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Author Topic: Space Thread  (Read 509389 times)
Pennilenko
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Reply #350 on: July 07, 2015, 07:09:08 PM

I thought this was pretty cool. Run Away Star Pushing Bow Wave

"See?  All of you are unique.  And special.  Like fucking snowflakes."  -- Signe
Khaldun
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Reply #351 on: July 09, 2015, 06:28:04 AM

Last time we see a major solar system object up close for the first time in our history. From here on, it's just about better looks and more information. Unless someone sends a probe to Eris or Makemake, but those might not get there while any of us are alive anyway even if they did.
MahrinSkel
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When she crossed over, she was just a ship. But when she came back... she was bullshit!


Reply #352 on: July 09, 2015, 01:30:05 PM

If the Cannae or Em drives actually turn out to be usable, that's going to look like a very silly declaration.

--Dave

--Signature Unclear
Morat20
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Reply #353 on: July 09, 2015, 06:41:57 PM

If the Cannae or Em drives actually turn out to be usable, that's going to look like a very silly declaration.

--Dave
That's a big if, but reactionless drives are a holy grail. So's FTL, although I note the Ablecurrie drive continues to improve. They've got the energy requirements down to something actually sane, if we could make antimatter.

I don't think they've worked out how to make it stop. Or turn. Or see where you're going. I also kind of wonder what happens to anything you hit.
Shannow
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Reply #354 on: July 10, 2015, 07:14:58 AM

If the Cannae or Em drives actually turn out to be usable, that's going to look like a very silly declaration.

--Dave
That's a big if, but reactionless drives are a holy grail. So's FTL, although I note the Ablecurrie drive continues to improve. They've got the energy requirements down to something actually sane, if we could make antimatter.

I don't think they've worked out how to make it stop. Or turn. Or see where you're going. I also kind of wonder what happens to anything you hit.

Pfffft details. To infinity and beyond.

Also its the 'alcubierre' drive, thanks for the heads up though, wikipedia dive commence!

Someone liked something? Who the fuzzy fuck was this heretic? You don't come to this website and enjoy something. Fuck that. ~ The Walrus
pxib
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Reply #355 on: July 10, 2015, 12:12:58 PM



That is a close orbit. Also, here's Pluto colored its lovely methane brown.

if at last you do succeed, never try again
Morat20
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Reply #356 on: July 10, 2015, 05:20:25 PM

Pfffft details. To infinity and beyond.

Also its the 'alcubierre' drive, thanks for the heads up though, wikipedia dive commence!
Hey, dude invented an actual, relativity-complaint warp FTL drive in the 90s. Since then he (and others) have refined the concept to needing a Jupiter sized planet's worth of power to a basketball sized amount.

All by -- I shit you not -- 'changing the shape of the warp field'. STAR TREK TECHNOBABBLE IS REAL.
Goreschach
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Reply #357 on: July 10, 2015, 11:30:25 PM

I think you're underestimating what a 'basketball size' of power actually is. This shit will absolutely not work. Ever. And even if it could, you can guarantee that we'd use it to create an 'earth shattering kaboom' first.
Khaldun
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Reply #358 on: July 11, 2015, 05:29:03 AM

If the Cannae or Em drives actually turn out to be usable, that's going to look like a very silly declaration.

--Dave

Sorry, I should have clarified: for those of us alive now.
Ghambit
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Reply #359 on: July 11, 2015, 10:16:43 AM

Pfffft details. To infinity and beyond.

Also its the 'alcubierre' drive, thanks for the heads up though, wikipedia dive commence!
Hey, dude invented an actual, relativity-complaint warp FTL drive in the 90s. Since then he (and others) have refined the concept to needing a Jupiter sized planet's worth of power to a basketball sized amount.

All by -- I shit you not -- 'changing the shape of the warp field'. STAR TREK TECHNOBABBLE IS REAL.

Sonny White over at JPL already started Warpfield Mechanics 101; ala Starfleet Academy.  But really, making a large spacecraft travel FTL is not the only application.  If we can simply "flip a bit," that's enough for a Nobel and a few lifetimes worth of applied science.

As for the EM drive; the main thing that device does is provide the impetus needed for an orbital manufacturing platform that'll let us expand through our local space.  Because without needing the fuel, and once in orbit, the solar system is an easy nut to crack.  We need pvt. space trucking to set off here first though.

Note: viable lagrange point stations have been on the books since the 60's.  Fully blueprinted.  Do we have the balls though?  Of course not.

"See, the beauty of webgames is that I can play them on my phone while I'm plowing your mom."  -Samwise
pxib
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Reply #360 on: July 11, 2015, 02:23:08 PM

Note: viable lagrange point stations have been on the books since the 60's.  Fully blueprinted.  Do we have the balls though?  Of course not.
It's not about balls, it's about money.

The L4 and L5 Earth-Moon points are just as far and slightly harder to reach than the Moon, since they lack their own gravity well. The Moon can at least catch things we throw at it. Plus they're likely full of Trojans the size of bowling balls and washing machines with eccentric orbits.

The L1 and L2 Earth-Sun, besides being inherently unstable and prone to decay, are also about four times as far from Earth than the Moon... and, again, lack a gravity well for easy braking.

Earth-Sun L4 and L5 are 93 million miles away, have no inherent gravity well, and are orbited by Trojans up to the size of football stadiums.

Our failure to return to the Moon, far easier than any of these expeditions, has not been about a lack of balls. It's been about a lack of money for pointless grandstanding on useless hunks of dust. As you mention, lack of fuel-less propulsion makes orbital manufacturing all but pointless. Lunar manufacturing brings its own raw materials... and it's still not worth the trouble. Launching fuel separately is prohibitively more expensive than simply using that fuel in the original rocket.

The ISS is in low-Earth orbit because that's the cheapest space to visit. It's also an enormous waste of money and material compared to our unmanned satellites and probes. A really, really cool waste of money.

if at last you do succeed, never try again
Torinak
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Reply #361 on: July 11, 2015, 04:07:01 PM

I think you're underestimating what a 'basketball size' of power actually is. This shit will absolutely not work. Ever. And even if it could, you can guarantee that we'd use it to create an 'earth shattering kaboom' first.

All we have to do is replace nearly all of modern physics with something that does a better job of matching observations. The Wikipedia article claims that the revision dropped the power requirements to the energy equivalent of 700 kg, which is only about 6.3E19 J...a bit less than the entire planet's energy consumption in 2012. So we just have to reroute the entire planet's energy consumption into a perfectly-efficient mechanism to produce and store antimatter. Unfortunately, current antimatter generation techniques are only about 0.0000001% efficient so we'd need to harness the entire planet's energy consumption for a billion years.

There are a few other minor gotchas in the current formulation, like having to preserve causality or turn into a black hole instead of traveling, figuring out how to start or stop travel without being able to pass any information through the warp bubble/torus, etc.

Out of curiosity, are there any FTL travel proposals are out there that weren't obviously cribbed from science fiction?
pxib
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Reply #362 on: July 11, 2015, 04:25:27 PM

Out of curiosity, are there any FTL travel proposals are out there that weren't obviously cribbed from science fiction?
Cart and horse.

Science fiction appropriates ideas as soon as science has them. Everything even remotely hopeful has been pretty thoroughly mined for story purposes.

if at last you do succeed, never try again
Lucas
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Further proof that Italians have suspect taste in games.


Reply #363 on: July 12, 2015, 04:45:57 AM

Damn, the latest pics of Pluto are so intriguing: here's an article about those odd and evenly spaced dark spots:

http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20150711-2

Raw image (not enhanced like the one in the article):



Pluto certainly looks far more complex than predicted. Can't wait.
« Last Edit: July 12, 2015, 04:47:39 AM by Lucas »

" He's so impatient, it's like watching a teenager fuck a glorious older woman." - Ironwood on J.J. Abrams
Lucas
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Reply #364 on: July 13, 2015, 03:48:10 PM

Looks like a polar cap is confirmed; also, Pluto is slightly larger than predicted (but it's still a so called "dwarf planet") :

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/how-big-is-pluto-new-horizons-settles-decades-long-debate

Latest processed images:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/newhorizons/images/index.html



Just too beautiful. 13 hours to go.

NASA TV schedule for the next couple days:

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-announces-updated-television-coverage-media-activities-for-pluto-flyby
« Last Edit: July 13, 2015, 03:52:20 PM by Lucas »

" He's so impatient, it's like watching a teenager fuck a glorious older woman." - Ironwood on J.J. Abrams
Lucas
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Reply #365 on: July 14, 2015, 05:39:56 AM

Just before today's flyby, here's a lovely pic of Pluto  Heart


" He's so impatient, it's like watching a teenager fuck a glorious older woman." - Ironwood on J.J. Abrams
RhyssaFireheart
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WWW
Reply #366 on: July 14, 2015, 08:00:37 AM

Such a fabulous accomplishment and the pics we're getting are just beautiful!

Lucas
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Reply #367 on: July 14, 2015, 08:19:36 AM

From various Twitter feeds:



You could say that the 1st generation of robotic exploration of the solar system ends today. Something that started back in 1962 with the Mariner probes (Venus).

" He's so impatient, it's like watching a teenager fuck a glorious older woman." - Ironwood on J.J. Abrams
Tannhauser
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Reply #368 on: July 14, 2015, 08:41:24 AM

Fucking Pluto. That's shit's awesome.
01101010
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You call it an accident. I call it justice.


Reply #369 on: July 14, 2015, 09:12:56 AM

Lots of hype for a non-planet.  why so serious?

Does any one know where the love of God goes...When the waves turn the minutes to hours? -G. Lightfoot
HaemishM
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WWW
Reply #370 on: July 14, 2015, 09:34:00 AM

You shut your dirty whore mouth.

Lucas
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Reply #371 on: July 14, 2015, 10:14:32 AM

The immediate timeline of the mission should go like this:

- Tonight, if all goes well, NH will "phone home" back to Earth. That will mean that all the data is taken and safe; several hours later, we should also get a very detailed first image of Charon, with more of Pluto to come (and of Nix and Hydra).
- It will take 16 months (yep) to download all the data NH gathered (from all the instruments onboard, I'm not talking about pictures).

Interesting AMA on Reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3d9luh/were_scientists_on_the_nasa_new_horizons_team

" He's so impatient, it's like watching a teenager fuck a glorious older woman." - Ironwood on J.J. Abrams
tazelbain
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tazelbain


Reply #372 on: July 14, 2015, 10:18:00 AM

You shut your dirty whore mouth.
Why do you hate science?

"Me am play gods"
Lucas
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Reply #373 on: July 14, 2015, 10:26:36 AM

From the AMA mentioned above:

Quote
At the datarate we have (2 kilobits per second) it takes over 2 hours to downlink a standard picture from your cell phone! That means we will spend the next 16 months transmitting all the data down to Earth. And yes, we are considering maneuvering the spacecraft so it flies by a small object farther out in the Kuiper Belt. - Curt

Quote
We're pretty excited too!
We will be getting back the data taken in July up through the end of 2016.
We'd like to fly by an object in the Kuiper Belt, we've narrowed it down to two.
-AZ

Whoa, another KB object (not Eris nor Sedna, anyway: I saw a picture where their orbit just doesn't match NH trajectory)  DRILLING AND MANLINESS

" He's so impatient, it's like watching a teenager fuck a glorious older woman." - Ironwood on J.J. Abrams
HaemishM
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the Confederate flag underneath the stone in my class ring


WWW
Reply #374 on: July 14, 2015, 11:12:07 AM

2 kilobits per second. It's like downloading pr0n from a bulletin board on 1200 baud.

Ahhhhh, memories. Memories of mammories.

01101010
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You call it an accident. I call it justice.


Reply #375 on: July 14, 2015, 11:38:03 AM

2 kilobits per second. It's like downloading pr0n from a bulletin board on 1200 baud.

Ahhhhh, memories. Memories of mammories.

And lines and lines of characters... then the dithering.

so. much. dithering.

Does any one know where the love of God goes...When the waves turn the minutes to hours? -G. Lightfoot
Lucas
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Reply #376 on: July 14, 2015, 12:48:33 PM

Here's an interesting but preliminary analysis of those pre-flyby pics we've seen:

https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/pluto-and-charon-shine-in-false-color



Quote
The new color images reveal that the “heart” of Pluto actually consists of two remarkably different-colored regions.  In the false-color image, the heart consists of a western lobe shaped like an ice cream cone that appears peach color in this image.  A mottled area on the right (east) side looks bluish.  A mid-latitude band appears in shades ranging from pale blue through red.  Even within the northern polar cap, in the upper part of the image, various shades of yellow-orange indicate subtle compositional differences. This image was obtained using three of the color filters of the Ralph instrument on July 13 at 3:38 am EDT and received on the ground on at 12:25 pm.
[...]
The surface of Charon is viewed using the same exaggerated color. The red on the dark northern polar cap of Charon is attributed to hydrocarbon and other molecules, a class of chemical compounds called tholins. The mottled colors at lower latitudes point to the diversity of terrains on Charon.  This image was obtained using three of the color filters of the Ralph instrument on July 13 at 3:38 am EDT and received on the ground on at 12:25 pm.

" He's so impatient, it's like watching a teenager fuck a glorious older woman." - Ironwood on J.J. Abrams
Merusk
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Reply #377 on: July 14, 2015, 02:39:11 PM

You shut your dirty whore mouth.
Why do you hate science?

Which Science are you referring to.  There's a few branches that still call Pluto a planet and are pissed the astronomers made the call on their own: the planetary scientist who is the lead of New Horizons is one of them. He was pretty clear about it on science Friday's podcast.  Pluto is a planet in his field. 

His anogy was something like: you're asking your podieatrist about a dental problem when you talk to astronomers about it. Sure they're a doctor but they're not the right specialist.

The past cannot be changed. The future is yet within your power.
tazelbain
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tazelbain


Reply #378 on: July 14, 2015, 02:55:17 PM

His classification system would still put Pluto in a different category than Earth. So really its being pissy about the "dwarf" nomenclature.

"Me am play gods"
Tale
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sıɥʇ ǝʞıן sʞןɐʇ


Reply #379 on: July 14, 2015, 04:14:51 PM

From various Twitter feeds:



Actually:



Edit: even better fit.

« Last Edit: July 14, 2015, 04:36:04 PM by Tale »
Lucas
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Reply #380 on: July 14, 2015, 05:52:23 PM

NH "phone home" in 10 minutes. Live right now on NASA TV:

https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html

Actually, phone call arrived sooner than anticipated!!

Lock on carrier, symbol and telemetry. They expect 100% of the data will be transmitted back to Earth. All is green. Mission fully accomplished!!!!



EDIT: the fact that the MOM (Mission Operations Manager) is called "Alice Bowman"  makes it even cooler  Oh ho ho ho. Reallllly?
« Last Edit: July 14, 2015, 06:07:03 PM by Lucas »

" He's so impatient, it's like watching a teenager fuck a glorious older woman." - Ironwood on J.J. Abrams
Surlyboi
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eat a bag of dicks


Reply #381 on: July 14, 2015, 09:12:30 PM

"A class of chemical compounds called Tholins."

It's a web of lies!


Tuned in, immediately get to watch cringey Ubisoft talking head offering her deepest sympathies to the families impacted by the Orlando shooting while flanked by a man in a giraffe suit and some sort of "horrifically garish neon costumes through the ages" exhibit or something.  We need to stop this fucking planet right now and sort some shit out. -Kail
Tale
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sıɥʇ ǝʞıן sʞןɐʇ


Reply #382 on: July 14, 2015, 09:40:15 PM

MahrinSkel
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When she crossed over, she was just a ship. But when she came back... she was bullshit!


Reply #383 on: July 14, 2015, 09:52:04 PM

No, we have already located the Death Star:


--Signature Unclear
Lucas
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Reply #384 on: July 15, 2015, 12:31:46 PM

Just finished watching the latest briefing from NASA.

Charon is just incredible, definitely not a ball of craters. And that tiny region south of the "heart" they just finished downloading.....WOW. Pics will hopefully be posted soon.

Here they are. Charon:



Full res: https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/charon-s-surprising-youthful-and-varied-terrain

Pluto small region (black and white), just below the "heart":



Full res: https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/the-icy-mountains-of-pluto

Here's a VERY interesting quote:

Quote
The mountains likely formed no more than 100 million years ago -- mere youngsters relative to the 4.56-billion-year age of the solar system -- and may still be in the process of building, says Jeff Moore of New Horizons’ Geology, Geophysics and Imaging Team (GGI). That suggests the close-up region, which covers less than one percent of Pluto’s surface, may still be geologically active today.

Moore and his colleagues base the youthful age estimate on the lack of craters in this scene. Like the rest of Pluto, this region would presumably have been pummeled by space debris for billions of years and would have once been heavily cratered -- unless recent activity had given the region a facelift, erasing those pockmarks.

“This is one of the youngest surfaces we’ve ever seen in the solar system,” says Moore.   

Unlike the icy moons of giant planets, Pluto cannot be heated by gravitational interactions with a much larger planetary body. Some other process must be generating the mountainous landscape.

 “This may cause us to rethink what powers geological activity on many other icy worlds,” says GGI deputy team leader John Spencer of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo.

The mountains are probably composed of Pluto’s water-ice “bedrock.”
« Last Edit: July 15, 2015, 12:36:26 PM by Lucas »

" He's so impatient, it's like watching a teenager fuck a glorious older woman." - Ironwood on J.J. Abrams
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