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NASA can't figure out what's causing computer issues on the Hubble telescope

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Re: NASA can't figure out what's causing computer issues on the Hubble telescope

#301

Post by rtkwe »

jccooper wrote: post #250
rtkwe wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the operating human launch systems are just capsules meant to either free fly or dock at a station, they don't have airlocks to let people out so using them for a Hubble repair would require a lot of modification and danger to use the whole capsule as an airlock. [0] [0] Except Soyuz I guess their orbital module would allow you to keep the descent module pressurized but it's still way outside the design so there'…

Soyuz has been used for spacewalks before, and the cabin is tolerant of vacuum. They haven't done that in ages, so it's possible that's been optimized out, but I'd suspect that requirement's been respected over the years.

Neat, didn't know that. There are of course other issues like how do you keep them in proximity while you do the work that could stretch days, ships don't usually free fly that close to each other for long the Hubble missions done with the shuttle all included hard captures of Hubble with the Shuttles.

Re: NASA can't figure out what's causing computer issues on the Hubble telescope

#302

Post by not2b »

geoduck14 wrote: post #274
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more than annoying. It comes part and parcel with the dumbing down of society.

Most of my work could benefit from a journalist > Overworked Engineer misses semicolon. All night review session finds it, data gets loaded! > Management insists Jira stories be routed to new Epic. Team Lead spends hours learning Jira API before giving up and doing it "the hard way"

Journalists don't choose the clickbait headlines and generally don't care for them; they are business decisions, especially for any site that makes money via ad clicks. They even do A/B testing: initially some visitors are shown headine A, others see headline B. If B gets more clicks, A is dropped.

Re: NASA can't figure out what's causing computer issues on the Hubble telescope

#303

Post by not2b »

skissane wrote: post #287
mhh__ wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anyone else look at the headline and feel this is one of the dumbest headlines ever. It makes it sound like NASA's incompetent. 'Why haven't you fixed Hubble yet?'. I didn't get that impression. This does intrigue me - I like browsing hackernews, but I often get the impression that some people (not the PC specifically) here are either ridiculously anal about English or genuinely do not parse sentences the way I do.

> I often get the impression that some people (not the PC specifically) here are either ridiculously anal about English or genuinely do not parse sentences the way I do. People with autistic traits sometimes parse sentences in an overly literal or precise manner. I rarely do this anymore, but when I was a child and teenager I did it more often. When I'm speaking of "autistic traits", I'm not speaking just of people d…

But the headline is literally and precisely true, at least at present. At some point they may be able to figure out the issues enough to restore operation, but not yet.

Re: NASA can't figure out what's causing computer issues on the Hubble telescope

#304

Post by [deleted] »

ben0x539 wrote: post #246
jorvi wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, I can understand both sides of the fence. 'this is why I read HN' is nothing but a slightly more verbal '+1', but as you stated it does humanize HN and makes it feel more social. In terms of downvotes, what really irks me and what I often see is people posting factually correct information, but still being sent into faded oblivion because some sect of the community's worldview doesn't agree with the facts.

I don't understand this viewpoint. Information being factually correct is a low bar. I have a lot of factually correct information that is irrelevant or misleading, or that I could state in a way that drags down the level of discourse more than it illuminates truth. Factually correct information is usually involved in tu quoque fallacies, or used to goad people into drawing false, non-sequitur conclusions. The Hacker…

[deleted]

Re: NASA can't figure out what's causing computer issues on the Hubble telescope

#305

Post by femto »

imoverclocked wrote: post #299
rajandatta wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how much more mystery one neds than 'Only orbiting telescope in human history has a fault our best engineers haven't diagnosed as yet!' :-)

Interestingly, we humans actually have more than just Hubble floating around up there in the way of telescopes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_space_telescopes

Missing from the list are the space telescopes that look inwards:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-11_Kennen

Re: NASA can't figure out what's causing computer issues on the Hubble telescope

#306

Post by wruza »

tambourine_man wrote: post #300
rajandatta wrote: post #253

Anyone else look at the headline and feel this is one of the dumbest headlines ever. It makes it sound like NASA's incompetent. 'Why haven't you fixed Hubble yet?'. There doesn't seem to be any nuance or respect that they're trying to repair an orbiting telescope that was launched 30 years ago and designed 40 years ago - and that people are patiently trying to sort through a fully autonomous system 400 miles above th…

Is Windows still like that or was that tongue in cheek? I run my Mac for months, only restart for updates.

Still? It got exponentially worse last few years. I deliberately turn off unplanned auto-updates by any means because windows 10 reboot/shutdown (when I really need one – drivers, etc) takes minutes because of mandatory updates. When I still had windows laptop and had to bring it somewhere I hibernated it instead of turning off, because turn off would mean “please wait for 20 minutes of battery stress test” or few hours if it’s that lucky day of not-a-service-pack-4.

Re: NASA can't figure out what's causing computer issues on the Hubble telescope

#307

Post by skissane »

not2b wrote: post #303
skissane wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I often get the impression that some people (not the PC specifically) here are either ridiculously anal about English or genuinely do not parse sentences the way I do. People with autistic traits sometimes parse sentences in an overly literal or precise manner. I rarely do this anymore, but when I was a child and teenager I did it more often. When I'm speaking of "autistic traits", I'm not speaking just of people d…

But the headline is literally and precisely true, at least at present. At some point they may be able to figure out the issues enough to restore operation, but not yet.

Sometimes, how this trait manifests itself, is in a difficulty in seeing that a sentence could have multiple meanings; the mind focuses on one particular meaning and struggles to perceive the other possibilities. Usually there are several different ways to read something in an overly literal/precise manner; the fact that one of them is true doesn't do much good if one's mind has decided to fixate on one of the others that isn't.

Re: NASA can't figure out what's causing computer issues on the Hubble telescope

#308

Post by Waterluvian »

rajandatta wrote: post #253

Anyone else look at the headline and feel this is one of the dumbest headlines ever. It makes it sound like NASA's incompetent. 'Why haven't you fixed Hubble yet?'. There doesn't seem to be any nuance or respect that they're trying to repair an orbiting telescope that was launched 30 years ago and designed 40 years ago - and that people are patiently trying to sort through a fully autonomous system 400 miles above th…

I hear you. But I’ve also learned as an engineer that nobody really cares to hear from you how difficult and impressive it is.

Re: NASA can't figure out what's causing computer issues on the Hubble telescope

#309

Post by IncRnd »

rajandatta wrote: post #253

Anyone else look at the headline and feel this is one of the dumbest headlines ever. It makes it sound like NASA's incompetent. 'Why haven't you fixed Hubble yet?'. There doesn't seem to be any nuance or respect that they're trying to repair an orbiting telescope that was launched 30 years ago and designed 40 years ago - and that people are patiently trying to sort through a fully autonomous system 400 miles above th…

> There doesn't seem to be any nuance or respect that they're trying to repair an orbiting telescope that was launched 30 years ago and designed 40 years ago - and that people are patiently trying to sort through a fully autonomous system 400 miles above the surface of the Earth with a very large set of failure options.

That's what the article says. The headline is clickbait.

Re: NASA can't figure out what's causing computer issues on the Hubble telescope

#310

Post by ravel-bar-foo »

tharkun__ wrote: post #290
geoduck14 wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of my work could benefit from a journalist > Overworked Engineer misses semicolon. All night review session finds it, data gets loaded! > Management insists Jira stories be routed to new Epic. Team Lead spends hours learning Jira API before giving up and doing it "the hard way"

Completely not related to the topic at hand but ;) I love this "spend hours figuring out the API" then giving up. Maybe it's just me but I have noticed that a lot (and it mean a lot) of devs will overestimate greatly on anything manual they need to do that they don't like. And spend hours if not days trying to automate it. Which is fine if it's gonna be needed again soon or over and over. But really, what is so bad i…

I discovered this in my PhD. I spent 3 months trying to automate a process (running a finite element model atop very fragile software platform). I couldn't figure out how to automate my way around the errors the system would give me, every run was unpredictable in duration due to the errors, and I ended up spending a lot of time holding the system's hand.

Eventually gave up on the automation and resolved to spend a few weeks clicking every 15 minutes to complete the simulations. It was very hard to stay motivated, but I got two papers out of it.

The disadvantage is now my CV says I'm an expert at an FEM framework which I never want anything to do with ever again.

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