Author Topic: Deep Space and Interplanetary Exploration - The Universe is Timeless  (Read 179054 times)

worktroll

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True fact (1) - around 1980 when I started my honours thesis, I actually wanted to model the Jovian atmosphere. The prof kindly advised me to start with something a) simpler, and b) for which there was much more information existed - Mars.

True fact (2) - I'm no longer up to date in the field, but when I was, the best models of the Jovian cloud belts worked on the assumption that the atmosphere rotated like a series of nested cylinders, moving in alternating directions:



True fact (3) - hail to the King, baby! ;)
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kato

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I'll try Saturn instead, so the Sol system's biggest trailer park at least won't be sitting at the bottom of Tornado Gravity Well.
Saturn has a rotation period of 10 hours 33 minutes, and their largest storm, the polar vortex, is a tornado twice the diameter of Earth that rotates at somewhere around 10,000 km/h...

(it actually rotates slower than the planet, which gives credit to the nested rotation of atmospheric layers)

BirdofPrey

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The downside of BEAM and other collapsible modules is that effectively they only provide empty space - while there's a need for that (part of the Japanese module is used like that - for storage, mostly), there's only so much you can really do with it. At best they'd provide mounting points for equipment later brought onboard by other flights for on-orbit assembly. At which point you can wonder whether it wouldn't be cheaper to package that into a standard module and launch on a dedicated flight.
Well, if you want to actually be able to work inside the module, a large portion of it DOES need to be empty space, granted, packing the module for launch becomes more difficult the more fixed items you try to include.

One of the main reasons to use one is for the payload shroud.  Since it collapses, you can fit more volume inside the same payload shroud on a rocket; a larger shroud would increase drag and mass which lowers the payload capacity, not to mention less support structure in the module itself means less of that mass is taken up in the first place.

I seem to recall mention that one of the things they wanted to use inflatable modules for was to provide more/better crew quarters.

kato

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ISS' JEM-ELM-PS' rigid module structure weighs about 6 tons empty for 55 m³ pressurized space plus 2.4 tons for the 8 mounted racks (structure ~110 kg/m³), which compares very favourably with BEAM's 3.0 tons for 16 cubic meters (188 kg/m³).

Payload fairings on rockets are mostly standardized - partly because the aerodynamic calculations for pressure on it are complicated enough that it'd be insane to adapt fairings for individual payloads; this is even more the case nowadays where you want to save some money. In fact, e.g. for Ariane 5 there's only a single type of payload fairing being used - there were two designed. It's the same with pretty much all current launchers.
The full-size BA330 modules that Bigelow still has on their design tables which don't really have a chance of ever launching are a different matter. These are basically designed to take up the space and weight that a "full-size" module (about 15-20 tons) transportable by typical rockets would take up, and then expand into modules with an internal volume one-quarter of the entire ISS.

Most of the (accessible) pressurized space within the station isn't crew space anyway btw. About one third of the volume is the free central corridors within a module; the other two thirds are taken up by rack space and fixed-mounted equipment. The standard solution to creating more "private quarters" - back when there were occasinally more people onboard than the 3-6 now - to take an unused rack space section and clip a sheet over its corridor side (kinda like this, on the left). That went well enough that since 2008 there's now a couple specialized "crew quarter racks" onboard which look like this (the two sections in front are the door panels to the corridor that can be closed). These are pretty much identical in size to the two private quarters in the Russian section btw (which are a bit better in that they have a small window). It definitely beats sleeping like this.

Wrangler

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I guess Bigelow isn't going launch BA330s.  He was planning to sell full on space stations using those modules with assistance of SpaceX or one of the other commerical carriers.  He must be struggling since he not been able launch anything in a while.
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ANS Kamas P81

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http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2016/11/

New photo of the center of our galaxy in infrared, thank you Hubble!  The large blue stars are foreground objects between us and the center.  Most everything else?  The core.  "...this region is so packed with stars, it is equivalent to having a million suns crammed into the volume of space between us and our closest stellar neighbor, Alpha Centauri, 4.3 light-years away."  Can you imagine how glorious that would look on some planet around one of those suns?
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Weirdo

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worktroll

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Or the chain of supernovae if one of them pops off ...
* No, FASA wasn't big on errata - ColBosch
* The Housebook series is from the 80's and is the foundation of Btech, the 80's heart wrapped in heavy metal that beats to this day - Sigma
* To sum it up: FASAnomics: By Cthulhu, for Cthulhu - Moonsword
* Because Battletech is a conspiracy by Habsburg & Bourbon pretenders - MadCapellan
* The Hellbringer is cool, either way. It's not cool because it's bad, it's cool because it's bad with balls - Nightsky
* It was a glorious time for people who felt that we didn't have enough Marauder variants - HABeas2, re "Empires Aflame"

Weirdo

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... chain of supernovae...
Welp, there goes the neighborhood...
My wife writes books
"Thanks to Megamek, I can finally play BattleTech the way it was meant to be played--pantsless!"   -Neko Bijin
"...finally, giant space panties don't seem so strange." - Whistler
"Damn you, Weirdo... Damn you for being right!" - Paul
"...I was this many years old when I found out that licking a touchscreen in excitement is a bad idea." - JadeHellbringer
"We are the tribal elders. Weirdo is the mushroom specialist." - Worktroll

worktroll

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Anyone got the Outsider's mobile number?
* No, FASA wasn't big on errata - ColBosch
* The Housebook series is from the 80's and is the foundation of Btech, the 80's heart wrapped in heavy metal that beats to this day - Sigma
* To sum it up: FASAnomics: By Cthulhu, for Cthulhu - Moonsword
* Because Battletech is a conspiracy by Habsburg & Bourbon pretenders - MadCapellan
* The Hellbringer is cool, either way. It's not cool because it's bad, it's cool because it's bad with balls - Nightsky
* It was a glorious time for people who felt that we didn't have enough Marauder variants - HABeas2, re "Empires Aflame"

BirdofPrey

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Can you imagine how glorious that would look on some planet around one of those suns?
MY EYES.  ZE GOGGLES DO NOTHING

ANS Kamas P81

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Or the chain of supernovae if one of them pops off ...
Anyone got the Outsider's mobile number?
Or your local General Products dealer.
Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen,
Tod und Verzweiflung flammet um mich her!
Fühlt nicht durch dich Jadefalke Todesschmerzen,
So bist du meine Tochter nimmermehr!

rebs

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It would be interesting to see a supernova in a region like that.  I'm sure it's happened, if not in our own galactic core region, then some other galaxy's core region.  All the competing stellar wind would make interesting shapes and bubbles, nice wallpaper.  O0
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Wrangler

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DARPA's XS-1 Space Program moving along to phase 2.  This is in a sense a replacement to the Airforce's reusable mini-shuttles.
It's suppose to be reusable, low-cost alternate to expendable space launcher systems used today.

Its nice see someone trying develop new reusable vehicles aside from SpaceX, Blue Origin.

Story is found here.
"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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Sabelkatten

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Just saw that SpaceX finally managed to soft-land a Falcon 9 booster! :D

Wrangler

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Just saw that SpaceX finally managed to soft-land a Falcon 9 booster! :D

It was amazing.  I wonder how well it will work when they start trying recover multiple Boosters when they start using Falcon Heavy.
"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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Maingunnery

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Just saw that SpaceX finally managed to soft-land a Falcon 9 booster! :D
I saw the clip, it looked kinda silly.  ;D

But it was cool at the same time.
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Sabelkatten

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The really impressive thing to me was the approach speed - watch how quickly it's coming down before the final burn!

kato

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It's only doing about 200 m/s before the final burn.

worktroll

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The Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship the Falcon landed on was named Of Course I Still Love You. Her sister ship is the Just Read The Instructions.

Those are Culture ships.

And ASDS, if not a canon Culture class, sounds like it should be ;)

FTW!  O0
* No, FASA wasn't big on errata - ColBosch
* The Housebook series is from the 80's and is the foundation of Btech, the 80's heart wrapped in heavy metal that beats to this day - Sigma
* To sum it up: FASAnomics: By Cthulhu, for Cthulhu - Moonsword
* Because Battletech is a conspiracy by Habsburg & Bourbon pretenders - MadCapellan
* The Hellbringer is cool, either way. It's not cool because it's bad, it's cool because it's bad with balls - Nightsky
* It was a glorious time for people who felt that we didn't have enough Marauder variants - HABeas2, re "Empires Aflame"

Weirdo

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ARTS(P)! :D

The fact that we live in a world that contains things legitimately titled Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ships....I has a happy.
My wife writes books
"Thanks to Megamek, I can finally play BattleTech the way it was meant to be played--pantsless!"   -Neko Bijin
"...finally, giant space panties don't seem so strange." - Whistler
"Damn you, Weirdo... Damn you for being right!" - Paul
"...I was this many years old when I found out that licking a touchscreen in excitement is a bad idea." - JadeHellbringer
"We are the tribal elders. Weirdo is the mushroom specialist." - Worktroll

ANS Kamas P81

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Anyone heard what happened to Kepler yet?
Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen,
Tod und Verzweiflung flammet um mich her!
Fühlt nicht durch dich Jadefalke Todesschmerzen,
So bist du meine Tochter nimmermehr!

kato

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Failure Mode, they recovered it.

ANS Kamas P81

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Any word what caused it all?
Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen,
Tod und Verzweiflung flammet um mich her!
Fühlt nicht durch dich Jadefalke Todesschmerzen,
So bist du meine Tochter nimmermehr!

kato

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Nothing from NASA yet.

kato

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Re: Deep Space and Interplanetary Exploration, 2015
« Reply #505 on: 12 April 2016, 11:50:46 »
It's notable for the fact that once Juno and Cassini have dived into their respective gas giants at the end of 2017 Akatsuki will be the only probe active in orbit of a planet other than Earth or Mars
JAXA has revised Akatsuki's orbit around Venus to extend its observation period until mid-2020, thus almost bridging the gap to the next interplanetary probe.

ANS Kamas P81

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A new theory for dark matter:
http://phys.org/news/2016-05-scientist-link-primordial-black-holes.html
And unlike most of them, this one's scientifically testable and disprovable now.  We'll need a few more LIGO style detectors, but it would be interesting to see just what the actual black hole population is.
Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen,
Tod und Verzweiflung flammet um mich her!
Fühlt nicht durch dich Jadefalke Todesschmerzen,
So bist du meine Tochter nimmermehr!

Wrangler

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news in hardware.

BEAM inflatable module
has successfully been inflated despite it earlier trouble due to surface sticking to itself. The thing popped open like a kern of popcorn.

A short (speed up most likely) video of SpaceX's stage one landing has been released.  It was pretty interesting see from rocket's perspective its landing.  I was hoping they had perhaps less speed up film of it's descent. Nether the case it was pretty amazing.  Video threw me off since it landed on the barge at such alarming speed.  ;D
"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
-Editor on Battletech Fanon Wiki

Wrangler

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Interesting, i don't know if is wishful thinking by Space.com and person came up with it.

Asteroid Seed Ship, aka convert a Riod into a ship.  I think it's bit of a stretch. Not i think it's not possible but i think its stretch.
"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
-Editor on Battletech Fanon Wiki

Weirdo

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Steampunk-y mechanical Von Neumanns? I'm in. ;D
My wife writes books
"Thanks to Megamek, I can finally play BattleTech the way it was meant to be played--pantsless!"   -Neko Bijin
"...finally, giant space panties don't seem so strange." - Whistler
"Damn you, Weirdo... Damn you for being right!" - Paul
"...I was this many years old when I found out that licking a touchscreen in excitement is a bad idea." - JadeHellbringer
"We are the tribal elders. Weirdo is the mushroom specialist." - Worktroll

 

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