Astronomy & Space Exploration

So is all that fuel wasted now or can they reuse it?

No, they'll pump it back into the tanks and reuse it. That's a lot of the reason it'll be a couple of days before they try again as they have to drain the fuel which can take around 24hours.
 
Still trying to figure out why Aoki is famous. He feels like some sort of Baron Cohen parody character like SuperGreg

I wondered that before, and concluded it's probably because his dad is loaded

he's shite
 
Good to see a successful launch, lifting that thing off the ground with so many engines needing to synch is a big achievement.

Not ruining the launchpad should help speed up the next launch anyway.
 
Good to see a successful launch, lifting that thing off the ground with so many engines needing to synch is a big achievement.

Not ruining the launchpad should help speed up the next launch anyway.

How much money exploded today ?
 
How much money exploded today ?

They have the next 3 iterations already in different stages of production and 2 of them are visible and outwardly ready. This one was never going to be used again, but they won't want the first reusable vehicles to blow up for sure.
 
How much money exploded today ?
It was never intended to land, it didn't even have the landing legs. Although they probably hoped for a more successful launch to collect even more data, it failing to separate from the first-stage rocket booster cut the test very short.
 
How much money exploded today ?

As others have said it was never intended to land. It's like asking how much damage cost on a car used for crash testing.

After every launch there seems to be confusion about how new rockets are tested.
 
As others have said it was never intended to land. It's like asking how much damage cost on a car used for crash testing.

After every launch there seems to be confusion about how new rockets are tested.

Never looked into either to be honest but I'm intrigued where such vast amounts of investment is coming from and how they are meant to get a return
 
Nature Briefing said:
Most powerful explosion ever witnessed

Astronomers have observed the most energetic explosion ever: a fireball 100 times the size of the Solar System and 2 trillion times brighter than the Sun, which has existed for 3 years. The event, dubbed AT2021lwx, might have been caused by an enormous star or cloud of gas being gobbled up by a black hole. The reason why night hasn’t been turned to day here on Earth is that the party is happening 2.5 billion parsecs away. It’s not the brightest event ever seen — that would be the γ-ray burst known as GRB 221009A — but that lasted only a few minutes.
More info: Astronomers capture largest cosmic explosion ever witnessed | Black holes | The Guardian
Scientific publication: Multiwavelength observations of the extraordinary accretion event AT2021lwx | Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society | Oxford Academic (oup.com)

Pretty picture:
3500.jpg
 
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Never looked into either to be honest but I'm intrigued where such vast amounts of investment is coming from and how they are meant to get a return

The return is that SpaceX will be the only company in the world able to (a) put 100 ton payloads into orbit (b) because of that capacity, reusability and launch frequency, it'll be cheaper than anyone else by an order of magnitude. SpaceX will own the bridge into orbit. And when you have cheap, heavy lift capacity available, you can build stuff in orbit that's currently inconceivable - factories, solar power generation, orbiting hotels, massive satellite constellations, tourism. That's where they'll get their return.

And that's civilian uses. I don't know if there are military versions of Starship on someone's desk but imagine being able to put a small army anywhere on the planet inside one hour.
 
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It's nice that SpaceX isn't the only game in town. Shame that they're both owned by some of the richest people in the world, but better that there's two of them than just one.

This was after it was originally tipped for SpaceX but Blue Origin sued about something or the other being unfair in the process, which has resulted in them getting it now. Musk must be fuming.
 
The NASA contract for Blue Origin is different from the one previously announced. SpaceX have still got that for Artemis III and IV. This new contract is for Artemis V and was explicitly for a new lander to give NASA options in the future.

It's good news that it's fixed price, NASA seem to be making better decisions that will hopefully free some money up for more missions in the future.
 
Full Image here. (132mb)




i don't think we've ever been visited by aliens....but pictures like that just make it so hard for me to believe there has never been evolution of advanced life elsewhere. They may have come and gone, but I cannot look at a picture like that and think "wow we are all alone". We definitely could be a solitary freak of nature, but I'd need strong convincing.
 
Full Image here. (132mb)



Incredible.

It’s a shame the school curriculum doesn’t include more stuff about the cosmic scale. Hopefully breed more interest in quantum physics and also maybe make people realise there’s bigger sh*t out there than the petty bollocks everyone is so fixated on arguing over.