Sunday 8 March 2015

Pandora's Cluster Detail iPad Air Cover

Here's a great iPad case from Zazzle featuring a Hubble-related design. Maybe you'd like to see your name on it? Click to personalize and see what it's like!


tagged with: abell 2744, pandora's cluster, blue, pink, purple, magenta, galaxy, galaxies, pretty, colorful, beautiful, awesome, abell2744

A colorful space image galaxy cluster Abell 2744, otherwise known as Pandora's Cluster. Source of image is NASA/Hubble programs.

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Concrete solutions to aging bridges

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According to the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT), this state leads the nation in the number of bridges

The post Concrete solutions to aging bridges has been published on Technology Org.

 
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How to survive a spaceship disaster

Science Focus

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Falling from 10 miles up, with no spacesuit on, in air that's 70 degrees below zero and so thin you can hardly draw breath…Conditions were not ideal for Peter Siebold, a test pilot flying on Virgin Galactic's SpaceShip Two, to survive. But he did. Siebold told investigators that he was thrown from the plane as it broke up, and unbuckled from his seat at some point before his parachute deployed automatically. It's unclear at this point why the same thing didn't happen for his copilot, Michael Alsbury.

Now, as spaceflight goes commercial, the destruction of both Spaceship Two and the Antares unmanned rocket is likely to bring the eyes of federal regulators back towards an industry that has until now enjoyed minimal red tape. The Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act, first passed by Congress in 2004, was designed to encourage innovation by keeping the rules not so stringent for the fledgling private space industry. But "the moratorium [was designed to] be in place until a certain date or the event of the first death," Joanne Irene Gabrynowicz, editor-in-chief of the Journal of Space Law, told the MIT Technology Review. "Unfortunately, the first death has now occurred, and the FAA will likely revisit the need for regulations, if any."

(More from World Science Festival: The science of perfect pumpkin pies)

A Virgin Galactic spokesperson said in an email that the company couldn't comment too broadly about the escape mechanisms for its spacecraft, due to the pending investigation. The spokesperson did confirm there are two exits from the cabin, but said that "specific design elements of the passenger cabin and spacesuits are still being developed and have not been made public."

Since the earliest days of the space program, researchers have tried to develop realistic ways to provide astronauts with an emergency exit. But in an emerging field of such complexity, what mechanisms are plausible…and practical? Here's a brief history of the effort so far.

Condition one: Failure to launch

One of the most dangerous parts of an astronaut's journey is the very beginning. To maximize the chance of survival during a launch, most spacecraft from the Mercury project onwards have incorporated a launch escape system (LES), which can carry the module containing the human crew away from a sudden threat to the rest of the craft — either while still on the launch pad, or during the initial ascent.

The Apollo LES was powered by a solid fuel rocket. At the first sign of trouble (transmitted by the loss of signal from wires attached to the launch vehicle), the LES would fire automatically, steering the command module up and away from danger, then jettison and allow the module to open its parachute and land. A similar principle lies behind the launch escape mechanisms used for Russia's Soyuz capsules and the Shenzhou capsule used by the Chinese space program. The Orion spacecraft, NASA's next generation of manned craft in development, also features an LES mounted on top of the craft, called a Launch Abort System.

(More from World Science Festival: How Alan Turing proved there's no "theory of everything" for math)

On the private industry side of LESs, SpaceX's Dragon capsule incorporates the rocket motors of the escape mechanism into the sides of the capsule itself, instead of mounting the LES on top. Since the LES isn't discarded after launch, this "pusher" method provides the capsule with emergency escape capability throughout the entire flight — something the Space Shuttle and Apollo crafts never had, the company notes. (The drawback is that, if unused, all that fuel for the escape system is extra weight to carry around). Testing Dragon's abort system both on the launch pad and in flight is something SpaceX expects to have done by January.

Using one of these devices is no picnic. Orion's LAS was estimated to put about 15.5 Gs of force on an astronaut — more than a fighter pilot experiences, but a little alleviated by the fact that the astronauts are lying on their backs. "They'll feel the effects," Orion's launch abort systems director Roger McNamara told Space.com, but "the bottom line is they'll be walking away."

Condition two: Disaster in orbit

In the 1960s, General Electric tested an emergency inflatable device called MOOSE (Manned Orbital Operations Safety Equipment, but originally Man Out Of Space Easiest) that was basically a small rocket motor attached to a six-foot-long polyester bag equipped with a heat shield, life support system, radio equipment and parachute. After a space-suited astronaut exited his or her space vehicle and climbed into the bag, he or she would activate pressurized canisters that filled it up with polyurethane foam.

More recently, NASA explored a new escape pod design called the X-38, a 7-person lifeboat designed to provide an escape route for astronauts on the International Space Station (say in case the Soyuz space capsule were damaged, or made unavailable because of political infighting, or hijacked by Sandra Bullock). This design made it as far as test flights, but was scrapped in 2002 over budget concerns.

Condition three: Extraterrestrial rescue

What if a disaster trapped astronauts on the moon? To prepare for that contingency, NASA worked on designs for unmanned Gemini Lunar Rescue Vehicles that could scoop up a marooned crew of two or three astronauts from the lunar surface, or from orbit around the moon. But funding cutbacks during the Apollo program prevented the agency from fully exploring these designs.

Condition four: Trouble with the landing

(More from World Science Festival: Do we live in a cosmic donut, infinite trumpet, or a space Pringle?)

NASA's space shuttles had an inflight escape system to be used only when the orbiter could not land properly after reentering orbit, which used a pole that extended out from one of the side hatches. The astronauts would hook themselves to the pole with a Kevlar strap and then jump out, allowing the pole to guide them out and underneath the left wing of the spacecraft. However, for this exit system to work, the space shuttle would have to be in pretty good shape, capable of staying in controlled, gliding flight. You can see the pole being used in this test footage here:

 
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 » see original post http://theweek.com/articles/441917/how-survive-spaceship-disaster
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AI masters 49 Atari 2600 games without instructions

Science Focus

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Artificial intelligence, machines and software with the ability to think for themselves, can be used for a variety of applications ranging from military technology to everyday services like automated telephone systems. However, none of the systems that currently exist exhibits learning abilities that would match the human intelligence. Recently, scientists have wondered whether an artificial agent could be given a tiny bit of human-like intelligence by modeling the algorithm on aspects of the primate neural system.

Using a bio-inspired system architecture, scientists have created a single algorithm that is actually able to develop problem-solving skills when presented with challenges that can stump some humans. And then they immediately put it to use learning a set of classic video games.

Scientists developed the novel agent (they called it the Deep Q-network), one that combined reinforcement learning with what's termed a "deep convolutional network," a layered system of artificial neural networks. Deep-Q is able to understand spatial relationships between different objects in an image, such as distance from one another, in such a sophisticated way that it can actually re-envision the scene from a different viewpoint. This type of system was inspired by early work done on the visual cortex.

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 » see original post http://feeds.arstechnica.com/~r/arstechnica/science/~3/QwbFmRzNuOk/
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Direct measurement of key molecule will increase accuracy of combustion models

Science Focus

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Sandia National Laboratories researchers are the first to directly measure hydroperoxyalkyl radicals — a class of reactive molecules

The post Direct measurement of key molecule will increase accuracy of combustion models has been published on Technology Org.

 
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 » see original post http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TechnologyOrgPhysicsNews/~3/Cgux9q5aqNw/
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Stars at the Galactic Center

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Zazzle Space Gifts for young and old

Pink Blue Stars Cross White iPad Air Cases

Here's a great iPad case from Zazzle featuring a Hubble-related design. Maybe you'd like to see your name on it? Click to personalize and see what it's like!


tagged with: pink, blue, galaxy cluster, space, image, pretty, colorful, cross, shape

Simple cross shape colored with a NASA Hubble space image of the colorful blue and pink galaxy cluster Abell 2744. You can change the background color.

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Silver electrocatalysts may help enable long-term space travel

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Despite continuous advances, major obstacles remain before manned missions can set off for destinations like Mars. A primary

The post Silver electrocatalysts may help enable long-term space travel has been published on Technology Org.

 
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