<html><body><div style="color:#000; background-color:#fff; font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:12pt"><div><span><div>On Thursday, May 16, 2013 12:17 AM spike <spike@rainier66.com> wrote:</div><div>>> http://news.yahoo.com/nasa-telescopes-planet-hunting-days-may-over-202309584.html</div><div>>> </div><div>>> Kind of related to the Fermi Paradox discussion. Well, at least,</div><div>>> planet finders give us some baseline for the Drake equation -- some</div><div>>> values to plug-in (those with the other unknowns, what does this</div><div>>> matter?) -- and an idea of what's out there in terms of planets.</div><div>>> And, of course, other missions like COROT and terrestrial efforts</div><div>>> still continue.</div><div>> </div><div>> Dan don’t count out Kepler. It has four completely independent</div><div>> reaction wheels and it only needs three. One
reaction wheel failed</div><div>> and the spacecraft went into safe mode, which is what it automatically</div><div>> does when anything goes wrong with the hardware. It powers down</div><div>> everything besides the control system and sunbathes the solar panels</div><div>> until the ground controllers can study the telemetry, figure out what</div><div>> happened and what to do.</div><div>></div><div>> The forces on reaction wheels are very small, so there is no reason</div><div>> to think the remaining three cannot go on for years, and if we are</div><div>> very lucky, decades.</div><div><br></div><div>The story states two reaction wheels are now inoperable. So, the problem is finding a way to work with the remaining two (and hoping they continue to work) or get one of the two non-working ones back into service.</div></span></div><div style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; "></div><div
style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; "><br></div><div style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; ">Regards,<br><br></div><div style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; ">Dan<br> See my SF short story "Residue":<br>http://www.amazon.com/Residue-ebook/dp/B00BS3T0RM/ -- US<br>http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00BS3T0RM -- UK<br>http://www.amazon.ca/dp/B00BS3T0RM -- Canada </div></div></body></html>