Students Help Crash NASA Satellite Into Ocean

[warezme]

they already had, like a 70% chance of hitting water without guidance right?

 

[hang-the-9]

Here is something I don't get, it's bad to polute rivers and streams, but OK to dump anything from engine oil to sattelites to nuclear bombs into the oceans, where life started?

 

[blackened144]

It seems more like a paid internship with NASA than a real job..

 

[bamslang]

[citation][nom]Kelavarus[/nom]Odd. I work 20+ hours a week and I'm taking 20 credits as an undergrad. I know someone else who is working 55 hours and taking 12 (bare minimum though for full time student). Yeah, they barely sleep though.[/citation]

A general business degree is much less strenuous than a degree in aerospace engineering. I worked between 30-60 hours a week (2 jobs) while taking between 15-21 class hours when getting my bachelors. I'm sure it would have been much harder if I couldn’t' have slept through 80% of my classes.

 

[Marco925]

Yay! Mindless Destruction!

 

[gtvr]

[citation][nom]hang-the-9[/nom]Here is something I don't get, it's bad to polute rivers and streams, but OK to dump anything from engine oil to sattelites to nuclear bombs into the oceans, where life started?[/citation]

It's going to come down someplace, they might as well put it where it's not going to kill people.

 

[jellico]

Sorry to nitpick, Jane, but it's the "University of Colorado at Boulder" or "University of Colorado" not "Colorado University." I know they abbreviate it CU-Boulder (to indicate the more distinguished of the three branches: Boulder, Colorado Springs, and Denver), but if you say Colorado University, people there likely wouldn't know what school you were talking about.

 

[surfer1337dude]

[citation][nom]NeeKo[/nom]20 hours a week?? You got to be kidding me.[/citation]
Actually it is alot of extra work. At college I take 16.5 credits, which means (atleast according to NYS universities) that I should have the 16.5 hours of in class time plus 3 hours outside of class time (atleast) for each of those credit hours to do well. So according to a university thats 49.5 hours of out of class time each week. On top of that I like alot (if not most) students have a job to pay for college (so thats another 16 hours). So thats 82 hours of my 168 hours a week. IF you sleep a third of the day *8 hours* thats 56 hours, so adding an extra 20 hours a week is alot of work...

 

[thechief73]

Very cool stuff, I sure they are all proud to be a part of something like that. Quite an interesting career if I may say so.

 

[maestintaolius]

[citation][nom]bamslang[/nom]A general business degree is much less strenuous than a degree in aerospace engineering. I worked between 30-60 hours a week (2 jobs) while taking between 15-21 class hours when getting my bachelors. I'm sure it would have been much harder if I couldn’t' have slept through 80% of my classes.[/citation]
Yeah, it really depends on the classes you're taking. When I was a ChemE undergrad many many moons ago several of my '3' credit ChemE classes entailed a minimum of 15-20 hours of homework a week each, and I was usually taking 2-3 of those along with working 10-20 hours a week at a 3M internship. Compared to many of my 3-4 credit lib ed. classes which I doubt I spent more than 2-3 hours a week on their homework. It pretty much meant I missed out on all the 'fun' parts of college (and learned to get by on 2-3 hours of sleep), but I have no regrets as my degree allowed me to get where I wanted to be.

 

[rohitbaran]

Nice to write in one's CV:
I crashed a NASA satellite! :lol:

 

[Jquarter00]

To everyone saying they are "only" working 20 hours a week. I'm sure their course load is very demanding.

I'm working 40 hours a week and taking 8 credit hours in a general Computer Science program, and it's difficult for me. I couldn't imagine working 20 hours a week at what has to be a fairly stressful job AND going through a difficult Aerospace program.

 

[nuvon]

What is so exciting about shutting down a satillite by sending some commands through computer? If they were to do it the Chinese way: shoot a missile at it. Then it is exciting!

 

[jellico]

[citation][nom]nuvon[/nom]What is so exciting about shutting down a satillite by sending some commands through computer? If they were to do it the Chinese way: shoot a missile at it. Then it is exciting![/citation]
Because the satalite is traveling over 7000 m/s in an atypical orbit, and it takes some pretty sharp calculations to plan the de-orbit burn that will drop it safely into a low-traffic part of the ocean, rather than slamming into a possibly populated part of the landscape at 1500+ miles per hour.

Incidently, shooting anything in orbit with a missile is an incredibly stupid thing to do. The cloud of debris created from doing this will largely remain in orbit, and every fragment large than 1 cm will present a navigation hazard to every other satalite or vehicle that crosses that orbit. In face, space debris is a growing problem as decades of accumulated defunct satalites, lost/discarded parts, debris from collisions, etc. has filled near-Earth orbits with over 600,000 bits larger than 1 cm; yet we are only tracking the largest 20,000 or so. Now granted, orbital space is vast, and the probability of a catastrophic encounter with an uncharted bit of space debris is pretty small; but we more certainly do not want to be adding to the problem by blowing things up in order.

 

[screechy]

Dont Push the big red button

 

[djmpsf]

And the college course will now be known as: How to break really big expensive stuff 101

 

[eddieroolz]

Man, this is such an awesome job...imagine having that in your portfolio. You'd get hired instantly.

 

[JonnyDough]

Why even bother when you could have just told Kim Jong-il that it was a S. Korean space weapons platform? Or would he have just talked about what he was going to do and then sucked his thumb? Of course, if Russia found out they would put their own weapon satellites over Cuba and claim that they were just practicing satellite launches until we parked a Death Star over their country and warned them to back off.

 

[lakelucid]

I'm just glad the earth is 70% covered with water.

 

[capcata]

"Put your finger in your satellite!, don't touch my display!!"