Students Help Crash NASA Satellite Into Ocean

How am I not surprised since they can deffere staffing costs by using students. Its a shame that many of us don't get hired for jobs that we spend tens of thousands of our own dollars to train for. Better than what the US military did with one of it's satellites that has 22lbs of plutonium that burned up on re-entry. No one talks about the weaponized satellites that are operated by the US and Russia.

20 hours a week?? You got to be kidding me.

They make it sound like their giving up their whole lives working 20 hours a week haha. Thats like 2.5 hours a day lol.

I think it's on top of their full class schedule.

It better be! haha
After they finish school they probably make 30hr/s a week?

haha j/k

That would be a fun project to work on. Luck them! lol

That's quite a lot for an undergrad student. I only manage to work 8 hrs with my schedule.

Wait a SECOND!! The BARENTS SEA?!

That is Russian land or very near to it right? I remember hearing this in Russian articles all the time " Missile test at s-300 at Barents" "admiral Kirov in the Barents today" "kashtan system tested in the Barents".


Couldn't the Russians have mistaken that for a nuke or something?

Oh well. What did you do today at college? "I crashed a satellite"

8 hrs? Must be nice. Try being in the military and going to school. =P

"Better than what the US military did with one of it's satellites that has 22lbs of plutonium that burned up on re-entry. No one talks about the weaponized satellites that are operated by the US and Russia."

and this is one of the reasons why i vote to cut nasa funding. stop wasting oxygen these stupid machines can gather some minute data still if you crashed them into the sun instead of trying to kill baby seals take that PETA lovers (think i'm going to write to PETA and give them a more realistic cause to fight about hahahahaa)

seriously, when they try to do this stupid wasteful manuever with the international space station, i'm going to protest it with congratulations on nasa helping to destory the earth, the ozone, and blah blah blah kill fish or baby seal, since a butterfly flapping it's wings in china causes hurricane katrina's the INS crashing into the earth causes the ozone to be destroyed blah blah blah... billions spent on these things and they want to waste them, crash the damned things into mars to look for water instead of making a special 30 billion dollar satellite to crash instead , f'n retards at nasa, i swear, they wouldn't have to spend so damn much money if they'd quit wasting it like this.

as for the air force releasing plutonium into the atmosphere i think all cancer patients should sure the air force now, i think micheal douglas would have a pretty good shot at it with his sudden throat cancer over this summer. long shot, but i don't care, i knew nothing about it, but if more people were aware of the plan before they did it, the damned thing should have been deep sixed in the sun to mix with the radiation already there. this just makes me want to dump my used motor oil next to the water wells for cities since nobody cares. i might just have to tell excel energy to just rocket their used plutonium up into the atmosphere to burn up since it's obviously not a big deal, and the air force can get away with it, so they should be able to also.

i'm not an enviroMENTAList, but this is about as smart as peeing in your drink before you drink it. presidents were supposed to be the best and the brightest, nasa is supposed to be the brightest and best of the best and brightest, either that was a straight out lie, or grading on a curve has further destroyed the american education system. the damned machines are already malfunctioning and they want to risk killing some one because they think it's safe to crash stuff into the earth and they have no clue as to why the things quit working right.

NASA EMPLOYEES: " my brake light is on, the engine light is on, i think i'll drive my car to work past the schools and while buses are bringing kids to school today "

yeah but you get to do something as awesome as control real satellites. I don't think anybody would persevere through a summer training and test battery if they weren't into it. I'd sign up in a heartbeat if my university offered something this cool.

I wish I could work 20 hours a week. I don't even work 5 minutes a week. No money for me.

Yes but, can they crash windows?

For some reason reading those first few words make me see this:

"Yes but, can they play Crysis"

I'm surprised someone hasn't posted that yet (yes I know now that I mentioned it someone will say it xD)

Odd. I work 20+ hours a week and I'm taking 20 credits as an undergrad.

I know someone else who is working 55 hours and taking 12 (bare minimum though for full time student). Yeah, they barely sleep though.

They shouldn't; I believe bans have been threatened for this before.

Obvious troll is obvious? Do a little research before you start ranting nonsense.

In response to the article and hours worked...

I went to school fulltime (at least 30hrs/week) and still managed to hold a 40/hr a week job. You have literally 6-7 hours of personal time a week but we do what we have to do.

good for them.

my first thought reading the headline was "Students handling a potentially disastrous event?" But after reading the details about their extensive training and experience helping control 5 satellites in the past 7 years, i think they did a very excellent job.

they already had, like a 70% chance of hitting water without guidance right?

Here is something I don't get, it's bad to polute rivers and streams, but OK to dump anything from engine oil to sattelites to nuclear bombs into the oceans, where life started?

It seems more like a paid internship with NASA than a real job..

A general business degree is much less strenuous than a degree in aerospace engineering. I worked between 30-60 hours a week (2 jobs) while taking between 15-21 class hours when getting my bachelors. I'm sure it would have been much harder if I couldn’t' have slept through 80% of my classes.

Yay! Mindless Destruction!

It's going to come down someplace, they might as well put it where it's not going to kill people.

Sorry to nitpick, Jane, but it's the "University of Colorado at Boulder" or "University of Colorado" not "Colorado University." I know they abbreviate it CU-Boulder (to indicate the more distinguished of the three branches: Boulder, Colorado Springs, and Denver), but if you say Colorado University, people there likely wouldn't know what school you were talking about.

Actually it is alot of extra work. At college I take 16.5 credits, which means (atleast according to NYS universities) that I should have the 16.5 hours of in class time plus 3 hours outside of class time (atleast) for each of those credit hours to do well. So according to a university thats 49.5 hours of out of class time each week. On top of that I like alot (if not most) students have a job to pay for college (so thats another 16 hours). So thats 82 hours of my 168 hours a week. IF you sleep a third of the day *8 hours* thats 56 hours, so adding an extra 20 hours a week is alot of work...

Very cool stuff, I sure they are all proud to be a part of something like that. Quite an interesting career if I may say so.

Yeah, it really depends on the classes you're taking. When I was a ChemE undergrad many many moons ago several of my '3' credit ChemE classes entailed a minimum of 15-20 hours of homework a week each, and I was usually taking 2-3 of those along with working 10-20 hours a week at a 3M internship. Compared to many of my 3-4 credit lib ed. classes which I doubt I spent more than 2-3 hours a week on their homework. It pretty much meant I missed out on all the 'fun' parts of college (and learned to get by on 2-3 hours of sleep), but I have no regrets as my degree allowed me to get where I wanted to be.

Nice to write in one's CV:
I crashed a NASA satellite!

To everyone saying they are "only" working 20 hours a week. I'm sure their course load is very demanding.

I'm working 40 hours a week and taking 8 credit hours in a general Computer Science program, and it's difficult for me. I couldn't imagine working 20 hours a week at what has to be a fairly stressful job AND going through a difficult Aerospace program.