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Space exploration: Where do we go from here?

dxmnkd316 said:
You’d be surprised what driving an hour will do.

Minnesota tan has some class 6 dark spots within a couple hours IIRC.
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Oh, you darling Minnesotan angel. Let me hold you and protect you.

I would have to drive 20 hours.

Edit: oh sh-t, no I wouldn't. 2 hours will do it.
 
First SpaceX delivery of a FT space station crew.

I didn't realize the contract would eventually revert to Boeing.

Two spacey questions for those in the biz and/or who want to take a shot:

1) What and where is the closest to the Sun one can be before the Sun is no longer the brightest object in the sky (no trick answers like on the surface of the Sun or when the Sun is hidden, please. You know what I mean.)

2) Once we have a thriving and populated Moon colony, will it become more cost effective to resupply the Earth space station from the Moon (significantly less escape thrust)?
 
Kepler said:
Run by Cornell for years.

Oceans rise, empires fall. I'm sure it is long since obsolete. We'll always have the work.
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Indeed. I have several friends who did undergrad and thesis research based on Arecibo data. Guess, like me, they're all old now, too!
 
A friend from h.s. who is now working in the Astronomy and Astrophysics department at PSU is a bit sad to hear that news.
 
dxmnkd316 said:
https://twitter.com/VergeScience/status/1329465438846193669?s=20

This makes me sad. They're going to demolish the Arecibo Observatory.
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I spent a LOT of time in Puerto Rico during my “prior life” of employment... cumulatively, well-over a year. During one 2-week trip I flew “the Wife” and kids down for the weekend, and took them to Arecibo to see the observatory. For me (a “Physics guy”), it was as close to a religious experience I have ever had. It is a shrine, so this news is heart breaking. At least I have the memories of that visit, along with about 30-minutes of video and a bunch of photos to try and keep the memory of that experience alive within this aging head.
 
Just want you to know that you all brightened my day.

I expected the response to be a collective shrug “it’s old, whatever”. Glad I was wrong.
 
The successor, for breakthrough science anyway, appears to be the Chinese FAST radio telescope.

The next American successor, in the design stage, is the Next-Generation Very Large Array (ngVLA).

Here is a notional idea of the scale of this monster:

00353_PSISDG10700_107001O_page_9_1.jpg


The VLA has been the scientific powerhouse of radio astronomy since its inception in the late 1970s, consisting of 27 movable 25 m symmetric antennas, with maximum baselines of 36.4 km. The VLA underwent a major electronics upgrade, completed in 2011, which provided continuous frequency coverage between 1 – 50 GHz. The ngVLA, by comparison, will consist of 214 dishes of 18 m diameter extending up to ~1000 km baselines and an additional 30 (18 m) antennas on scales up to 9,000 km, delivering an order of magnitude improvement in both sensitivity. The ngVLA dishes will not be movable, so different angular scales are achieved using subarray selection. The ngVLA will also extend the operational frequency range from 1.2 –116 GHz (25 – 026 cm).
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Um. Wow.
 
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