Sun 6 Jun 2010
Nice Weather for Ducks
Posted by anaglyph under Australiana, Hokum, Idiots, In The News, Insane People, Science, Skeptical Thinking, Stupidity, Technology, WooWoo, Words
[128] Comments
Anomalous Radar Activity Around MelbourneI just love it when event transpire such that I can bring you two of my favourite subjects in one Tetherd Cow Ahead post. Today’s is such a post and it’s brought to you by the Melbourne Age which is carrying an article that combines the stupidity of the newspaper business with the beliefs of a loony. It runs under the headline ‘Weather has conspiracy theorists strung out’
INEXPLICABLY odd images ((Why, why, why do reporters continue to use this kind of language? The images are ENTIRELY explicable in any number of ways. They are ONLY inexplicable in the mind of Colin Andrews. Stephen Cauchi, you are an IDIOT.)) on Bureau of Meteorology radar. Cyclones off the Australian coast and the most intense storm to hit Melbourne in living memory. A controversial US military facility in Alaska suspected of research into weather control … It sounds like the plot of a sci-fi conspiracy thriller.
Yes, there’s no quibbling there – that’s exactly what that hodge-podge of unrelated factoids sounds like (although I’d be inclined to add the word ‘bad’ just before ‘sci-fi’). So the implication here is that it’s going to turn out to be The Truth, right, as opposed to the fiction of a ‘sci-fi conspiracy thriller’? Well, you’d be totally wrong if you were thinking that.
The story goes on to detail the following points:
•The Bureau of Meteorology radar has been recording ‘a number of very strange patterns – rings, loops, starbursts’ around Melbourne.
•There have been some big storms here.
•The High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) facility in Alaska has powerful transmitters and radars.
From this, the correspondent spins up a vacuous story that says in essence that websites ‘specializing in pseudoscience’ have ‘leapt on the notion’ that the three things above are connected and the ‘government’ is trying to control the weather.
Is anybody else feeling the need to stick their head in a bucket of ammonia?
To simplify: this is a story which is actually just a free plug for the nutty ideas of lunatics, while all the while pretending to ‘news’ by distancing itself from aforementioned lunatics. And, to put the icing on the cake, the story is embellished with an image of the recent SpaceX Falcon 9 launch, which has exactly NO relevance to anything at all.
As I’m reading this, I find myself thinking ‘Who the hell is responsible for this guff and how do they get to be working on a news desk?’ So I scroll up to the byline. It will probably come as no surprise to you at all to find that the literary genius behind this story is none other than reporter Stephen Cauchi, who has provided us with much mirth previously here on The Cow with his non-news style of journalism.
Which brings me to the second of my favourite Tetherd Cow subjects – insane people. Mr Cauchi’s main source for the above-mentioned conspiracy turns out to be someone who is very familiar to anyone who’s spent time around the pseudoscience traps – a fellow who goes by the name of Colin Andrews. Now, just to set you up, Mr Andrews has about ZERO credibility as any kind of authoritative source. In fact, if you were actually trying to find a less credible spokesperson (for anything except nutty ideas I guess) you’d have your work cut out for you.
Colin Andrews first came to prominence as an ‘expert’ on crop circles back in the 1980s, and contrary to all common sense, still believes that they are made by ‘aliens’. Since that time, he has advanced all manner of implausible conspiracies across numerous disciplines. In this case, Mr Andrews’ ‘government weather control’ paranoia centers on some ‘anomalous’ radar screen captures from earlier this year when the south coast of Australia suffered some unusually fierce storm activity. This is a couple of them:
Well, yeah, sure, these ones are from the Bureau of Meteorology radar in Broome in Western Australia, but close enough, right?
These are the ‘inexplicably’ odd radar images to which Mr Cauchi refers in his first paragraph. Rather than conclude (as might any rational person) that the radar images are simply quite explicable as imperfections in the way that a meteorological radar functions, Mr Andrews’ brain oscillates to the most wildly improbably alternative – that the images are some kind of government weather control experiment that has been cunningly contrived to appear like a radar imperfection.
Mr Andrews persists in this belief even when told as much from someone who works for the Bureau of Meteorology:
Re: The round radar prob in WA, it is a BOM Radar unit which has its lower rain level threshold setup too low, ie, too sensitive, which gives the noisy radar reading like that. Nothing to do with HAARP, which, as you know, is in Alaska. I see images like this a lot, as I work for the Bureau of Meteorology in QLD.
And you know what? You too can see images like this on Australian meteorological radars if you feel like clicking on every radar station that the BOM offers. If you think like Mr Andrews, you’re likely to find a LOT of government hanky panky. It’s a wonder the government has any time for actual governing.
After giving plenty of airing to Colin Andrews’ hair-brained ideas, the Age article goes on to seek opinions from authoritative skeptics, who quite reasonably call the idea ‘silly’. We could have started with that conclusion and made the whole story one sentence long, viz:
We asked a sensible person, Mr Tim Mendham (president of the Australian Skeptics), what he thought of noted loony Colin Andrews’ idea that the government is controlling the weather, and he said it was silly.
I guess that doesn’t make for ‘pizazz’ but the content is exactly the same as the story as it stands.
Anyhoo, after a lot of stupid waffle, the article rounds off with:
The Sunday Age tried to contact Mr Andrews, who is based in the US, but there was no reply. That could be because, according to his website, he was in Oregon for last weekend’s 11th annual UFO Festival.
Smirk smirk smirk. Well if that’s your attitude Mr ‘cynical’ Stephen Cauchi, why are you making this nitwit’s ideas out to have any credence at all?
It makes me feel quite nauseous to note that this was No. 1 on the ‘most read’ list of Top National Articles in The Age today.
Well done Melbourne Age! Another pin on the board for the Great De-Braining of the Human Race. ((Or, one optimistically hopes, another nail in the coffin of the old news media.))
UPDATE: At the time I wrote this yesterday, there were no comments on the article. Now there are 19. After reading them I actually feel like walking over to the train line near my house and throwing myself in front of the 10:15 to Flinders St Station. WHY WAS I BORN INTO A WORLD WITH THIS MUCH STUPID?!
The comments are now closed and the one I left was evidently deemed unsuitable for inclusion – evidently it made a little too much sense.
These mysterious weather formations: they’re centred right over weather radar stations, aren’t they?
Now, a naïve person might think this meant that radar was the one recording the data, and was clearly borked.
But that’s ridiculous. We have the technology to prevent that. There are plenty of radar stations that don’t show this effect! So a more savvy reading of the facts shows us that the only reason these radar stations are the ones affected is that they aren’t really passive radar stations at all! They’re creating the star-storms! Their dishes must be there, not to detect weather, but to refocus the HAARP signal, which is transmitted to them through the earth using the earth’s core as a lens!
What is the purpose of these star-shaped atmospheric disturbances? Why is the secretive world government creating them?
The answer is obvious to those who are not blinded by science! Nobody in the area reports seeing a massive spinning star thing in the sky: why not? The only possible explanation is that the star formation is a brainwashing device! Hundreds, if not thousands of people brainwashed into forgetting ever having seen it!
But what other commands will have been programmed into their vulnerable brains? Only time will tell. The innocent citizens of Australia are being made unwitting sleeping stooges of the Man!
Pay attention to these signals on the radar while you still can: soon enough the government will have perfected their system, and their meteorological computers will be programmed to remove any such anomalies. We must be on guard for any discontinuities in weather maps, as evidence of this kind of airbrushing.
Not just in Australia, either: if HAARP is on the other side of the planet, this must mean that the brainwashing device has worldwide scope!
Nobodyi is safe.
[i Except those wearing the DewiMorgan brand tin hat! Now with trivectors! Buy yours today, only $999.99 with mail-in rebate!]
bah – sup tags worked in the preview!
I fix for you. No charge.
You know, the weird thing is Dewi, that I totally forgot I’d written this post until I logged on this morning and saw it there. In fact, I’m not even totally sure I wrote it in the first place…
And the weather is turning grim….
Im glad you brought this up, Revrend, cuz I been starting to doubt the whole angels-bowling-during-thunderstorms thing. I mean … who does that sorta thing?
I was told that it was God in the bathroom after a night on the curry and lager.
Revrend, Mr. Andrews seemd unwilling to provide the information that would “set you straight.” Instead, he just seemd hostile.
I wasn’t expecting that, were you?
Well, I did call Mr Andrews a loony, so I guess he has a right to get snippy. But like I always say, Sir Joey – I can always be convinced by good science. But I’m never convinced by pseudoscience – no matter how good it is.
I posted the information “to set you straight” here and also sent it to you by email. What do you have to say now? BTW Colin Andrews has a much firmer grasp on reality than you could ever hope for.
So that’s your scientific proof, is it? See my comments above.
In Mr Andrews’ conspiracy-riddled reality, pigs can fly as well.
In this age of genetic modification, I’m sure we’ll see that in our lifetime. The US currently has over 600 species of cloned animals.
Oh for fuck’s sake. Is there anything you’re NOT paranoid about?
Since you didn’t say that it was a lie, I can only assume that you don’t know for sure.
Hey is in Malach controlling the weather, it is all just fun and games
I find it highly unlikely that you’re controlling the weather, Malach, when you can’t even control your communications skills.
In case you havent noticd, Revrend, it HAS begun to rain turnips.
There is no why.
No? I guess this is just Hell then.
Did the aliens change your photo Reverend?
You know, I believe they did Nurse Myra!
Everyone wants to do Nurse Myra.
Ba-dum.
G’day Anaglyph, maaate,
I wonder if you could explain how the Australian spiral could have been the Falcon 9 rocket when the rocket blasted off from Cape Canaverel at 2.45am EDT, the second stage ignited only 3 minutes later, and it took only 9 minutes to reach Earth’s orbit (250km). You seem to have accepted without question the we in Australia saw the rocket’s stage 2 ignition some three hours later?
Some kind of space time lapse? Why don’t you spend more than 3 minutes googling, then you might come up with a real answer instead of uncritically repeating the tabloids.
I have not ‘accepted without question’ that it was the Falcon 9. I did some research. I ask you, as I asked justsayupyours, below, if you have any idea of how orbital dynamics work? When a rocket is launched it’s all travelling at a speed – let’s say ‘x’. ALL the bits of the rocket are travelling at that speed. When a stage is ejected, that stage continues to travel at x, gradually slowing down as it loses momentum. HOWEVER, it takes some time to do that, and the higher up it is, the more likely that it will track around the planet with the orbit of the rocket. The rocket and stage will, of course, eventually fall unless propelled into a more permanent orbit. But here’s the thing Reg, maaaate, it will still be swingin’ around the planet for at least some time after launch.
Here’s a groundtrack of the SpaceX launch. Do you see where the rocket went on its first orbit? Do you know how long it took to get over Australia? EXACTLY the right amount of time to account for the ‘spiral UFO’. Coincidence? Or just plain ol’ common sense?
see answer below
Where did you get those orbit coordinates? Btw you are the only one who mentioned controlling the weather. I only mentioned inducing the weather. Totally different things.
Oh whatever. Are we playing semantic games now? Colin Andrews SAYS the Government is interfering with the weather. You imply that it’s possible, otherwise why are you bothering me?
For a start, you’re the only one saying anything about “stage 2 ignition”. Anaglyph wrote: “the Falcon 9’s second stage booster would have been spiralling down through the atmosphere”. If you’re spiralling down during ignition, then something is decidedly WRONG with your launch!
So, from your time facts, I can draw a few possible conclusions:
1) MAGIC! ALIENS! GOVERNMENT CONSPIRACY!
2) It takes a while for stuff to fall far enough from orbit to hit the atmosphere and start spiralling.
3) Someone confused burn time for flight time. ~10 mins isn’t an orbital flight!
4) Someone fucked up their time calculations.
OK, option 4 is by far the most likely, so let’s check that first.
Launch was 14:45 EDT (Currently UTC-4 = 18:45 UTC), and flew about ten minutes.
Spiral was reported at 5:50am EST (Currently UTC+10 = 19:50 UTC): one hour later. NOT “some three hours later” as you claim, but definitely an hour later.
OK, option 3: Someone thinks a “ten minute ascent” is a ten minute flight. Pretty likely. Let’s check.
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/falcon9/001/status.html confirms – that was burn time, not flight time. In fact, I can’t find flight time anywhere, which is annoying. However, wikipedia has the flight listed as 16 orbits/day, which means that one hour after lift off, I’d expect it to be 16orbits/24hrs = 2/3 of an orbit in one hour of flight. 10 minutes of acceleration means maybe a bit less, and the sightings were about 5-10 minutes more than an hour later, which means maybe a bit more. But basically, it’d be about 2/3 of the way round the world from the launch site in Florida.
I can’t find any orbit maps for it, (though someone might be able to do something with the orbital details from the wiki page?), but looking at the maps you get from Googling “orbit map”, that seems like it might reasonably take it over Australia at about that time.
So to answer your questions:
1) yes, it appears it can easily be explained without “some kind of space time lapse”.
2) one hour, not three.
3) falling, not igniting.
4) you’re the one who suffered Googling fail.
5) you’re the one uncritically repeating the bad reporters (specifically ABC)
Fortunately, the ABC story has already been lambasted delightfully by Phil Plait.
Except you forgot to factor in that separation of first and second stages happened 3 minutes after lift-off.
No, actually YOU forgot to factor in momentum and orbital inertia. Do you actually have any idea at all of how physical systems work? Well, plainly not I guess. Here, try this – next time you’re speeding along the freeway at 100 mph, jump out of your car and see if you stop immediately.
Does it bother you at all, justsayupyours that you’re persisting in this stupid idea when pretty much every sensible person in the world now accepts that the ‘spiral’ seen over Australia is exactly what we say it is? Or is it that you’re the only one marching in step?
The two stages separated at 50 miles high and the second stage reached 155 miles high, at nine minutes they were already 105 miles away from each other. But somehow it stayed in orbit for over an hour so you Aussies could spot it? It would take about 20-25 minutes for the first stage to fall from that height. That would mean it landed somewhere in Africa.
Ah, I think I see your confusion. You think Anaglyph said “that’s exactly when the Falcon 9’s first stage booster would have been spiralling down through the atmosphere… just before dawn, right over Australia.”
You might want to go back and reread. The spiral was most likely caused either by the second stage (most likely), or the payload (probably not). We even already know that the second stage was tumbling, from the second burn.
Nice groundtrack, Rev: I bow to your Google-fu!
Dewi, there is a groundtrack of the SpaceX flight here.
Funnily enough, the first orbit puts the second stage & payload pretty much exactly where it needs to be to account for the ‘spiral’.
How exactly did you figure that?
It’s a simple calculation of time. You can even watch the first half of the launch from the rocket’s POV until it goes out of radio range because the planet is in the way (ie, it’s on its way to HALF A PLANET AWAY – RIGHT OVER AUSTRALIA):
http://bit.ly/bmxs6h
See how the rocket is tumbling through the last bit – just before it gets to the horizon? There’s yer explanation.
As the booster spins and the gas shoots out, it makes a water-sprinkler spiral pattern in the sky. As it happens, the second stage of the Falcon 9 was rotating; this was not supposed to happen and the SpaceX engineers are looking into it (it didn’t affect the launch adversely; the payload achieved orbit).
I really don’t see how this is hard to understand.
So are you saying that 9 minutes after lift-off it was out of radio range because it was over Australia? But you’ve already said that it would take an hour to get over Australia. Your explanation is that it was tumbling before it achieved orbit, so this explains why it would be spiraling over Australia? Why would you think it would still be tumbling after reaching orbit? Why would the second stage spiral down through the atmosphere when it’s supposed to orbit the earth for the next year?
The rocket is rotating (tumbling was a clumsy term and I shouldn’t have used it). The Falcon 9 team is not sure why. It doesn’t appear to have been a problem. As I understand orbital dynamics and inertia, under those circumstances a vehicle will keep rotating until something stops it. Since there were no correctional adjustments on the Falcon 9, to my knowledge, it kept on rotating as it orbited.
And no, I’m not saying it was over Australia in 9 minutes. It was over Australia in an hour or so, but it was out of radio range in 9 minutes because the planet was getting in the way. It had commenced its uncontrolled rotation by that time as the video shows.
Oh, come on admit it. You have no clue whether it is rotating or not because you’ve never seen any video of it after it achieved orbit. You only assume it’s still rotating. What makes you so sure that there are no correctional adjustments on the Falcon 9? It is after all, orbiting for the next year, you don’t think they thought of that?
There IS video of it rotating after it achieved orbit! That’s what you think is a UFO!
As for them thinking about correctional adjustments, well, they didn’t think it would rotate on launch – they don’t think of everything. You can hear them say so in the telemetry talkback on the launch video. The rotation was unexpected. You can’t plan for unexpected events. That’s the nature of unexpected events. They’re unexpected.
Wrong! There is NO video after it achieved orbit – at least not one that SpaceX is willing to show. That’s what you think is a UFO, I’ve always maintained it was military shenanigans.
And you base your assumption on that unknown guy called jetforme, who is a wanna-be astronomer? Somehow I’m supposed to believe a guy who has information that no one else has, about the ground track? Not once questioning where he got his coordinates from and if they are even accurate?
Good job on your indepth investigative reporting tetherdcow. Are you sure you don’t want to change the name to tetherdsheep?
Where is your evidence that it was brought down after the second orbit?
Look – you go on believing whatever loopy thing you want to believe. You’ve started down the road to name-calling which, in my book, means you lose the argument.
Actually you lose the argument if you cannot provide the link. I on the other hand can provide the link that states the Dragon will stay there for a year before it re-enters the atmosphere and burns up. Yeah so much for being able to check it out after landing, lol.
And you don’t even question this person by the name of jetforme? Why not?
I’m very curious to see sources from both of ya. I suspect you’re both right.
I can believe the payload (Dragon demo module) staying in orbit for a year. But the second stage is not the Dragon demo module. Bringing that down after demonstrating orbital capability by staying up for a couple of orbits would be sensible.
When I looked, I couldn’t find refs for the flight time of either Dragon or Stage 2, so if you both could find ’em, I bow to both your Google fu.
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/falcon9/001/100602rollout/
“The Falcon 9 rocket will head east from the Space Coast, but SpaceX is not divulging the altitude or inclination of the planned orbit. ”
“The Falcon 9 was shooting for a CIRCULAR orbit 250 kilometers, or 155 miles, high and an inclination of 34.5 degrees. ”
“SpaceX says they accomplished a second stage restart “burp” to slightly change the Falcon’s orbit. That could explain the slightly ELLIPTICAL orbit being reported by independent tracking data.”
“We did a test burp of the second stage after orbit insertion, so the current orbit will be a little different than the insertion orbit,” Elon Musk tells Spaceflight Now.”
As you can see it reached an ecliptical orbit, not a zig zagging one like jetforme produced.
Do you know how to read orbital ground track maps? Well, obviously not. The ‘zig-zag’ path you think you see is what orbital groundtracks look like. ALL OF THEM. Anything that orbits the Earth makes a ground track with that typical sine-wave pattern. The orbit may well be elliptical (many of them are) but they still make a groundtrack pattern like that. That’s basic orbital science. I’ll leave you to figure out why groundtracks look like that (hint – the world is not flat and maps are).
This is the last I have to say about this matter. You obviously have fundamental flaws in your concept of orbital dynamics and space flight. That, combined with your obvious distrust in anything you are told by rational people, undermines your common sense. You ‘want to believe’ that there is some kind of conspiracy occurring and as a consequence you’ll look for any opportunity that seems to fit your preconceived notions. Any further discussion is obviously quite pointless.
But you believe jetforme without question? I want to see the coordinates so I can check for myself whether they’re correct or not. Jetforme’s ground track is the only thing that gives your theory any credibility. If you lose that, what will you have? Nothing!
It’s quite obvious where your preconceived notions lie.
How the hell do I know if jetforme IS a rational person? But I’m supposed to believe him, because he said so, lol. That is so funny.
If you want the raw data, you can apparently register for free at http://www.space-track.org/ and grab it. Think I might do that. But you’ve no reason to trust me on the data, so do it yourself too.
(alternative proof: if you draw that “zig-zag” path onto a globe, you should see that it describes a circle, inclined at 34.5 degrees, which moves moves sideways at the speed the earth rotates. I have a globe here in my room, so I might try that too)
Oh, and it was probably a typo, but just in case: “elliptic orbit” means “kinda egg shaped orbit”, where the craft is higher up at one point of the orbit than the other; “ecliptic orbit” means “orbiting in the same plane as the sun”, which it clearly isn’t, since the sun has an inclination of 1.5degrees, and you and jetforme both reckon the Falcon is about 34.5 degrees (your link unfortunately doesn’t say this – did they change the page, or is it the wrong link?)
So did you get the coordinates Dewie? Anything there you’d like to share with us?
I also have a globe, the pattern is definitely not the same as the ground track.
The other information I quoted was from the main page of that site. And yes that was a typo. Are typos allowed on this blog?
I wonder if your buddy jetforme is going to be prosecuted?
Yeah, I typo like crazy myself (and my broken space bar doesn’t help!).
So I reckoned it was almost certainly just a Dewi-style typo, but thought it best to doublecheck with you, since it could have been a Dewi-style misreading: also because an ecliptic orbit wouldn’t “zig-zag” much at all, it’d be very close to a straight line along the equator.
I applied for an account to the space-track site, but they say it’ll take “one or two days to process”. And this is the US government. They said my visa’d take about “three months to process” back at the end of January, and I’m still waiting… but hopefully the space-track lot’s more efficient than the USCIS.
I still reckon you guys should apply too: they might reject my application, after all.
Though they do have some REALLY freaky terms in their user agreement: read carefully before joining. Like “don’t share anything you see here with anyone else.” WTF? Isn’t US gov’t data considered to be in the public domain? How’m I meanta resolve an internet argument without sharing data?
I’m sure they don’t mind discussing and sharing data with other members though, so sign up! :P
An elliptical (symmetrical oval) orbit wouldn’t zig-zag much either. So are we in agreement that we’ve determined that neither an elliptical or ecliptical ordit would match the ground track?
I also thought WTF when I read it too. And you are correct, you will never be able to share anything from that site. You know what that means, don’t you? That jetforme was not able to share it either. Which means his ground track is suspect.
Elliptical just means the altitude would vary (that is, the orbit’s apogee/highest point and perigee/lowest point would be different, as opposed to a circular orbit where they’re the same), and a small ellipticness wouldn’t noticeably affect the ground track. (but see the molnya track here for a suggestion that the effect may be larger than I expect: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_track )
However (in my very limited understanding as just an armchair observer with no relevant qualification unless you count a couple of weeks of “Space School” back in the late 80’s), an “inclination of 34.5 degrees” means the orbit is inclined from the horizontal at that angle.
So if you picture a globe, with a metal ring going around the equator representing an orbit, then that’s an orbit with an inclination of 0 degrees. If you twist the ring so it’s still centred over the middle of the globe (a “great circle”), but goes over the poles, and crosses the equator twice, that’s a polar orbit with an inclination of 90 degrees.
If you twist it back towards the equator, so it crosses the equator at an angle of 34.5 degrees, that’s the orbit Falcon 9 had: starting above the equator at Florida, crossing the equator at 34.5 degrees, going below the equator, and looping back up to the equator at 34.5 degrees.
So, yeah, the ground track will be a sin wave really, zig zagging like crazy: it’ll cross the equator once for each zig and each zag, at an angle of 34.5 degrees.
Just eyeballing it, that looks about what it’s got. But we can check this (and I will now) by taking that ground path map, rotating it by 34.5 degrees in PaintShop Pro, and seeing if the line is roughly horizontal where it crosses the equator.
Hrm, no, the ground track crosses the equator at closer to 42 degrees. Which means one of:
1) my methodology is wrong (quite likely: ellipticism has some effect, maybe?)
2) PSP’s rotation is wrong (unlikely)
3) our figure of 34.5 is wrong (maybe likely?)
4) the ground track is wrong (maybe likely?)
5) something else.
Your link is very clear… but they also seem to be either wrong, or simplifying for their audience.
“The 55-metre-high Falcon 9 rocket carried an unmanned mockup cargo capsule — named Dragon — into a low-Earth orbit. Dragon will stay there for a year before it re-enters the atmosphere and burns up.” – it’s not the real Dragon module, it’s a mock-up of the Dragon module. So if they were going from the fact that the Dragon module’s intended to fly for a year, that’s not relevant, because it’s not flown yet.
I’m inclined to believe them, though: I’ve no reason to believe they got it wrong. If they’re right, it’s unlikely to have been the mock-up Dragon capsule: which means if it was the Falcon, it probably needs to be either the secondary burn, or the descent of stage 2.
Dewi, I would be most interested in seeing your model. Can you post it?
What model?
If you mean the paintshop pro work, I just took the ground track picture anaglyph linked, and rotated it in an art package. To get the line to be “flat”, I needed to rotate by +/-42 degrees. That’s not a model, and even if I post it, doesn’t prove anything unless you do it yourself (since I could SAY I rotated it by so-many degrees, but be lying). Still, I’ll post that anyway – gimme a minute.
If you mean the bit where I said “picture a globe” that’s something you’re meant to do in your head. It doesn’t seem hard to me, I tried to make the idea accessible. The wiki page on ground tracks should help too. If not, and you still don’t see how any inclined orbit will give a wiggly ground track, I guess I could make some pictures of orbits, both around a sphere, and unrolled, so you can see how one maps to another.
I’ll post my link in good faith hoping that analglyph does the same.
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2010/06/04/falcon-launch.html
Interestingly enough it states that a test run of the Falcon 1 in 2008 “resulted in the loss of three government satellites”.
That’s sure not well known, can’t even find that information on wiki. Do I think we know all there is to know about the Falcon? Hell no! Are we ever going to find out? Highly unlikely.
I’m looking forward to seeing it Dewie.
Btw if anything in the CBC article is incorrect, don’t you think they would have had to retract it by now?
For an added bonus, you should check out the history of Elon Musk co founder of Tesla Motors and co founder of SpaceX.
Whee!
I got my spacetrack id accepted, so let’s see what we get when I login to that website. [All the following is intended for members of that site only. If you aren’t a member, please register there before reading further (you think that covered my ass enough?)]
Catalog Number: 36595
Common Name: DRAGON/FALCON 9 R/B
International Designator: 2010-026A
Country: US
Launch Date: 2010-06-04
Launch Site: AFETR (AIR FORCE EASTERN TEST RANGE)
Period: 89.45
Incl.: 34.5
Apogee: 261
Perigee: 234
RCS: 12.5893
Last Element Set Data:
1 36595U 10026A 10163.53449698 .00351789 59467-4 33437-3 0 268
2 36595 034.4968 345.9902 0019690 294.4147 065.5040 16.10327516 1252
Decay Date: (left blank)
Current Decay Messages (last 30 days): None
Current Decay Prediction Messages (TIP Messages): None
60 Day Decay Forecast:
Predicted Decay Date: 2010-06-17
RCS: 0
Element Set Data:
1 36595U 10026A 10163.53449698 .00351789 59467-4 33437-3 0 268
2 36595 034.4968 345.9902 0019690 294.4147 065.5040 16.10327516 1252
1 36595U 10026A 10162.91453097 .00333080 52757-4 32551-3 0 251
2 36595 034.4968 350.4572 0020266 289.9685 069.8764 16.09886317 1159
1 36595U 10026A 10162.85252607 .00332443 52516-4 32629-3 0 248
2 36595 034.4969 350.9055 0019776 285.9683 073.8889 16.09845052 1142
1 36595U 10026A 10161.92226248 .00303738 43219-4 31058-3 0 236
2 36595 034.4965 357.6066 0019915 278.5954 081.2506 16.09223153 991
1 36595U 10026A 10161.79820116 .00300990 42373-4 30944-3 0 224
2 36595 034.4965 358.4995 0019814 275.8064 084.0506 16.09145982 973
Not a hell of a lot of data, and I’m not sure what much of it means.
It’s only got info on one object, though, not two, which is annoying. I want SEPARATE data for stage 2 and the dragon mockup, and it doesn’t say which this is.
I searched for both “Falcon” and “Dragon”, and also anything launched this month (full list below), so I don’t think I missed anything.
It’s possible that they never detached the dragon module from stage 2, and intend to retrieve them together?
There’s a few useful things worthy of comment.
1) The estimated decay date: 2010-06-17.
So whatever it is that it’s tracking (and I’m guessing it’s just the dragon module, but it might be both together?), comes down on the 17th, and can only be the spiral if the spiral came from the secondary burn.
I suspect the “element set data” defines the orbit, but
2) The inclination is confirmed at 34.5 degrees, which means quite large ground path “wiggle”.
3) The apogee and perigee are confirmed, giving us a very nearly circular orbit, elliptical by only 30 units (miles or km? It doesn’t say!), or +/-4% – I’m thinking that shouldn’t affect the ground path much.
4) The data is not classified (the “U” in the element sets), and I’m safe to give it out without being hunted down by government goons.
I’m not sure what apogee and perigee are measured relative to, though.
I’m guessing relative to ground level, but WHICH ground level?
Earth’s equator diameter: 7926.28 miles
Earth’s polar diameter: 7899.80 miles
Like the ellipticness, though, I suspect it doesn’t matter much.
The “two line mean element set” (aka “2LMES”, “two-line-elset”, “TLE”) are explained in detail here:
http://celestrak.com/columns/v04n03/#FAQ01
Unfortunately, I’m being yelled at as I’ve got a ton of work (and a meeting in 10mins I’ve not prepped for), so I’ll have to leave further analysis of that to anyone who feels like it. But I’ll have time to come back to it in a day or two, so if nobody’s done a ground track by then, I’ll have a bash myself.
Oh, that pic I promised:
http://www.dewimorgan.com/files/42.5degrees.jpg
I’ve rotated by 42.5 degrees each way, which is as flat as I could get it.
The fact that it’s the same angle both ways suggests it’s a valid ground track, but whether it’s the Falcon’s remains to be seen.
Full list of launches this month that it’s tracking and is willing to show me:
2010-023A SERVIS 2
2010-023B SL-19 R/B
2010-024A BEIDOU G3
2010-024B CZ-3C R/B
2010-025A ARABSAT 5B
2010-025B BREEZE-M R/B
2010-025C BREEZE-M DEB
2010-026A DRAGON/FALCON 9 R/B
Thanks for all your hard work Dewie. I checked out your “pic” last night but am unable to access it now? What’s up with that?
I haven’t come across anything that says the stage 2 detached from the Dragon either.
Check this link out because it’s unclear why discover magazine refuses to post it and have refused any further comments from me. Sadly I’ve been buying discover magazine for years:
http://cheniere.org/techpapers/on_extracting_EM%20energy.htm
It explains energy from a vacuum which I believe is part of the Merlin engine on Falcon 9. Kuhnigget believes that I think energy from a vacuum means that’s its extracted from space, lol.
Kuhnigget here.
You are lying, Mr./Ms. Justsayupyours.
I caught you in every single one of your paranoid delusions, and you can’t seem to deal with that.
Check it out, here:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/06/05/oh-those-falcon-ufos/
Mr./Ms. justsayupyours’ delightful fantasies being toward the bottom of the thread.
Judging by his record, Mr./Ms. Justsayupyours does not score very high in the reading comprehension category.
Tell me, do you just roam the blogosphere, searching for new people to annoy?
I gave up Kuhnigget – there’s really no point in trying to talk to someone who doesn’t understand even the very basic ideas behind orbital mechanics. Justsayupyours still doesn’t understand why an orbit ground track appears sinusoidal on a flat map. It’s not worth the effort.
I’m not lying, kukhead, as you can see by an email from Joe yesterday, it’s true.
“I am very sorry for the trouble you are having with the site. It’s possible your comments were caught in our spam filter and automatically deleted. The filter automatically filters posts with off-color keywords and also posts that have more than 2 links in them, because that’s a common spam characteristic.”
The funny thing is, only one had anything off colour when I asked if jetforme pulled those coordinates out of his ass. And as Dewie explained there are no coordinates for stage2/Dragon. Got a problem with that asshole?
No, no problem with THAT, Mr./Ms. Justsayupyours.
What I have a problem with is cranks who make false statements, e.g. “Kuhnigget believes that I think energy from a vacuum means that’s its extracted from space, lol.”
Which is so obviously contradicted by YOUR post on the BadAstronomy blog, e.g. ” The Merlin motor on the Falcon 9 incorporated energy from a vacuum. Proof that free energy is already patented.”
I realize your reading skills are nil, but I hadn’t realized this included your own blathering posts.
Oh, but then I guess you were unaware “space” is largely a vacuum. Or maybe your were thinking Lectrolux or Dyson?
G’day, sir or madam. Carry on your crank.
Dewi – the Dragon module and the 2nd stage didn’t separate as far as I can tell. At least that’s the implication on the SpaceX site although they don’t specifically say that. Also, commentary elsewhere seems to confirm that.
(Your pic worked fine for me btw)
It’s also working for me again too. Where are you Dewie? They didn’t throw you in the hoosegow, did they?
An update that I realised a couple of nights ago: my rotation that showed that the jetforme trace was wrong assumed that in the projection he’d chosen, one mile of latitude was the same distance in vertical pixels as one mile of longitude was in horizontal pixels. This is usually not the case for most projections. So the trace may or may not be off by a few degrees, and looking at the ground trace won’t tell us that for sure: looking at a globe, would.
Your ground tracks were posted at https://www.tetherdcow.com/?p=8350
You’re now being lambasted by a chap called “justsayupyours”, who appears to have not the slightest clue about… well, anything, really.
You might want to check it out, if only for amusement value :)
Also, I posted something kinda stupid there myself: I rotated your pics and declared that they had the wrong inclination (41.5 instead of 34.5 if I remember right). But of course, that only holds true if one pixel in x = one pixel in y at the equator in your chosen projection. And there’s no reason it should. So, I FAIL at basic logic. Sorry.
Think I’d best comment on that. Not that I think it’ll enlighten this justsayupyours guy, but it might help others who read it.
Heh – embarrassing paste at the bottom of that comment. Oh, well :)
For some reason, embarrassing fuckups are made much less embarrassing by telling everyone about them.
I guess you really let the cat out of the bag, didn’t you?
Ayup! Gloriously embarrassing! :D
So now you know (based on the fact that I’d be unlikely to have that in my clipboard to mispaste, unless I’d just written it) that I just warned jetforme that he’s being talked about. Not embarrassing, that bit, though.
What was crushingly embarrassing was that you also know that I think you’re amusingly clueless, and resistant to enlightenment.
And yeah, that’s true, though I’d rather have deliberately said that to you, than say it accidentally. That just feels *wrong* :(
Which made me wonder – is it better to be nice to people, to try to calm the waters and encourage less aggressive dialog, or is it better to just say what you think of people to their faces, even when it’s unrelated to the topic, and likely to be damaging to the debate? I think it’s better to be polite, but if I’m going to do that, I *also* need to be polite about people when I’m speaking *about* them, as well as *to*.
Which is a long way of saying: I dissed you behind your back, which is an unpleasant thing to do, probably hurtful to find out, and I’m sorry.
In future, I’ll try not to say things behind people’s backs that I wouldn’t say to their faces.
The reason I remain interested in this topic isn’t because I think there’s a secret to uncover, or because of your haranguing, but because it’s an interesting puzzle, and figuring it out might be useful to those who come later.
It’s looking like the two halves didn’t separate, and haven’t come down. Far as I can tell, that leaves us with a single possibility that might match the falcon+dragon to the sky-spiral: they were tumbling, and did a secondary burn. For that, we need orbital data for that period (so we can say when and where they were, when their orbit changed); or else, we need to know the times and locations of the burns from some other means.
Space-track’s not got that data – it only stores the most recent. Which is frustrating. And since you seem to have taken a personal dislike to him just based on his groundtracks, you probably wouldn’t accept the orbital data from jetforme either, even if he has them: we need another, official and independent source. But I don’t know of any sites other than spacetrack. Grr.
Btw kukhead, you did nothing to “set me straight”, all you did was look like an effing freak. How were you able to attack me like that, even though the rules are that you can’t?
Did you get a chance to read over the link from cheniere.org ? Did you get a chance to dig some dirt on Tom Beardan yet, so anything he says will mean nothing because he’s a nutter or something?
One thing I did learn is that discover magazine will only post US government approved articles. Sadly I’m not buying their crap anymore.
Yes I do believe that. Because the Merlin uses energy from a vacuum which can be explained here, for your convenience:
http://www.cheniere.org/techpapers/Tech_Rpt_2008.pdf
Since this is being used in the Falcon 9 that means there is a patent on it. Otherwise they would not be able to use that technology without the inventor’s agreement.
But since you mentioned it, I have noticed a real push against those creating free energy already. For example John Hutchison, recently Steven Greer and Orion Project. Somebody doesn’t want free energy, who could that be?
Well if you look at history you will see that the FBI confiscated all of Tesla’s inventions when he died in 1943. And currently through FOIA the FBI only lists about a dozen patents. And since Tesla museum has 278 patents listed, I would say the FBI are missing a few. Ironically enough Elon Musk co-founder of SpaceX is also co-founder of Tesla Motors. Coincidence?
Well, what a surprise. He’s a free energy nutcase and a Tesla conspiracist as well.
Mr./Ms. Justsayupyours cannot comprehend written text. Therefore he/she reads this, from a wikipedia release:
The upper stage is powered by a single Merlin engine modified for vacuum operation
…and concludes the engine is magically getting free energy from “the vacuum” of space. This, despite the fact the following information, also from wikipedia, was directly quoted to him/her:
Merlin Vacuum
On March 10, 2009 a SpaceX press release announced successful testing of the Merlin Vacuum engine. A variant of the 1C engine, Merlin Vacuum features a larger exhaust section and a significantly larger expansion nozzle to maximize the engine’s efficiency in the vacuum of space. Its combustion chamber is regeneratively cooled while the niobium alloy[1] expansion nozzle is radiatively cooled. The engine delivers a vacuum thrust of 92,500 lbf (411 kN) and a vacuum specific impulse of 342 seconds.[13] The first production Merlin Vacuum engine underwent a full duration orbital insertion firing (329 seconds) of the integrated Falcon 9 second stage on January 2, 2010.[14]. It was flown on the second stage for the inaugural Falcon 9 flight on June 4, 2010. At full power the Merlin Vacuum engine operates with the greatest efficiency ever for an American-made hydrocarbon rocket engine.
What is that loud cranking noise I hear?
It’s the sound of your head splitting open because you STILL don’t understand what energy from a vacuum means. I posted two links already to explain it to you, but I can’t read it for you. It’s not my problem that you can’t comprehend it. You were the only one insinuating that energy from a vacuum is taken from outer space. What a stupid shit you are.
It’s no use kuhnigget. Everything he reads is overshadowed by his illogical preconceptions and paranoid delusions.
Talk about preconceptions. You are the one who is perfectly fine with the Falcon 9 explanation. I’m not. Whatever you do, never ever question jetforme’s ground track even though we know that those coordinates have never been released for public consumption, confirmed by Dewie. That’s funny that you think that shouldn’t be questioned. You would do well in the military.
Jetforme used the same source I did, which is why he says “based on Space-Track orbital elements for the Falcon 9 R/B”: he’s just a rocket ham/space fan. However, while my results above are datasets 22-26, I imagine he got earlier ones, since he went to the site earlier. So, the data was, at the time, all publicly available, far as I can see. You can get what I got yourself, all you need to do is sign up, check the “I’m a hobbyist” checkbox, and wait a couple days.
Still don’t have time to code up a 2LMES orbital simulator, though. In case I ever do, here are the latest data sets (sets 33-37)
DRAGON/FALCON 9 R/B
1 36595U 10026A 10167.55984032 .00480959 12099-3 36604-3 0 372
2 36595 034.4960 316.9127 0018355 336.6559 023.3394 16.13613583 1905
1 36595U 10026A 10166.75545724 .00428188 93349-4 34302-3 0 360
2 36595 034.4953 322.7345 0019569 326.5508 033.4013 16.12823737 1772
1 36595U 10026A 10166.50787823 .00432223 94879-4 35178-3 0 356
2 36595 034.4960 324.5273 0019096 325.0917 034.8693 16.12620893 1736
1 36595U 10026A 10166.19835451 .00421673 89664-4 34947-3 0 347
2 36595 034.4960 326.7650 0019308 321.8136 038.1182 16.12350129 1688
1 36595U 10026A 10165.82686266 .00414323 85968-4 35052-3 0 338
2 36595 034.4960 329.4497 0019556 317.8347 042.0964 16.12041401 1627
As for cheniere.org: If you can make overunity devices, make ’em and sell ’em. We electronic engineers will love you forever: the low power capacity of batteries is one of the biggest things holding us back from being able to do a whole range of awesome things. Like freaking awesome flying robots. Wearable computing. Electric cars. Flying cars.
Don’t talk about it: nobody’s interested in hearing what they’ve heard claimed a million times before. Don’t claim to build just one prototype that fails to work as soon as independent observers are given one to play with. Make MANY. Put them in devices. Show people them working. Show a high-power device working for hours off one of them. Make a car that runs on them.
Free yourself from the electrical grid, and everyone else will follow.
But talk? Talk’s cheap. Nobody wants to know what you *think* you can do: they want to know what you’ve *done*.
My link above was wrong, I meant http://www.flickr.com/photos/jetforme/sets/72157624209104176/
The jetforme groundtrack makes sense. Your disjointed assertions don’t. That’s the difference. As Dewi has demonstrated below, you can do the science yourself and verify what I already knew would be the case because it is sensible.
Just as I don’t need to actually put my hand on an active hotplate to know it’s hot, I can use my brains to understand something that has sound scientific basis. Jetforme’s groundtrack is rational. Your ideas about things like ‘free’ energy and weather manipulation are irrational. You don’t know how to read a groundtrack, as is plain from all your waffle above, so to you it seems mysterious and suspicious. But it’s not if you understand what you’re looking at.
I don’t know how to explain this in any clearer way to you. You WANT there to be a hidden agenda and so you continue to find it no matter what.
Yeah, I should know better. Tried to guide him gently at first, but quickly found out he’s permanently off the tracks. Oh well. Cheerio.
Don’t let the door hit your fat ass on the way out.
Pip pip and cheerio and all that crap.
Analgraph, your disjointed assertions claimed that the second stage came down after the second orbit. And you didn’t believe it would orbit for the next year. What? No comment about your inaccuracies?
But somehow you KNOW that this spiral was the Falcon 9? Laughable at best.
Can we dispense with the lame potty-mouth name calling? If you think it’s clever, it’s not, and if you think it will offend me you’ll have to try a lot harder than that. It just makes you look like a petulant teenager.
OK, I admit I made a mistake about the orbit duration. I misread the SpaceX site. How long the thing is up there hardly matters in respect to my assertion that the rocket was over Australia at the right time to account for the spiral UFO sighting.
Now, let’s hear you admit any one of your multiple egregious mistakes:
•Admit that the video you linked showing ‘lasers being used to induce weather’ shows nothing of the sort, but is instead demonstrating that lasers can make water vapour on a very small scale in a cloud chamber.
•Admit that you think that energy can be somehow ‘retrieved’ from a vacuum and used to do work (and please don’t paste the link to the TE Bearden document again – it proves exactly nothing. Bearden is a well known conspiracist and free-energy crank with no proper scientific credentials and is hardly an authoritative source.)
•Admit that you haven’t the foggiest idea how to read an orbital groundtrack, or why a circular or elliptical orbit appears as a sinusoidal path on a flat map.
As for your assertion that I ‘KNOW’ the spiral seen over Australia was the Falcon 9 – I never said that. My contention is that all the available evidence suggests overwhelmingly that this is the case, and that is the conclusion that any rational person would come to. If you can provide any evidence to suggest it was something else, then do so. So far all you have done is try and pick holes (incompetently) in the probable explanation. If the spiral was not the SpaceX flight, then what was it that was over the coast of Australia at exactly the same time that the Falcon 9 was there? Or are you going to tell me it was just a ‘coincidence’ that the spiral happened then?
Okay Dewie, why do you feel I need “enlightenment” from your “little group”? I have every right to question that ground track, as should any thinking person.
Another thing just struck me, if the Falcon 9 can go around the world in 90 minutes, then it should be in an east to west orbital path (not the other way around as is claimed). But unlike yourselves I would be willing to look at the “possibility” that the ground track is from west to east. And confirmation of such, lol.
>> if the Falcon 9 can go around the world in 90 minutes, then it should be in an east to west orbital path (not the other way around as is claimed).
Why?
Dewie, I will only accept your apology if you pm jetforme again and tell him, that I’m not ONLY amusing, but also educational too. Come on admit it, you’ve learned a thing or two from my postings about the falcon 9 that you didn’t know before.
[Giving up on “reply” – all these nested answers just make my head hurt]
You’re educational at least in that you drive me to find out stuff when trying to prove you wrong. Which is fun!
What we got wrong so far.
Just to summarise how far we’ve come :)
JustSay got a few things wrong:
– “supposed to be in orbit for a year”
– “energy from a vacuum which I believe is part of the Merlin engine on Falcon 9”.
– “it reached an ecliptical orbit, not a zig zagging one”
– “it should be in an east to west orbital path”. A retrograde orbit? Why would it take off in the direction opposite to the rotation of the earth, and do away with all that free velocity? Also, in that case, the inclination would then be listed as something greater than 90 degrees, probably 145.5 degrees (180-34.5).
– There’s no e on the end of my name :P It’s a Welsh name, nobody pronounces it right, either. *sigh*
The Rev gets a few things wrong (I think):
– Getting the orbital period wrong.
– The public feed didn’t die because the camera was out of radio range, but because they turned it off – or so I read on a news site, where it said something like “they said ‘this is a good day for spaceX’ before turning off the feed”. But I can’t find the damn page any more. My suspicion, if this is the case, is that they were they embarrassed by the roll, and the way it brought back ghosts of Falcon1.
And I’ve got a whole shedload if stuff wrong:
– Calculating the angle on the ground trace wrong, because of assumptions about the projection.
– Assuming dragon and second stage separated.
– Assuming dragon and/or second stage fell to earth.
– Claiming that ALL ground tracks are sinusoidal. All near-circular, low-orbit orbits with a greater-than-zero inclination are, though, and that’s what we’re dealing with, so the Falcon will be. High, elliptical orbits aren’t, and neither are geostationary, geosynchronous, or equatorial orbits. But none of those apply here anyway.
The Rev got some of these wrong too, so at least I’m not alone! :)
What we now know
I think we have narrowed in on some basic info that we have agreed on, after arguing it out and being mutually wrong. Let me know if there’s still any disagreement here.
– Nothing fell from orbit after the first stage. Falling stuff is not the source of the Australian spiral. (I had a nasty moment after writing that, because I read this and thought “what the crap? It fell??? But I have the datasets…” but then I read the date, and realised it was a very similar F1 flight from ’97)
– The Falcon9 and Dragon probably didn’t part company. We’re not 100% sure on this, but it seems quite a reasonable assumption given it’s being tracked by both names, and because we’ve not read anywhere of them separating, only “delivering the payload into orbit”.
– After the second stage burn, the Falcon9/Dragon was rolling, not tumbling. (they had this problem on Falcon1, too, but moreso, such that it shut down the burn, and fell to earth before one orbit).
– The Falcon9 team did another second stage burn at some point, which they called a “test burp”, to change the orbit slightly (maybe also to resolve the rolling? We don’t know). This burn is our current “best candidate” for the cause of the spiral. If we can show that some kind of maneuver took place about an hour after launch, over Australia, I’m happy to take that as sufficient evidence that the spiral was most likely the falcon firing its engines. If, on the other hand, we can rule this out, I’m quite happy to say that this spiral was most likely NOT the falcon.
– With a fairly circular orbit, Falcon9/Dragon will have a path that *could* put it in the right place and the right time. Jetforme’s tracks appear to be correct by every test I’ve thrown at them (see below).
– Orbital height and angle. I think we’re agreed on all this stuff. We just don’t have the technology yet to display it prettily. Though I just read an article “Falcon 9, Jupiter Impact” which would have meant it was WILDLY off course :P
Latest from Space-track:
They’ve moved the “predicted decay date”: it’s now saying “2010-06-19”. I’m guessing that’s GMT, so it’ll be coming down in a day or two, if they don’t move it again.
Latest sets, 40-44:
DRAGON/FALCON 9 R/B
1 36595U 10026A 10168.73463267 .00626866 21998-3 42849-3 0 448
2 36595 034.4947 308.3970 0018854 345.1798 014.8382 16.15107944 2099
1 36595U 10026A 10168.61103485 .00540914 00000-0 37267-3 0 432
2 36595 034.4967 309.2882 0019431 344.7768 015.2824 16.14868881 2074
1 36595U 10026A 10168.48744291 .00497587 00000-0 35261-3 0 421
2 36595 034.4957 310.1850 0016778 347.9378 012.1394 16.14602747 2055
1 36595U 10026A 10168.48740669 .00572580 00000-0 39819-3 0 415
2 36595 034.4949 310.1925 0019049 342.4243 017.6242 16.14759234 2050
1 36595U 10026A 10168.42559244 .00612095 20730-3 43210-3 0 406
2 36595 034.4948 310.6373 0017572 342.5460 017.5620 16.14720620 2047
Correcting my mistake
While not willing to get embroiled in a newbie flamewar, Jetforme tells me about his ground track: “The image is linear in lon/lat (that is, the center of the image is 0,0, the left edge is -180, the right +180, the bottom -90, the top +90. So, for example, halfway up between the center and top would be +45° lat.”
Handy! That makes checking the angle easier, because if I scale the image to be twice as wide as it is tall (one planet diameter wide, half a planet diametrer tall), then I don’t need to do any transforms for angles. The image I went from was 1387×828, only about 1.7 times as wide, “stretched” vertically a bit, so angles would have appeared a little bit larger than reality (which matches with what I found).
Rescaling to 1800×900 we now have a much more accurate way of measuring the azimuth.
At 900 pixels high, with a linear projection of latitude, every five pixels is exactly one degree of latitude. Each “wave” should be 34.5 degrees*5 pixels=172.5 pixels high. Let’s test that. The equator’s a couple of pixels wide, so’s the ground path, so I’ll measure from the middle of both… 172 pixels! Damn, that’s perfect to the nearest pixel. So the *inclination* of the track is accurate to within a pixel.
Just to doublecheck, I tried my rough and inaccurate method of rotating the image and seeing if it “looks flat”. Rotating by 34.5 and -34.5… hrm, seems closer to 36, to be honest. A 1.6 degree discrepancy is well within the error of this method, anyway, and would move the trace of only 8 pixels (only 4 times the thickness of the line itself) at the peak of each orbit curve, which still puts it passing comfortably over the right parts of Australia: just passing over a bit more of it.
For the Launch azimuth, I could only think of using the inaccurate method: I rotated anticlockwise by 69.68 degrees, and the line through Florida looks vertical (not horizontal, since it’s measured from due North, not from due East), which I think means it matches the calculation for the launch azimuth by Jim Oberg on the discovermagazine blog.
Last but not least, I needed to check the orbital period. We know from the data sets that this is 16.10327516 revolutions per day, with a period for each being 89.45 minutes.
Each degree of rotation takes the world (24*60)/360=4 minutes. If every degree is 4 minutes, and every degree is 5 pixels, then the earth rotates at 4/5=1.25 pixels/minute :)
So 89.45 minutes would be 112 pixels.
The two lines from the two passes cross the equator about 110-120 pixels apart (each track is about 5 pixels wide at that point, because of the diagonal, and my rescaling). And 112 is right in the middle of that range, which means the period of the diagram is right, too.
So, the launch azimuth, inclination and period all seem correct within my ability to measure. Which means the trace is at least “pretty damn close” to right. Good!
This can all be doublechecked by anyone with a paint package that can rotate by degrees, and measure pixels (mspaint is a bit too crap). Paintshop pro or the Gimp should do the job, though: both are available free. If anyone does that, please let me know whether you found any screwups anywhere.
The sun
Next question, since I’m on a roll: would it be lit by the sun at that time in the morning?
To answer this, we need to find how many degrees of the earth’s surface someone at Falcon9’s altitude can see.
the radius of their sight should (I think) be the angle formed by a right-angle triangle where the adjacent angle is the radius of the earth, and the hypotenuse is the radius plus the altitude.
Reasoning: draw a circle. Draw a flat horizontal line resting on the top of the circle – this is a beam of “sunlight”. Draw a dot somewhere along the line, a bit away from the circle. This is “a spacecraft that can just see sunlight”. Draw a line from the centre of the circle to the point where the sunlight touches the circle, to make a rightangle: this line will have the length of the circle’s radius, r. Draw another line from the centre of the circle to the spacecraft: this line has length r+a, where a is the spacecraft’s height. This triangle you have drawn is the one I describe.
Apogee: 261km = 162 miles
Perigee: 234km = 145miles
Earth’s equator: 7926.28 miles diameter = 3963.14 miles radius
Earth’s polar: 7899.80 miles diameter = 3949.9 miles radius
We’ll use equator diameter (largest) and perigee (smallest) to give the worst-case, using 3 sig figs throughout.
Cos X = r/(r+a)
X = ACos(3950/(3950+145)) = 15.3 degrees
That means it can see 15.3 degeres further around the earth than someone standing on the ground, with an altitude of 0.
We know each degree is 4 minutes, so that’s 61mins, 10 seconds more sunlight, worst case.
We know from Andrew on the DiscoverMagazine blog “I saw this light at 5.52am AEST, while fishing in Hervey Bay, QLD. my first thought was ‘this is not a ufo, this is the suns rays hitting something up high in the atmosphere’. But….30 mins later, the sun had still not risen, so I was confused. Sunrise was at 6.28am local time.” – so ifFalcon passed overhead, it could have been lit by sun since 5:27 local time, worst (latest) case.
So yes, its venting would have been sunlit.
celestrack
I’ve also found that celestrak.com gives historical datasets! This means we can find roughly when (ie between which two datasets) the orbit changed.
I’ve used their form to ask for the historical data :)
Anyone who wants to verify can use the same form: the NORAD catalog number is 36595, the same as in the data sets.
VERY comprehensive. I doff my hat to your mad space skillz. Just a few things:
I’m pretty sure now that the second stage and the Dragon capsule never separated. I initially thought that, but after reading further realised that there was no evidence to assume so – it makes little difference to the idea that the spiral UFO was the Falcon 9 (in whatever formation it was in). I did mistakenly think that the flight was terminated after the second orbit – I had several pages of the SpaceX site loaded and read info about Falcon 1’s fourth flight as pertaining to Falcon 9. Dumb. Mea culpa.
As far as sinusoidal groundtracks go – well, obviously it would be hard to defend the idea that geostationary orbits make sinusoidal groundtracks since they are, well, geostationary. I should have been more careful with the ‘ALL’. As far as high elliptical orbits are concerned, I suggest that they are still sinusoidal unless they are also equatorial. Anything that doesn’t follow the equator and goes around the planet must map to a sinusoidal pattern. In fact, the ‘amplitude’ of the sine wave increases in proportion to the angle of tilt that the orbit has away from the equator – the shape of the orbit only effects the shape of the sine pattern, NOT its inherent sine-wave-ishness. Of course, the closer that orbit gets to geostationary, the more the sine wave damps down until the satellite is completely stationary and therefore there is no groundtrack at all. All that being said, I think it is plain that anything launched from the surface that doesn’t track directly around the equator (and nothing is launched like that to my knowledge) inscribes a sinusoidal track on its first orbit at least. And the first orbit is the ONLY one we care about in this instance.
The question of the video feed being terminated or going out of range is an interesting one – in the SpaceX launch video the technician specifically says that they expect to lose the video signal as the vehicle goes over the horizon. He later confirms that as having happened when the feed does die. Now the report you read is in contradiction to that. There is nothing to indicate to me that the SpaceX commentary is in error here, and since it makes good technical sense, I’m going with it. To suggest anything else without some substantiation is to invoke conspiracy again. (incidentally, on re-listening to this, the technician says quite plainly: ‘Falcon 9 Stage 2 and the Dragon capsule are now in orbit around the earth.’ This indicates the capsule and the second stage were together in orbit.)
It’s interesting to look at the video having the hindsight that the rotation of the craft was unexpected. As it starts to spin, there is a lot of ‘Everything is nominal’ and ‘Looking good’ interspersed with long silences. There was plainly a bit of discussion going on while the mics were turned off… This makes sense – there’s a LOT riding on the success of this mission. They clearly wanted it to look as flawless as possible.
But still, no reason to invoke conspiracy. This is an expensive commercial enterprise. They are covering their asses.
Ground tracks
“As far as high elliptical orbits are concerned, I suggest that they are still sinusoidal unless they are also equatorial.”
Nah, I’m gonna disagree with you about elliptical orbits. Unless your definition of “sinusoidal” is different to mine :)
Thing about elliptical orbits is that, as you know, they’re circles squished to have two foci, one close to each end. The centre of gravity (in this case, the centre of the earth) is located at one of these. So for a BIG orbit (definitely not low earth, something big), the close approach is very fast and covers the closest 180 degrees around that focus pretty fast. Then do to the other 180, it has to go aaaaall the way to the other focus, go round that, and come aaaaall the way back again. Obviously, that takes longer. So the ground track moves… slower!
And, of course, the world turns.
Because of this, you end up with orbits like the Molnya one shown here, or the figure-8 of the geosynchronous ones (which are like the geostationary ones, but with a non-zero inclination), and so on.
http://science.nasa.gov/realtime/jtrack/3d/JTrack3D.html is DEFINITELY worth playing with if you have Java – it’s beautiful. Click view->ground trace, and Satellite->select. Leave the select window open, it’s handy.
Go full screen, shift-click to zoom in until the earth fills the screen, then Select Options->update rate->1/4 second, and Options->timing->real-time together, to really show the speed these things belt around in low earth orbit, like ETS7.
For some interesting ground tracks, try:
ACTS: geosynchronous, figure-8.
IUE: an extreme version of this.
AO-40: I have no idea what this would be useful for…
CLUSTER II/whatever: strongly elliptical, they whoosh by the northern hemisphere, but take days over the southern. INTEGRAL and Chandra do the same thing, but the other way up.
DOUBLESTAR: isn’t this one beautiful?
DUMMY MASS 1 & 2: normal high-inclination orbits, but the name made me lol. Russian sats.
IMAGE: amusing.
SIRIUS-1, 2, and 3 – combines elliptical with geosynchronous, to nice effect: it means it spends most of its time over North America. There are 3 of them, with orbits spaced out, so there’s always cover.
rolling
The NasaSpaceFlight forum about this has people claiming to see one or two brief roll corrections during the video, but those are by the engines. Once those get turned off, you lose the ability to use them to control roll.
Poster “jcm” at comment #955 (page 64 of that thread) writes:
“More TLEs on Space-Track. Looks like the orbit is now 243 x 273 km (mean elements relative to 6378 km sphere) and there was a burn at the end of the first orbit, around 2025 UTC. This ‘burp’ (per Elon) gave about 5m/s orbit change so was probably about 0.1 seconds in duration for a propellant consumption of around 14 kg.”
Now, 20:25 looks too late to be it: the spiral was around 19:50. But since they only take sets every few hours, it could still fit in there, and we could find exactly where, by finding the intersection of the two sets. Which means getting the historical data.
•Sinusoidal... OK, I have to be more careful with my terms. I’ll whack my own knuckles with the ruler for punishment. I will qualify: objects in orbit (unless they are strictly equatorial) transcribe anything EXCEPT a completely straight line (or a single curve) on a flat map projection of the globe, which is what justsayupyours was expecting. He was upset by the ‘zig zaggy line’ on the jetforme map. He didn’t expect to see that, and yet, that’s exactly what you expect to see on any normal launch orbit. Further to that, a launch trajectory will always be sinusoidal (and I mean strictly sinusoidal now), at least until the vehicle takes up a proper orbit.
Can I have that one?
•Rolling: Yes, agreed. That gels with the commentary on the video. It possibly explains the ‘spiral’ too – only speculation, but maybe they attempted to vent some fuel to control the roll. Or maybe it was just a normal part of operations, accented by the unexpected rotation of the vehicle.
Yeah, you can have that one, but only because there are no normally-used launch sites* right on the equator! :P
(* that I know of)
Didja see that app?
I noticed something. Those geosynchronous orbits. They’re all inclined the same way. If you look at the geostationary ring edge on, and rotate it, the inclined geosynch orbits all go above it one one side, below it on the other.
I assume this is a convention that people have come up with, but I can’t think of any reason for it. Maybe reduced collision possibilities?
Further orbit observations:
•There are quite a few equatorial satellites – many more than I would have thought likely. All seem to be WAY out in space. I guess there is a reason for this, love to know what.
•The Iridium network is massive – 66 of the suckers plus spares! Now I can see why it was such a big deal.
•And yup, they really do pelt around. Nice applet!
Ah, some few more details.
http://www.spacelaunchreport.com/falcon9.html has some info, but http://www.spacelaunchreport.com/, is I suspect more recent, and contains much juicy info:
“During a teleconference after the launch, Elon Musk of SpaceX stated that the second stage Merlin Vacuum engine had performed a brief “burp” restart during its first orbit as an engineering test, but provided no details of the burn. Jonathan McDowell subsequently reported, on June 8, that a planned restart of the Merlin Vacuum engine had failed 54 minutes after liftoff.
Observers in eastern Australia saw the stage pass overhead about 65 minutes after liftoff. Video of the pass showed that the stage was still rotating out of control, venting gas to form a spiral pattern. The relationship of the reported engine restart failure and the spiral gas pattern remains uncertain.”
So, an engine restart after 54 minutes, a spiral at 65 minutes, ground tracks that show it in the right place at the right time, and the sun in the right place too. I think we have a smoking gun, and am happy to consider this one proven as best we can prove it.
I don’t think there’s anything further we can find out or show, though I might still run those historical sets through some software if I get them.
Like I said from the beginning. And I know you like the chase, but I have to say Occam’s Razor got us there faster…
If there’s any evidence to say it was something else, justsayupyours, pony it up and let’s see how much plausibility it contains.
Oh – and I’ll admit to another error on my part as well: I thought there were no rotational adjustments on the Falcon 9. That’s wrong. They were in fact making adjustments as the vehicle climbed into orbit – the technician plainly says so. But the fact that the vehicle went out of their ability to control helps, rather than hinders, the argument for the Falcon 9 being the UFO. As I said above, an ‘unexpected’ event isn’t expected. SpaceX did have some correctional methods for what they expected to happen, but got caught out on something they didn’t. The craft was rotating out of control – it is possible that by the time it came over the Australian coast they were trying some tricks to get it stable again. Who knows? But it’s all well within the bounds of explanation of the spiral UFO.
Guess what I got in my inbox this morning?
Anaglyph: couldja feex the pre tags if they don’t show up?
=====================================================================
36595 2010-026A DRAGON & FALCON 9 R/B
Launched: 2010-06-04 (155) Start Date: 2010-06-01 (152)
Decayed: Stop Date: 2010-06-18 (169)
=====================================================================
1 36595U 10026A 10155.83670785 -.00000212 67405-6 00000+0 0 10
2 36595 34.5005 41.2862 0030715 213.7590 146.1185 16.06552645 09
1 36595U 10026A 10155.89887927 -.00851134 25274-3 -10876-2 0 23
2 36595 34.4954 40.8438 0022796 216.0518 143.8299 16.05676161 22
1 36595U 10026A 10155.89888577 -.00071120 26925-5 -89872-4 0 35
2 36595 34.4959 40.8457 0023426 215.3412 144.5792 16.05718329 23
1 36595U 10026A 10155.91803255 .00078673 32520-5 10000-3 0 41
2 36595 34.4959 40.7086 0023426 215.5471 255.2519 16.05715940 20
1 36595U 10026A 10155.97904472 .00439973 88238-4 55636-3 0 77
2 36595 34.4971 40.2633 0022999 217.3370 246.7977 16.05806525 33
1 36595U 10026A 10156.02805006 .00343490 52833-4 43417-3 0 71
2 36595 34.4969 39.9138 0022570 218.3435 169.5903 16.05827617 40
1 36595U 10026A 10156.08537067 .00462902 98305-4 58306-3 0 84
2 36595 34.4967 39.5065 0022228 219.1864 140.7251 16.05909220 57
1 36595U 10026A 10156.39614309 .00364534 59967-4 45366-3 0 99
2 36595 34.4974 37.2811 0021831 222.6006 137.2984 16.06110482 100
1 36595U 10026A 10156.76902451 .00317383 45254-4 39013-3 0 106
2 36595 34.4974 34.6095 0021559 226.5675 133.3168 16.06315415 167
1 36595U 10026A 10156.83116748 .00318055 45474-4 39007-3 0 115
2 36595 34.4969 34.1667 0021523 226.6347 133.2500 16.06352623 171
1 36595U 10026A 10156.89330925 .00358678 58212-4 44040-3 0 129
2 36595 34.4955 33.7169 0020990 223.9193 135.9790 16.06361902 185
1 36595U 10026A 10157.07972142 .00309202 43015-4 37611-3 0 134
2 36595 34.4966 32.3837 0021226 229.8294 130.0532 16.06494966 215
1 36595U 10026A 10157.84425758 .00288424 37555-4 34312-3 0 145
2 36595 34.4972 26.9003 0020090 239.2950 230.6252 16.06894423 339
1 36595U 10026A 10157.88738827 .00277922 34839-4 33010-3 0 151
2 36595 34.4965 26.5941 0020369 236.5427 123.3357 16.06906369 344
1 36595U 10026A 10158.01162436 .00279936 35389-4 33115-3 0 158
2 36595 34.4967 25.7039 0020207 238.3639 121.5115 16.06976738 362
1 36595U 10026A 10158.88112487 .00287690 37679-4 33024-3 0 164
2 36595 34.4971 19.4663 0019668 248.0606 111.8023 16.07468204 502
1 36595U 10026A 10159.00531734 .00289371 38169-4 33068-3 0 171
2 36595 34.4971 18.5748 0019598 249.3698 110.4940 16.07540769 525
1 36595U 10026A 10159.81243034 .00296391 40359-4 32822-3 0 185
2 36595 34.4969 12.7778 0019923 256.3045 103.5485 16.08010579 650
1 36595U 10026A 10159.93658060 .00296804 40515-4 32671-3 0 193
2 36595 34.4967 11.8853 0020394 257.4860 102.3599 16.08080735 679
1 36595U 10026A 10159.99865371 .00297671 40780-4 32690-3 0 192
2 36595 34.4967 11.4388 0020373 258.4261 101.4178 16.08117657 689
1 36595U 10026A 10160.80549165 .00289623 38825-4 30920-3 0 205
2 36595 34.4966 5.6412 0020144 265.3931 94.4507 16.08559208 812
1 36595U 10026A 10160.92959983 .00291610 39412-4 30981-3 0 211
2 36595 34.4963 4.7478 0020161 267.5613 92.2801 16.08632019 838
1 36595U 10026A 10160.99165202 .00292057 39557-4 30958-3 0 211
2 36595 34.4963 4.3015 0020131 268.5059 91.3357 16.08668001 840
1 36595U 10026A 10161.79820116 .00300990 42373-4 30944-3 0 224
2 36595 34.4965 358.4995 0019814 275.8064 84.0506 16.09145982 973
1 36595U 10026A 10161.92226248 .00303738 43219-4 31058-3 0 236
2 36595 34.4965 357.6066 0019915 278.5954 81.2506 16.09223153 991
1 36595U 10026A 10162.85252607 .00332443 52516-4 32629-3 0 248
2 36595 34.4969 350.9055 0019776 285.9683 73.8889 16.09845052 1142
1 36595U 10026A 10162.91453097 .00333080 52757-4 32551-3 0 251
2 36595 34.4968 350.4572 0020266 289.9685 69.8764 16.09886317 1159
1 36595U 10026A 10163.53449698 .00351789 59467-4 33437-3 0 268
2 36595 34.4968 345.9902 0019690 294.4147 65.5040 16.10327516 1252
1 36595U 10026A 10163.84440696 .00353852 60391-4 33100-3 0 270
2 36595 34.4963 343.7573 0020255 297.0279 62.8359 16.10536859 1302
1 36595U 10026A 10163.90638599 .00355712 61094-4 33171-3 0 285
2 36595 34.4963 343.3114 0020280 297.8371 62.0297 16.10581772 1316
1 36595U 10026A 10164.52608857 .00355910 61587-4 32283-3 0 299
2 36595 34.4965 338.8408 0019925 304.9226 54.9851 16.11005697 1411
1 36595U 10026A 10164.83586954 .00362444 64186-4 32378-3 0 301
2 36595 34.4962 336.6069 0019901 308.0092 51.8848 16.11230315 1461
1 36595U 10026A 10164.89782132 .00364123 64853-4 32421-3 0 310
2 36595 34.4962 336.1592 0019955 308.9401 50.9550 16.11276126 1470
1 36595U 10026A 10165.14561124 .00371395 67777-4 32668-3 0 315
2 36595 34.4962 334.3706 0019769 311.4853 48.4254 16.11463266 1511
1 36595U 10026A 10165.51724046 .00401386 80099-4 34549-3 0 327
2 36595 34.4961 331.6880 0019713 314.2600 45.7210 16.11783050 1577
1 36595U 10026A 10165.82686266 .00414323 85968-4 35052-3 0 338
2 36595 34.4960 329.4497 0019556 317.8347 42.0964 16.12041401 1627
1 36595U 10026A 10166.19835451 .00421673 89664-4 34947-3 0 347
2 36595 34.4960 326.7650 0019308 321.8136 38.1182 16.12350129 1688
1 36595U 10026A 10166.75545724 .00428188 93349-4 34302-3 0 360
2 36595 34.4953 322.7345 0019569 326.5508 33.4013 16.12823737 1772
1 36595U 10026A 10167.74541018 .00497631 13055-3 37302-3 0 381
2 36595 34.4955 315.5649 0018658 337.6592 22.3578 16.13815014 1936
1 36595U 10026A 10168.11648281 .00576107 18037-3 41823-3 0 398
2 36595 34.4948 312.8787 0017933 339.4808 20.6805 16.14308939 1990
1 36595U 10026A 10168.73463267 .00626866 21998-3 42849-3 0 448
2 36595 34.4947 308.3970 0018854 345.1798 14.8382 16.15107944 2099
Interestingly, note that some numbers are repeated, and some skipped. It goes 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 15… (last entry on line 1 is the sequence number: ignore the last character, which is the checksum).
This is because the data has clearly been tampered with and as a member of the global conspiracy, I’ve deleted the important bits.
Or perhaps, to quote Celestrak, “Field 1.13 represents the element set number. Normally, this number is incremented each time a new element set is generated. In practice, however, this doesn’t always happen. When operations switch between the primary and backup Space Control Centers, sometimes the element set numbers get out of sync, with some numbers being reused and others skipped. Unfortunately, this makes it difficult to tell if you have all the element sets for a particular object.”
I think we all know that the conspiracy theory is much more interesting, though, so is probably true.
Wow, good job you guys, pat yourselves on the back. I on the other hand, stand by my mistakes, lol.
Actually Dewi (with no e, sorry) the Dragon/Falcon WILL be in orbit for the next year. It only lists June 18, 2010 (now the 19th) as the ending date for their mission. That does not mean it is coming back to earth.
Anaglyph said “Of course, the closer that orbit gets to geostationary, the more the sine wave damps down until the satellite is completely stationary and therefore there is no groundtrack at all. All that being said, I think it is plain that anything launched from the surface that doesn’t track directly around the equator (and nothing is launched like that to my knowledge) inscribes a sinusoidal track on its first orbit at least. And the first orbit is the ONLY one we care about in this instance.”
Since the Falcon 9 DID reach orbit after 9 minutes, there is no first orbit, just like you said. Just because you’ve never heard of an equatorial launch, doesn’t mean there isn’t one. Cape Canaveral is pretty darn close to the equator. And this is not a “normal” lauch orbit. How many satellites are 250 km above the earth? This is a new and improved system, that’s why all the secrecy.
Dewi, in reference to your June 19th end date, I looked back at Falconsat-3 for some insight. It says “FalconSAT-3 will carry
three payloads to conduct DoD research. Then primary
mission completed amateur radio payload will be activated.”
http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/nwgs/UCS_Satellite_Database_4-1-10.txt
Cape Canaveral is pretty darn close to the equator.
If, by “pretty darn close” you mean 1968 miles away.
How many satellites are 250 km above the earth?
Given that low earth orbit is generally defined as around 100 to 1200 miles above the surface, the answer to that would be, “Quite a few.”
One in particular, the International Space Station, orbits around 275 miles up, and given that servicing the ISS is one of the Falcon 9’s primary objectives, and one reason why SpaceX received so much NASA funding, that fact might seem somewhat significant to a rational mind.
I know, I know, Anaglyph! I shouldn’t be tempted!
Pip pip kukhead, you should have listened to anaglyph and now the fires are going to come down and spank your fat ass. How many minutes do you think it took the Falcon 9 to go 1,968 miles? You must be the mysterious and over rated jetforme?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Space_Station
“In the evening, as the station moves further from the dusk, going from west to east it will appear to suddenly fade and disappear. In the reverse situation, it may suddenly appear in the sky as it approaches the dawn.”
So apparently the space station moves in different directions. I would think the Falcon 9 would be in the same orbital path as the ISS since they were to meet up. So what was the orbital
path of the ISS on the day they hooked up?
Also interesting to note is what time of day the spiral appeared? In the morning! The quote above stated it would
be in an east to west orbit to appear at dawn.
Btw most satellites are in an equatorial orbit.
So apparently the space station moves in different directions.
Key word is “apparently”, upyours. The ISS orbit is inclined about 51°, which means it will either be traveling WNW to ESE, or WSW to ENE, depending upon where you happen to be on the earth as it crosses overhead. You can easily map this out on a globe. Bear in mind, the orbit remains in the same orientation relative to space at large, but the earth spins beneath it, so from the same spot (my back yard, for example) the ISS can travel along a different path each time you see it. It’s quite a pretty site, actually.
BTW, understanding this would get back to solving that problem of the “sine wave” on the flat map issue. Honestly, you really should try to grasp this one. It will help clear up a lot of things for you and make your “military shenanigans” arguments sound a little better.
How many minutes do you think it took the Falcon 9 to go 1,968 miles?
You are confusing an equatorial orbit with the position of the actual equator on the surface of the globe. One does not need to launch from the equator in order to reach an equatorial orbit, tho it would save you a huge amount of fuel if you did.
One of the reasons rockets need to make more than one “burn” is to make adjustments to their orbits. Typically, the first orbit is not the final one. Only after one or often numerous burns does the spacecraft get into the proper orbit.
So what was the orbital
path of the ISS on the day they hooked up?
They didn’t. And I certainly didn’t say they did.
You asked what satellites would orbit around 250 miles up. I told you.
The position of the ISS is irrelevant to this issue, as a rendezvous was not an objective of this launch.
Btw most satellites are in an equatorial orbit.
Not true. Satellites that need to cover large sections of the globe — spy satellites, for an example that you’ll like — are typically in polar orbits, or at least in orbits that are steeply inclined to the equator. That way they get to cover much more of the earth’s surface as it rotates beneath their orbit.
Replying to justsayupyours
>>Since the Falcon 9 DID reach orbit after 9 minutes, there is no first orbit, just like you said.
I didn’t say that. There IS a first orbit. I’m not sure what you mean here – it went into orbit. There’s a first orbit on every rocket launched into orbit. If the launch into orbit is not directly down the line of the earth’s rotation (equatorial) then it must, by necessity, inscribe a sinusoidal groundtrack. It simply CAN’T do anything else.
>>Just because you’ve never heard of an equatorial launch, doesn’t mean there isn’t one.
Well, there are very few equatorial launch sites for a start (none in the US, obviously). I didn’t say there weren’t any, just that I didn’t know of any, but I checked and it appears that there are in fact specialists in equatorial launches. Nevertheless, Falcon was not one of those, so it doesn’t concern us.
>>Cape Canaveral is pretty darn close to the equator.
Not close enough. A launch that is offset by even a small amount from the equator and travels down over the equatorial rotation will map to a sinusoidal groundtrack. And you should be clear on the fact that just because satellites are in equatorial orbit does not mean they were launched that way. Most, if not all, satellites are manoeuvred into their preferred orbit once in space (as Kuhnigget said).
>>And this is not a “normal†lauch orbit.
It’s not atypical. Like I said – the groundtrack for the launch was totally unsurprising. If someone said they were launching a rocket from the continental US, that’s exactly the kind of groundtrack you’d expect to see the vehicle describe as it climbed into space.
>>This is a new and improved system, that’s why all the secrecy.
No, the ‘secrecy’ is because this is a multimillion dollar private enterprise operation, and a lot of money rides on it. You know how the recipe for Coca Cola is a secret? Same thing.
Also:
>>So apparently the space station moves in different directions.
No, you misunderstand the description you quoted. Let’s break it down:
>>“In the evening, as the station moves further from the dusk, going from west to east it will appear to suddenly fade and disappear.
That’s because it goes into the shadow of the earth. That is, as it travels from west to east it fades away (quite rapidly actually) as the earth comes between it and the sun.
>>In the reverse situation, it may suddenly appear in the sky as it approaches the dawn.â€
The dawn is in the east, right? The ISS is still travelling west to east. What the wikipedia entry says is that it will ‘suddenly appear in the sky’ because it is now coming out of the shadow of the Earth to be illuminated by the sun. I’ve seen it do both of those things. Still going west to east both times.
This is in fact another piece of data that helps confirm that the ‘spiral UFO’ was the Falcon 9. If you watch any of the videos of the event on YouTube, you will see quite plainly that the ‘spiral’ gets brighter as it travels toward the east – it’s just picking up more sunlight as it comes right out of the shadow of the earth.
OK. This is absolutely my last analytical post to this thread, apart from maybe the post when its orbit decays tomorrowish!
I installed WXtrack and threw those traces at it. Really klunky interface, but I was able to establish a few things.
Annoyingly, the launch was at 18:45 UTC and people reported seeing the spiral from about 19:45 UTC, but the first groundtrack’s timestamp is “10155.83670785”, which translates to 2010, 155th day, 0.83670785 of the day.
0.83670785 of a day is 20:05 hours.
That’s a real pain. Maybe I’m an hour out somewhere?
I plotted the first 7 ground tracks, and the latest:
1 – 20:05 UTC
2 – 21:35 UTC
3 – 21:35 UTC again
4 – 22:02 UTC
7 – 23:29 UTC
7again – 00:40 UTC
8 – 02:03 UTC
45 – 2 weeks later.
Rather than plot the orbits with the satellite shown where it was at the time, I instead plotted them, as they would be if the orbit had been followed at 19:46 UTC on the 4th June. That way, all orbits should (assuming no course change or degradation due to friction) be identical.
Tracks 1 through 8 all became visible from Brisbane at 19:46 UTC (I set Brisbane to an altitude of 10m above sea level, after Googling a bit: it varies from 0-20).
Tracks 2 through 8 were identical.
Track 1 was very, very slightly different, a few pixels in a few places. Not enough to say “this track intersects with this other track here, so that’s where the course change took place”. It’s not even different enough that I could plot both on a picture and it’d show the differences: the lines would be almost all over eachother, apart from those few pixels.
In track 45 the orbit has clearly degraded.
I’ve uploaded an 11.3M multilayered PSP pic showing all this. Requires PSP 7 or later. Download here (7.8MiB .7z file). Projection is linear lat/long, again, so you can use the tricks I used above to check it, or just download and install the software yourself and run the traces above through it.
So, other than confirming that not only was it definitely visible, but that the time was as correct as we’re gonna get, I didn’t show much. I was hoping to be able to say “look, it changed course HERE”, but I can’t.
But it’s possible the very slight change between tracks 1 and 2 was the “test burp”, in which case the spiral was just outgassing.
And having finally looked at the videos (I know, I shoulda done that ages ago), that looks more likely: it looks like a very gentle spin, and a very gentle leak, with the droplets sticking around the craft for a long while. They only seem to drift away slowly with the relative motion imparted by the spin, and are not by being flung rapidly away as they would with an engine burn.
Since air resistance isn’t a factor, the droplets carry on orbiting along with the craft, and just disperse because of the spin (and whatever pressure caused them to leak in the first place).
Can you make a small jpg of your map that I can link to in the comments? I don’t have PSP7. I think a visual aid, even if it was flat, would be good here.
BRILLIANT sleuthing, Dewi.
>>Since air resistance isn’t a factor, the droplets carry on orbiting along with the craft, and just disperse because of the spin (and whatever pressure caused them to leak in the first place).
Oh yeah, that’s certainly the case. The Falcon video, along with the ‘UFO’ videos are consistent – a slow rotation of the vehicle and the spiral halo slowly changing over several minutes. Since there’s no apparent outgassing/fuel vapour leak in the on-vehicle camera footage it’s reasonable to assume that it must have started after the Falcon video went offline (anywhere inside of roughly an hour that the vehicle took to get over Australia), possibly as part of an effort to stabilize the roll. Totally consistent with a vapour spiral lit by the sun as the craft rotates on its path eastward.
UFO vids linked for reference:
http://bit.ly/cqMZui
http://bit.ly/9HO6nz
I think your hard work establishes within all reasonable bounds that the most likely explanation for the ‘spiral UFO’ over the Australian east coast on the morning of June 5 was the SpaceX Falcon 9 second stage & Dragon capsule in the early stages of its first orbit, slowly rotating and surrounded by a plume of fuel gas or vapour. I’m thinking this is pretty much a QED.
These are fascinating (and entertaining) strings of comments.
And I think Dewi deserves a knighthood.
Sadly, it aint in my powr to confr such rank; but Id gladly give him loan o my lance until King Willy returns and does his duty.
Awr, thanks :)
I just checked spacetrack. The thing’s still up there.
Errata
First some corrections (when you’re wrong, it’s important to correct yourself!)
1) JustSayUpYours is RIGHT about the decay time, and I am wrong. I have no idea why space-track is saying that it will come down yesterday, even though it’s still recording element sets for it… but every other reliable source seems to say decay will be in a year.
2) Anaglyph is RIGHT about the camera going off because they lost radio contact: at least, I can’t find any source which says different, and a few which say the same, and it makes sense anyway. So again, I was wrong.
Current best guess
It’s apparently a legal requirement that launchers vent all fuel once their mission is done. This reduces the likelihood of an onboard explosion and fragmentation and resulting spacejunk.
After the final “test burp”, the second stage vented its remaining fuel. This is what we see coming out of it over Australia: a mixture of liquid oxygen and fuel.
This venting continued for some time, and resulted in the slight difference between the orbit in element set 1 and all later ones.
More nails
The rotational speed of the thing seen in the sky over australia is apparently rotating at the same speed Falcon was.
Still looking for refs on that, as well as for refs of the exact time Falcon started venting.
Piccy!
http://www.dewimorgan.com/files/FalconTracks.gif
Frame rate is 1 frame every 1.5 seconds.
Both tracks are extrapolated back in time to where the falcon would be at 19:46 UTC.
Round black circle is Brisbane.
Round blue dot is the Falcon.
Blue box is the part of its path for which the Falcon will be visible from Brisbane (at 10metre above sea level).
Orange ground track is the “future” path.
Blue ground track with dots is the past, with a dot for each minute.
Grey ground track is more distant past.
The half-and-half grey and black circle above the east of Australia is the ground position of the moon.
The lighter area is daylight at groundlevel, which we can see is near Australia at that time.
Falcon1 is from element set 1.
Falcon2 is from subsequent elements.
Nice work on the rotation speed. We now have what I would call devastating evidence for our case. Refutation necessarily requires something equally or (really) more persuasive…
I got no joy with the gif though – ‘Page Failure’ error.
Site down for revamp. Sorry! Will be back up again in… uh… eventually.
Wow look at all the effort you’ve put into these comments. And still, nobody cares.
You nerds have fun, I’m going to go get laid now.
You nerds have fun, I’m going to go get laid now.
Yeah, right. Best regards to your fist.
Capt Obvious’ post was the last thing I saw last night, and it was so cute, I went to sleep with a grin :) thank you, Captain: I’ve been depressed at nights lately, and you gave me a big lift.
To repay you, I’ll critique your trollery.
It’s such a cool example of a newbie troll swinging and missing, I almost want to print it out and stick it on my wall, as a counterpoint to xkcd’s much better take on the issue.
It’s so delightfully naïve, like a baby troll posting its first wobbly stompings. But why?
Well, recognising the effort put in was a pretty bad start. It meant you started off on the wrong foot, and you never really recovered.
But then you forgot that your own pubescent concerns aren’t universal. Your worry about other people caring just cries “teen fashion victim”, desperate for affirmation from your peers. But subcultures don’t care about outsiders. Telling football fans “that match you’re dissecting – nobody cares!” wouldn’t faze them at all. Know your enemy: don’t project.
And it’s actually nice to be recognised as part of the general nerd/geek subculture by an outsider, even if they get the specific term wrong: that just makes you appear cute. Much more cutting than to call people something that would hurt you, is to call people a name that is not in their subculture: call a jock a geek, or vice versa. Know your enemy: don’t project!
And telling people to have fun… that’s not even trying to troll!
Overall, the tone is what I’d call “jockish” – it’s the wrong tone to troll geeks in. As a subculture, they don’t care about other subcultures, and oppression from outside just reinforces their social ties. You would have been much better trolling from the inside: words from a fellow subculture member carry more weight, so can sting more, and get more of a rise.
Know your enemy!
But it’s the last bit that just tugged at my heartstrings, and at the same time left me smiling and happy about my life last night. Bragging to married men that you’re about to get laid, is a bit like bragging to a professor that you’re about to get your highschool diploma: it only reveals your own insecurities.
Takes me back to my own days of teenage angst. It must be a hard time for you, and it’s understandable you would turn to trolling in order to salve your repeatedly crushed ego. Unfortunately, with that type of personality, it’s likely you may never have any longterm, meaningful relationships, so you might end up being a troll for life, and this geeky little endorphin surge you get from trolling may be the closest you get to true approval.
In that case, next time you’re hurting from rejection, bear these criticisms in mind: they’ll hopefully help you hone much better troll-posts, and your improved nerdy bullying of uncaring internet avatars might, perhaps, help you rebuild your shattered ego.
That you could evoke such empathic pity, in just two lines, is very powerful writing, and normally, I’d say you should be proud. But I honestly don’t think that was your intention.
Captain Obvious is like a clueless person who accidentally walks into a cocktail party, takes one look around and says in a loud voice ‘Youse are all WANKERS!’.
It has no effect other than to make everyone feel embarrassed for him for his lack of social skills.
Visiting here after a while… curious to see that Colin Andrews has redacted ALL his comments and replies.
Awr :(