Starship Asterisk*

Guest wrote: ↑Sat Aug 07, 2021 1:20 am

johnnydeep wrote: ↑Sun Mar 28, 2021 3:18 pm

E Fish wrote: ↑Sun Mar 28, 2021 3:10 pm This is weirdly entertaining. I have so many questions now. Are spacesuits so ubiquitous that they can just jettison one for fun? Or did they intentionally bring along an extra spacesuit? Did they get in trouble for doing it? Did they sneak some vodka onto the ISS and were just drunk? And finally... just how smelly were those clothes?

The suit had reached it's end of useful life (probably along with some worn out clothes - or can clothes really not be effectively or economically washed in space, with or without water?) - and was repurposed to end life doing something of some scientific value.

Actually, I think I disagree with your take. It would be very valuable for the Russians to get a used space suit back and examine it under a microscope (literally and figuratively), do materials tests, etc., since they know exactly what it was exposed to, when, how used, maintained, etc.
...
Dave Huntsman

johnnydeep wrote: ↑Sun Mar 28, 2021 3:18 pm

E Fish wrote: ↑Sun Mar 28, 2021 3:10 pm This is weirdly entertaining. I have so many questions now. Are spacesuits so ubiquitous that they can just jettison one for fun? Or did they intentionally bring along an extra spacesuit? Did they get in trouble for doing it? Did they sneak some vodka onto the ISS and were just drunk? And finally... just how smelly were those clothes?

The suit had reached it's end of useful life (probably along with some worn out clothes - or can clothes really not be effectively or economically washed in space, with or without water?) - and was repurposed to end life doing something of some scientific value.

johnnydeep wrote: ↑Tue Mar 30, 2021 3:45 pm

Chris Peterson wrote: ↑Tue Mar 30, 2021 1:44 pm

Pwave wrote: ↑Tue Mar 30, 2021 8:13 am So, every follicle is weighed and accounted for, but someone over-packs?
"Lazy astronauts eject space trash", news at 11:00.

Almost all trash in the ISS is ejected. It's the most efficient, cost-effective way of getting rid of it. And this spacesuit was obsolete and of no further use. So it was, in fact, trash. Nice they found a way to stretch one last little bit of value from it.

Hmm, what about the loss of some oxygen due to the ejection process. Or maybe that's deliberately minimized enough to be a non-issue.

Chris Peterson wrote: ↑Tue Mar 30, 2021 1:44 pm

Pwave wrote: ↑Tue Mar 30, 2021 8:13 am So, every follicle is weighed and accounted for, but someone over-packs?
"Lazy astronauts eject space trash", news at 11:00.

Almost all trash in the ISS is ejected. It's the most efficient, cost-effective way of getting rid of it. And this spacesuit was obsolete and of no further use. So it was, in fact, trash. Nice they found a way to stretch one last little bit of value from it.

Pwave wrote: ↑Tue Mar 30, 2021 8:13 am So, every follicle is weighed and accounted for, but someone over-packs?
"Lazy astronauts eject space trash", news at 11:00.

heehaw wrote: ↑Sun Mar 28, 2021 10:10 pm

De58te wrote: ↑Sun Mar 28, 2021 5:12 pm This spacesuit floats free picture reminds me of something similar not 15 years ago but some 3 or 4 years ago about a spacesuit (empty as well) that was seen driving away from Earth in a red convertible car. I think it belonged to the Elon Musk Space Corporation or something. Wonder what happened to that?

Yes, a brilliant gesture by Musk. https://www.cnet.com/news/spacex-starma ... sks-tesla/

Chris Peterson wrote: ↑Sun Mar 28, 2021 9:52 pm

mason dixon wrote: ↑Sun Mar 28, 2021 9:41 pm
So anything just casually tossed out the space station door/airlock will burn up in a few weeks?

Depends on the shape and mass.

https://www.sws.bom.gov.au/Category/Educational/Space%20Weather/Space%20Weather%20Effects/SatelliteOrbitalDecayCalculations.pdf wrote:
Satellite: Altitude = 300.0 kms : Mass = 100.0 kg : Area = 1.0 square meters

Code: Select all

     TIME(days)   ALTITIUDE	  PERIOD
----------------------------------------------------
	 0.0     300.0(kms)    90.5(minutes)
.....................................................
	19.5     279.9(kms)    90.1(minutes)
	31.5     259.9(kms)    89.7(minutes)
	38.4     239.8(kms)    89.3(minutes)
	42.3     219.6(kms)    88.9(minutes)
	44.5     199.3(kms)    88.5(minutes)
	45.7     179.5(kms)    88.1(minutes)
----------------------------------------------

• Re-entry after 46 days.

https://www.spaceacademy.net.au/watch/debris/orblife.htm wrote:

• The following table provides a very rough guide to the lifetime of
  an object in a circular or near circular orbit at various altitudes.

Code: Select all

	Altitude 	Lifetime
----------------------------------------------
	200 km		1 day
	300 km		1 month
................................................
	400 km		1 year  [~ISS altitude]
................................................
	500 km		10 years
	700 km		100 years
	900 km		1000 years
	----------------------------------------------------

De58te wrote: ↑Sun Mar 28, 2021 5:12 pm This spacesuit floats free picture reminds me of something similar not 15 years ago but some 3 or 4 years ago about a spacesuit (empty as well) that was seen driving away from Earth in a red convertible car. I think it belonged to the Elon Musk Space Corporation or something. Wonder what happened to that?

mason dixon wrote: ↑Sun Mar 28, 2021 9:41 pm So anything just casually tossed out the space station door/airlock will burn up in a few weeks?

De58te wrote: ↑Sun Mar 28, 2021 5:12 pm This spacesuit floats free picture reminds me of something similar not 15 years ago but some 3 or 4 years ago about a spacesuit (empty as well) that was seen driving away from Earth in a red convertible car. I think it belonged to the Elon Musk Space Corporation or something. Wonder what happened to that?

johnnydeep wrote: ↑Sun Mar 28, 2021 3:21 pm

Knight of Clear Skies wrote: ↑Sun Mar 28, 2021 7:31 am

RocketRon wrote: ↑Sun Mar 28, 2021 5:18 am
And since we now know its not allowed/possible to wash clothes in space,
it would have been a very grimy set of clothes inside indeed !?

Re-entry would have had something of a scouring effect, perhaps as high as two micro-Zwickys.

Ok, it's humourous. I found this from https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/1605 ... be/page/2/:

One of his colleagues said that 'The Zwicky' should be adopted as a unit of abrasievness, to which another replied that the micro-Zwicky would already exceed the highest know abrasiveness on earth! Walter Baader thought Zwicky wanted to kill him.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/curmudgeon wrote:
<<Curmudgeon: an ill-tempered person full of stubborn ideas or opinions. An alternative spelling attested in 1600 is cornmudgin, in Holland's translation of Livy, rendering Latin frūmentārius (“corn-merchant”). This has been suggested as the original form of the word.>>

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Zwicky wrote:
<<Fritz Zwicky (born February 14, 1898) is remembered as both a genius and a curmudgeon. One of his favorite insults was to refer to people he did not approve of as "spherical bastards", because, he explained, they were bastards no matter which way one looked at them. German colleague Walter Baade claims to have been accused by Zwicky of being a Nazi, and falsely staged complaints that he "feared" Zwicky. Unknown to the public was that Baade was fearful, because he had named a galaxy after himself that was discovered by Zwicky. Edwin Hubble corrected this injustice and the galaxy was catalogued as a Zwicky galaxy. Zwicky & Baade pioneered and promoted the use of the first Schmidt telescopes used in a mountain-top observatory in 1935. In 1934 he and Baade coined the term "supernova" and hypothesized that supernovae were the transition of normal stars into neutron stars,as well as the origin of cosmic rays.

Zwicky was skeptical of the expansion of space in 1929, because the rates measured at that time seemed too large. It was not until 1956 that Walter Baade corrected the distance scale based on Cepheid variable stars, and ushered in the first accurate measures of the expansion rate. Cosmological redshift is now conventionally understood to be a consequence of the expansion of space; a feature of Big Bang cosmology. In support of this hypothesis, Zwicky started looking for supernovae, and found a total of 120 by himself (and one more, SN 1963J, in concert with Paul Wild) over 52 years (SN 1921B through SN 1973K), a record which stood until 2009 when passed by Tom Boles. Zwicky did his laborious work, comparing photographic plates with the human eye, which is far more challenging and difficult than Boles accomplished using modern technology for his record.>>

Knight of Clear Skies wrote: ↑Sun Mar 28, 2021 7:31 am

RocketRon wrote: ↑Sun Mar 28, 2021 5:18 am And since we now know its not allowed/possible to wash clothes in space,
it would have been a very grimy set of clothes inside indeed !?

Re-entry would have had something of a scouring effect, perhaps as high as two micro-Zwickys.

One of his colleagues said that 'The Zwicky' should be adopted as a unit of abrasievness, to which another replied that the micro-Zwicky would already exceed the highest know abrasiveness on earth! Walter Baader thought Zwicky wanted to kill him.

E Fish wrote: ↑Sun Mar 28, 2021 3:10 pm This is weirdly entertaining. I have so many questions now. Are spacesuits so ubiquitous that they can just jettison one for fun? Or did they intentionally bring along an extra spacesuit? Did they get in trouble for doing it? Did they sneak some vodka onto the ISS and were just drunk? And finally... just how smelly were those clothes?

RocketRon wrote: ↑Sun Mar 28, 2021 5:18 am And since we now know its not allowed/possible to wash clothes in space,
it would have been a very grimy set of clothes inside indeed !?