Space and Astronomy in general

From shower thoughts on Reddit

The picture of the black hole we captured yesterday is basically a 55 million years old Black Hole, We captured a picture of something that occurred when we didn’t even exist.

Israel became the 4th country to reach the surface of the moon today with their Beresheet lander. Unfortunately a main engine failure caused the landing to not be as smooth as they had hoped.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2019...

A private moon impactor is still a remarkable achievement.

Landing on the moon is hard.

thrawn82 wrote:

A private moon impactor is still a remarkable achievement.

That is quite true. I hope they get the chance to learn from the experience & try again.

BadKen wrote:

Landing on the moon is hard.

So is landing 3 boosters within a couple of minutes.

I will never get tired of watching that happen.

ARE HUMANS FIT FOR SPACE? A ‘HERCULEAN’ STUDY SAYS MAYBE NOT
*Love it when the article title is all caps...

Francine Garnett-Bakelman, the article’s lead author and a molecular biologist at the University of Virginia, said it was the “most comprehensive result possible based on the data available.” But to the essential question “Are humans fit for space?” the study provides only unsettling and incomplete answers. Long-term exposure to spaceflight is dangerous; based on what we know now, a journey to Mars is still too risky to contemplate.

Never getting old:

BadKen wrote:

Landing on the moon is hard.

And landing really hard on the moon is significantly easier!

Yonder wrote:
BadKen wrote:

Landing on the moon is hard.

And landing really hard on the moon is significantly easier!

So true, I learned that from Kerbal Space Program.

RIP Jeb

MeatMan wrote:

Katie Bouman, who led the team that devised the algorithm, giving a TED Talk in 2017 about taking a picture of a black hole:

Apparently, that algorithm wasn't used for this.

While she led the development of an algorithm to take a picture of a black hole, an effort that was the subject of a TED Talk she gave in 2016, her colleagues said that technique was not ultimately used to create this particular image.

A few days ago I wrote that I hoped that SpaceIL would try again after their lander crashed into the moon.

I didn't think it would happen so quickly, though:

SpaceIL Now Planning the Creation and Launch of a Second Beresheet Spacecraft

No one will ever convince me that Jebediah isn't flying that.

Yonder wrote:

No one will ever convince me that Jebediah isn't flying that.

How is Jedediah flying that? he's still trapped on the moon after he bailed out of the probe that crashed there last week.

Mixolyde wrote:

Never getting old:

SPACESHIP !!!

Scott Manley is starting a new series called "Why Rockets Fail".

The first entry is for a Delta II that was carrying the first GPS satellite on which I'd worked. Some of my friends from work were in the blockhouse he mentions, and had their rental cars destroyed.

"A total elapsed mission time of 12.58 seconds".

We did eventually recover our payload box and had it on display for a while. I don't know where it is now, though.

So ultimately a solid rocket booster failed because of rigorous safety testing. Clearly, the answer is to never test anything!

Wow

For reference, that's an area of the sky about the size of the full moon.

deftly wrote:

For reference, that's an area of the sky about the size of the full moon.

A full regular moon? Or a full super blue blood moon?

merphle wrote:
deftly wrote:

For reference, that's an area of the sky about the size of the full moon.

A full regular moon? Or a full super blue blood moon?

Well, the blue and blood effects don't affect the apparent size. I'm going with the average full moon size. Which isn't halfway between the size of a full moon at perigee (super moon) and apogee, because orbital velocity isn't constant in an elliptical orbit, so you don't have a flat distribution of full moon sizes.

You, uh, need some soothing cream for that burn, Merphle?

I'm with you, Jim!

I love NASA. I worked for them happily for a few years. But they will not land a man on the moon using the SLS, Orion and Gateway setup by 2024. Ain't gonna happen that quickly.

I thought the Space X rocket they are developing was going to the be the biggest/most powerful?

I'm worried that the budget and aggressive moon plans will lead to a big flashy start that will have schedule slip and no allocation for maintaining any of it.

Yes, Gaald, until the SLS actually launches, it will be the biggest in use. 70 ton capacity for the Falcon Heavy, development cost of $500M so far. 77 ton capacity for the SLS, with later enhancements planned to get to 130 tons, at a cost (so far) of $23B. Yes... 46x as expensive as the Falcon Heavy to develop...

Robear wrote:

You, uh, need some soothing cream for that burn, Merphle? :-)

Nope. Feeling good about it.

This announcement of establishing a permanent presence on the moon has me really hyped. Coincidentally, I finished reading Andy Weir's Artemis literally about an hour ago, and while I fully recognize that it's a work of fiction (and it's certainly not groundbreaking, by any stretch), it's gotten me romanticizing about life offworld again. This is a seriously exciting time to be alive, even if I only get to observe from afar.