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    Anyone for an astronomy thread?

    so.... you're spying on russia with the algerians? That's not going to end badly

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      Anyone for an astronomy thread?

      so, er, NASA is having real trouble getting Boeing and Space-X to keep on schedule with their efforts to be able to ferry people to the ISS, so they've beeing lining up more flights on soyuz.

      unfortunately it now turns out that someone at one of Russia's rocket factories, has been replacing highly expensive, heat resistant high tech alloys, with porridge and chewing gum, so now both the Proton and soyuz rockets are all grounded for an unspecified period of time, so it's not entirely sure how they're going to get people to or from the ISS.

      And while it may be made out of elastic bands and pritt stick, I have to say that the proton rocket really fucking looks the part.

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        Anyone for an astronomy thread?

        Fine conjunction tonight for UK and Irish OTFers - the Moon, Venus and Mars forming a clearly-visible triangle.

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          Anyone for an astronomy thread?

          It's really beautiful.

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            Anyone for an astronomy thread?

            Does anyone know any more about this Em drive Is it basically steorn in space?

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              Anyone for an astronomy thread?

              So Space-X launched a capsule up to the ISS at the weekend. They called off the first launch at literally the last second, because they were unsure about something in the second stage. So they had a look at it, and launched the next day, and it all went relatively smoothly (though the capsulte hasn't docked with the station yet)

              This sort of thing is a big part of what Space-X actually do to keep the lights on. A lot of the financial basis of their company is built on flying stuff to the ISS, and they would never have made it this far without those contracts. And they're about to re-use one of the cargo capsules that they fly up there, which is going to be a pretty big milestone for them. The problem they have is that they were supposed to have finished the human ferrying version of this capsule already, and they're not going to be ready to start testing this until probably next year. This is a problem because the US needs to buy seats on the Soyuz in order to get people up to the space station, and the Russians are really jacking up the price. And.....you know..... sanctions.

              So into the gap steps the Senate Science Committee, who oversee the Nasa Budget. Not content with the slow pace of progress of these commercial methods of getting to space. they've decided that they want to help out the companies that already make Nasa's stuff, in their own states, by getting NASA to spend a fortune making the Orion Capsule compatible with the ISS so it too can dock with the space station and deliver goods and people. The other major issue with this is that they will have to adapt a pre-existing rocket for Human use, and that also will be ruinously expensive and time consuming.

              The thing is that this is completely and utterly pointless, and a total waste of money. Nasa is soon going to have access to three vehicles that can go to the ISS, and two Rockets capable of launching humans. It will have access to these vehicles, long before the Orion Capsule is made compatible with the ISS.

              I can only assume that there are a lot of people in NASA praying for the day when they have nothing to do with building Rockets

              Oh and This is fascinating

              Apparently this thing has been on the ISS for over a year It's an inflatable space station component, made of layers of polyurethene and kevlar. which are launched folded up, and then Expanded with compressed Gas. It's apparently much better at dealing with small impacts than the Space Station, they're Checking to see if it leaks, and how it copes with radiation.

              I think this is really rather exciting, because it opens up the possibility of building much larger space stations relatively cheaply. For instance, they're currently building This which weighs 20 tonnes, and can be loaded on a pretty standard rocket. The thing is that because it expands to that shape, it has about 1/3rd of of the internal pressurized space of the ISS, but weighs less than a twentieth as much. If you can build something like this, It should be relatively cheap and easy to build quite large spacestations, and because they are so light and small, you can do things like send them to orbit the moon

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                Anyone for an astronomy thread?

                Seven Earth sized planets!!! We will be monitoring for life on these planets by peering through a telescope and trying to see Farts.

                Isn't science wonderful

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                  Anyone for an astronomy thread?

                  All seven of these worlds orbit closer to their sun than Mercury. If some are in the "goldilocks zone" how faint must that star be? Would it be like looking at our sun at sunset through low cloud? And the other planets in the night sky - they'd all appear huge to each other, wouldn't they? Like something sci-fi artists paint as backdrops.

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                    Anyone for an astronomy thread?

                    From Phil Plait:
                    TRAPPIST-1 is a very small, cool star — it’s what we call an M8 red dwarf. It only has a mass 8% of the Sun’s and a radius 10% of the Sun’s (that’s only a wee bit bigger than Jupiter!), and shines at a feeble 0.05% of our own star.

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                      Anyone for an astronomy thread?

                      Sign me up! I want to go.

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                        Anyone for an astronomy thread?

                        yes yes, join the bloody queue.

                        39 light years is a long way mind you. A really really long way.

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                          Anyone for an astronomy thread?

                          It only has a mass 8% of the Sun’s and a radius 10% of the Sun’s
                          That's really surprising. So its volume is around 1/1000th that of the Sun's, meaning that to have 8% of its mass it must have an average density around 80 times that of the Sun's. I guess there must be forces in the Sun which counteract its internal gravity (and so reduce density) which just don't operate the same way in a much smaller cooler star.

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                            Anyone for an astronomy thread?

                            39 light years is a long way mind you. A really really long way.
                            Quite. Not wishing to pour cold water on everyone's dreams, but...... There are many and varied explanations on the Internet of why interstellar travel can never be anything other than a fantasy, and the one lnked below from the boingboing site is perhaps one of the very best. Leaving aside the challenging engineering issues around generating (never mind controlling and stopping from) sufficient speed to make a journey in a feasible length of time (bearing in mind that 1 light year = over 6 million million miles), and managing the risks of collision (bearing in mind that at such speeds collision with anything bigger than a scrap of dust is highly problematic), the main issues are biological - with regard to which it's quite enlightening to reflect on how little we still understand about biological systems in their entirety. But the most thought-provoking aspects discussed in the piece are the psychological and sociological issues around such a flight, which are truly the stuff of nightmares.

                            http://boingboing.net/2015/11/16/our-generation-ships-will-sink.html

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                              Anyone for an astronomy thread?

                              That's really surprising. So its volume is around 1/1000th that of the Sun's, meaning that to have 8% of its mass it must have an average density around 80 times that of the Sun's. I guess there must be forces in the Sun which counteract its internal gravity (and so reduce density) which just don't operate the same way in a much smaller cooler star.
                              Thermal pressure, basically. The hotter the core the more it pushes against gravity.

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                                Anyone for an astronomy thread?

                                If this is an old dense star much further along in its lifecycle than our sun, then presumably it's gone through various awful intermediate stages that have sterilized everything on those seven planets. Or am I thinking about timescales and stars all wrong?

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                                  Anyone for an astronomy thread?

                                  If this is an old dense star much further along in its lifecycle than our sun, then presumably it's gone through various awful intermediate stages that have sterilized everything on those seven planets.
                                  Not at all. Red dwarfs burn low and slow. They can stay in the main sequence for far longer than the sun can, and in fact the smaller they are the longer they last.

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                                    Anyone for an astronomy thread?

                                    So that's how it's kept going for 11 series despite the last bit of anything vaguely resembling excitement, energy or interest being way back in about season 2.

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                                      Anyone for an astronomy thread?

                                      Evariste Euler Gauss wrote:
                                      39 light years is a long way mind you. A really really long way.
                                      Quite. Not wishing to pour cold water on everyone's dreams, but...... There are many and varied explanations on the Internet of why interstellar travel can never be anything other than a fantasy, and the one lnked below from the boingboing site is perhaps one of the very best. Leaving aside the challenging engineering issues around generating (never mind controlling and stopping from) sufficient speed to make a journey in a feasible length of time (bearing in mind that 1 light year = over 6 million million miles), and managing the risks of collision (bearing in mind that at such speeds collision with anything bigger than a scrap of dust is highly problematic), the main issues are biological - with regard to which it's quite enlightening to reflect on how little we still understand about biological systems in their entirety. But the most thought-provoking aspects discussed in the piece are the psychological and sociological issues around such a flight, which are truly the stuff of nightmares.

                                      http://boingboing.net/2015/11/16/our-generation-ships-will-sink.html
                                      I think we could still do it. Somehow. Maybe with FTL drives or a generation ship that overcomes the problems he explains. Who knows what we will be able to do in the future? Something something quantum physics something.

                                      Perhaps if we can ever learn to download our brains, we could create android copies of ourselves - ones that don't age or need a lot of food or sleep - and send them to these planets and they could report back. It would take 40 years to get that report, but if we can survive that long, it would be worthwhile.

                                      In The Expanse, which I'm very fond of - both books and tv series - the major advances we've made in 200 years are an Epstein Drive that allows for very efficient and relatively safe nuclear engines, drugs that allow people to survive flying at many Gs, a way to "spin" asteroids and space stations to create artificial gravity, and a lot of ways to create artificial enclosed settlements on Mars and various moons and asteroids. None of them are entirely self-sufficient, they still have to mine and haul ice, among other things, from around the solar system.

                                      It's not explained how they get around the collision problem, but maybe at even 10 G, it's not so hard to clad a ship to protect it from debris.

                                      The Mormons build a generation ship.

                                      Mars and Earth are like Europe and the US in the 19th century. Mars is working on a multi-generation terraforming effort and puts a lot of its resources into the military. It is politically independent of Earth and they are in a perpetually uneasy truce. Earth is overcrowded (30b) but automation is such that most people just live on the dole (called "basic"). The UN has become the planet's central government. The food everywhere is lousy - mostly made of various fungi and lichens. Earthers think Martians are violent rednecks, and Martians think Earthers are soft and lazy.

                                      Then there are the Belters, the people who have lived their whole life in low-g environments on the settled asteroids and moons of the outer planets. They've been exploited by the inner planets and are pissed. That's what creates most of the plot.

                                      Then something remarkable happens.

                                      I heavily recommend it.

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                                        Anyone for an astronomy thread?

                                        Just to say that I have now finished reading (and very much enjoyed) both Dan Parry's Moonshot and Andrew Smith's Moondust, so thanks again to Mitch and to Reginald C for their respective recommendations upthread.

                                        I found Moonshot highly readable, entertaining and informative, a really good choice for someone who, like me, did not have a huge amount of prior knowledge of the Apollo missions. I thought the to-ing and fro-ing between the chronology of the Apollo 11 mission itself and relevant personal, technical, political and space programme background worked very well. Of course, there's almost nothing in it about any of the later Apollo missions.

                                        I found Moondust absolutely brilliant. Mostly riveting, very well written, insightful, reflective and thought-provoking.

                                        I now want to re-read Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff (which I read last summer) with the benefit of the knowledge I now have about the later roles (or tragic fate in one case) of some of the Mercury 7 in the Apollo programme. Although I must say my ignorance at the time gave me the benefit of tension and relief reading TRS last year which would be unavailable to better-informed readers in that I had no idea whether the various Mercury 7 guys would survive their missions.

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                                          Anyone for an astronomy thread?

                                          Cheers for mentioning those books, I love The Right Stuff, truly amazing.

                                          I'm sort of glad that I'm unemployed as it means I can't buy this book of photos from the Apollo missions. It and the prints look gorgeous. They say they've gone to some effort locating prints and tidying them up but it's all royalty free isn't it?

                                          I also spent a good long time reading [url=https://www.jsc.nasa.gov/history/oral_histories/UnderwoodRW/UnderwoodRW_10-17-00.htm]this oral history transcript with Richard W. Underwood who worked in the Photographic Technology Laboratory from 62 - 85.

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                                            Anyone for an astronomy thread?

                                            and if you're wondering why everything foundered after Apollo, this article gives you a pretty good example

                                            some context. After Apollo, you were in a familiar situation where you had a load of republicans who were every bit as opposed to govt spending on things, and particularly on science. They weren't remotely interested in spending money on stuff like this. However space was really useful for spy satellites. So that meant that it fell under the purview of the Military industrial complex, and that has rules of its own, and they're very interested in spending money on that sort of thing. (It's the Airforce that launches spy satellites, not nasa)

                                            It meant that the US had to have a space industry of a sort. and these companies that would build the rockets to launch spy satellites needed the extra business. There was also an overlap So NASA was essentially allowed to exist on a certain level, as long as they kept funneling money to these companies to do things in space. These companies in turn built their factories in politically sensitive districts. I.e. Florida, Alabama, louisiana and Texas, where the local senators and representatives somehow found themselves all in charge of the science committees in congress . for Instance, Jeff Sessions is one of the most important people in dictating the direction and the funding for NASA, and so is Ted Cruz, but there's also a cunt called Shelby from louisiana. This meant that they were perfectly happy to carry on with the shuttle until it fell apart, because every shuttle launch meant hundreds of millions in repair work, and nine months employment for all of these companies.

                                            So in short NASA could exist, as long as it spent a disproportionate amount of its money by giving it to rocket builders, to build a small number of disappointing rockets, or kept the Shuttle going. The Companies involved in this are basically all the people you'd expect to see competing to build the New US fighter Jet, and they all come under the heading of "OldSpace."

                                            on this side you have a group called ULA or United Launch Alliance, which is a spin off of Boeing and lockheed Martin. They make Delta 1V (boeing) and Atlas V (Lockheed Martin) rockets, and they get a billion a year just to be ready to launch a spy satellite at the drop of a hat. they also get to charge about $450 million a shot for each Spy satellite launch, which is nice work if you can get it. Then there is Aerojet Rocketdyne, (North American aviation, then rockwell international, then boeing, before finally becoming part of Pratt and Whitney) they made the engines for the space shuttle, and they make engines for the Delta IV rocket.

                                            The Atlas V on the other hand is powered by a russian made engine, the RD-180, which is a million miles ahead of any equivalent american engine. That engine is manufactured in Russia, for ULA, and for no-one else, because they bought the rights to the engine, however, they would have to transport or recreate an entire replica of the russian rocket industry to manufacture these in the US. Now this obviously is extremely problematic. The ability of the US to launch spy satellites is kind of dependent on Russia sending over those rd-180 rocket engines. so you can see that there is a bit of a problem.

                                            Then somewhere along the line it became clear that there was no plan to replace the shuttle, which was basically falling apart, so the US found itself in a situation where it wasn't going to be able to replace the shuttle, and would be reliant on the Russians to get people and cargo to the international space station, with a little help from the europeans.

                                            One of the reasons why things didn't advance at all, and that everything cost so much, was largely based around the structure and nature of the contracts that the US govt struck with the space industry. Essentially they followed the traditional military industrial complex approach, of specifying a certain type of rocket, and then inviting a small number of companies to bid to build it. The one with the "best entry" then goes away and develops the rocket, and bills the US govt for the costs of developing the rocket, and a percentage on top for profit. The bigger your costs, the bigger your profit, so you can see why this is a bit of a disaster.

                                            So at the start of the Obama Regime, they went to NASA and asked them what do you want to do? They said, cancel GW's nonsensical mission to Mars, which was simply going to fund the creation of a bunch of inadequate rockets, from the usual suspects, at enormous expense. And instead of building a replacement for the Shuttle, they wanted to set up a system where they could buy flights to the ISS for a fixed price. This is a completely different model of doing things. Instead of being encouraged to drive the costs of development as high as possible, in order to further inflate profits, people would now be encouraged to drive development and operating costs as low as possible. because they would be getting a fixed price for each launch.

                                            this lead to a bit of a kerfuffle once this plan reached Congress, where a lot of southern boots were firmly put down. NASA could keep these commercial crew and cargo contracts to the ISS, because no-one could come up with a better idea, but the programme to Mars was revived after a fashion, and instead Nasa were forced to build a massive new Rocket system called the SLS, which would be broadly equivalent to Saturn V, except instead of designing it from scratch, it would use Space shuttle parts, and it would use the capsule from the cancelled Constellation programme. And NASA would do all of this or they would take a huge axe to its funding.

                                            So anyway, this set the scene for the Obama years, with Space-X growing like rhododendrons on a tipperary mountainside, you also in the background had a company called Blue-Origin beavering away. Now Space-X is a company driven by Elon Musk because he wants to go to mars. But he started off with only $165 million dollars from the sale of paypal, so if he was going to get to mars, he was going to have to build a space launch company up from scratch, and use commercial income to fund development of his rockets.

                                            Blue origin on the other hand were owned by Jeff Bezos, who was vastly richer than Musk, and as such had no need to grubby its hands with actually launching things. Instead they just kept working away at building a big reusable rocket, with the emphasis on reuse from the beginning. (Space-X built a fairly primitive rocket, and added reusability along the way)

                                            Blue Origin have just unveiled their planned rocket, which they plan to start launching in 2019, and it's basically designed to launch two big satellites to geosynchronous orbit, at the same time, and that's about it. They'll do their learning on this rocket, and their next one, is the one that will enable them to go to the Moon in a meaningful way.

                                            Now Blue Origin aren't half as focused on the commercial launch side of things as Space-X, simply because they haven't needed to be, but their plan is to manufacture engines for other companies. And this is where the article comes in. ULA (remember them) are building a single rocket to replace the Atlas V and Delta IV rockets, called the Vulcan. they don't want to use the Russian made rd-180 any more, so a couple of years ago, they bunged Blue Origin a bunch of cash to make their rocket engine a bit more powerful, so they could use it to make the vulcan rocket.

                                            Blue Origin are basically finished their engine, and are about to start final testing. The engine has been developed entirely at the expense of Jeff Bezos, and a bit by ULA, and it actually exists. You can touch it. The problem is that this is going to leave Rocketdyne completely and utterly fucked. They will have lost their main customer in ULA, they won't have their new rocket engine ready for a couple of years. They also need substantial funding from the Govt in order to develop it.

                                            So that article is all about a bunch of congressmen, writing a letter to the acting secretary of the Air force to say that the Airforce should be able to force ULA to abandon the Blue Origin BE-4 engine, which they've paid for, and which is basically ready to go, and instead force them to choose an engine manufactured by Rocketdyne, to be manufactured in Alabama, which will require a load of funding, and take several years to complete. All on the grounds that the rocket engine which is nearer completion is built by a company with no track record in building large rocket engines, and also it will be cheaper for the US govt to pay to develop a new rocket engine, rather than just use one that has been developed entirely at private expense.

                                            It's a breathtakingly naked piece of crony capitalism. And it's also completely fucking doomed. ULA are dying on their arse. They're being gradually wiped out by Space-X, because Space-X can launch at a fraction of the cost, and by offering an american alternative to Arianne or the russians, have completely swallowed their commercial launch market. the US doesn't launch half as many spy satellites as it used to, essentially because of Moore's law, but also there's no reason that Space-X or Blue Origin shouldn't be able to launch spy satellites for a fraction of the cost, and that contract can't hold indefinitely. so they can see their company dying from two different sides. They need to get this new rocket working as quickly as possible, and even then their future looks fucking grim.

                                            The thing is that it seems as with all aspects of the current presidency, everything is a shitshow, and there are two competing factions within the republicans. There are those that are in favour of total commercialization of space, and there are those that are ready to kill to keep the old ways, and they're battling it out by the new time, so you're getting all sorts of competing announcements.

                                            There was that kerfuffle where it seems as though Space-X were trying to steal NASA's thunder about using the first launch of the SLS to send people around the moon during trump's presidency. But seemingly what happened there was that Space-X had always planned to announce about then that they were going to send space tourists around the moon in 2018. So the more traditionalist side of things, convinced Trump to put astronauts on the first SLS launch and announce that they were going around the moon in 2019. If Space-X had got their announcement out first, it would have just made the NASA announcement look much weaker.

                                            So you're stuck with this really bizarre situation where NASA have managed to partially change their way of doing things from the ruinous costs plus model, to fixed costs, and as a result you are seeing a real battle developing between two different factions of the Republican party, who seem to represent the side who benefited from the old way of doing things, and the side who will benefit from the new way of doing things. The thing to focus on though is that the new way of doing things is way better than the old way of doing things, and it's getting very close to the point where it's going to completely kill off the old approach, simply because it's vastly cheaper, and much better.

                                            This huge SLS rocket Is supposed to cost about $30 billion dollars to develop, and each one costs over a billion to make and launch, and it can manage about one launch a year. It's basically fucking useless. and by the time it launches, it will have two commercial competitors that can launch broadly similar payloads, for a fraction of the cost, before returning to the landing pad and being ready to go again.

                                            There is literally no way this is going to be able to survive beyond one or two launches. It simply doesn't make any fucking sense. and once it goes, then that's going to be dark days for all the "oldspace" companies who are involved in building it. There;s going to be a lot of people losing their jobs in Huntsville-decatur in alabama, and in michoud in New orleans.

                                            Given the hostility of the current regime towards climate science (which is a lot of the meaningful stuff that Nasa actually does) victory for "Newspace" over the traditional companies, may just see them gutting NASA. If it's useless to provide military industrial complex jobs in the states of the people in charge of their funding, then they'll just probably kill it. And that would be shit.

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                                              Anyone for an astronomy thread?

                                              Given the hostility of the current regime towards climate science (which is a lot of the meaningful stuff that Nasa actually does) victory for "Newspace" over the traditional companies, may just see them gutting NASA.
                                              .

                                              By all accounts they're going to cut basically everything that isn't space exploration, and there'll probably be project cutbacks on that side too.

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                                                Anyone for an astronomy thread?

                                                ugh. How utterly predictable. Just as it appears that we are on the edge of a golden age in space development, the US govt decides to kill NASA.

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                                                  Anyone for an astronomy thread?

                                                  The sad thing is that all sides of the aisle have been trying to kill NASA for a while. Democrats who lack imagination have been complaining that we shouldn't be spending money on science while there are still poor people; and Republicans complaining that we shouldn't be spending money at all.

                                                  It is only the old school pork-barrel military districts; and a handful of people who think that the next war is going to be in space, who've been keeping NASA going at all.

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                                                    Anyone for an astronomy thread?

                                                    Ugh, that's really dispiriting. The US spends about .1% of GDP on NASA. that's a rounding error in the national accounts. It's in the region of $60 per head for every man woman and child in the US. There is every prospect that Nasa will have access to sub $100 million dollar launches, and access to bigelow space stations for a fraction of the cost of the ISS in the next ten years. The opportunity to start to do enormous amounts of meaningful research in space is right there, and everyone wants to shut it down. This sort of thing is the clearest evidence you can find of a superpower in decline.

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