Anyone for an astronomy thread?

[Slightly Brown]

There’s a cool documentary about how they arrived at the “picture” of the first observable black hole. I’m going on memory, but they basically give all the data to several teams of astronomers around the world. They then crunch the numbers and arrive at what they think the data “looks” like. They do this in isolation. They then collate all the pictures and see where the similarities lie. They then debate for a bit, before arriving at a composite image that represents the black hole.

I’m probably getting that totally wrong. I was just amazed/embarrassed to find out that it’s not an actual photo-photo. Probably belongs on the thread about such things.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

The same image viewed through the James Webb Telescope

[ursus arctos]

https://twitter.com/bbcbreaking/status/1524743010113757184?s=21&t=aT43GwmvK9_EgYLxjIP4Bg

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Irish people use hole and arse interchangeably, with hole being more common. That's a mild titter in the uk but more of a belly laugh to us

Oh I see. the perils of using two separate devices. deleted now

[Gangster Octopus]

You've started early...

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

I...just...I mean, there has to be a better name for this: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-60708711

They did this just for St Patrick's day

[Sits]

One would hope.

[Nocturnal Submission]

I...just...I mean, there has to be a better name for this: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-60708711

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/01/jeff...to-office.html

And as if to back up the last paragraph above, Over 20% of blue origin's workforce of 4000 have already quit this year. who knew that trying to force people with a high level of scientific education, to return to the office would lead to mass resignations.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

It turns out Jeff Bezos is running some kind of dystopian nightmare, where dissent is crushed, and employees have to sign non disclosure agreement that binds them, and their children to remain silent after they leave Blue Origin. Hands up who is shocked?

https://www.lioness.co/post/bezos-wa...n-a-toxic-past

A lot of the accusations in this letter ring true. While it's difficult for people to see inside his company, a number of things have become really apparent, and that is that it is a terrible horrible mess.. The big one is the efforts to resolve problems through courtcases. It's easy to believe that they're using the threat of Court Cases to silence internal dissent or critics, because right now they're suing NASA and delaying the planned return to the moon, because NASA didn't give them a contract. NASA initially wanted to have two moon landers, however congress gave them a fraction of the money that they wanted, so they decided to only have one lander, and gave the contract to SpaceX, because they were building the thing anyway, and they didn't want anywhere near as much money to do it. Jeff Tried to get senators to throw in a load of cash so NASA could fund his lander, but that doesn't seem to have gotten anywhere, so he sued.

Whatever goodwill he sought to get for himself by getting involved in Space, was vaporized in that moment. Personally Flying to space pissed off people who didn't like him anyway or were somehow unaware of him until that point, but this bullshit enraged everyone who was prepared to give him some credit for spending his money on space stuff. It's kind of a bit of a mystery what he's doing it for now. I think on some level this sort of thing was his effort to try and be remembered for something other than just being a cunt, but he just can't help himself.

There's another criticism in there of them loading extra projects on people who already don't have the resources to do what is being asked of them. The only thing they've built is that space tourism rocket, but they're also supposed to be selling rocket engines to ULA (Boeing/lockheed) for their new rocket, but they're fucking miles behind schedule, and are delaying ULA by maybe two years at this stage. This is going to be a problem as they've only got a certain number of the old rockets left, and the US govt needs to have at least two different types of rockets to launch their satellites, and if something were to go wrong with the SpaceX rocket, the US wouldn't have any way of getting to space. The delays to the engine mean that their own huge rocket is also way behind schedule, and to distract from this they announced that they were going to recover the second stage, which looks a lot like the sort of thing that is being complained about in that letter. That's an enormous amount of extra work for the people building the second stage (the bit that puts the satellite into orbit). and absent a massive increase in funding, that's going to be nearly impossible. They're essentially trying to mask their current failures, by promising even greater failures in the future.

There's all sorts of other alarm bells there. That whole thing of telling engineers who raise possible issues to shut the fuck up, or else, is considered to have been one of the primary causes of the challenger explosion, above and beyond the frozen o-rings. But even beyond that, that bit about there being about 1,000 problems of varying degrees with the engine of the new shephard. Now these problems might not be a safety risk, but that they decided to suppress complaint, rather than deal with them is really bad news. Blue Origin are competing with a whole host of companies, that would look at that 1000 small problems, not as a shameful secret to be suppressed, but as the normal course of events, and an opportunity to work through all the problems, and along the way learn a huge amount about making engines. If they've decided that their first attempt at it is enough they are never going to learn and are never going to be able to compete, and could easily be surpassed by even quite small companies, that actually try and launch things to space.

The other thing that springs to mind is that Bezos is demanding that the new shephard be able to fly 40 times a year, while being told that the vehicle needs an awful lot of work if it's going to be flown that often, and he's saying just do it. Which again bears an uncanny similarity to the Challenger crash, where the push for 24 flights a year, from vehicles that weren't being changed or improved was seen as another one of the key institutional factors that lead to the disaster.

The obsession with Musk and Branson is so apparent. The First flight of the new Shephard was timed to happen just before SpaceX made their first attempt to land a booster on land (Which they managed), well 6 years later the first flight of the new Shephard, with people on board, was timed to take place just before SpaceX flew four space tourists up into actual space for a couple of days. Unfortunately for Bezos, Branson was waiting for him to make his announcement, and then announced that he would be flying a couple of days before bezos. The timing of these events is based on maximising publicity, and trying to show that he hasn't been lapped yet.

Other stories coming out of Blue Origin suggest that for some time now Bezos has been expecting to be winning Govt contracts, and gets unfeasibly angry when he doesn't. He seems to think that SpaceX are being given favourable treatment when they get most of these contracts, and that bubbled over when SpaceX got the lunar contract, hence the staggeringly ill advised court case He doesn't understand that spaceX win most of these contracts because they have been to space 125 times, and have a super reliable and cheap rocket, whereas Blue Origin haven't launched anything to orbit, and don't actually have a rocket.

A lot of the problems seem to stem from a decision Bezos seems to have made in 2017, to change the direction of the company, and to import some experienced aerospace executives. So out went Rob Meyerson, who had been running the company fairly well, and was very popular with staff, and in comes all the Military industrial complex Lads to run things. He seems to have taken the rather odd decision to hire a bunch of "old-space" guys to run his "New-space" companies, and after this you stopped hearing stories about how Blue Origin was a great place to work, and then things went silent, and now you have this. it seems that he managed to successfully import all of the bad habits of traditional aerospace companies, on top of which he has layered his own personal weirdnesses and problems. I'm not entirely sure that this can be turned around. He's making too many bad mistakes, and his awfulness as a person, and all the shit he gets away with at amazon prevents him from being able to learn. You can't treat employees in the Aerospace industry like amazon workers. They'll just leave and get another job somewhere else. which is I suppose one reason why they don't give you your shares until you've completed two years, meaning that a substantial proportion of your pay is tied to you not leaving, and if you do you'll suffer a retroactive pay cut. There's a certain element of this practice going on at all tech companies, but their behaviour at blue origin is apparently very extreme.

[diggedy derek]

Sporting – we were about ten miles West of Oswestry. Arguably mid-Wales perhaps, but where we were wasn't in any way hard to get to, it was just tucked away in a small valley with just sheep and a couple of donkeys for company.

[Guy Profumo]

Elon Musk

Wanking cunt bastard cunt bastard wanking cunt bastard fucking wanking cunt bastard fucking arsehole non shock


Cunt bastard fucking cunt wanking cunt bastard cunt bastard cunt cunt cunt fucking bastard wanking cunt cunt cunt CUNT cunt satellites creating greater risk of collision


https://www.independent.co.uk/space/...-b1905969.html

Elon Musk - CUNT

[hobbes]

And what excuse do you give to your neighbours for it being at that angle?

I have trouble getting it up?

[Sporting]

We’re currently staying at a shack in a small valley in North Wales. There’s nothing but a couple of caravans nearby, and the nearest town is a good ten miles way across many hills.

Where exactly?

[Southport Zeb]

And what excuse do you give to your neighbours for it being at that angle?

[hobbes]

Bessie.

[hobbes]

We’re currently staying at a shack in a small valley in North Wales. There’s nothing but a couple of caravans nearby, and the nearest town is a good ten miles way across many hills.

There’s very little light pollution, and the view with binoculars is mindblowing

I envy you. I'd love to get Bessie under some properly dark skies.

[diggedy derek]

We’re currently staying at a shack in a small valley in North Wales. There’s nothing but a couple of caravans nearby, and the nearest town is a good ten miles way across many hills.

There’s very little light pollution, and the view with binoculars is mindblowing

[ursus arctos]

It is quite astounding just how little "you" got out of the zillions spent on "track and trace".

And rather unlikely that there will ever be a complete accounting.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

So NASA has still spent less on this than our twat gave to his mate for a totally useless "track and trace" system? Righty-ho.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

https://twitter.com/Erdayastronaut/status/1393232441834356736

This is the best footage of the landing. It's easy to lose sight of just how fucking huge that thing is.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

ooh since this was brought back up. They managed to land the starship without blowing it up. Scott Manley has all the highlights here. There's not a lot of footage, because there were clouds, and the satellite uplink kept freezing.

They skipped from sn 11 to sn 15, because the spectacular failures of the first four and all the different ways they went wrong, taught them most of what they needed to know, and so they integrated all the changes needed, and fixed a bunch of problems with the engines, and it worked. Apart from the camera streams, and a fire after it landed, and one of the engines not relighting, but the back up plan worked. the important thing is that it landed, and didn't blow up. It seems like they're going to make a few little changes, and fly it again. SN-16 is going to be basically the same but with few tweaks to improve the landing, sort out that nasty fire caused by leaks, and a few other things that weren't immediately obvious. The next step is to build one that flies up much higher, and the next stage after that is building the massive booster, and trying for orbit.

This is very timely. Under Trump, NASA decided to go to the moon, with "The Artemis Programme" and the aim was for 2024. The biden administration has decided to stick with this, which is normally not the case, which means that not everything got immediately cancelled. The Normal way things like this go, is that NASA is told to go somewhere by the president. they ask congress for money, and congress gives them a tiny fraction of it, which delays the project to the point where it can be later cancelled without having got too far down the road and cost too much money. The next president comes in, changes the destination from the moon to mars, or from mars to the moon, and the process begins again, However there is still a substantial flow of money from NASA to what can best be described as the giants of the military industrial complex.

Now Artemis was supposed to be trying to keep costs down, through competitions for services, and they would put up proposals, and companies would put in bids to provide various aspects of it, for a fixed price, and then be paid to do the certain thing. The Tricky part of the whole Moon thing, is getting down to the lunar surface, and getting back up again. so they had three different groups competing. There was the dynetics lander, which has going to be built by second tier defence type companies and new-space companies. The second proposal came from "The National Team" which was basically the people who built and maintained the shuttle, but with Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin instead of Boeing, who are very much on the naughty step. Third proposal was a slight variation on the SpaceX Starship. A lander taller than Nelson's column, with as much internal volume as the ISS, or a boeing 747. Which could easily carry the other two landers to the moon in its cargo bay,

So recently they came to the end of that first round of competition, the Dynetics lander was far too heavy and they didn't really know how to fix it, so it wouldn't work. They were looking for about 7 billion, but no-one had any confidence that they could build this. The National team's one was really expensive at about $8 billion, and they weren't putting in any money of their own, and it also had a large number of technical problems. The spaceX one was looking for about $3 bn, and they were already pouring large amounts of their own money into building it anyway. and were already actually doing stuff. That it involves developing something that is 30 feet taller than the Saturn V, has to be set against their having already built one.

So since Congress was only going to give them about $3 bn, they gave it all to SpaceX, with a promise to have a second lander later, if congress gave them more money. This was an extremely aggressive power play by NASA, as it is a right thumb in the eye for senators who have relationships with blue origin, or lockheed martin, or northrup Grumman, which lets face it, is a lot of them. It also kicks the legs from under the SLS which brings in people with Boeing factories in their constituency. So last week, the Democratic Senator for Washington state, (home of blue Origin and boeing) Maria Cantwell (A fine tipperary/kilkenny norman name) and some republican buck called Roger Wicker (not a fine tipperary/kilkenny norman name) from Mississippi decided to tack a space amendment to the Endless Frontier Act, or the "Keep ahead of China 2021" act. https://arstechnica.com/science/2021...-lander-award/

Essentially it demands three things. The first is that NASA spend $10 billion on a second lander, which should keep blue origin, lockheed martin and northrup Grumman, and The draper laboratory happy. The second thing that they are looking for is for NASA to spend $10 billion on an upper stage for the SLS rocket, which will keep Boeing happy, and seems to be an effort to keep the SLS flying beyond the second launch. The Third thing is a bit bizarre. Boeing has built NASA one SLS. NASA tested this at their test stands in Mississippi, and they decided it was all the testing they needed to do for the SLS programme. Senator Wicky wants them to build a test article replica of the SLS, so they can keep testing it again and again, keeping Stennis space centre busy for no discernible reason.

Now it's not clear that this amendment will last, and without an allocation of money, it's all a bit pointless, NASA is trying to gently break it to congress that It doesn't really want any more fucking SLS rockets, and keep saying things like this new second stage isn't necessary for the early stages of the Artemis programme, which is a gentle way of saying it takes so long to build these fucking things that they may have developed warp drive by the time they've built a third rocket that needs a more powerful upper stage. The determination of the US senate to keep shovelling money to Boeing via the SLS rocket is truly commendable. That it would take 5 years and $10 bn dollars to build a big hydrogen tank, on top of a smaller oxygen tank, and tack on four small engines, and then build eight of them is staggering. There's very little new technological ground been broken here, and quite frankly they're taking the piss. It's worth noting that the amount of money that this latest bill instructs NASA to spend on Boeing, Blue origin, Lockheed Martin, and Northrup Grumman, is more than the total budget allocated so far for the entire programme to get back to the moon. I think the priorities are clear.

[Ginger Yellow]

Not entirely sure what happened, as visibility was terrible and the on-board feet cut-out, but it seems SN11 blew up right after re-ignition.

[jason voorhees]

Paraguay is about to have their first-ever satellite deployed by JAXA. Got moved back to 20:20 Japan time, which I believe is 11:20am GMT.

I had woken up at 6 am, but it got delayed...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OxEipWBuRI

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Scott Manley as always is on top of things. It seems that only three of the six little stubby landing legs deployed, and it was going relatively quite fast when it landed, and bounced, having crushed the three little legs, and as it was sitting on its base, the fire at the end seems to have caused some problems.

So on the plus side the whole landing thing works, Now to work on the plumbing, and the legs. They don't seem to have completely nailed down the engines side of things yet.