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    This seems to be down to cutbacks in the National science foundation's grant, which meant that they couldn't do the big repair and upgrade work that needed to be done, and the money was instead going on running repairs. They tried to give the telescope away, but no-body wanted to take it on and pump the money in. They tried to give it to NASA and they gently explained that they too were operating on a pretty thin budget. Now they will either have to essentially rebuild it from scratch, which will be expensive, but then again It obviously was time for a major overhaul. That big bit in the middle that you see there has been rapidly dismantled over the last couple of weeks. The amount of extra stuff that had been put on it over the years played a big part in this eventual collapse.

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      That big bit in the middle
      That'll be the scientific term, presumably? <Winky thing>

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        I stick out my tongue at you!

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          Talk about fitting to your stereotypes....

          https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/the-wor...swiss/46203780

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            After noon all. The Panel may like to drop by the Crossword thread to help out...

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              https://twitter.com/GenChuckYeager/status/1336150145369444352

              Ah I see it got its own thread.
              Last edited by The Awesome Berbaslug!!!; 09-12-2020, 20:04.

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                In the next hour or so SpaceX are going to launch their 50 metre tall prototype starship up to 12.5 km and then let it fall like a brick and try and do a fancy tail flip manouevre to land it back on the launch pad. If it works it will look like this. Yesterday they got to 1.3 seconds from launch before cancelling.



                But since this is the first stab at it, It's far more likely to smash into the launchpad in a big fireball. Though if it gets that far it will likely be considered a big success. There are livestreams all over youtube. so you can take your pick.

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                  When you look at it on its launchpad it looks, as a friend of mine says, like a mock-up Potemkin spaceship, not a real thing.

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                    well it is effectively just sheets of metal bent into rings and welded together. with a cone put on the top, with a bit of internal plumbing and a few engines on the end. An earlier version of it expected to look like tintin's rocket.

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                      It's about to happen fairly imminently. they had to pause the launch at 2 minutes, and are waiting for a new launch time. Apparently a plane wandered too close.



                      new time is 22:40
                      Last edited by The Awesome Berbaslug!!!; 09-12-2020, 21:24.

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                        Well that was quite exciting. Here's Scott Manley's video. It's weird watching something that big falling at terminal velocity. I was surprised at how well it pulled off the flip manoeuvre at the end and everything was going really well, until a lack of pressure in the tanks used for landing meant one of the engines cut out, and the other essentially caught fire and it hit the ground a little too hard, giving us the big explosion that we were promised. The next one of these is more or less ready to go once they make a few tweaks based on this launch

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                          Did anyone catch a sight of the northern lights from this week's CME?

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                            The only total eclipse of the sun visible from Earth in 2020 has just taken place (between 16:06-16:08 GMT), with numerous live streams on YouTube capturing it live from Argentina.

                            Here's Euronews' footage – drag the red bar under the video back a few minutes to rewatch it as live:



                            Or CosmoSapiens:



                            I'm not sure there's any more beautiful sight available on this planet.

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                              Popped to the end of the driveway last night to check out the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn. Worth the effort even with just basic binoculars.

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                                Sam Kelly got a good view as well.

                                We saw it, but quality was very diminished by cloud cover and light pollution

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                                  Ms F drove to a hilltop to see it - I stayed at the desk and when she came back I glanced out of the back bedroom/study window and there it was. With binos you could see that Saturn was more ovoid looking

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                                    I just got rain in me eyes.

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                                      Showing you fear among the handfuls of dust

                                      Phobos eclipsing the Sun as seen from the Curiosity Rover

                                      https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/scienc...nment-55562154

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                                        Safe touchdown on Mars for Perserverance, fuck yeah

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                                          I liked the "straighten up and fly right" stage. So did the NASA/JPL people as the parachute opened a few seconds later.

                                          [actually probably a second or two earlier, given the time lag of em signals! And assuming an overall reference frame, which doesn't actually exist]

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                                            I forgot this because I was too engrossed in royal antwerp 3 4 rangers. Now to find a recording of a stream

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                                              This is a good stream

                                              Wemartians is a really good podcast. The guy who does it, Jake Robbins is from the west coast of canada, and has that dry canadian sense of humour that reminds me of the influx of canadians into Irish colleges in 2001. This stream is a good example of what it is like in general, and he does a great job of getting people on to discuss what they are doing on mars in a way that is really accessible. He also does another podcast with an italian american from philly called offnominal, which has a much broader remit, which again is very good at telling you about things that are happening in a very relaxed, very accessible way.

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                                                Went out for a mid-evening walk round the village with Mrs TrL last night and just happened to be pointing in the right direction to see a bright white light with orange sparks coming off both sides as it curved down, apparently towards Liverpool. It was obviously much lower and brighter than any meteor shower I've ever seen, so much so that I wondered if it was some sort of marine flare. Turns out it was a meteor https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-eng...istol-56237596

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                                                  Oh wow, the shot in the montage video on that link of the meteor streaking right across the centre of Orion, as seen from Nuneaton, is particularly great.

                                                  Rather a startling thought that, as mentioned at the end of the video according to NASA, "Earth gets hit by 100 tonnes of space debris every day". For all that space is really, really big and really, really empty, there's still an awful lot of bits of this and this flying about everywhere up there that you simply have to adequately shield your sensitive spacecraft/instruments/astronauts etc. from to the nth degree.

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                                                    Yay, Starship didn't blow up this time. Sure it caught fire a little, but that's OK.

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