Space In General

[TheCracker]

Good video of the booster landings from launch complex 37B.

That's proper sci-fi for you there 👍

I've watched and enjoyed the booster landings before, but they've always been from the point of view of a fixed camera, usually from close up and situated on the landing barge or close by. I've never seen them being tracked down from high in the atmosphere and slowed so rapidly by the engines firing. That sudden deceleration is even more spectacular than the actual landings.

 

[TetsuKobura]

I wonder what Neil Armstrong and Gene Cernon would think of SpaceX after this recent launch and the success it mostly had. Do you think they would have change dtheir opinion on commercialized space flights after seeing that?

 

[Danoff]

1. I don’t know the specifications of the rover vehicles, but it’s safe to say that it was the first production car in space.

2. I wouldn’t consider the surface of the moon to be space since there’s a gravitational pull, even if it’s just a weak one. Space to me is where there’s no bounds holding something back.

3. I guess that could be inferred multiple different ways depending on how you look at it.

Someone claimed that the Tesla was "the first electric car in space", which begs a few questions:

1. Did someone launch a non-electric car into space already? Or is there a other reason for why it wouldn't simply be the first car in space?

2. What counts as being in space? Is the surface of the moon considered space or not? Does transporting the lunar rover to the moon counts as it being in space, or is some kind of deployment in flight required?

3. Does the lunar rover count as a car or is it a separate category of vehicle?

The LRV (lunar roving vehicle) was definitely a car, for people, and went through space to its destination on the moon where it is exposed directly to the vacuum of space due to a lack of atmosphere and is therefore in space while being on the surface of the moon. It's not a "production car" or "road legal".

 

[Dotini]

Bad news for fans of crewed missions beyond LEO.

Return to moon delayed (by budgetary reasons?) until maybe 2030.

https://www.engadget.com/2018/02/12/trump-s-new-budget-wont-land-us-on-the-moon-anytime-soon/

 

[Leadfoot530]

I wonder what Neil Armstrong and Gene Cernon would think of SpaceX after this recent launch and the success it mostly had. Do you think they would have change dtheir opinion on commercialized space flights after seeing that?

"Back in our day, we had to land on the moon ourselves! Lazy kids..."

 

[CodeRedR51]

Bad news for fans of crewed missions beyond LEO.

Return to moon delayed (by budgetary reasons?) until maybe 2030.

https://www.engadget.com/2018/02/12/trump-s-new-budget-wont-land-us-on-the-moon-anytime-soon/

Funny how quick we got there in the 60's and now it seems like we forgot how to do it. Should be a cakewalk by now.

 

[Dotini]

Funny how quick we got there in the 60's and now it seems like we forgot how to do it. Should be a cakewalk by now.

Back in the 60's real men were racing F1 cars with no seatbelts, no rollover bars and no concern for stone walls, bollards and ditches alongside the roads. And they were going to the moon and landing by the seat of their pants. All with less computing power than a modern toilet seat.

 

[wfooshee]

Funny how quick we got there in the 60's and now it seems like we forgot how to do it. Should be a cakewalk by now.

Except for the willingness to spend the money, which has definitely gone away. Even during Apollo, once it had been done, interest waned almost instantly, to the point of cancelling the last three missions.

Those cancellations didn't save as much money as people think, as the rockets were built. They now live in museums, the actual Saturn V rockets built for those missions, not mockups. Still, with public interest completely evaporated (OK, we did it! Why do we have to keep doing it?) there was simply no way they could continue.

 

[CodeRedR51]

Except for the willingness to spend the money, which has definitely gone away. Even during Apollo, once it had been done, interest waned almost instantly, to the point of cancelling the last three missions.

Those cancellations didn't save as much money as people think, as the rockets were built. They now live in museums, the actual Saturn V rockets built for those missions, not mockups. Still, with public interest completely evaporated (OK, we did it! Why do we have to keep doing it?) there was simply no way they could continue.

The impression I get from the government is, "we're going back to the moon but we're forcing NASA to save their pennies every year so in about 2030 they'll have enough in their piggy bank to actually go". I have a hard time believing it will take that long to develop the hardware to make the trip.

Edit: Then again this article makes it seem like it's happening sooner than that.

 

[Dennisch]

It will certainly make Mr Trump's willy grow if the USA can drop some people off on the moon during his reign. Seeing his peacockish behaviour he might want to push a race to Mars too.

 

[daan]

Back in the 60's real men were racing F1 cars with no seatbelts, no rollover bars and no concern for stone walls, bollards and ditches alongside the roads. And they were going to the moon and landing by the seat of their pants. All with less computing power than a modern toilet seat.

And that's why quite a lot of them died. Great times, losing an F1 driver every other week.

 

[Dotini]

And that's why quite a lot of them died. Great times, losing an F1 driver every other week.

Yes, it was bad. I lost a few personal heroes, like Jim Clark and Dave MacDonald, a sports and Indy car driver.
In 1982, I counted 500 drivers who had taken part in championship GP. 33% of them died behind the wheel of a some kind of racing vehicle.

It's amazing so few Apollo astronauts died. Poor Gus Grissom, a vocal critic of what he thought were flaws, maybe he talked too much, and took White and Chaffee with him.

 

[Carbon_6]

It will certainly make Mr Trump's willy grow if the USA can drop some people off on the moon during his reign. Seeing his peacockish behaviour he might want to push a race to Mars too.

Great. Now I can't get that image out of my head.

 

[Dennisch]

Great. Now I can't get that image out of my head.

Now imagine him holding that throbbing member with his tiny hands.

 

[Carbon_6]

 

[Dennisch]

 

[TexRex]

("See you, space jockey?")

 

[Obelisk]

This thread got hilarious.

And I didn't need that mental picture.

 

[Carbon_6]

 

[Leadfoot530]

 

[Dotini]

...from today's edition of spaceweather.com

SUNSPOT EXPLODES, HURLS CME AT EARTH: On Feb. 12th, the magnetic canopy of sunspot AR2699 exploded--for more than 6 hours. The slow-motion blast produced a C1-class solar flare and hurled a coronal mass ejection (CME) almost directly toward Earth. This movie from the Solar and Heliospheric Observtory (SOHO) shows the CME leaving the sun:

The CME could arrive as early as Feb. 14th, although Feb 15th is more likely. NOAA forecasters say there is a 60% chance of G1-class geomagnetic storms with isolated periods of stronger G2 storming.

The effectiveness of the CME could be enhanced by a stream of solar wind that was already en route to Earth when the sunspot exploded. The solar wind is flowing from a large wedge-shaped hole in the sun's atmosphere. If the approaching CME sweeps up material from that stream, snowplow-style, it could strike Earth's magnetic field with extra mass and potency.

Arctic sky watchers should be alert for auroras when the CME arrives. If the coming storm intensifies to category G2, observers in northern-tier US states from Maine to Washington could see auroras as well. Stay tuned for updates. Free:Aurora Alerts

 

[CodeRedR51]

I know this is old news by now, but this is by far the best amateur video of the Falcon Heavy launch. Fully tracked from liftoff to landing.

 

[CodeRedR51]

Congrats to Mars rover Opportunity, it will celebrate its 5,000th Martian day of activity on the planet as of Saturday the 17th. 👍

 

[Leadfoot530]

Congrats to Mars rover Opportunity, it will celebrate its 5,000th Martian day of activity on the planet as of Saturday the 17th. 👍

And to think it was only supposed to last 90 sols! 👍

 

[Dennisch]

That robot deserves to be brought back to Earth and receive its own pedestal in a museum.

 

[TexRex]

That robot deserves to be brought back to Earth and receive its own pedestal in a museum.

 

[-Cheezman-]

That robot deserves to be brought back to Earth and receive its own pedestal in a museum.

Narrow minded thinking;

We need to build a museum on Mars after we colonize it, and give the rover it's own pedestal.

👍

 

[Dennisch]

Narrow minded thinking;

We need to build a museum on Mars after we colonize it, and give the rover it's own pedestal.

👍

I'll tweet Elon right now.

 

[CodeRedR51]

 

[Imari]

Funny how quick we got there in the 60's and now it seems like we forgot how to do it. Should be a cakewalk by now.

Except for the willingness to spend the money, which has definitely gone away. Even during Apollo, once it had been done, interest waned almost instantly, to the point of cancelling the last three missions.

In the 60's there was a big push by the military for missile technology and satellites, which meant that funding NASA was largely killing two birds with one stone. We all known how much money the US is willing to put into anything military or defence related.