SultanOfSwing

First class is rather beyond my budget, I would suspect

Or most of Illinois. Once you get into the Southwest, views get much better.

Shard

SKA.. cool my new acronym of the day. Good website on it. Thanks.

Pulaski

A "final" report on the SpaceX rocket explosion last September - well worth a look if you are interested in SpaceX and/or rocket design and operation.

Shard

Thanks Jezzza. Will give it a view in due course. Elon is such an impressive dude. Though it looks like China may now be first to Mars. Anyway, it's all good.

I recently learned (from that NG Mars series) that the Saturn V was in fact vastly overpowered for the moon, and in fact, Von Braun was prototyping for a future Mars mission. Any truth in that?

steveq

Von Braun was after an Earth Rendezvous rather than a Moon Rendezvous strategy for the moon landing, where multiple launches to LEO would have assembled the landing package for the moon, which would have been a lot bigger than the LEM. Von Braun's preferred profile might have taken 15 Saturn launches to assemble. Clearly this wasn't viable.

As it was, a single Saturn 5 stack was only just big enough to launch enough hardware for two men to land and return safely.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova_(rocket)

From the above link

As the Apollo program continued, NASA designers started looking at their needs for the post-Apollo era, and it appeared that a manned mission to Mars would be the next "obvious" step. For this role the Saturn V was far too small, and a second series of Nova design studies started for launchers of up to 1 million pounds delivered to LEO. Unlike the original Nova series which was designed by NASA, the new designs were studied under contract by the major aerospace companies that did not receive major Apollo-related contracts, namely General Dynamics and Martin Marietta. Philip Bono at Douglas Aircraft decided to send in his own unsolicited proposals as well.
All of the companies submitted a wide variety of designs. Many of these were based on existing technology, suitably enlarged. For instance, Martin's smallest design, the 1B, used fourteen F-1s in the first stage and had a LEO payload of 662,000 pounds (300,000 kg). They also suggested a number of "advanced" designs using the latest (undeveloped) technology, notably aerospike engines. The Nova C8 concept was nearly identical to the proposed "Saturn C-8"; there were differences in staging engines and in the stage-1 fin/flaring arrangement.

Pulaski

Any thoughts of the news about Trappist-1?

It's hard to imagine what seven roughly earth-sized planets closer to their star than Mercury is to the sun, would look like. Apparently it was unexpected and will challenge the accepted process of planetary system formation.

steveq

“Bollocks, They Found Us”: NASA Receive First Audio From New Planets – Waterford Whispers News

SultanOfSwing

It's a very interesting discovery.

This particular star is, of course, much smaller and cooler than the sun, which is why potentially habitable planets can be so close, but it is interesting that they are so large. The star is only slightly larger than Jupiter, but even Jupiter's largest moon, Ganymede, is still less than half the size of Earth.

Of course, we have seen systems where Jupiter sized planets are zipping around their stars in very close orbits. It seems that if there is a system you can dream up, it'll be found out there somewhere!

This one is particularly interesting because not only are three of the planets inside the 'goldilocks zone' of Trappist-1, but all seven could potentially possess liquid water depending on conditions. Of course, this doesn't mean anything with regards to finding life. After all, Venus and Mars can both technically be considered to be inside the Sun's habitable zone.

I'm continuously impressed by how easily we are discovering exoplanets as well. Since the first one was confirmed in 1995, we've now found over 3,000 of them.

Pulaski

Well with, IIRC, an estimated two trillion stars in the universe, there are plenty of chances for just about any permutation to exist somewhere.

SultanOfSwing

I doubt they'll find that triangular planet I just thought of ...

Pulaski

The biggest chunk of space rock since 2004 (one km wide) is staging a fly-by of earth later this month, at a fairly comfortable 1.1 million miles distance. The next known one of such substantial size won't be passing earth until 2027.

Shard

Better put Will Smith on standby, just in case..

Shard

News today that the ESA wants Earth orbit space debris cleaned up. Apparently a 1mm piece of something knocked a large dent in a satellite's solar panel, causing some problems. The estimate of bits of orbitting space debris is staggering, up to 150 million pieces if you go down to the 1mm size. Don't know how they would do it. A joint venture opportunity for Elon Musk and James Dyson perhaps?

https://www.theguardian.com/science/...n-space-agency

Pulaski

I would guess it will be as challenging as clearing up the plastic debris in the oceans, if not more so.

Nutek

Maybe they can use a vacuum.