Space In General

I say that it is a patch of fresh ice, dumped there by the water vapour plumes.

Mystery solved. :D
 
I would love it if Ceres had an atmosphere, but I doubt it has a magnetosphere or strong enough gravity to retain one.
 
Nah, seeing that Mars has already lost most of it's magnetosphere and atmosphere, I can't see any thing smaller still have it.

On the subject of Mars, I hope one of the rovers finds out when Mars actually lost most of it's liquid water supporting properties. Should give us a decent benchmark for further explorations on other planets and moons.
 
Dennisch
Nah, seeing that Mars has already lost most of it's magnetosphere and atmosphere, I can't see any thing smaller still have it.

On the subject of Mars, I hope one of the rovers finds out when Mars actually lost most of it's liquid water supporting properties. Should give us a decent benchmark for further explorations on other planets and moons.
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Mercury has a disproportionately strong magnetosphere for its size. On those bodies lacking a strong one, it may be possible to strengthen them. NASA is working hard trying to understand how magnetospheres are generated and how they part of a complex and dynamic relationship with the sun.

Occasionally you hear otherwise intelligent people saying that NASA should be killed off and all space projects privatized. NASA's mission is crucially focused on basic research and discovery, while the basic focus of private enterprise is on profit. One can well imagine that the eventually tendency of such a total takeover would be to sacrifice research and discovery to profitable bread-and-butter exploitation.
 
Dotini
Occasionally you hear otherwise intelligent people saying that NASA should be killed off and all space projects privatized. NASA's mission is crucially focused on basic research and discovery, while the basic focus of private enterprise is on profit. One can well imagine that the eventually tendency of such a total takeover would be to sacrifice research and discovery to profitable bread-and-butter exploitation.
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NASA is spinning its wheels in dirt. It's been doing "basic research and discovery" for way too long. If the progenitors of our space programs saw what it's become, they'd be crying out in anguish. Space should've been privatized a long time ago. Washington put all the money into a government administration that spends their budget so inefficiently just as any other department or body of government would/does. Something a private company buys for one million, they end up inflating to five and finally get around to getting or applying it in probably ten times the duration. Government should've handled the building of our space program like it does the military, with military contracts and subsidies for research labs.

Military industry's aim is profit of course, but that doesn't get in the way of their blindingly fast research capabilities, because in order to get more profit and compete for contracts, they have to innovate faster and better. Competition is the important aspect for sure, always is. NASA is seemingly resting on its laurels and look where it's at now, a sad state. Don't totally blame the congressmen and women that voted their budget down. If NASA was giving us truly compelling results, they would've continued to get a proper budget.

One of the biggest problems for them though was the simple fact that we had a different president every four or eight years. We all know that planning missions for space involves extremely long time spans relative to other Earthly affairs. One president will set an outline for them, or a budget, then NASA starts work, next president's in and - poof - there goes your mission. Money wasted, work discarded, on to our next proposition.

What needed to happen, instead of NASA, was to allow all the high end engineering companies the permission to build toward space and stop saying " Don't worry everyone, we got this, focus on atmospheric and military." No, you didn't have it, you were crippled by the whim of politicians who mostly come from law backgrounds and couldn't care less about the matter of exploration.

I'm not saying it's all NASA's fault, they're a victim of being included in one of the worst systems for initiating real growth and pioneering: politics. They did some amazing work, when they were allowed to, but otherwise, most of the time, they were/are stuck.

You've got it backwards my friend, totally backwards. Allow companies to compete for contracts. They could've given out dozens of them to various established companies, even start ups, for the same price that they'd pay for running NASA for a year. Then those companies would've all expanded, devised, invented, and solved so many things that could have really stimulated a new push into the frontier.

I don't get how you could come to the conclusion that research would be set aside for profit. This isn't the electronics industry where they make phones' batteries die at a set rate then seal the covers so you have to buy a new phone rather than just replace the old battery. This is exploration into space. Every step they make towards giving people the ability to explore it faster and better rewards them, and us, exponentially.
 
Dotini
Occasionally you hear otherwise intelligent people saying that NASA should be killed off and all space projects privatized. NASA's mission is crucially focused on basic research and discovery, while the basic focus of private enterprise is on profit. One can well imagine that the eventually tendency of such a total takeover would be to sacrifice research and discovery to profitable bread-and-butter exploitation.
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There's a real problem with having an R&D group with no particular drive or competition though. See most university research departments. It's 60% politics, 35% paper pushing and 5% trying to find some post-grad with enough time to actually get into the lab and do something.

I can imagine in the days of the space race there was a totally different atmosphere in NASA to what they have now. Without an "outsider" to compete against like the Russians, profit is an excellent way to drive results.
 
Wardez
I hope they don't. They should be giving that money to private space companies as subsidies. Let NASA die, we don't need them the government to be our leader into exploring outer space.
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We're better off with as many space programs as we can get, government funded or not.
 
The major countries should set their differences aside and combine their strength and fundings.

We'll be on Mars before 2020.
 
Oh come on. That is really going to be a court case?? What a complete and utter tool.

Let's waste precious time and bandwidth because some conspiracist lost his marbles sometime in his life?
 
Let him pay for a rocket with rover to Mars himself. Force him. If he fails to do so, take away all his belongings, sell them and give the money to NASA.
 
Not sure if mentioned yet:

Curiosity's wheels seem to be in rough shape. Pretty sad to see when you consider the fact that Opportunity has been on Mars for 10 years now and her wheels are in better shape.

UFO,+UFOs,+sighting,+sightings,+news,+report,+Justin+Bieber,+NASA,+top+secret,+mission,+alien,+aliens,+tech,+science,+black+opps,+USAF,+Mars,+rover,+curiosity,+surface,+ancient,+ruins,+evidence,+life,+biology,+Selena+Gomez,+politics,+area+51,+3.jpg


http://www.universetoday.com/107405/rough-red-planet-rocks-rip-rover-curiosity-wheels/
 
Currently, Feb 5, 2014, there is an 80% chance of M-flares and a 50% chance of X-flares and CME's coming from sunspot AR1967, now at the center of the solar disk. This implies a direct hit on Earth from a CME is currently a near certainty.
http://spaceweather.com/
 
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Dotini
Currently, Feb 5, 2014, there is an 80% chance of M-flares and a 50% chance of X-flares and CME's coming from sunspot AR1967, now at the center of the solar disk.
http://spaceweather.com/
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👍

That reminds me to get a piece of welding glass for my telescope, to see if it saves my eyes from burning out of their sockets!.
 
Dennisch
👍

That reminds me to get a piece of welding glass for my telescope, to see if it saves my eyes from burning out of their sockets!.
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You can purchase solar filters, designed both to fit your scope and to provide the best views, from your local astronomy shop.
 
Dotini
You can purchase solar filters, designed both to fit your scope and to provide the best views, from your local astronomy shop.
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I know that, but a piece of welding glass is a lot cheaper. :lol:

Also, does anyone here have any experience with a point and shoot camera in combination with a telescope, would that work if I would use it with my eyepieces?

I once used a Dslr on my scope but I found it really difficult to get the focus right, and I could not use any eyepieces so the magnification was poop.
 
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Bc4
Its beautiful :D

Anyway its been proven that theres a multi universe right? Or did I just hear that on tv...
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Multiverses have not and probably cannot be proved.

However, the notion is a convenient one to (1) explain the seeming fact that our universe has its many physical constants set in such a particular way as to permit life to exist (see "anthropic principle") , yet (2) permit such a universe to appear completely random assuming that X numbers of other universes have no life at all.
 
A possible explanation for this amazing phenomenon was given in a paper from 2010 by a group at Oxford University who were able to recreate a similar hexagonal pattern in a laboratory set-up using a spinning pool of fluid with a fluorescent dye added gradually... the paper is downloadable from here (possibly need a subscription) and there is also videos in the Supplementary Information section...

1-s2.0-S0019103509004382-gr10.jpg
 
Giant Magellan Telescope Poised to Enter Construction Phase

Still-GMT-S21-medium.jpg


Pasadena, CA - Feb. 19, 2014 - The Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) project has successfully passed two major reviews, completing its detailed design phase and positioning the project to enter the construction phase. When completed the 25-meter GMT will have more than six times the collecting area of the largest telescopes today and ten times the resolution of the Hubble Space Telescope. Scientists will use the GMT to explore distant and potentially habitable planets around other stars, to explore the Universe in the first billion years after the big bang, and to probe the mysteries of dark matter, dark energy and massive black holes.

During a week-long review in mid January, an international panel of experts examined the design of the giant telescope, its complex optical systems and precision scientific instruments. This panel was made up of experts involved in building telescopes around the world. Their conclusion was that the project meets the technical readiness required to proceed to construction. Immediately following the design review a team of construction experts scrutinized the project’s cost estimate and management plan. Both review panels endorsed the team’s cost estimate and their approach to managing construction of the telescope atop a remote mountain peak in the Chilean Andes.


👍 👍 👍 👍 👍 👍
 
APIOQM
Not sure if mentioned yet:

Curiosity's wheels seem to be in rough shape. Pretty sad to see when you consider the fact that Opportunity has been on Mars for 10 years now and her wheels are in better shape.

http://www.universetoday.com/107405/rough-red-planet-rocks-rip-rover-curiosity-wheels/
Click to expand...

Partly down to luck too, if the right part of the wheel rests on a super-hard-super-narrow point at exactly the right point in the heat cycle then the pressures involved can be enormous. It's very hard to engineer for that because those circumstances are very low-chance and over-mitigation could cause problems in more normal performance envelopes.

Not all down to luck of course... ;)
 

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