I don't know why, i just like idea of one oldest forms mechanical proposultion being used move the latest form.(https://abload.de/img/shuttle-800isk86.jpg)
The only two prototypes left, after the one that did make it to space died in 2002 when theIncluding the various test models / prototypes, there are currently still 9 Buran around, including two partial units.U-Store-It"hangar" it was in collapsed and crushed it to bits.
Sagittarius after that ???
So making a BH is extremely difficult, but it would not be as dangerous or hard to handle as a massive quantity of antimatter.
I'd name the first one The Cygnus.Definitely would deserve the X-1 designation.
While there suppose to fly a light weight drone copter on Mars, this thing going be monster sized self-driving drone in comparison. Which really ambitious endeavor i think. Low gravity, nuclear power going make this thing zip around fast if the winds aren't too bad.The thickest air on Mars is in the Hellas basin, and it's 1/100 the pressure of Earth's sea-level average; any random surface outside of Hellas is going to be about half of that. You need to build something capable of operating at about 110,000 feet on Earth; nNo way are you getting a car-sized probe to fly around on props that small unless they're doing fractional-c rotation...
Definitely would deserve the X-1 designation.This thing going be on Titan. Atmosphere thicker there.
The thickest air on Mars is in the Hellas basin, and it's 1/100 the pressure of Earth's sea-level average; any random surface outside of Hellas is going to be about half of that. You need to build something capable of operating at about 110,000 feet on Earth; nNo way are you getting a car-sized probe to fly around on props that small unless they're doing fractional-c rotation...
But not "getting there"... ::)Your right. NASA will likely need to use the SLS or commercial carrier with that power. Given it will be 2026 when it's launched, its possible that the New Glenn & SpaceX's Superheavy/Starship will be operational and be available to do the job.
This thing going be on Titan. Atmosphere thicker there.Now that makes much more sense. They should build it in Texas, then, so it's used to the smell from the cow farts.
Now that makes much more sense. They should build it in Texas, then, so it's used to the smell from the cow farts.
Interesting challenge NASA put out, the CO2 Conversion Challenge. (https://www.co2conversionchallenge.org/)The "convert CO2 into molecules" tag line already has my eyebrow twitching.
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) ?
earthlike atmosphereEven 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.
Looks like Venus may had habitable 3 billions years ago.The bulk density of Venus is lower than the trend for our other earthlike worlds
I found this on ScienceAlert. (https://www.sciencealert.com/venus-may-have-been-habitable-until-a-mysterious-catastrophe-millions-of-years-ago)
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.
(https://www.sciencealert.com/images/2019-09/processed/012-venus-habitable_1024.jpg)
Looks like Mk1 Starship prototype is looking like it coming close to being done.the first Martian explorers would be very brave
(https://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=66939.0;attach=54766)
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.
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.
I find the Flash Gordon similarities HILARIOUS! ;DNeeds some lightning bolts on the wings!
Makes me think of thisOMG! I knew it looked vaguely familiar.
(http://www.davidsissonmodels.co.uk/UFO/LunarMod1.jpg)
Is the software of the camera providing the light or is that natural sun light as the ship see's it.There's plenty postprocessing involved, but the light is mostly natural. Ryugu isn't much farther out than Earth, and about half as reflective as the moon in effective visual albedo (i.e. compared to looking at the moon from Earth).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUelbSa-OkAA warning it was 30 minutes long would have been helpful...
Something for folks to watch.
A report i read on Gizmodo posted about Mars. (https://gizmodo.com/curiosity-finds-mysterious-oxygen-fluctuations-on-mars-1839809905)After a 3 year report from the rovers, scientist can't explain fluxs of oxygen along with Methane in the atmosphere.RE: Methane, Invisible Martian Cattle?
RE: Methane, Invisible Martian Cattle?Anyone play "Terraforming Mars"? Prelude expansion has a card that lets you play a project "ignoring global requirements". Say hello to the Space Cows: -30 Celsius, no air, no water, no problem! :D
speed along the process of disproving their work.In all honesty, especially this. Nip weirdness in the bud, so that only the truly weird has any strength of getting through.
In all honesty, especially this. Nip weirdness in the bud, so that only the truly weird has any strength of getting through....stranger than science fiction? ^-^
odd features like Labyrinths here and there, which i didn't know it was actually a feature a world could have.There are plenty similar structures on Earth (across the planet) and a couple on Mars (in polar ice). The term basically describes a geography in which part of the ground has been carved out through erosion, often combining karst with canyons and plenty of sinkholes. The ones on Titan are supposedly geologically rather old, for which there is no exact explanation yet - though the unknown composition of the ground is suspected.
Where's that one from?Its was originally taken 2014 during tge Cassini mission. Picture was nicknamed Ring King. How ever some one colorized image. Still trying how it was done. They did tbe coloring from the description of Saturn correctly.
That's a nice one! :thumbsup:The chain of seven (7) active star-forming regions, running from the upper-right to lower-left corners, of which the Orion association is the 2nd, is one segment of the 9000 lyr long "Radcliffe Wave" (see 2nd image). Do factor into account that the "first" active SFR in the UR corner (near the Vela SNR) is 500-1000 lyr below the galactic midplane, whereas the Orion SFR is near the midplane, and the "third thru seventh" active SFRs running down towards the LL corner are all well above the midplane... such that the "aqua-green circles" on the first image are only projected-onto-the-galactic-midplane positions:
New space company is taking a spin in the commercial space lift business.
Reported on Space.com (https://www.space.com/spinlaunch-launch-startup-investment-funding.html), Spinlaunch going to use a method of spinning a potential payload and rocket to hypersonic speeds and fling them into space. They have a test facility being built in New Mexico's Space port America.
Its interesting idea, its sort like how futurist had though a rail gun launch system would work.
I do recall that Saddam's Iraqi military was trying to use pressurized pipes to potentially launch things into space for their purposes.
Well, it seems the Curiosity rover has frozen in place due to a software malfunction. The rover is seven years old, far exceeding mission specs, but it would be a shame to lose it now.Weird that there no backup computer that could take over. Odd and kinda sad if this is the end of Curiosity. When you think a nuclear powered rover can't out last a older, long as the struggling but, tough (and cheaper) Opportunity by a number of years.
https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/305205-mars-rover-is-frozen-in-place-following-software-error (https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/305205-mars-rover-is-frozen-in-place-following-software-error)
Mars is a seismically active body. NASA's InSight lander has recorded 450 "Marsquakes" in a relatively short amount of time. The activity places Mars somewhere between the Moon and the Earth in level of seismic activity.
https://www.space.com/amp/nasa-insight-lander-mars-seismically-active.html (https://www.space.com/amp/nasa-insight-lander-mars-seismically-active.html)
That's interesting, the core's not quite as dead as folks thought then if that's the case :)Its the Mole people. (J/K)
their Falcon 9 stage 1 rockets are revolutionary since they come back on their own.
Ariane-5's solid-rocket boosters are designed for high reliability and minimum cost. Already during the preliminary design stage, the possibility of recovering the boosters after flight was therefore considered to be of great interest for meeting both of these goals. To ensure enhanced reliability during the entire production phase, there will be stringent post- flight inspection of the spent boosters. The possibility of refurbishing and reusing the recovered boosters has, however, been rejected. It is currently considered a non-cost-effective option because of the specific design and reliability complications that this would incur. It is currently planned to recover four boosters per year.http://www.esa.int/esapub/bulletin/bullet85/gigo85.htm
Cool... That sounds like the ISS is our first space shipyard! 8)it sounds like it. Hope they go with it. Bigelow Aerospace suppose to be finally getting something off the ground as well.
Not saying it couldn't have been possiblity, i think due to the distance were observing these exoplanets, that its just moved into position we simply can't see it.Aren't we looking at it from above the ecliptic? There shouldn't be anywhere to hide...
Well, there stuff between us and that exoplanet. Something could have move in the way like interstellar debris for that moment, catching the light of the planet. (shrugs)"A long time ago in a galaxy far far away"
That someone ticked off the Empire, they used the Death Star on the thing.
"Throughout my long government career of over four and a half decades I have always found it to be true that we are sometimes, as leaders, called on to take risks," Loverro wrote. "The risks we take, whether technical, political, or personal, all have potential consequences if we judge them incorrectly. I took such a risk earlier in the year because I judged it necessary to fulfill our mission. Now, over the balance of time, it is clear that I made a mistake in that choice for which I alone must bear the consequences. "
Okay, this is strange.
And just a week before the first manned launch off US soil in years. Most peculiar.
I'd have thought it another "inappropriate relationship with underling", except why would he think that "necessary to fulfil our mission"?
Strange days indeed.
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2020/exoplanet-apparently-disappears-in-latest-hubble-observations
When worlds collide?
Otherwise the Jovian moon system would be included already (Europa's likely water ocean).Pretty much every moon beyond the frost line of sufficient size and with a core is usually suspected to have or have had an internal ocean at the core-mantle boundary.
I was hoping that with something like 2 decades of observations, we'd have seen something new new, not "last 2-3 million years" new, but hope spring eternal ...Given the low number of vulcanoes on Venus there's about a one-in-five chance that there's just a single one active anywhere on the planet. Active meaning having erupted in the last 10,000 years...
Starship has started flying...The birth of the DropShip.
https://mobile.twitter.com/SpaceX/status/1290854457136181248 (https://mobile.twitter.com/SpaceX/status/1290854457136181248)
What exploded on the pad just after it took off?It looks like the scaffold the rocket was standing on. And something has to explode during a Starship test, it's a tradition now.
What exploded on the pad just after it took off?Maybe some fuel lines that hadn't been emptied? I think SpaceX might be pushing their timetable just a bit harder than what's really advisable... I hope NASA keeps a close eye on their future testing, we don't need another Boeing debacle... :(
Bacteria like those in Chernobyl might stand the radiation. I sure hope some space agency gets money for an aerial probe!i was reading couple months ago, they think the could use that Bacteria for space flight to protect the crew from radiation.
Intended target is - of course - Australia.
We appreciate the help in keeping the drop bears down. The last time the US tried - Skylab - nah. Sorry, but you muffed that one.This is JAXA. As in this.
A view into how much a metallic asteroid (Psyche) about 140 miles in diameter is worth compared to the Global Economy.Always a purely academic question.
https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/nasas-new-nuclear-reactor-could-change-space-exploration?utm_source=dscfb&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=dscfb (https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/nasas-new-nuclear-reactor-could-change-space-exploration?utm_source=dscfb&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=dscfb)Great news, as described it should be a lot more efficient than RTGs.
NASA reveals the future of powered spaceflight with this small sized reactor.
Great news, as described it should be a lot more efficient than RTGs.And presumably it's controllable so the power level stays constant, one of the headaches with RTGs. And probably refuelable as well, if used in a manned station (easier to ship a uranium core in a lead box than the whole reactor).
However, Hayabusa 2 already has an extended mission that it will enter immediately after its bombing run.http://www.hayabusa2.jaxa.jp/galleries/othermovie/pages/ext_mission_en.html
Ahh man. I guess they didn't have resources to save it. :-[From the sound of it, they didn't spend enough on preventative maintenance, so it's not in a good state to be repaired. If the other cables weren't at risk of snapping and killing anyone trying to fix it, they probably would repair it.
I wonder if they would rebuild.I hope so, but the way funding for these things go, I wouldn't expect it any time soon. At the very least it does mean they can improve the design a bit.
I thought Mars gets about 40-50% of the light we get here?43% through distance.
To be seen as more than just a dot, that's an impressively close flyby.Distance to ISS depends on exact orbital mechanics of course, but Hayabusa-2 actually dipped below ISS with a planned 290 km altitude at closest point to Earth.
The possible answer is 3d printing, using moon regolith as a building material to produce a concrete-like substance.Europe and China have been working on this for a while, and are way beyond the "oh let's use 3D printing" and in the stage of finding applications.
Data from the Juno mission has uncovered a thin but fairly substantial cloud of orbital dust that leads to a phenomenon called Zodiacal Light that slightly brightens the sky at, you guessed it, the Zodiac path.Interplanetary dust is what Brian May wrote his thesis about. :) Rock on! ;D
The culprit? MARS. And specifically the dust storms that rage on the surface. Read more about it in the below link.
https://scitechdaily.com/serendipitous-juno-spacecraft-detections-shatter-ideas-about-origin-of-zodiacal-light/amp/ (https://scitechdaily.com/serendipitous-juno-spacecraft-detections-shatter-ideas-about-origin-of-zodiacal-light/amp/)
It really makes you wonder if "dark matter" is just more of the usual stuff that we just haven't seen yet...As I understand it that seems extremely unlikely. First off the required densities should be visible, second it should be distributed closer to how other matter is distributed. Dark matter, as far as we have been able to determine, doesn't interact through EM. That's how it stays dark and spreads out around galaxies.
As I understand it that seems extremely unlikely. First off the required densities should be visible, second it should be distributed closer to how other matter is distributed. Dark matter, as far as we have been able to determine, doesn't interact through EM. That's how it stays dark and spreads out around galaxies.The non-existence of "aether" was "extremely unlikely" until Michelson and Morely showed it to be so...
The non-existence of "aether" was "extremely unlikely" until Michelson and Morely showed it to be so...While it's certainly possible there is a mundane explanation for dark matter, the situations aren't similar.
Dark matter - the modern epicycles. Amazing how its properties change to meet the need of the latest theory? And no predictive, falsifiable work (proving a foregone selected conclusion ain't falsifiable).Implying that thousands of physicists are all lying about their work to get more grant money is a rather serious accusation. Do you have any evidence to back that up?
But the modern thinking assumes it's either WIMPs or MACHOs - Weakly Interacting Massive Particles, or Massive Compact Halo Objects. Think is, if it's not magical, we'd see the effect on light travelling over billions of light years. And we don't. So it has to be magical, to keep that sweet, sweet grant money coming.
we'd see the effect on light travelling over billions of light years. And we don't.
Using spectroscopic data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, the SLACS1 team has so far isolated 98 ellipticals that strongly lens background blue star-forming galaxies at moderately high redshift (Bolton et al. 2008). Since the redshifts of both the lens and the background source are known, the lensing geometry, revealed by Hubble Space Telescope images (figure 4a), defines the total mass interior to the critical line (or ‘Einstein radius’) irrespective of whether that material is shining. Together with a dynamically based mass on a smaller physical scale derived from the dispersion of stellar velocities in the lensing galaxy itself, the total mass density in the lens as a function of galactocentric distance ρ(r) can be determined. Across a wide range in cosmic time and lens mass, the total mass distribution is remarkably uniform, following an isothermal distribution, Inline Formula (figure 4b). This distribution is spatially more extended than that of the visible baryons, demonstrating clearly the existence of dark matter...
Techniques for robustly analysing the pattern of distortions of background galaxies and inverting these to map the foreground dark matter were developed by Kaiser and others (Kaiser 1992; Kaiser et al. 1995). Yet the clear detection of weak lensing from the large-scale distribution of dark matter along random sight lines, an effect known as ‘cosmic shear’, was not announced until 2000 (Bacon et al. 2000; van Waerbeke et al. 2000; Wittman et al. 2000). There are excellent reviews of this rapidly developing field by Bartelmann & Schneider (2001), Huterer (2002) and Refregier (2003)...
The early papers (cited above) analysed the strength of the signal to constrain the amount of dark matter per unit volume, confirming independently values from other methods. Later papers exploited the capabilities of the Hubble Space Telescope to produce the first projected map of its distribution (Massey et al. 2007a; figure 7a). This map of dark matter can be compared with that of the light in the same direction as revealed by visible galaxies and X-ray clusters (figure 7b). To first order, there is a reassuring similarity, indicative of the fact that dark matter acts as the gravitational framework (or scaffolding) for the normal baryonic material...
In addition to tracing dark matter around clusters and on cosmic scales, a similar statistical technique can be applied around individual galaxies to detect their dark matter ‘haloes’. Suppose that we conduct a large spectroscopic survey of bright nearby galaxies and select a subset of systems of a particular class for which we have deeper imaging data. By ‘stacking’ the imaging data for that class of object, we can determine the average density of dark matter around a mean galaxy of this type to much larger radius than is possible using strong lensing (§3a(i)), and for a much wider variety of objects that may not be compact enough to act as strong lenses. Early detections of this so-called galaxy–galaxy lensingsignal were made by Brainerd et al. (1996).
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (York et al. 2000) is a good example of a recent imaging and spectroscopic survey that has been used to analyse this signal (Fischer et al. 2000; Sheldon et al. 2004). By correlating the positions of foreground galaxies of a given type with the effect that they have on the shapes of background galaxies, we can not only measure the extent of their dark matter haloes for given types, but also determine the extent to which such galaxies are, or are not, representative tracers of the underlying dark matter density field. Such analyses can be used to determine the shapes of the dark matter haloes (Parker et al. 2007) as well as to eliminate claimed non-Newtonian gravitational forces laws invoked to eliminate the need for dark matter (Tian et al. 2009). Finally, by comparing the dark matter haloes associated with galaxies as a function of their spatial positions in dense clusters, we can demonstrate that galaxies suffer violent environmental forces that work to strip their dark matter haloes (Natarajan et al.2002, 2009).
Despite seemingly difficult technical obstacles only a few years ago, great strides have been made in using weak lensing to chart dark matter on large scales and around clusters and various galaxy populations. In the space of 3–4 years, we have confirmed the theoretical paradigm that emerged in the 1980s, which postulated that galaxies and clusters owe their existence to the gravitational clumping of a dominant dark matter density field. We can trace this dark matter around galaxies in statistically well-controlled samples and see how it differs in its extent and shape in various environments...
To the "first order"? I'm pretty sure Einstein was a few orders of magnitude beyond that (GPS, anyone?). And I have to say, "gravitational framework (or scaffolding) for the normal baryonic material" sounds an awful lot like "universal metric" to me (no, it's not a perfect analogy, merely suspicious).
This is almost as much fun as debating Oxford commas, and I say that as a physicist (albeit one almost 28 years removed from their Astronomy minor). I get a lot of observations have been made since I graduated, but I did stare at a lot of photographic plates as an undergrad. I think there's still plenty of room for interpretation and error in that, modern technology notwithstanding. Worktroll may have overstated his case, but he's not fundamentally wrong.
Well, personally, I didn't care about my lifespan seriously - I am not old enough to worry about that right now, and when I need to go then it is the time to go. Simple, as many people does since the dawn of our species(or lifeform in earth). I will eventually grow old, and finally on someday, die. It is just natural.
But when I read the information about the concept level project to launch the unmanned probe to the Alpha Centauri system some years ago, I am seriously wish that live long enough to see its result. We can get the report around 20~30 years after launch it, so how long I could live is a serious problem on it.
In essence, the Eagleworks EmDrive apparent thrust came from a heating of the scale they used to measure the thrust, not from any movement of the drive itself.
"When power flows into the EmDrive, the engine warms up. This also causes the fastening elements on the scale to warp, causing the scale to move to a new zero point. We were able to prevent that in an improved structure," Prof. Tajmar continued.
His conclusion puts the final nail in the coffin for EmDrive dreams: "Our measurements refute all EmDrive claims by at least three orders of magnitude."
as well as an ESA orbiter in February.Hope is a United Arab Emirates mission, not ESA. Launched on a Japanese rocket and with mission support from India.
Only issue i have it the cargo section so bloody far up. Elevator going to be tricky since it's low gravity.Look out down below!!! KICK.
Like a possible drone on Titan.Certainty. The nuclear battery powered chopper would interesting. It would be able over come obstacles landscape.
Nuclear power - at least RTG - makes perfect sense on Titan. But the weight! Oh, the weight! The Voyager MH-RTG weighs 10 times what Intrepid does. And that's probably not the right type. How much to develop new RTGs from scratch?
It will be more interesting when they can do flight beyond going up and down. That alone was a great achievement. Going something will be better to me. It does make me think, why heck it cost NASA US$80 million build a tiny 4 pound drone helicopter and five million to operate it.It also needs to survive the accelerations of launching and landing with the rover, and be reliable enough to do what they need to within the mission time since they can't just send another if it breaks, and all of this while being extremely light because the atmosphere is less dense.
I know about radiation shielding, hardening it, weather proofing it. Lordy, it seem to be super sky-high price for tiny thing like that.
Some folks do not click on links that don't come with any context. Can you elaborate, please?
Was it noisy when the rocket flew over?
That's amazing view of it in the night sky!
2 new robotic landers!Technically it's only one lander (DAVINCI+). VERITAS is an orbiter.
Came across this - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsS0Gn0IN2I the other day and wow this is a huge 'what if' for sure! A fleet of SSTO's that would help launch and construct a series of orbital solar powerplants that would in turn beam their energy down to earth. One can only imagine what a project would do for the space industry!Didn't watch all that much of it, but the video seems to mash up a bunch of 1970s NASA studies that were developed in parallel to Shuttle development over that decade (about '71 to '78) in order to have a possible use case that would actually justify investing in STS in order to satisfy the capacity and operating cost requirements that such a project would need.
Didn't watch all that much of it, but the video seems to mash up a bunch of 1970s NASA studies that were developed in parallel to Shuttle development over that decade (about '71 to '78) in order to have a possible use case that would actually justify investing in STS in order to satisfy the capacity and operating cost requirements that such a project would need.
It tends to be dragged back up whenever there is any similar (payload-over-time) concept to justify, and not just for SSTO.
So, are we going to one day see Branson's Raiders, now that the first billionaire has been to space?
Must be a Lloyd's of London thing.Oof, that would be extra bad. Third market insurance is sky high, my condo complex has that. Too much aluminum wiring in it, no normal insurance will cover it.
actual research that will result in a functional spacecraft nearly-onbudget.
I don't know what it means... but Mars may be the solution to despoiling our planet too much. We can despoil Mars instead.The costs would be astronomical (pun intended) even after the proper technologies are developed.
And asteroids.
The costs would be astronomical (pun intended) even after the proper technologies are developed.
An interesting article about black holes. Complete with a size comparison chart for various known black holes...
https://nerdist.com/article/biggest-black-holes-size-comparison/?amp (https://nerdist.com/article/biggest-black-holes-size-comparison/?amp)
Originally thought to be a brown dwarf,, it has a mean temperature of 1,500 f, and a measured magnetic field about 4 million times as strong as the earth's magnetic field. .There's nothing there that empirically stops it from "being" a brown dwarf in the sense of definition. It's simply at the lower edge of brown dwarf possibilities, just about at the point where it could fuse deuterium. Due to its mass of 12.7+-1.0 M_Jupiter (below the IAU-standardized rule of thumb of 13 M_Jupiter, although that's contested and often stated as "12-13") it was relegated from a Class T2.5 brown dwarf to an "object of planetary mass" in 2017.
I posted about that couple pages ago, Reb. Did they change something like the carrier their using? NOthing beyond project was announced last time.
You know? I hope we are at or near the end of the space capsule age. We need something better than the Orion or this.Honestly, this seems more like Boeing has lost their edge to me. Their planes have also had issues in the recent past.
But I do understand it's necessary because a next generation space shuttle never materialized.
Mars and Venus are the only remotely terraform-able bodies though, and Mercury is just easier to get to than anything in the outer system.
That said, I think the outer system needs to be explored too, but trying to boost the priority above Mars and Venus just doesn't make sense.
I was just saying the SLS is going to be a very valuable tool for getting our robotic probes to these far flung places.
Haha! We were once told (mostly by Disney) that we would all have flying cars and jetpacks for several years now. WHERE'S MY JETPACK? I want to be a jump infantry reservist. ;D
Having seen people's driving and flying, I'm honestly kinda glad those things have yet to pan out...
Ah, but how much would you trust that cabbie with a third dimension to steer in? :)
JAXA has announced a bold mission to Mars' moon, Phobos. There they will land a probe that will take a roughly 10 ounce sample, then lift off and return to Earth. Launch date will be 2024, and the return journey will arrive home in 2029.The Phobos mission (MMX) has been in plans for a couple years - even the english Twitter account (http://"https://twitter.com/mmx_jaxa_en") for the mission was opened in 2017 ;) .
Read more about it here:
https://phys.org/news/2021-08-japan-aims-soil-samples-mars.amp (https://phys.org/news/2021-08-japan-aims-soil-samples-mars.amp)
This is an interesting way to save some weight: https://www.universetoday.com/152221/musk-confirms-how-mechazilla-will-catch-and-assemble-starship-and-super-heavy-for-rapid-reuse/amp/Well... I'll believe it when I see it working. It feels way too optimistic. :-\
Well... I'll believe it when I see it working. It feels way too optimistic. :-\
I admit it'll probably take a lot longer to achieve that technology than Musk would prefer, but I gotta say...could someone in the Wright Brothers time have foreseen the commercialized, rapid-turnaround air travel industry we now have today? It'd be pie in the sky unachievable dreams...yet here it's second nature for us. Maybe in 50-60 years we'll be at that same point. Too late for us...but isn't that why we have kids?
Five bucks says the Japanese look at this and take a long, hard look at their moving Gundam statue...
I would nominate Iapetus in general for most impressive geological formations.
Not only is it black on one side and white on the other, it also features an equatorial ridge - on the black side - with some of the tallest mountains - and some of the largest landslides - in the solar system making it visibly walnut-shaped even from a distance and has the largest known impact crater in the outer solar system. And apparently due to its inclination Iapetus is the place to be among Saturn's larger moons if you want to have a good look at the rings.
the largest known impact crater in the outer solar systemEven bigger than Mimas's Death Star Laser?
Can't remember which one or where for the life of me, but there's a moon out there that has a fairly high ridge running completely around its equator, as if two small moons slowly melted together into a ball shape.That's Iapetus.
Even bigger than Mimas's Death Star Laser?Herschel (that prominent crater on Mimas) is only 130 km diameter and hence fairly small as craters go. It only looks big because Mimas is so small. >:D
The trick will be doing the mixing to get the alloys right.Oh yes. And we don't even know how to purify the elements to start with.
In exoplanet news, a new designation called Hycean planet has been being used to denote planets with high hydrogen content atmospheres and oceanic conditions, which seem to dominate the list of known exoplanets.To me that has a certain whiff of "let's just broaden the definition to get more results".
Come to think of it... Lunar regolith includes a lot of Aluminium, doesn't it? And Aluminium is pretty good for radio antennas, right? That sounds like a great time to start experimenting with moon mining! :)
To be brutally honest, I hope not. I'd rather see a private space truck that met an actual need for commercial spaceflight, which the government could get value out of.The beauty of it is those problems already exist! They are just dawning on the new civilian space industry, but they exist until corrected.
The old "space tug" format, for example. Something that lives in orbit, and can move packages into geo, lunar, or interplanetary orbits, and come back. Needs refuelling infrastructure, but something with good delta vee, grappling capabilities, couple of weeks life support, and a decent airlock for EVA capacity - a solution looking for problems.
Next suggestion - use Dragon like the crew capsule on the Soyuz. Mission modules have all the good stuff - engines, crew hab, arms & docks. Except leave the modules in orbit for re-use. That makes perfect sense to me.
And yes, Dragon with harpoons for snagging & de-orbiting dead satellites.
Daryk! I found an OK article about the newly observed evidence for a planet orbiting a triple star system.
No stupid paywall, either! :thumbsup:
https://www.livescience.com/amp/triple-star-planet-orion-simulations
Interesting read, cheers for sharing.
Just add water! ;)
Still, Oldest person in space so far - at 90 that is respectable.It is and consider how healthy he still is, he might break his record again. :)
It is and consider how healthy he still is, he might break his record again. :)
It could also just be a sensor glitch sending a faulty signal but even if it has failed to latch that would just mean the panel may not be able to rotate to face the sun perfectly, it would still generate power. There's a couple of other minute risk increases to mission health but I'm sure over the next few weeks they will work out a work-a-round.
Aren't there telescopes they could track it and see while it's semi-close by to determine if they can get visual.Visual (or rather detail radar image) tracking of orbital objects with this precision of detail analysis is a military thing, generally only focused on space below 3000 km. And there's only about four systems worldwide that do that.
You might find the new Professor Brian Cox series on the BBC called Universe interesting.
It was very fortunate that the surface of the comet was soft enough allow Philae keep operating despite barely any sunlight reaching the solar panel.It's sometimes claimed that Mascot-1 - onboard Hayabusa 2 - due to "lessons learned" from Philae had a self-righting mechanism and ran on larger batteries. That's of course not quite the case. Mascot launched only 6 months after Philae landed, that's not enough to add stuff like that.
Interesting discovery. NASA reported that the Hubble found the flames of a Nebula was preventing a star from forming planets or it disrupted the process. (https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2001/hubble-finds-flame-nebulas-searing-stars-may-halt-planet-formation)
(https://bg.battletech.com/forums/off-topic/deep-space-and-interplanetary-exploration-houston-we-are-go-for-launch!/?action=dlattach;attach=65419)
I guess Star Trek II's little battle in side a nebula was very dubious. ;D
Another one from Astronomy.com. Today, it's an article about our solar system's neighbors in a 30 light year sphere centered on the Sun. Complete with an AWESOME star chart.
https://astronomy.com/magazine/2019/10/meet--the-stars-next-door?utm_source=asyfb&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=asyfb
Very cool map! When I zoomed in, I saw the radius is actually only 15 light years, so they meant a sphere with a diameter of 30 light years.
Clearly, there are a LOT more stars than depicted on BT maps, but we knew that...
Oystein once clarified that for every habitable star system on our map there are hundreds and up to a thousand uninhabitable systems between. Not sure if those numbers still hold, but that gives one an idea of how many stars jumpship captains have to work with.If you
The boys and girls at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab are on to a new idea for a system of propulsion that is much stronger and three times as efficient than any current rocket in testing or use. Called Solar Thermal Propulsion
There is nothing new under the Sun...
https://www.space.com/4559-darpa-readies-demonstration-radically-space-propulsion.html (https://www.space.com/4559-darpa-readies-demonstration-radically-space-propulsion.html)
The other thing is that you can only use the engine while close enough to the sun to get the efficiencies they're talking about. So minimal ability to course correct, slingshot further off Jupiter, etc.
I can't help but wish to see the maths that shows this intense short-period thrust beats the "slow but steady" of ion drives, or even (from this keyboard to Ghu's ears) VASIMR.
The scale of the project is what's new; it's not simply pushing an existing satellite into a new orbit. The article I posted was about being able to fling a space probe out of the solar system twice as fast as Voyager 1 took to "leave".
VASIMR looks very interesting. Not gonna lie, I had to look it up because it's new to me. I hope to see some of these technologies (VASIMR or Laser/Microwave Thermal) not just developed, but put to use.
And yeah, with Solar Thermal Propulsion there would be no maneuvering for a slingshot off of Jupiter, would there be? Rhetorical, of course, since you already said as much.
It's incredible the Probe is managing survive such conditions.Lack of a transfer medium. While there are heated particles most of space around the probe is still a vacuum and hence around -273°C.
What's the current status of the JWST launch? Delayed till New Years?Slated for a Christmas Eve launch
So the JWST is in orbit already? How long before it goes online for observations?It's en route to the sun/earth L2 point, 1.5 million km out. Roughly 4 weeks of travel time, and altogether 6 months until it is completely unfolded, cooled down, calibrated and ready.
So the JWST is in orbit already? How long before it goes online for observations?JWST will arrive in its target orbit (around the Earth-Sun L2 point) in about 4 weeks.
And sharing those observations with the world will take slightly longer than that, but not too much... ^-^"James Webb Space Telescope ‘Early Release Science’ Data Release" is planned for "June/July 2022" according to ESA's scientific highlights schedule for next year.
That's definitely one way to demonstrate the inverse square law! :thumbsup:Gaia is at the same place JWST is going, a lissajous orbit around the Sun-Earth L2 point, i.e. the same distance of about 1.5 million kilometers (0.01 AU).
I expect there will be data much sooner, after all there's no reason not to release any test pictures taken.
Very true - here is the first test picture taken:;D
https://i.imgur.com/aOtlBMx.jpg
Here is another article that postulates that primordial black holes account for 100% of dark matter.Interesting idea, it does give me the question of what the current distribution would be of those small black holes.
https://scitechdaily.com/are-black-holes-and-dark-matter-the-same-astrophysicists-upend-textbook-explanations/
The caveat I'd throw at Worktroll's explanations is "can't be seen by current technology". The assumptions being made about those things were made with the technology that couldn't see the exoplanets we know about.
Dark matter is too much "I have these observations that don't fit. In order to explain them, I would need these exact properties, which are virtually impossible to test for. Please provide grant money."
Dark energy, by comparison, is currently at "I have these observations that don't fit. If they're caused by X, then we can test that by observing Y. Please provide grant money."
... the former is career-building...
... they're only detectable by theoreticians seeking grant money, with properties that are defined by what they can't be, rarely what they could be tested to be. Hence my references to the "modern epicycles."
And I have seen a lot of money get poured into it, which I'd rather have spent on getting a few folks and a backhoe to Mars, for example
Some may think it ignorant to want to actually press the envelope of Planetary exploration. But I agree. I would also wish to have seen more energy, drive, and financial support for actual efforts in colonization. At least the drive and energy of the Apollo Program and it's results. Imagine where we would be if that had continued.
It absolutely is underfunded compared to GDP growth during the same time.
Those statements are woefully ignorant of the state of research in these topics and scientific process in general. They’re also grossly unfair to the physicists and astrophysicists doing the work.I think that Dark Matter and Dark Energy have a bad reputation because the means to properly test them were missing, so the layman would just hear of a lot of random theorizing without any definite results. So I am quite happy to hear that JWST will play an important role for testing them.
This is how science works. You make observations. Certain observations don’t match law or theory. So you come up with a hypothesis that does explain the observations. You figure out way(s) to test that hypothesis. Sometimes those tests cost money.
Observations raising the issue of dark matter have been around since the 1930s. In the early 1990s, I worked with a theorist on large-scale structure who tried to explain it without initial dark matter fluctuations. He didn’t ask for grants. He worked it out on chalkboards and laptops. We’re finally going to put his and dozens and dozens of other dark matter theories to the test with JWST observations. JWST is a very expensive telescope, but it or something very much like it is required to see the young universe early enough to rule-out or rule-in certain dark matter hypotheses. No one is involved on JWST to test the impossible or for grant money.
I was at one of the two institutions whose extragalactic supernova observations in the 1990s first raised the issue of dark energy. I had a small hand on a panel of astrophysicists who defined the follow-on to JWST, which, among other things, will measure thousands of extragalactic standard candles, reducing mathematical uncertainty about the accelerating expansion of the universe, which will rule-out or rule-in certain hypotheses about the dark energy driving it. No one is involved in the Roman Space Telescope for the sake of “epicycles” or because only theoreticians can test dark energy.
The natures of dark matter and dark energy are hard to solve not because researchers enjoy writing grants (they absolutely do not) nor because our profession rewards going down known dead-ends (it absolutely does not — terrible way to get published, win awards, and advance up the ladder). Dark matter and dark energy are hard to figure out because they’re not luminous sources of light like stars. We can only observe their influence indirectly. It’s like trying to understand something by looking at its shadow. A circular shadow could be cast by a circular disk, a ball, the base of a column, the base of a cone, or any number of other objects. Trying to test for disks, balls, columns, and cones without being able to see or touch those objects — only the shadow — is immensely difficult. Dark matter and dark energy have the same problem, only magnified many-fold.
If you know how much China's black space budget is, I know some people who'd like to know too...
There must be considerable amount money dumped into it. I'm curious if they will go through their endeavors. There was report last year of their ambitions to build a mile long structure which has been reported from being massive space station to an actual interplanetary vehicle to be used to go to Mars.
I'm guessing I'm wrong that photons have mass=0Photons have a "imaginary rest mass" on a scale of 10^-51 to 10^-47 gramm that has been proven experimentally. The exact value depends on the wavelength apparently.
Secondly, why are photons which have no mass affected by gravity? The equation for working out the force of gravity between 2 objects is G*M1*M2(over distance squared), shouldn't that equal 0. (I'm guessing I'm wrong that photons have mass=0)
Large masses warp space-time and that shows up as gravity, in the absence of a graviton particle how do objects interact with the curved space-time? How do they know(wrong word I know) that space-time is curved?
Secondly, why are photons which have no mass affected by gravity?
I always understood photons to have momentum, not necessarily mass.
That's a new equation for me, but I haven't actively studied physics for around 28 years now...
That would seem to imply gravity lensing varies with the frequency of the photons being lensed. Do we know?
Gravitational redshifting is new to me. What's the magnitude of the effect?Well... A photon inside the event horizon of a black hole would lose all energy and disappear if it was traveling straight out.
Order of magnitude? ???Redshift? Completely dependent on circumstances. I'd guess stars really close to the core BH of the Milky Way looks noticeable redder.
The SLS: the little rocket engine that could.
As we inch closer to Artemis I, the excitement of returning to the Moon slowly gets more real
Kurzgesagt posted a video about terraforming Venus, of all things. Their plan would take centuries, but seems workable.
I suppose it depends on your definition of "long term" returns...
I’m being a little tongue-in-cheek. But I also think the Venusian atmosphere is the only existing location in the solar system that we actually would have a shot at colonizing (meaning having children and living out entire lives there) without altering our bodies or minds or waiting for terraforming or O’Neil colonies. I think our biology limits us to visits (for research, work, or vacation) everywhere else.
Venus is certainly more viable than Mars.
I'm usually shocked when a piece of space equipment DOESN'T massively exceed it's planned/projected service life
I'm usually shocked when a piece of space equipment DOESN'T massively exceed it's planned/projected service lifeSure, but in this case it apparently worked better still than anyone anticipated.
Speaking of outlasting projected service life, how about that Hubble Space Telescope!Hubble doesn't really count given that it has been maintenanced and repaired in-orbit.
Hubble doesn't really count given that it has been maintenanced and repaired in-orbit.
The three solar research satellites WIND, ACE and SOHO are probably the most enduring un-tended spacecraft. They were originally planned for 2 years operations at the Sun-Earth L1 point, WIND for 3 years.
ACE is now at 24 years 5 months, SOHO at 26 years 2 months, WIND at 27 years 3 months - with missions of ACE and SOHO currently extended to 2024 and 2025 respectively. WIND is estimated to have enough fuel to last at SEL1 until 2070...
Is it that old that it's slowed down, or did something else happen to cause this one?The compact object in a pulsar doesn't need to be a neutron star. There are white dwarf pulsars discovered in recent years (e.g. AR Scorpii re-evaluated in 2016) which tend to have pulse cycles on minute scales.
more accurately scaled -- wonder if there's another "wave" like structure on the far side of the Local Bubble, threading through the Vela-Gum and Scorpius-Centaurus associations ???
(https://i.postimg.cc/W3pT5Sfm/LB-with-RWave-UPDATED.png)
(https://i.postimg.cc/DZCFHst9/RWave-interior-view-with-LB-UPDATED.png)
PLANETES we need you!
It's funny.. did they ignore the space weather forecast?
They better pay attention to the long-term forecastI'd blame NOAA here to some extent actually.
Space Weather Message Code: WATA30 / Serial Number: 200 / Issue Time: 2022 Feb 02 1914 UTC
CANCEL WATCH: Geomagnetic Storm Category G2 Predicted / Cancel Serial Number: 199 / Original Issue Time: 2022 Jan 31 1954 UTC
Comment: Cancelling the G2 (Moderate) watch for 2 Feb and the G1 Watch for 3 Feb. No watches are now in effect.
[...]
Space Weather Message Code: WARK05 / Serial Number: 1633 / Issue Time: 2022 Feb 03 0554 UTC
WARNING: Geomagnetic K-index of 5 expected / Valid From: 2022 Feb 03 0555 UTC / Valid To: 2022 Feb 03 0900 UTC / Warning Condition: Onset / NOAA Scale: G1 - Minor
Potential Impacts: Spacecraft - Minor impact on satellite operations possible.
[...]
Space Weather Message Code: ALTEF3 / Serial Number: 3196 / Issue Time: 2022 Feb 04 1347 UTC
ALERT: Electron 2MeV Integral Flux exceeded 1000pfu / Threshold Reached: 2022 Feb 04 1310 UTC / Station: GOES16
Potential Impacts: Satellite systems may experience significant charging resulting in increased risk to satellite systems.
Ceres is a dwarf planet now? I obviously missed the change... :-\Follows from the definition - It's round, but not alone in its orbit. :)
Ceres is a dwarf planet now? I obviously missed the change... :-\that was part of the fallout of the IAU's planet definition. it got lost in the chaos surrounding the demotion of Pluto to dwarf planet status from full planet.
https://gizmodo.com/arianegroup-concept-reusable-upper-state-spacecraft-1849553008Its being written as reusable stage. However, so far from everything seen so far it's a reusable capsule. They may have some ways to go get to that "stage" of development.
New article about a possible reusable space freighter that could open up exploration efforts for ESA.
Its being written as reusable stage. However, so far from everything seen so far it's a reusable capsule.SUSIE is basically a 25-ton version of SPACE RIDER.
Well that was pretty badass. #DARTRIPDefinitely, I was following it live, and those last few frames really show how sharp those rocks were. 8)
Finally! :thumbsup:
| Date(s) | Scheduled Event |
| Nov 16 | Launch |
| Nov 17-20 | Outbound coasting phase |
| Nov 21 | Lunar gravity assist |
| Nov 21-24 | Transit to distant retrograde orbit (DRO) |
| Nov 25-30 | In DRO |
| Dec 1 | DRO departure burn |
| Dec 1-4 | Exiting DRO |
| Dec 5 | Return powered flyby |
| Dec 5-11 | Return transit |
| Dec 11 | Entry and splashdown |
Spoke about this to a neighbor the other day. Yes this is a very cool new moon mission. But the world is in a much darker mood than 50 years ago and despite all the awe the Artemis project just doesn’t have that bright, optimistic Apollo feel to it that still jumps out of old videos to this day. (And no, I’m not old enough to actually remember Apollo. But the grownups were still talking about it when I was a kid and I could grow up knowing man had reached the moon. It felt… inspiring.)Well I was born in 1964 so I missed the Mercury. I don't remember Gemini but I do remember Apollo. Oh yes getting up to watch at very young age but remember it. All the space toys made around that time. I remember a poster in grade school 1970 with time line about where we would be in space , like mid 70s space station around the Earth , 80s have Moon base , 90s getting ready to go to Mars. Mars base by now. You all need watch Right Stuff and the HBO series Earth to the Moon about the whole Space program. Frabby I have to disagree it was darker mood 50 years ago then it is now or close to it. The Kennedy brothers and Mr King assassination , Vietnam War , violent protest and Riots in major U.S city. Yes it was darker then it is now.
The trick is getting it back to Earth... ::)
when they do actual landing hopefully in three years or so.
I suspect not... the link was to a professional journal. It might be free eventually, but it won't be anytime soon...
True, but it was pretty esoteric. Fingers crossed it happens! :thumbsup:
EditThis is what happens when you miss meetings/posts. ;D
Whoops! I went to post the new pics of Titan from the JWST, then noticed it was already covered.
This is what happens when you miss meetings/posts. ;D
Interesting... the article asserts that another paper found land planets are most common, followed by water planets. Unfortunately, that other paper is behind a paywall, and its free abstract doesn't go into that.
Orion now REALLY far out now. Both the Moon and Earth are in the same shot.This by far is my favorite shot that I've seen from the Orion capsule. I can't wait to see the new 3 launches as well.
(https://bg.battletech.com/forums/off-topic/deep-space-and-interplanetary-exploration-houston-we-are-go-for-launch!/?action=dlattach;attach=69660)
*looks at the picture 3 posts above Wrangler's*Do not worry, a lot of people can not see pictures from such links that Bedwyr is using.
Meanwhile, this morning...Orion/Artemis I has begun its return trip.
(https://bg.battletech.com/forums/off-topic/deep-space-and-interplanetary-exploration-houston-we-are-go-for-launch!/?action=dlattach;attach=69729)
Well, it's not like any part of Russia is in the tropics... 8)
Splashdown.
After traveling 1.4 million miles through space, orbiting the Moon, and collecting data that will prepare us to send astronauts on future #Artemis missions, the
@NASA_Orion
spacecraft is home.
How did they figure that out? ???
This is how the Perseverance Rover been rocking for last year.
Apparently, this little gem got stuck in the wheel and is still there.
That is a horrible pun, but an amusing picture! ;D
This is how the Perseverance Rover been rocking for last year.
(https://bg.battletech.com/forums/off-topic/deep-space-and-interplanetary-exploration-houston-we-are-go-for-launch!/?action=dlattach;attach=69975)
Apparently, this little gem got stuck in the wheel and is still there.
Here's an article about how NASA is looking into having a private company "boost" the Hubble Space Telescope's slowly decaying orbit so as to prolong mission life. It would also demonstrate possible other uses for missions like this, how to pull them off, and how we could all possibly benefit.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/nasa-is-looking-for-ideas-on-how-to-boost-the-hubble-space-telescope/ar-AA15QLFj
Send up the space tug to the ISS, and refuel/refit it at the ISS as well.That's basically the original concept for STS and Space Station Alpha
So a mission arrives where the space tug has to boost a satellite. The ISS crew put the necessary tools on the front of the tug so it can interface with the satellite, and after verifying system checks the tug is fueled and sent to the correct orbit to intercept the satellite. Arriving at the satellite, the tug uses the custom-fitted tools to grab on to the satellite correctly, and uses its onboard engine to slowly push the satellite into a new orbit.
If the tug runs low on fuel it can always detach from the satellite and return to the ISS
Once the tug has the satellite in the correct orbit, it detaches, and returns to the ISS for repair/refitting/evaluating.
The correct orbit can be anything programmed into the tug. This can range from a de-orbit burn to remove large debris, an adjustment burn like that proposed in the article, or even transferring a payload from LEO to Geostationary orbit.
Anyone looking forward to any space based projects coming up this year potentially?The big one in 2023 - at least for exploration - will definitely be the launch of JUICE (https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Juice) by ESA in April.
Awesome find, thanks! And yes, I love "blazars"... :D
It’s interesting that they mention polar ice caps. I thought the atmosphere was to thick such temperature differences below it.It's not an ice cap - someone probably added the word in editing. It is simply a "polar cap" (previously also known as a "polar hood"). Nasa itself terms it "an area of brightening at the pole facing the Sun, known as a polar cap".
I'm quoting from smeone quoting from elsewhere, so can't give proper attribution, but apparently folks internal to SpaceX considered the test successful if it cleared the pad. One trusts their instrumentation tells them lots.
33 engines in proximity is an awful lot of shaking going on - that, and the accellerated test program, killed the Soviet N1. By comparison, the current (!) Soyuz launcher has 20 engines in five clusters of 4 - one cluster in the core, and one cluster in each of the "carrots". 1900+ flights since 1966, so the issues can be addressed.
The crater from the launch was deeper than I thought. Via Twitter:
A mean thought just occurred. Would rocket blast causing a crater this deep kill Natasha?
Deimos is shockingly smooth for something without an atmosphere. I'd have expected it to look more like Luna myself, pockmarked with craters everywhere.
The crater from the launch was deeper than I thought. Via Twitter:That crater is b/c SpaceX has nowhere near enough water flow protecting the concrete from the heat blast, blast pressure, and sound vibration of all those engines. For NASA's SLS the IOPSS system floods the mobile launch pad and flame diverter with about 450,000 gallons in less than 45 seconds, with a peak flow of over 1,000,000 gal/min. This video starts showing a test without the mobile launcher attached, but you can see the volume of water that flows https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuFn8sPFdTs BTW, those vertical pipes are 54" (4'-6") in diameter. That looks like roughly 1.37 meter diameter pipe.
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FuPvv2mXgAIJgui?format=jpg&name=900x900)
I think this will be one of the primary focus points going forward. I'll bet money debris was the cause of a fair amount of engine damage. Maybe not all, but the failures further up were definitely affected by it. The vehicle was clearly unable to control itself at some point and went end-over-end.
From my understanding was from reports I've read. Separation was abandoned due too the explosion after take off of one of the hydraulic controllers on the side of the Booster, which caused the Super Heavy vehicle to be unable to gimble it's center engines. I believe had it not lost that, the rocket could have gotten high enough to separate. From what I understood was, once it became apparent they lost control of the booster. They abandoned effort to separate stage 2 aka the Starship.I'm sure they won't be allowed to launch Starship at Pad 39A in Florida until they have upgraded the ground service equipment. Right now the Falcon 9 launch tower at Pad 39A is the only place that SpaceX (and by extension NASA) can launch crew to the ISS. Now SpaceX has 2 other Falcon 9 launch pads (Pad 40 in Florida and one at Vandenburg in California), but neither of those are setup to load & launch crew. With that in mind, I highly doubt NASA would allow any kind of launch or even static fire in Florida until it's plainly proved they won't blast the launch site to pieces.
However, it was outright stupid thing to do gamble launch site on withstanding the thrust of the engines blasting down on it. I always though that was bone head move by Musk because he was in a rush to launch and test. Now unfortunately, the company is paying for it. Hopefully, they learned enough to fix the other tower in Florida or make new site with proper flame diverter. This cooling plate Musk wants to use is likely not too work, but I'm no engineer or scientist.
Deimos seriously looks like a smoothed beach rock with the few small craters being fossilized "bubbles" eroding to the surface.
I've seen things like this on the shores of Lake Huron and Lake Michigan.
Just a thought: Considering the size of the Universe, wood, is rarer than diamonds.That's true in the solar system, much less the Universe! 8)
What this means for Battletech: M-Class stars might just be recharging stars for jumpships; pirate-points in which there are not habitable worlds in the system.To be fair under current system generation rules the chances of an M-Class star hosting a habitable planet - without lots of Fiat - are already ... fairly low. As in one in a couple thousand or so. Too lazy to run the numbers.
It's a theory, it can be proven wrong easily. But it's better than using something we have no evidence for in place of actual measurable substance - as is the case when we plug so-called "dark matter" into the equation. When asked about what dark matter is, most reputable astrophysicists will give a fairly long answer that ultimately boils down to "not sure".But it’s not a good theory if it gives the wrong answers... Which is - as I understand it - what it looks like at this time.
But it’s not a good theory if it gives the wrong answers... Which is - as I understand it - what it looks like at this time.
Russia has reported an “abnormal situation” on its moon-bound Luna-25 spacecraft, which launched earlier this month.From The Gruinard (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/19/russia-reports-abnormal-situation-as-luna-25-tries-to-begin-moon-landing)
The country’s space agency, Roscosmos, said on Saturday that the spacecraft ran into unspecified trouble while trying to enter a pre-landing orbit and that its specialists were analysing the situation.
"The apparatus moved into an unpredictable orbit and ceased to exist as a result of a collision with the surface of the Moon," Roskosmos said in a statement.
Or anyone literally under the gun... ;)
To be fair under current system generation rules the chances of an M-Class star hosting a habitable planet - without lots of Fiat - are already ... fairly low. As in one in a couple thousand or so. Too lazy to run the numbers.
It should be noted for Trappist-1b that the atmosphere observation only has a 1-sigma reliability for 0.01 bar, i.e. under evaluation of the observation there's a 32% chance that it is denser than 10 millibar. Mars' atmosphere for comparison has about 6 millibar.
I'm sure some will now say the Indians are in on the conspiracy... ::)
I'm sure some will now say the Indians are in on the conspiracy... ::)
I was going to ask why it was orbiting above Hollywood. :cool:It can't be an indian fake. If it was a Bollywood production there would be a song&dance number as the probe passed over the site! :laugh:
Its amazing desolate Mars is, yet if these pictures are unaltered how it reminds me of a desert on Earth (minus very non-blue hazy skies).There's a reason the middle of nowhere Arizona or Utah or the like is often used as a Mars analog.
Nice shot indeed! :)
Orion again? I thought they gave up on that decades ago... :/
They solved all the practical problem with Orion that were possible without actual nuclear testing, except one - the misfire.That doesn't sound correct. While it would probably be optimal to use springs to transfer the momentum from the plate to the rest of the craft shock absorbers are a thing. It would be trivially easy to optimize the system such that the plate returns to its starting position with very little remaining momentum.
So think the first time you fire. The blast plate moves up, hits the springs, slows, then recoils. ending up going almost as fast out as it did in. And then the next perfectly timed blast stops the plate, sending it back up onto the springs, and so on.
Until you get a misfire. In which the blast plate sails off the end of the guiderails and flies off into intersolar space. There wasn't any way to put stops strong enough at the end of the guiderails. For every action there is ...
That doesn't sound correct. While it would probably be optimal to use springs to transfer the momentum from the plate to the rest of the craft shock absorbers are a thing. It would be trivially easy to optimize the system such that the plate returns to its starting position with very little remaining momentum.
NTRs have been around a while too. ;)as a concept yes, but no one has built actual hardware since 1969 when the NERVA XE Prime rocket engine module was tested. the NERVA project was cancelled shortly after, when Nixon basically killed off all of NASA's development projects other than the space shuttle. since then there have been a lot of "on paper" concept and design work done by small research teams, but no physical hardware or even attempts to put the design work into physical testing.
After postponing launch three times, JAXA has successfully launched its SLIM (Smart Lander for Investigating Moon) lunar lander from a launch site in southern Japan.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/japan-launches-moon-sniper-lunar-lander-slim-to-space/ar-AA1glHVV
This mission was a 2fer!
Also onboard the H-IIA launch vehicle was a new orbital X-ray telescope.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/japan-launches-moon-lander-and-x-ray-space-telescope-on-same-rocket/ar-AA1gnoB6
Awesome! That looks like the dawn of asteroid mining (finally) to me! :)
(https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/ESdaeoyYMhomnmuaKKakdY-1200-80.jpg)
The best way to mine 16 Psyche is to nuke of chunks, and then use probes to maneuver the bits into LEO for human-mining.
But to nuke it into chunks you'd have to put the nuke deep inside and that would require a drilling team....
Better get Bruce! :cool:
Dumbest movie ever.
Would asteroid mining really be beneficial as far as larger operations versus the proposed grab a rock and pull it near orbit to dismantle it? It's not that I don't believe in doing that versus tearing up terrain on earth, my impression was that we don't know where we're getting and frankly I don't know if there's as many rocks out there that would be worth the while to dismantle.
I do think however, if you find like an asteroid that's all of a rare Element it could in fact disrupt the economy for the world. Something that was a rare commodity could become uncommon or not so rare.
I think the stumbling part is right now is access to space in the first place. I do believe the startup rocket providers commercially could be the gateway to doing such operations, but I still think we have a long ways to go.
Phobos is on a death-spiral with Mars whereas Demos is slowly pulling away, and will eventually end up in a solar-orbit.
I hope I live to see that.
I hope I live to see that.
Cool! +1 more for Arthur C. Clarke! :)
Huh? Why? ???
Is that an eclipse, or what? ???
Is it combined imagery with Keck? The text isn't 100% clear on that point...
I wonder what they think Web showing us?
The wiki page is showing the same pictures (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_(moon)#Atmosphere), it suppose to be cloud cover.
Maybe some dark matter isn't so dark after all... :)
Maybe some dark matter isn't so dark after all... :)
E=MC2
But some E is more MC2
One can only hope they don't intend to apply this iterative approach to life-support systems.But eventually they will find & fix all the flaws, it will just cost some test-passengers...
Space isn't just hard, it's also EXPENSIVE! ;)
Another explosive setback for SpaceX.Wat hell, that's happened in March 30, 2021. That news service was dumpster diving for news blurps from look of it. SN15 did successful landing, afterwards and earlier this year full stack of Starship S24 & Super Heavy Booster 7 launched, but it did fail. However, they fixed the launch pad and the replacements S25 & Booster 9 are waiting to get green light for the second launch attempt to orbit.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/spacex-starship-sn11-prototype-explodes-during-test-flight/ar-AA1iaqnJ?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=6c1fc0c469b842429f466c6d1a78da78&ei=11
I'm told that the owner is a genius. In a way he is, because he won't ride his own rockets or get his neural link implant.
He trusted them with his car!
To explain the extreme red-shifted galaxies that shouldn't exist, one theory states that light, slows down over vast distances and another states that time, was different in the early-universe.
I would also suggest that what we felt was our understanding of physics was actually a slight misunderstanding.
Edit - This is actually not to be a smartass, but in the Immanuel Cant tradition, I firmly believe the we cannot *Fully* know or understand the universe around us with only our five senses.
That's a LOT of asteroids, but it's still mostly empty space... ;D
In a way its disappointing, makes me think there limited supply of the rocks that would be useful for human exploration / development in space.
I keep thinking what Asteroid field was like in such films as Star Wars, that amount of debris would be useful or worthwhile to harvest.
*snip*From the start, good sir... :D
Spot the pattern yet?
*snip*
Ceres isn't THAT big... ;)You can't not be Ceres-ous.
IIRC the Trojan clusters (which aren't, admittedly, in the "belt") might be pretty dense. At least if you get a few collisions. Of course they're so small and out of the way you really have to work to find yourself in them!
As a side note, "Star Wars asteroid belts" gets a bit more realistic if you assume that industrial and military activity has been involved. Blow Ceres to pieces after towing it to L5 and Earth will get a pretty dense belt for a while! Might make everyone not working in asteroid mining a bit unhappy, thought... azn
. . .
I keep thinking what Asteroid field was like in such films as Star Wars, that amount of debris would be useful or worthwhile to harvest.
Nope: giant space-worms.Funny lore detail: Space slugs are usually not giant, and often illegal to hunt as they eat Mynocks - a real pest! :cheesy:
I just found out that Ken Mattingly died last Tuesday (31 October). If there was an announcement then I missed it. RIP.And now Frank Borman too. :( RIP
So when will we get Twin Ion Engine fighters?Probably about the time we get inertialess drives...
TT
DARPA's purpose isn't to sustain projects at all.
Interesting. I wonder how they can name features of the moon if it's always changing with activity on the surface.
Size matters, but that makes Earth look CALM! ;D
China rolls out its "Long March 2F" rocket.
The Artemis Accords with the Wolf Amendment puts the US against China, without expressed consent from both Congress and a full FBI investigation of both party interests.
I hope it survives the budgeting process!
Don't think legally they can, they'll have to share something or loose their licenses...
TT
Western Europe's first vertical launch spaceport will be on the Shetland island of Unst.Depends on definition of "Western Europe".
Geologically-speaking, the Shetlands were once part of North America (Laurentia).
The Appalachian Mountains, as well as the mountains of Scotland and in Norway were all connected and originated in the same orogeny, long before the first dinosaurs.Keep this up, and we'll have to start a thread on paleogeology... ;D
Keep this up, and we'll have to start a thread on paleogeology... ;D
All Grognard all the time, baby! ;D
LOL! I understood that reference! ;D
Bummer!True, but with the obtained practical data they can design a much better martian copter for future missions.
Manley had a video on the SLIM crash after JAXA had a press conference. Apparently one of the engines failed just before landing - possibly a problem with the oxidizer feed - and while the lander came down softly it was now at an angle as well as still moving a bit sideways. Thus when it touched down it tumbled.Indeed, I finally caught up on Scott Manley's video on the landing. He amazing at his analyzing everything. They really shouldn't be using the oxidizer for fuel. If he's right, the Venus probe lost it's engine in same manner, which shares same type engine as this lander. Still the guidance system did a specular job landing it, and most precise landing so far.
The impressive part is that it was under internal guidance during the whole landing sequence, and the programming was good enough to (mostly) handle a ~40% loss of power plus off-axis thrust without crashing!
Can't find what SLIM used for fuel/oxidizer mix, but given how it operated I assume it had to be hypergolic - which pretty much by default means horrible reactive substances as both fuel and oxidizer.Took a while to find it, but apparently SLIM used 296.7 kg hydrazine as fuel and 237.3 kg MON-3 as oxidizer for the main thruster.
View from the rover to Ingenuity on sand dunes of Mars.Just had too... and you know it! (https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?&q=where+NASA+and+we+know+it&qpvt=where+NASA+and+we+know+it&mid=05634D2811AE5C23187B05634D2811AE5C23187B&&FORM=VRDGAR)
(https://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=66939.0;attach=75094)
On the first picture, is that a pair of geysers in the upper left?Yep, more likely volcanoes. Given surface is cover with lava pools as Jupiter squeezes the moon.
It is surprisingly close to us, just a little over 7 LY away.
I don't think so as it is Y-class.
If you jumped there, could you recharge your sails?
A solution to the dark matter problem would be welcome!
". . .Companies operating on the moon will have a strong incentive to play nice with each other: It's good for business."
HAHAHA, yeah right. I've heard this many times before.
Earthbound companies aren’t typically threatened by lack of oxygen, lack of water, threats of starvation, catastrophic decompression. Rival corporations have been known to dynamite each others’ assets here on the ground, literally and figuratively. Destruction up there is far easier to accomplish.
“May you live in interesting times.” - Chinese proverb
Interesting times have found us.
Of course... Black holes by definition will have similar "appearances"... ;)
CMEs are NO joke!
And what does that solve when there is a time zone for the moon??
https://esahubble.org/news/heic1806/True, but it also could provide essential clues of what dark matter actually is.
A galaxy without dark matter at all? That ought to throw a wrench into the popular theories.
“That doesn't mean that all GRBs do not produce them,” Blanchard added...
Looks like scientist have figured out how Pluto got it's heart shape feature on the planet.
It appears in ancient time a object size of Switzerland collided with Pluto, creating the Sputnik Planitia & Tombaugh Regio regions, aka each sides of the heart.
Unfortunately, the report suggests that because way things turned out and the impact on the region would thinned crust of the planet, there is most likely no subsurface ocean.
Report was posted on phys.org (https://phys.org/news/2024-04-astrophysicists-mystery-heart-feature-surface.html).
That's an amazing photo of Phobos! What was the source? :)
Good News (https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/nasa-approves-dragonfly-s-rotorcraft-revolution-to-explore-saturn-s-icy-moon/ar-BB1lM5Kw) The Dragonfly quadcopper probe was approved for the Titan mission! Won't get there till 2034, but it's something that was on verge being cut! Hope it gets to the finish line!
Check out this amazing image of Phobos! I’ll attach the file….
Check out this amazing image of Phobos! I’ll attach the file….
Honestly, I had little trouble finding the original announcement. It could have been buried.
That's... not what I remember of Doom back in '93? ???
I have no idea what you're talking about... ;)
Amazing video of Juno mission flyby at Europa. Very peaceful compared to Io.
https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=jupiter%20moon%20europa&mid=947A4B81CCE6AF66D2A5947A4B81CCE6AF66D2A5&ajaxhist=0
. . .Especially when the wealthy proprietor owner pulls up stakes and goes back to Earth.
Nice! All the more reason to figure out how to shield Mars with a magnetic field...
Nice! All the more reason to figure out how to shield Mars with a magnetic field...
Nice! All the more reason to figure out how to shield Mars with a magnetic field...
That's a nice shot! :)
Deep Space and Interplanetary Exploration — I Survived the Aurora!
https://www.facebook.com/reel/718993190433918 (https://www.facebook.com/reel/718993190433918)
If you want to laugh about cosmic stuff...
TT
Made the trip a few times myself. I’ve been under it too, whilst on the boat trip a couple years back.