[dije]

LarparNar posted:

Actually SpaceX only has a 57.14% success rate at the moment.

They have launched 7 rockets and the first three failed.

Edited:

If the fourth had failed, they would probably not have been able to continue.

But ever since, they've had successes. That's what I meant

[LarparNar]

Hello General Discussion.


Can't wait for the thread to be drowned by all the fast threads...

[Zombii]

Dear god, why were all the Chat Threads moved to GD?

Ok, poll time.
Would you guys rather have weekly space news, or weekly write-ups of large moments/history of space travel and exploration?
Agree for news, informative for history.

[finbe]

If you guys have any webos/ios devices I would suggest installing Zite and setting your preferences as space and science related stuff, it digs up some neat content.

[billi999]

Got some content.

Cosmic Journeys: Is the Universe Infinite? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dG1JpC5jels

The Known Universe http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17jymDn0W6U
I really liked this for giving a true impression of the scale of even just portion of the universe that's visible to us.

The milky way, photo taken with a camera on high a exposure time:

Universe simulator program: http://www.shatters.net/celestia/
Celestia has a few useful features such as its exponentional zoom which makes navigation easier.

A few basic controls to get you started with it:
Left mouse - rotate camera
Right mouse - pan camera on current focus
A - accelerate
Z - decrease velocity
Arrow keys - pitch and roll controls
[ - decrease apparent magnitude at 45 degrees
] - increase apparent magnitude at 45 degrees

If you get bored with it, I suggest flying to a random position outside of but relatively close to the milky way, then select earth and try to reach earth with A/Z and the arrow keys only, I tried it and found it quite entertaining.

And for some random trivia:
The Milky Way galaxy is approximately 100,000 light years across (it takes light 100,000 years to travel from one end to the other)
The nearest spiral galaxy to the Milky Way is Andromeda. There is a possibility that Andromeda may eventually collide with the Milky way, causing either the galaxies to merge or the consumption of one galaxy by the other due to the supermassive black hole theoretically located at the galactic barycentre.

[DesolateGrun]

My debate team is doing it's Resolve on Space,
"Should the United States significantly increase its exploration and/or development of Space beyond the Earth's Mesosphere"
Our Championship is next Friday, I'm the back up for the affirmative team since I have such a boner for space.

Also Favorite Nebulae here:


And who doesn't like the fire cracker stars

[Altec100]

Space blows my mind when it comes to Neutron Stars. The angular momentum produced during the collapse of a star gives the neutron star an amazing rotation speed.

Pulsars are the result. Eerie but fascinating.

[DesolateGrun]

billi999 posted:

Got some content.


Universe simulator program: http://www.shatters.net/celestia/
Celestia has a few useful features such as its exponentional zoom which makes navigation easier.

A few basic controls to get you started with it:
Left mouse - rotate camera
Right mouse - pan camera on current focus
A - accelerate
Z - decrease velocity
Arrow keys - pitch and roll controls
[ - decrease apparent magnitude at 45 degrees
] - increase apparent magnitude at 45 degrees

http://en.spaceengine.org/

Edited:

Aerkhan posted:

Looks more like an elephant to me broskis.

Also fuck yeah space, it's weird as hell but holy fuck do I love space.

It was named due to the blurry-ness of early telescopes, as well as Messier didn't have exposure technology so he only saw the faint nebulousity of it.

[Killer900]

I find it both interesting and extremely sad how we devote 2.1 trillion dollars to killing each other yet only 38 billion on space in general.

We need some change in this world, badly, not just for Sagan's sake but for the species sake.

[DesolateGrun]

Killer900 posted:

I find it both interesting and extremely sad how we devote 2.1 trillion dollars to killing each other yet only 38 billion on space in general.

We need some change in this world, badly.

Imagine NASA having 3% the GDP, imagine what that little amount could do for the Human race.

[cpt.armadillo]

DesolateGrun posted:

Imagine NASA having 3% the GDP, imagine what that little amount could do for the Human race.

But killing people is obviously more important than going up!!!111!11!!!!1111!1!!!!!1

[finbe]

[DesolateGrun]

cpt.armadillo posted:

But killing people is obviously more important than going up!!!111!11!!!!1111!1!!!!!1

Well since it's our god driven duty to kill all brown people, why not from orbit?

[Pelf]

Recent article on Popular science goes into MSL and its landing sequence: http://www.popsci.com/node/60477/?cm...12&spPodID=020

[DesolateGrun]

The MSL is going to be awesome, we've come a long way from smashing lander into Mars.
*cough*

[Dacheet]

Relevant to the space budget discussion:

[Blazyd]

I was thinking of making one of these threads myself, since this is my favorite subject. The universe never ceases to amaze me.

Heres a picture of a sunset on mars

[Dacheet]

I could've sworn in the bigger version of that image you could faintly see Earth.

[Blazyd]

Dacheet posted:

I could've sworn in the bigger version of that image you could faintly see Earth.

[Zombii]

Altec100 posted:

Space blows my mind when it comes to Neutron Stars. The angular momentum produced during the collapse of a star gives the neutron star an amazing rotation speed.

Pulsars are the result. Eerie but fascinating.

I love how the Crab Nebula and the next fastest sound like a fucking swarm of hornets.

[MC3craze]

Blazyd posted:

I was thinking of making one of these threads myself, since this is my favorite subject. The universe never ceases to amaze me.

Heres a picture of a sunset on mars

Imagine seeing that with your own eyes.

*sniff* It's beautiful

I actually shed a tear.

[Killer900]

MC3craze posted:

Imagine seeing that with your own eyes.

*sniff* It's beautiful

I actually shed a tear.

Yeah, it just isn't the same looking at it on a computer monitor than it is with your own two eyes.

[Zombii]

Things have happened this week:

Mercury may have a liquid core, and other suprises from the innermost planet.

NASA’s Messenger spacecraft entered orbit around Mercury one year ago this week, and the spacecraft has been hard at work. It has captured nearly 100,000 images, mapped Mercury’s gravity field, and taken sensitive altimetry measurements that are shedding light on the planet’s surface features like never before. This week, scientists on the Messenger mission published another round of new findings about the innermost planet, which turns out to be an altogether weirder world than we'd thought.

The planet’s crust is thicker in low latitudes and thinner at the poles, a distribution that suggests the planet could have a liquid outer core. Its core is also large relative to the planet, comprising 85 percent of the planet’s radius, much more than Earth. The findings suggest that a layer of liquid iron sulfide lies beneath Mercury’s crust, which would make the planet much different from the other terrestrial planets.

Mercury’s elevation changes are also much smaller than those of Mars or the moon, the new research found. The most prominent topographic feature is an uplift inside a major volcanic plain in the planet’s northern latitudes. Somehow this area lifted up after the plains formed.

There are also some weird features relating to Mercury’s largest impact basin, Caloris, actually one of the largest craters in the solar system. The floor of the 1,500-kilometer (932-mile)-wide crater is now higher than the rim, scientists found. This implies that Mercury underwent some major topographic changes after it formed — perhaps through tectonic forces. This is still up for debate, though, and an extended one-year mission could help settle it.

There's a lot more cool pictures in the article.
Really cool, and it shows that we know a lot less about our solar system than many people would like to believe.

Space Shuttles Atlantis and Discovery meet for the last time.



The article is too big to quote here, so I'll paraphrase:
Atlantis has been sitting in the VAB since her return to Earth from STS-135 last year, Discovery has been undergoing a strip-and-fit inside the Orbital Processing Facility. Discovery was stripped of all functioning avionics, engines and all her fuel tanks were drained and pressurized. Even if the government wanted it, she would never be able to fly again. Atlantis is now on her way to the same fate, as both vehicles are set to become museum pieces. As they switched places for the final time, they posed for a photo opportunity with each other, then carried on.
Link.

BONUS IMAGE:

A self portrait of the rover Opportunity on Mars as it prepares for another harsh Martian winter. It's incredible how long these rovers have been functioning, and how well they're working.

[Pelf]

Zombii posted:

That's a lot of dust. Amazing how it's still going.

Edited:

Dust devil on Mars, taken from orbit.

[Blazyd]

Speaking of mars and dust on mars, one of the rovers was ready to die, because of the amount of dust on it.

Amazingly, a dust storm (like in the pic above) came across it and wiped it clean.

this was a while ago though

[OvB]

I wish they showed this on tv.

[ZenX2]

I love space. When I look up at the sky at night, it just takes my breath away.

If you haven't tried going to the top of a mountain or hill in an area with no light pollution, do it. You just look up and my god, the stars. Sometimes it seems as if they nighttime sky has just turned pure white.

[ThermalArc]

space is cool as fuck, there is a metric ton of shit to learn about space.
I wish we could all end the worlds conflicts and turn our attention toward space programS

[Rapist]

Anyone else here own a Telescope?
I have a 150mm Skywatcher Dobson, it's a fantastic thing.

[cpt.armadillo]

Rapist posted:

Anyone else here own a Telescope?
I have a 150mm Skywatcher Dobson, it's a fantastic thing.

Do you rape people with it?

[OogalaBoogal]

http://facepunch.com/threads/1172250

ITN Space thread!

[JohnnyMo1]

Black holes are the coolest thing ever.

[Alan Ninja!]

They'll fuck your shit up though.

[Tony]

Am I the only one thinking it's too optimistic for SpaceX to even be talking about Mars at the moment? Sure it's great to see them start work on the next stage, but heck, one thing at a time, work on the current project at the moment.

Pretty keen for Virgin Galactic to get off the ground in the next 2 years as well, I really like their feather design on the spacecraft.

[Nutt007]

I always loved these videos.

[Zackin5]

Alan Ninja! posted:

Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space, listen...

I've always had an interest in space but it's been growing lately. Particularly I'm interested in how to get around space at any sort of reasonable speed. Does anyone know of some books that deal with propulsion in depth?

To put it into perspective how mindbogglingly big space is:

[Alan Ninja!]

Space is really goddamn huge. Its a shame that it'll take centuries to reach even the closest other stars.

[Pelf]

This is the Great Daylight 1972 Fireball which is an asteroid that "grazed" the atmosphere, coming within 35 miles (57 km) of the surface, and is still in orbit around the sun today.

[Joazzz]

Zackin5 posted:

To put it into perspective how mindbogglingly big space is:

Hah, and some people still say we are all alone in the universe.

[cpt.armadillo]

I am wearing a NASA shirt. Fear me.