The Astronomy Thread

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MusicForFish

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phisey

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Politico had an article about the space industry's reaction to Musk's Starship Presentation:

Politico said:
“They are shitting the bed,” said a top Washington space lobbyist who works for SpaceX’s competitors

 
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Big Phoenix

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meStevo

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JWST alignment continues.

1645318316569.png
 
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Tuco

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Politico had an article about the space industry's reaction to Musk's Starship Presentation:



Once they ramp up it'll be the biggest leap in space rocketry since Apollo. The projected orbit cost per kilogram will be so low we could pool our tucobux together and rickshaw the asshat 2027 winner into the moon. Oldspace won't even be competing in the same space.
 
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Mudcrush Durtfeet

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Once they ramp up it'll be the biggest leap in space rocketry since Apollo. The projected orbit cost per kilogram will be so low we could pool our tucobux together and rickshaw the asshat 2027 winner into the moon. Oldspace won't even be competing in the same space.
It is MORE important than Apollo, _IF_ starship succeeds in its goals.
 
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Tuco

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It is MORE important than Apollo, _IF_ starship succeeds in its goals.
I agree, but at this point I don't view it as that much of a binary thing, which is great. So much of space flight to this point has been pinned on popularity fueling very expensive and narrowly scoped projects like Apollo, Perseverance or JWST. The ISS missions weren't narrowly scoped, which was great, but they were still very expensive. A tragedy, shift in popular opinion or poorly timed delay could've ended any of those missions like the Buran or in the future, the SLS. Any success was met with extreme relief not just because of the incremental move forward but confirmation that the whole house of cards wasn't going to collapse yet.

For Starship, there's just not a big _IF_. A series of catastrophic losses would be terrible, for sure, but the approach is pretty much proven and now it's just a matter of scaling it up. Starship has a ridiculous set of goals shown in this vid, but unlike so many previous efforts they don't have to succeed in them to be of massive importance.

 
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Mudcrush Durtfeet

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The goal to reuse a booster several times a day is really... it's just really far beyond what they're doing with Falcon 9 that I don't feel I can count it as something that will really happen. I hope it does, but it's just so far beyond what anyone has managed yet.

My fingers are crossed though. Hopefully they get approval to launch soon, though I imagine there's a lot of opposition from old space types and whoever they can convince to get in SpaceX's way (I suspect that's why the approval process is so delayed atm). I imagine that there's a lot of pressure to make sure this launch takes place AFTER SLS finally launches.
 
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phisey

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Starship's "Stage Zero", with its purpose-built catching arms/crane for rapid reusability is revolutionary by itself. Even before anything has launched it's already obsoleted even Starship's original design by eliminating the weight of the original starship's landing fins.

By offloading landing capabilities onto stage zero, Starship is already saving over twenty tons of weight from the landing fins alone. By making starship's gridfins its catching hardpoints, they saved another two tons of hardware for making them foldable like the gridfins on the falcon 9.
 

meStevo

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On Wednesday, February 23, 2022, the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Inouye Solar Telescope commenced its first science observations, signaling the start of its year-long operations commissioning phase and a new era of solar science.


1645731462249.png
 
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Big Phoenix

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Martin said that the operational costs alone for a single Artemis launch—for just the rocket, Orion spacecraft, and ground systems—will total $4.1 billion. This is, he said, "a price tag that strikes us as unsustainable."


Holy Billions and Billions, Batman!
NASA has been mainly a jobs program since Apollo. Dont be shocked when they cancel this bloated piece of shit and then start another program under the guise of building a "lower cost and better" rocket.
 
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Cybsled

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NASA need to focus on something else besides Earth->Space rockets. Throw some more weight behind Starship, then focus on building bases on the moon or other deep space stuff. And continue with unmanned long term missions (like Europa Clipper or the flying drone on Titan)
 
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Ukerric

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NASA need to focus on something else besides Earth->Space rockets. Throw some more weight behind Starship, then focus on building bases on the moon or other deep space stuff. And continue with unmanned long term missions (like Europa Clipper or the flying drone on Titan)
Unfortunately, the commitee overseeing NASA (and proposing the budget) is entirely bipartisan on the matter of pork. They all love it, and care for nothing else.

Unless there is a significant pressure (like the cold war space race), expecting them - and thus, NASA's higher-ups - to care about anything but funneling money is a fool's errand.
 
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Tripamang

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NASA writes reports that cost plus is always goes over budget and has never been on time but the people funding them don't care and say you have to keep using it. The whole thing is a scam that every us tax payer should be furious about. A few government contractors make off like bandits while the tax payers keep rewarding them for failing. The only positive is they're shitting bricks because starship is going to render everything they're selling irrelevant. They have become so fat and incompetent they can't unfuck themselves fast enough to save their business.
 
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