Space news /comments

[IAM]

I am not sure exactly what you're saying about the crater, but

a) it would be a meteorite. Meteor is the thing you see in the sky.
b) does the surface of the stone look like it was melted?
c) the safest bet is to consult an expert. Clean it, make a good photo of it and send it to someone qualified if there is nobody you can show it to in person.

There are many ways a rock that doesn't fit the geologic background can get to a place (glacier deposits, flooding, someone just dropping it there, etc.). It doesn't necessarily have to be of extraterrestrial origin.

the surface has several dings from a shovel and many (existing) dings like it was a piece of clay stabbed with a ball point pin. I would have ignored it; but when I work I often have to dig and finding something in undisturbed soil like this is weird.

Yea I figured I would have to bring it to somebody but... anyway my initial reaction once i saw what I had was that it was a piece of rock from deeper than 25 meters that was thrown up in a extraplanet rock strike. I kind of compare it to bomb blast and their dispersion.

Taking a trip to the local university geology department doesn't sound fun i will more than likely just crack it open with a hammer and have a look see. That's what it feels like.. a little bit heavier than granite.

 

[Winner]

People are finally realizing that a human spaceflight programme without a clear goal is inherently pointless.

The problem is that they'll probably pick an asteroid, which is about as interesting to the general public as a rubbish dump.

NASA advisory council urges the agency to pick a destination for its future missions

.

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Also, someone made a size comparison between the proposed conceptual Daedalus interstellar probe and the Saturn V rocket:



The whole thing has recently been "rebooted" and continued as Project Icarus.

 

[IAM]

Billions of planets with life?

http://news.yahoo.com/billions-planets-life-074000332.html

Just based on numbers alone I find it impossible to believe there is not life beyond earth.

 

[Winner]

Billions of planets in the potential zones where water can exist in liquid form. And even that is speculation.

Until we build telescopes capable of analysing the planets' atmospheres, it's too soon to be making any conclusions.

 

[Winner]

German scientists are working on super-precise navigation in space using pulsars

Great, so theoretically, this system "would enable the craft to determine its position to an accuracy of just five kilometres anywhere in the galaxy". Which is so astonishing I don't know whether to believe it or not - Milky Way is about 100,000 light-years wide, which is roughly 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilometres. To find your position with a 5 km accuracy sounds too good to be true.

Now we only need some sort of an FTL jump drive to actually take advantage of it. Easy peasy, right?

 

[Crezth]

German scientists are working on super-precise navigation in space using pulsars

Great, so theoretically, this system "would enable the craft to determine its position to an accuracy of just five kilometres anywhere in the galaxy". Which is so astonishing I don't whether to believe it or not - Milky Way is about 100,000 light-years wide, which is roughly 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilometres. To find your position with a 5 km accuracy sounds too good to be true.

Now we only need some sort of an FTL jump drive to actually take advantage of it. Easy peasy, right?

Holy moly, that is truly impressive. Those Germans, man, I tell ya.

 

[kramerfan86]

Seems like its putting the cart before the horse to build a navigation system before you have any sort of drive that lets you use it, but cool news nonetheless.

 

[Winner]

Seems like its putting the cart before the horse to build a navigation system before you have any sort of drive that lets you use it, but cool news nonetheless.

Well, the article says that future generations of probes within this Solar System could use the same system, which would of course be helpful. The problem seems to be in the technology of X-ray telescopes, which at present are simply too heavy and bulky for this technology to be used on small spacecraft.

BTW, speaking of the Galaxy: http://www.3dgalaxymap.com/

 

[tokala]

The whole thing has recently been "rebooted" and continued as Project Icarus

Isn't it a tad optimistic to designate industrial scale He-3 extraction from Jupiter's atmosphere as near-future technology

Okay, the reboot page is talking about the "coming centuries"

 

[kramerfan86]

Honestly I dont think anything in the solar system is out of reach as a near future technology, the only problem is the funding isnt there. We went from no presence in space to the moon in less than 20 years, so its not a lack of ability its a lack of will. The governments are too cowardly to stand up for knowledge for the sake of knowledge when people moan about problems on earth so the funding is decaying away to nothing and instead of expanding our horizons the goals are letting private industries figure out a way for rich people to get to weightlessness.

 

[timtofly]

Honestly I dont think anything in the solar system is out of reach as a near future technology, the only problem is the funding isnt there. We went from no presence in space to the moon in less than 20 years, so its not a lack of ability its a lack of will. The governments are too cowardly to stand up for knowledge for the sake of knowledge when people moan about problems on earth so the funding is decaying away to nothing and instead of expanding our horizons the goals are letting private industries figure out a way for rich people to get to weightlessness.

Doesn't that just prove that trusting and waiting for "the governement" is the wrong approach? Or are people too afraid to do things of their own initiative? Seems to me the only progress period is when individuals took initiative and did not wait for "governmental" authority.

Steps can be boosted by, or held back by the government. I for one am thankful that people are still contemplating the future and not letting dreams die.

 

[red_elk]

German scientists are working on super-precise navigation in space using pulsars

Considering the fact that intergalactic objects are rotating around center of the galaxy with different speeds, measuring in hundreds of km/s..
I wonder if the words "anywhere in the galaxy" were said by scientists or they're just invention of BBC journalist.

 

[Winner]

Isn't it a tad optimistic to designate industrial scale He-3 extraction from Jupiter's atmosphere as near-future technology

Okay, the reboot page is talking about the "coming centuries"

Yeah. Besides, Saturn might be a tad better source anyway. Jupiter is bloody difficult in so many ways.

Also, I am not convinced a short fly-by of a star is really worth the effort.

Honestly I dont think anything in the solar system is out of reach as a near future technology, the only problem is the funding isnt there. We went from no presence in space to the moon in less than 20 years, so its not a lack of ability its a lack of will. The governments are too cowardly to stand up for knowledge for the sake of knowledge when people moan about problems on earth so the funding is decaying away to nothing and instead of expanding our horizons the goals are letting private industries figure out a way for rich people to get to weightlessness.

They should read the article I pasted in this thread. The funding shouldn't be an issue - the whole world spends something about $40 billion per year on space-related activities. That's pennies compared to most other things we're spending money on. We could easily double, triple, quadruple it and it wouldn't even stand out as a serious expenditure in most national budgets.

The problem is that our (Western) society is getting increasingly dumb and disinterested in what's important - progress through scientific and technological advancement. It's absurd that we probably spend far more money on developing lipsticks than we do on trying to understand the Universe better.

Speaking of that, here's another article. It's hyped a lot, but...

The race to Mars: India takes the lead

Considering the fact that intergalactic objects are rotating around center of the galaxy with different speeds, measuring in hundreds of km/s..
I wonder if the words "anywhere in the galaxy" were said by scientists or BBC journalist.

I assume they meant relative to the reference objects.

 

[Crezth]

Doesn't that just prove that trusting and waiting for "the governement" is the wrong approach? Or are people too afraid to do things of their own initiative? Seems to me the only progress period is when individuals took initiative and did not wait for "governmental" authority.

Such as the Apollo missions?

 

[kramerfan86]

Doesn't that just prove that trusting and waiting for "the governement" is the wrong approach? Or are people too afraid to do things of their own initiative? Seems to me the only progress period is when individuals took initiative and did not wait for "governmental" authority.

Steps can be boosted by, or held back by the government. I for one am thankful that people are still contemplating the future and not letting dreams die.

Everything about manned space travel and space in general was pushed by government. Private industry when it comes to manned flight hasnt even matched the john glenn in orbit level of ability. So they are still 50 years behind where governments reached. And the problem is that there isnt much financial benefit upfront to a mission like going to mars or exploring the gas giants, its more about knowledge which could potentially open up benefits. Not many business have 100s of billions of dollars to sink into knowledge gain, governments do though.

 

[Winner]

Such as the Apollo missions?

I rather well-known space historian once called the Apollo project "Stalinist" in its heavy statist top-down management. Maybe that's why it worked so well

You know what's really funny? Apollo was terminated because of the high cost of Saturn-V. Yet, if we run the numbers, we find that each Saturn-V cost less that one Shuttle launch, and the US was doing 4-6 of those per year for more than two decades.

If Apollo hadn't been terminated, but evolved -- which would have been the logical approach, you don't spend tens of billions developing a set of hardware only to throw it away and start all over again after just a few missions -- the US could have easily reached Mars by 1980s.

 

[red_elk]

I assume they meant relative to the reference objects.

I think scientists meant neighborhood of Solar system, probably 10-50 LY.
If method determine position in some general Galactic coordinate system (which is not easy to define, even position of "symmetry plane" of Milky Way is known just approximately) with accuracy of 5 km, it's probably too awesome to be true.
But anyway, without original article it's just speculations.

 

[Crezth]

I rather well-known space historian once called the Apollo project "Stalinist" in its heavy statist top-down management. Maybe that's why it worked so well

You know what's really funny? Apollo was terminated because of the high cost of Saturn-V. Yet, if we run the numbers, we find that each Saturn-V cost less that one Shuttle launch, and the US was doing 4-6 of those per year for more than two decades.

If Apollo hadn't been terminated, but evolved -- which would have been the logical approach, you don't spend tens of billions developing a set of hardware only to throw it away and start again after a few missions -- the US could have easily reached Mars by 1980s.

Yup. Ten characters.

 

[timtofly]

Such as the Apollo missions?

Proof that it could be done? or Proof that it needed to be done? Seems the government thought they had a motive to get it done. It just boosted the progress that was already there.

 

[kramerfan86]

Proof that it could be done? or Proof that it needed to be done? Seems the government thought they had a motive to get it done. It just boosted the progress that was already there.

Progress that was already there?