The Astronomy Thread

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MusicForFish

MusicForFish

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Edaw said:
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Tuco

Tuco

I got Tuco'd!
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Sanrith Descartes said:
SpaceX be like...

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I feel like there's a decent chance that when we finally make an Epstein drive it'll be a collaborative effort from nerds pursuing dumbass ideas for decades in a DARPA / University setting, some CERN universe-breaking bullshit and a SpaceX harvesting something that finally works. Anything that first group of nerds tries will be very laughable ( EmDrive - Wikipedia ) until it's not.
 
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Cybsled

Cybsled

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The NASA/DARPA project is the nuclear propulsion thing, isn’t it?

Granted we do need faster ways of getting to the other planets and moons in the system, so we really need to start doing things like this vs just relying upon slingshots or launch momentum.
 
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Mudcrush Durtfeet

Mudcrush Durtfeet

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Such engines cannot take off from Earth (not enough thrust) so you have to assemble such ships in orbit.

This essentially requires heavy (or super heavy) lift rockets. Well, at least Starship might be available for that, which would reduce cost.
 
Kharzette

Kharzette

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Darpa is kicking funds around in small amounts to researchers attempting very theoretical EMDrive like stuff here and there. Maybe one of them will work?

The modified inertia guy got a bit of money to try a sort of quantized inertia effect drive. The first one didn't work for sure but they are trying a new approach.

physicsfromtheedge.blogspot.com

On the Cusp?

For the past five months my Chief Engineer (Richard Arundal) and myself have been busy in the lab attempting to prove that one can extract p...
physicsfromtheedge.blogspot.com physicsfromtheedge.blogspot.com

I think it is worth spending a few million a year on. A long shot but if one of these ends up working we could start going places.
 
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Sanrith Descartes

Sanrith Descartes

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"Discovered Saturday,." " It was first spotted by the same amateur astronomer in Crimea, Gennady Borisov, who discovered an interstellar comet in 2019"

So the US had no idea it was there and some dude in the Crimea (currently a war zone) was able to figure this out.

So the guys who had no idea it was there are the guys we are trusting with the calculations that it will 100% not hit us.
 
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Captain Suave

Captain Suave

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Sanrith Descartes said:
"Discovered Saturday,." " It was first spotted by the same amateur astronomer in Crimea, Gennady Borisov, who discovered an interstellar comet in 2019"

So the US had no idea it was there and some dude in the Crimea (currently a war zone) was able to figure this out.

So the guys who had no idea it was there are the guys we are trusting with the calculations that it will 100% not hit us.
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They didn't know it was there because there's no need to look for asteroids this small because they can't hurt us. Anything smaller than 25 meters wide burns up.
 
Captain Suave

Captain Suave

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Sanrith Descartes said:
I thought it was 10m or more was a problem. Shrug.
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Dunno.

"Space rocks smaller than about 25 meters (about 82 feet) will most likely burn up as they enter the Earth's atmosphere and cause little or no damage."

www.nasa.gov

Asteroid Fast Facts - NASA

Comet: A relatively small, at times active, object whose ices can vaporize in sunlight forming an atmosphere (coma) of dust and gas and, sometimes, a
www.nasa.gov www.nasa.gov
 
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