The thread for space cadets!

People who live in Boca Chica Texas are being told to evacuate their homes ahead of a SpaceX starhopper test flight as it may shatter their windows. This is really terrible and irresponsible and I have no idea how the company is being allowed to conduct such tests.

https://qz.com/1694822/spacex-starhopper-launch-prompts-blast-warnings-from-local-police/

I am not sure what I find more disturbing: That somebody had the idea to test this in an inhabited area or that they are allowed to.
 
To be fair, it is very low-populated - even less so than is typical of Texas in general. But Texas rushed approval for the launch site without buying people out of their land to get them to move and without proper environmental studies. There's a lot of worry that this launch site will disrupt some endangered species in the area and if SpaceX hits the launch cadence they're projecting, those fears will be realized.

This launch site has always been an oddball that only really made sense because of all the money Texas through at the company to attract them. To fly out of Boca Chica, every launch will have to perform a costly dogleg maneuver to avoid overflying populated foreign nations. SpaceX also did not do a good job of assessing the local soil and ended up having to spend a lot more money and time preparing the ground for construction than they originally anticipated. Last I've heard, they've given up on flying Falcon out of the area due to the performance hit and I think I even read they no longer seriously plan to fly Starship from the area either and instead are mostly going to do hopper testing at the facility and might build out more test stands and areas rather than the launch pads they were originally going to put in the area.
 
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@hobbsyoyo I have a question that was posed to me as a thought experiment. I think I have it figured out, but I would like a second opinion:

Picture you and I in the back end of the Space Shuttle and the big doors are open and there we are in our spacesuits looking at the stars. The shuttle is going as fast as it goes in one direction. You take a baseball and throw it out the back of the shuttle as hard as you can. (I watch impressed because I throw like a girl. :p )

What happens to the baseball? I know that relative to the shuttle it is now moving slowly in the opposite direction from the shuttle, but still moving forward along with the shuttle. We perceive it as flying away from us. I know that it is slowing down because we have applied energy to send it in a backwards trajectory and the forward velocity must decrease. Assuming that we are in a high enough orbit that atmospheric effects are negligible, does the baseball eventually slow enough to de-orbit?
 
If you threw the ball backwards (so toward the engines of the shuttle if it's facing forward relative to the direction of the orbit) hard enough, you could de-orbit it as that is the retrograde (braking) direction. But you'd have to throw it quite hard to make it de-orbit fast, about 100 m/s or so to bring it down within a week. Just throwing it at average pitching speed probably won't be fast enough to bring it down that much faster than drag would as the shuttle already orbits quite low and there is non-negligible drag at that altitude which brings things downs in weeks or months. If you were really at a high enough altitude that drag doesn't affect the ball then no, you would not be able to de-orbit it as it's too high and would take a lot more energy to de-orbit (few hundred m/s).
 
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The ball will change the orbit to a lower elliptic one, with apogee at throwing point. In fact if there is no atmosphere, it either immediately falls down on Earth (if it was slowed down enough) or stays on the orbit forever. All scenarios where it de-orbits gradually, require either atmospheric effects or jet engines installed on the ball :)

(That assumes the Shuttle itself is on circular orbit and the ball is thrown in the exact opposite direction of Shuttle's velocity)
 
The shuttle is normally low enough that it doesn't take a huge amount of energy to de-orbit. IIRC, the OMS (orbital maneuver system - the supplementary engines which provide the final push to orbit after the large orange fuel tank is dropped) only provide around 200 m/s of delta-v to the shuttle. Throwing a ball at 100 m/s will put it's perigee low enough to be dragged back in very quickly. But if we're high enough to be above drag as per Lemon's scenario, you'd need to throw much faster. But the real shuttle couldn't get that high.
 
What a brave new world we live in-
https://thehill.com/homenews/news/4...st-allegation-of-criminal-wrongdoing-in-space
NASA investigating possible first allegation of criminal wrongdoing in space


NASA is reportedly investigating an allegation that an astronaut aboard the International Space Station improperly accessed the bank account of her estranged spouse, marking what could be the first allegation of criminal activity from space.

The New York Times reported Friday that NASA astronaut Anne McClain told investigators she accessed her spouse’s bank account during her six-month mission aboard the International Space Station in preparation for NASA’s first all-female spacewalk.
 
Throwing a ball at 100 m/s will put it's perigee low enough to be dragged back in very quickly.

100 m/s would be an extremely fast pitch. I don't want to insult your pitching skills, but I would be impressed if you managed to reach 40 m/s
 
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heavier form of the F-119 formula or was it 118 ? Fighter-bomber size nominally , it becomes far harder as the weight goes up . Elsewhere on the web it got two likes , only because they wouldn't follow the r16 flow HERE and lend their names like "approving" , so like don't .


well , the Russian Ambrassador to New Turkey writes an op-ed if you will , in which he starts with reminding how the Soviet Union and its "allies" defeated Nazism , September 1st being the Peace Day or whatever . Without a single reference to good ols days when America was paying great attention to have proofs all over the place to be discovered ... that New Turkey operated entirely on Nazi experience , following the roadmap and stuff of post-1933 in every field whereever remotely possible . They are apparently hush hushing that they might provide engines to the QFX , the Qatari fighter in development in Ankara , but might support "Rsadio Electric WEA

...

ı don't understand the excitement , it's like that damned USB ports again , the keyboard decides to write as if ı pressed caps lock .


so they are offering jammers and stuff . In addition to now Su-57s . Again apparently they opened the talks with Su-30s . 57s once being Indian "property" , they wouldn't perhaps want to offend New Delhi but PM asked at the exhibit at that Moscow fair was a mockup and then whether that was the plane New Turkey was "buying" . Russians have learned a bit or two , too . It's going to be E type , export and not the full-up . Deliveries of the second S-400 battery is underway , doubling Americans to check what's in them . Did anyone give the Russians the full up ?

and what's more , Putin has offered to have a New Turkey spaceman up in orbit on the 100th Anniversary of the Republic of 1923 . The first New Turkey spaceman candidate was killed in the Phantom that went down as they were trolling some Russian arms shipment / smuggling . UK has given up flying the QFX on the day , despite Boris Johnson's first call after his coup of closing the British Parliament for Brexit was to New Turkey . US has been like forced to not to deliver the Footpad , the abomination better known as the F-35 . Oh , glorious Putin can insult the now dead Republic and the unrealized dreams of its evil and dead founder Kemal by mocking the latter's saying of "The future is in the skies" with a New Turkey cosmonaut ? Sure he can after the apparent claims that he has also managed to have a full reactor breach . Because they can't go around and say they were bombed or ... Somebody has approved the cracking open of a reactor , can they now ? Putin fears nothing , man . Not even a claim that he has got no right to talk of the fighting against Nazism , now that naturally none of his people under him could be be ever there
 
Trump tweeted classified photos from one of the Hubble-class spy satellites that the US operates. This has provided a bonanza for spy-sat enthusiasts (and foreign adversaries) who have gone over the details of the photos and backed out a lot of the technical specifications of the satellites based on the images he tweeted. The images in question were of a Iranian launch pad which was destroyed following a recent launch failure.

The Air Force is trying to change the narrative on their stance on a Space Force (which under legislation currently being considered, would be within the Air Force rather than an independent branch) as they've recently forced out generals for speaking out in favor of the Space Force and have pushed out press rules which have further stifled the ability of the upper echelons to publicly lobby for the Space Force. The Air Force is now trying to make it seem like they really do support the notion of a Space Force but I think they're just running damage control.
https://spacenews.com/air-force-changes-message-on-space-force-amid-criticism-it-stifled-debate/

An ESA spacecraft had to fire its thrusters to avoid a collision with a SpaceX Starlink satellite and the Europeans are throwing some major shade. It's to the point where the Iridium CEO had to point out that his satellites have to make similar avoidance maneuvers every week but they've never gone to the press to shame anyone over it. Ironically, the collision avoidance maneuver was only made possible because of radar data the US provides to the rest of the world. It's telling that the Europeans are decrying the increased utilization of space by their economic rivals but don't seem very interested in being good stewards of outer space by setting up more of their own monitoring services and sharing the data.
https://spacenews.com/esa-spacecraft-dodges-potential-collision-with-starlink-satellite/

Finally, SpaceX has re-committed to offering ride share services to smaller satellites after some previous missteps which they had hinted meant they were uninterested in servicing that sector of the market. The about-face seems to be a direct reaction to the success of Rocket Lab as their new service is undercutting them on price point. They're now charging down to only a $1 million for some launches (originally it was $2.5m) which is well below what Rocket Lab can offer.
https://spacenews.com/spacex-revamps-smallsat-rideshare-program/
 
mother forgot her cellphone at the seaside house . Nothing fancy for the middle class couple of both retired , mother and late father . Despite the fact that it needs a fresh coat of paint even . Got the phone , it will be next summer when mother returns , bought the ticket for the bus trip back , had almost an hour to wait , so ı walked across the beach and sat on a boat turned upside down for perhaps 15 minutes . Does Mud Green exist as a colour ? Perhaps Brackish Water Green , then , though it becomes Blue when it gets deeper . ı haven't been "in" the sea for 30 years or more , and ı will never learn to swim as it seems obvious . The wind picked up for a while and the waves got somewhat bigger . Like 5 centimeters higher , though they would mean nothing to the landing ship on repulsorlifts ı designed . ı even walked to the shore and ı pressed the tip of my shoe , to make this dent in the wet sand at its deepest penetration of the dry . ı am not crazy , ı am in the Starfleet , Strafleet existing is crazy . And when ı say "Have a nice Day" and the cashier says nothing back (for ı had lost my bottle of water on the way in) he/she either hates me or he/she will still be there in the shop , while am on my way home . Just a little more due to the Stuntwoman . Who also might very well lack the heart to tell me we are not like fighting this year , too . And can you imagine another 20 years ?

uh , erm , what ? You are very right . We are treated to a claim that Russia will give the town of Idlip to us , like we are equal "Whites" and not "Brown" to Superpower "White" , despite America treats Moscow lower and lower in the colour scala . An explosion of "leaks" , Israel "discovers" New Turkey is deploying S-400s with units in the field around Ankara , aerial branch of Army of Petrol has its crews in training now and it will be operational by the end of the year and not April next year ! Voice of Russia is overcome with joy and somehow are also announcing they will have the Hour of the Opposition again , with the original 1st host , too . Ah , joy of beating does not exactly match the specialized news bulletins , but hey , that's Russian bi-polarism for you , man . ı hadn't even got to the 130 km ranged HARMs ... And the scene changes to Sivas , the city where Kemal had a Congress a full 100 years back , gaining the political leadership of Anatolia . Re-enacment of which shows a guy in a fez with a guy in a turban , because it's all about teaching people that "Muslims" and not Muslims won 1919-22 , a war which wasn't real and just a Kemalist lie a few years back or a decade even , but America is adaptable to local conditions . And the PM says New Turkey has , let me see , started work on nuclear tipped missiles . Every developed country has them he says . See , if Russia does not give A-K-P Idlip , it must then sell New Turkey atomic bombs , because the PM has willed to have nuclear weapons . And now that Russians have refused to accept a Jihadi attack killed 3 soldiers of theirs and a disagreement is between New Turkey and EU over a notion that 1.5 billion Euros for Syrian refugees "might" have gone missing , the nuclear power station to built in Sinop by ı think South Koreans is no longer feasible , and so might go to Putin as well ... Yeah , Israel has them nukes and everybody denies him . One would be really scared , if one indeed was Saddam's Iraq or something . This WMD being the most succesful formula of America to bombing one to ruins . "Klotzen, nicht Kleckern" which like totally means do not play with your food , but hey , America will think it's America that plays with its food . Just let me to light up the world a bit , will you ? ı might have heard it on the Voice of Russia that Putin has offered to sell America missiles , but am not sure of it . On a binge of reading Star Wars novels , Republic Commando series currently , was coming to the end of the second book . And this MOFF Panaka and ı are going to have a talk , for bad mouthing Padme to Leia Organa ...
 
indian probe crashes from 2.1 kilometers up ? Moon Base Alpha:2 , world: 0 . But like it should have happened 20 years ago ... We blowing up the waste facility as the canon would have it around September 13th , 1999 ?

many might be wondering but keeping aloof on why ı blame the Stuntwoman ? This sissiness , my friend . Like after the astreoid thread ı end up with the smoking gun on my lap . Indians are nationalistic and web savvy , right ? Punching like a sissy one is and at least tell me that you managed to use visible radar frequencies .
 
Damn, and they were so close, too. I hope they can use it as a stepping stone to go on further missions....
They found the lander intact on the surface but sitting at an angle. They are trying to establish contact with it but it is probably dead.
 
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