The capsule that fell!

If you havent heard around 10:00 mtn time, a capsule from space probe genises fell to the desert of Utah. There was supposed to be a parachute to slow it down but it didnt deploy. I dont know a whole lot about it as of now, but im just intrested in what some of you have heard.

N.A.S.A is going to have a press conference here soon,
1 of my questions is they said the capsule fell at 100 mph? isnt that awful slow for such an object falling all the way from space?

Anyone have any theorys on what the goverment was really doing/ what the falling object really was.

[edit on 8-9-2004 by Scyman]

Really?Jesus Iam to slow not only is it all on the news but theres a major post about it already

Yeah, just saw it on the news.

How much did it cost?

Anyone have any theorys on what the goverment was really doing/ what the falling object really was.

It was a probe that collected bits of things from space

I don't think it was any kind of conspiracy. The probe has been collecting samples of the sun for the last 3 years so that we could understand the "building blocks" of the solar system. The parachute didn't open and they lost the experiment and something like 250 million dollars they spent to fund this research. The probe entered the earths atmosphere at 25000 mph and its rate of decent was slowed by the friction of our thick atmosphere and the shape of the probe. Although 100 mph sounds a bit slow but not unthinkable.

I wonder if any of the information on board can be recovered. I guess we have to wait till the Press meeting.

i remember watching where Nasa hired a professional helicopter stunt person to catch the capsule. since the parachute never deployed i hope he still gets his check

Originally posted by Scyman
I wonder if any of the information on board can be recovered. I guess we have to wait till the Press meeting.

I think it's doubtful. The probe collected samples of the solar wind on wafer like disks. The reason we couldn't do this on earth is because of our atmosphere. These samples are very fragile and needed to be in a clean environment (untouched by our atmosphere). The probe slammed into the earth breaking the housing and probably destroying the physical wafers. The broken samples have probably been exposed to the air and therefor unsuitable. This is how I understand it to be, I could be wrong.

Space Probe Fails to Deploy Chute, Slams into Earth
By Leonard David
Senior Space Writer
posted: 08 September 2004
12:04 pm ET

Updated at 1:13 p.m. ET

DUGWAY PROVING GROUND, UTAH -- A NASA spacecraft spun out of control and crashed into the Utah desert this morning, putting a disastrous end to a years-long mission to bring back samples of the Sun.

The probe was supposed to deploy a parachute and be snagged by a helicopter for safe recovery.
Read more....

Anyone read the Andromeda strain? rut roh Raggy...lol

The reason it fell so slowly is simple: friction.

When something enters the atmosphere, be it a probe, shuttle, or meteor, the result is heat. LOTS of heat. This heat is caused by the atmosphere slowing down the velocity of the incoming probe. As the probe descends the air gets thicker and thicker, and so the amount of friction becomes higher and higher, and so it slows down more and more.

EDIT: KL beat me to it, and I didn't even see!

[edit on 9/8/2004 by cmdrkeenkid]

Damn! KingLizard beat me to the "friction of our atmosphere" explanation! I was really looking forward to sounding smart for a change.

To paraphrase Freud: Sometimes a space probe is just a space probe.

On another note, the picture of the small probe half burried in the sand is a really great shot. Here's a quasi-prediction...in about six months to a year you will begin to see that photo mixed with the subsequent retrieval photos (guy's in lab coats, suits and of course military personal) on the more ridiculous UFO websites claiming they are photos of a "secret government retrieval team securing a crashed alien craft from the Utah desert".

I can almost guaruntee it.

Spiderj

Originally posted by Scyman
N.A.S.A is going to have a press conference here soon,
1 of my questions is they said the capsule fell at 100 mph? isnt that awful slow for such an object falling all the way from space?
[edit on 8-9-2004 by Scyman]

Ok, I cant prove this but this be what i thinks, (if your an english major, go away) anyway
1. The Atmosphere is slowing the capsule down (friction)
2. The 100mph part is a question of terminal velocity or the maximum spped an object can fall at any given time, for example, a raindrops terminal velocity is 22 feet per second, so possibly, the bigger the object, the faster the terminal velocity

Thank you Mythbusters!!!

For those who have more time on their hands can solve for the correct rate of descent, provided one knows the exact dimension and weight of the probe returning to earth.

What follows below is a small excerpt from NASA's website.

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An object which is falling through the atmosphere is subjected to two external forces. One force is the gravitational force, expressed as the weight of the object. The other force is the air resistance, or drag of the object. The motion of any object can be described by Newton's second law of motion, force F equals mass m times acceleration a:

F = m * a

which can be solved for the acceleration of the object in terms of the net external force and the mass of the object:

a = F / m

Weight and drag are forces which are vector quantities. The net external force F is then equal to the difference of the weight W and the drag D

F = W - D

The acceleration of a falling object then becomes:

a = (W - D) / m

The drag force depends on the square of the velocity. So as the body accelerates its velocity and the drag increase. It quickly reaches a point where the drag is exactly equal to the weight. When drag is equal to weight, there is no net external force on the object and the object falls at a constant velocity as described by Newton's first law of motion. The constant velocity is called the terminal velocity .

We can determine the value of the terminal velocity by doing a little algebra and using the drag equation. Drag depends on a drag coefficient, Cd the air density, r the square of the velocity V and some reference area A of the object:

D = Cd * r * V ^2 * A / 2

At terminal velocity, D = W. Solving for the velocity, we obtain the equation

V = sqrt ( (2 * W) / (Cd * r * A) )

The terminal velocity equation tells us that an object with a large cross-sectional area or a high drag coefficient falls slower than an object with a small area or low drag coefficient. A large flat plate falls slower than an a small ball with the same weight. If we have two objects with the same area and drag coefficient, like two identically sized spheres, the lighter object falls slower. This seems to contradict the findings of Galileo that all free falling objects fall at the same rate with equal air resistance. But Galileo's principle only applies in a vacuum, where there is NO air resistance and drag is equal to zero.

The drag coefficient is a number which aerodynamicists use to model all of the complex dependencies of drag on shape, inclination, and some flow conditions. The drag coefficient Cd is equal to the drag D divided by the quantity: density r times reference area A times one half of the velocity V squared.

Cd = D / (.5 * r * V^2 * A)

This slide shows some typical values of the drag coefficient for a variety of shapes. The values shown here were determined experimentally by placing models in a wind tunnel and measuring the amount of drag, the tunnel conditions of velocity and density, and the reference area of the model. The drag equation given above was then used to calculate the drag coefficient. The projected frontal area of each object was used as the reference area. A flat plate has Cd = 1.28, a wedge shaped prism with the wedge facing downstream has Cd = 1.14, a sphere has a Cd that varies from .07 to .5, a bullet Cd = .295, and a typical airfoil Cd = .045.

We can study the effect of shape on drag by comparing the values of drag coefficient for any two objects as long as the same reference area is used and the Mach number and Reynolds number are matched. All of the drag coefficients on this slide were produced in low speed (subsonic) wind tunnels and at similar Reynolds number, except for the sphere. A quick comparison shows that a flat plate gives the highest drag and a streamlined symmetric airfoil gives the lowest drag, by a factor of almost 30! Shape has a very large effect on the amount of drag produced. The drag coefficient for a sphere is given with a range of values because the drag on a sphere is highly dependent on Reynolds number. Flow past a sphere, or cylinder, goes through a number of transitions with velocity. At very low velocity, a stable pair of vortices are formed on the downwind side. As velocity increases, the vortices become unstable and are alternately shed downstream. As velocity is increased even more, the boundary layer transitions to chaotic turbulent flow with vortices of many different scales being shed in a turbulent wake from the body. Each of these flow regimes produce a different amount of drag on the sphere. Comparing the flat plate and the prism, and the sphere and the bullet, we see that the downstream shape can be modified to reduce drag.
---

Don't forget, the exact speed would also hinge on the rate of rotation of the probe returning to earth (X-Y axis) since that would increase and decrease the aerodynamics of the object. These numbers would probably be very insignificant. This is where the Cd, or Drag Coefficient, comes into place.

I'll wait 'till the movie comes out....


NVBadBoy



[edit on 11-9-2004 by NVBadBoy]

Is there an english translation to that? i got lost in the first sentence

Funny hey that trying to do things on the cheap all ways come around to bite you on the ass in some way.All that effort and cost cutting ruined it i hope they still get some use out of it.