This allows us to better understand it and possibly respond more effectively when its behavior suddenly changes. This empathy moves us to interact more fully with the object. It is this ability to project human qualities onto these inanimate objects that allow us to empathize with them. All of these were given the guise of deities, each with their own motivations desires, and emotions. Consider how the ancient Greeks anthropomorphized the Sun, Moon and planets, as well as wind, rain, seasons, etc. I believe that humans are at least partially hard-wired to attribute familiar qualities to inanimate objects or even natural physical processes. People tend to imagine that these probes have grit and determination, even if they realize deep down that they are just remotely controlled devices.Īnd it really is not that hard to do. We've started rooting for those plucky little probes that just keep on going and going, exploring the places that we fancy ourselves going someday. We care about whether Hubble is revived and rejuvenated or left to burn up in the atmosphere. They have been transformed from mere pieces of hardware into entities unto themselves. The Hubble Space Telescope, and the Mars Exploration Rovers have been successfully anthropomorphized. Or even, The Crew of Expedition 20 to the ISS. This as opposed to The International Space Station, or the Space Shuttle Atlantis. To understand the public's engagement with certain aspects of the space program, just look at how they refer to Hubble, Spirit, and Opportunity.
(We'll assume for the moment that they actually have a compelling story to tell.) I had also been reading a number of articles which described NASA's PR problem as essentially not being able to tell a good story. I was puzzling how the Hubble telescope, and the Mars rovers could get such good exposure with the public, and yet the ISS and Space Shuttle, let alone the astronauts themselves are barely acknowledged. I had a thought recently concerning public engagement with NASA's human spaceflight program. I'm sure this is probably a well established conclusion in orbital mechanics or general relativity, but it's the first time I've encountered it.
#Space flight simulator space station series
The first two terms of the series expansion are: As I look back at my equations now, I see that there is a weak dependence on M, however the coefficient is exceedingly small. If this same process is applied to the Earth, we get the recipe for a space elevator.Ĭuriously, we see that no matter what planet we are orbiting, the upper end of the tether is always at approximately the same radial distance. The numbers given below are for each planet around which this theoretical orbiting station could exist. Let R denote radial distance from the center of the planet, and H be the height above the commonly accepted "surface" of each body. At the lower end, the force of the planet's gravity exceeds the centripetal force due to the orbit by exactly 1G, and at the upper end the reverse is true.
#Space flight simulator space station full
Simply place the center of gravity of the station in a 24 hour orbit around the planet, and extend a pair of tethers up and down from there such that a full 1G would be felt at either end. In addition to the Earth's surface, I thought that a space station orbiting a gas giant could possibly provide the proper environment. I was looking for places in the solar system where one could experience about 9.8 m/s 2 of gravitational acceleration and a 24 hour day. The article reminded me of a little exercise in orbital mechanics that I had once worked out. However, if one were to go ballooning among the cloud tops of Jupiter, one would likely spend a lot of time pinned to the floor of the gondola by about 2.5 g's (2.5 times the Earth's gravity). On Venus, the gravity is comparable to that on Earth. In the case of Jupiter, however, the post leaves out one important detail: gravity. Presumably, there are sweet spots in their atmospheres where the temperature and pressure are close enough to STP at Earth's surface that a human could go ballooning in these locales with little more than breathing apparatus and attire suitable for surviving the climate (an acid-resistant full-body bathing suit for Venus, or a heavy parka for Jupiter). I ran across this post over at the systemic blog about ballooning in the upper atmosphere of Venus and Jupiter.