The Astronomy Thread

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Mudcrush Durtfeet

Mudcrush Durtfeet

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Aaron said:
Back during the 90s Newt Gingrich was lobbying for Congress to create a form of a "prize" system for private companies to compete towards unlocking certain space based goals. The prize money increased based on the increase in difficulty. Would have created a good incentive for private enterprise to find interesting solutions to problems we face. They should look into doing it now.
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Newt Gingrich?

Lol, would have been pork barrel garbage.
 
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BrutulTM

BrutulTM

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Kiroy said:
out of all the issues for intergalactic flight, this is probably the easiest problem to solve with 3d printing
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Assuming your 3d printer will work for thousands of years. And what happens when you run out of whatever material you're using to print with? Building something to travel through space and support a population of humans with absolutely no outside inputs for many generations is about 10 orders of magnitude more difficult than the moon landing.
 
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Oldbased

Oldbased

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SLS now delayed till 2022 at the earliest. This is just a test flight of the system even at a cost of 1 billion+
My meme of SpaceX reaching the moon first is all but reality now.
 
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Oldbased

Oldbased

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A fighterjet fuel specialist made this on a 3d printer. He thinks it is right but has sent it to Elon to confirm.
1630424771643.png

We've already seen the thrust puck, the real one which I can dig up if anyone requests it. It is a thick steel bitch all 29 mount too.
This is theorized for above the puck to how fuel is being delivered.
 
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LachiusTZ

LachiusTZ

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Captain Suave said:
With rockets as an example, if you keep accelerating eventually you'll reach the point where your propellant out the back ends up a dead stop, after which you can't go any faster no matter how much fuel you have
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Captain Suave said:
Different point. I'm saying that a chemical rocket (or anything with a finite impulse) can't accelerate you indefinitely. When your speed reaches the exhaust velocity of your propellant you can't go any faster, and you will approach this speed asymptotically. This has nothing to do with relativity
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Isaac Arthur has gone into this a few times.

But you can, in theory, accelerate forever on rockets.

It's just not practical.
 
LachiusTZ

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Mudcrush Durtfeet said:
Or maybe we can't make generation ships smaller than planets that are stable over millenia. At any realistic improvement of tech based on actual things that work now, it's going to be many thousands of years to get to the nearest star. Making any sort of ship that will survive for 1000s of years that can carry a civilization is probably not within our current technological means. It might never be, we don't really know the limits of technology pushed to the extreme in such a way.

I mean, we haven't even had a civilization last 10000 years on EARTH.
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Don't need to. Start firing materials, parts, etc now.

The fleet of ships catch up to supplies while en route.

Freeze some sperm etc for genetic diversity.

It's not beyond doing now, it's just the solutions are extreme.

And awesome.
 
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LachiusTZ

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Mudcrush Durtfeet said:
plausible back then than FTL is now
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Even by your own admission, we are already traveling at ftl relative to a lot of things.

And we don't need ftl, just fission rockets, and big nuts.

Problem is society has decided cutting kids nuts off is good, because the future is feminine.
 
LachiusTZ

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Mudcrush Durtfeet said:
SpaceX didn't need trillions of dollars to get reusable rocket technology going.
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Been shown in this thread that tech was around 30 years ago.

Abandoned by NASA because reasons.

But yeah, we have up the stars for the poors to get fat and have phones.
 
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Oldbased

Oldbased

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I've said it before. Build a fucking ship port in space, ideally near a real space station that can operate with 100+ people, which SpaceX will be capable of doing SOON™ and the nuke engines will come quicker. We have the tech to be sending people deep space NOW. It is just cost but either top billionaire could probably fund it themselves if they choose too.
 
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Cybsled

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Ship port in space will be limited in use unless it can supply things ships need. LEO has applications, but refueling isn’t one of them.
 
Mudcrush Durtfeet

Mudcrush Durtfeet

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LachiusTZ said:
Don't need to. Start firing materials, parts, etc now.

The fleet of ships catch up to supplies while en route.

Freeze some sperm etc for genetic diversity.

It's not beyond doing now, it's just the solutions are extreme.

And awesome.
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You are proposing that we could RIGHT NOW start sending supplies to Alpha Centauri that will get there in 10000 years and that we can send (later) fleets of spaceships to 'catch up' with those supplies, match velocitires to pick them up (expending fuel) and then what... spend 1000s of years to get there?

Because I don't think we can do that.
 
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LachiusTZ

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Of course we could do that.

But that's racist.

So we won't.
 
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Mudcrush Durtfeet

Mudcrush Durtfeet

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Edaw said:
From 2015...

View attachment 370129

www.jpl.nasa.gov

The Lunar Gold Rush: How Moon Mining Could Work

www.jpl.nasa.gov www.jpl.nasa.gov
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Rare Earth elements aren't actually particularly rare and can be found in the US, it's just that they're expensive to actually seperate (and would be more so on the moon).

He3 for fusion reactors is not needed until we (some day) actually invent fusion reactors. That's been something like 30 years in the future for the last sixty years, so don't hold your breath.

How much water and how easy it is to mine on the moon, I don't know that one.
 
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Mudcrush Durtfeet

Mudcrush Durtfeet

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LachiusTZ said:
Even by your own admission, we are already traveling at ftl relative to a lot of things.

And we don't need ftl, just fission rockets, and big nuts.

Problem is society has decided cutting kids nuts off is good, because the future is feminine.
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No, I stated that we are travelling at a fraction of the speed of light compared to distant galaxies, not faster than light.

While I am aware of Cosmic Inflation having an FTL effect, it is not applicable to space travel and there is no lead on how to do it at this time, wishful thinking or not.
 
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