Exilian

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45444246/ns/technology_and_science-space/

Let's hope it gets there safely...

http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/

http://www.space.com/13821-nasa-kepler-alien-planets-habitable-zone.html
http://www.space.com/13766-international-space-station-flex-fire-research.html

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45776625/ns/technology_and_science-space/

;D

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16906740

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!  >:(

Dammit Obama! He better let loose the funds for this project.

Something tells me the GOP won't be any more favourable if they get the White House, either.  :-\

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsbYx6hevoQ

Happened yesterday:

http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/annular-solar-eclipse-may-20-2012/20gies43?q=Solar+eclipse&rel=msn&from=en-us_msnhphero&form=msnhro&overlaytype=multimediaviewer&name=hpvideo3&csid=ux-en-us&initialmoduleindex=1

This is definitely a yay! ;D

http://www.startrek.com/article/send-picard-to-space-a-success

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/05/26/astronauts-enter-world-1st-private-supply-ship/

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/48186927/ns/technology_and_science-space/#.UAK8fvWQODE

So we're left to hitchhike on 46 year old Russian rockets. :(

http://news.discovery.com/space/new-comet-discovered-will-it-be-spectacular-120925.html#mkcpgn=fbdsc17

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20389148

It's that guy again. Falcon VS Ariane!

http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/12/tech/innovation/voyager-solar-system/

"You are the Kirk Unit. You will listen to me."

- V'ger

Woop!  :)

http://www.weather.com/news/science/private-space-taxis-20140324

It's companies like SpaceX that will lead the way towards our future.

I think SpaceX in particular is worth watching; a company like Boeing is really in it for the haulage contracts, a guy like Elon Musk just wants to go to Mars because it'd be cool.

Elon Musk... what an odd name. Kind of like Zephram Cochrane is also an odd name. ;D

Planet X theory! http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/planet-x-myth-debunked-20140317-34weh.html

Some neat picshas:

http://www.news.com.au/technology/photos-e6frfrnr-1226854669884?page=1

http://www.iflscience.com/space/eyes-earth-iss-hd-earth-viewing-experiment

Holy sheet.

At that distance it would probably crash into earth pretty rapidly as well unless it was going totally super hyper fast.

Almsivi would save us!

Space, the final frontier...

http://www.iflscience.com/space/nasa-reveals-latest-warp-drive-ship-designs

THAT LOOKS SOOOOOOOO COOOOL. Can I get one?

One day Tom, one day... I hope...

I think building a fancy computer and getting star citizen is my next best bet.:(

Star Citizen, *Drool* I've been following that since it's kickstarter, even though I wouldn't be able to play it.

I'm saving up to build myself a tank of a PC so hopefully I will be able to :)

I wouldn't even if I did have an awesome PC because of my crappy Internet. :(

Has Australia got crappy internet as a whole or is Tasmania just the worst area to live in? For internet that is.

I live on a farm, so I have satellite. Other than that, our Internet is just as good as it is anywhere else... if you live in the cities. Plus, with the NBN we're getting fiber optics to every house in major populated areas. 'Tis good.

Sounds good mate :) Is living on a farm alright?
Oh and SPACE, YAY.

Lets take this to a more appropriate thread eh? (http://www.exilian.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=1678.new#new)

Back to actual space yays, a mars rover mission is set to try and make oxygen:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-28582903 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-28582903)

QuoteNasa's next Martian rover will attempt to make oxygen on the surface of the red planet when it lands there in 2021.

The rover will carry seven scientific projects, aimed at paving the way for future manned missions, seeking evidence of life and storing samples to be brought back in the future.

Among them is a device for turning the CO2 that dominates the thin Martian air into oxygen.

This could support human life or make rocket fuel for return missions.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-28268186

India becomes the first country to get a satellite to Mars on its first attempt!  :)

Looks like the Indian Space Agency in that Doctor Who episode (Dinosaurs on a Spaceship?) is becoming a reality :P

I saw some of the Lunar eclipse this morning.

I could go to my brothers' place in North Carolina if it would help. :)

Quote from: comrade_general on October 08, 2014, 01:25:27 PM
I could go to my brothers' place in North Carolina if it would help. :)

That's a very kind offer, but please don't make any plans yet: having missed most of totality of the 1999 eclipse due to an inconveniently placed cloud, I'm keen to find somewhere with skies as clear as possible. Also, there's likely to be an extensive US tour constructed around this, so I'd expect to be in Ohio at some point anyway.

Meanwhile, this side of the Atlantic, there will be a partial solar eclipse rather sooner, on Friday 20 March 2015. It's actually total on a path running from the north Atlantic up into the Arctic; the UK will see varying fractions of the sun obscured, from about 85% in south-east England up to at least 95% in northern Scotland. The maximum looks to be around 09:30 UK time. There are more details on the main NASA solar eclipse page (http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/solar.html) - scroll down the list to the right date, and follow the individual links.

This is a space sad :(


Makes me thing of the Vanguard (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JK6a6Hkp94o), except this one made it a bit further. Rocket science must be hard if it hasn't changed much in 60 years. :P

There's going to be a lot of bad press surrounding this which sucks.

I think it's inevitable that rockets will go wrong occasionally, like any other machinery; when they do, the consequences are usually explosive, given that they're mostly tubes filled with fuel and oxidant. At least in this case there was no-one on board. It's just a shame that it's happened to one of the companies that's just getting going in this area.

Another space sad :(

Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo is reported to have exploded and crashed while on a test flight in California, with at least one person (one of the pilots) dead.

I just came here to post it :(

http://www.iflscience.com/space/breaking-virgin-galactic-s-spaceshiptwo-crashes-over-mohave-desert

I also saw that the previous rocket was self-destructed due to the launch being flawed somehow (looked fine to me).

Quote from: comrade_general on November 01, 2014, 01:11:10 AMI also saw that the previous rocket was self-destructed due to the launch being flawed somehow (looked fine to me).

As far as I know they saw that the rocket wasn't going to make it into orbit and so it made more sense to destroy it ASAP rather than risk debris falling on a populated area, which seems sensible enough.

How in the hell would they know that so soon?

According to a statement (https://www.orbital.com/NewsInfo/MissionUpdates/Orb-3/default.aspx) on the Orbital Sciences website:

Quote from: Orbital Sciences, 30 Oct 2014All systems appeared to be performing nominally until approximately T+15 seconds at which point the failure occurred. Evidence suggests the failure initiated in the first stage after which the vehicle lost its propulsive capability and fell back to the ground impacting near, but not on, the launch pad. Prior to impacting the ground, the rocket's Flight Termination System was engaged by the designated official in the Wallops Range Control Center.

The official NASA video is on the Wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cygnus_CRS_Orb-3); it's from near the launchpad up to a few seconds after launch, and then cuts to one from further away (possibly losing a few seconds). At around 0:45 on the video, the rocket exhaust flame gets brighter and bigger. Over the next few seconds, there looks to be a small explosion in the exhaust, the rocket stops accelerating, slows down and starts falling, and then there's another explosion or burst of flame. I would guess that the change in the flame at 0:45 is the "failure" reported by Orbital, and that the burst of flame after the rocket starts falling is the flight termination system.

Quote from: comrade_general on November 01, 2014, 08:17:13 PMHow in the hell would they know that so soon?

I would guess that there's a prescribed safe path, dictating where the rocket should be at what time after the launch. If it deviates from that path, either in location or not accelerating correctly, then it's considered unsafe and is destroyed.

That makes more sense if it lost propulsion before they aborted. At first it sounded like they had caused the entire incident.

Meanwhile, something happier that I found: a video recorded on the ISS, of and from a camera inside a big blob of water. Particularly interesting for me is some all-too-brief footage (around 1:25 - 1:40) of what you can do when surface tension is the strongest force acting on the water.

That looks so fun! :D

Anyone catch the orion ama on reddit?
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2li4jx/were_the_team_that_designed_and_built_orion_nasas/ (http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2li4jx/were_the_team_that_designed_and_built_orion_nasas/)

For a second I thought that was a fake AMA from the constellation :P

Not sure if this is the place to put it but: http://www.buzzfeed.com/donnad/what-if-our-planet-had-rings-like-saturn

Interesting (and rather pretty) - thanks for posting this.

I think if the Earth had rings, we (the human race) might have worked out a lot more about astronomy quite early on. The fact that the world is round can readily be deduced from how the position of the rings in the sky varies with latitude, and there's a series of interesting observations that give us lots of data on celestial geometry:
- the shadow of the rings on the Earth at various times of the day/year
- the shadow of the rings on the Moon at lunar eclipses
- the shadow of the Moon on the rings at solar eclipses (albeit very occasionally)
- the Sun crossing the plane of the rings at equinoxes

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/#.VIHHcsmSled

Looks like Orion made it up okay. We're going to eventually use it to send people to asteroids and then Mars.

Quote from: The Khan on November 14, 2014, 05:49:39 AM
Not sure if this is the place to put it but: http://www.buzzfeed.com/donnad/what-if-our-planet-had-rings-like-saturn

Somewhat relatedly, has anyone seen the "donut earth" post?
http://io9.com/what-would-the-earth-be-like-if-it-was-the-shape-of-a-d-1515700296 (http://io9.com/what-would-the-earth-be-like-if-it-was-the-shape-of-a-d-1515700296)


The idea of seeing your own planet in the sky is quite cool, as is that of satellites that go through the hole...

Found on that same site as yours Fishy. Thought it was pretty interesting. http://io9.com/5906300/5-scientific-explanations-for-game-of-thrones-messed-up-seasons

News from the Curiosity rover on Mars: there are substantial deposits of sedimentary rocks, implying the existence of lakes and rivers in Mars' early history. More in a BBC News article (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-30390143), with some nice pictures and a link to the relevant NASA website.

Oooo, Portugal! Were there astronauts on that? :(

 :picard_facepalm:

http://gizmodo.com/every-ship-that-has-carried-humans-into-space-in-one-c-1665286013

Beagle 2 actually made it! They thought it was lost, turned out it just broke!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-30784886

Reading this story made me feel happy, and also made me sad that Colin Pillinger never found out that it didn't crash after all.

The fact that it landed at all is impressive given how cheap the mission was; it's a great pity we haven't been funding more missions like that really.

http://news.discovery.com/space/alien-life-exoplanets/kepler-discovers-solar-systems-ancient-twin-150127.htm?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=DiscoveryChannel

http://www.iflscience.com/space/solar-system-speed-light

Apparently there has now been a successful soft-landing (http://spaceflightnow.com/2015/02/12/space-weather-observatory-blasts-off-after-17-year-wait/) of a Falcon 9 first stage. Unfortunately it was in the ocean, as rough seas meant that they didn't think they could keep their landing barge in place.

But still, it came down slowly, on rockets, the right way up, as God and E.E. 'Doc' Smith intended :)

With the Falcon 9 soft landing there seem to be two main challenges:

• Getting it in the right place (with a very small margin of error, the barges aren't that huge)
• Getting it to stay upright

To my (very uneducated in this field) mind, the first bit seems much harder to achieve (not that I am claiming the upright bit is easy of course). Yet with both attempts so far, it has been spot on target. It is very impressive technically, and if the stages can genuinely be reused safely, it is very cool indeed.

It's certainly impressive.

Elon Musk I think definitely wins the current global award for "I'm going to use my billionaire status to do ridiculous but cool stuff". Probably high up on the impact stakes as well, though below the Gates foundation on that.

http://www.theverge.com/2015/3/12/8199689/jupiter-moon-ganymede-hidden-ocean-water

Jupiter pretty much has its own private planetary system.

http://www.nasa.gov/content/a-year-in-space/index.html?linkId=13158669

In news of great concern to Doctor Who fans everywhere, it turns out there are waters on Mars...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-32287609

So with some proper planning and genetic engineering the first steps of terraforming might not be so far away after all.  :D

http://www.iflscience.com/space/spacex-wins-permission-launch-government-satellites

One step closer to Mars, or world domination, or whatever they're after...

So this is pretty awesome:

---

'Earth 2.0' found in Nasa Kepler telescope haul

(http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/660/cpsprodpb/1824E/production/_84449889_84449888.jpg)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-33641648 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-33641648)

QuoteA haul of planets from Nasa's Kepler telescope includes a world sharing many characteristics with Earth.
Kepler-452b orbits at a very similar distance from its star, though its radius is 60% larger.
Mission scientists said they believed it was the most Earth-like planet yet.
Such worlds are of interest to astronomers because they might be small and cool enough to host liquid water on their surface - and might therefore be hospitable to life.
Nasa's science chief John Grunsfeld called the new world the "closest so far" to Earth.

(http://orig00.deviantart.net/505e/f/2015/294/8/e/exoplanets_by_jaysimons-d9dv6th.jpg)

There's one of those but with all the different sci-fi spacecraft, they're awesome :D

Know exactly what you're talking about.

Spoiler

http://orig03.deviantart.net/494a/f/2014/171/0/1/size_comparison___science_fiction_spaceships_by_dirkloechel-d6lfgdf.jpg
(http://orig03.deviantart.net/494a/f/2014/171/0/1/size_comparison___science_fiction_spaceships_by_dirkloechel-d6lfgdf.jpg)

'Course that can't include V'Ger at 97,500 meters or the Death Stars at 120,000 and 160,000 meters. portugal that whale probe thing.

It's hilarious how tiny all the DW ships are :) (Also, did they get some of those from the comics? I'm not sure all those appear in the TV series...)

In other news, apparently solar storms might have blasted Mars' atmosphere out the way:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-34736574

SpaceX rocket in historic upright landing

(http://ichef-1.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/EAEF/production/_87334106_7f995026-0291-4459-a914-03b9a81c7460.jpg)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-35157782

OK, this is a fairly big one. SpaceX have managed a vertical landing after launching satellites, which means - if this can be done regularly - potentially a vastly, vastly decreased financial and environmental cost of space launches.  :)

portugal yeah.

You must've missed the signpost to the space sads thread :(

Some nice pictures of Earth and other planets in this BBC News article (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-35292518). They are all in an exhibition at the Natural History Museum in London, open from 22 January to 15 May, if you're able to get there and willing to pay the £9.90 exhibition charge.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3454486/Could-travel-Mars-just-THREE-days-Nasa-s-photonic-propulsion-uses-light-lasers-produce-thrust.html
This is awesome, makes me think of that episode of Next Gen where they propel the ship to warp using a soliton wave (http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Soliton_wave) generator. We'd just need to send the robots first to install a second laser either on Mars or in orbit so there could be a return journey. The Moon took 4 days in the past so this is an amazing step in space travel. :)

It seems that something, probably a small asteroid or comet, collided with Jupiter on March 17. Here's an IFLScience post (http://www.iflscience.com/space/incredibly-rare-impact-jupiter-may-have-been-spotted-amateur-astronomers) about it, including several short videos.

Cool image I came across. I really hope the SLS still becomes a thing.

(http://img0.joyreactor.com/pics/post/full/space-rocket-1698744.jpeg)

Huh, I hadn't actually realised how huge the Saturn payloads were compared to modern commercial rockets like the Falcon.

Saturn V was by far the most powerful launch system ever (successfully) constructed. A testament to what our capabilites were and could have continued to be if space remained higher on the priorities list. SLS is essentially a throwback, carrying a bit larger version of the Apollo craft, and a hybrid by using similar solid boosters like the shuttle did.

Aye, it's short-sighted the extent to which NASA has been cut back. :(

http://www.space.com/34210-elon-musk-unveils-spacex-mars-colony-ship.html

Yay!

I remember reading about NASA's EM drive. The most fun part for me was that they were astounded that it actually works, despite the fact that it's not supported by the current fundamental laws of physics. :P

Quote from: Silver Wolf on April 23, 2017, 11:02:20 AM
I remember reading about NASA's EM drive. The most fun part for me was that they were astounded that it actually works, despite the fact that it's not supported by the current fundamental laws of physics. :P

More about it on this thread (http://exilian.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=4492.0).

"Not supported by the current laws of physics" generally means that we're about to find out something fun and interesting about the way the universe works. A hundred years ago it was things like radioactivity, the photoelectric effect, the Michelson-Morley experiment and the precession of the perihelion of Mercury - that got us relativity and quantum mechanics, and thence a vast array of modern technology.

At the moment we have dark matter, dark energy, the EM drive and probably other stuff that I haven't heard about yet. Somewhere, I hope, there is another Einstein working to make sense of it all.

It would of course help & speed things up if we actually put the money in and funded the research on this stuff... (grumblegrumble).

Interesting upcoming Mercury mission:

(https://ichef-1.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/CB40/production/_96823025_1.jpg)

QuoteThe two satellites that make up the BepiColombo mission to Mercury were presented to the media on Thursday.

This joint European-Japanese venture has been in development for nearly two decades, but should finally get to the launch pad in 15 months' time.

The two spacecraft will travel together to the baking world but separate on arrival to conduct their own studies.

Thursday's event in the Netherlands was the last chance for journalists to view the so-called "flight stack".

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-40513818

Not quite a yay - but the Cassini probe has finally had its watch ended, which felt like a thing to mention here.

Quote(https://ichef-1.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/0A33/production/_97811620_3.jpg)

The American-led Cassini space mission to Saturn has just come to a spectacular end.

Controllers had commanded the probe to destroy itself by plunging into the planet's atmosphere. It survived for just over a minute before being broken apart. Cassini had run out of fuel and Nasa had determined that the probe should not be allowed simply to wander uncontrolled among Saturn and its moons.

The loss of signal from the spacecraft occurred pretty close to the prediction. Here at mission control, at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, the drop-off was timed at 04:55 PDT (11:55 GMT; 12:55 BST).

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-41207827

To note, SpaceX has been launching and landing Falcon 9's for a while now, and they recently successfully tested their Falcon heavy, which is currently the most powerful rocket in the world, by sending one of their Tesla cars towards the general Mars area. I expect some more pretty portugaling fantastic things from them soon.

Here's the launch of the falcon heavy. The most epic part is the simultaneous landing of the boosters around the 9:15 minute mark.

https://deadspin.com/indians-pitchers-ponder-the-existence-of-multiple-earth-1825904317

Baseball and space. What more could you want?

Don't answer that.

Meanwhile, coming up overnight Friday / Saturday: the longest (at least by a few seconds) lunar eclipse this century. It will be visible from Australia, most of Asia and Europe, Africa, and parts of South America. The eastern and western edges of that range only get to see part of the eclipse; as seen from Australia, the moon will set before it's finished, while it will already have started when the moon rises for Europe. More details for this eclipse here (https://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/LEplot/LEplot2001/LE2018Jul27T.pdf), and for lunar eclipses generally here (https://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/lunar.html).

I'll just wait here then.

- North America :'(

Quote from: comrade_general on July 23, 2018, 08:18:45 PM
I'll just wait here then.

- North America :'(

You shouldn't have to wait too long - just under six months. There's a lunar eclipse on 21 January 2019 for which North America is perfectly positioned - details here (https://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/LEplot/LEplot2001/LE2019Jan21T.pdf).

Yay :)

Parker sun probe launching today

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-45058911

Quote from: Tusky on August 11, 2018, 08:21:12 AM
Parker sun probe launching today

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-45058911

... make that tomorrow
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-45058911

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-45838991

New joint Europe-Japan mission to Mercury :)

https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/astronomers-unveil-first-ever-image-of-a-black-hole/70007951

The black hole stuff is super cool :) It's nice that they seem to have done more actively talking to the scientists on it than I remember with previous big science stories - actually letting scientists geek out about stuff on the news rather than presenting these things as "this is science, it's done by nameless scientists who are presumably some alien species" is positive I think.

This could also be a history yay. :)

Nasa have discovered water on a sunlit part of the moon for the first time, which is pretty cool:

QuoteNASA's Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) has confirmed, for the first time, water on the sunlit surface of the Moon. This discovery indicates that water may be distributed across the lunar surface, and not limited to cold, shadowed places.

SOFIA has detected water molecules (H2O) in Clavius Crater, one of the largest craters visible from Earth, located in the Moon's southern hemisphere. Previous observations of the Moon's surface detected some form of hydrogen, but were unable to distinguish between water and its close chemical relative, hydroxyl (OH). Data from this location reveal water in concentrations of 100 to 412 parts per million – roughly equivalent to a 12-ounce bottle of water – trapped in a cubic meter of soil spread across the lunar surface. The results are published in the latest issue of Nature Astronomy.

"We had indications that H2O – the familiar water we know – might be present on the sunlit side of the Moon," said Paul Hertz, director of the Astrophysics Division in the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "Now we know it is there. This discovery challenges our understanding of the lunar surface and raises intriguing questions about resources relevant for deep space exploration."

As a comparison, the Sahara desert has 100 times the amount of water than what SOFIA detected in the lunar soil. Despite the small amounts, the discovery raises new questions about how water is created and how it persists on the harsh, airless lunar surface.

Full press release is at:
https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-s-sofia-discovers-water-on-sunlit-surface-of-moon

That is pretty cool, one particular part of the article that stuck out to me was:

QuoteUnder NASA's Artemis (https://www.nasa.gov/Artemis#_blank) program, the agency is eager to learn all it can about the presence of water on the Moon in advance of sending the first woman and next man to the lunar surface in 2024 and establishing a sustainable human presence there by the end of the decade.

This might be old news, but I'd never heard of this ambitious plan. Perhaps we have an exciting space decade to come!  ;D

One of the many things which has been driven out of the news by interpersonal trivia is the successful collection of samples from the surface of asteroid Bennu by OSIRIS REX (https://www.asteroidmission.org/).  All it needs is a proper Akkadian name, or at least a Greek one!  Everyone knows you don't do any serious astronomy in a language for thugs and hucksters like Latin.

The Japanese mission to an asteroid has returned its sample to Earth! 

Areciebo may have fallen and people on birdsite are angry at the CEO of SpaceX but things are still happening in space science because of experts working together.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-56844601 (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-56844601)

QuoteAn instrument on Nasa's Perseverance rover on Mars has made oxygen from the planet's carbon dioxide atmosphere.

This is very cool, I had no idea that this tech was being trialled. Sounds like this allows for visitors to Mars to use some version of this Moxie unit, and be able to breathe indefinitely without relying on Earth for Oxygen deliveries!

Israel and Jordan are planning a massive geoengineering project: the Red Sea - Dead Sea Project.  The plan is to dump waste brine from a planned desalination plant at Aqaba into the north basin of the Dead Sea which is drying up because of water diverted from the Sea of Galilee to Israel (and the turning of the southern part of the Dead Sea into shallow evaporation ponds to be mined for minerals).  The problem is that Red Sea water is chemically distinct, and adding all this slightly less salty water with sulphites will have unpredictable effects.

The population of Jordan increased 11-fold before 1960 and 2010, and then the wars in Syria came.

(https://imgur.com/gfh5sVw.jpg)

Blank post by Jubal

Oops! It wasn't empty, but I messed up the image code on a recent bit of photography I did. Now fixed :)

Possibly the opposite of a yay but today I learned of the existence of MOOSE, a 1980s plan to have people drop out of space with a metal sheet and some foam to protect them in case of emergencies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOOSE

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/49/Operation_MOOSE_%28figure_110%29.PNG)

Maciej Ceglowski has broken his silence with a series trying to argue against manned space travel without being an asshole https://idlewords.com/2023/1/why_not_mars.htm (https://idlewords.com/2023/1/why_not_mars.htm)

Its kind of journalistic and rhetorical more than scientific but it has fun footnotes

I published a blog post last summer about two pieces of rocket engineering which have not reached pop culture and especially science fiction: Whipple shields and radiators (https://www.bookandsword.com/2022/07/23/whipple-shields-and-radiators/).

I wonder how much of the Whipple shield not capturing the science fiction imagination is just the name. It unfortunately sounds like a specially designed cup lid for messy drinkers of cream topped coffee, more than a piece of brilliantly conceived space engineering.

Quote from: Jubal on January 16, 2023, 06:12:28 PM
I wonder how much of the Whipple shield not capturing the science fiction imagination is just the name. It unfortunately sounds like a specially designed cup lid for messy drinkers of cream topped coffee, more than a piece of brilliantly conceived space engineering.

It could be worse, an early sexologist was named Dr. Beverly Whipple.  I don't know if the story that the "Whipple tickle" almost became a piece of official scientific nomenclature is true, but it should be.

...good heavens.

(An old BBC Article (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8443465.stm) quotes Whipple herself as giving the "Whipple Tickle" story, noting that she rejected the idea - but how seriously anyone suggested it may be another matter, so it perhaps depends on your definition of almost).

India got a lander to the moon's south pole! :)

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-66601996

Definitely a nice contrast to the failed Russian mission and the indecision on what to do after the ISS is deorbited.  We can do so many amazing things in space with robots when its not limited by military Keynesianism!  Indian space agency, Chinese, NASA, all do cool things with modest budgets when they are not obliged to spend a lot of money in the right districts or keep Russian engineers from moonlighting with North Korea.

Yes, indeed. Though I don't know much about the politics of the space programme internally in India - I do wonder how achievements like this play in the world of heavily religious-nationalist rule the country is now in. It's an exciting scientific achievement though, regardless.

On one hand its odd that a country has a Moon program while allowing schools to skip evolution in biology class, on the other hand both of Werner von Braun's employers had some issues with the scientific worldview.

One of the problems with Ceglowski's arguments is that its not obvious that cuts to manned spaceflight would produce greater federal spending on natural science or engineering.  And NASA seems better at manned spaceflight than at other important things like 'getting the cost of putting a kilo into orbit close to the cost of the energy.'  (The prices claimed or promised by SpaceX have been getting a closer look over the past few years).

But building another big space station does seem a questionable goal, and a manned mission to Mars around 2040 seems very optimistic.

Ceglowski? I don't think I'm familiar/

I literally linked to his essay above.  Its journalistic but nobody seems to have taken up his challenge and unpicked the hyperbole from the serious arguments.

Edit: His major achievement is a series of talks explaining the long-term doom of venture-capitalist funded websites and the surveillance-advertising complex and the dubiousness of the AI cult in the California vernacular https://idlewords.com/talks/  He seems to have become depressed after several short-term ventures into American politics and labour organizing and has been neglecting the business that pays his rent (but that stuff takes decades!  giving up after a year or two is premature)

Edit: examples of responses to "Why Not Mars?": a classic bad forum thread https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=58511.0 and blog post with an actual argument https://www.jwkash.com/questioning-my-religion-why-not-mars Note the manned spaceflight advocate's term"existential risk" and see TESCREAL (https://exilian.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=6566.0) ("what if some disaster ends life on earth?" has been a favourite gambit by American advocates of manned spaceflight for my whole lifetime).  Most of what I can find is short responses by randos saying "I agree completely!" or "I disagree completely"

Edit: the Oceangate submarine disaster let us empirically test the space-advocate argument "NASA is too cautious, we need to take a few risks to get things moving again."  Everyone who has close contact with NASA seems to agree that they are very bureaucratic but these are hard problems and when you try and fail people die (see also Theranos, Inc. (https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2018/08/09/bad-blood-secrets-lies-silicon-valley-startup/)).

Oh right! Yes, that post was back in January in my defence so it's a few months since I'd read it.

And yes, I think the "should we send humans to space" question is definitely in that box for me of "I am excited when exciting space things happen, but I do not think I have within a million miles of the expertise needed to weigh in on what exciting space things should be attempted". I don't think Knych's argument feels a good one to me for the same reasons you give re existential risk, but I'm also not enormously concerned about contaminating Mars. But overall I'd quite like this problem to be someone else's to solve (although I also think the world in which I did have to think about it seriously because that was the sort of discussion that might e.g. factor into my voting considerations would be an incredibly good one because that would in turn imply that a lot of other much scarier and bigger problems that I think about more were somehow no longer on my worry list).

Yeah, that is why I would like a more detailed analysis by someone not pushing a predetermined agenda.  I noticed that Ceglowski's essay did not address the geopolitical context of the ISS which the recent Guardian piece (https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/aug/26/its-like-doing-an-arctic-expedition-with-german-scientists-in-1943-life-on-the-international-space-station-at-a-time-of-war) emphasized (keeping Russian rocket scientists gainfully employed and supervised in the 1990s).  And in general critics of manned spaceflight feel like losers ("how dare someone else devote their lives to this dangerous, amazing thing"), but relatively small investments on projects like the JWST or the Indian moon mission can have very cool results.

Meanwhile SpaceX had a successful test firing
https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/08/starships-next-test-flight-might-be-closer-than-you-think/

Edit: since a lot of space news is tediously nationalistic lets not forget that China has a space station too https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiangong_space_station

TIL from that Wiki piece that the Chinese space station's name is "The Heavenly Palace", which honestly makes the nomenclature of the ISS feel excessively mundane. Couldn't we have called it the "Bastion of the Star Explorers" or something?

Another Guardian piece (https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/sep/09/first-cat-space-felicette-orbit-humans-earth-atmosphere) reminded me that while it turns out that keeping primates alive and healthy in space is hard, in the 1940s and 1950s there were spoil-sports who thought it might be impossible.  They just were not writing for Astounding.  And closed-circuit life support may become more feasible if we can get the cost of a kilo in orbit down from $20k to $2k (ie. closer to the cost of the energy).

Mm. I think it's common to discuss things people assumed we'd have in the past that never worked out (the "where's my hovercar" line of argument) but much less common to discuss the things people actively assumed were impossible that we've achieved.

Quote from: Jubal on September 14, 2023, 05:34:30 PM
Mm. I think it's common to discuss things people assumed we'd have in the past that never worked out (the "where's my hovercar" line of argument) but much less common to discuss the things people actively assumed were impossible that we've achieved.

I think that people often do discuss the things people actively assumed were impossible that we've achieved, but they are telling urban legends ("a physicist said that a bumblebee can't fly!" "first they ignore you then they mock you then you win!") not history.

The only one that comes to mind is the discovery that there was not an impassable hot belt near the equator which confined the known world to the northern hemisphere.  I don't know how long there was a question whether it was possible to run a mile in four minutes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-minute_mile), and whether it was a scientific consensus or just an old runners' tale.

A private spacelaunch company in Spain had a successful launch https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/oct/07/spanish-company-launches-reusable-rocket-in-breakthrough-for-european-space-ambitions

Japan landed its first spacecraft on the moon but it may have flipped over or fallen on its side https://www.theguardian.com/science/live/2024/jan/19/japan-moon-landing-mission-space-latest-live-news-updates

One of the hard problems in human spacetravel is shielding crew from radiation outside the Earth's magnetic field whenever there is a solar storm (although a lot depends on the level of safety you expect).  One proposal is electromagnetic shielding but implementation is the problem.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/03/shields-up-new-ideas-might-make-active-shielding-viable/

NASA's safety culture after Apollo 11 is a weird mix of safety-conscious (carefully calculating incremental increases in cancer risk to International Space Station crew) and reckless (all those deaths in the Shuttle program)

Quote from: dubsartur on March 12, 2024, 08:51:02 PM
NASA's safety culture after Apollo 11 is a weird mix of safety-conscious (carefully calculating incremental increases in cancer risk to International Space Station crew) and reckless (all those deaths in the Shuttle program)

Is this something that's actually traceable as a single block change, or is it more that it's gone through several phases since? We're quite a few careers down the line from Apollo 11 now!

I had some interesting online discussion recently about building on the moon using sintering to make stuff from lunar dust, like in Markus Kayser's work: https://kayserworks.com/
And I remembered and dug up some interesting notes from 2022 on how one might actually be able to use microwaves for the purpose, superheating lunar dust that's been magnetically sifted to increase the metal content:
https://www.ucf.edu/news/methods-for-building-lunar-landing-pads-may-involve-microwaving-moon-soil/
https://www.universetoday.com/159427/want-to-build-structures-on-the-moon-just-blast-the-regolith-with-microwaves/

I think the balance has swung back and forth several times, dependent on competing pressures (not least from the US Congress) to:
- complete programmes as quickly and cheaply as possible
- avoid killing people and consequent bad publicity

Quote from: Jubal on March 13, 2024, 01:40:34 PM

Quote from: dubsartur on March 12, 2024, 08:51:02 PM
NASA's safety culture after Apollo 11 is a weird mix of safety-conscious (carefully calculating incremental increases in cancer risk to International Space Station crew) and reckless (all those deaths in the Shuttle program)

Is this something that's actually traceable as a single block change, or is it more that it's gone through several phases since? We're quite a few careers down the line from Apollo 11 now!

Simultaneous in different parts of the organization!  They lost the Columbia  (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Columbia_disaster)while teams were carefully trying to calculate obscure long-term health risks to highly-paid idealistic volunteers.

Maybe because of its origins, NASA is always centred around a prestige project (Apollo, Space Shuttle, ISS, Artemis) and when that project gets into trouble management makes choices which are bad for science and space capabilities but good for covering their butts.  Currently they are cancelling a $20m science project (Chandra X-ray telescope) to have MAWR BUDGET for the Moon/Mars plan.

More budget would probably help, but giant prestige projects are prone to delays, budget shortfalls, and deadly engineering failures.

Edit: fediverse thread on moon dust and its effects on breathing and equipment https://mastodon.green/@AnarchoCatgirlism@transfem.social/112057068231111010

Ceglowski has posted a long essay in the style of a business or policy paper with his criticisms of the Artemis program. I sure would take a bet that NASA will not land astronauts on the moon by 31 December 2026 but having some manned spaceflight seems better than dropping more bombs on Arabs or tax cuts for billionaires or other things the actually-existing United States would do with the money. https://idlewords.com/2024/5/the_lunacy_of_artemis.htm  And half a dozen countries or alliances have serious space programs now so if the USA loses interest the rest of us will keep going.

Quote from: dubsartur on May 21, 2024, 06:34:07 AM
Ceglowski has posted a long essay in the style of a business or policy paper with his criticisms of the Artemis program. I sure would take a bet that NASA will not land astronauts on the moon by 31 December 2026 but having some manned spaceflight seems better than dropping more bombs on Arabs or tax cuts for billionaires or other things the actually-existing United States would do with the money. https://idlewords.com/2024/5/the_lunacy_of_artemis.htm  And half a dozen countries or alliances have serious space programs now so if the USA loses interest the rest of us will keep going.

I substantially agree with you, though I'd be more worried for the future of space exploration about things like the critiques he makes of the lander system: having a bunch of astronauts die on the moon after their multi-storey landing capsule fell over feels like the sort of thing that would really tank wider support for space travel.

Past NASA disasters have not had that effect, but a collapse in confidence in NASA might be damaging.  Another of Ceglowski's points is that only national space agencies have expertise in the tedious issues around keeping primates healthy outside the atmosphere.  The private space firms focus on rocket science and telecommunications even if their patrons have dreams of space stations or Mars colonies.

You'd have thought that Blue Origin would have been developing some more expertise in this given their lean into the space tourism side, but maybe their much shorter tourist flights are just far too different to what's needed for keeping people alive over the time it takes to do a moon mission etc.

I think that so far, the private space launch companies have only sent people outside the atmosphere for missions that can be measured in hours.  Its only projects like Apollo and the Soviet, NASA, and Chinese space stations which put people outside the atmosphere for weeks or months and faced issues like muscle degradation in free fall or how to recycle water with near 100% effectiveness.  Of course, most of these issues would get easier with space launches that cost hundreds of dollars per kilo not $10,000 per kilo.  Eg. one of the solutions for solar storms (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_weather) outside the magnetosphere is to give a spacecraft a 'storm shelter' of materials which resist those nasty particles, and have the crew hide inside when NASA tells them a solar storm is coming ... but that costs mass.

In the 1970s, Jeanne Robinson (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Robinson) imagined what freefall dance might be for a novel.  The Challenger disaster prevented her from going to space and she retired from dance in 1987 because it was hard to get Canadian arts grants when you live outside the greater Toronto Area.  In 2007, she got to try it out on a parabolic flight https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7sk9dU5pvM  That little low-budget film is about beauty and joy and play, and the Ceglowskis of the world can't answer it, they have to try to talk around it in the logic of accountants and Teddy Roosevelt's critic who does not count.  In the end, so little of what we do is because its necessary or optimal.

I have trouble speaking sharply against human space travel in general, although I also have trouble believing in a future with thousands of humans as we know them beyond the Moon and the Lagrange points.

There is said to be an issue with the Boeing Starliner spacecraft which has kept two crew waiting six or seven weeks on the ISS as they decide whether the Starliner can safely return with crew.  I imagine that the poor relations between Russia and the US make it hard to get enough Soyuz capsules to return that way. https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/08/yes-nasa-really-could-bring-starliners-astronauts-back-on-crew-dragon/

I do wonder if the post-ISS world will end up with any of the grand designs people have for it or if we'll end up with things like Lunar Gateway being lost to budget arguments, over-reliance on private companies with the wrong expertise, etc etc.

I can't find this thread with Search under "space".

Ceglowski has a second essay about the problems with human missions to Mars with chemical rockets: it takes six months each way, and there is no abort, and the crew have to do everything themselves (currently the seven-person crew of the ISS has 80 hours for science per week, the other 1096 astronaut-hours are maintaining themselves and their environment).  One argument for a Moon mission is that it would let us see how human bodies respond to fractional gravity to reduce the chance of surprises when humans are living on Mars for 1, 2, or 17 months. https://idlewords.com/2025/02/the_shape_of_a_mars_mission.htm

I like being part of a species which is experimenting with this.

The phrase "you can just build things" is associated with postrationalists (https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/rational-magic) and some other American twitter communities with a bit more of an engineering and less of a mystical focus.  I think part of his seeming depression is related to too much Twitter although he probable hangs out with righty self-helpy tech folks in meatspace too.

My impression is that a lot of late-20th-century space advocacy focused on getting launch costs down and the possibility that NASA was bad at that (and sure the Space Shuttle was a boondoggle because they had to please too many parts of the post-FDR federal government). They were not as interested in the biomedicine, Musk's "send volunteers and let them risk it " is a counsel of despair.  The Apollo 1 fire was a good death compared to many of the ways that bodies and life support systems could fail on the way to Mars.

Quote from: dubsartur on February 27, 2025, 03:53:17 PMI can't find this thread with Search under "space".

Ironically, having just tried it to check, this complaint now comes up as the third result, so you may have fixed the problem:)

I wonder if anyone has written in more depth (and ideally with some numbers and polling) about the social impact of things like space exploration as a sort of ideological concept: that is, there might be an interesting question as to whether a big exploration-style societal focus is easier to rally people around than "let's not burn the planet down" because people can see the big rocket go up in a way that they can't see climate change not happening, and whether that's something we need to consider when thinking about how we get public opinion behind scientific endeavours more generally.

Quote from: Jubal on February 27, 2025, 04:06:03 PM

Quote from: dubsartur on February 27, 2025, 03:53:17 PMI can't find this thread with Search under "space".

Ironically, having just tried it to check, this complaint now comes up as the third result, so you may have fixed the problem:)

I wonder if anyone has written in more depth (and ideally with some numbers and polling) about the social impact of things like space exploration as a sort of ideological concept: that is, there might be an interesting question as to whether a big exploration-style societal focus is easier to rally people around than "let's not burn the planet down" because people can see the big rocket go up in a way that they can't see climate change not happening, and whether that's something we need to consider when thinking about how we get public opinion behind scientific endeavours more generally.

I think there are discussions like that.  IIRC GURPS Transhuman Space postulated landing a bunch of small Internet-connected crawlers on Mars and letting people on earth control them for a fee or as a prize.

Climate change is very visible where I live and more so in the Canadian Arctic.

That would be a healthier thing for me to research than weird Internet communities, as long as I did notget sidetracked into specifically US culture and ideas such as safetyism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Coddling_of_the_American_Mind). Thinking about US culture does not help me!

I have edited the OP.

Asteroid mining company AstroForge has lost control of their probe, the first private spacecraft to travel beyond the moon https://www.space.com/space-exploration/private-spaceflight/i-think-we-all-know-that-hope-is-fading-private-odin-asteroid-probe-is-tumbling-in-space

Its worth stressing that so far all the money in space has been in communications and observation and earth orbit is what you need for that. So while private companies have helped reduce capitalist launch costs (USSR-derived systems used to be cheaper than US systems) there are areas like life support and long-term, long-range missions where almost all the expertise is in government space agencies. Space tourism has limits too since 'send people to orbit for a few hours' is much simpler than what the ISS does let alone a crewed mission to Luna or Mars. Businesses like asteroid mining or lunar He3 for fusion are still speculative.

Yeah, asteroid mining feels like one of those things that sounds cool but, as with any form of trade, moving things a long way gets difficult when the things are heavy bulk payloads. I kinda struggle to imagine how one could make it profitable.