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Space exploration: Where do we go from here?

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  • Kepler
    replied
    Think you had a bad day at work?

    NASA has temporarily lost contact with Voyager 2 space probe, the second-farthest man-made object sent into space. It is currently located more than 12.3 billion miles (19.9 billion kilometres) from Earth. In a statement, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) said that scientists lost contact with the space probe on July 21 after a series of planned commands inadvertently caused Voyager 2 to angle its antenna away from Earth. Though the spacecraft's antenna shifted a mere 2 per cent, it was enough to cut communications.
    Apparently it has a protocol where it resets its orientation relative to Earth after some interval, so hopefully this is not a fatal mistake. But that's not going to be a great performance review.

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  • Kepler
    replied
    If you live in Iowa or Utah, here's your reward.

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  • Kepler
    replied
    What could go wrong?

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  • Kepler
    replied
    Originally posted by LynahFan View Post
    I'm not up on my Gaia source IDs - did they limit the list to stars with known exoplanets?
    Here is the GCNS.

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  • LynahFan
    replied
    I'm not up on my Gaia source IDs - did they limit the list to stars with known exoplanets?

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  • RaceBoarder
    replied
    Well if Millennials are running the show, we're just gonna watch the call come in and then let it go to voicemail. Texting is the way to go =)

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  • Kepler
    replied
    Every once in a while, somebody combines amazing science with a night of off the chain drinking, and the result is wonderful.

    TLDR: a bunch of really smart NASA scientists were thinking about all the deep space probes we have. They thought about first contact. They thought about trajectory and telemetry. They thought about signals. They went to dinner, and then, after, they got really high, and then they started actually thinking interestingly.

    And the result is which star systems will get our probes' signals first -- in other words, a betting pool on who's going to call back first.



    And yeah, you read that right. First potential callback is in 6 years. That will be the first time in ALL of human history (200,000 years) we find out if we're f-cked. And you and I -- well, you anyway -- are going to be here for it.

    The odds are low but the stakes are... high.



    Last edited by Kepler; 05-18-2023, 12:40 AM.

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  • dxmnkd316
    replied
    Drill baby drill

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  • Kepler
    replied
    Saturn's moons may have oceans warm enough to support life.

    Uranus has 27 moons, but the researchers focused on the five largest, which are Ariel, Umbriel, Titania, Oberon and Miranda. Of these, Ariel is the smallest at 720 miles (1,160 kilometers) across, while Titania is the largest at 980 miles (1,580 km) across.

    Previously, scientists thought only Tatiana was likely to generate any internal heat via radioactive decay — the process by which unstable atoms lose energy through radiation — believing the other moons to be too small.

    However, modeling the other moons' porosity suggested that all but Miranda are insulated enough to retain internal heat created by radioactive decay.

    The researchers also found that any potential oceans beneath the icy crusts of these moons would be rich in chlorides, ammonia and salts, both of which would lower the freezing point of the water. The combination of a low freezing point and enough internal heat could mean that Ariel, Umbrial, Titania and Oberon all have oceans dozens of miles deep within their interiors, the researchers reported.

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  • unofan
    replied
    Originally posted by LynahFan View Post

    …..aaaaannd we are officially into conspiracy guess (not even theory) territory.

    Shall we make a list of all the bad things that a company might do and explicitly state, one by one, that SpaceX would be in the wrong IF they were doing that?
    You threw the hypothetical out there. The only way to know if a $19.99 price means people are paying too much is if you provide more information. Without that, any answer has to be qualified.

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  • LynahFan
    replied
    Originally posted by unofan View Post

    If you are creating market barriers preventing people from entering the market to sell toasters at $19.98, then yes. And if those barriers are inherent, that speaks to market failures and greater government controls over toasters to ensure people aren't overpaying.
    …..aaaaannd we are officially into conspiracy guess (not even theory) territory.

    Shall we make a list of all the bad things that a company might do and explicitly state, one by one, that SpaceX would be in the wrong IF they were doing that?

    Leave a comment:


  • unofan
    replied
    Originally posted by LynahFan View Post
    If your competitor makes toasters for $10 and sells them for $20, are you doing something wrong/unethical if you can make a toaster for $6 but are selling it for $19.99?

    Are the people paying $19.99 overpaying?
    If you are creating market barriers preventing people from entering the market to sell toasters at $19.98, then yes. And if those barriers are inherent, that speaks to market failures and greater government controls over toasters to ensure people aren't overpaying.

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  • MichVandal
    replied
    Ok, but can they at least stop pretending everything went well. They rushed, it failed. There were more bad things than good ones.

    it’s fine they want to do this, but that was more like Soviet embarrassment than NASA. Even the reaction.

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  • LynahFan
    replied
    If your competitor makes toasters for $10 and sells them for $20, are you doing something wrong/unethical if you can make a toaster for $6 but are selling it for $19.99?

    Are the people paying $19.99 overpaying?

    First rule of business strategy: price and cost are independent variables.
    Last edited by LynahFan; 04-22-2023, 04:21 PM.

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  • MichVandal
    replied
    Originally posted by dxmnkd316 View Post

    Overpaying relative to what? Like, there are three or four acts in town. ESA, SpaceX, NASA (really just an agglomeration of contractors), and does blue horizons do contract work? So basically overpaying is relative to what you can get these three or four down to in costs.

    It's a good question though.
    Overpaying for how much it costs spacex, with all of what they have to waste on that kind of launch.

    speed and cutting corners works if it happens to work, but it ends up being more expensive when it fails, especially when so much goes bad.

    Leave a comment:

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