# Tag Info

15

As an engineer who has used slide rules, logarithmic tables, calculators, computers and done designs on paper and using computers, in the paper design era engineers concentrated on the critical areas of designs. These days, computers and mathematical techniques such as FEA & boundary element analysis, etc. allow engineers to consider a larger number of ...

10

What sort of analysis was performed before “modern” computing and the invention of finite element analysis and computational fluid dynamics? Techniques such as computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and finite element method (FEM) are older than you think and were used early on in the space age. Although CFD is very computationally demanding, CFD predates ...

7

You don't need a laser to do this. The technique you describe is known as spectroscopy, and it can use any light source, including light from the planet's star. This is a common technique for studying Earth's atmosphere from space, and to study stars and planets from Earth. This even works on planets in other solar systems. In a few years, an ESA mission ...

7

You have to remember that technology was much less advanced at the time of Sputnik 1. It’s ability to downlink information was tiny, and the science was organized around that: The ball was pressurized, and the skin and internal temperatures were (the only?) quantities downlinked. This was used to put a lower limit on micrometeoroid impact rate, as a leak ...

5

I would recommend you to take a look at the 'technical comparison of three low earth orbit satellite constellation systems to provide global broadband' (del Portillo et al.). Available here. In this work authors focus on the mega-constellation throughput estimation and some analysis in terms of ground infrastructure is also present. I assume you might use ...

5

The loads (acceleration, vibration) that occur during launch are specified in the Ariane 5 user manual. The payload is attached to the top of the PAF via the ring at the top.

5

The paper does not describe how the calculations for the tether are done, but I can make a guess. We take a small piece of the tether with mass $\delta m$ and length $\delta r$, at distance $r$ from the center. The tether is spinning at an angular rate $\omega$, and has an ultimate tensile strength $\sigma_\text{max}$ and density $\rho$. The area $A$ is a ...

4

This is done through APF, NEAT and LINEAR, as mins mentioned however an interesting project currently running is the Galaxy Zoo, which works on the principle that: Humans are much better at identifying certain types of pattern than computers So while computers trawl raw data for potential points of interest, these are then passed to humans for ...

2

The "connector support" supports a connector. Here's one in use on VV04, supporting a connector for the IXV. (ESA–M. Pedoussaut, 2015) It's on the left hand side, and you should be able to make out the bundle of cables running up through it. The connector itself shouldn't be supporting the payload, however there is a spring, constantly under ...

2

https://www.roscosmos.ru/24173/ The main tasks of the satellite were: verification of calculations and basic technical decisions made for launch; ionospheric studies of the passage of radio waves emitted by satellite transmitters; experimental determination of the density of the upper layers of the atmosphere by deceleration of the satellite and ...

2

From a cursory read of the Wikipedia article, it seems to me that the Zachman framework is intended to be a top-level overview of a project. I suspect the errors that led to the loss of Columbia would not even show up at this level. The primary source for data on the Columbia accident is the Accident Investigation Report.

2

You also had reference books like Formulas for Stress and Strain by Roark (and Young) and Stress Concentration Factors by Peterson. Prediction might not have been as strong as it is today but often enough comparison was possible.

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