Space

I love that sort of stuff. The geothermal application was most interesting - just because we have this huge furnace just waiting there for us to reach it to tap into it.

But then the catch phrase is “this is rocket science” I’m confused.

:slight_smile:

hes talking about a cannon right?

Magnets.

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Yes, it is effectively a high tech cannon that can shoot projectiles at Mach 5. He showed me a video that was better than the Youtube I linked to (and I guess they will eventually post on their site or to Youtube). It showed their satellite launch. Basically, they eliminated all of the heavy parts of the rocket, including the fuel tanks, and just launched the payload. At Mach 5 straight out of the “cannon”.

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@Heffsgirl would be very interested.

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could myers protect the kids from it?

as long as it’s not a head high boot he should be fine

Hope it’s the right thread but this really has me captivated, it looks so surreal landing booster rockets like they did. Can only imagine what it was like for people seeing the moon landing for the first time, this is the start of something

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NASA investigates first alleged space crime after astronaut accesses partner’s bank account from ISS

Sun at 11:41am

Updated

Anne McClain is all smiles as ground staff help her out of the capsule after landing Photo: NASA astronaut Anne McClain arrived back on Earth from her six-month mission to the ISS on June 24. (Reuters: Alexander Nemenov)

NASA is reportedly investigating a claim that an astronaut accessed the bank account of her estranged spouse from the International Space Station (ISS) — in what could be the first allegation of a crime committed in space.

Key points:

  • Astronaut Anne McClain has acknowledged she accessed her partner’s bank account from the International Space Station
  • She insists she was only doing so to make sure there was enough money to pay bills and care for her partner’s son
  • But her estranged partner has accused the astronaut of identity theft and filed a complaint with NASA and the FTC

American astronaut Anne McClain, who has since returned to Earth, acknowledged she had accessed the account from the ISS but denied any wrongdoing.

Lieutenant Colonel McClain defended herself on Twitter, explaining that she and her partner had been going through a “painful, personal separation” but maintaining there was “unequivocally no truth” to claims that she had stolen his identity.

Speaking through her lawyer, Lieutenant Colonel McClain told the New York Times she was only making sure that the family’s finances were in order and that there was enough money to pay bills and care for her partner’s son.

“She strenuously denies that she did anything improper,” her lawyer said adding that the astronaut was “totally cooperating”.

But the astronaut’s partner, Summer Worden — a former Air Force intelligence officer living in Kansas — felt differently, filing a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and another with NASA’s Office of Inspector General, accusing Lieutenant Colonel McClain of identity theft.

“I was pretty appalled that she would go that far. I knew it was not OK,” Ms Worden said, who added the FTC had not responded to the identity theft report.

NASA officials told the New York Times they were not aware of any crimes committed on the space station.

An astronaut smiles as they take a selfie during a spacewalk miles above the Earth's surface, with Earth in the background Photo: Anne McClain’s lawyer says she "strenously denies any wrongdoing. (Flickr: NASA)

There are five international space agencies involved in the ISS — the US, Canada, Japan, Russia and the European Space Agency — and their agreed legal frameworks stipulate that national law applies to any people and possessions in space, meaning Americans are subject to American law in space, and Russians subject to Russian law, etc.

Lieutenant Colonel McClain was on board the recent launch of Soyuz MS-11 to the ISS in December 2018 as a flight engineer. She performed her first spacewalk on March 22, 2019, in a six-hour-and-39-minute EVA.

She was scheduled to perform a second EVA on March 29 alongside Christina Koch, which would have been the first all-female spacewalk, but spacesuit sizing issues saw Lieutenant Colonel McClain reassigned.

Anne McClain looks at the camera during a spacewalk outside the International Space Station. Photo: Anne McClain was meant to be part of the first-ever all-female spacewalk, but was reassigned at the last minute. (NASA via Reuters)

A NASA spokeswoman told the New York Times the decision over the spacewalk was not influenced by any allegations about Lieutenant Colonel McClain.

Lieutenant Colonel McClain returned to Earth on June 24.

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But can you get YouTube and Tinder up there?

fast and faster still

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SpaceX Unveils Silvery Vision to Mars: ‘It’s Basically an I.C.B.M. That Lands’

By Kenneth Chang

  • Sept. 29, 2019, 8:29 a.m. ET

BOCA CHICA VILLAGE, Tex. — As you drive east along Texas State Highway 4, it looks like a giant, shiny and pointy grain silo is rising out of the scrubby flatland at the tip of southern Texas.

But it is the first version of a spaceship design that Elon Musk, the entrepreneur and founder of the rocket company SpaceX, hopes will be humanity’s first ride to Mars.

Within a month or two, he says optimistically, this prototype of the Starship spacecraft — without anyone aboard — will blast off to an altitude of 12 miles, then return to the ground in one piece.

“It’s going to be pretty epic to see that thing take off and come back,” Mr. Musk said late on Saturday at a SpaceX facility outside Brownsville, Tex., where Starship is being built.

The update on his mega-rocket was timed to coincide with the anniversary of SpaceX’s first successful launch 11 years ago. SpaceX has a steady business putting satellites in orbit and carrying cargo to the International Space Station. But whether the company can meet its founder’s aims of taking people to Mars is yet to be seen.

The company’s earliest rocket, Falcon 1, was just 68 feet high, 5.5 feet in diameter and could carry a payload of 400 pounds.


SpaceX :heavy_check_mark: @SpaceX

11 years ago today, we launched our first successful mission. To date, we’ve completed 78 launches and have developed the world’s only operational reusable orbital class rockets and spacecraft—capable of launching to space, returning to Earth, and flying again

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Starship, by comparison, is 164 feet high and 30 feet in diameter. It will be paired with a behemoth booster stage called the Super Heavy, and the full rocket will be 387 feet tall and able to lug more than 220,000 pounds to orbit. That would be about as powerful as the Saturn 5 rocket that took NASA astronauts to the moon 50 years ago, but able to fly again and again and again.

By making rockets more like other forms of transportation where the vehicle is not thrown away after one trip, the cost of going to space could plummet.

Mr. Musk said an orbital test flight of a refined Starship prototype and the Super Heavy booster could come in less than six months.

Mr. Musk, who spoke to a couple of reporters after the public portion of the event, said SpaceX could still meet timelines he set out a few years ago — landing a Starship on the moon and Mars within the next few years. Mr. Musk, however, has a history of setting aspirational schedules that turn out to be too optimistic.

Despite such futuristic ambitions, the Starship, made of stainless steel, reflected an imperfect, handcrafted sheen of an earlier era.

“It’s like you drove into a Flash Gordon movie or something,” said Andrew Goetsch, who lives in the nearby hamlet of about 30 homes and is thrilled to have a front row view of Mr. Musk’s space dreams, a sentiment not shared by all of his neighbors.

“It’s not often they build a rocket where you can get close enough for it to fall on you,” Mr. Goetsch said.

Txhere are good engineering decisions for the choice of material.

Mr. Musk originally had planned to use high-tech carbon fiber, but switched to denser stainless steel. It is cheaper, easier to work with, becomes stronger in the ultracold temperatures of space and has a higher melting temperature that can more easily withstand the heat of re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere.

The Starship is to belly flop in the upper atmosphere at a 60-degree angle, Mr. Musk said. Then as it slows and nears the ground, it will rotate to vertical and land.

Elon Musk gives an update on the progress of Starship rocket late on Saturday night. “It’s basically an I.C.B.M. that lands,” he said.

Elon Musk gives an update on the progress of Starship rocket late on Saturday night. “It’s basically an I.C.B.M. that lands,” he said.CreditLoren Elliott/Getty Images

For the last three years, Mr. Musk has repeatedly revised the design — trimming the size, changing the heat shield, adjusting the shape of the fins. “It took quite a while to just frame the problem,” Mr. Musk said.

Once the SpaceX engineers settled on the current stainless steel version, the first two prototypes (the other was built in Florida) have been put together at a breakneck pace.

“Ten months ago, there was a lot of barren dirt and nothing,” Mr. Goetsch, the Boca Chica neighbor, said of the SpaceX site where Starship now stands.

In August, SpaceX tested a simpler prototype, Starhopper, with a single engine, which Mr. Musk earlier compared to a flying water tower. It rose to an altitude of 500 feet, flew sideways and then set down at a different spot.

Experts say the technology of Starship lies within the realm of the possible, without requiring impossible physics or unlikely technological leaps. Indeed, Starship employs many ideas that were studied decades ago but never built.

What is more puzzling to them is how SpaceX can make money with Starship. Mr. Musk agreed that it was far larger than necessary to launch current satellites.

For now, Mr. Musk conceded, there is not much of a commercial market — “not that’s especially relevant” — for Starship to fill.

Starship could be used for deploying SpaceX’s Starlink internet service, Mr. Musk said. The company hopes that will provide a major source of revenue, despite fears over the impact of placing thousands of satellites in orbit. A single Starship launch could carry about 400 Starlink satellites.

He said SpaceX was continuing to study using Starship as a speedy — likely expensive — way to travel around the world, New York to Tokyo in 30 minutes.

“It’s basically an I.C.B.M. that lands,” Mr. Musk said. “Nothing gets there faster than a I.C.B.M. It’s just minus the nuclear bomb and add landing.”

He said the company has the financing to follow through on the plans, at least for the initial phases. “I think we have a path to getting the ship to orbit and even doing a loop around the moon,” Mr. Musk said. “Maybe we need to raise some more money to land on the moon or land on Mars.”

The ultimate goal is for Starship to take people to Mars. He argues that people moving to another planet would serve as an insurance policy for humanity’s survival. Mr. Musk still thinks Mars colonists could set off in the next decade. He already has one paying customer for a trip nearer to Earth.

A Japanese billionaire, Yusaku Maezawa, has purchased an around-the-moon trip on a Starship that is to take off in 2023. Mr. Musk thanked Mr. Maezawa with providing much of the money for the rapid development of Starship.

On Friday, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine pointedly reminded Mr. Musk that NASA, SpaceX’s biggest and most important customer, was awaiting delivery of another big project: taking NASA astronauts to the space station in the company’s Crew Dragon capsules.


Jim Bridenstine :heavy_check_mark: @JimBridenstine

My statement on @SpaceX’s announcement tomorrow:

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Neither SpaceX nor Boeing, which also received a contract for transporting NASA astronauts, appears to be on track to launch crews this year. A SpaceX capsule exploded during a ground test in April with no crew aboard.

On Saturday, Mr. Musk responded that the “vast majority” of SpaceX’s resources are focused on its existing spacecraft, including Crew Dragon, and setting launch dates was up to NASA at this point.

“The NASA administrator was like ‘What’s going on? Are you not working on Crew Dragon or something?’ in that tweet,” Mr. Musk said during the post-event interview. “Actually, there’s nothing more we can do from a hardware standpoint. The hardware is basically done. It’s really just a whole bunch of NASA reviews, essentially. Speed up the NASA reviews, we can launch sooner.”

If Starship does start flying soon, and especially if it lands on the moon, that could amplify arguments that NASA could save money by buying rides to deep space from SpaceX rather than continuing development on its own Space Launch System rocket, the key component in plans to return NASA astronauts to the moon by 2024. S.L.S. could cost $1 billion per launch and plans are to fly it less than once a year.

NASA has already spent billions on S.L.S., first announced in 2011, and Orion, the crew-carrying capsule, although this has not stopped appropriators in Congress from continuing to finance work on it. The first S.L.S. flight has been delayed for years; it is not expected to lift off until 2021. The first moon landing by astronauts is to occur on the third launch of S.L.S.

At Boca Chica, the work accelerates. Mr. Musk on Saturday discussed his desire to manufacture rocket propellant on site, instead of trucking it in. Not all of the neighbors, who can easily see the rocket from their yards, are happy.

“It used to be that if a car drove down the street, that was noisy,” said Cheryl Stevens, who like many of her neighbors came here because it was isolated — surrounded by a wildlife refuge, minutes away from the beach. Now, she said, there is round-the-clock construction.

SpaceX has now decided it would be better for residents of Boca Chica Village not to be there. The company this month sent letters to Ms. Stevens and other homeowners offering three times the value of the property. The letter said SpaceX wanted an answer within two weeks and that it was not willing to negotiate the price.

“They want everyone gone,” said Gale McConnaughey, who has owned his home here for 13 years.

He and others said the appraisals lowballed the value of their homes. SpaceX has now extended the deadline by three weeks and some residents are talking with the appraiser to adjust the numbers.

But Mr. McConnaughey expected that SpaceX would eventually push them away.

“What can you do?” he said. “You can’t stop progress.”

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In b4 “sun orbits the earth”

So the Milky Way and Andromeda are destined for a collision in about 4.5 billion years. Hopefully we have our 17th premiership by then.

Scientists discover Andromeda galaxy’s history of mass eating. So, will it eat the Milky Way?

By national environment and science reporter Penny Timms

Video: When galaxies collide (ABC News)

There’s a hungry galaxy which — in space terms — is not too far away and it’s hurtling towards our Milky Way.

Key points:

  • Scientists discover more detail about neighbouring galaxy Andromeda, particularly its eating habits
  • The galaxy has been on feeding frenzies in the past and it is likely to collide with the Milky Way in the future
  • Scientists are unsure which galaxy will come out on top
  • The researchers have also hinted at the recent discovery’s potential to challenge our understanding of gravity

Its name is Andromeda.

The two are destined for a collision in about 4.5 billion years and astronomers are still unsure which system will cannibalise the other for ultimate supremacy.

What they now also know is that Andromeda has been on a feeding frenzy in the past.

The galaxy’s eating habits were the focus of an international study co-led by Dr Dougal Mackey from the Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Australian National University.

“What we know about Andromeda is that it’s roughly the same size as the Milky Way, both in terms of distances and terms of mass,” he said.

“The Milky Way is a spiral system; you may see pictures of that type of galaxy that’s flat like a dinner plate with spiral arms, and Andromeda is a very similar system in that sense.”

The study, published in the latest edition of the journal Nature, found evidence of a mass-eating event as long as 10 billion years ago, when Andromeda was still forming.

There was also a second feeding frenzy about 4 billion years ago, along with a spattering of smaller events.

That information provides astronomers with important information about how large galaxies form.

They made the discovery by studying Andromeda’s stellar halo, and realising two gravitationally-bound clusters of stars, known as globular clusters, were orbiting at right angles to each other.

An illustration of the Andromeda galaxy and its two rings of orbiting star clusters. Infographic: Two gravitationally bound clusters of stars are orbiting Andromeda at right angles to each other. (Supplied: The University of Sydney)

Feeding frenzies billions of years apart

Astronomers were trying to put together a picture of how Andromeda had grown over time and the orbital direction of the clusters surprised them.

Another of the study’s lead authors, Professor Geraint Lewis from the University of Sydney, said they were able to calculate that the clusters came together at different times — billions of years apart.

"We know that galaxies like Andromeda and the Milky Way were embedded in this thing called the cosmic web — it’s like this sponge-like structure of galaxies and material around us and objects fall into our galaxy from this web.

"What we’ve started concluding is that these episodes of feeding came from different parts of the cosmic web — one came from a completely different direction to another.

“There’s a big feed from one direction, then another feed from another direction.”

Astronomers are enthusiastic about this discovery because they know Andromeda is similar to the Milky Way, but it’s hard to get a good view of our galaxy.

When big galaxies fight, there’s rarely a winner

When the Milky Way consumes a smaller galaxy, it gets a little bigger. Given it and Andromeda are similar sizes, it looks like it will be a fair fight.

“In the end, they’re both going to lose because they’re both beautiful spiral galaxies,” Professor Lewis said.

“When they get close to each other, their mutual gravitational pulls are going to tear them apart. So, they will be a new single — much larger — featureless galaxy after the collision in around 4.5 to 5 billion years time.”

A illustration shows two plate-shaped galaxies approaching each other. Photo: An illustration showing a stage in the predicted merger between our Milky Way and the neighbouring Andromeda galaxy. (Supplied: NASA)

Another, unlikely but remotely possible scenario is one where Earth is destroyed by the cannibalistic showdown, or the Sun is thrown off course.

“It’s not out of the question, but in general the stars in galaxies are spaced sufficiently sparsely that direct collisions between stars are rare,” Dr Mackey said.

"However, it’s possible that the Sun could be thrown out of the merged Andromeda and Milky Way system by the collision, into intergalactic space, and/or a nearby close passage with another star could perturb the Earth’s orbit such that the Earth can no longer support life.

“So it’s not factually incorrect to say there is a risk from the collision.”

Information like this helps scientists understand where galaxies came from because they can piece together a galaxy’s timeline.

“What processes brought the Milky Way into being?” Professor Lewis questioned.

“It’s [about] trying to pin together the actions of gravity over the history of the universe and look at the conditions the universe was in just after the Big Bang.”

Professor Lewis says the big question about our origin will help determine where we are going and what’s going to happen to the Milky Way over the next five, 10, and 15 billion years.

“Putting together the past also tells us a bit about the future,” he said.

Do we have gravity all wrong?

This finding may also eventually help to explain the distribution of dark matter.

Professor Lewis said he had colleagues who believed the presence of Andromeda’s two well-defined orbits did not fit the current understanding of gravity, and raised some questions.

“I’m still on the fence with this,” he said.

“They (some astronomers) are saying we’ve actually got gravity wrong, rather than this being an indication that we understand what’s going on with galaxy evolution.”

“It may tell us more about the distribution of dark matter, but the presence of ordered motion does sort of worry some people that we have gotten something wrong somewhere.”

Though, he quickly added: “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and if you’re going to say that we’ve got gravity wrong, then you’re going to require some pretty extraordinary evidence”.

There is a small but vocal group of astronomers that continue to say “yep, we need to go back to the drawing board when it comes to gravity”.

“We’re not quite there yet,” Professor Lewis said.

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video showing how fast and slow light moves

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Not so much how slow light moves but rather how VAST distances in space are…

Cool video.

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true that - but you know what I meant

space is a stupidly massive place

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Yup, always boggles my mind that we are seeing light from stars that is reaching us after billions of years and the stars may not even exist anymore.

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