Brit Mars bot named while NASA 'nauts must wait a bit longer for a US rocket trip to the ISS Over the past two Earth days, NASA released pics of China's Moon lander, SpaceX saw a Falcon delay to its Crew Dragon and the UK failed to name the ExoMars rover Rover McRoverface. SpaceX and Boeing commercial crew flights slide to the right A year has passed since SpaceX fired up Musk's mighty Falcon Heavy but the Demo-1 …
The US definition predates the other. Discussion at the end of this page:
https://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/news/X-Press/stories/2005/102105_Schneider.html
Essentially the 50 mile point is where it's no longer an aeroplane - there's nothing for *control* surfaces to work on. The 62 mile point is where - in order to maintain altitude - you've got to be doing orbital velocities anyway for your wings to generate sufficient lift.
"NASA reckons that more testing, verification, reviewing and training is needed before any blue touchpaper can be lit."
Anyone still wondering how ideas like "move fast and break things" could have possibly ended up being touted as a Good Thing - now you know. Because of exactly this sort of bollocks.
NASA always moves slowly because they can't get past the Van Allen belts.
Has anyone spotted the problem with all the rocks on the moon pictures yet? That's right, they are sitting in aeons of smooth dust: but have no dust on them at all.
How does a rock in a vacuum get to sit in a smooth dust field and not get dusty? How did it get there? How did the dust find it's way around to surround it so perfectly? What keeps the dust from ever settling on top?
All right. So NASA has been concealing the truth about the lunar cleaning lady all these years.
Alternatively in a vacuum anything capable of forming hydrogen bonds tends to be lost, so there's no adhesion between dust particles and a surface. Which means that as the surface temperature rises and falls between day and night, expansion and contraction of the rock gradually will cause dust to roll off. (There are other things that might have this effect). On the Moon,once dust has fallen to the lowest level, there's no wind to lift it again. The only new dust is due to micrometeorite bombardment and surface cracking.
...how did such a clueless AC find its way to El Reg? A much bigger mystery.
Why would they mention Airbus?
The first part is about Boeing and SpaceX's respective spacecraft, no Airbus involvement there.
The second part is about LRO taking pictures of Chang'e 4, again, neither built by Airbus.
The third part is about the ExoMars rover, that's being built by Thales.
The forth part is about Skyora, still no reason for Airbus to be name checked
And finally there's a few paragraphs about Virgin Galactic.
So which of these stories has an Airbus angle that elReg are cruelly censoring? The only space related Airbus news I can find is that they're building a satellite for a Japanese telecoms company, not really very interesting.
Unless I'm missing something Thales were responsible for Schiaparelli but Airbus are indeed building the ExoMars rover.
http://exploration.esa.int/mars/56912-schiaparelli-at-thales-alenia-space/
https://www.airbus.com/space/space-exploration/exomars.html
Having said that, Thales and Airbus do have a partnership on many projects, so I wouldn't be surprised if they both have a hand in it.
"Why would they mention Airbus?"
To inform people like you. Thales, which is a French group, delivered part of the rover's tech to AIRBUS, which is a European company (mostly non-UK) and built the rover (assembled in UK). Some of the involved sites happen to be in the UK. Calling it a "Brit" bot is acceptable (although slightly wishful thinking), but NOT mentioning Europe (with the exception of ESA) is specious.
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