New Gaia-telescope launched to Space

JadeStar
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You know, people like you succeeded in getting everyone to wait after Apollo in the 1970s and very little was done.

People like me? Dont you DARE put words and opinions into MY mouth, DONT YOU DARE!

I would have been 10000000% behind continueing the apollo program up to a moon base.

Hell I would have gone staight to orion project and we would have colonies on the moon of satern by now.

People like ME would have got you far further than the crap we have now.

JadeStar
[
That great space infrastructure we were supposed to have by 1985 never materialized. All we got was a space shuttle.

Yup another white elefant and useless piece of crap.

You keep saying infrastructure but what exactly are do you have in mind?

I think I have some idea and I think I know what it might cost but I'd rather you clarify what you would rather be spending the money on.

crazyewok
So your argument fails, sorry.

That's an opinion as well.

Actually seeing as my reaction is based on cold hard logic, realistic expectaions and a sound plan and yours is based on what is a currently pipe dream of instetller travel I think yours is the knee jerk reaction

edit on 19-12-2013 by crazyewok because: (no reason given)

No, actually, I disagree with that. For one, YOU, have no idea what is possible and what isn't. Just as I don't. So really, neither of us are right. We just have different priorities. You think it's a waste of money to take a good look at things that WILL, one day, be reachable. I don't.

Obviously, being able to efficiently and routinely navigate space in general is a necessary first step before anyone even considers traveling outside of our system, but this wasn't the debate at hand. The debate was about whether or not it's a good idea to map the distant stars, determine more details about that, in a hope to learn more about our origins, our galaxy, and the rest of the universe.

I was simply stating that just because YOU don't agree with something, doesn't mean you should write it off immediately as being a waste, and further more, do so with such fervor and vigor as to nearly state is as being a fact.

Seems more like you were trying to impose an opinion on others, rather than just rationalize it.

crazyewok

People like me? Dont you DARE put words and opinions into MY mouth, DONT YOU DARE!

I would have been 10000000% behind continueing the apollo program up to a moon base.

Hell I would have gone staight to orion project and we would have colonies on the moon of satern by now.

People like ME would have got you far further than the crap we have now.

When I said "people like you" I was referring to people who only see value in HUMAN space flight and not astronomy, astrophysics or astrobiology.

Space SCIENCE as opposed to space TRAVEL.

You are an advocate for the latter. I am and advocated for the former.

You need to calm down and act a bit more rationally as well.

JadeStar

That great space infrastructure we were supposed to have by 1985 never materialized. All we got was a space shuttle.

crazyewok
Yup another white elefant and useless piece of crap.

That white "elephant" constructed the only piece of space infrastructure we have. Lol.

reply to post by JadeStar


Well a orbital shipyard would be a start like what russia have planned.

Earth to LEO orbit have little use beyond shuttles.

Orion project from the 60's would put us far ahead, though that would cost $12 billion from what was calculated.

Skylon that britan is developing would be a HUGE step forward. Plus germany had some good plans on the drawing board for mass produce rockets that could reduce the cost of launchs by a big factor.

So plenty of things to be done. Some big yes, others quite realistic like Skylon.

crazyewok

ngchunter

I'm sorry, but that is extremely ignorant to say.

Depends what your prioritys are doesnt it?

If your priority is anything to do with space, then astrometry is a vital component of supporting that goal. Your post is incredibly ignorant.

If you want to look at pretty star then fine great.

This is exactly the kind of ignorance I'm talking about. Astrometry isn't about "looking at pretty stars," that is not what it is used for. Simply put, hopefully at a level you can understand, it's used to measure the position of objects in space. Ultimately it is necessary to do any serious work in space and astronomy. I use it all the time myself. Not for "looking at pretty stars," but for tracking the motions of asteroids, comets, and satellites. It is foundational data, that is what you do not seem to understand.

If you have the opinion like me were I want to see humans move out into the solar system and exploit it resources then no its not much good.

Wrong. Ignorant and wrong.

Building Star Catalogs for Spacecraft Applications (Leonard J. Berg, Boeing)
Release of the Hipparcos and Tycho-2 star catalogs represented a huge step forward for the spacecraft application engineer. However, difficulties still remain when using these and other references to create star catalogs used to design, simulate, initialize, calibrate, and maintain spacecraft attitude determination processes. This presentation will outline the basic methods used to develop spacecraft application catalogs and help focus attention on the potential for improvement in resources used to support this effort.

ad.usno.navy.mil...

Like I said before, Gaia is the successor to Hipparcos and will supplant Tycho-2 and other star catalogs.

reply to post by parad0x122


Im not denying it would one day be usefull to map the stars.

But it will be a long time before we can move out there.

At the moment our priority should be to find a better and cheaper alternative to what we have now.

Once that done then start mapping the galaxy.

Not saying we shouldnt do it, just that we should do a few other things first.

JadeStar

Space SCIENCE as opposed to space TRAVEL.

Exactly.

Im pissed off with being called igonrant when I used have a diffrent goal in mind.

crazyewok
reply to post by JadeStar

 

Well a orbital shipyard would be a start like what russia have planned.

You are aware that was part of the original plan for the ISS.

Then reality kicked in that there would be NO SHIPS. Cause there was NO MONEY or POLITICAL WILL to build them

Earth to LEO orbit have little use beyond shuttles.

Once you are to LEO you are halfway to anywhere in the solar system. This is an often used quote because most of the energy to launch missions is getting out of our Earth's gravity well.

Orion project from the 60's would put us far ahead, though that would cost $12 billion from what was calculated.

And violated the UN Outer Space Treaty of 1967, the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, SALT 1 and SALT 2.

Orion wasn't built for POLITICAL reasons as much as for financial ones.

You still have never answered the key question with regards of building space infrastructure: How do you change the political environment to one which wants to do these things?

Skylon that britan is developing would be a HUGE step forward. Plus germany had some good plans on the drawing board for mass produce rockets that could reduce the cost of launchs by a big factor.

Skylon is a bit like Moller's Skycar. Its been the ship of the future for decades. Yes they had breakthrough recently but they are still miles behind things like the Dreamchaser (look it up).

So plenty of things to be done. Some big yes, others quite realistic like Skylon.

Which is another "inefficient chemical rocket" but with wings..woooooooo hoooo!

reply to post by ngchunter


Sorry we put a space station in orbit with it. We put a man on the moon without it
Im sure we could go to mars without it.

Unless something has a dircet purpose in :
Putting a shipyard in orbit
A colony on the moon
A colony on mars

I dont see it as anymore than a luxory.

Not ignorant Im just pragmatic.

We obviosly have diffrent goals in mind. Not ignorant, just diffrent goals.

JadeStar
Then reality kicked in that there would be NO SHIPS. Cause there was NO MONEY or POLITICAL WILL to build them

Yup it sucks. We need to change that.

JadeStar
Once you are to LEO you are halfway to anywhere in the solar system. This is an often used quote because most of the energy to launch missions is getting out of our Earth's gravity well.

Half right. A chem rocket will still take 8 months (may be slightly off ) to get to mars, a Nuclear powerd craft which russia have on the drawing board is 6 weeks.

JadeStar

And violated the UN Outer Space Treaty of 1967, the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, SALT 1 and SALT 2.

Orion wasn't built for POLITICAL reasons as much as for financial ones.

Yup POLITICAL reasons, which means its a very viable and very doable way its only idoits in suites that are holding it back. Maybe we should put pressure on to change the treaty? If it can be written by men it can be amended. Its no diffrent from catholics from burning people at stakes for have a good scientific idea, now instead of religion holding us back its politicans.

JadeStar
You still have never answered the key question with regards of building space infrastructure: How do you change the political environment to one which wants to do these things?

You see that the billion doller queation right?

Only way I can think of right now is to try and get some tangible real results that we can use back here on earth in our everyday lifes. If we can do some cool stuff that everyone would be intrested in and would encourage private sector funding it would go a long way.

Right now Space has little intrest amougnst the unwashed and uneducated masses. We are a minority.

Which is another "inefficient chemical rocket" but with wings..woooooooo hoooo!

One that would cost a fraction of our current ones.

Unless someone has the balls to try and change the nuclear test ban treaty its one of the few ways.

JadeStar
Then reality kicked in that there would be NO SHIPS. Cause there was NO MONEY or POLITICAL WILL to build them

Yup it sucks. We need to change that.

JadeStar
Once you are to LEO you are halfway to anywhere in the solar system. This is an often used quote because most of the energy to launch missions is getting out of our Earth's gravity well.

Half right. A chem rocket will still take 8 months (may be slightly off ) to get to mars, a Nuclear powerd craft which russia have on the drawing board is 6 weeks.

JadeStar

And violated the UN Outer Space Treaty of 1967, the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, SALT 1 and SALT 2.

Orion wasn't built for POLITICAL reasons as much as for financial ones.

Yup POLITICAL reasons, which means its a very viable and very doable way its only idoits in suites that are holding it back. Maybe we should put pressure on to change the treaty? If it can be written by men it can be amended. Its no diffrent from catholics from burning people at stakes for have a good scientific idea, now instead of religion holding us back its politicans.

JadeStar
You still have never answered the key question with regards of building space infrastructure: How do you change the political environment to one which wants to do these things?

You see that the billion doller queation right?

Only way I can think of right now is to try and get some tangible real results that we can use back here on earth in our everyday lifes. If we can do some cool stuff that everyone would be intrested in and would encourage private sector funding it would go a long way.

Right now Space has little intrest amougnst the unwashed and uneducated masses. We are a minority.

Which is another "inefficient chemical rocket" but with wings..woooooooo hoooo!

One that would cost a fraction of our current ones.

Unless someone has the balls to try and change the nuclear test ban treaty its one of the few ways.


What are our other option? Carry on at a snail pace so that in a 100 years time when the earth is overpopulated and almost out of resources we THEN do something? Or worse get to a point were we are so depleted of resources the expense for even a basic program is beyond anyones means?

DP

crazyewok
reply to post by ngchunter

 

Sorry we put a space station in orbit with it. We put a man on the moon without it
Im sure we could go to mars without it.

You could go to Mars without artificial gravity and sufficient radiation shielding, just take the risk of increased cancer, illness, and atrophy, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea. You can't go to Mars, the moon, or make a functioning space station without at least basic star catalogs for measuring your orientation and position in space. You get those star catalogs as a result of astrometry such as that produced by Gaia. The science of astrometry is used by all spacecraft in order to maintain orientation in space. We didn't put a man on the moon without astrometry to create a star catalog used to align the spacecraft. You would not want to be forced to rely upon that same old star catalog today though, precessing forward 50 years and just "hoping" the proper motion values of the catalog were "good enough." Go take a look at a space shuttle sometime, the shuttle that built your space station, and take note of the star tracker telescopes on its nose.
www.ballaerospace.com...
That's astrometry in action. It IS necessary for spaceflight. This mission improves it. Simple enough?

Unless something has a dircet purpose in :
Putting a shipyard in orbit
A colony on the moon
A colony on mars

I dont see it as anymore than a luxory.

Not ignorant Im just pragmatic.

We obviosly have diffrent goals in mind. Not ignorant, just diffrent goals.

I disagree with your narrow-minded "priorities," but that's not the point of my posts nor is it relevant to Gaia. You are ignorant; astrometry is necessary for ALL of those things. Gaia will improve our star catalogs and therefore improve astrometry. This has direct relevance to spaceflight.

Building Star Catalogs for Spacecraft Applications (Leonard J. Berg, Boeing)
Release of the Hipparcos and Tycho-2 star catalogs represented a huge step forward for the spacecraft application engineer. However, difficulties still remain when using these and other references to create star catalogs used to design, simulate, initialize, calibrate, and maintain spacecraft attitude determination processes. This presentation will outline the basic methods used to develop spacecraft application catalogs and help focus attention on the potential for improvement in resources used to support this effort.

ad.usno.navy.mil...

Space vehicles need star catalogs to ...
Design onboard attitude determination software
Simulate on-orbit performance (will design work?)
Initialize attitude reference (where am I?)
Maintain accurate onboard attitude reference
Calibrate sensors (biases, alignments, scale factors, etc.)
Note: Accuracy critical for precision systems

ad.usno.navy.mil...

Deny ignorance. It's ok, just learn from the experience and move on. Astrometry is NECESSARY to produce star catalogs which are NECESSARY to spaceflight. Gaia will produce much higher accuracy astrometric data from which superior and modern star catalogs will be constructed. You do NOT want to try to fly a modern spacecraft with the same star catalogs we had 50 years ago complete with low precision coordinates and low precision proper motion values.

To get back on track I found a couple of illustrations that are helpful in understanding why this mission is important.

The first is a chart of our accuracy of measurement of star positions and parallaxes over time.



You'll note GAIA and SIM.

Only one of these missions launched. SIM was cancelled by NASA due to budget reasons so it is very important that GAIA still got off the ground.

Europe (ESA) was not without its own cancelled missions, Eddington and Darwin both were cancelled as well so to see GAIA get off the ground is good news especially since SIM was cancelled in the US.

This chart shows how each mission is interrelated based on the old NASA Origins plan from the 90s. Note that SIM, the TPF (Terrestrial Planet Finder) were cancelled. Kepler narrowly escaped the budget axe.

I tried to find a similar chart for GAIA but this serves to show how one mission feeds data to others so GAIA's mission is far from pointless.




Accurate stellar positions are important for everything from determining the ages of stars to the hunt for planets like the Earth around other stars to information used for realistic space based video games.

reply to post by ngchunter

Ok you have shown that is of some use.

reply to post by ngchunter


Bravo!

Thank you for showing how we still use the stars to navigate, even in space. And the more accurate those positions are, the better the navigation. For any kind of mission (manned or unmanned).