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[Various Artist]

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True, but the popular conception tends to link "liquid water" with "necessary prerequisite for life", ergo the Goldilocks Zone is (popularly) implied to mean somewhere where life (as we know it) can evolve. Which does tend to lead into the discussion of whether or not our notions of the conditions necessary for life are overly narrow, or indeed our notion of what constitutes "life".
At this point, someone usually suggests then someone else dismisses the idea of an alternative biology based upon, say, silicon rather than carbon.

Anyhow, PT's last point still holds, erm, water. Life is indubitably rare and precious. If the universe is infinite then there's an infinite number of possible planets out there, but we know even from our small observable sample to date that the vast majority of these are most probably uninhabited. There's certainly a finite and – given the unlikeliness of their falling within said Goldilocks Zone – relatively small number of inhabited worlds out there in the vast reaches of the cosmos. And I believe it was Douglas Adams who pointed out in this context how any finite number divided by infinity is as near to zero as makes no odds, so statistically we don't even exist. (And anyone you may happen to meet is hence merely the product of a deranged imagination.) Our actual existence, and the chances of contacting or meeting any other race in a similar state of being, considering the literally astronomic distances involved, are so ravishingly unlikely it's stupendous.

That, of course, is why it's so brilliant to discover a vaguely plausibly viable exoplanet right on our cosmic doorstep.
Though still (with apologies to Jeff Wayne) the chances of anything coming from Proxima Centauri B are a squillion to one, they said.

[evilC]

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More 'wow'! (It's worth following each of the links embedded in the text, too.)

[evilC]

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Well, hello Philae!

[Gangster Octopus]

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Mapping a billion stars...

[evilC]

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"...surprising activity..."

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

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===ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS EXCEPT EUROPA===

===ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE===

[Moonlight Shadow]

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Yes, shame he is not around anymore...

[Ginger Yellow]

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I wouldn't feel too sad. He did become a Star Child.

[Gerontophile]

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I don't know if this has been done, but if you fancy having a look at the International Space Station from your home, here's how.

[Gangster Octopus]

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More Martian photography.

[Levin]

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I can't get over how three dimensional Pluto looks in this fly by photo.

[San Bernardhinault]

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Wow! That is fantastic.

[Gerontophile]

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There is a new series of "How The Universe Works" just started on Science channel, and the first episode is all about what Planet X (although they are calling it Planet 9) is, how it was discovered, and what it is likely to look like (Chances of being like Iceland, and having water - high).

S05E01 if you, ahem, know where to look.

[hobbes]

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Cracking view of the Moon and Venus this evening.
I was driving to Poole and they were in front of me the whole way down. Marvellous.

[Gerontophile]

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Bit of a bugger to overtake, huh?

[hobbes]

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[Evariste Euler Gauss]

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Applause indeed!

Slightly off-topic, but the BBC documentary "Cosmonauts" last night about the [] Soviet space programme was brilliant, worth 90 mins of anyone's time, well anyone interested in space derring-do. Great original footage and interviews with some of the cosmonauts involved, and an intelligent editorial approach and tone.
It's on i-player for another 4 weeks.

Edited: having just seen the first half I thought it was all about the 1960s stuff but actually there's quite a chunk about the Mir Space Station too.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

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Has anyone else been watching the SpaceX propaganda fake reality tv show about mars yet? I must admit I was very jaundiced about it, until I saw This clip and realized that they are completely serious about this thing. That thing was in space and then it did that. Fucking hell. That's basically how they plan to land on mars, arse first, and ready to fuel up and head home. But also being able to land those rockets on barges means that they can use reusable rockets to carry far more cargo, as they don't have to carry the fuel to get them back to the place where they took off. That to me seems like the trickiest part.

I must say that their plan seems relatively achievable, if remarkably unromantic. Map and chart every square inch of mars. Find a suitable spot near a large lava tube to hide in, near lots of ice. You can only go to mars every two years, and it takes about six months. So in year one, you Land a load of stuff up with robots to unpack it, there to start making rocket fuel and water.

Then two years later send people up in a big space ship filled with stuff, and no fuel. Send up a second almost identical tanker ship, fill it up, and send it on its way. At the same time you send off the start of the second phase two years in advance. They land spend two years basically slowly setting things up and then starting to move from the irradiated surface, into their nice new hidey hole. Keep doing this, and in a decade or so there will be literally dozens of people living on mars.

Presumably once safely ensconced in one of these lava tubes, you put a roof on, and suddenly the Age of the Mars Moleman is upon us. There doesn't seem to be very much to do up there. Search around for evidence of life (that could get either get very old very quickly, or you find it, and it's over) make your hidey hole more habitable, and pray that none of your supply ships blows up, before you can make more of what you need.

It certainly seems dangerous, but then again a 75% mortality rate would make it one of the least dangerous exploration adventures that Humans had ever embarked upon. The mortality rate on the sugar Islands of Barbados and antigua was nearly 95% in the first year. If they can figure out how to safely land stuff on mars that would be a huge step, because after that it just seems to be a matter of time, will, and a healthy disregard for the health of your martians. Then again you'd think that things would have gone a lot better for the Jamestown Colony if they had perfect knowledge of the environment and terrain, robots, computers, 3-d printers, Hydroponics and meat in a petri-dish.

[Ginger Yellow]

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The safely landing stuff aspect seems like just as much a matter of time, in the sense that NASA at least has mastered it for relatively heavy payloads, and then it "just" becomes a question of having a heavy enough lift launch vehicle to carry enough fuel (and other supplies) to do the retro rocket or skycrane landing. The main problem is that nobody has a reliable super heavy-lift launch vehicle at the moment, and they are stupendously expensive in general. The Delta IV is the highest capacity in operation at present and it carries way less than the shuttle did and a sixth of the Saturn V.

That's the meat of the SpaceX proposal, really, making heavy-lift launches economically viable.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

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heh, there's a world of difference between bouncing a rover across the surface of mars on big airbags, and gently landing humans, in such a way that they can attach a hose, fuel up, and fuck off home. But yeah, most of the problem seems to be about getting things into space. It's really just one of those truck going across the desert, dropping off oil barrels problems at the core of it. The Space X plan is to get their current rocket engine sorted out, then basically strap a whole lot of them together, and wrap it in carbon fibre and make a big rocket. It sounds like an achievable plan, if their current rocket engines turn out to be reliable.

Then They have to figure out how to make that land on a barge so they can use it multiple times. And then you're merely left with the problems of designing a landing craft that you can live in for a long time, and can take off and go back to earth. You need a huge leap forward in Battery technology, a huge leap forward in solar technology, a huge leap forward in portable nuclear reactors, 3-d printing, material science to make pressure suits that keep out the radiation, a means to create meat in the laboratory, Plants genetically modified to grow under reduced gravity, and basically it's all sorted. But a lot of those things are happening anyway.

I suppose that's one of their big arguments for going. The definite timeline of the apollo missions caused a huge leap forward in a wide variety of sciences, that then fed into the wider economy. All of those things would be incredibly useful on earth, but without a sort of central driving goal, progress is very piecemeal, and though they don't say it, America needs something Technological that it can be proud of, and a sign that scientific progress is crucial, before their culture reverts to hunter-gathering.

Where are Space-X getting the money from? Do the global elite have literally so much money sitting around offshore that some of them can afford to piss away a chunk of it on this?

[Ginger Yellow]

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Where are Space-X getting the money from? Do the global elite have literally so much money sitting around offshore that some of them can afford to piss away a chunk of it on this?

For Mars? They're not. That's why they're doing this PR push, to get the subsidies.

[hobbes]

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heh, there's a world of difference between bouncing a rover across the surface of mars on big airbags, and gently landing humans, in such a way that they can attach a hose, fuel up, and fuck off home.

Curiosity used a Sky Crane to land gently.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

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Oh wow, that'As the most James Bond thing I've ever seen. and the guy in charge looks like a cross between Michael madsen in Kill bill, and travolta in saturday night fever.

As awesome (in the traditional sense) as that is, It seems to be a bit of a dead end, in that it looks like a great way for landing the curiosity rover, and things exactly like it. But not much else. They've had to deal with certain engineering problems, overcome them, and added to the total of human knowledge, but mostly in a rather limited kind of way.

I think it's kind of a reflection of the state that NASA seems to be in. NASA seems to be the US in microcosm, Achieving great leaps forward when motivated by a particular goal, then when the goal subsides, lapsing into diverse little kingdoms, and factional power bases, before being overwhelmed by the Military Industrial complex, and used as a means of transferring money from the many to the few, while doing a few good things along the way to justify its continued existence.

Space-X seem to have come along at a good moment in History. There's no great trick to making rocket engines. It's mostly about plumbing, welding, and making really good pumps. The principles behind it are well understood, There is apparently nothing particularly ground-breaking about anything that they have done from a technical standpoint. They've just used modern computers, Modern Manufacturing methods, modern materials, and can I mention modern Computers again, to produce a relatively efficient, simple. reliable and relatively powerful rocket engine that they can mass produce. (they're finishing five engines every week)

Then they're using Modern Computers and their carefully designed rocket to land the rocket on it's arse, so it can be reused again. If it leaves the atmosphere, it can land at the launch pad after a day, if it doesn't leave the atmosphere it can land on a barge, and be slowly transported back.

the thing is that I don't think that it would have been possible for NASA to go to congress and say We want to build a new generation of rockets, and we want to make them reusable which will greatly reduce the cost. I honestly don't think they would have got the money for the idea. And then, aside from that, I don't know how much it would have cost for NASA to get to this point.

I'm not sure how much it would have cost NASA to Hire Lockheed Martin to make these engines, or how long it would have taken, and I don't know how much say Boeing would have charged NASA to figure out how to land the rocket. I don't know how much it cost Space-X to get to the point where they landed a nine engine booster rocket on a Barge.

Basically, there's one price and time Frame if you're trying to Fuck the Govt, but there's another price and time frame, if you're trying to do something for yourself, so you can monopolize a potentially massively lucrative industry.

Space-X are in a hell of a hurry. They've gone from a single rocket engine, to a 27 engine rocket that theoretically can land at least two, and maybe all three components for reuse, in a decade, and along the way they've built a capsule for delivering stuff to the ISS, which they designed with the intention of upgrading it to take people. (Ah, apparently the development of the Falcon 9 vehicle

If this new big rocket that they've built works, they're going to use it to send one of their shuttles to land on Mars in 2018 mostly to show that it can be done. Because the Rocket is supposed to be reusable, it's not going to cost them very much to do this off their own bat. They are testing a new, vastly more powerful engine, using fuel that you can manufacture on Mars. If that works out for them, they can start mass producing them. the engine that they were testing just there is nearly half 3-d printed. If that engine works, then they can start sticking them together and building even more powerful rockets. And before you know it, you can lift enough weight to be able to send quite a big spaceship to Mars.

But even if you don't go to mars, You have now reduced the cost of launching something into space by a massive degree, and you've massively increased the amount of stuff you can carry. The rocket engine that they are designing to go to mars, and come back, will be able to hurl huge things into orbit. There is a massive backlog of satellites waiting for a launch, and a sharp fall in the price of launching, will suddenly make satellites more affordable, so there will be a hell of a lot more of them.

If they can show that this landing rockets business can be done reliably, and that most of them don't explode, they stand to make an awful lot of money in the medium to long term in the space haulage business, almost as a by-product of their plan to go to Mars.

I would be very curious to know exactly how much money they have spent up to this point to be where they are, and how much of that they have made back from contracts with NASA, and private launches. I would like to know exactly when Space-X's net expenditure hits the €60 billion mark that we spent on those Anglo Bond holders.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

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Oh God, the cost of developing the Big Rocket they're using and landing, and the shuttle craft they send up to the ISS was $850 million, half of which was stumped up by NASA. I think that includes designing the manufacturing process as well. They get $120 million for every trip to the ISS, but they have to provide the Shuttle, and they charge $65 million to launch a load into space, and they have a hell of a lot of bookings. So the faster they can build more rockets, the more money they will make.

$900 million seems like a trivial amount of money for developing a big rocket, that lands on its tail, and a shuttle that can supply the space station, carry people, and that you can send off to land on mars. NASA estimated that the development of one part of the programme would have cost 12 times as much under the traditional Cost plus model. It's quite alarming when you compare it to the f-35.

This is quite an interesting piece of speculative guesswork

For the purposes of the example they estimate a gross margin of 40% on each launch, with the Cost of the rocket apparently 75% of the cost of the launch. That would put the cost of each rocket at about $26 million. that doesn't seem like very much. You can see how being able to reuse the rocket would make a huge difference to their margin, but It would seem from that article that getting a rocket ready for reuse may not be a trivial matter. Either way, they seem to be able to make money out of the nuts and bolts of what they actually do, and if they move quickly enough, they can monopolize much of the world's space commercial space traffic.

[Ginger Yellow]

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As far as I'm aware they've yet to actually re-use a rocket. They only had their first successful landing in July, and the mission that was announced as the first to use a recovered booster currently has a January launch date.