Deep Space and Interplanetary Exploration - Houston, we are go for launch!

[Sabelkatten]

Arguably, the most urgent thing is to get there and back again - if we can't manage that most other projects are rather less useful...

[Thunderbolt]

Earth is 10x more massive than Mars, and wouldn't it always be cheaper to mine anything on earth, even pulling it up from the Challenger Deep at the bottom of the Marianas trench, then lugging it back from scores of millions of km away?

[rebs]

But living there whilst exploiting the planet for resouces is the thing.  That's why I agree with Daryk the CO2 in It's molecular for is our friend for warming the atmosphere while we shield the planet from the solar wind to thicken the atmosphere.   

[Thunderbolt]

But living there whilst exploiting the planet for resouces is the thing.  That's why I agree with Daryk the CO2 in It's molecular for is our friend for warming the atmosphere while we shield the planet from the solar wind to thicken the atmosphere.

just to be completely clear, CO₂ is always a molecule... you mean in its gaseous state ?  CO₂(g) ?

Still think if you're investing your money for economic profit, we'll always be able to getting anything from earth cheaper than from space, for the foreseeable future

Earth is 10x the mass of Mars, 100x the mass of the Moon, 1000x the mass of the largest minor planets

Of course, getting outposts on Mars would be great for early warning & tracking of asteroids (say) or for increasing the baseline for parallax measurements of the distances to stars

[Thunderbolt]

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/09/mars-insight-feels-mysterious-magnetic-pulsations-at-midnight/

Global liquid water reservoir ???

[Daryk]

As far as "foreseeable future", I expect we'll see the first asteroid mined before I die.

[Thunderbolt]

If economics has anything to say about, manganese nodules long before that  :)

[Wrangler]

Looks like Venus may had habitable 3 billions years ago. 

I found this on ScienceAlert.

The article indicates that it's suspected the Venus of ancient times lost it's oceans and habitability 700 million years ago.  I wonder what in world did THAT to the planet.  I hope hell don't happen here. The report suggests some kind gas leak came from somewhere and rock couldn't had reabsorbed the gases.

If they could have survived, i wonder if if there could have had life on the survive and fossils to be found that hadn't melted from sheer toxicity of the atmosphere.

[ANS Kamas P81]

I'd love to know just how much outgassing was required, and how many millions of years of effort, was needed to go from one earthlike atmosphere to 96...

[Sabelkatten]

As I understand it, Venus barely has any magnetic field?

[kato]

earthlike atmosphere

Even just the nitrogen in Venus' atmosphere - being the item that doesn't really change - is already almost four times the mass of the nitrogen in Earth's atmosphere.

As for the scale required, data from the landers indicates that current volcanism on Venus emit less than 1 km³ magma and therefore less than 1.4 * 10^10 kg CO2 per year. Which makes it pretty much irrelevant for CO2 content, although - provided high sulfuric material surfacing - sufficient for maintenance of SO2 levels and therefore the H2SO4 clouds in the atmosphere.

In theory a slow resurfacing event with a release of around 160 km³ of magma per year occuring over a geologically significant period between 700-500 ma ago could lead to the current levels of CO2. For scale this is equivalent to about 130 times the extent of the Siberian Traps operating for 100 times the length of time.

[Wrangler]

Looks like Mk1 Starship prototype is looking like it coming close to being done.



SpaceX's Elon Musk is suppose to have a conference on what their going do now that Star Hopper prototype was successful in it's final hop test.

[Thunderbolt]

Looks like Venus may had habitable 3 billions years ago. 

I found this on ScienceAlert.

The article indicates that it's suspected the Venus of ancient times lost it's oceans and habitability 700 million years ago.  I wonder what in world did THAT to the planet.  I hope hell don't happen here. The report suggests some kind gas leak came from somewhere and rock couldn't had reabsorbed the gases.

If they could have survived, i wonder if if there could have had life on the survive and fossils to be found that hadn't melted from sheer toxicity of the atmosphere.

The bulk density of Venus is lower than the trend for our other earthlike worlds

If that was due to thermal expansion, and if the coefficient of thermal expansion for granite / basalt on earth is appropriate, then the overall characteristic bulk temperature of Venus would be about 100-200 degrees C hotter than earth throughout

the same calculations for Mars (slightly over dense) would imply that world was 200-300 degrees C colder than earth throughout, which agrees with scholarly consensus to my knowledge

so Venus being 100-200 degrees hotter than earth throughout doesn't seem wildly implausible

By comparison, earth's Mantle has cooled by 200-300 degrees over the past 4 Gyr

[Thunderbolt]

Looks like Mk1 Starship prototype is looking like it coming close to being done.



SpaceX's Elon Musk is suppose to have a conference on what their going do now that Star Hopper prototype was successful in it's final hop test.

the first Martian explorers would be very brave

without anyone discussing radiation protection, I'm afraid we will be summarily "throwing them to the radiation fields"

[Wrangler]

Well, looks like NASA put order of 6 more Orion Capsules for future missions.  Which is nice i guess since their reusable.

[Wrangler]

A picture of Soyuz 61 lift off taken by Astronaut Christina Koch from the International Space Station.

[Wrangler]

Interesting tidbit of rocket development.  I have doubts it will get greenlighted, but i'm hopeful.

NASA is quietly working on Nuclear style rocket for fast travel between Earth and mars. Old idea, but it has possiblities if they can re-do the regulations about handling nuclear materials.

The Rocket Engine itself is not a direct nuclear engine per say, it's nuclear powered with heat of a fission plant powering it.  White House has asked the regulations be re-done so this type Rocket can get it to space. 

This would solve alot issues of getting the people to Mars without worrying about radiation as badly, but there funding and the usual anti-nuclear movement to contend with i suspect.

[ANS Kamas P81]

NASA posted a curious image from Juno's latest deep dive over Jupiter.  No press announcement has been made yet as to whether "something wonderful" is going to happen.

[rebs]

All eyes will turn to....  Jupiter?

[kato]

In case anyone wonders and is too lazy to google - that's the shadow of Io on Jupiter.

They're pretty regular, even if there used to be less clickbait hype about it. It's sort of a sport for astronomers to snag pictures with multiple shadows, although such conjunctions are rare - the next triple-moon photo opportunity is supposedly 2032, the last one was 2015. First shadow photographed on Jupiter was Ganymede in Voyager 2's flyby 1979.

PS On a side note, that's not the pole as the angle may suggest. Io's shadow is generally around the equator of Jupiter, Juno is flying a sorta semi-polar orbit there to avoid the radiation fields.

[ANS Kamas P81]

Yeah, it should be noted that Juno's using a pretty wide angle lens - and is getting VERY close to Jupiter for its passes, so the imagery is very different from those long-range "sitting portraits" we usually get of the planets.  Compare these shots of Jupiter to shots of Earth from the ISS; obviously the ISS is much closer to Earth but Jupiter's also much bigger.

[rebs]

As long as the spice flows and no attempts at landing on Europa are made (just to be safe), we'll all be fine. 

In click baity news....  Both gizmodo and Science Magazine are proposing that Planet 9 is a bowling ball sized black hole.  Easily googled, both come up on my news feed.  Does anyone in the know think this idea has merit?

[kato]

[Daryk]

I'm pretty sure we'd notice the Hawking radiation from a black hole that close to us...

[rebs]

That's about what I thought.  And love that last bit that Mike Brown had to say about it.  I'm hungry, now.  Lol....

[Thunderbolt]

https://www.livescience.com/massive-underwater-gas-trough-mystery.html

new research from Japan reminds us, enormous, miles-wide reservoirs of greenhouse gases lurk in untouched pockets just below the seafloor...Using seismic waves to map the trough's structure, the team found a huge gas pocket stretching at least 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) wide and potentially containing more than 100 million tons (90.7 million metric tons) of CO2, methane or some combination of the two.

[Wrangler]

Mk1 Starship apparently "assembled" physically. 

Saturday SpaceX suppose to have some sort meeting what their going to happen next with their program.

Rocket looks bit too Flash Gordonish to me..

[rebs]

Seems that scientists diving deep into the data gleaned by the Cassini mission have found evidence for the existence of oxygen bearing organic compounds in Enceladus' plumes.

Here's the NASA article....
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/new-organic-compounds-found-in-enceladus-ice-grains

[Wrangler]

Minor Rocket news, looks like Virgin Galactic got its first government contract to fly Italian Air Force researchers next year on their SpaceShip2 type ship, the VSS Unity.


This is the 2nd SpaceShip2 their building.

[Daryk]

I find the Flash Gordon similarities HILARIOUS!  ;D