STS-75 Tether Incident - Mystery solved! Breaking News!

reply to post by Balez


Well done Balez, very good point!

I've been thinking, since we agreed the waste water cloud does not come back after it is dumped, doesn't it come back after all?

Its orbit will cross the Shuttle's orbit every orbital period (90 minutes). As waste water is not pure water, aren't debris likely to hit the Shuttle, bounce back and stay in the vicinity afterwards? I don't know, it may be a stretch, with the distances involved, orbits aren't perfect ellipses either...

Originally posted by nablator
reply to post by Balez

 

Well done Balez, very good point!

I've been thinking, since we agreed the waste water cloud does not come back after it is dumped, doesn't it come back after all?

Its orbit will cross the Shuttle's orbit every orbital period (90 minutes). As waste water is not pure water, aren't debris likely to hit the Shuttle, bounce back and stay in the vicinity afterwards? I don't know, it may be a stretch, with the distances involved, orbits aren't perfect ellipses either...

Not sure.
I think that has a bit to do with where the water spray is directed also.
If it is directed towards earth i dont think 'we' will see it again, however since the particles are quite small (not much mass) and if the direction of the spray is out from earth, they could be pulled in again.

That could be one explanation to it.
Did you see the water spray dump on P.R.O.V.E?
I noticed the speed they had, and irregular movement, not consisten with almost straight lines and such as we see in the STS-75.
I still dont know what it is, ofcourse it could be particles close to the camera....


[edit on 4-4-2008 by Balez]

The official explanation, a water dump a few hours before the (in)famous UFO video, is not mentioned in the mission log for day 7. Draw your own conclusions.

Excerpt from an interview of Chuck Shaw, lead Flight Director for STS-75:

The 'toilet flush' you mentioned was actually a supply of waste water dump that we periodically have to do. The fuel cell and waste water are stored in tanks, and when those tanks get full they get dumped through the nozzles overboard. The water freezes as it is dumped and makes a huge cloud of 'snow'. We typically dump the retrograde to allow orbital dynamics to help dissipate the cloud away from the orbiter, but there is always a portion that stays with us since the cloud expands very rapidly in all directions when it hits a vacuum. It is not unusual to have a cloud of ice crystals around the orbiter at a variety of distances for several days after dumps. As much as I would like to think some type of UFO was around, the fact is there was not anything up there that we did not understand.

Source

Originally posted by Balez
I think that has a bit to do with where the water spray is directed also.
If it is directed towards earth i dont think 'we' will see it again, however since the particles are quite small (not much mass) and if the direction of the spray is out from earth, they could be pulled in again.

I don't think the direction matters, the orbits will cross again in an ideal, Keplerian model. In reality the small particle's orbit will quickly decay, and they will never be seen again.

Did you see the water spray dump on P.R.O.V.E?
I noticed the speed they had, and irregular movement, not consisten with almost straight lines and such as we see in the STS-75.

Yes, like a sine wave. It's probably because of the pump. Not surprising.

reply to post by nablator

I don't think the direction matters, the orbits will cross again in an ideal, Keplerian model. In reality the small particle's orbit will quickly decay, and they will never be seen again.

Perhaps...
It also depends on wether or not they will totally evaporate if they get in the sun's light.
And also they dont have any force of themself to stay out of earths gravity pull, as the shuttle does.

Yes, like a sine wave. It's probably because of the pump. Not surprising.

Yes, and that is what i find to be inconsistent with the 'debris' in the sts-75 mission footage.
And also, you can clearly see that the ice particles from the P.R.O.V.E site that the shuttle leave them behind, and they disapear quickly.

It's too bad i dont have the footage anymore, i had the complete mission, sorted into mission days, then i could have checked the test they did on the water dump to see what it looked like, since it was close to the payload area.
Then we would atleast have had a reference point as it is the same mission.

As i understand it with the shuttle, they can eject this water from almost anywhere, they can even eject it into the payload area.

reply to post by ArMaP

If momentum is the product of the mass of the object and its velocity, from where came the velocity? From an acceleration.

That is quite obvious, and i did understand what you meant

So, the arrows show the directions of the force that started the acceleration, the acceleration, the velocity and/or the momentum, they all have the same direction.

True they all have the same direction.
What are you trying to say here, that the end product is still force?
The force (shuttle) is the starter of the momentum, but the force is not constant here, so your arrows are still showing the momentum of the shuttle, the momentum of ball before ejection, the force put on the ball on ejection point and the momentum of the ball after that.

In the second drawing I included the two components because I wanted to show the reason for the ball keeping its movement along with the shuttle while moving away from it. If the ball is ejected at 10km/h from the shuttle it will move in a direction that is perpendicular to that of the shuttle but it will not move only on that direction, it will keep the direction of its previous movement while inside the shuttle and so it will keep on orbit, it will not be a ball orbiting at 10km/h, it will be a ball orbiting at a slightly higher velocity than that of the shuttle and with a slightly different direction.

That implies that there is a force needed to be put on the ball on the same point of ejection as the ejection force is.
There were only one force, and that was the ejection force.

In conclusion, and returning to what started all this, I think that it is possible for some drops of the water ejected from the shuttle to exit the shuttle at a very low velocity (when compared to the shuttle) and so they could appear on the videos and photos taken from the shuttle.

Yes there are probably some parts of the water that is ejected at a lower degree of force.
I dont think that matter though, NASA claims that the particles are only around the shuttle for 10-15 minutes, after that the shuttle has left them behind, and if i remember correctly, this incident with the tether and this part of the STS-75 mission was a film being around 45 minutes long.

Now i wonder why that is so, why only 10-15 minutes....
Is it because the shuttle fires the thrusters and the constant particles are no longer at a constant with the shuttle after that.

So, is the show over on this case?
Hardly.
Will we ever be able to say with any certain what it is we are seeing? No.
Will we be able to solve this? Dont think so.

It is still a mystery to me.
I still lean on it being tether debris, close to the tether though....
If no one agrees with me on that, that is

Originally posted by Balez
That implies that there is a force needed to be put on the ball on the same point of ejection as the ejection force is.
There were only one force, and that was the ejection force.

I don't know if I am understanding what you say.

What I wanted to show (and failed, apparently ) was that if we eject the ball in a direction perpendicular to the shuttle, the ball, besides its movement away from the shuttle, will also keep on moving along with the shuttle but getting farther away, it does not stop following the shuttle.

reply to post by ArMaP

I don't know if I am understanding what you say.

It's like this...
If the ejection occured without force, where would the ball(debris) be?
Where they were from the begining, they are still a constant with the shuttle.
Now, if you put force to it, probably a force that is much greater than the sum of the mass, you will also change the constantinuity of the mass.
When the force is active something else also happens, "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction." Which means that the energy that the ball had in it will be reaction, what will it react to? The shuttle as it was a constant with.
You wont have one without the other.

What I wanted to show (and failed, apparently ) was that if we eject the ball in a direction perpendicular to the shuttle, the ball, besides its movement away from the shuttle, will also keep on moving along with the shuttle but getting farther away, it does not stop following the shuttle.

No you did not fail, i just think you were wrong
I understand completely what you mean.

Originally posted by Balez
No you did not fail, i just think you were wrong

I understand completely what you mean.

OK, then it was me the that did not understood what I wrote.

But I still think I am right.

Originally posted by ArMaP

Originally posted by Balez
No you did not fail, i just think you were wrong

I understand completely what you mean.

OK, then it was me the that did not understood what I wrote.

But I still think I am right.

That's good

What would be intersting to know, is if NASA's claims for how long the particles stay with the shuttle is correct, i know the shuttle always have some degree of particles around it, but the amount that we are seeing i think is a bit too much for the shuttle to generate at a simultaneus amount.

Originally posted by Balez
I dont think that matter though, NASA claims that the particles are only around the shuttle for 10-15 minutes, after that the shuttle has left them behind, and if i remember correctly, this incident with the tether and this part of the STS-75 mission was a film being around 45 minutes long.

10-15 minutes? Left behind? Who said that? Not Chuck Shaw, Lead Flight Director for STS-75.

Repost of his interview:

(after a question about the water cloud quickly moving away from the Shuttle)
CHUCK SHAW: You are neglecting the effects of orbital dynamics, which is the dominant effect. When the Tether separated, the satellite and Tether did, in effect, a 100 ft/sec posigrade manouvre due to differences in altitude of the two masses (which had been constrained to be in the same orbit, and that same effect was what was providing the tension in the Tether), which moved the satellite and Tether up and behind the orbiter. After three days we lapped the satellite (i.e. we had moved approximately 25,000 miles ahead of it and were coming up on it from below and behind). The 'toilet flush' you mentioned was actually a supply of waste water dump that we
periodically have to do. The fuel cell and waste water are stored in tanks, and when those tanks get full they get dumped through the nozzles overboard. The water freezes as it is dumped and makes a huge
cloud of 'snow'. We typically dump the retrograde to allow orbital dynamics to help dissipate the cloud away from the orbiter, but there is always a portion that stays with us since the cloud expands very rapidly in all directions when it hits a vacuum. It is not unusual to have a cloud of ice crystals around the orbiter at a variety of
distances for several days after dumps. As much as I would like to think some type of UFO was around, the fact is there was not anything up there that we did not understand.

reply to post by nablator

10-15 minutes? Left behind? Who said that? Not Chuck Shaw, Lead Flight Director for STS-75.

No i dont think so, it was however on NASA's homepage, and i'll try to find it.

He is making some very interesting claims though.
"The water freezes as it is dumped and makes a huge
cloud of 'snow'."
He forgot to add that what happens is that the water boils and freezes at the same time.

We typically dump the retrograde to allow orbital dynamics to help dissipate the cloud away from the orbiter, but there is always a portion that stays with us since the cloud expands very rapidly in all directions when it hits a vacuum. It is not unusual to have a cloud of ice crystals around the orbiter at a variety of distances for several days after dumps.

Now, this however is interesting....
Simple ice particles, withstanding the suns affects, and not to forget, the gravity pull from earth, for several days.

Something the shuttle itself has to do course corrections to avoid sinking down towards the atmosphere.

Originally posted by nablator

As much as I would like to think some type of UFO was around, the fact is there was not anything up there that we did not understand.

that we did not understand

Right no UFO's NASA understands the 'Critters' very well...

reply to post by zorgon

that we did not understand

Right no UFO's NASA understands the 'Critters' very well...

Well NASA.... will always be NASA, but this isn't the 60's anymore, where people will just take their word as being the truth.
I do not know what it is that the STS-75 footage is showing, but i do have my theories, and they have excluded intelligent life and "critters" as some believe these to be.

Its okay... but when one of them critters nips at your feet I get to say "told you so"

I was trying to find one youtube video that showed an EVA on the shuttle where mission control talks about a UFO in the background... and the astronaut says "I don't know what you are talking about"... and mission control says "never mind' but we can clearly see it moving across the screen and behind the astronauts...

Will post it when I find it

reply to post by zorgon


Yes, and i think i've seen that one.

Still though, i dont make any correlations to the STS-75 sighting, and the one you mentioned zorgon.
There might very well be 'critters' out there in space, i doubt that the STS-75 was such a sighting.

reply to post by zorgon


STS-80 is my absolute favorite footage, so powerful.

Originally posted by kazmology
reply to post by zorgon

 

STS-80 is my absolute favorite footage, so powerful.

Yes STS-80 and STS-75 are both so exciting.

Why can't I subscribe to this thread after I had accidentally deleted it from my subscribed threads list?

I had to make a new post to add the thread back.

Sorry everyone for the off-topic.

[edit on 16/4/2008 by ArMaP]

I don't have the time to read the entire thread but I was just wondering what your opinion is with the recent UFO hunters episode where they explain away the tether incident.

In my opinion you cannot simply "explain away" the tether incident without accounting for numerous instances where the so-called debris change direction. Unless the tether has its own gravitational pull, only then those objects could be debris.

Why so much debris and where from though?