What are /r/nasa's favorite Products & Services?

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Anyone that does so should consider using Tor or Tails and an alt account. You have the right to free speech, but that doesn't help you keep your job if you speak out in violation of policy.

I found this.

There's also a smaller, cheaper one on a more reliable website. This one includes Charon and they apparently hold hands.

That’s not true at all. There are a multitude of starter scopes that can be bought for under $250. Binoculars are a better entry point if you have zero experience, but that doesn’t mean that scopes under that price are useless.

My starting scope, the Orion Skyquest XT4.5, I bought 4 years ago and I still use to this day.

My friends Skyscanner 100mm tabletop reflector is just about the most bang for your buck scope you can buy. Much more light gathering ability than a pair of binoculars for the same price.

Universe Sandbox is great, I'd recommend it. Scott Manley also has good words to say about it! u/ne0ge013 - may I also suggest Orbiter 2016? Again, however, not at all suitable for a 4.5 year old, but maybe when he hits 10 or so (or maybe earlier, who knows!).

Here is ESA's website which has the info and times in GMT.

Here is a time converter. just pick Untied Kingdom - London to get GMT, and then add where ever you are in the 2nd bit.

I'm in Australia, so the landing will be happening at 3am, and the first pics around about 4am my local time. not sure if I want to get up that early.

Here's a batch of scholarly articles that may help.

Theres the Apollo 11 one too. I have the Saturn V and Apollo but not the ISS yet.

https://www.amazon.com/LEGO-Creator-Expert-Apollo-Building/dp/B07W4M54CJ

I think it's a it's a direct consequence of the decision to build only one.

There's no room for incremental improvement in later builds -- there's only going to be one train, and you had better be on it -- so it takes forever to finalize the specs, and every change you find you need to make causes schedule slips.

And there's no chance to learn from flying one.

There's a maxim in The Mythical Man-Month: Plan to throw one away; you will, anyhow.

If launches were free, it would make more sense to build and fly a half-dozen JWST's.

I was at KSC this summer and was lucky enough to get a panorama of the whole shuttle. The whole place was a great experience.

It's not complete by any means—it stops at STS-92—but Dennis Jenkins' Space Shuttle: The History of the National Transportation System has surprisingly detailed tables describing the processing and flight history of the SRBs and SSMEs for the first 100 launches (along with the ETs and the OMS/RCS). Each mission seems to have unique serial numbers for its SRBs, so /u/Lars0's presumption seems to be true, but it does mention what kind of motor and case each SRB had. The SSME chart actually has specific serial numbers for each position on each mission.

You can see if it's at a nearby library here on WorldCat, or you can just buy it through Amazon if you want to hold on to it for yourself.

I was just curious as the article didn't specify, but here's what I found for the material being tested:

>"Saffire I and III will have a 40-cm-wide by 94-cm-long sample of SIBAL fuel (75% cotton and 25% fiberglass blend) burned at two different flow speeds, and Saffire II will have nine samples that are 5-cm wide by 30-cm long."

-source

>"The cotton-fiberglass fabric blend Solid Inflammability Boundary at Low-Speeds (SIBAL) fuel is our principal thin material, and it was specially developed just for this purpose."

-source

Although I'm not 100% sure, I think I know what u/Yeetboi3300 is talking about. Let me try and fill in some blanks...

The primary culprit was the frozen O-ring. The lack of flexibility of the frozen O-Ring is first and foremost what brought Challenger down.

However, we've learned since then that there were significant winds whipping around that day, shear that day. On the way up, the Challenger got blasted with some not-too-insignificant wind shear, and many experts believe that, were it not for the wind shear bending vehicle, Challenger might have survived.

From that article... >Dr. Mark Salita, who modeled O-ring erosion for Morton Thiokol, wrote that the wind shear - the "worst wind shear experienced by any STS flight up to that date" - shimmied the segmented booster case enough to dislodge the particles that had been temporarily plugging the joint gap. Salita believes that without this wind shear "the damaged but plugged O-rings probably would have survived the 120 seconds of booster operation without leaking" and the accident would have been avoided.

I just came across this article this morning. https://thenextweb.com/politics/2018/11/29/russia-to-build-moon-colony-by-2040-nasa-says-hold-my-beer/

There are reasonably high quality videos at Archive.org. It's all from the NASA archives, so it should be royalty free (but copyright law is complicated and I'm not a lawyer). I think the 16mm film from the Apollo missions are especially interesting.

You can also contact NASA directly. This might fall under either the history office or the public affairs office.

So, part of the process for these internships is figuring some stuff out for yourself. Honestly, someone could say the answers to both are "what you think is appropriate?" There is no way to optimize or min/max a career.Be yourself!

Anyways, I'm working for the same group this year in my second internship at a center.

1) Explain what you did and why you did it. Also good is what you got out of it. Highlights are good, stories are better, but they should take a few seconds to read. Mind you, there were over 6k applicants for some 200 positions. Make them stand out, add value to your resume in the scope of the position you want and memorable while being realistic.

2) Typical cover letter loadout for these:

• Who am I

• what will I add

• why should you choose me

Good luck! What center are you thinking about?

Here’s Chris Garfield, the man who will not let you forget he went to space, explaining how he went to space link

There is this website called

https://brilliant.org/courses/#special-featured

There is a whole lot of math, astronomy, and cosmology. It is very interactive and will foster kids interest, it would be good to do with him at first to show him the basics and then have him do it on his own!! It does require a payment to use it's "upgraded" version but it is very much worth it. There are also many Youtube channels that teach all about space, rockets, satellites, and the universe in general.

All the best!

Thank you very much. I originally made this for me but a lot of people seem to really like it. If you want to try it you can check it out here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ExploAR.ExploARSolarSystem

Sorry for the long link, I dont know how to compress. But this is the exact model I use. Great for viewing the moon and naked-eye planets. Should be able to see the rings of saturn but I haven't had much luck; I think its my location or light pollution, etc.

https://www.amazon.com/Celestron-Refractor-Telescope-Beginners-Astronomy/dp/B001TI9Y2M/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=70mm+celestron+travel+scope&qid=1600458584&sprefix=70mm+celestron+&sr=8-3#

"Hey," Watney said over the radio, "I've got an idea."

"Of course you do," Lewis said. "What do you got?"

"I could find something sharp in here and poke a hole in the glove of my EVA suit. I could use the escaping air as a thruster and fly my way to you. The source of the thrust would be on my arm, so I'd be able to direct it pretty easily."

"How does he come up with this shit?" Martinez interjected.

"Hmm," Lewis said. "Could you get forty-two meters per second that way?"

"No idea."

"I can't see you having any control if you did that," Lewis said. "You'd be eyeballing the intercept and using a thrust vector you can barely control."

"I admit it's fatally dangerous," Watney said. "But consider this: I'd get to fly around like Iron Man."

"We'll keep working on ideas," Lewis said.

"Iron Man, Commander. Iron Man."

• Andy Weir, '<em>The Martian</em>'

The If This Then That app might work. I know they have a Space channel. I use it to change my background to the astronomy pic of the day.

I've been using IFTTT to set my android wallpaper to NASA IotD for a while. I love it!

https://ifttt.com/applets/127999p-set-nasa-s-image-of-the-day-as-your-wallpaper

According to WeatherSpark, Kourou's temperature is more consistent throughout the year and it has less wind than Cape Canaveral. However, Kourou is more humid and it rains significantly more than at the Cape, so I would expect more delays due to weather

Gizmodo published a post (some language NSFW) where they come out squarely against NASA, though some of the commenters there rather strongly disagree. I think it's an interesting question, and I'm glad I'm not the one who has to decide what the right thing to do is.

Thx!

also @ u/tiedyechicken since this is a followup on your preceding comment.

BTW There of course hybrids (engineers with an MBA) and there is even debate on the subject.

• https://www.ecosia.org/search?q=engineer+with+mba+degree

At the end it says "Authorised sharing with credits, under reserve of non-commercial exploitation or modification."

Also, the rightmost logo at the end means "If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you may not distribute the modified material." source

I'm not too sure, but I guess you can still show them without publicly sharing it?

Looks like you found a home brew stock photo my dude. To use the creators words "elements of this image furnished by NASA". My guess is it's a mix of many images mashed up in Photoshop. Several in NASA's photo of the day stream have similar features and colors.

https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/starfield-elements-this-image-furnished-by-295846730

https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/iotd.html

Download inkscape and the svg version of NASA's logo. Then, once you open the svg file, select (using the black mouse pointer tool) the logo, then click the drop-down menu labelled 'Object' and select 'Ungroup'. You should now be able to regroup any sections you want, giving you whichever layers you like. At this point you can convert to png (File->Export PNG Image...).

Next time you can find out yourself with the help of a search engine. Just for this time, here it is:

ecosia.org/search?q=Crew+Dragon+test+stand+anomaly

Could you tell us what you found?

probably not for bringing minerals to Earth. But it should create the foundations of a space economy, freed from Earth's gravity well. I suggest setting a standard unit of value as one liter of water available in low Earth orbit. Then derive all other values, including minerals, in terms of that unit.

Its really expensive to get a liter of water from Earth, and relatively cheap from the Moon. From Robert Heinlein's famous quote Once you get to earth orbit, you're halfway to anywhere in the solar system

For further reading, may I suggest any subway map of the solar system.

Not a fan. It's like some higher up saw tumblr and decided that's how a government site should be designed.

It does not convey a strong visual message and hops onto the tail end of the boxes-in-boxes/cards design, which is well on its way out in the design world.

Well, Orbiter uses the physics engine that the author of Orbiter wrote to simulate spaceflight dynamics. Orbiter includes such things as gravity gradient torque acting on a spacecraft (useful for stabilization), but doesn't include relativistic effects. Here's something on a fairly old version, see page 10.

> I want to become an astronaut. I really want to see space in person...

...and maybe see the lunar surface in person too!

As everybody else replied, do your best at school. Adding to this, I'd suggest you choose subjects (not only math and physics) according to your aptitudes and suggestions from teachers. As access to space becomes cheaper and less "elitist", fewer people going to space will be actual astronauts and more will be payload specialists or have competences in some particular subject. There will be doctors, biologists, agronomists, civil engineers and much more.

Build up a real-world space culture, avoiding world-building games and suchlike. The only exception here is Kerbal IMO. Develop reading skills. Wide-ranging general knowledge in tech areas (and some of their past history) is good and needs to be based on a fair understanding of the physics involved.

Also, do sport with a long-term view on overall physical fitness. Group and team activities are appreciated because they develop very important personal qualities. The kind of mix of friends you have is relevant and whatever professional project you have later on, needs to fit with your personal life. Look at role models around you.

There's an ideal mix where a candidate needs to be hard-working but relaxed. This means not being overly obsessive (some of the less glamorous stories about astronauts tend to demonstrate this).

The old "work hard and play hard" adage applies quite well here.

Good luck, be patient, and get over hurdles and failures when they occur.

BTW. Next time you do a thread like this, its better write a text and look at it the next day before posting. Choose a short but meaningful title and the appropriate flair.

You can get the launch tower on ebay for about $70, but I wanted something cheaper so I designed an extension for the stands that come with it:

https://mecabricks.com/en/models/Dp2llNg12MV

I ordered all the parts from Bricklink for about $20 including shipping, I found it lets you move the set more easily and keeps the stands in the same orientation

I would start just paying attention to math and physics in class, and do other things like additional physics lessons, informatics and electronics on my free time. Don't think about moving to the US yet, you're only 14, and got plenty of time to think about it when you are older.

I would say that informatics is a great thing to learn too, because it's very common and used in scientic fields. I never used brilliant, but I think it's a great website too.

Most importantly, listen in school and try to enjoy it as much as you can, especially science, math, etc, and make sure to also do other stuff in your free time, like sports, hobbies, quality time with friends and family.

Fair enough, I am thinking that based on this feedback a new survey would be in order. It is, after all, a learning experience. Here is a new survey I just made, I would be thrilled if you would look at it and offer suggestions: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/W5NXMQS

Smash that subscribe button and mash that notification bell! NordVPN: whether you're in Boca Chica, Cape Canaveral, Baikonur, or the moon, you can change your location to appear like your anywhere in the world and get around those pesky region locks!

The Skylab 4 story is probably wildly exaggerated.

<em>Homesteading Space: The Skylab Story</em> is the best book that I know of about the history of that program. It covers the issues that the Skylab 4 crew had in some detail. tl:dr; there were some disagreements between the crew and mission control but there was nothing even vaguely approaching a mutiny. The radio incident was because the crew would normally only leave one person's radio on during each orbit so that the other two could continue their work uninterrupted. One orbit they didn't do the radio switch over properly and all three of their radios were turned off. It was accidental and didn't last long.

Supposedly during the early years of the shuttle program there was at least one payload specialist (arguably not a "real" astronaut) whose experiment didn't work properly. According to the story he became super-despondent about it, to the point where the crew was concerned he might harm himself. Don't know how true this is. Source for this is Come Fly with Us: NASA's Payload Specialist Program

Here's an amazon link, with the ISBN and pictures so if you can't get i through amazon hopefully you can find a local seller.

Here is the app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ExploAR.ExploARSolarSystem&amp;hl=en_US

In support to our Opportunity and its service, I ordered this (check the link), can't wait to make my fellows cry like myself.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07NV9YHTX?_encoding=UTF8&amp;customId=B075384WHP&amp;fbclid=IwAR14gvzAbaJN4W4xhrybhxT9u4d4yLsO9UBVkVNcOf1CVPDuwmBJor6S4OA&amp;th=1

Get a copy of the book, it's terrific.

The flight that formed the basis for this 80's TV commercial with Wally Schirra! Speaking of the crew, Donn Eisele's long-lost memoir was finally published last year. It's on my to-read list.

I agree. A role model isn't an excuse. I have no role model. Usually, kids have famous people as role models. Oh! That's amazing for only 2.5 years old! A little telescope would be fun! I remember as a kid, I had this space game where you could go around to each planet and moon and build on it (kind of like monopoly). It got me to learn all the moons and really loved it! Also, those laser lights that display the galaxy or planets onto the ceiling are great, even as an adult!

Edit: This is the game!

Regarding his autobiography, get the audiobook of "Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth: What Going to Space Taught Me About Ingenuity, Determination, and Being Prepared for Anything" instead of the print volume. He does the audio himself and it gave a level of immersion I didn't expect and very much enjoyed. He has a wonderful reading voice, and because it is autobiographical, his emphasis and delivery completely draw you in.

It is a wonderful book from a very talented man. I'm envious that you got to meet him.

I bought this a couple months ago and it provides a very general, but comprehensive, list of launch vehicles. Starts with the V2, and goes up to Atlas, Titan,and Soyuz. It also gives an overview of propellant types, engine types, staging, and a brief lesson on physics and orbital mechanics. Along with all of the general stats (cargo capacity, first flight, thrust power, and size), it gives a historical overview of the missions it was used and the process of its development. Also, there are a lot of cool charts, pictures, and cross-sections. 10/10 for the low price, the interesting content, and the approachable presentation. Although now I have SMAD, which is the professional resource equivalent, this one is still a good read that covers all bases.

Maybe /u/ColChrisHadfield could help?

P.S. I am reading his book Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth and I've been learning a lot more about space and the program than I would imagine! It's not a manual on how to get yourself on the path to space, but it has some great things you'd might note in considering the space program in there! It debunks certain misconceptions that people have about space travel. Definitely a recommend if you haven't read it!

To expand on this, Jenkins' book describes the artwork as follows:

>"The North American Phase B high cross-range design leaving the VAB for the trip to the launch pad at KSC. North American expected to use a service structure mounted on the Mobile Launch Platform."

And credits the picture as:

>Convair photo 112899B via the SDAM Collection

So try SDAM (a good, helpful bunch of people), as they have a lot of Convair stuff since Convair was headquartered in San Diego. Since it was also a North American joint project, Boeing may also have some info.