NASA Sends Space Shuttle Back to Hangar

NASA pulled space shuttle Atlantis off the launch pad and sent it back to the hangar Monday to await a trip to the Hubble Space Telescope next year.

Atlantis was originally scheduled to blast off this month on a mission to make various repairs and upgrade the telescope. But the Hubble broke down three weeks ago and stopped sending data for its space pictures, forcing NASA to regroup and delay its mission until February at the earliest.

Now astronauts will need time to train for a telescope repair they hadn't planned on.
Atlantis' return to the Vehicle Assembly Building marks the 18th time in 25 years that NASA has had to pull a launch-ready spacecraft off the pad.

Shuttle Endeavour, now at the front of the flight lineup, will be moved from its launch pad to Atlantis' spot this weekend. Endeavour had been poised to blast off as a rescue ship for Atlantis' crew if there was an emergency during the Hubble mission. Instead, Endeavour will carry seven astronauts to the international space station on an equipment delivery mission; launch is targeted for Nov. 14.




That trip will enable NASA to double the number of astronauts living at the orbiting outpost, from three to six. That transition should occur next spring.
The 18-year-old Hubble, meanwhile, has been unable to send back pictures of the cosmos since Sept. 27 because of a failure of its science commanding and data-handling system. Flight controllers tried unsuccessfully to get a backup channel working last week, and may make another attempt later this week.

When they do fly, the Hubble repair crew members will take up a replacement part for the disabled system.

By MARCIA DUNN, AP Aerospace Writer
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NASA: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/

Satellite Booming in the Middle East and North Africa

The 13 commercial satellite-fleet operators active in the Middle East and North Africa showed a 73 percent fill rate on their 41 Ku-band satellites in mid-2008 when measured in booked megahertz compared to total megahertz of capacity, according to a mid-2008 survey of capacity taken from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, by the London Satellite Exchange (LSE) and Euroconsult. The satellites were spread over 31 orbital slots.

The Ku-band fill rate jumps to 97 percent if the measure is made in the less-precise count of transponders used versus transponders unused, because some transponders are booked only partially, the survey found.

The survey is the latest confirmation that the region is among the world's most dynamic, and it explains why operators without satellites in the region want to get in there, and those already there are planning new capacity.
Transponder demand has risen at a rate of 12 percent per year during the last five years, with most of the new capacity in Ku-band. Commercial satellite-lease revenues have grown by 17 percent per year on average since 2003, reaching $752 million in 2007, according to Euroconsult estimates.

Not all operators are sharing the benefits, in part because fill rates are a function of the uses to which satellites are put.

A company focused on satellite television, such as Nilesat of Egypt, is booked solid on its two satellites, both in terms of available megahertz and available transponders. Television broadcasters typically lease entire transponders in multiyear contracts. Nilesat recently ordered a new satellite, to be launched at the company's 7 degrees west orbital slot in early 2010.
But television and radio broadcasts represented just 42 percent of the uses to which the observed satellites were put when LSE measured demand from Dubai in mid-2008.
A majority of the satellite capacity in the region was devoted to voice and data traffic, whose customers tend to sign shorter-term contracts, often for partial transponders. This gives their fill rates a higher volatility. LSE and Euroconsult said in their survey, "Ku-Band Loading Report: Middle East and North Africa," that for these applications any snapshot of demand may be less reliable.

Peter B. de Selding, PARISSpace News Staff WriterSPACE.com peter B. De Selding, Parisspace News Staff Writerspace.com

The Akashi Kaikyō Bridge (Marcus Bridge), The World's Longest Suspension Bridge

The Akashi Kaikyō Bridge (Akashi Kaikyō Ō-hashi?), also known as Marcus Bridge in Japan was completed in 1998 and is the world's longest suspension bridge (measured by the length of the center span of 1,991 metres/6,532 feet). It links the city of Kobe on the mainland of Honshū to Iwaya on Awaji Island by crossing the busy Akashi Strait. It carries the part of the Honshū-Shikoku Highway.

The bridge is one of the key links of the Honshū-Shikoku Bridge Project, which created three routes across the Inland Sea.

History

Before the Akashi Kaikyō Bridge was built, ferries carried passengers across the Akashi Strait in Japan. This dangerous waterway often experiences severe storms, and in 1955, two ferries sank in the strait during a storm, killing 168 children. The ensuing shock and public outrage convinced the Japanese government to develop plans for a suspension bridge to cross the strait. The original plan called for a mixed railway-road bridge, but when construction on the bridge began in April 1986, the construction was restricted to road only, with six lanes. Actual construction did not begin until May 1986, and the bridge was opened for traffic on April 5, 1998. The Akashi Strait is an international waterway that necessitated the provision of a 1,500-metre (4,921 ft)-wide shipping lane.

Architecture

bridge has three spans. The central span is 1,991 m (6,532 ft), and the two other sections are each 960 m (3,150 ft). The bridge is 3,911 m (12,831 ft) long overall. The central span was originally only 1,990 m (6,529 ft), but the Kobe earthquake on January 17, 1995, moved the two towers sufficiently (only the towers had been erected at the time) so that it had to be increased by 1 m (3.3 ft).

The bridge was designed with a two-hinged stiffening girder system, allowing the structure to withstand winds of 286 kilometres per hour (178 mph), earthquakes measuring to 8.5 on the Richter scale, and harsh sea currents. The bridge also contains pendulums that are designed to operate at the resonance frequency of the bridge to damp forces. The two main supporting towers rise 298 m (978 ft) above sea level, and the bridge can expand because of heating up to 2 metres (7 ft) over the course of a day. The cables are in 350,000 tons of concrete and are one meter in diameter.

Use

The total cost is estimated at ¥500 billion (~US$5 billion), and is expected to be defrayed by charging commuters a toll to cross the bridge. The toll is ¥2,300 (US$20.00) and is used by approximately 23,000 cars/day.

Google Satellite Image of Akashi Kaikyō Bridge

Hoover Dam (Boulder Dam), a concrete arch-gravity dam in the Black Canyon of the Colorado River

Hoover Dam, one of the great accomplishments. Also known as Boulder Dam, is a concrete arch-gravity dam in the Black Canyon of the Colorado River, on the border between the U.S. states of Arizona and Nevada. When completed in 1935, it was both the world's largest electric-power generating station and the world's largest concrete structure. It was surpassed in both these respects by the Grand Coulee Dam in 1945. It is currently the world's 35th-largest hydroelectric generating station.

The Dam: At the time of construction, Hoover Dam was the largest in the world and although long since surpassed it is still an amazing structure and a marvel of engineering - a huge, curving wall of plain concrete 660 feet thick at the base and 726 feet high set between the vertical walls of Black Canyon, accompanied by strangely-angled pylons, cables, power generating plants and other machinery. In 1955, the dam was selected as one of the Seven Modern Engineering Wonders in the USA by the American Society of Civil Engineers, and it is was later designated a National Historic Landmark.

This dam, located 30 miles (48 km) southeast of Las Vegas, Nevada, is named after Herbert Hoover, who played an instrumental role in its construction, first as the Secretary of Commerce and then later as the President of the United States. Construction began in 1931 and was completed in 1935, more than two years ahead of schedule. The dam and the power plant are operated by the Bureau of Reclamation of the U.S. Department of the Interior. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1981, Hoover Dam was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1985.
Lake Mead is the reservoir created behind the dam, named after Elwood Mead, who oversaw the construction of the dam.
Planning and agreements
A commission was formed in 1922 with a representative from each of the Basin states and one from the Federal Government. The federal representative was Herbert Hoover, then Secretary of Commerce under President Warren Harding. In January 1922, Hoover met with the state governors of Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming to work out an equitable arrangement for apportioning the waters of the Colorado River for their states' use. The resulting Colorado River Compact, signed on November 24, 1922, split the river basin into upper and lower halves with the states within each region deciding how the water would be divided. This agreement, known as the Hoover Compromise, paved the way for the Boulder Dam Project. This huge dam was built to help keep the silt and sediment out of the Colorado River, for flood control, and for hydroelectric-power generation
Power plant The hydroelectric generators at Hoover dam Following an uprating project from 1986 to 1993, the total gross power rating for the plant, including two 2.4 megawatt generators that power the plant's operations, is about 2080 megawatts.Excavation for the powerhouse was carried out simultaneously with the excavation for the dam foundation and abutments. Excavation for the U-shaped structure located at the downstream toe of the dam was completed in late 1933 with the first concrete placed in November 1933.

Generators at the Dam's Hoover Powerplant began transmission of electricity from the Colorado River to Los Angeles, California 266 miles (428 km) away on October 26, 1936. Additional generating units were added through 1961. Water flowing from Lake Mead through the gradually-narrowing penstocks to the powerhouse reaches a speed of about 85 miles per hour (137 km/h) by the time it reaches the turbines. The entire flow of the Colorado River passes through the turbines. The spillways are rarely used. Hydroelectric power plants have the ability to vary the amount of power generated, depending on the demand. Steam turbine power plants are not as easily "throttled" because of the amount of thermodynamic inertia contained in their systems.

Atlas of Creation - Harun Yahya

Title: Atlas of Creation
Author: Harun Yahya
URL: http://www.harunyahya.com/


Hardcover: 870 pages
Publisher: Global Publishing (2007)
Language: English
ASIN: B000U37CWQ




The Atlas of Creation, was published by Global Publishing, Istanbul, Turkey in October 2006.[35] The book contains over 800 glossy pages and weighs 12 pounds (5.4 kg). Tens of thousands of copies of the book have been delivered, on an unsolicited basis, to schools, prominent researchers and research institutes throughout Europe and the United States.[36][3] Some of the schools that received copies were in France as well as prominent researchers at Utrecht University, University of Tilburg, University of California, Brown University, University of Colorado, University of Chicago, Brigham Young University, the University of Connecticut, the University of Georgia, Imperial College London, and several others


This book will provide you with not only such information as what fossils are and where and how they are found, but also a closer examination of a variety of fossil specimens, millions of years old, that are still able to declare, "We never underwent evolution; we were created." The fossils discussed and illustrated in this book are just a few examples of the hundreds of millions of specimens that prove the fact of creation. And even these few are enough to prove that the theory of evolution is a major hoax and deception in the history of science.

Download this book for FREE:

http://www.harunyahya.com