The thread for space cadets!

[Samson]

Moment of touchdown: Out on the asteroid. It’s been a busy few months for Japan’s asteroid craft Hayabusa2. The probe, which is hanging out by a space rock called Ryugu, touched down on the body in late February, and collected some space dirt that was kicked up after the craft fired a bullet at the surface (pictured). On 5 April, it performed its most daring manoeuvre yet: it dropped an explosive on the surface to create a small crater that will expose some subsurface layers. Hayabusa2 will gather further material during a later touchdown, and, eventually, return the samples to Earth.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Well, that's fine; it's sort of a shuttle in that regard, isn't it? A plan also forms around this: Launch a spaceship in parts, attach to ship, burn off down the like. Sort of like later Von Braun plans.

If one can conquer Earth well enough, most of the rest of the terrestrial system objects are in reach, save, probably, Mercury.

The way the Starship is architected makes it difficult to attach anything to it and still be able to use the engines. They do plan on refueling it and the last plans they published showing how that would work would be two Starships docking tail to tail.

Does China need propulsion engineers?

That would put me on a list...

--------------

Rocket Lab announced a new satellite bus based around their Curie kick-stage called the Photon. If they think they can outcompete their own customers then good luck on them. Building satellites is not at all like building rockets. That they have a kickstage that can operate autonomously for a couple of hours is impressive but that doesn't mean building a satellite bus will be easy. I've seen people claim this is a brilliant move because they have already figured out the launch vehicle interface but that's one of the easiest parts of satellite design due to how discrete and well-defined the launch vehicle interface is. There main advantage is that they have some of the propulsion issues worked out which is one of the biggest challenges in the small sat world - though the propulsion they have demonstrated only covers a fraction of the total propulsion use-cases so even this isn't a massive headstart over traditional small sat builders.

 

[Berzerker]

Maybe playing around with asteroids aint such a good idea, the Japanese could alter the orbit of that rock enough to cause problems down the line... Or maybe they're nudging it off a course that would pose a problem in the future. Another thing, that rock looks peculiar. If asteroids formed from the accretion of dust and gas why is the surface so littered with chunks of rock? It looks like one of those religious mosaics done with little pebbles. Or do dust grains just happen to form hand sized chunks of rock normally? It looks like all that rock was shattered by an impact.

 

[Lexicus]

This is from a while ago but I thought it was funny

NASA Announces Plans To Put Man On Bus To Cleveland

CAPE CANAVERAL, FL—Hailing the dawn of a new era in long-distance highway travel, NASA officials unveiled Monday the agency’s ambitious plans to put a man on a bus to Cleveland, OH by early 2013.


The complex and dangerous three-day mission, dubbed “Chariot I,” is expected to pass through six states and include two brief transfers in Atlanta and Louisville in both directions, at a reported total cost of $360 dollars plus taxes and fees.



“For almost as long as our nation has existed, man has gazed upon a map of the eastern United States and dreamed of traveling to Cleveland, the largest metropolitan area in Ohio,” NASA administrator Charles F. Bolden, Jr. said at a press conference announcing the agency’s first major initiative since the discontinuation of the space shuttle program. “Until now, the immense physical and psychological risks involved in any manned mission had put that dream sadly out of reach.”

 

[r16]

well , before it's swamped by the black hole pictures , ı saw this snippet on the back of a calender page . So , there's some astreoid of 200 kilometers diameter out there with iron , nickel and gold deposits worth 137 000 times the global economy , but no name is offered . Is it because the name is too complex to write or NASA or something do not want squatters learn of it and arrive on spot like decades before and steal America's gold before good old NASA can stake its claims and put up no tresspassing signs ?

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Maybe playing around with asteroids aint such a good idea, the Japanese could alter the orbit of that rock enough to cause problems down the line... Or maybe they're nudging it off a course that would pose a problem in the future. Another thing, that rock looks peculiar. If asteroids formed from the accretion of dust and gas why is the surface so littered with chunks of rock? It looks like one of those religious mosaics done with little pebbles. Or do dust grains just happen to form hand sized chunks of rock normally? It looks like all that rock was shattered by an impact.

If the asteroid isn't earth-crossing then giving it the tiniest of one-off or twice-off nudges isn't going to put it on a collision with Earth. It would need an impulse on the order of km/s to be dangerous.

I don't know enough about asteroid accretion to comment on how it looks.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

well , before it's swamped by the black hole pictures , ı saw this snippet on the back of a calender page . So , there's some astreoid of 200 kilometers diameter out there with iron , nickel and gold deposits worth 137 000 times the global economy , but no name is offered . Is it because the name is too complex to write or NASA or something do not want squatters learn of it and arrive on spot like decades before and steal America's gold before good old NASA can stake its claims and put up no tresspassing signs ?

The name is Psyche 16. Estimated value 500+ quintillions of dollars in nickel, iron and precious metals such as gold, about 100 billions dollars for every living person.

There are lots of similar nickel-iron asteroids in the asteroid belt, probably part of the nucleus of something much bigger that was destroyed by Jupiter's gravity a long time ago.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

Of course once we can extract metal from the asteroids the value will drop somewhat.

Yep, i wonder the effect on economy if gold becomes as common as dirt.

 

[Broken_Erika]

First ever black hole image released
Astronomers have taken the first ever image of a black hole, which is located in a distant galaxy.

It measures 40 billion km across - three million times the size of the Earth - and has been described by scientists as "a monster".

The black hole is 500 million trillion km away and was photographed by a network of eight telescopes across the world.

Details have been published today in Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Prof Heino Falcke, of Radboud University in the Netherlands, who proposed the experiment, told BBC News that the black hole was found in a galaxy called M87.

"What we see is larger than the size of our entire Solar System," he said.

"It has a mass 6.5 billion times that of the Sun. And it is one of the heaviest black holes that we think exists. It is an absolute monster, the heavyweight champion of black holes in the Universe."

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47873592

 

[Berzerker]

it looks a bit oblong like its being stretched in the direction of the brightest part of the ring below it.

Could that bright partial ring be a star being torn apart and tugging on the black hole

its the size of the Earth and the event horizon is blurred by a boundary of decreasing light rather than a sharp dividing line

 

[Thorgalaeg]

It is the accretion disk. It is formed by lots of pulverized stars in the moment of being devoured.

 

[Berzerker]

It is the accretion disk. It is formed by lots of pulverized stars in the moment of being devoured.

Actually if that black hole is earth sized I'd expect any star being dismantled and eaten to have a larger footprint, unless it was a star smaller than the Earth. That bright ring looks more like a small planet breaking up.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

Actually if that black hole is earth sized I'd expect any star being dismantled and eaten to have a larger footprint, unless it was a star smaller than the Earth. That bright ring looks more like a small planet breaking up.

It is the part of the accretion disk closer to the black hole which reach huge temperatures just before falling into the black hole. The whole accretion disk extent several light years outwards i think.

 

[Berzerker]

doh! I got the Earth sized object from watching a TV news item and I might have mis-heard that too

I should have immediately realized the Milky Way's black hole wouldn't be that small

 

[Berzerker]

The image BE posted doesn't show it as much but the images I see on TV show a more defined margin on the bright side and a more blurred margin on the back side.

no, that aint right, my math is off

Man that thing is big

40 b km is...well... Neptune's mean orbital distance is about 45 b km

 

[Kaitzilla]

Man that thing is big

40 b km is...well... Neptune's mean orbital distance is about 45 b km

Ya, it is quite gigantic.

@4:20, this video shows what the scientists saw when they looked at the black hole at the center of our galaxy.
It is 26,000 light years away and not 55,000,000 million light years away like M87.
I love how it confirms without any doubt that black holes exist.

Light travels 300,000km/s, so it would take 40,000,000,000/300,000 = 133,333 seconds or 37 hours to go from one side of that black hole's event horizon to the other.
For our sun, light would take 1,391,000,000/300,000 = 4.6 seconds to go from from one side to the other.

To get another grasp on 40 billion kilometers, here is what Earth looks like from 6 billion kilometers away.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_Blue_Dot


I was always kind of curious what ultimately happens to stuff that falls into a black hole.
It probably crunches down to a single point, right?

If the black hole forms anything other than a point singularity such as some kind of crazy ring, then the force of gravity at the very center should be 0 just like Earth.
But all the math breaks down inside black holes, so there is just no way to know.

Perhaps drop a star into the black hole, and then monitor the gravitational waves?
That might give some clues as to the interior, but I doubt it.

 

[Imaus]

The name is Psyche 16. Estimated value 500+ quintillions of dollars in nickel, iron and precious metals such as gold, about 100 billions dollars for every living person.

There are lots of similar nickel-iron asteroids in the asteroid belt, probably part of the nucleus of something much bigger that was destroyed by Jupiter's gravity a long time ago.

Of course once we can extract metal from the asteroids the value will drop somewhat.

Yep, i wonder the effect on economy if gold becomes as common as dirt.

Asteroid mining was toted, in the mid 10s, as being a huge gold mine waiting to be plucked. Luxembourg "looked" into it and some companies popped up which all went quiet.

I, for one, am very suspicious of the notion that Asteroids are just money bags waiting to be picked up*. I can readily see their use as providing the basics for a interplanetary society, especially C class roids or S class; but M classes just seem too good to be true. Of course, if the science holds up, the math holds up, and the results hold up, I won't turn against the results. It would be a good boon. It just seems hyped up, is all. All the objects in the Asteroid Belt and Oort Cloud are less, combined, than the Moon, right? The Kupier Belt has a bit more, but still not by much, right? though that by itself does not preclude absolute wealth garnered from the planetsmals floating about....

I know that Mining the Sky: Untold Riches From The Asteroids, Comets, And Planets by John S Lewis looked into it, Zubrin doesn't talk about it much IIRC.

*Yes, I know Asteroid Mining is more complex than that.

 

[Berzerker]

aw hell, I should have read the article... Thats M87's black hole and apparently its aiming at us.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

Asteroid mining was toted, in the mid 10s, as being a huge gold mine waiting to be plucked. Luxembourg "looked" into it and some companies popped up which all went quiet.

I, for one, am very suspicious of the notion that Asteroids are just money bags waiting to be picked up*. I can readily see their use as providing the basics for a interplanetary society, especially C class roids or S class; but M classes just seem too good to be true. Of course, if the science holds up, the math holds up, and the results hold up, I won't turn against the results. It would be a good boon. It just seems hyped up, is all. All the objects in the Asteroid Belt and Oort Cloud are less, combined, than the Moon, right? The Kupier Belt has a bit more, but still not by much, right? though that by itself does not preclude absolute wealth garnered from the planetsmals floating about....

The key is that, thank to Archimedes, light elements float to the surface and heavy elements sunk to the center of the liquid hot magma ball a young forming planet basically is, so all valuable metals tend to concentrate in the nucleus. We have only access to Earth crust which is all light elements and very poor in heavy elements, and the few traces there are hard to find and hard to extract. However, if a planet or planetoid has been cracked into a billion of bits by some cosmical force we can have access to the bits corresponding to the nucleus, such as Psyche 16, which are like 100% heavy elements.

 

[Berzerker]

If Psyche's the core of a larger body, how big was the parent? My rough guess is a bit smaller than our Moon.