[HN Gopher] Old Soviet Venus descent craft nearing Earth reentry
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Old Soviet Venus descent craft nearing Earth reentry
Author : Wingman4l7
Score : 392 points
Date : 2025-05-02 19:02 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.leonarddavid.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.leonarddavid.com)
| quercusa wrote:
| Those of a certain age will remember this as the premise of the
| Six Million Dollar Man episode _Death Probe_ (S4E13).
| donnachangstein wrote:
| They would also remember there is a man with a cape in a phone
| booth that could be called upon to stop this thing.
| greggsy wrote:
| No, the Six Million Dollar Man stopped it
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| That's a super idea, but sadly Underdog is fictional.
| gcanyon wrote:
| "There's no need to fear! ..."
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| Raise your hand if you remember phone booths.
| rbanffy wrote:
| Can't. My back hurts.
| bunderbunder wrote:
| I was in one a few weeks ago.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| It's been so long since those could reliably be found, that
| even the 1978 Superman movie has a gag about it (Clark
| steps up to one of those stand-style payphones, briefly
| looks befuddled, then runs into door turnstile instead,
| super-speed changing while it spins)
| RetroTechie wrote:
| Bonus points if you've used those equipped with a rotary
| dial.
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| The other week, I was dining at the Old Spaghetti Factory,
| and their lobby is impressive for classic furniture and
| cool stuff on display, including a Donkey Kong and a
| (nominally) Ms. Pac-Man cabinet, and some "Fragadas
| Espanolas" models.
|
| There was also a _bona fide_ telephone booth in there, in
| wood and glass, and I absolutely went nuts, actually
| needing to place a phone call. But I couldn 't quite figure
| out whether it would open and admit me, or if customers
| were supposed to be fiddling with it at all, or whether it
| was only a showpiece. So that exploration will wait until
| the next time I drop by.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| It would be pretty stereotypically Soviet to create a parachute
| system that only mostly (some of the Venera probes kinda crashed)
| works in the intended use case (short 1-way trip to Venus) but
| also somehow manages to work once way, way, way outside of its
| intended operating environment (50yr orbiting earth).
| 0x000xca0xfe wrote:
| To be fair Venus' atmosphere is pretty much hell.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| Higher up the Venusian atmosphere is surprisingly earth-like.
| Interestingly though, once a probe gets deep enough into the
| atmosphere a parachute becomes unnecessary because the
| atmosphere has gotten so thick that a probe can simply soft-
| land.
| varjag wrote:
| Parachute deployment was possibly gasodynamic rather than
| electronically controlled. In which case there's a broad
| similarity on reentry in Earth atmosphere which could trigger
| the release.
| orbital-decay wrote:
| Sounds unlikely, but it could have malfunctioned. I believe
| the deceleration chute was designed to deploy after the hot
| entry phase and be triggered mechanically once crossing the
| certain deceleration threshold of about 2g (I could be wrong
| though, take it with a huge grain of salt). It also worked as
| a pilot chute for the cap protecting the main one.
| mrtksn wrote:
| In my experience, in soviet engineering they don't augment
| stuff unless absolutely necessary. As a result, stuff tend to
| work as long as the physics work. It results in relatively
| crude but simple and reliable machines. The elegance comes from
| simplicity, in western tech the elegance comes from being well
| thought and designed for specific use cases. I.e. a Lada will
| be uncomfortable, loud, uneconomical car but at the same time
| it will withstand abuse and be easy to repair enough to get it
| going.
|
| Thinking about the elevator in our commie block, it would have
| given a heart attack to a western European. Instead of having
| double doors to keep us safe from the moving wall, it had pads
| on the bottom and top edge so if your hand or leg is stuck, the
| pad will be pushed and the elevator will stop immediately. Also
| there was a tiny cabinet door on the right side so you can
| access the mechanism to force open the door or force move/halt
| the elevator. As kids, we would be experimenting with those
| mechanisms. They worked every single time, no legs or arms were
| lost.
| throwewey wrote:
| A Lada is actually an Italian car built under license.
|
| Neah, paternoster is quite a common elevator design in the
| west: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paternoster_lift
| mrtksn wrote:
| Depends on the model. It's Lada Niva that is legendary.
| throwewey wrote:
| How could I forget! Many apologies.
| fipar wrote:
| I often see one parked in my area (in Uruguay) with a
| sticker that says "Land Rover recovery vehicle"
| 725686 wrote:
| "The name paternoster ("Our Father", the first two words of
| the Lord's Prayer in Latin) was originally applied to the
| device because the elevator is in the form of a loop and is
| thus similar to rosary beads used as an aid in reciting
| prayers."
|
| I would have thought the name was related to the users
| praying before entering to increase their chances of
| surviving the ordeal.
| tialaramex wrote:
| Although this mechanism _looks_ scary it 's actually
| fine.
|
| The reason even its proponents accept you wouldn't build
| these now is that they have terrible accessibility, so
| they're only practical as an extra option.
| em-bee wrote:
| despite that, it looks like the reason no new
| paternosters are built and existing ones are removed is
| safety. unfortunately this is considered to be more
| important than cultural heritage protection.
|
| i have used one at the university of vienna. sadly it was
| removed almost 20 years ago.
| JoeCortopassi wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paternoster_lift#Safety
|
| _Their overall rate of accidents is estimated as 30
| times higher than conventional elevators_
|
| _Germany saw an average of one death per year due to
| paternosters_
| tialaramex wrote:
| Huh, that's much higher than I expected, thanks.
| DrSAR wrote:
| We used to love riding in them at our university in the
| late 80s/90s. And when you proceed to ride over the top
| will the car flip upside down? We managed to scare at
| least one of our classmates into believe this could
| happen. The whole thing felt as exciting as a carnival
| ride in retrospect ...
| idiotsecant wrote:
| Calling paternosters 'common' in the West is quite a
| stretch. They are a curiosity where they are found
| precisely because there are so few.
| zabzonk wrote:
| Only place I've ever come across one was Napier College,
| Edinburgh in the mid 1970s. I found it quite scary, and
| actually preferred to take the stairs. I seem to remember
| it was actually shut down, for undisclosed reasons.
| ggm wrote:
| I also used these ones in Edinburgh decades ago, and the
| same model at Leeds uni which was a similar vintage. The
| Napier one there is a story about a lecturer convincing
| two students it went upside down and if you tried to loop
| the loop you had to stand on your hands to do the
| transition... much hilarity when they appear upside down
| on the other side.
| DrSAR wrote:
| we discovered the same joke independently in Germany.
| loved it.
| jtwaleson wrote:
| For some reason I looked into this a couple of weeks ago,
| and discovered there's one in Amsterdam pretty close to
| where I often work, in the Grand Hotel Amrath. It's
| supposedly open to the public every Sunday between 10am
| and 2pm. I think it's only the second time I've seen one
| in person, and the previous one has been demolished.
| banku_brougham wrote:
| Have a look up on the Russian town called Togliati
| necovek wrote:
| Does not sound like they talked about the paternoster lift
| though: they did bring up doors and implied lift stopping
| in stations.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| I had the pleasure of working closely with a Russian engineer
| on a team once and had to "massage" his stuff quite often
| into a state that would be deemed acceptable to leadership.
| It looked terrible, hacked together, haphazard - but it
| literally never broke. It's been the better part of a decade
| now but I wouldnt be surprised if his stuff outlived mine.
| nasretdinov wrote:
| I've once built a distributed scheduler to run PHP jobs
| over a cluster of several thousand machines, before
| Kubernetes was a thing. It's only a few thousand lines of
| code and perfectly matches the description of being
| terrible, hacked together, etc. It also rarely broke and
| the company still uses it to this day, 10 years later, with
| almost no adjustments. My ex-colleagues are also saying
| that wherever they go they miss that framework (even though
| it's technically open source). And yes, I'm Russian :).
| wileydragonfly wrote:
| My elevator has double doors, but some of them were installed
| with too large of a gap between doors that a child can get
| trapped. The solution is to bolt plastic bumpers to the back
| of the outer door. Which, hey. Works.
| em-bee wrote:
| when i first heard about this probe last week i was wondering,
| isn't this thing old and unique enough to warrant a mission to
| rescue and preserve it? combined with todays lower prices for a
| space flight, it might just be worth it.
|
| and now it looks like it might just survive anyways. but then
| according to the article there also seems to be a second
| (identical?) model. so maybe it's not that important, except for
| maybe material analysis what does 50 years of exposure to space
| do to the material.
| rdtsc wrote:
| In principle this is not science fiction, Space Shuttle
| captured a satellite, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-49,
| they just didn't return it back. It was a catch, fix, and
| release.
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| They did that when they fixed the Hubble telescope too. Five
| times.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Space_Telescope#Servi.
| ..
| euroderf wrote:
| How many satellites have the USAF and US Space Command
| captured ? Inquring minds want to know.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| They do run their own unmanned shuttle based platform
| spacecraft but full capabilities aren't public.
| walrus01 wrote:
| The space shuttle also captured and returned the long
| duration exposure facility satellite, a materials test bus
| for future missions. Extremely uneconomical, however.
| mk_stjames wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-51-A brought two satellites
| back in the cargo bay that had not reached their proper orbit
| on a prior launch.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-32 brought back the Long
| Duration Exposure Facility experiment, a bigass science probe
| the size of a small school bus.
|
| There are still missions that are classified that could have
| done so as well.
|
| It was something the shuttle was designed to do, with the
| 60-foot cargo bay requirement and the ability to bring back
| the mass it flew with coming specifically from the military.
| rdtsc wrote:
| > STS-51-A marked the first time a shuttle deployed two
| communications satellites, and retrieved from orbit two
| other communications satellites
|
| That's very interesting. First time I heard about it.
| Thanks for the reference!
| alnwlsn wrote:
| I've heard that one of the things they wanted the shuttle
| to do was launch, capture a spacecraft in polar orbit, and
| land at the launch site _within a single orbit_. Some say
| it was so they could secretly grab a Soviet satellite right
| out of the sky when it was out of range of Russia, but I 'm
| not sure how you would secure something like that in the
| payload bay.
| toast0 wrote:
| > I'm not sure how you would secure something like that
| in the payload bay.
|
| Tighten down some ratchet straps, wiggle it a bit and
| say, 'that'll hold it'
| ahazred8ta wrote:
| That's an urban legend. There were never any plans to
| capture a satellite in a single orbit. It was supposed to
| be capable of making an emergency landing after one
| orbit, but not while releasing or capturing a satellite.
| The 1950s Air Force X-20 Dyna-Soar was intended to launch
| a recon satellite and land in one orbit, but not recover
| a foreign satellite in one orbit.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Is Catch Fix Release like Trap Neuter Return? Did they snip
| its ear tip for identification?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap%E2%80%93neuter%E2%80%93re.
| ..
| rdtsc wrote:
| > Is Catch Fix Release like Trap Neuter Return?
|
| And Soviets were wondering why their satellite numbers were
| not growing...
| MetallicDragon wrote:
| I don't think we have any active craft capable of recovering
| it. The space shuttle probably could have done it, but with a
| cost of about $1.5b per launch, there is no way that would be
| worth it.
|
| SpaceX's Dragon 2 easily has enough cargo capacity to bring it
| down (~3 tons vs 0.5 ton), but there's still the question of
| intercepting, capturing, and securing it in Dragon's cargo bay.
| That would still cost something north of $100m to recover the
| lander.
| dmurray wrote:
| Most of the benefit of the Shuttle program, and manned
| spaceflight in general, has come from R and D on the launch
| process, or from the prestige and bragging rights of being
| able to launch humans into space. So once they're up there,
| you're getting your money's worth (or not) no matter what
| they do, you may as well do something cool like recover a
| historic satellite.
| pirate787 wrote:
| The Shuttle program was a disaster that consumed NASA's
| budget and set back manned space flight by a generation.
| olex wrote:
| Dragon likely wouldn't be able to get it, unfortunately.
|
| The lander would easily fit into the unpressurized cargo bay
| (the "trunk"), that is typically used to launch various
| vacuum-bound payloads alongside pressurized cargo inside the
| capsule. However, for a return from orbit, the trunk cannot
| be used - it is not protected by a heat shield, and is
| ejected before re-entry.
|
| You are correct that the return payload mass of a Dragon
| would technically allow it. But you'd need to somehow get the
| captured object _inside_ the capsule, which may be possible
| via the EVA front hatch for something smaller, but not 1m in
| diameter like the Venera lander.
|
| Starship should be able to do it, since it is fully protected
| by heat shielding and returns in one piece, not ejecting any
| modules in orbit. But that's quite a while from being
| operational yet.
| nradov wrote:
| No, the Space Shuttle could not have done it. It had nowhere
| near the DV that would have been necessary for an intercept
| and capture. The OMS had only a tiny fuel supply. We're
| talking about orders of magnitude difference here.
| perihelions wrote:
| Should have been possible with a dedicated launch. This
| thing's current orbit is on the same* inclination as the
| ISS, and at lower altitude.
|
| *(They're both at exactly the minimum inclination, 51deg,
| achievable by a Soviet launch from Baikonur).
| dingaling wrote:
| Intercept and capture was one of the functional purposes of
| the shuttle. It was intended to refuel KH-12 recce sats.
| nradov wrote:
| Only for a very limited set of orbital parameters.
| bunderbunder wrote:
| I would guess that the most expensive part of such an endeavor
| wouldn't be the launch; it would be developing and building a
| spacecraft capable of capturing it and bringing it back.
|
| Even the Space Shuttle wasn't necessarily a perfect fit for the
| job as-is. Hubble was serviced many times, but it was
| specifically designed for on-orbit capture and servicing by the
| Shuttle. Before they decommissioned the shuttle they actually
| had to install an extra piece of hardware to make it feasible
| to capture and de-orbit using future non-crewed spacecraft. And
| even then that's just to make sure it crashes in a safe place,
| not to bring it home intact.
|
| There was also a mission to service a satellite that wasn't
| designed for the purpose, and they had a really hard time
| capturing it and very nearly had to give up after days' worth
| of failed attempts. It finally took simultaneous EVA by three
| astronauts to coordinate a successful capture (one to grab it
| by hand, two to get it onto a specialized adapter rig built
| just for that satellite so that the Canadarm could hold it),
| which is quite a thing considering that the Shuttle's only
| designed to allow two people on EVA at a time.
|
| This craft is likely tumbling, which I presume would make it
| unacceptably dangerous for a crewed mission (and certainly
| rules out anyone just going out there and grabbing it with
| their hands), in addition to making successful capture that
| much more difficult.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| Wouldn't it be possible to "simply" match it's tumble?
| stevage wrote:
| That sounds absolutely terrifying for the astronaut.
| Imagine the whole universe spinning past you every second.
| Not to mention the forces.
| throw_a_grenade wrote:
| No, when it tumbles, it does it around its centre of mass.
| You'd have to get a craft that has empty area inside.
|
| If you know Elite, it has space stations where you dock by
| going inside, while matching station's rotation. That's
| only in one axis (and note the hangar goes through the axis
| of rotation, i.e. centre of mass). To add rotation around
| another axis would make the task impossible.
| Zardoz84 wrote:
| like that station that is in orbit around a pulsar star
| and destroys anything trying to take off from it ?
| paul80808 wrote:
| Only if it is only spinning along one axis. Very likely to
| be spinning on multiple axis. That said, with enough money
| and effort I'm sure we could figure something out, like
| shooting it strategically with small projectiles to slow
| the spin, etc.
| LegionMammal978 wrote:
| Unless acted on by an external force, all rigid objects
| only rotate about a single axis, do they not? That axis
| just might not be aligned with any useful parts you'd
| want to grab on to.
| Ancapistani wrote:
| You might enjoy this, if you haven't seen it:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1n-HMSCDYtM
| WJW wrote:
| Anything "spinning among multiple axes" is just spinning
| around a single compound axis? There's no reason for a
| spacecraft to limit itself to any earthbound reference
| frame when it comes to matching frame with an incoming
| body from outer space.
| slavik81 wrote:
| In three dimensions, the rotation around one axis can
| affect the distribution of mass around other axes of
| rotation. That change in the moment of intertia causes
| acceleration, which can result in chaotic motion even
| without the addition of any outside forces.
| LegionMammal978 wrote:
| What do you mean by "other axes of rotation"? As long as
| the object is rigid and not acted upon by external
| forces, its axis should never change, since both the
| direction and magnitude of angular momentum are
| conserved.
|
| Wikipedia talks of "chaotic rotation" of astronomical
| objects, but only over long timescales due to
| gravitational interactions and thermal effects. On short
| timescales, its axis shouldn't change much at all, unless
| you bump into it and apply an off-axis torque.
| jameshart wrote:
| Look at the Dzhanibekov effect
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DOY21HnJII
| LegionMammal978 wrote:
| Alright, that makes more sense, the trick is that the
| (conserved) angular momentum vector need not be parallel
| with the angular velocity vector, the simplest example
| being torque-free precession [0]. It doesn't help that
| most examples of non-constant angular velocity have
| external forces in the mix to confuse the reader.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precession#Torque-
| free_or_torq...
| accrual wrote:
| Reminds me of the tumbling T-handle. A small tool is spun
| up in one axis, and due to some interesting physics, ends
| up flipping over on another axis every few seconds.
|
| https://rotations.berkeley.edu/a-tumbling-t-handle-in-
| space/
| alexey-salmin wrote:
| I wonder if it's reproducible in vacuum or the air is
| necessary to destabilize it?
| darkerside wrote:
| Does it really work this way? If the craft is rotating
| along any other axis than its direction of travel,
| wouldn't the matching craft have to be revolving around
| it, not just rotating?
| chiffre01 wrote:
| Is this one of the missions where the shuttle returned a
| satellite from orbit? There were a few:
|
| https://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/dev/hillger/Shuttle-
| related...
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| Perhaps scientists would have some particular interest in _that
| particular hardware_ as it had been launched and flown in Earth
| orbit, but I 'll tell ya: it's way easier to get your hands on
| flight spare equipment; while this stuff hasn't flown, it's
| probably a really good copy of whatever they did launch into
| space, and way better condition.
|
| When I worked "on Mars" there was a "flight spare" copy of a
| Viking instrument which was the predecessor to the one we were
| working on, and of course it was encased in Plexiglas as a
| museum piece, but it was truly a redundant copy, as NASA was
| into copying everything they sent into space, (what was the
| saying in _Contact_? "Why have only one, when you can buy two
| at twice the price?") so that if anything needed to be tweaked,
| or went wrong, they would have this copy on the ground that
| they could experiment with to their hearts' content.
| Sharlin wrote:
| You're quite overestimating our capabilities as a species if
| you think that planning, developing, and launching a recovery
| mission in a few weeks would be even _remotely_ feasible. Sure,
| we 've known that the thing's up there all this time, so in the
| very counterfactual scenario where we had started thinking
| about a retrieval mission a few of years ago, and the Space
| Shuttle was still a thing, and someone was willing to foot the
| n-hundred-million-dollar bill, I guess? I don't think any
| nation on Earth currently has the hardware required to
| rendezvous with a random spacecraft in orbit _and_ bring it
| down in one piece. The Shuttle was unique in that respect.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Feasible for a 50yo project motivated by nostalgia? No
|
| National existential crisis? They'd probably take Dragon and
| figure out how to make it work.
| Rover222 wrote:
| This thing would be going at higher than earth orbital
| velocity, making an in-space capture of it more or less
| impossible.
| klysm wrote:
| Who's gonna pay for that?
| ahmedfromtunis wrote:
| Man, I wish we had the technology to just concoct a spacecraft
| that can intercept the lander in its shallow reentry and bring it
| back in as few pieces as possible.
|
| I don't know what value can it have to be studied since it never
| left low earth orbit (albeit it was there since 1972), but I know
| it would be a cool addition to any museum that may host it.
| fsckboy wrote:
| space shuttle, the air force still has one, doesn't it? also,
| elon could whip something up.
| pacificmint wrote:
| The Air Force never had a space shuttle, though NASA flew
| missions for the Air Force and the NRO.
|
| But at this point none of the remaining shuttles are in an
| operational state.
|
| Maybe you are thinking of the X-37 which is operated by the
| space force?
| porphyra wrote:
| It's funny/sad how a bunch of Soviet Venera probes had
| malfunctioning camera lens caps and returned black photos. From
| Venera 9-12 all four probes had malfunctioning lens caps. And
| then
|
| > The Venera 14 craft had the misfortune of ejecting the camera
| lens cap directly under the surface compressibility tester arm,
| and returned information for the compressibility of the lens cap
| rather than the surface.
| FredPret wrote:
| It's funny _now_ - imagine being the Commissar for Lens Cap
| design in the old USSR and overseeing all that
| staplung wrote:
| Oh that Commissar was fine. It was the Commissar for Lens Cap
| Ejection Systems on Interplanetary Probes that got thrown
| under the avtobus.
| roughly wrote:
| I heard the Commissar for Lens Cap Ejection Trajectory
| Modeling for Venusian Planetary Environments caught the
| brunt of the blame, but the real fault was with the
| Commissar for Lens Cap Ejection Trajectory Modeling for
| Venusian Atmospheric Dynamics, who got off scott free.
| Turns out he was the general's nephew.
| transcriptase wrote:
| At the end of the day, all that matters is that someone
| involved accidentally fell from a 5th to 12th story
| window.
| jl6 wrote:
| Falling upwards - truly a comrade of the space programme.
| dluan wrote:
| It's not limited to Soviet missions. My high school physics
| teacher worked at JPL on the Mars Climate Orbiter in the 90s.
| His entire NASA career was in development of it, and after 10
| months of travel following successful launch, the thing
| exploded in the atmosphere without ever reaching the surface
| because the team at JPL used metric while Lockheed Martin
| used imperial. He was so spiritually broken by the experience
| that he quit and became a high school physics teacher. Great
| teacher, but to have your life's work go up in smoke like
| that is brutal.
| wileydragonfly wrote:
| Should have gone with the "martians shot it down"
| explanation which was far cooler and less embarrassing
| robertlagrant wrote:
| I think turning the whole earth into a total war economy
| is worth avoiding the engineering embarrassment!
| dekhn wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter#Cause_of
| _...
| userbinator wrote:
| _Still, NASA does not place the responsibility on
| Lockheed for the mission loss; instead, various officials
| at NASA have stated that NASA itself was at fault for
| failing to make the appropriate checks and tests that
| would have caught the discrepancy._
|
| _The discrepancy between calculated and measured
| position, resulting in the discrepancy between desired
| and actual orbit insertion altitude, had been noticed
| earlier by at least two navigators, whose concerns were
| dismissed because they "did not follow the rules about
| filling out [the] form to document their concerns"_
|
| Typical bureaucratic BS. Not surprised; what's surprising
| is that anything works in that sort of environment.
| pkaye wrote:
| This was during the "Faster, Better, Cheaper" era when
| staffing was cut and projects were being privatized and
| had to be done for cut rate costs. This video actually
| goes a lot into the details on what happened.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuYDkVRyMkg
|
| The whole videos series of JPL and the Space Age is very
| enjoyable to watch.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTiv_XWHnOZqFnWQs3
| 93R...
| bad_username wrote:
| Exceptional documentary. Thanks for posting.
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| If you take a step back the bureaucratic bs is actually
| that certain countries did and continue to use imperial
| measurements and nonsensical date formats.
| anthk wrote:
| The US using _Imperial_ (British) units instead of the
| modern Metric ones it 's a bit silly. We are using powers
| of ten daily. You just have to shift points in the scale.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Similar thing happened in Georgia once busy Friday night
| when tons of bridge railing came smashing down onto the
| Interstate below. Given the traffic that time of day,
| it's a miracle no one was hurt, much less killed. Almost
| immediately the head of the DOT pleaded for the public to
| not blame the contractor who installed the railing. While
| it is important to do a root cause analysis, the DOT head
| should be mostly concerned about the people who could
| have been killed instead of the contractor. It was an
| incredibly tone-deaf moment.
| lazide wrote:
| Classic sign of regulatory capture and/or corruption.
|
| Did they ever figure out who was sleeping with whom/who
| was related to whom?
| VectorLock wrote:
| The ultimate "fuck this shit- I'm out."
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Teaching high school physics will do more good for more
| people than landing a spacecraft on Mars.
| taskforcegemini wrote:
| that's debatable
| ivell wrote:
| I think the implication is that a good teacher can
| inspire more students to take up science and contribute
| broadly to the field than just one person on a specific
| field.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Pretty much. Having a working understanding of Newtonian
| physics, electricity, and other High School physics
| topics has real-world benefits. Landing a spacecraft on
| Mars is a remarkable technical achievement, but makes
| almost no difference in the life of 99.999% of people.
|
| Either could inspire someone to pursue a career in
| science, I was more thinking of just practical benefits.
| Jensson wrote:
| One brilliant scientist can inspire millions of children,
| that is much more than a teacher.
| sgt wrote:
| What reality are you living in? Zero ambition?
| dudeinjapan wrote:
| My highschool physics teacher had a similar story, he was
| one of best teachers I ever had. I went from disliking
| physics to becoming a EE major in college. Doubt I would
| be where I am today without him coming in at the right
| moment in my life.
|
| So, yes, a good teacher could inspire 10+ others to make
| spacecraft, tech startups, etc. Maybe the ROI for
| humanity is greater if that teacher stayed as an IC in
| their field.
| cbanek wrote:
| And the classic accelerometer installed backward which
| doomed the Genesis mission sample return, although some
| bits were successfully recovered, the parachute never
| deployed.
| dudeinjapan wrote:
| Elsewhere in this thread someone was asking about the
| difference between acceleration and deceleration. Well,
| this is a good example!
| cbanek wrote:
| The difference is just a minus sign!
| hilbert42 wrote:
| _" ...the thing exploded in the atmosphere without ever
| reaching the surface because the team at JPL used metric
| while Lockheed Martin used imperial."_
|
| I've just read the Wiki on the Mars Climate Orbiter and it
| explains the disastrous implications of that mistake.
| What's tragic about such errors is that the US keeps
| repeating them, Hubble was another very expensive
| Imperial/Metric fuck-up even though it was recoverable.
|
| I've often had debates with Americans about Imperial versus
| Metric when I was in the US and their retort is usually
| along the lines _" why should we give up God's own units
| for that nasty French stuff?"_ or words to that effect.
|
| They gave other specious arguments too, such as cost of new
| tooling would be prohibitive. That's rubbish+ of course
| (certainly in the grand schema of things as the long-term
| benefits far outweigh initial costs).
|
| Well, anyway, by the looks of it God is on the side of the
| French!
|
| What many of us outside the US find odd and can't figure
| out is that in its early days the American Republic was
| hand-in-glove with the French against that horrible
| Imperial island, so why did it reject the French system?
|
| Yes, I know of the early attempt at metricization and the
| loss of weights and measures at sea whilst in transit from
| France to the US but given its impact that's pretty paltry
| excuse.
|
| It really is time you guys caught up with the rest of the
| world. Surely, it's getting a bit too expensive to continue
| to lose spacecraft to whims of measurement.
|
| __
|
| _+ Check how well Australia 's metric conversion went some
| 50 years ago. It's a textbook example of how to go about it
| correctly. I know, I live there--we fuck things up more
| often than not but this one we got AOK right. If you ask
| kids at school today what various Imperial units are they'd
| likely say they've never heard of them._
| blincoln wrote:
| I'm American, and I fully support moving to the metric
| system. But it's a tough sell for most people.
|
| If someone is an adult, it's a bunch of new information
| to learn, and unless they work in a field that involves
| measurements and math, it probably won't be an obvious
| net positive for them.
|
| The biggest benefit IMO is for future generations, who
| wouldn't grow up having to memorize conversion factors
| for a bunch of ancient legacy units (feet per mile,
| teaspoons per cup, etc.) as well as having to do the
| conversions when working with people from outside the US.
|
| I'd greatly appreciate it as someone who does a lot of
| hobby work in various fields, because metric measurements
| are something I can use across all of them. But the
| impression I've gotten is that professionals in a single
| field are so used to working with whichever specific
| imperial units are relevant to them that it would be a
| wash. And since they'd have to redevelop all of that
| intuitive knowledge for the metric equivalent, they see
| it as a net negative.
| drob518 wrote:
| Sergei is, sadly, ahem, no longer with us.
| smallnix wrote:
| Jest aside, do we know how such failure was handled in the
| USSR?
| kerkeslager wrote:
| This is a question I've tried to answer to myself, and I
| think it's actually pretty hard to tell, if all your
| sources are Western media. I'll give you my impressions but
| I'm by no means an expert.
|
| I tend to reject any narrative about the Soviets which
| makes them not sound like humans. They weren't all idiots
| or sociopaths: they understood, just like we do, that
| people make mistakes and that if you punish mistakes too
| harshly, people won't want to risk working with you. The
| Soviet government punished _dissent_ harshly--but if you
| were working with them they weren 't typically so foolish
| as to punish honest mistakes with a stay in the gulags. In
| fact, technical fields like their space program (and, for
| example, infrastructure programs) were safe havens for
| intelligentsia, where some criticism of government was
| tolerated because it was understood that criticism from
| people with technical knowhow was necessary to progress
| Soviet goals.
|
| There are exceptions I've found, but I tend to think those
| are the result of a few people with too much power making
| bad decisions, rather than a pervasive cultural norm.
|
| None of this should be perceived as a defense of Soviet
| totalitarianism. Stalin has the highest body count of any
| dictator by a wide margin, and that's totally
| reprehensible. All I'm saying is I think he killed
| political dissenters, mostly, not allies who made mistakes.
| Scramblejams wrote:
| Since you brought him up: Stalin was also motivated by a
| truckload of paranoia, though, right? Hard to make
| rational decisions about who is dissenting if you think
| they're all out to get you. The flimsiest accusations
| related by the least reliable people could be enough.
|
| He executed and imprisoned a bunch of his best aircraft
| designers. Look what he did to Andrei Tupolev and his
| design bureau; they designed a whole aircraft in the
| Gulag: https://vvsairwar.com/2016/10/20/aviation-design-
| in-the-gula...
| anonymars wrote:
| A classic feature of authoritarian governments: when
| their dumb plans fail, it's because of enemies of the
| state. Bonus points when the enemies of the state are the
| ones that warned of the negative effects that would
| happen (obviously they must have been saboteurs)
| TiredOfLife wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharashka
| somenameforme wrote:
| In general I think the issue is a lot of people equate
| Stalin with USSR. Things were substantially different
| both before and after him. And his reign was also from
| the 20s to the 50s in which there was the context of,
| amongst other major issues, WW2 where the Soviets lost
| tens of millions of people. As one can see in certain
| ongoing wars, exceptional loss of life seems to gradually
| push leaders towards having zero concern for life at all
| - let alone the liberties and values we hold to be
| desirable, even in authoritarian systems. When the "hard"
| decisions become quite easy, you're well on your way to
| dystopia.
| codedokode wrote:
| The peak of Stalin's repression is somewhere in 1937-1939
| - right before WW2, so you can't write it off to losses
| in the war. The reason is probably Stalin's paranoia and
| him seeing traitors everywhere, including his former
| comrades.
| LtWorf wrote:
| They were at war with Japan at the time though.
| dsq wrote:
| The Holodomor and mass purges all occurred well before
| WW2 so there's no pass there for Soviet repression.
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| The mass purges were deliberate, while the famine
| (polemically called the "Holodomor") was not. The famine
| was caused by Stalin's disastrous agricultural policy,
| but it wasn't a deliberate attempt to kill people.
| medbrane wrote:
| >Broadly speaking, Russian historians are generally of
| the opinion that the Holodomor did not constitute a
| genocide. Among Ukrainian historians the general opinion
| is that it did constitute a genocide.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor_genocide_question
| dsq wrote:
| While I agree that one primary motive was to get more
| food, Communist atrocities generally start out with noble
| ideals, at least on paper. Pol Pot also intended to
| create an ideal society[1], at whatever cost.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Zero_(political_
| notion)
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| Pol Pot actually intended to kill huge numbers of people
| and wipe out the cities. He had his own crazy philosophy
| about a peasant Utopia that had nothing to do with
| Marxism at all.
|
| The Soviets wanted to increase agricultural yield, but
| the policies Stalin implemented caused the harvest in
| 1932 to fall by about 20%. In a country already just
| barely able to feed itself, that led to famine, not just
| in Ukraine but across the USSR.
| mopsi wrote:
| > The famine was caused by Stalin's disastrous
| agricultural policy, but it wasn't a deliberate attempt
| to kill people.
|
| Neo-Nazis argue the same about the Holocaust, namely,
| that there is not a single piece of evidence showing that
| the highest level of the German government, in Hitler's
| person, ever ordered the extermination of Jews (and this
| is true). They claim it was merely an unfortunate side-
| effect of various factors, such as widespread shortages,
| logistical issues caused by Allied aerial bombings, and
| so on.
|
| However, when you zoom in on the personal level, the
| deliberateness becomes obvious in both cases. If someone
| came to your city, confiscated all the food, harshly
| punished any attempts to store even a minimal amount for
| basic survival, caused horrific starvation that killed
| many, drove survivors to such insanity that parents ate
| the flesh of their own children in the most extreme
| cases, and still blocked all foreign aid and prevented
| people from leaving, then what would you call it, if not
| deliberate mass murder?
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| > Neo-Nazis argue the same about the Holocaust, namely,
| that there is not a single piece of evidence showing that
| the highest level of the German government, in Hitler's
| person, ever ordered the extermination of Jews
|
| We literally have the minutes of the Wannsee conference,
| in which the Nazis decided to kill all Jews.
|
| The German state carried out a massive logistical
| operation of moving millions of people to specially built
| camps and gassing them to death. Comparing that to a
| famine is insane.
|
| You're drawing an equivalence between patently absurd,
| factually false denialism about the Holocaust on the one
| hand, and the dominant scholarly view that the Soviet
| famine of the early 1930s was not a deliberate attempt to
| kill Ukrainians on the other hand.
| antifa wrote:
| > Neo-Nazis argue the same about the Holocaust
|
| No they don't, don't trivialize the Holocaust with shitty
| comparisons like this.
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| Some of them do, but the difference is that their claim
| is complete and utter hogwash.
|
| On the other side, pretty much everyone accepts that
| there was a major famine in the USSR in the early 1930s,
| mostly caused by Stalin's collectivization policy. That's
| just a fact.
| anticodon wrote:
| As a Russian I will explain my vision: one of the oldest
| Western traditions is to demonize Russia and Russian
| people. You can find plenty of examples in the Western
| literature from 100 years ago, from 400 years ago, and
| right now on CNN or Bloomberg or in any Hollywood movie.
|
| E.g. movie Tenet starts from depicting a scene from
| "Russian life": under a low sun, in freezing cold, dirty
| hungry Russians are crawling in the dirt gathering
| "pieces of Uranium" with their bare hands.
|
| Or you can open just about any publication/movie about
| Russia/Soviet Union from just about any period of time:
| there would be not a single good word. Western Media
| almost never publishes something like: "There's a new
| school/hospital/stadium/factory opened in Russia".
| Instead all you can see is "Russian corrupt government
| officials set a record of eating 100500 babies alive
| today.", "Weak Russian economy means that Russians will
| survive on a diet of two rotten potatoes a day in 2026",
| etc. etc.
|
| It's just that Soviet period is demonized the most.
| medbrane wrote:
| >one of the oldest Western traditions is to demonize
| Russia and Russian people
|
| Would you blame them? Who cares is something good happens
| now in Russia while they are brutally murdering their
| neighbors?
|
| Nobody cares whether Hitler was great at drawing or not.
| subscribed wrote:
| Maybe if not for the majority of Russians actually
| supporting the brutal dictator ordering ongoing war
| crimes in Ukraine you could ask for some sympathy.
|
| https://theconversation.com/why-vladimir-putin-still-has-
| wid...
|
| This isn't just oppressed society afraid to act. This is
| actual support for the actual killer of the babies.
| Despicable.
|
| Some of it is also caused by the pervasive hostility to
| the values important to most humans, pervasive
| disinformation efforts, and aim to destroy the peace and
| integrity of the countries it perceives as a competition.
|
| For now I'll just agree this is largely deserved, and
| I'll play the sad tune on the tiny violin.
| LtWorf wrote:
| Didn't the USA population elect the brutal guy who did
| war crimes in Iraq? Are americans all monsters?
| tokai wrote:
| Plenty of people the world over hate the Americans for
| what they let happen in Iraq.
| LtWorf wrote:
| They don't get nearly as much flak as the russians do.
| For example they aren't banned from sport competitions,
| USA films aren't boycotted, and so on...
| anticodon wrote:
| Rusofobia started in middle ages, long before Putin was
| born. And it never ended.
|
| > Some of it is also caused by the pervasive hostility to
| the values important to most humans,
|
| USA started with a genocide of a whole continent. Started
| more wars than any other nation/state in the human
| history. Probably killed more civilians than any other
| nation in history (Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, just to
| name a few countries with huge losses among civilians,
| not even counting those who died from hunger or illnesses
| caused by US wars and deliberate destruction of
| agriculture and infrastructure).
|
| So what? Do you read every day that it is the most
| belligerent and aggressive state on Earth, although it
| really is?
|
| > pervasive disinformation efforts
|
| I've already wrote in the original message, how Russia is
| portrayed by the media and Hollywoold. Is it a really
| true information? Not propaganda and disinformation?
| testing22321 wrote:
| I spent three years on Africa, and it's the same story
| there. Literally everyday millions of africans laugh and
| sing and cry with joy at weddings, parties, birth of
| children. New hospitals get built, life is rapidly
| improving.
|
| Basically nobody in the west has any idea, and people
| always assume I was in a hell hole the entire time. It's
| wild what propaganda will do for knowledge of a place.
| EndsOfnversion wrote:
| So basically you are fine living in a imperialist,
| totalitarian dictatorship, where the slightest descent is
| punished by years in prison, because the boot on your
| neck is Russian made?
|
| The rest of the world having to clean up the mess left by
| the Soviet Union (paying for the cleanup and
| decommissioning of nuclear submarines, Chernobyl,
| rebuilding eastern Europe) may have a lot to do with the
| anti-Soviet attitude.
|
| Have you ever wondered if maybe that (and by extension
| your attitude to it) is part of the problem?
| tokai wrote:
| Russian soldiers stole radioactive materials with their
| bare hands in Chernobyl some years ago. When you steal
| thousands of children, keep invading neighbors,
| assassinate people all over europe, its not that weird
| that you don't have the best PR. The western world tried
| to get you to join the free world for almost 30 years, so
| this is all on yourself.
| LtWorf wrote:
| More than Hitler? Source on this very incorrect
| information?
| hilbert42 wrote:
| _" I tend to reject any narrative about the Soviets which
| makes them not sound like humans."_
|
| Right, it's time we stopped this stereotyping and looked
| at this objectively. The Russian Empire and later the
| USSR has had many, many truly brilliant people over
| recent centuries. The list of names seems endless, here
| are few immediately to mind: Chebyshev, Cantor, Markov,
| Borodin, Koppen, Landau, Cherenkov, Mendeleyev, Tolstoy,
| Shostakovich, Gagarin, Prokudin-Gorsky, Mussorgsky and
| Tchaikovsky. And here's just the Wiki list of Russian
| scientists: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Russi
| an_scientists. Now, there's much more, do the same again
| for physicists, mathematicians, chemists, composers,
| writers, novelist and so on. When one looks at the sheer
| numbers of people it's hard to believe that they all come
| from Russia.
|
| Morever, it's hard to imagine where the world would be
| today without these brilliant people. It's almost
| inconceivable the world would be anywhere near the same
| without them.
|
| I'd like to think most of us are smart enough to separate
| the majority of Russians from the small minority of
| ratbags, sociopaths and psychopathic, paranoid, sadistic
| monsters such as Stalin, Putin and Ivan the Terrible.
| There is no doubt that Russia has had a long and terrible
| history of tyrant rulers whose reign of tyranny has
| caused great harm to the Russian people. If anything we
| ought to feel some sympathy and compassion for the
| Russian population as a whole given the centuries-long
| turmoil Russia has endured.
|
| Nevertheless, in spite of its long history of adversity
| Russia has still been able to produce this brilliant body
| of people and it's done so essentially consistently over
| recent centuries.
|
| Give credit where credit is due.
| codedokode wrote:
| Stalin died in 1953, and these probes were launched much
| later, so there were no chance to get into a Gulag. However
| for people who worked earlier the possibility to get there
| was always nearby.
|
| Sergei Korolev, a famous Russian rocket designer (who was
| later responsible for launching a first satellite and first
| human space flight), had to go through the prison and
| labour camp. In 1938 he was head of a laboratory for jet
| propulsion (mainly for development of weapon), and as jet
| engines were not well studied, experimental models often
| failed with explosions. After another failed test, several
| laboratory employees were arrested, and after they
| testified, Korolev. They were charged with sabotage -
| creating a secret anti-Soviet organization with the purpose
| of weakening Soviet defence. After series of
| interrogations, during which he had his jaw broken, he
| admitted the guilt and soon was sentenced to 10 years of
| work in labour camps [1]. The sentence was later reviewed
| and he was transferred to a prison where he was allowed to
| continue working on jet propulsion.
|
| Another example is Andrey Tupolev - Soviet aircraft
| designer ("Tu" series of planes is named after him). He was
| also charged with sabotage (conspiracy to slow down
| aircraft development in USSR) and espionage during Stalin
| times and had to design his planes in a prison [2].
|
| After Stalin death, both Korolev and Tupolev cases were
| reviewed and they were admitted not guilty.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Korolev#Imprisonment
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrei_Tupolev#Sharashka
| varjag wrote:
| _After series of interrogations, during which he had his
| jaw broken_
|
| It was worse than that. He was beaten with rubber hose
| and wire harnesses, had needles pressed in the body, was
| urinated on. He then was sent to a gulag where he was
| left dying from hunger and scurvy. He was saved by a
| fellow imprisoned engineer who was fortunate to fight his
| way up though the inmate hierarchy.
|
| The broken jaw, out of the many broken bones in his body
| is mostly mentioned because it was ultimately the cause
| of his death in 1960s.
| macbr wrote:
| At least with the Venus probes they were only publicly
| announced when they were well on their way to Venus with
| failures either not getting published or getting assigned
| alibi mission goals (e.g. if they failed to leave earth's
| orbit) so failure modes were limited to the destination.
| marcodiego wrote:
| If it falls in my backyard. Can I keep it to myself?
| eagerpace wrote:
| No
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| From a previous probe:
|
| > Space law required that the space junk be returned to its
| national owner, but the Soviets denied knowledge or ownership
| of the satellite.[8] Ownership therefore fell to the farmer
| upon whose property the satellite fell. The pieces were
| thoroughly analyzed by New Zealand scientists which determined
| that they were Soviet in origin because of manufacturing marks
| and the high-tech welding of the titanium. The scientists
| concluded that they were probably gas pressure vessels of a
| kind used in the launching rocket for a satellite or space
| vehicle and had decayed in the atmosphere.[9]
|
| I wonder how space law works when the national owner (CCCP) no
| longer exists? Does it go to Russia? Kazakhstan?
| CryptoBanker wrote:
| Russia is the successor state to the USSR
| stevage wrote:
| One of many successor states, no?
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| I'd bet many parts were manufactured in Ukraine. Let them
| have dibs.
| pests wrote:
| While many countries are successor states of the USSR,
| only Russia was declared the continuator.
|
| > In an interview with Nezavisimaya Gazeta on 1 April
| 1992, Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev explained the
| situation: "Many people think that Russia became the
| legal successor of the USSR automatically, but this is
| far from being the case. We faced a very difficult
| political and diplomatic task. Russia is not a legal
| successor, but a continuing state of the USSR.
|
| > There was no automaticity. It was an open question. The
| solution was suggested to us by Western countries,
| especially by the British, who had a huge experience in
| solving inheritance issues, they had an empire. The
| British dug somewhere in their archives and proposed a
| variant of a successor state. There is a monstrous
| confusion even among historians who write about it and
| political analysts. It is simply an unwillingness to
| understand. So, all of them are legal successors. All
| Union republics. The three Baltic republics refused to be
| successors. All the others, Georgia, Armenia, Kazakhstan
| were legal successors and now remain legal successors. In
| relation to foreign debt, it was a deal. With respect to
| the UN Security Council, an international conference of
| all successors under international law had to be convened
| to resolve the issues. Therefore, a continuator was
| invented. A continuator is one of the inheritors, one of
| the legal successors, whom everybody recognises, but it
| doesn't require ratification. It is simply a declaration
| that it is recognised as a continuing state of the legal
| function that is written in the UN Charter for the USSR
| and now for Russia.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Succession,_continuity_and_
| leg...
| stevage wrote:
| Thanks for sharing, very interesting.
| consumer451 wrote:
| Only when it's convenient for them.
|
| UN Security Council seat: yes, of course! What an ignorant
| question.
|
| Responsible for the damage done by the USSR in other
| countries: certainly not! How dare you!
| treyd wrote:
| Usually international law regarding successor states applies,
| so it would almost certainly be Russia that would have a
| claim to it.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| What are the chances it lands and kills a whale?
| mystified5016 wrote:
| Whales are not _typically_ found on land, and usually when they
| 're already dead.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| You've clearly never been to a Walmart outside Indianapolis
| before.
| ChocolateGod wrote:
| What if it lands on water though?
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| I think we can still estimate that probability. I'd say 0%.
| aruggirello wrote:
| This thread is looking more and more as if it were written
| by Douglas Adams.
| whoopdedo wrote:
| Oh no, not again.
| TiredOfLife wrote:
| Yeah, that bureaucrat is at least 20% responsible for the
| current US administration
| alexfromapex wrote:
| It sounds like it will definitely land, no parachute, because it
| was made to be strong enough to survive the pressures of Venus. I
| hope it doesn't land near me.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Sorry, but there is still no chance it will land. It's safe to
| bet your house on it making a nice crater or just disappearing
| from radar into the drink.
| stevage wrote:
| Sounds like you have different definitions of landing.
| alexfromapex wrote:
| Sorry, I had assumed that a crash landing was obvious from
| what I said. I don't know how it could be unclear since
| there's no parachute.
| ahazred8ta wrote:
| Lithobraking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithobraking is
| very reliable but a bit hard on the equipment.
| rbanffy wrote:
| Would be awesome if it soft-landed on a field and started taking
| and transmitting pictures of sheep.
| LordGrignard wrote:
| or even better yet, landed on a desert and taking pictures of
| cactii and camels
| rbanffy wrote:
| I think sheep would e funnier, but camels would be OK as
| well.
| eh_why_not wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosmos_482
|
| _> Its landing module, which weighs 495 kilograms (1,091 lb), is
| highly likely to reach the surface of Earth in one piece as it
| was designed to withstand 300 G 's of acceleration and 100
| atmospheres of pressure._
|
| Awesome! I don't know how you can design for 300 G's of
| acceleration!
| dgrin91 wrote:
| Nitpicking, but wouldn't it be 300 Gs of deceleration? I know
| the math is basically the same, but technically the words a
| mean different things
| jbnorth wrote:
| What is deceleration but acceleration in the opposite
| direction? /s
| JohnKemeny wrote:
| There's no need for the "/s" on the end, there.
| Deceleration, and especially in this case with a natural
| frame of reference, deceleration is negative acceleration.
| rightbyte wrote:
| More stringently, deceleration is decreasing the
| magnitude of the velocity vector, I would say.
|
| If acceleration can be negative, so can speed. A negative
| speed with negative acceleration would not imply
| deceleration?
| mongol wrote:
| Speed is not a vector, it is a scalar. You are thinking
| of velocity.
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| The magnitude of the velocity vector is dependent on the
| frame of reference.
|
| If you measure the same object's velocity from a
| spaceship traveling through the solar system, you'll get
| a different answer from what we measure from Earth.
|
| That's why physics doesn't distinguish between
| acceleration and deceleration. What looks like
| acceleration in one frame looks like deceleration in a
| different frame.
| crazydoggers wrote:
| Acceleration is a vector. So if you apply the "deceleration"
| long enough you'll eventually be accelerating in the opposite
| direction. Without a frame of reference it's all the same.
| Even with a frame of reference you're still accelerating just
| that it's in he opposite direction of the current velocity.
| Eduard wrote:
| I fly through trams in completely different directions
| depending on whether it accelerates or decelerates. So for
| sure a system's design must consider more than just the
| magnitude of acceleration.
| FredPret wrote:
| They tend to do this with spacecraft by turning the whole
| craft so acceleration always comes through the floor
| crazydoggers wrote:
| Without looking out the window how would you tell the
| difference between acceleration or deceleration? You
| can't.
|
| And if you say "well one way I fly to the back of the
| tram and the other the front" You're arbitrarily
| associating "front" with decelerate and "back" with
| accelerate.
|
| 300gs is 300gs regardless of the direction vector of the
| component.
|
| > So for sure a system's design must consider more than
| just the magnitude of acceleration.
|
| What else would you need to consider? Acceleration up?
| Down? Left? 20%x,30%y,40%z? There's an infinite number of
| directions.
| ryandrake wrote:
| "The enemy's gate is down."
| anyfoo wrote:
| Well to be fair, the person you reply to has a point.
| There's a continuous range of directions, but even though
| I'm no spaceship engineer, I suspect they're probably
| engineered to withstand acceleration better in some
| directions than others, given that pretty much only their
| thrust method, as well as gravity at source and
| destination, will actually be able to apply any
| acceleration.
| agurk wrote:
| When you go around a tight corner and are thrown to one
| side, what term would you use for the tram's change in
| motion then?
|
| Deceleration is a useful but non-technical term, like
| vegetable. A tomato is a fruit which is a tightly defined
| concept, but it is in this loose category of things
| called vegetables. It's still useful to be able to call
| it a vegetable.
|
| From a physics perspective all changes in motion
| (direction and magnitude) are acceleration, and it's
| correct to say the designers had to consider acceleration
| in most (all?) directions when designing the tram. This
| is including gravity's, as they tend to give you seats to
| sit on, rather than velcro panels and straps like on
| space ships.
|
| It is useful to say to your friend in the pub that you
| got thrown out of your seat due to the tram's heavy
| deceleration, rather than give a precise vector.
| amoshebb wrote:
| I think this is a case where "technically" the words mean the
| same thing but "generally" they mean different things.
| anyfoo wrote:
| Acceleration, deceleration, point is: Something is going to
| apply 300 gs in a certain direction to design for.
|
| It's not like you can tell whether you're going slow or fast,
| in one direction, the other direction, or even just standing
| still, if you close your eyes.
| stickfigure wrote:
| Sure you can. You just need a luminiferous aether detector.
| anyfoo wrote:
| Of course, my bad. Otherwise the speed of light would
| have to be constant in any reference frame, and that
| would just be _ridiculous_.
| exabrial wrote:
| Flip your phone upside brah
| Rover222 wrote:
| This is wrong when talking about the physics of something.
| Deceleration is acceleration. Acceleration is just a change
| in velocity.
| drob518 wrote:
| It's just a minus sign.
| os2warpman wrote:
| There are electronics and gyroscopes designed for >9,000 G
| loads, in guided artillery shells.
|
| Aerospace is awesome.
| nandomrumber wrote:
| 88.2 m/s^2
|
| For well under a second though, typically artillery muzzle
| velocity is, what, two to three thousand feet a second?
|
| Still, it's wild that guidance electronics and control
| mechanisms can survive that sort of acceleration.
| Baeocystin wrote:
| That vacuum tubes(!) were part of that package, and were
| able to be that robust, still floors me every time I think
| about it.
| MathMonkeyMan wrote:
| > 88.2 m/s^2
|
| Isn't that more like 9g?
| nandomrumber wrote:
| Yes, thanks, I meant to write 88.2 _kilometres_ / second
| squared.
| af78 wrote:
| According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M777_howitzer
| (typical howitzer):
|
| - barrel length (x): 5.08 meters
|
| - muzzle velocity (v): 827 m/s
|
| Assuming a constant acceleration g, x = g * t2 / 2 and v =
| g * t
|
| Hence:
|
| - t = 2 * x / v = 12.29 ms
|
| - g = v / t = 67316 m / s2 = 7000 G
|
| A bit lower than 9000 G, but in the same ballpark.
|
| Certain rounds, like Excalibur
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M982_Excalibur) or BONUS
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bofors/Nexter_Bonus), are
| sophisticated and are able to cope with such accelerations.
| WJW wrote:
| Overbuild everything. For things that might be fragile-ish like
| surface mounted electronics, cast the whole thing in resin. As
| a sibling poster has mentioned, we shoot things out of
| artillery tubes these days that have way harsher accelerations
| than 300g.
| MarkMarine wrote:
| 300g is nuts. Electronics in a shell is one thing, this is a
| landing craft. In a prior life my designs had to survive 12g
| aerial drop loads and we had to make things pretty robust.
| consumer451 wrote:
| It also blew my mind that a human being, John Stapp,
| survived >40g acceleration and 26g deceleration, in a
| rocket sled. I believe it was the deceleration that hurt
| him the most.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Gun scopes are minimum 500G rated. Apparently that's the
| ballpark for recoils(the reaction force from the barrel
| becoming a rocket engine, and/or the bolt/carrier bottoming
| out)
| casylum wrote:
| If anyone wants to try and see it the orbit is listed.
|
| https://www.n2yo.com/passes/?s=6073
| lenerdenator wrote:
| [flagged]
| copula4 wrote:
| His name is not Vlad, it's a familiar form of a completely
| unrelated name. If you want to demonstrate contempt by using a
| familiar form, use Vova.
|
| It sounds about the same as if I used something like "Joe" to
| refer to a William.
| margalabargala wrote:
| [flagged]
| int_19h wrote:
| It doesn't actually achieve that, it just makes you look
| like an ignorant Westerner. Similar to all the "-ski" stuff
| that Americans, for some reason, seem to believe is
| indicative of Russian.
|
| If you want to troll Putin, call him Vovochka.
| margalabargala wrote:
| Putin is not in fact the intended audience, so the
| diminutive should be tailored to the audience, not to
| Putin.
|
| Kind of like calling him "Putain", or "Poo-tin", which
| are also not his name.
| elzbardico wrote:
| [flagged]
| lenerdenator wrote:
| [flagged]
| lenerdenator wrote:
| [flagged]
| TiredOfLife wrote:
| The Vlad part is from
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlad_the_Impaler
| tomhow wrote:
| We detached this comment from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43874642 and marked it off
| topic.
| ConanRus wrote:
| Soviet is the best (c)
| CommenterPerson wrote:
| If the parachute had already deployed sometime during the past 50
| years, wouldn't it burn up on re-entry?
| cactusfrog wrote:
| This would be a good start of a plot line for some alien life
| form
| y33t wrote:
| It's already the start for _Night of the Living Dead_.
| drob518 wrote:
| Lander reports that Venus is very... earth-like.
| erulabs wrote:
| Any projected intercept for earth yet? Feels like it might be
| quite beautiful on reentry assuming you're in the right (but not
| TOO right) spot.
| jasonkester wrote:
| Childhood me hopes this will play out exactly like the Six
| Million Dollar Man episode. That it will roam around terrorizing
| rural California, and we'll have to team up with a pretty young
| Russian scientist and Bigfoot to stop it.
|
| I wonder if the producers of that show knew about that failed
| mission, and that this was actually really in earth orbit, when
| they wrote that episode.
| Jun8 wrote:
| "Oscar: Irina, you know that Steve is bionic. If he's careful
| ...
|
| Irina: You don't understand. I designed that probe for Venus.
| Venus Oscar. A planet with temperatures of 900 degrees, 300
| mile per hour winds, pressures up to 90 earth atmospheres. Even
| a bionic man couldn't survive under those conditions."
| hackeraccount wrote:
| Came here looking for this reference; left not dissapointed.
| Aachen wrote:
| Article says +-3.1 days, but the author wrote a newer entry (go
| to homepage, click on latest article, click through to space.com
| link1) that says May 10, +-2.2 days.
|
| Starting to get to the range where a timezone would be helpful!
|
| Via Wikipedia2, which will probably also get updated fast, this
| page says they'll stay updated with the latest estimate:
| https://sattrackcam.blogspot.com/2025/04/kosmos-842-descent-...
|
| 1 https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/...
|
| 2 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosmos_482
| rich_sasha wrote:
| The blog post seems to say the reentry time depends somewhat on
| (future, unknown) solar activity, contributing to the
| estimation error.
|
| Why would this be? Is the solar wind strong enough to affect
| the velocity of a dense object such as this?
| dotancohen wrote:
| The solar wind affects the atmosphere, specifically by
| raising it, such that the probe may experience more
| atmospheric drag.
| fguerraz wrote:
| Solar activity affects the outer layer of our atmosphere
| which expands with solar activity and affects the drag of
| satellites. This is how starlight lost a bunch of satellites
| last year.
| af78 wrote:
| May 9th is in that range. My goodness, how ironic it would be
| if it hit the parade in Moscow...
| oleganza wrote:
| what's ironic about that?
| af78 wrote:
| This spacecraft was part of the Soviet space exploration
| program, designed to consolidate USSR's World Power status.
|
| The Moscow military parade is meant to demonstrate the neo-
| imperial Russian military might, on the 80th anniversary of
| the USSR conquering half of Europe. That's the way it is
| presented, with slogans like <<Mozhem povtorit'>> i.e. "We
| can repeat it".
|
| The former striking the latter would be a bit like a
| terrorist accidentally blowing up on a bomb of their own
| making.
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| > on the 80th anniversary of the USSR conquering half of
| Europe.
|
| Weird way to say defeating the Nazis despite millions in
| losses.
| meindnoch wrote:
| They overstayed a tiny bit.
| EndsOfnversion wrote:
| You mean former-Nazi allies the Soviet Union?
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Yes, the former Nazi allies that the Allies gleefully
| partnered with as soon as the opportunity presented
| itself. Of course that was just a one time thing and the
| West would never again ally itself it forces that openly
| call themselves Nazis. Oh wait, the West is currently
| doing that today. Relative moralism is something the West
| specializes in doing.
| EasyMark wrote:
| There was no glee, it was simply a partnership of
| convenience to defeat the much worse enemy. The west
| didn't starve and murder their own people to the tune of
| 10 million+ like the Soviets did, outside of the losses
| in fighting the Nazis
| hedora wrote:
| They starved about 10 million and they murdered another
| 10 million:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties_o
| f_t...
|
| Their total losses were about 26.6M. For comparison,
| German concentration camps killed about 6M, but Russia
| was on our side, so we don't like to compare these two
| numbers.
| EndsOfnversion wrote:
| Just to clarify further, we are talking about the Katyn
| massacre Soviet Union?
| mcv wrote:
| They did both. They defeated the Nazis, but they didn't
| exactly "liberate" eastern Europe. They just replaced one
| occupier with another.
| EasyMark wrote:
| They helped* defeat the Nazis
| af78 wrote:
| Ukraine and Belarus suffered the highest losses in
| proportion of their population. Weird that contemporary
| Russia tries to take credit for results obtained with the
| blood of others.
| ponector wrote:
| Don't forget they started world war together with Nazis.
| EasyMark wrote:
| Then abusing the big win by attempting to absorb all the
| Eastern European companies as puppet provinces. Let's not
| act like they weren't doing it for their own ambitions,
| just like Hitler. A lot of those millions could have been
| preventable because Stalin had zero concern for the lives
| of citizens or his military
| egorfine wrote:
| > 80th anniversary of the USSR conquering half of Europe
|
| Is this a correct description of the end of WWII?
| eitland wrote:
| Sadly, in many ways, that's true.
|
| They entered the Second World War as allies of Nazi
| Germany. When Germany inevitably turned on them, it was
| we--the collective West, with my own country playing a
| significant and costly role--who helped drag them out of
| the mess they'd enabled.
|
| And yet, not long after, they turned on us. They occupied
| Eastern Europe, ruled it with an iron grip, and spent the
| next 80 years constructing a narrative in which they were
| the heroes--and that they'd done it all on their own.
| hedora wrote:
| Saying they turned on us is misleading. They were never
| on our side, but Hitler was the bigger threat.
|
| The US nuked Japan post surrender (go look it up - the
| documents were declassified a decade ago) as a bluff to
| convince the Russians that they could not win a war where
| they attempted to take all of Europe.
| boulos wrote:
| "Post surrender" is misleading.
| https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2022/05/06/did-the-
| japanese-... has good coverage of what's known here.
| There were definitely factions within Japan that wanted
| to surrender, but there doesn't appear to have been a
| formal attempt.
|
| As is, there was an attempted coup to overthrow the
| government due to the first (conditional) surrender.
| egorfine wrote:
| I have to agree, it's technically true. And tbh even more
| than technically.
|
| Still, it's as correct to speak about the end of WWII in
| that terms as it is to describe love as four letter word.
| mapt wrote:
| Yes?
|
| You could mention something about "Losing 80% of their
| population of fighting-age men and nearly losing their
| capital city to German aggression before turning the
| tide" and something about the race against the other
| Allies, but that is what happened.
|
| Victory Day is basically the largest holiday in Russia.
| ordu wrote:
| The current propaganda trends of Kremlin are relying a lot
| on a glorious past. The 9 May is one of the staples of the
| propaganda, that now represents WWII as a victory over the
| most of the world, not just a victory on an Eastern
| European front of the WWII. The USSR space achievements are
| another reason to boast about the glorious past.
|
| So it would be ironic if glorious past reached through the
| space to hit those who idolizes it, because they idolize
| not the historical past but the alternate history past.
| Reality strikes back.
| hedora wrote:
| Trump's glorious past parade isn't until June. A hit on
| it would be ironic too.
| hvenev wrote:
| Sadly the inclination of the orbit prevents it from falling
| that far north.
| kamranjon wrote:
| I wonder if something like this could basically be a time capsule
| for germs/viruses/pathogens that no longer exist? Could that ever
| be a risk?
| bobxmax wrote:
| Highly unlikely given sterilization before launch and Venus
| basically being a deep fryer
|
| But also technically not impossible. For example if the dormant
| microbes react to prolonged microgravity and radiation in ways
| we don't understand, perhaps it brings back something we
| haven't seen before
|
| Could be a fun science fiction plot
| cogman10 wrote:
| If I'm reading the article correctly, it never made it to
| Venus.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Not likely.
|
| This thing spent 50 years in high earth orbit. Everything will
| have received a huge dosage of radiation along with periodic
| freezing and boiling temperatures.
|
| Something may have survived, life is crazy like that, but it's
| unlikely it will be a dangerous pathogen to humans. In fact,
| surviving life will have likely adapted to eat any of the
| pathogens.
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