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Getaway Special
Getaway Special was a NASA program that offered interested individuals, or groups, opportunities to fly small experiments aboard the Space Shuttle. Over the 20-year history of the program, over 170 individual missions were flown. The program, which was officially known as the ''Small, Self-Contained Payloads program'', was canceled following the Space Shuttle ''Columbia'' disaster on February 1, 2003. History The program was conceived by NASA's Shuttle program manager John Yardley, and announced in the fall of 1976. The "Getaway Special" nickname originated from a special vacation fare for flights between Los Angeles and Honolulu being advertised by Trans World Airlines at the time around the program's conception. The first Getaway Special was purchased by Gilbert Moore of Thiokol on October 12, 1976, and donated to Utah State University. It was flown on ''Columbia'' during STS-4 in June/July 1982. The program was canceled after the Space Shuttle ''Columbia'' disaster on F ...
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NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil List of government space agencies, space program, aeronautics research, and outer space, space research. NASA was National Aeronautics and Space Act, established in 1958, succeeding the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), to give the U.S. space development effort a distinctly civilian orientation, emphasizing peaceful applications in space science. NASA has since led most American space exploration, including Project Mercury, Project Gemini, the 1968-1972 Apollo program, Apollo Moon landing missions, the Skylab space station, and the Space Shuttle. NASA supports the International Space Station and oversees the development of the Orion (spacecraft), Orion spacecraft and the Space Launch System for the crewed lunar Artemis program, Commercial Crew Program, Commercial Crew ...
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Greenbelt, Maryland
Greenbelt is a city in Prince George's County, Maryland, United States, and a suburb of Washington, D.C. At the 2020 census, the population was 24,921. Greenbelt is the first and the largest of the three experimental and controversial New Deal Greenbelt Towns, the others being Greenhills, Ohio, and Greendale, Wisconsin. Greenbelt was planned and built by the Federal government. The cooperative community was conceived in 1935 by Undersecretary of Agriculture Rexford Guy Tugwell, whose perceived collectivist ideology attracted opposition to the Greenbelt Towns project throughout its short duration. The project came into legal existence on April 8, 1935, when Congress passed the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935. Under the authority granted to him by this legislation, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an executive order, on May 1, 1935, establishing the United States Resettlement Administration (RA/RRA). First called ''Maryland Special Project No. 1'', the ...
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G-616
G-616, formally known as GAS canister #G-616: The Effect of Cosmic Radiation on Static Computer Media & Plant Seeds Exposure to Microgravity was an experiment flown on the Space Shuttle as a self-contained experiment, as part of STS-40. Description The Small Self-Contained Payload G-616 was managed and owned by Thomas M. Hancock III, a space scientist from Redlands, California. G-616 was assigned by NASA to Hancock in 1987. He developed and constructed the primary payload. It was approved for flight in 1988. G-616 originally consisted of 3 experiments: #A study on the effects of low Earth orbit on Space Shuttle External Tank foam – to assess if leaving an ET in space was feasible. #Static Computer Memory Integrity Testing (SCMIT) – looking for soft event upsets (bit-flips) in static computer media #Cultavor Microgravity Exposure (seeds in space). This experiment was to fly over two million seeds of 57 types from all over the world to orbit. History Preflight testing at ...
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Pressure Regulator
A pressure regulator is a valve that controls the pressure of a fluid or gas to a desired value, using negative feedback from the controlled pressure. Regulators are used for gases and liquids, and can be an integral device with a pressure setting, a restrictor and a sensor all in the one body, or consist of a separate pressure sensor, controller and flow valve. Two types are found: The pressure reduction regulator and the back-pressure regulator. *A pressure reducing regulator is a control valve that reduces the input pressure of a fluid or gas to a desired value at its output. It is a normally-open valve and is installed upstream of pressure sensitive equipment. *A back-pressure regulator, back-pressure valve, pressure sustaining valve or pressure sustaining regulator is a control valve that maintains the set pressure at its inlet side by opening to allow flow when the inlet pressure exceeds the set value. It differs from an over-pressure relief valve in that the over-pressu ...
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Command Decoder
Command may refer to: Computing * Command (computing), a statement in a computer language * COMMAND.COM, the default operating system shell and command-line interpreter for DOS * Command key, a modifier key on Apple Macintosh computer keyboards * Command pattern, a software design pattern in which objects represent actions * Voice command, in speech recognition Military * Military command (instruction) or military order * Command responsibility, the doctrine of hierarchical accountability in cases of war crimes * Command (military formation), an organizational unit * Command and control, the exercise of authority in a military organization * Command hierarchy, a group of people dedicated to carrying out orders "from the top" Music * ''Command'' (album), a 2009 album by Client * Command Records, a record label Sports * Command (baseball), the ability of a pitcher to throw a pitch where he intends to * Kansas City Command, a former professional arena football team * Comman ...
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Aluminum
Aluminium (aluminum in American and Canadian English) is a chemical element with the symbol Al and atomic number 13. Aluminium has a density lower than those of other common metals, at approximately one third that of steel. It has a great affinity towards oxygen, and forms a protective layer of oxide on the surface when exposed to air. Aluminium visually resembles silver, both in its color and in its great ability to reflect light. It is soft, non-magnetic and ductile. It has one stable isotope, 27Al; this isotope is very common, making aluminium the twelfth most common element in the Universe. The radioactivity of 26Al is used in radiodating. Chemically, aluminium is a post-transition metal in the boron group; as is common for the group, aluminium forms compounds primarily in the +3 oxidation state. The aluminium cation Al3+ is small and highly charged; as such, it is polarizing, and bonds aluminium forms tend towards covalency. The strong affinity towa ...
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Thermal Insulation
Thermal insulation is the reduction of heat transfer (i.e., the transfer of thermal energy between objects of differing temperature) between objects in thermal contact or in range of radiative influence. Thermal insulation can be achieved with specially engineered methods or processes, as well as with suitable object shapes and materials. Heat flow is an inevitable consequence of contact between objects of different temperature. Thermal insulation provides a region of insulation in which thermal conduction is reduced, creating a thermal break or thermal barrier, or thermal radiation is reflected rather than absorbed by the lower-temperature body. The insulating capability of a material is measured as the inverse of thermal conductivity (k). Low thermal conductivity is equivalent to high insulating capability ( resistance value). In thermal engineering, other important properties of insulating materials are product density (ρ) and specific heat capacity (c). Definition ...
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Atmosphere (unit)
The standard atmosphere (symbol: atm) is a unit of pressure defined as Pa. It is sometimes used as a ''reference pressure'' or ''standard pressure''. It is approximately equal to Earth's average atmospheric pressure at sea level. History The standard atmosphere was originally defined as the pressure exerted by 760 mm of mercury at and standard gravity (''g''n = ). It was used as a reference condition for physical and chemical properties, and was implicit in the definition of the Celsius temperature scale, which defined as the boiling point of water at this pressure. In 1954, the 10th General Conference on Weights and Measures (CGPM) adopted ''standard atmosphere'' for general use and affirmed its definition of being precisely equal to dynes per square centimetre (). This defined both temperature and pressure independent of the properties of particular substance. In addition, the CGPM noted that there had been some misapprehension that it "led some physicists to believe ...
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Vacuum
A vacuum is a space devoid of matter. The word is derived from the Latin adjective ''vacuus'' for "vacant" or " void". An approximation to such vacuum is a region with a gaseous pressure much less than atmospheric pressure. Physicists often discuss ideal test results that would occur in a ''perfect'' vacuum, which they sometimes simply call "vacuum" or free space, and use the term partial vacuum to refer to an actual imperfect vacuum as one might have in a laboratory or in space. In engineering and applied physics on the other hand, vacuum refers to any space in which the pressure is considerably lower than atmospheric pressure. The Latin term ''in vacuo'' is used to describe an object that is surrounded by a vacuum. The ''quality'' of a partial vacuum refers to how closely it approaches a perfect vacuum. Other things equal, lower gas pressure means higher-quality vacuum. For example, a typical vacuum cleaner produces enough suction to reduce air pressure by around 20%. But h ...
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Pressure
Pressure (symbol: ''p'' or ''P'') is the force applied perpendicular to the surface of an object per unit area over which that force is distributed. Gauge pressure (also spelled ''gage'' pressure)The preferred spelling varies by country and even by industry. Further, both spellings are often used ''within'' a particular industry or country. Industries in British English-speaking countries typically use the "gauge" spelling. is the pressure relative to the ambient pressure. Various #Units, units are used to express pressure. Some of these derive from a unit of force divided by a unit of area; the International System of Units, SI unit of pressure, the Pascal (unit), pascal (Pa), for example, is one newton (unit), newton per square metre (N/m2); similarly, the Pound (force), pound-force per square inch (Pounds per square inch, psi) is the traditional unit of pressure in the imperial units, imperial and United States customary units, U.S. customary systems. Pressure may also be e ...
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