Author Topic: Deep Space and Interplanetary Exploration - The Universe is Timeless  (Read 176898 times)

Garrand

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Right.  Most people aren't as interested in colonizing the planets and stars.  But reminding folks that the potential wealth of space exploration and exploitation will positively affect the daily lives here puts it in a more favorable light.

I think most people lack the forward-looking vision to see the benefits of that. There's some psychology in there, I think. But give them some near-future benefits & it helps them get sold on the idea. Baby steps. The visionaries have to lead the rest of humanity with easily seen goals...

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Wrangler

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Couple things happening or sort of news worthy via Rocket Development News

  • SpaceX is setting up a second Starship Fabrication in Flordia. - Essentially SpaceX is trying to test different StarHoppers-Starship Designs to seeing what works best.
  • NASA Needs More Cash for Moon Landing - Basically the tally is 1.12 Billion dollars is needed for the 2020 Fiscal year if US is serious to go to the Moon. However, it don't look good since their funding White House wants take could be take from the Pella Grant fund.
  • Bezos ambitions for the Moon -  Looks like that Jeff Bezos wants to build O'Neil Colonies near the moon and near Earth, wanting restrict industry on Earth to light or residential.  That's interesting idea, but it will take alot effort get that sort thing off the ground i think.

I wonder if this stuff will pan out,  Doubling up testing of the Starship in two locations seem to be good idea.
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Bedwyr

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It needs 5-8 billion a year or it's not happening.
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Wrangler

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"Men, fetch the Urbanmechs.  We have an interrogation to attend to." - jklantern
"How do you defeat a Dragau? Shoot the damn thing. Lots." - Jellico 
"No, it's a "Most Awesome Blues Brothers scene Reenactment EVER" waiting to happen." VotW Destrier - Weirdo  
"It's 200 LY to Sian, we got a full load of shells, a half a platoon of Grenadiers, it's exploding outside, and we're wearing flak jackets." VoTW Destrier - Misterpants
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Dragon Cat

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Bezos doesn't want to build an O'Neil type station he sees it as the future rather than the mars but he is also smart enough to realise that this generation or the next generation wont see it instead this generation needs to begin to make space affordable perfect the reusable technologies that Space X Bezos and others are testing

He basically puts it this way Amazon would never have taken off without the global postal and internet access that was already in place he too advantage of the work that was done before him.  He believes space travel is the same it cant become common place until there is infrastructure to support it
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https://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php/topic,20515.0.html - Part 1

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Easy

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« Last Edit: 29 May 2019, 13:54:15 by Easy »

kato

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We need to up the game. Amphibious landers for Europa.
Uh, Europa is rather solid. Titan is the only body other than Earth in the solar system with liquid bodies on the surface.

Flying drones for the stuff we can't land on.
Ain't much that you can't land on where you can fly.

If you want upping the game - there's a conceptual project for landing a burrowing drone on Enceladus that heats up to melt its way through the ice while navigating with the aid of a 3D network of ultrasound beacons...

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Easy

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« Last Edit: 29 May 2019, 13:52:36 by Easy »

Wrangler

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More details on NASA's plan for the moon. This was reported on The Verge
The program is being called Artemis. There lot of questions that need to be answered. The Gateway is going be seriously mini-station, 2 modules.  There currently two alledged proposals for a Lander.  Locheed's project and Blue Origin's Blue Moon concept.   

Questions remain is what they going to do once they get there, which NASA hasn't spelled out since they didn't detailed how their going sustain their presence on the Moon.  What their going to be doing there.  Explore, i know, but they need more than that to justify going out claiming a plot put your boots on. 

As much i cite the SLS being too expensive of a vehicle, i do hope NASA does SOMETHING.  First Woman on the Moon nice, but i hope they accomplish more.  They need justify stuff better.
« Last Edit: 17 May 2019, 14:54:40 by Wrangler »
"Men, fetch the Urbanmechs.  We have an interrogation to attend to." - jklantern
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Easy

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« Last Edit: 29 May 2019, 13:37:19 by Easy »

Wrangler

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I think i get what they were saying why they need do this in smaller modules. 



The differences in different approaches, what is usable with the current list of the existing lift vehicles.
"Men, fetch the Urbanmechs.  We have an interrogation to attend to." - jklantern
"How do you defeat a Dragau? Shoot the damn thing. Lots." - Jellico 
"No, it's a "Most Awesome Blues Brothers scene Reenactment EVER" waiting to happen." VotW Destrier - Weirdo  
"It's 200 LY to Sian, we got a full load of shells, a half a platoon of Grenadiers, it's exploding outside, and we're wearing flak jackets." VoTW Destrier - Misterpants
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ANS Kamas P81

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So it seems our dear Luna has a little surprise, and there's a present waiting for us at the south pole.  Apparently there's a huge metallic lump (nickel-iron, I imagine) five times the size of Hawaii relatively intact and just under Aiken crater.

This is the part where I stop reading the back of the VHS cover and...oh wait it's not a bad sci-fi movie synopsis...
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Daryk

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Unwrapping that present is going to take some significant work, though...

Weirdo

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If that's solid metal, it's be worth the trouble to dig it out. That'd likely fulfill our entire species' industrial needs for a few centuries.
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Daryk

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Maybe if we dig with nukes... that mass is DEEP.

Luciora

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Would trying to excavate it cause any problems much further down the line?  I'm aware it takes a significant amount of energy to alter an orbit, but our planet does rely on the moon for many natural processes.

kato

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That'd likely fulfill our entire species' industrial needs for a few centuries.
Actually more like 1.3 million years at current levels.

It's not a single chunk though, but instead dispersed. That's the precondition for it existing in this place; it'd otherwise long ago have sunk down to the core. For scale, if the material of the mass is spread across the former melt pool of the basin (below the 10 km crustal cover), then it'd be as prevalent within it as sulfur is in Earth's crust.

Daryk

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Heh, reminds of Schlock Mercenary's "Resonance Mining of Io" joke...

rebs

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Time to begin building orbital yards around Luna to truly take advantage of this monumental find.
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Wrangler

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Depends on alot things.  If you look at the luna lander issue of weight.  I begun to think we as civilization would need a heck of a kick in the pants to want go and try make stuff up there.  Though i personally don't look forward to the day i see the moon brilliantly lit up with artificial light from cities beginning to crowd out the silent beauty of the moon (it's old man).

It seems no one can persistingly keep going there unless there reason. Knowing humanity, we'll likely use up the resources on the Moon fairly quickly if we truly set shop up there.  Unless we as species can't finally develop a reason method of shielding humans from life threatening health problems that comes from not living behind a thick atmosphere and not having Magentic shield of some kind keeping cosmic rads killing us among other things.
« Last Edit: 15 June 2019, 15:47:01 by Wrangler »
"Men, fetch the Urbanmechs.  We have an interrogation to attend to." - jklantern
"How do you defeat a Dragau? Shoot the damn thing. Lots." - Jellico 
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"It's 200 LY to Sian, we got a full load of shells, a half a platoon of Grenadiers, it's exploding outside, and we're wearing flak jackets." VoTW Destrier - Misterpants
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ANS Kamas P81

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Whatever the mascon is, it's relatively deep - but downright gigantic; if it is nickel-iron (most likely the classic solar system blend) then yeah it'd be arguably worth digging up.  I'd not be surprised if that's the "bullet fragments" from the hit that caused the Aitken basin; that much mass hitting on a relatively simultaneous timescale (if not all at once) would certainly have the impact strength for a 2500km crater.

That said, there's another interesting bit - because of the basin and the topography, that same part of the moon is also the part that's kept in shadow the most, and has the best chances for finding lunar ice.  Water, silicates galore, as well as higher abundances of iron, titanium and thorium, plus "something" way the hell down under the surface?

Maybe it's Vibranium; doesn't Wakanda have a colony on the moon these days in the comics?
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Wrangler

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Some exploration news, NASA is apparently moving ahead to develop a nuclear-powered Quadcopter to accompany a lander mission to explore Titan.  It called at the moment named the Dragonfly, which set to fly in 2026 if all goes right.

I'm not so up to date on atmosphere & gravity of Titan.  From the article, atmosphere is thick, so there won't be too many problems there.
 Would there be tough time getting something like a Quadcopter to fly around such alien world such as Titan?  It would be dark too won't it?  Depending on the orbit of Titan and how much sunlight is reflected off  Saturn or even coming down on the moon.
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"How do you defeat a Dragau? Shoot the damn thing. Lots." - Jellico 
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Daryk

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It's powered by an RTG, so no sunlight required.

And I have to say, if CGL doesn't find a way to canonize the names "Bridenstine" and "Zurbuchen", they're NOT doing their jobs!  8)

Wrangler

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It's powered by an RTG, so no sunlight required.

And I have to say, if CGL doesn't find a way to canonize the names "Bridenstine" and "Zurbuchen", they're NOT doing their jobs!  8)
I was more saying about sunlight to be able to SEE clear pictures verse having use senors only using low-light or radar mapping methods.  I think they were able take pictures so that's why i brought it up.     

With a RTG, won't that sucker be heavy?
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"How do you defeat a Dragau? Shoot the damn thing. Lots." - Jellico 
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Daryk

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They mentioned the RTG would charge lithium-ion batteries, so it's going to be much lighter than an RTG powering the rotors directly.

kato

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lighter than an RTG powering the rotors directly.
There's been some studies into what kind of power you need for a rotorcraft on Titan, and it's on a scale of 3.8-5.3 W/kg vehicle weight depending on flight mode (a bit less for smaller craft, 1 kg drones range around 3.2-3.6 W/kg). A Pu-214 RTG produces around 2.8 W/kg at peak performance, which kinda makes that physically impossible.

A somewhat realistic approach is a probe of Huygens dimensions that can fly for a maximum of one hour per day. And that already would need considerable improvements in power-to-weight ratios.

I was more saying about sunlight to be able to SEE clear pictures verse having use senors only using low-light or radar mapping methods.  I think they were able take pictures so that's why i brought it up.
Huygen's camera system is a bit complicated:
http://sci.esa.int/cassini-huygens/31193-instruments/?fbodylongid=734
Note the three imagers (in table at bottom) themselves being calibrated for 660nm to 1000nm wavelengths. That's basically near-infrared spectrum with a slight bit of red.

In order to get actual ground color information Huygens carried two lamps for 20W illumination at 700m and 40W at 100m altitude to light up the ground for DLVS, the visible light spectrometer.

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Well Titan's atmosphere is pretty dense, so lift won't be a huge problem.
I imagine they'd be more worried about the launch vehicle's payload budget than the probe's.

Wrangler

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NASA has released the list of selected luna related projects its going to fund.  Some of them are interesting. NASA going to be using commercial landers for the project, so i will give chance see if private companies can deliver and keep costs down for them.

MoonRanger and Heimdall look to be interesting to me.  Ranger is a small fast rover, i wonder how fast that is? Its suppose to be able go beyond range of the lander's radio and come back on it's own .
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"How do you defeat a Dragau? Shoot the damn thing. Lots." - Jellico 
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"It's 200 LY to Sian, we got a full load of shells, a half a platoon of Grenadiers, it's exploding outside, and we're wearing flak jackets." VoTW Destrier - Misterpants
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Wrangler

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We have touch down (again). Last Wednesday, JAX (Japanese Space Agency) landed it's Hayabusa-2 spacecraft to pick up samples on the Ryugu Asteroid.

Which cool. Wish there was pictures from another view of the vehicle landing, the soil it landed on crushed with it's landing.



Business Insider did nice article on it.
"Men, fetch the Urbanmechs.  We have an interrogation to attend to." - jklantern
"How do you defeat a Dragau? Shoot the damn thing. Lots." - Jellico 
"No, it's a "Most Awesome Blues Brothers scene Reenactment EVER" waiting to happen." VotW Destrier - Weirdo  
"It's 200 LY to Sian, we got a full load of shells, a half a platoon of Grenadiers, it's exploding outside, and we're wearing flak jackets." VoTW Destrier - Misterpants
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