Fracking awesomeWhat does a the business end of a rocket capable of generating 12 million pounds of thrust look like? Something like this.
** The Official Space Flight Thread - The Space Station and Beyond **
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Astra test launch to orbit soon. Countdown is currently on hold. T-7 minutes and counting.
Sideways again, or straight up this time?
Sideways again, or straight up this time?
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It always boggled my mind that all those valves and pipework are seemingly exposed to the heat, and eventual vacuum, and not contained in any sort of isolating shroud.What does a the business end of a rocket capable of generating 12 million pounds of thrust look like? Something like this.
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The joy of thermodynamics and the cooling properties of their contents. Boiler tubes in power stations are exposed to external temperatures far in excess of their strength but the steam flowing through them cools them down even as it is being heated. It's like the engine bells on the rocket, little pipes inside cool the bell whilst pre-heating the propellants. Clever stuff.
Shroud will be installed, Engine bells are liquid cooled and also heat generally goes down rather than up (mostly)
Planet 9 just outside the edge of our solar system most likely, new data. Quite cool actually. Our solar system is quite unique in that it has no super earth whereas other solar systems detected in the galaxy have super earth candidates. So is this outside body our super earth, or an extra solar planet that hitched a ride in the Sun's orbit path long ago?
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This video is beautiful.
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https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1466797158737268743
I wonder if they are scrapping the ocean launch option using old oil rigs?
I wonder if they are scrapping the ocean launch option using old oil rigs?
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No, this was always part of the plan. Starbase is a test site, pad 39A was always intended as the primary launch site for starship.
I didn't say starbase.
Dr Jill Tarter features on this week's Event Horizon. John asks an interesting question that is often talked about online about alien life out there ignoring uss if they are intelligent because we would be like ants. He states that we ourselves are scientifically interested in ants, Nat Geo do docus on them, online communities are fascinated by the,... So why wouldn't a scientific alien community be similar assuming they are intelligent?
Can't wait for James Webb to go live and start seeing what we have never been able to see before and hopefully detect exo planets that contain signatures that almost certainly could mean life exists (well more likely once existed) there
Can't wait for James Webb to go live and start seeing what we have never been able to see before and hopefully detect exo planets that contain signatures that almost certainly could mean life exists (well more likely once existed) there
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8 minutes to launch.
Deleted member 236143
Deleted member 236143
Personally I think the possibility is there that our known cosmos is teeming with life. Looking at tardigrades on earth I even think the possibility of micro bacterial life that exists in space itself is even possible.
But the resounding utter facts to date is there is not a single thing. There is a lot of hope, a lot of want, a lot of belief.
But would it not make sense if it is true to put species so far apart they can barely see each other let alone ever meet each other.
If there is an alien race or races out there then they will be busy with their own anthills and their own bacteria in thermal vents etc. They also may have telescopes but probably and hopefully perhaps, are forever restricted by sheer scale and distance they will never have a chance to visit.
Even if like us we are already looking at the real possibility of exploring our solar system in the next 100 years.
Wright brothers flew in 1903
Perhaps 2103 will see manned Jupiter missions from established Lunar and Mars bases.
But the ask to find a neighbour.
The hubble Deep field image was astounding and the numbers are so large that almost surely yes there must be another race out there with car insurance, bills, mortgages, and kids who are dicks!
But the distance and scale is so vast so enormous. It stops us from fighting and messing up the beauty of it all.
Contact
Is probably my fav space alien contact type movie ever. I love it.
Although I do like a good alien invasion film or game.
X Com!
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Falcon 9 to launch NASA's IXPE in 20 minutes
Personally I think the possibility is there that our known cosmos is teeming with life. Looking at tardigrades on earth I even think the possibility of micro bacterial life that exists in space itself is even possible.
But the resounding utter facts to date is there is not a single thing. There is a lot of hope, a lot of want, a lot of belief.
But would it not make sense if it is true to put species so far apart they can barely see each other let alone ever meet each other.
If there is an alien race or races out there then they will be busy with their own anthills and their own bacteria in thermal vents etc. They also may have telescopes but probably and hopefully perhaps, are forever restricted by sheer scale and distance they will never have a chance to visit.
Even if like us we are already looking at the real possibility of exploring our solar system in the next 100 years.
Wright brothers flew in 1903
Perhaps 2103 will see manned Jupiter missions from established Lunar and Mars bases.
But the ask to find a neighbour.
The hubble Deep field image was astounding and the numbers are so large that almost surely yes there must be another race out there with car insurance, bills, mortgages, and kids who are dicks!
But the distance and scale is so vast so enormous. It stops us from fighting and messing up the beauty of it all.
Contact
Is probably my fav space alien contact type movie ever. I love it.
Although I do like a good alien invasion film or game.
Personally favour the idea that we are simply amongst the first to emerge, in the grand scheme of things we are still in very early days of this universe.
Probably some simple life forms out there but the chances for advanced life to emerge and thrive let alone survive for any real length of time are incredibly small. The higher density, more central, regions of most galaxies aren't particularly favourable places for life the more likely places for life to emerge and survive are the lower density regions on the edges of galaxies so the potential candidates for life are likely far lower than it would appear at first.
Oh thanks for the heads up. Forgot it was even happening.
If you like films like Contact then Arrival is a belter of a movie. The linguistics expertise the makers employed was scientifically sound from the behind the scenes interviews and things I watched. Also the way it was done was really nice, too.
This is another possibility, but then we also have to look at our own planet. We know through historical evidence in rock weathering and archaeological findings that ancient civilisations we have absolutely zero record of existed that had technical knowledge of principal physics, gravity and the cosmos because they built structures and monuments either either aligned to the stars, in near perfect symmetry with nature or other things that we today would use computers to first blueprint. I'm by no means pointing to ancient aliens and rubbish like that lol, but the evidence still stands that civilisations built massive things that we today consider impossible which later civilisations like the Romans and Egyptians later took over. The fact that neither of the latter took credit in any writing or hieroglyphs for those structures even though they wrote about their achievements and beliefs on everything else raises the very question.
Civilisations come and go, even without a technological revolution they are smart enough to find a way to do things we simply don't fully understand today. There's every chance a civilisation on Earth only lasted a few thousand years and any record of them as people got washed away in one of the many cataclysmic events that have happened in the past like whatever turned the Sahara into a dessert land since it once had a large chunk of the Nile running all the way through to the now Western Sahara. Asteroid impact or geological event? Nobody knows at least yet anyway but as ground penetrating radar and other tech advances, they are finding out more and more every few years so I guess we will find out soon enough.
The same could easily apply to space. If a single gas giant in one seemingly perfect solar system (like ours) gets hit by a big enough asteroid to impact its position enough to change its orbit or rotation, then that could cause a chain reaction to smaller planets like ours as rocks that would otherwise be captured by their gravity might not any more - Or a CME big enough to cause surface havoc (look up the Carrington Event as an example of one in the late 1800s).
Life is quite fragile from all we know now, we are extremely lucky to have multiple gas giants taking the strain of further rock bombardment from the Oort cloud and other bodies that fly in from outside the neighbourhood. Other planets don't get so lucky, look at Mars which was once like Earth, and Venus is now said to have once been like Earth too before some climate event turned it into a bakery.
So we have strong evidence that at least one or two planets were once like Earth in our own solar system. Those are favourable odds that similar exists elsewhere. But because of how volatile space and local events are, life just comes and goes and each civilisation (assuming intelligent) may not even know one existed, just like what we are finding here on Earth.
This is another possibility, but then we also have to look at our own planet. We know through historical evidence in rock weathering and archaeological findings that ancient civilisations we have absolutely zero record of existed that had technical knowledge of principal physics, gravity and the cosmos because they built structures and monuments either either aligned to the stars, in near perfect symmetry with nature or other things that we today would use computers to first blueprint. I'm by no means pointing to ancient aliens and rubbish like that lol, but the evidence still stands that civilisations built massive things that we today consider impossible which later civilisations like the Romans and Egyptians later took over. The fact that neither of the latter took credit in any writing or hieroglyphs for those structures even though they wrote about their achievements and beliefs on everything else raises the very question.
Civilisations come and go, even without a technological revolution they are smart enough to find a way to do things we simply don't fully understand today. There's every chance a civilisation on Earth only lasted a few thousand years and any record of them as people got washed away in one of the many cataclysmic events that have happened in the past like whatever turned the Sahara into a dessert land since it once had a large chunk of the Nile running all the way through to the now Western Sahara. Asteroid impact or geological event? Nobody knows at least yet anyway but as ground penetrating radar and other tech advances, they are finding out more and more every few years so I guess we will find out soon enough.
The same could easily apply to space. If a single gas giant in one seemingly perfect solar system (like ours) gets hit by a big enough asteroid to impact its position enough to change its orbit or rotation, then that could cause a chain reaction to smaller planets like ours as rocks that would otherwise be captured by their gravity might not any more - Or a CME big enough to cause surface havoc (look up the Carrington Event as an example of one in the late 1800s).
Life is quite fragile from all we know now, we are extremely lucky to have multiple gas giants taking the strain of further rock bombardment from the Oort cloud and other bodies that fly in from outside the neighbourhood. Other planets don't get so lucky, look at Mars which was once like Earth, and Venus is now said to have once been like Earth too before some climate event turned it into a bakery.
So we have strong evidence that at least one or two planets were once like Earth in our own solar system. Those are favourable odds that similar exists elsewhere. But because of how volatile space and local events are, life just comes and goes and each civilisation (assuming intelligent) may not even know one existed, just like what we are finding here on Earth.
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It's hypnotic.