Astronomy & Space Exploration

I think I've managed to both flag things they didn't want flagged, and failed to pick out stuff that's probably Planet 9 (from Outer Space). I suppose this is why I'm not an astronomer.

But here's a fun gif anyway

 
Attempt number two, (yesterdays launch was aborted because of a bunch of minor issues)

In One Hour and Fifteen Minutes from when I post this, SpaceX will attempt to launch their Falcon 9 with Dragon Capsule on a commercial resupply mission to the ISS. This is notable for a number of reasons:

- It is the first launch from LC-39A, a historically important launch pad leased from NASA, from which Apollo 11 (first manned mission to the moon) was launched, as well as Apollo 9 (first manned lunar flight), as well as a whole bunch of Space Shuttle missions.
- It is the first Florida SpaceX launch since the Amos 6 explosion
- It is a dragon resupply mission to the ISS
- It includes an RTLS (return to launch site) attempt for the first stage, the first RTLS in daylight (so should look awesome)

Dragon will meet and dock with the ISS in approximately two day time, so we won't see that.

You can check out the pre-livestream here. (Just a non-official video of what's going on at the launch site)

http://original.livestream.com/spaceflightnow

The SpaceX livetreams will start in about 1 hour





The NASA has already started, but it might be random stuff.



Weather is 50/50

This is an instantaneous launch window. If there are any problems, it will be scrubbed for 48 hours.
 
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That is pretty awesome, made it look easy. Have they actually re-used a rocket yet?
 
Simbo said:
That is pretty awesome, made it look easy. Have they actually re-used a rocket yet?
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Not yet! Soon! Also rumours that they will be reusing one on the falcon heavy, but I dont believe that
 
Ubik said:
The first launch of it?
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Maybe. The Iridium CEO tweeted this



And they were rumoured to be the customer who was going to use one.

So first flight might well be on Faclon Heavy... which I guess shows both that Falcon Heavy is ready, and reusable first stages are good for go (if it works).

But I don't really believe that,
 
Just found this thread. Haven't read it all yet. Wonderful stuff: well done everyone.
 
I'm betting on news of some goldilocks zone planets with a very similar mass to Earth, they'll say many more planets in this category than originally thought and one or two certified to have water detected on.
 
ArmandTamzarian said:
I'm betting on news of some goldilocks zone planets with a very similar mass to Earth, they'll say many more planets in this category than originally thought and one or two certified to have water detected on.
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What i hope - Dyson sphere found just beyond pluto, Nasa want to send a probe there.
What i think- More exoplanets being found in the habitable zone. Some with ingridients for life to be confirmed but be so far away that there is no possibility of reaching them in meaningful time.
 
So should we build a spaceship with todays tech to go look at our nearest star which would take about 100 years?

Or to put it another way, will our tech advance enough over the next hundred years to get there before a hypothetical ship sent in the near future arrived?
 
RamblingRebel said:
So should we build a spaceship with todays tech to go look at our nearest star which would take about 100 years?

Or to put it another way, will our tech advance enough over the next hundred years to get there before a hypothetical ship sent in the near future arrived?
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Before the ship that takes 100 years to reach a place we will build a new one that takes us there in 10 in next 25 years.
 
New Horizons was the fastest craft we'd launched (leaving Earth), and that would've taken about 50,000 years to get to Alpha Centauri. The Breakthrough Starshot idea was talking about getting a tiny craft up to .2C, which would get there in about 25 years, but the technological challenges for that are extremely daunting. Going to take a while before anything resembling a modern probe can be sent interstellar in a reasonable time period, current propulsion methods are just too slow.
 
Maradona10 said:
Before the ship that takes 100 years to reach a place we will build a new one that takes us there in 10 in next 25 years.
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Really? Are we on the verge of a breakthrough in substantially 'upgrading' our space travel tech?

I've heard of these giant solar/laser sails but do these increase the speed 10-fold
 
Ubik said:
New Horizons was the fastest craft we'd launched (leaving Earth), and that would've taken about 50,000 years to get to Alpha Centauri. The Breakthrough Starshot idea was talking about getting a tiny craft up to .2C, which would get there in about 25 years, but the technological challenges for that are extremely daunting. Going to take a while before anything resembling a modern probe can be sent interstellar in a reasonable time period, current propulsion methods are just too slow.
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When you say the tech challenges are daunting is that purely down to our engineering and scientific knowledge or is it something the whole worlds political powers would need to work hand in hand with to make it actually do-able, like sharing the costs ect, getting the Russians, Chinese, and Americans pissing in the same pot... Although I do believe in the scientific community this is quite routine.
 
RamblingRebel said:
Really? Are we on the verge of a breakthrough in substantially 'upgrading' our space travel tech?

I've heard of these giant solar/laser sails but do these increase the speed 10-fold
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My reply was more in hope than in knowledge.
 
RamblingRebel said:
When you say the tech challenges are daunting is that purely down to our engineering and scientific knowledge or is it something the whole worlds political powers would need to work hand in hand with to make it actually do-able, like sharing the costs ect, getting the Russians, Chinese, and Americans pissing in the same pot... Although I do believe in the scientific community this is quite routine.
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Engineering really, huge laser power needing to be pointed at spacecraft centimetres large, accelerated to a significant fraction of lightspeed and aimed precisely at objects multiple lightyears away, and that's without thinking about the complexities of the probes themselves and stuff they're likely to encounter en route (mainly dust, which at that speed is gonna be hard hitting).
 
Just watched this Harvard-Smithsonian presentation and its answered everything.


We are living in fascinating times. I hope this project comes to fruition.
 
WOW! So apparently the news coming out today is that astronomers have found a Red Dwarf Star system with 7 earth sized planets all in the habitable zone.

mind_blown.gif


A Business Insider website accidentally broke the embargo and then promptly took the web page down but as usual once something goes up on the internet it stays on the internet....

http://webcache.googleusercontent.c...&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk#a1OD3mZDgBRpAptj.97

Can you just imagine how fecking nuts interplanetary exploration/politics/conflict would be. Multiple planets evolving intelligent species independently simultaneously in the same solar system seems pretty improbable to me unless the chances of it increases significantly if you consider one world spreading the seed to others via asteroid impacts etc.. But I could see one species becoming advanced enough to be spreading over the other planets and colonizing them and with enough time becoming separate government entities on each planet.
 
39 light years away. Any advanced aliens there saw our broadcasts about the start of World War 2 in 1978. If they sent a gamma ray pulse to wipe us out (thinking we are too dangerous to keep alive), it will reach us in 2017. Wait thats now :nervous: ...


But seriously, that's amazing stuff. Life does seem like it should be extremely common throughout the universe (because it appeared on Earth pretty much as soon as the Earth was capable of supporting it, and there seems to be habitable zones everywhere). The bigger jump seems to be more complicated life and maybe intelligent life. I also think maybe Earth got lucky with humans becoming so intelligent. If wolves for example had been the most intelligent animals, maybe they could have learned to herd animals and grow crops, but probably would have struggled to build a computer. The pairing of a general-purpose animal and a intelligent mind could be quite a random phenomenon.

But still. Aliens.
 
rcoobc said:
If wolves for example had been the most intelligent animals, maybe they could have learned to herd animals and grow crops
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..and play snooker & card games and smoke cigars then paint pictures of themselves doing that.. can you even begin to imagine such greatness!
 
The comparison to the Jovian system is fascinating. It's like 3001 actually happened somewhere.
 
It isn't so much exoplanet fascination as alien fascination.
 
The more exoplanets we find the more frustrated I get about our lack of propulsion technologies.

It is like seeing a grand prize far away without being able to reach it.
 
SwansonsTache said:
The more exoplanets we find the more frustrated I get about our lack of propulsion technologies.

It is like seeing a grand prize far away without being able to reach it.
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Or to put it another way, its like going in the NSFW girly pics thread in the general. They are totally out of reach and we can only gawp and imagine!
 
That or we're ground back into the dirt by our own technology, but both those outcomes are less exciting than aliens.
 
So "only" actually three in the habitable zone, similar to our own system, but one of those looks likely be water-rich. Apparently some of the other planets would look about moon-sized in the sky as well, which would be pretty amazing to see.
 
Raoul said:
As far as I know those are just CGI pics of what astronomers think the planets may look like.
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When I said "looks likely", I was paraphrasing the guy at the presentation. Based on density measurements.
 
Though they were a bit more cagey on that during the Q&A, said lots more observations necessary. Real gamechanger will be JWST going up, which'll be able to look at the atmosphere.
 
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