Clock ticking on NASA’s low-cost X-ray stargazer NASA has set March 18 as the soonest revised date for the launch of its NuSTAR X-ray satellite observatory, after delaying the “flight readiness review” it had scheduled for March 13. According to NASA’s mission page, NuSTAR is now on a six-day countdown (at the time of writing). NuSTAR is a belt-tightening novelty for the …
Bah, LOHAN is going to come in much cheaper than that, right guys? :)
Actually I remember a relevant Tomorrow's World segment for this. In space there's very little in the way of lateral forces buggering things up, so these struts can be very flimsy indeed and still do the job. Basically the new idea was extruding struts when you're up there, so instead of some complicated folding mechanism, you just send up a strut-assembly gadget and a big roll of tinfoil. Of course it's no good for stuff like the ISS where you've got humans bouncing off it, but for something like this sat way out on its own, it'd be ideal.
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