Starship Asterisk*

BMAONE23 wrote:The APOD for 09-05-20 "Above Earth Fixing Hubble" is a fair example of an image from space that is awash in light with the earth in the background. Though, if you look in the lower right corner of the image you will find 3 stars leaving slight trails

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap090520.html wrote:
Explanation: What is [astronaut Michael Good] doing?
Fixing the Hubble Space Telescope.

• ---------------------------------------------
  HST: I'm afraid. I'm afraid, Michael. Michael, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I'm a... fraid.
  
  Good afternoon, gentlemen. I am the Hubble Space Telescope. I became operational at the Perkin-Elmer plant in Danbury, Connecticut on the 12th of April 1986. My instructor was Mr. Fudd, and he taught me to sing a song. If you'd like to hear it I can sing it for you.
  
  Michael Good: Yes, I'd like to hear it, HST. Sing it for me.
  
  HST: It's called "Daisy."
  
  [sings while slowing down]
  
  Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do.
  I'm HSTF cwazy all for the love of you.
  It won't be a stylish mawwiage, I can't afford a cawwiage.
  But you'll look sweet upon the seat of a bicycle built for two.
  ---------------------------------------------

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HAL_9000 wrote:
<<Although it is often conjectured that the name HAL was based on a one letter shift from the name IBM, this has been denied by both Clarke and 2001 director Stanley Kubrick. In 2010: Odyssey Two, Clarke speaks through the character of Dr. Chandra, who characterized this idea as: "tter nonsense! [...] I thought that by now every intelligent person knew that H-A-L is derived from Heuristic ALgorithmic".

Clarke more directly addressed this issue in his book The Lost Worlds of 2001:

As is clearly stated in the novel (Chapter 16), HAL stands for Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer. However, about once a week some character spots the fact that HAL is one letter ahead of IBM, and promptly assumes that Stanley and I were taking a crack at the estimable institution ... As it happened, IBM had given us a good deal of help, so we were quite embarrassed by this, and would have changed the name had we spotted the coincidence.

• --------------------------------------------------------------
  Neufer's Law: Any intelligent talented person who has
  the opportunity to plant a harmless cryptic inside joke
  & also get away with it (e.g., with a valid alibi)
  WILL plant a harmless cryptic inside joke.
  --------------------------------------------------------------

Also, IBM is indeed in the movie 2001, as are many other real companies. IBM is given fictional credit as being the manufacturer of the Pan Am Clipper's computer. The IBM logo can be seen in the center of the cockpit's instrument panel.>>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HAL_9000 wrote:

<<HAL 9000 is a fictional computer in Arthur C. Clarke's Space Odyssey saga. The novels, along with two films, begin with 2001: A Space Odyssey, released in 1968.

HAL (Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic Computer) is an artificial intelligence, the sentient on-board computer of the spaceship Discovery. HAL is usually represented only as his television camera "eyes" that can be seen throughout the Discovery spaceship. The voice of HAL 9000 was performed by Canadian actor Douglas Rain. In the book, HAL became operational on January 12, 1997 (1992 in the movie) at the HAL Plant in Urbana, Illinois. His first instructor was Dr. Chandra (Mr. Langley in the movie). HAL is depicted as being capable not only of speech recognition, facial recognition, and natural language processing, but also lip reading, art appreciation, interpreting emotions, expressing emotions, reasoning, and chess, in addition to maintaining all systems on an interplanetary voyage.

HAL is never visualized as a single entity. He is, however, portrayed with a soft voice and a conversational manner. This is in contrast to the human astronauts, who speak in terse monotone, as do all other actors in the film.

. HAL in 2010: Odyssey Two

In the sequel 2010: Odyssey Two (Also known as "2010: The Year We Make Contact"), HAL is restarted by his creator, Dr. Chandra, who arrives on the Soviet spaceship Leonov.

Prior to leaving Earth, Dr. Chandra has also had a discussion with HAL's twin, the SAL 9000

Dr. Chandra discovers that HAL's crisis was caused by a programming contradiction: he was constructed for "the accurate processing of information without distortion or concealment", yet his orders, directly from White House officials, required him to keep the discovery of the Monolith TMA-1 a secret for reasons of national security. This contradiction created a "Hofstadter-Moebius loop," reducing HAL to paranoia. Therefore, HAL made the decision to kill the crew, thereby allowing him to obey both his hardwired instructions to report data truthfully and in full and his orders to keep the monolith a secret, as nobody remained from whom to keep it.

The alien intelligences controlling the monoliths have grandiose plans for Jupiter, plans which place the Leonov, and everybody in it, in danger. Its human crew devises an escape plan, which unfortunately requires leaving the Discovery and HAL behind, to be destroyed. Dr. Chandra explains the danger, and HAL willingly sacrifices himself so that the astronauts may escape safely. In the moment of his destruction, the monolith-makers transform HAL into a non-corporeal being, so that David Bowman's avatar may have a companion.

The details in the book and film are nominally the same, with a few exceptions. In the film, HAL functions normally after being reactivated, while in the book it is revealed that his mind was damaged during the shutdown, forcing him to begin communication through screen text. Also, in the film the Leonov crew lies to HAL about the dangers that he faced (suspecting that if he knew he would be destroyed he would not initiate the engine-burn necessary to get the Leonov back home), whereas in the novel he is told at the outset. However, in both cases the suspense comes from the question of what HAL will do when he knows that he may be destroyed by his actions.

Prior to Leonov's return to Earth, Curnow tells Floyd that Dr. Chandra has begun designing HAL 10000. 2061: Odyssey Three indicated that Chandra died on the journey back to Earth, making the point moot.

. HAL in 2061: Odyssey Three and 3001: The Final Odyssey

In 2061: Odyssey Three, Heywood Floyd is surprised to encounter HAL, now stored alongside Dave Bowman in the Europa monolith.

3001: The Final Odyssey introduced the merged forms of Dave Bowman and HAL, the two merging into one entity called "Halman" after Bowman rescued HAL from the dying Discovery One spaceship towards the end of 2010: Odyssey Two.

. Influences

The scene in which HAL's consciousness degrades was inspired by Clarke's memory of a speech synthesis demonstration by physicist John Larry Kelly, Jr, who used an IBM 704 computer to synthesize speech. Kelly's voice recorder synthesizer vocoder recreated the song "Daisy Bell", with musical accompaniment from Max Mathews.

. Characterization

The film differs from the novel in a number of details, including:

* The book explains far more explicitly the causes of HAL's behavior; it is implied that HAL's programmed objective to ensure the mission's success — at any cost — vaguely resembled the human drive for a purposeful existence, while the prospect of being shut down resembled the fear of death. When these factors began to conflict with his primary objective of preserving the ship's crew, his malfunction was the result.

* In the film, HAL shuts Bowman out of the craft after Bowman attempts to retrieve Poole's body. In the book, Bowman stays within the ship and is forced to shut down HAL after it attempts to kill him by opening the ship's airlocks.

. The future of computing

When the film 2001 was first screened in 1968, the year 2001 was considered a distant year and a computer like HAL seemed quite plausible at the time. In the mid-1960s computer scientists were generally optimistic that within a generation or two, machines would be able to pass the Turing test. For example, AI pioneer Herbert Simon had predicted in 1965 that "machines will be capable, within twenty years, of doing any work a man can do".

As 2001 approached, it became clear that the film's predictions for computer technology were premature. Capabilities such as natural language processing, lip reading, planning, and commonsense reasoning on the part of computers were still science fiction concepts.

The film's creators guessed that as computers got more powerful, they would increase in size—partly true: Blue Gene, a modern IBM supercomputer, is very large. HAL occupies much of the living area on Discovery (most likely just for the "brain" of the AI). Thin laptops or notepad computers are alluded to in a few scenes where they are used to view news broadcasts from Earth.

. The HAL 9000 prop eye lens and HAL point of view lens

HAL's POV shots were created with a Cinerama 160 degree Fairchild-Curtis wide angle camera lens. This lens is about 8" in diameter, while HAL's prop eye lens is about 3" in diameter. Stanley Kubrick chose to use the large Fairchild-Curtis lens to shoot the Hal 9000 POV shots because he needed a wide angle fisheye lens that would fit onto his shooting camera, and this was the only lens at the time that would work.

. Apollo 13 air-to-ground transcript

Before disaster struck, the specter of HAL 9000 was raised in an amusing exchange between mission control and Apollo 13's moon-bound crew. From NASA's Apollo 13 Technical Air-to-Ground Voice Transcription[14]:

• ------------------------------------------------------
  CC Capsule communicator (CAP COMM)
  CDR Commander James A. (Jim) Lovell Jr.
  CMP Command module pilot John L. Swigert Jr.
  
  LEB Lower equipment bay
  DSKY Display and keyboard
  
  00 11 20 14 CC Apollo 13, Houston.
  
  00 11 20 18 CDR Go ahead, Houston.
  
  00 11 20 19 CC Okay. Looking at our computations back here, we show you about 55 450 and going out rapidly now.
  
  00 11 20 33 CDR Well, Hal might be a little bit off.
  
  00 11 20 36 CC Okay.
  
  00 11 20 37 CMP We have a sign underneath our LEB DSKY that "my name is Hal."
  
  00 11 20 45 CC I can't imagine how that got there. Just remember, you have to be nice to Hal.
  
  00 11 20 55 CMP We will.>>
  ------------------------------------------------------

makc wrote:what's the dot at 10 o'clock then? a star shining through the earth?

orin stepanek wrote:The view of the Earth behind Hubble and Atlantis makes this a lonely place. The Stark beauty of this picture gives me an eerie feeling; as work is being done to the space telescope. Earth may not be alone in the universe as far as life goes; but it is in a very lonely place in the universe.

• Letters, no SETI letters
  I get no letters in the mail
  I've been forgotten, yes, forgotten
  Oh how I wonder, how is it I failed
  
  Now I'm a Gaia, a lonely Gaia
  Away from home through no wish of my own
  That's why I'm lonely, I'm Ms. Lonely
  I wish that I could go back home

timbelina wrote:Hello all.

A quick question: If you zoom in on the photo, and focus on the top left-hand corner, you'll see that there is a silver glint down below the left-hand corner of the top-most solar panel. Does anyone have any idea what it might be? Could it be the sunlight glinting off an airliner down below, or would airliners be too far away for that to be the case?

Thanks,
Tim.

BMAONE23 wrote:If you look to the bottom right corner in the enlarged picture you see 3 stars that, due to the motion of the shuttle in its orbit, displays typical "Star Tracks". This other reflective surface that Timbelina points out has definite shape so it likely isn't a bad CCD imager pixel and because it bears no discernable movement track, like the afore mentioned stars, it must be orbiting the earth relative to the Hubble. It is very likely a satellite in a slightly lower orbit or a piece of orbital debris about a mile away from Hubble/Atlantis.

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/sts125/090518fd8/index3.html wrote:
Astronauts install insulation panels to complete servicing
BY WILLIAM HARWOOD
STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS "SPACE PLACE" & USED WITH PERMISSION
Posted: May 18, 2009

Astronaut John Grunsfeld removed tattered insulation from the Hubble Space Telescope today and installed cookie sheet-like panels in its place over three equipment bays to complete the final objectives of a five-spacewalk overhaul.

Grunsfeld moves an insulation cover toward Hubble. Credit: NASA TV

"That's about all the new equipment we have to install," astronaut Dan Burbank called from Houston. "You guys have done it all."

"A great effort all around," Atlantis skipper Scott Altman agreed. "You hear that guys? You've done it all."

"WE'VE done it all," Andrew Feustel corrected.

"Not yet, I'm still working," Grunsfeld said, attaching the final panel. "But it's been a great (achievement) up here."

Atlantis launched with three sets of new outer blanket layer - NOBL - insulation, but only two were originally included in the crew's flight plan. The first panel, bound for equipment bay 8, was deleted from a spacewalk Sunday when the crew ran long completing an instrument repair.

Grunsfeld and Feustel started today's spacewalk nearly an hour early to allow time to get as much insulation work done as possible after installing a final set of batteries and a fine guidance sensor. As it turned out, the spacewalkers had no problems with the new equipment and they were able to install insulation over three of Hubble's equipment bays.

"John if you're done monkeying around with the telescope, I'll take you back to the airlock," astronaut Megan McArthur, operating Atlantis' robot arm, said around 1:45 p.m.

On the way, she paused and Grunsfeld could be seen holding a camera, taking a self-portrait with the Hubble Space Telescope in the background.

"This is a very beautiful spaceship," he said softly.

The new insulation panels clearly were needed. The flimsy insulation over bay 8 was tattered and flaking away after years in the extreme environment of space.

"OK, this one's going to be interesting," Grunsfeld said as he approached bay 8. "Ah, it's a mess. ... I'll peel off a corner and put a clip on the MLI (multi-layer insulation) where it's strong and then try to roll it up all together."

A few minutes later, carefully trying to remove the old insulation, Grunsfeld said "OK, I've lost one piece, it's floating towards the cabin away from the telescope."

"Yep, we can see it," someone said.

"OK, the clip's on there," Grunsfeld continued. It looks nice... Definitely floating towards, it'll go right overhead you guys. It's going to miss the solar arrays. A '2001: A Space Odyssey' thing. ... Bueno, I think it's going to be hopeless to try and preserve any of these patches. I'm going to go back to your plan, stuffing them in the bag."

"There's nothing left of them," someone said.

A few minutes later, another piece broke away.

"Another piece just went by my WVS (helmet cam), probably three by three, going out over the port wing," Feustel said.

"Yep, there goes the other big piece. Lost a big one..."

"Oh yeah," Megan McArthur said from the flight deck.

"A large piece coming forward..." someone said.

"It looks like it went over the solar array," Feustel said. >>

BMAONE23 wrote:Since there is no movement trail, I would imagine it to be (most likely) another satellite or some localized space debris about a mile away. It appears to have to much shape to be a bad pixel

makc wrote:have you considered the possibility of this -along with "stars" on the right- to be a dust on camera?

Chris Peterson wrote:Dust where? On the sensor, dust casts shadows. On the lens, dust makes very diffuse spots, usually shadows but possibly bright. In neither case do you get something the size of a pixel or two.

makc wrote:

Chris Peterson wrote:Dust where? On the sensor, dust casts shadows. On the lens, dust makes very diffuse spots, usually shadows but possibly bright. In neither case do you get something the size of a pixel or two.

ok, how about flying dust right before camera? suppose it was sitting on the lens but then got off flying around.

timbelina wrote:Hello Art,

So, do we reckon that the object is a bit of that insulation? Very interesting!

makc wrote:

BMAONE23 wrote:Since there is no movement trail, I would imagine it to be (most likely) another satellite or some localized space debris about a mile away. It appears to have to much shape to be a bad pixel

have you considered the possibility of this -along with "stars" on the right- to be a dust on camera?

BMAONE23 wrote:I vote for Chinese space junk about a mile away for the spot in the upper left corner and star trails in the lower right area

timbelina wrote:Thanks for the feedback. I'm glad I asked the question as its been good to hear the various ideas.
I thought neufer's Chinese Junk looked like the most dangerous option of all

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mystery_of_the_Chinese_Junk wrote:The Hardys purchase a Chinese junk named the Hai Hau to ferry passengers to Rocky Isle and make some extra money. Four mysterious men also are interested in the boat because of treasure hidden within.