The Astronomy Thread

  • Guest, it's time once again for the massively important and exciting FoH Asshat Tournament!



    Go here and give us your nominations!
    Who's been the biggest Asshat in the last year? Give us your worst ones!

meStevo

I think your wife's a bigfoot gus.
<Silver Donator>
6,493
4,773
Super Heavy down to 37.

1569740214443.png
 
  • 2Like
Reactions: 1 users
4,107
4,043
As all this space tech come to maturity over the next 30 years, and we have ironed out at least some of the tremendous issues -- physical, engineering, and biological -- that we already know faces a Mars shot, it will be ironic that during that same time frame the Earth will start suffering some very significant climate issues and global population issues.

We will not have the social or national capital to do much after about 2050. We will be too busy trying to figure out what to do with >2 billion climate refugees.

Elon Musk is this generation's DeLorean w/o the coke scandal.
 
  • 2Like
  • 1Salty
Reactions: 2 users

Oldbased

> Than U
28,424
67,390
As all this space tech come to maturity over the next 30 years, and we have ironed out at least some of the tremendous issues -- physical, engineering, and biological -- that we already know faces a Mars shot, it will be ironic that during that same time frame the Earth will start suffering some very significant climate issues and global population issues.

We will not have the social or national capital to do much after about 2050. We will be too busy trying to figure out what to do with >2 billion climate refugees.

Elon Musk is this generation's DeLorean w/o the coke scandal.
HIV was supposed to fix that. Turns out it hated gay men more. Our best hope still relies on advanced ebola. Either way we got to get those very low IQ shit hole regions to stop mass producing low IQ populations that they can't even house, feed, and care for.
Nukes, diseases or shark feeding. I'm all ears to ideas.
 
  • 1Dislike
Reactions: 1 user
4,107
4,043
I always thought gayness was a evolutionary response. But I am simpleminded, as Judy Garland's char in Judgment at Nuremberg so famously declared, NO I am NOT.

Who knows. I think the world needs to get a lot more toxic before we see real evolutionary damage.

But the tides, they are a-rising. And that's a lot of people, and very nice land. The Florida Keys? Goodbye. And so forth.
 

Cad

scientia potentia est
<Bronze Donator>
25,426
49,042
Are they still just testing the raptors at this point or the starship itself? There are supposed to be FORTY ONE of those things on the first stage of the BFR.... that's more than N1's 30 engines and an extra 11 possible points of failure.

I don't see the point of launching the super-huge rockets... why not use falcon heavys to launch whatever you need in 40 pieces, reusing every rocket? Or is the starship/BFR supposed to be reusable also?
 
  • 2Like
Reactions: 1 users

LachiusTZ

Rogue Deathwalker Box
<Silver Donator>
14,472
27,162
I don't see the point of launching the super-huge rockets... why not use falcon heavys to launch whatever you need in 40 pieces, reusing every rocket? Or is the starship/BFR supposed to be reusable also?

It's supposed to be reusable
 
  • 1Like
Reactions: 1 user

khorum

Murder Apologist
24,338
81,363
Well it's supposed to be able to take 100 passengers around the moon at least (he's already got a Japanese billionaire paid into that so he has to make it) and it's supposed to go to Mars.

The size and weight have to do with the much bigger payload obviously but also with the different fuel it uses. BFR uses methane instead of kerosene, so they'll need a lot more fuel to get as much thrust out of the rocket. But methane can be produced on Mars and kerosene cannot. So the idea is the first few unmanned flights would land a methane production facility on Mars ahead of the manned flight so that the manned flight halves the fuel it needs to boost to Mars.

Also Musk is having a press conference in front of that prototype tonight.

EDIT: Starship presser:

 
Last edited:
  • 4Like
Reactions: 3 users

meStevo

I think your wife's a bigfoot gus.
<Silver Donator>
6,493
4,773
There's a paper out that is kind of a 'what if' kind of question - that Planet 9 is a black hole. I wouldn't care / post about it, but thought this was funny:

1569793683519.png


'Exact scale (1:1)' illustration of said black hole.

Paper is here - [1909.11090] What if Planet 9 is a Primordial Black Hole?

We highlight that the anomalous orbits of Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs) and an excess in microlensing events in the 5-year OGLE dataset can be simultaneously explained by a new population of astrophysical bodies with mass several times that of Earth (M⊕). We take these objects to be primordial black holes (PBHs) and point out the orbits of TNOs would be altered if one of these PBHs was captured by the Solar System, inline with the Planet 9 hypothesis. Capture of a free floating planet is a leading explanation for the origin of Planet 9 and we show that the probability of capturing a PBH instead is comparable. The observational constraints on a PBH in the outer Solar System significantly differ from the case of a new ninth planet. This scenario could be confirmed through annihilation signals from the dark matter microhalo around the PBH.​
 
  • 4Like
  • 1WTF
Reactions: 4 users

1987

Bronze Baronet of the Realm
3,574
8,157
There's a paper out that is kind of a 'what if' kind of question - that Planet 9 is a black hole. I wouldn't care / post about it, but thought this was funny:

View attachment 224645

'Exact scale (1:1)' illustration of said black hole.

Paper is here - [1909.11090] What if Planet 9 is a Primordial Black Hole?

We highlight that the anomalous orbits of Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs) and an excess in microlensing events in the 5-year OGLE dataset can be simultaneously explained by a new population of astrophysical bodies with mass several times that of Earth (M⊕). We take these objects to be primordial black holes (PBHs) and point out the orbits of TNOs would be altered if one of these PBHs was captured by the Solar System, inline with the Planet 9 hypothesis. Capture of a free floating planet is a leading explanation for the origin of Planet 9 and we show that the probability of capturing a PBH instead is comparable. The observational constraints on a PBH in the outer Solar System significantly differ from the case of a new ninth planet. This scenario could be confirmed through annihilation signals from the dark matter microhalo around the PBH.​
Dont black holes that small essentially evaporate rather quickly?
 

khorum

Murder Apologist
24,338
81,363
Sometimes, it's time to promote my favorite artist:
pioneerspirit1fb.jpg
Looks great but the only domes with access to sunlight would probably be for observatories and some hydroponics. The vast majority of the agriculture will be LED-lit vertical farms under several dozen feet of regolith to protect it from the harsh radiation.

Blackbird Interactive (homeworld: deserts of kharak guys) made Mars base exploration demo with NASA called Project Eagle. It's free on steam.



 
  • 1Like
Reactions: 1 user

Cybsled

Naxxramas 1.0 Raider
17,086
13,609
The mini-series Mars on NatGeo channel was a pretty good idea of what a long term habitation would look like.
 
  • 2Like
Reactions: 1 users

Ukerric

Bearded Ape
<Silver Donator>
8,310
10,283
To be accurate, the building blocks of life appear about everywhere in the universe, since relatively simple chemical processes generate them.

(the one I was most interested at one time was the interstellar cloud that had about a Jupiter's mass worth of... alcohol).
 
  • 1Like
Reactions: 1 user

meStevo

I think your wife's a bigfoot gus.
<Silver Donator>
6,493
4,773

Astronomers using ALMA have obtained an extremely high-resolution image showing two disks in which young stars are growing, fed by a complex pretzel-shaped network of filaments of gas and dust.​

1570209419506.png
 
  • 5Like
Reactions: 4 users