttle's camera itself, the "AFT TV camera":

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/45a6c0ec1c8e.gif[/atsimg]

a frame:

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/6828a81943b2.gif[/atsimg]

example taken again from the current thread: www.abovetopsecret.com...




Now all of this came from some a little bit more than basic optics. If you don't understand, then..i've tried to do my best to explain...



My guess, as photographic and optics experience tells me, is that the famous particles in STS75 videos, apearing as out of focus notched discs, are closer than the particles of ice ejected by the thrusters exemplified in the curved trajectory example...i would say that the STS75 particles are closer something like the example with AFT TV camera's notched bokeh above.


Next, direct evidence, if you really understand how optics operates, so direct evidence of the closer particles being out of focus, as the sudden focusing maneuver move the focus plane from infinite to closer, and back to infinity, catching particles on the way in a more focused position (smaller shape but greater brightness - as focusing really dictates):

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/07dd320e9f21.gif[/atsimg]

example taken guess from where..from the current thread: www.abovetopsecret.com...


Do you want to smoke a cigar?

[edit on 2/10/09 by depthoffield]

from the movie series "From The Earth To The Moon"

it's just a movie but what's up with the plasma scene at 1:00 ?




why would they put that in a movie ?

Originally posted by easynow
from the movie series "From The Earth To The Moon"

it's just a movie but what's up with the plasma scene at 1:00 ?

why would they put that in a movie ?

Here's a description from How NASA Learned To Fly In Space - An Exciting Account Of The Gemini Missions (Apogee Books Space Series) (Paperback) by David M. Harland:

By the time they reached Tananrive they were in darkness again and Aldrin was working methodically through the list of stars. To his surprise, repeatedly holding the cable release for the two-minute exposures made his fingers ache. "When I rub my gloves together," he noted in fascination, there is static electricity between them." Once his eyes had fully adapted to the darkness, he had noticed that his gloves glowed. Experimenting, he found that rubbing his thumb against his index finger induced an electrostatic effect, evidently resulting from passing through the ionosphere - in effect, he was flying though a sea of electrons.

www.bautforum.com...

Note that on Earth, when you shuffle your feet on the carpet it's hard to build up static electricity in high humidity. In the winter months when humidity is lower it's easier. Since the humidity in space is essentially zero, I guess it's easier still for static electricity to build up. Was it all from passing through the ionosphere, or could simply rubbing his gloves have generated static electricity?

The movie makes the effect look quite dramatic, I wonder what it really looked like?

reply to post by JimOberg

Jim... some might say take a chill pill! Even those who are in agreement with your UFO
skepticism, are mortified by the delivery system, your all or nothing demagogic style, & the deliberate donning of blinders when a cogent counterargument comes along. I admire your eternal willingness to serve as NASAs shame-free skeptical gadfly.

But as soon as a particular NASA UFO video leads a thread, & ATS members take on the larger & slipperier issues of that video (like this STS-75 Thread has), your gray-area-free moral clarity starts to feel like a dodge!

Jim...by chopping up quotes into unfairly small sound bites can make anyone sound like a do-nothing dreamer...making your well intentioned aims come into direct conflict with your bludgeon tactics.

Originally posted by Arbitrageur I guess it's easier still for static electricity to build up. Was it all from passing through the ionosphere, or could simply rubbing his gloves have generated static electricity?

It's a lot more than 'static' electricity... it's actually enough to KILL an astronaut. It's all about PLASMA not static electricity

Altitude and Latitude Range of Applicability
These guidelines are intended for space systems that spend the majority of their time at altitudes between 200 and 1000 km (usually known as Low Earth Orbit (LEO) applications) and at latitudes between about + and – 50 degrees. That is, space systems that do not (often) encounter the auroral ovals of electron streams, that do not encounter GEO (geosynchronous orbit) charging conditions, and that do not fly through the Van Allen belts. For the extreme radiation protection that is necessary for those orbits, exterior spacecraft charging will likely be a secondary concern.

In effect "shielding" by an Em charge on the hull...

Overview of Plasma Interactions
When energized conductors are exposed to plasma, positive surfaces collect electrons while negative surfaces collect ions. The Poisson equation governs charge movement.

To illustrate the basic effects, consider first a hypothetical experiment. Suppose two metal spheres a few feet in diameter are initially connected by a conductor and placed in LEO some distance apart. Since electrons are collected more easily than ions, both spheres will charge to the same potential, within a volt or two of plasma potential. Now suppose a high voltage battery is placed between them with one sphere connected to the negative terminal and the other to the positive. On earth, in air, such an arrangement would result in half of the battery voltage appearing on each sphere. But in LEO, highly mobile electrons stream to the positive sphere while the negative sphere struggles to collect the massive ions. Both experience and modeling indicate that approximately 90% of the battery voltage will appear on the negative sphere while only 10% will be on the positive one with respect to the plasma potential.

The implications of this are considerable and often expensive. In the case of ISS, for example, the power system consists of solar arrays wired in a series-parallel arrangement to give a 160-volt system. Since the main structure of ISS is “grounded” to the negative end of the array string, the entire space station would “float” more than 140V negative with respect to the ionosphere. Such potentials are beyond the dielectric strength of the anodized coatings on the ISS aluminum structure, and would lead to arcing into the space plasma and eventual destruction of the ISS thermal control system. This prospect required the addition of an active plasma contactor, a xenon hollow cathode discharge unit, to effectively ground the space station to the ionosphere. As it turns out, the ISS solar arrays are unusual in that they are poor electron collectors due to their welded-through design. Atypically, the ISS early mission-build structure usually doesn’t charge more than 20 volts or so negative with respect to the surrounding plasma even without the plasma contactors operating. However, as more solar arrays are put up, it is expected that the charging level on ISS will increase dramatically, justifying the added expense of the plasma contactors.

4.1.2 Sheath Effects
A positive charged spherical electrode will collect electrons when inserted in a plasma. The volume called the sheath, in which the electrode influences electrons, is larger than the sphere. For low voltages, the sheath thickness will be nearly the same as the Debye length (see eqn. 5.2.3.1). Some electrons will orbit around the electrode and escape out of the sheath. The collected or trapped electrons are said to be orbit-limited and are affected in a complex manner by the radius of the electrode, the electrode voltages, and the temperature and density of the free electrons.
A solar array looks to the plasma like a large rod electrode (like the wires and interconnects that are in contact with the plasma) rather than a spherical probe, and is also surrounded by a sheath. Power loss due to plasma leakage current will become significant above 100 V for positive electrodes and is discussed below. Above a threshold voltage, which differs due to array design, arcing may be observed between the electrodes.

Although pictures of damage produced by on-orbit sustained arcs are rare, because most arrays that have arced are not recovered, we do have photos of damage suffered by the ESA Eureca spacecraft that was recovered by the Space Shuttle. Figure 5 shows a sustained arc site on its solar arrays. In this case, the sustained arc eventually burned through the array substrate to the grounded backing, completely shorting the array string to ground.

It was the arcing threat from the ISS anodized aluminum that forced ISS to incorporate the PCUs to control ISS floating potentials. The PCUs act by creating a large localized plasma cloud that makes good electrical contact with the surrounding plasma, and essentially by brute force grounds the ISS structure to the ambient plasma. A generic plasma-contacting device is called a plasma contactor

Most disturbing of all, chromic acid anodized samples for astronaut EMUs were found to break down at potentials of only – 60 V, relative to the plasma, with a two-sigma error bar of 10 V. It is thus possible that an astronaut, grounded to ISS by his tether or conductive tools, could undergo an arc at only –50 V. A sneak circuit analysis showed that such arcs could put 1 Amp of current through an astronaut’s heart. Since 0.1 Amp is enough to cause heart stoppage, it is imperative that if the ISS plasma contactors are inoperable during astronaut EVAs, a method be used to prevent ISS astronaut workplaces from floating more than 50 V negative.

Tether Report - LEO Charging Guidelines v1.3.1
www.thelivingmoon.com...







[edit on 2-10-2009 by zorgon]

reply to post by depthoffield


Thanks for your expanded explanation although I'm not 100% convinced that what you explained is true for the actual event.

"Do you want to smoke a cigar?"
Do you have something smaller, say wrapped in Bambu?

reply to post by secretnasaman


You ain't seen nothing until you trigger his STS-48 explanation!

reply to post by zorgon

Thanks for all the detail Zorgon but a lot of that (except the EMU part) is about conductive surfaces, and would have thought the gloves to be non-conductive. I don't doubt the effects of traveling through the ionosphere, however what I was questioning is if additional static charge might be generated by rubbing non-conductive parts of the suit together like the gloves.

I must say That satellite really got toasted but GOOD! wow!


@secretnasaman

What Jim Oberg said was:

Originally posted by JimOberg

Originally posted by secretnasaman
reply to JimOberg........

Jim,you don't have this info report by NASA & so you ask me for it & mock me for no link! You give no link as my ATS friend says...

You're the one making the claim the quote is supposed to support. But you're the one finding excuses now not to show the world the link you claim you are quoting correctly but won't allow anyone to check. And you're blaming ME for your own refusal. Priceless.

To which you replied:

Originally posted by secretnasaman
Jim...by chopping up quotes into unfairly small sound bites can make anyone sound like a do-nothing dreamer...making your well intentioned aims come into direct conflict with your bludgeon tactics.

Did you or did you not claim you sourced something from NASA and then fail to show the source? That was Jim's claim and rather than refute it you attacked his posting style? How about we attack the subject matter instead of each other?

I'm just an innocent bystander here reading this thread but if somebody claims NASA said something and can't back it up with a source then it makes me wonder.

Originally posted by ArbitrageurI don't doubt the effects of traveling through the ionosphere, however what I was questioning is if additional static charge might be generated by rubbing non-conductive parts of the suit together like the gloves.

AH Well that glove scene was CGI

Originally posted by secretnasaman
Jim...by chopping up quotes into unfairly small sound bites can make anyone sound like a do-nothing dreamer...making your well intentioned aims come into direct conflict with your bludgeon tactics.

The English of which is, no, I'm not gonna provide the links to check my assertions, and it's Oberg's fault.

reply to post by JimOberg


Excellent post Jim, now and then you show your talents.

However, we have already been over this ground. I would expect you could probably write my reply for me by now.

as per when we first began circling on this thread, I pointed out that if thruster firings and effluent dumps were what we were seeing here, then there should be plenty of other videos with the kind of phenomenon that we see here on this particular tether video. You were going to search for other videos that also show this phenomenon, but have yet to produce them. Could you be hiding an ace in the hole, waiting to spring the final proof?

The evidence to why this video does not show thruster firings or effluent dumps has already been provided in the original artifact of the video that we are discussing. For about the first minute and a half, the camera is staring off into deep space, and there are no little white dots/UFOs floating around. Then the direction where the camera is pointing is adjusted slightly, so that the tether is now shown on screen. Just as the tether moves onto the screen, so do the UFOs, which are already there flocking around the tether.

If these are thruster firings and effluent dumps, then they would have been on the camera all along, when the camera was looking deep into space near the tether as it was during the first minute and a half of the original video.

These videos show that these UFOs are only floating around the tether, actually converging on the tether, or in a tiny space directly in front of the camera, but only in that tiny space, as they were not present until the direction of the where the camera was pointing was changed ever so slightly.

Once again, good post, I gave you a star.

edit, Yes I used the term artifact because I love the movie on scifi.


[edit on 3-10-2009 by poet1b]

reply to post by depthoffield


Thanks for posting this video, because it shows just the opposite of what you interpret. The particles are all moving very quickly, and almost all of them disappear very quickly, they look nothing like what we are seeing in the tether video. I notice the twinkling that is evident in the original video has been edited out.

In the second video where ice crystals form on the camera lens, clearly they are not moving, and they look like ice crystals. Most of the UFOs on the tether video look nothing like this. A few do, but that could could easily be due to camera distortion. While camera distortion explains the unreasonable size of some of these UFOs, it clear does not explain their behavior.

reply to post by zorgon


Nice post Zorgon, excellent information. Do you have a link?
while Earth is a very solid negative charge, which means more electrons than ions, space seems to be the opposite. Ions streaming form the sun and all. Good points. Yeah, it isn't that simple, but the logic is there.

Are you going to visit my plasma thread or what?

Originally posted by poet1b
Are you going to visit my plasma thread or what?

Link is at bottom of post 380 page PDF report

Didn't know you had a plasma thread

but right now its busy at work till December . I will stop by tomorrow

[edit on 3-10-2009 by zorgon]

Originally posted by Arbitrageur
I must say That satellite really got toasted but GOOD! wow!

You do realize that the document I quoted is the Tether aftermath report, don't you?

reply to post by zorgon


Yes.

It's an interesting report, thanks for posting it.

reply to post by zorgon


Don't know how I missed that link.

Yeah, I started a thread not long ago, and posted the link here this thread, since I had talked so much about plasma here in this thread, as per suggestion by Armap a while back. Arbitrageur has visited to debunk, which is always needed. Armap has yet to visit.

Here is the link again.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Poet1b, what games are you playing here? Seems pretty obviously that when addressing one particular issue, you try to dismiss it using another particular non-related issue. Let's see:

Originally posted by poet1b
Thanks for posting this video, because it shows just the opposite of what you interpret. The particles are all moving very quickly, and almost all of them disappear very quickly, they look nothing like what we are seeing in the tether video.

you talked about this video:


this was a response, an example, addressed to those which ask how is possible that particles in orbit in space to appear to have curved trajectories, and also to appear to go to different directions (up/down/left/right) despite being from the same provenance. As anybody can see, this manifestation is perfectly posible.
But why you said "they look nothing like what we are seeing in the tether video"?
It's not about the look, it is only about the motion as seen from the camera.
Curved trajectories. Different directions.

Why wonder about this in STS75 videos? It is just posible!

Originally posted by poet1b
In the second video where ice crystals form on the camera lens, clearly they are not moving, and they look like ice crystals. Most of the UFOs on the tether video look nothing like this. A few do, but that could could easily be due to camera distortion. While camera distortion explains the unreasonable size of some of these UFOs, it clear does not explain their behavior.

This video:
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/45a6c0ec1c8e.gif[/atsimg]

and a frame:

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/6828a81943b2.gif[/atsimg]


..this video doesn't show "ice crystals formed on the lens"!
It shows a relative big structure on the shuttle, close to the lens. Take care!
Being close, this structure is out of focus, very blurry and with transparent boundaries. And that structure has some punctual bright reflections on it.
Exactly like in the following (my) picture, where punctual bright spots are marked with red arrows:

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/d1e6b7673cce.jpg[/atsimg]

The difference is that my example with the keys is not so very out of focus like that structure on NASA shuttle, the keys are a bit further and the iris is more closed down (which means increased depth of field), because the shot is taken during the day when was plenty of light...also my camera is not a catadioptric camera, and therefore does not produce "donuts" bokeh, but full discs.

Returning to NASA bokeh before, those punctual reflections from the structure, beeing out of focus, follow the rules of bokeh, taking shape from internal lens mechanisms (iris). You can see this principle in action, just watching on those reflections how the iris is closing down, actually shrinking the (dark centered) discs and as consequence the overall luminosity comes down, logical, and the structure becomes less blurred, because the depth of field increases when the iris is stopping down. But, as we see, when iris is fully open at first, those bright reflections are discs with dark center, and with notches, exactly like in STS 75 tether videos.

And, remember, this is a NASA shuttle camera, the AFT TV camera! Their camera!


But what you say?

"ice crystals form on the camera lens, clearly they are not moving, and they look like ice crystals"

if those notched discs in AFT TV video, are looking like ice crystals, then, also my example with keys shows some ice crystals, despite was summer! funny! lol

More, you dismiss it because is not moving.. so what? if the structure happened to move, so the bokeh. It is no need any brain to understand that bokeh is a very distorted image of original obiect (point of light), therefore, if the light is moving, so it's bokeh...if there are multiple objects moving or stoping, so does their bokeh. This is childish, you know..

Fact is that at least one shuttle camera, the AFT TV camera, produces bokeh as discs with dark center and notches! And this is very relevant!


Other ideas of what you say:

Originally posted by poet1b
Most of the UFOs on the tether video look nothing like this. A few do, but that could could easily be due to camera distortion. While camera distortion explains the unreasonable size of some of these UFOs, it clear does not explain their behavior.

So, you are agree that in STS75 tether videos, there are some of those "ufo's" which appears big and looks like in my example taken from AFT TV camera..and you put this on some "camera distorsion". Well, what camera distorsion is this? I said and argumented that is bokeh. You said is not. But what kind of camera distorsion it is then? Enlighten us, please, if you make ambiguous afirmation.

You said again about "their behavior"... what behavior?
Curved trajectories? Different directions? Well, as first part of this post shows, this behavior is something very posible to some debris, innanimate and dumb particles.

What other behaviour? sudden changes in trajectories, what LunaCognita shows in the OP? Well, it was also explained right here in this thread (www.abovetopsecret.com...), as being results of the shuttle itself finely changing atitude in small steps, using RCS, so the POV of the camera is changing accordingly:


(www.abovetopsecret.com...)


what other "behavior"?
the notches going smooth from one position to another in the disc?
well, this explained here: www.abovetopsecret.com...

or try this:



it is what you say with the mouth half closed: camera distorsion... which i named it as what it is: bokeh. So, if it is camera distorsion, then we should not look and wonder at this "behavior" as belonging to those "ufo's", because instead is a camera effect.