SPACE - random thread about space stuff

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Re: SPACE - random thread about space stuff

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Re: SPACE - random thread about space stuff

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Some more footage of Mr REx

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Re: SPACE - random thread about space stuff

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Boop
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Re: SPACE - random thread about space stuff

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Daehawk wrote: Sun Feb 09, 2020 11:42 am Two stories for today. Neat stuff.

Something in Deep Space Is Sending Signals to Earth in Steady 16-Day Cycles
A mysterious radio source located in a galaxy 500 million light years from Earth is pulsing on a 16-day cycle, like clockwork, according to a new study. This marks the first time that scientists have ever detected periodicity in these signals, which are known as fast radio bursts (FRBs), and is a major step toward unmasking their sources.
Wired
But the existence of repeating sources suggests that at least some of them are produced by an object that survives the event. That has led to a focus on compact objects, like neutron stars and black holes, with a class of neutron stars called magnetars being viewed very suspiciously.

Those suspicions have now been borne out, as scientists have watched a magnetar in our own galaxy sending out an FRB at the same time it emitted pulses of high-energy gamma rays. This doesn't answer all our questions, as we're still not sure how the FRBs are produced or why only some of the gamma-ray outbursts from this magnetar are associated with FRBs.
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Re: SPACE - random thread about space stuff

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Magnetars are my favorite stars I think. Something about having your electrons pulled off your atoms at 1000 miles distance is frightening. It will rip the atoms off the iron in your blood. Thats a bit tough on life.

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Re: SPACE - random thread about space stuff

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Stunning Photographs Capture the International Space Station Traveling Across the Sun and Moon

Pics and info at link. Sample pic below. looks like a Tie Fighter.

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Re: SPACE - random thread about space stuff

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Re: SPACE - random thread about space stuff

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A little crossover between real Space stuff and gaming... Rover Mechanic Simulator will be leaving Early Access this Thursday, November 12th. Check out the Full Release trailer and dig the zillions of parts (all those screws!).

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Re: SPACE - random thread about space stuff

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There Could Be 300 Million (or More) Earth-Like Planets in Our Galaxy
Taking the paper’s most conservative lower bound, 7 per cent of the galaxy’s estimated 4 billion sun-like stars could have an Earth-like planet in the habitable zone. That translates to a population of at least 300 million such planets in the Milky Way. With warp drive and a map, that’s a potentially habitable planet for every 26 people in the world. (Indeed, 4 such planets could be within 30 light years of the sun, the closest within 20 light years.)
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Re: SPACE - random thread about space stuff

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For those with space-interested kiddos, or if you are one yourself, NASA's inviting you to be a virtual launch attendee for this Saturday's SPACEX Crew-1 launch:. You get a digital boarding pass, a virtual launch passport stamp to put into your virtual launch passport, and SOCIAL media notifications.

There are also some STEM activities related to the launch.
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Re: SPACE - random thread about space stuff

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Another interesting article from Space.com, A vintage NASA moon rocket body is officially back in Earth orbit … for now
A relic of the early days of spaceflight has likely come back to pay a brief visit to its planet of origin, according to months of observations of a near-Earth object dubbed 2020 SO.

2020 SO entered what scientists call Earth's Hill sphere, where Earth's gravity governs how objects behave, on Nov. 8, according to a NASA statement. Scientists say that the object will make two leisurely loops around Earth before slipping away to resume its path around the sun in March.

But although scientists first spotted it in September during surveys conducted to identify asteroids, the object soon seemed to be something entirely different — a rocket's upper stage from a 1966 robotic NASA moon mission called Surveyor 2. And that would make it quite storied space junk indeed.

"If it is the Centaur upper stage," Alice Gorman, an archaeologist focused on spaceflight heritage, told Space.com, "it's this object in itself, it's this rocket stage, but it's also connected to all of these other things as well."
Related: Back in the early 1980s I was involved in a program to modify a Space Shuttle Orbiter that would be loaned to the Air Force (known informally as the Blue Shuttle) and the associated ground systems to carry a Centaur upper stage into orbit within its payload bay. We met at KSC and at the General Dynamics facility outside San Diego (a great place to go for a business trip) to discuss the hardware and software changes needed to the flight and ground systems to carry a fully fueled Centaur, with its satellite cargo, into orbit and release it. We actually built and installed the ground systems hardware changes needed at LC-39A and did a tanking test (with no vehicle) to demonstrate the concept.

After Challenger it was decided that carrying (I'll emphasize it again) a fully fueled Centaur in the payload bay wasn't a smart thing and the Air Force moved on to larger unmanned boosters. Still, it would have very interesting to do a countdown and launch with that vehicle configuration.
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Re: SPACE - random thread about space stuff

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Re: SPACE - random thread about space stuff

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From NASASpaceflight.com, Examining Crew-1 launch weather criteria and abort modes
With each new crew launch from the U.S. comes the inevitable questions: Why all the weather rules? What are the vehicle’s abort modes and how will it perform a launch abort and aim itself to a predetermined location in the Atlantic Ocean stretching from the Kennedy Space Center across to the western Irish coast?
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Re: SPACE - random thread about space stuff

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By the way, if anyone is planning to come watch the Crew-1 launch in person, there are estimates of up to a half-million visitors expected, so good luck with that. It's probably going to be quite a mob scene at the shoreline viewing areas and the roads will be backed up too. We are heading out Sunday morning to the other side of the state for our anniversary, but even if we had been home we would have avoided the crowds and just watched from the backyard like always.
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Re: SPACE - random thread about space stuff

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Re: SPACE - random thread about space stuff

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50% favorable weather as of this morning...

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Re: SPACE - random thread about space stuff

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Zaxxon wrote: Sun Nov 15, 2020 11:45 am 50% favorable weather as of this morning...

T-45 minutes, weather upgraded to 80% go.
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Re: SPACE - random thread about space stuff

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Musk is banned from attending due to having COVID possibly lol. Passed 2 tests but failed 2 others.

Questions - All launches throttle down to go through Max Q. We've heard this since the shuttle exploded. So in the old days did they just not throttle down? Full power all the way? If so what happens if you dont throttle down? Is it simply a more powerful jolt or shock wave or does it actually damage the vehicle?
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Re: SPACE - random thread about space stuff

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The throttle down is to avoid exceeding maximum allowed dynamic pressure on the vehicle, the force the atmosphere is exerting on the front of the vehicle. Think of sticking your hand out a car window while it accelerates. At some point you won't be able to keep your hand there (or you break something :D). The difference with a rocket is that as the rocket ascends the atmosphere pressure decreases, so at some point you can keep your hand out there no matter how fast you go. The throttle down occurs so as to not exceed Max Q before the air thins out enough. Not all launch vehicles would have that concern, it would just depend on the acceleration versus strength of the vehicle.
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Re: SPACE - random thread about space stuff

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Ah ok. Full power to get going, ease up to lower pressure, once higher stomp it again. Thanks. For some reason I always thought it had more to do with the sound barrier.
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Re: SPACE - random thread about space stuff

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Daehawk wrote: Mon Nov 16, 2020 12:56 amFor some reason I always thought it had more to do with the sound barrier.
More or less. It's still all about atmospheric resistance.
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Re: SPACE - random thread about space stuff

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Kerbal Space Program taught me that it's not just about slowing down to reduce stresses on the craft, but to be more thrifty with fuel. The more you shove against the atmospheric resistance the less bang for your buck you're getting for your fuel.
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Re: SPACE - random thread about space stuff

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ars technica
Today, the National Science Foundation announced that its famed Arecibo radio observatory would be shut down. Built into a hilltop in Puerto Rico, the main dish of the observatory is over 300 meters across, and its massive size has made it a feature in popular culture ranging from James Bond movies to video games. But despite a long history of scientific contributions, the observatory has been struggling for funding for over a decade, and two cables that support it have failed this year, leaving it in a precarious state.

After engineering studies determined there was no way to repair the hardware without putting workers at risk, the NSF made the decision to shut the observatory down.

While the sheer scale of the main dish at Arecibo grabbed the most attention, the dish was purely a reflector. The actual business end of the telescope, where radio waves were sensed, was an instrument platform suspended high above it by cables strung from three towers. The instrument platform held a receiver that could be moved to different locations above the disk, giving it the ability to resolve signals from more directions than its fixed dish might suggest.
...
But it wasn't money that eventually doomed Arecibo; instead, it was the instrument platform. In August of this year, one of the auxiliary cables that help support the platform snapped, creating a gash in the radio-reflective dish below. While plans were being made to replace that cable and repair the dish—replacement cables were already on order—one of the 7.5cm main cables on the same tower snapped on November 6.

An engineering analysis subsequently determined that this cable failure happened despite the fact that the strain on it was only about 60 percent of what should be its minimum breaking strength. This raised serious questions about the stability of the remaining cables, and thus the ability of the structure to support its instrument platform. The analysis concluded that it was unsafe to find out; the platform could collapse without warning, and any snapped cables would present a danger to any workers on the towers, as the large cables would move at very high speeds following a break. Of the three additional engineering firms consulted by NSF and the University of Central Florida, two agreed with this assessment.
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Re: SPACE - random thread about space stuff

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Aw thats a shame. So much science its done to just let fall apart. Still remember doing SETI packets from it. Not to mention Bond, James Bond.
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Re: SPACE - random thread about space stuff

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wonderpug wrote: Mon Nov 16, 2020 11:46 am Kerbal Space Program taught me that it's not just about slowing down to reduce stresses on the craft, but to be more thrifty with fuel. The more you shove against the atmospheric resistance the less bang for your buck you're getting for your fuel.
Also there is the consideration of G-load on the payload or crew. And atmospheric heating of the vehicle, vacuum effects on the exhaust plume which may impinge on the vehicle, so on and so forth. It's really sometimes a wonder I got any of my KSP rockets into orbit at all :roll:
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Re: SPACE - random thread about space stuff

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Daehawk wrote: Thu Nov 19, 2020 4:27 pm Aw thats a shame. So much science its done to just let fall apart. Still remember doing SETI packets from it. Not to mention Bond, James Bond.
We (APL) were also using it to bounce radar signals off the moon and into the Mini-RF instrument on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter to make radar maps of the surface and peer into dark craters to see if there's evidence of water.
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and peer into dark craters to see if there's evidence of water hidden alien bases.
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Re: SPACE - random thread about space stuff

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How exactly does going to the moon lay the foundation for Mars missions?
“The biggest problem we have right now is we don’t know how to live and work productively off planet Earth,” says Clive Neal, a geologist at the University of Notre Dame and an expert in lunar exploration. “We have no clue.” We’ve never properly tested out the technologies we’d need to live and work in space for months or years on end, in harsh environments with much colder temperatures, much higher amounts of radiation, lower levels of gravity, and a lack of oxygen and water.

“But we’ve got our own lab in our backyard with which to try these things,” says Neal. He and many colleagues recently authored a new report released by Explore Mars, an advocacy group promoting sustainable space exploration. The report identifies dozens of activities and technologies critical to Mars exploration that can be developed and tested through Artemis and ongoing lunar exploration efforts.
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Re: SPACE - random thread about space stuff

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USA Today
The European Space Agency says it is signing a 86 million-euro ($102 million) contract with a Swiss start-up company to bring a large piece of orbital trash back to Earth.

The agency said Thursday that the deal with ClearSpace SA will lead to the “first active debris removal mission” in 2025, in which a custom-made spacecraft will capture and bring down part of a rocket once used to deliver a satellite into orbit.
...
The object being removed from orbit is a so-called Vespa payload adapter that was used to hold and then release a satellite in 2013. It weighs about 247 pounds.
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Re: SPACE - random thread about space stuff

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Arecibo radio telescope’s massive instrument platform has collapsed
On Monday night, the enormous instrument platform that hung over the Arecibo radio telescope's big dish collapsed due to the failure of the remaining cables supporting it. The risk of this sort of failure was the key motivation behind the National Science Foundation's recent decision to shut down the observatory, as the potential for collapse made any attempt to repair the battered scope too dangerous for the people who would do the repairs.
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Re: SPACE - random thread about space stuff

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:cry:
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Re: SPACE - random thread about space stuff

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Image
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Re: SPACE - random thread about space stuff

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Well damnit.
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Re: SPACE - random thread about space stuff

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Isgrimnur wrote: Tue Dec 01, 2020 1:29 pm:cry:
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Re: SPACE - random thread about space stuff

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Well in one way it's a blessing. Before the final collapse there were concerns about letting folks under or even near it to work on it. Now that it is essentially on ground level they don't have to spend money trying to stabilize it, now (if they can fund it) they can remove the debris and build it new.
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Re: SPACE - random thread about space stuff

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I kinda doubt they'll ever build a new one. Telescope fields with many smaller ones do more than one big one now days.
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Re: SPACE - random thread about space stuff

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The internet has taught me that you can patch that up with ramen.
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Re: SPACE - random thread about space stuff

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Turns out it was cake the whole time.
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Re: SPACE - random thread about space stuff

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For many years I thought the dish part was sitting on the ground and was concrete. I figured they had hollowed out a bowl shape and poured it. It always looked dirty and unkept. They appear to never have invested money into upkeep later in it's life.
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Re: SPACE - random thread about space stuff

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For the longest time, the PI of the instrument that I am involved with wanted to schedule a science team meeting in Puerto Rico. One of the reasons being that Arecibo was the dish we were using to conduct our bistatic radar experiments with the Mini-RF instrument on the LRO spacecraft. Visiting Arecibo would have been on the agenda. I think he really wanted to plan it for this year. Then COVID happened. And now this.

We still do experiments with one of the dishes at the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex out in California. So I suppose we could do a meeting and visit the dish there.
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