Space Never Fails to Blow My Mind, 2nd Edition

Discussion in 'The Mainboard' started by Bruce Wayne, Apr 13, 2015.

  1. billdozer

    billdozer Well-Known Member
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    I've been reading A Man on the Moon about the Apollo program. During the moon walks, the astronauts would have checklists on their wrist. For Apollo 12, the backup crew inserted snoopy cartoons and playmates into the list for the actual crew to find during their moonwalk. Spoiler for NSFW:
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  2. WhiskeyDelta

    WhiskeyDelta Well-Known Member
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    I love stuff like this when old vets constantly talk about how the military used to be “professional”
     
  3. Mr Bulldops

    Mr Bulldops If you’re juiceless, you’re useless
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    Someone leaked the footage of the “anomaly” that occurred last month with the SpaceX dragon capsule. The leaked footage prompted SpaceX to admit that the capsule was completely destroyed. It’s now unlikely that anyone gets launched into space this year and basically impossible by July.

     
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  4. Jeffrey Lebowski

    Jeffrey Lebowski Obviously you're not a golfer
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    What exactly happened? Hard to see
     
  5. Emma

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    We won't know for a while

    Could've been something that happened in the refurb process, hardware issue, faulty this or that, overlooked during the checkout process, or a string of issues that started from something small
     
    #2605 Emma, May 3, 2019
    Last edited: May 3, 2019
  6. Emma

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    It's unfortunate regardless and kinda need a best case scenario
     
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  7. Jeffrey Lebowski

    Jeffrey Lebowski Obviously you're not a golfer
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    Is this the same capsule that went to the ISS?
     
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  8. Emma

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    That is correct!

    IIRC, the Crew Dragon 2 underwent its first uncrewed, orbital mission on March 2. The spacecraft's approach and automated docking process with the ISS was tested, remaining there for 6 days. A full re-entry, splashdown and recovery was then conducted after its brief stay. Unfortunately, the same capsule was planned to be re-used in June for an in-flight abort test.
     
  9. Mr Bulldops

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    They won’t know for awhile still I’m sure.

    The fucked up thing about this though is they originally came out and just said there was an “anomaly” and really downplayed it like it was no big deal. That’s kind of a big deal
     
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  10. pearl

    pearl Fan of: White wimmens feet
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  11. Bankz

    Bankz Well-Known Member
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    Yeah I shouldn't have watched this video before bed
     
  12. pearl

    pearl Fan of: White wimmens feet
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  13. Emma

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  14. billdozer

    billdozer Well-Known Member
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    Chang'e-4: Chinese rover 'confirms' Moon crater theory
    By Paul RinconScience editor, BBC News website

    The Chinese Chang'e-4 rover may have confirmed a longstanding idea about the origin of a vast crater on the Moon's far side.

    The rover's landing site lies within a vast impact depression created by an asteroid strike billions of years ago.

    Now, mission scientists have found evidence that impact was so powerful it punched through the Moon's crust and into the layer below called the mantle.

    Chang'e-4 has identified what appear to be mantle rocks on the surface.

    It's something the rover was sent to the far side to find out.

    Chunlai Li, from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, and colleagues have presented their findings in the journal Nature.

    The lunar far side, which is turned away from Earth, is more rugged than the familiar near side and has fewer "maria" - dark plains formed by ancient volcanic eruptions.

    The Chinese spacecraft touched down on 3 January, becoming the first spacecraft to perform a soft landing on the lunar far side. The rover then rolled off the lander to explore its surroundings.

    The rover landed inside a 180km-wide impact bowl called Von Kármán crater. But that smaller crater lies within the 2,300km-wide South Pole Aitken (SPA) Basin, which covers nearly a quarter of the Moon's circumference.

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    Image captionThe South Pole Aitken Basin is one of the largest known impact craters in the Solar System

    It's not known exactly how old the SPA Basin is, but it's thought to be at least 3.9 billion years old. The asteroid that carved it out is thought to have been about 170km wide.

    The Yutu-2 rover has now identified rocks with a very different chemical make-up to those found elsewhere on the Moon.

    Early results from the rover's Visible and Near Infrared Spectrometer (VNIS) suggest the rocks contain minerals known as low-calcium (ortho)pyroxene and olivine.

    They fit the profile of rocks from the lunar mantle and suggest that the ancient impact that created the SPA drove right through the 50km-deep crust into the mantle.

    Observational data taken by Moon-orbiting spacecraft have been inconclusive as to the presence of mantle rocks on the surface.

    The authors of the paper want to continue their examination of these rocks and find others. They have also raised the possibility of sending another mission to deliver some of them to Earth for study in laboratories.

    Image copyrightCLEP[​IMG]
    Image captionA picture of the lander taken by the rover's panoramic camera (PCAM)

    The results could now help scientists understand the chemical and mineralogical composition of the mantle, which could shed light on the origins and evolution of the Moon itself.

    The team members also want to find out more about what happened after the asteroid collided with the Moon and formed the SPA Basin. Scientists predict that the hole in the surface may have been filled by molten rock - forming a "melt sheet" within the impact bowl, which complicates the picture of this region's geology.

    Patrick Pinet, from the Research Institute in Astrophysics and Planetology (IRAP) in Toulouse, France, called the results "thrilling" and said they "could have considerable implications for characterising the composition of the Moon's upper mantle".

    He added: "It is of the utmost importance to make progress towards unpacking the geology of the lunar far side, expanding our fundamental knowledge of the Moon's formation and the origin of the crustal asymmetry that exists between its near and far sides, and preparing future sample-return missions."
     
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  15. Emma

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    Gotta click on the Reddit link to see a full screen of the gif, which is much needed

    It did not go quietly into the night: An exploding star left behind an echo of light, captured by the Hubble Space Telescope.

    In a sequence of images captured over the course of two years, Hubble scientists tracked a ring of light as it appeared to expand outward into space. This light came from an initial stellar explosion — which was first identified three years ago — reflecting off a nearby gas cloud, according to a statement from the Space Telescope Science Institute's Hubble site.

    https://www.space.com/38731-exploding-star-echo-of-light-hubble-telescope.html
     
    #2615 Emma, Jun 9, 2019
    Last edited: Jun 9, 2019
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  16. beerme

    beerme Well-Known Member
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    That ring seems like it’s covering a good chunk of space in only two years
     
  17. Emma

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    Moving at the speed of light, it covered a lot of ground
     
  18. beerme

    beerme Well-Known Member
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    Well sure... I suppose it’s just perspective but the nearest star to us wouldn’t have been reached in that time frame and it looks like it’s engulfing many, just interesting to see anything moving at that distance I can’t think of another object I’ve seen a time lapse of that far away. Any idea if it’s still visibly moving? Almost two more years went by.
     
  19. Emma

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    It's going to move and move and move until another force acts on it

    The nearest stars to us are the Alpha Centaurs, at 4.3 light years away. This supernova would have not yet hit either. Space is really fucking big.

    Also, the shockwave you see is basically the light from the explosion hitting nearby gas and space dust mainly

    Though, a typical supernova can affect Earthlike planets within about 10 parsecs (30 light years), by destroying the ozone layer with gamma rays. Some supernovas may be dangerous from much farther away.

    There are about 500 stars within 10 parsecs of us. A supernova explodes within 10 parsecs of Earth about once every quarter-billion years.

    It's also been stated that a supernova happens once every 33 milliseconds
     
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  20. pearl

    pearl Fan of: White wimmens feet
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  21. Nizz

    Nizz /nizzbrag
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    cool, we'll get Thanos'd
     
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  22. Emma

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    NASA Rover on Mars Detects Puff of Gas That Hints at Possibility of Life

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/22/science/nasa-mars-rover-life.html

    Mars, it appears, is belching a large amount of a gas that could be a sign of microbes living on the planet today.

    In a measurement taken on Wednesday, NASA’s Curiosity rover discovered startlingly high amounts of methane in the Martian air, a gas that on Earth is usually produced by living things. The data arrived back on Earth on Thursday, and by Friday, scientists working on the mission were excitedly discussing the news, which has not yet been announced by NASA.


    “Given this surprising result, we’ve reorganized the weekend to run a follow-up experiment,” Ashwin R. Vasavada, the project scientist for the mission, wrote to the science team in an email that was obtained by The Times.

    The mission’s controllers on Earth sent new instructions to the rover on Friday to follow up on the readings, bumping previously planned science work. The results of these observations are expected back on the ground on Monday.



    Methane, if it is there in the thin Martian air, is significant, because sunlight and chemical reactions would break up the molecules within a few centuries. Thus any methane detected now must have been released recently.

    On Earth, microbes known as methanogens thrive in places lacking oxygen, such as rocks deep underground and the digestive tracts of animals, and they release methane as a waste product. However, geothermal reactions devoid of biology can also generate methane.

    It is also possible that the methane is ancient, trapped inside Mars for millions of years but escaping intermittently through cracks.


    When Curiosity arrived on Mars in 2012, it looked for methane and found nothing, or at least less than 1 part per billion in the atmosphere. Then, in 2013 it detected a sudden spike, up to 7 parts per billion that lasted at least a couple of months.

    The methane ebbed away.

    The measurement this week found 21 parts per billion of methane, or three times the 2013 spike.


    Even before this week’s discovery, the mystery of methane has been deepening.

    Curiosity scientists developed a technique that enabled the rover to detect even tinier amounts of methane with its existing tools. The gas seems to rise and fall with the red plant’s seasons. A new analysis of old Mars Express readings confirmed Curiosity’s 2013 findings. One day after Curiosity reported a spike of methane, the orbiter, passing over Curiosity’s location, also measured a spike.

    Marco Giuranna, a scientist at the National Institute for Astrophysics in Italy, who leads the Mars Express orbiter’s methane measurements, said scientists on the Curiosity, Mars Express and Trace Gas Orbiter missions had been discussing the latest findings. He confirmed he had been told of the reading of 21 parts per billion but added that the finding was preliminary.

    He said Mars Express passed over Gale Crater, the 96-mile-wide depression that Curiosity has been studying, on the same day that Curiosity made its measurements. There are other observations on earlier and subsequent dates, Dr. Giuranna said, including joint observations with the Trace Gas Orbiter.

    “A lot of data to be processed,” Dr. Giuranna said in an email. “I’ll have some preliminary results by next week.”
     
  23. Emma

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    I guess you can say, Curiosity smelt it and now must find who dealt it
     
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  24. Emma

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    Still going strong after 2433 Sols on Mars

    [​IMG]
     
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  25. Popovio

    Popovio The poster formerly known as "MouseCop"
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    Went camping in Joshua Tree this weekend, was able to see Ganymede with a pair of binoculars. So god damn cool.
     
  26. Mr Bulldops

    Mr Bulldops If you’re juiceless, you’re useless
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    Falcon heavy launch was fucking rad. Looked like the sun was rising on the horizon. Not as bright as the shuttle used to be but pretty close. Could even see the side boosters light back up for their decent burns and hear their sonic booms. Now back to sleep since I have to wake up for work in 3ish hours
     
  27. Mr Bulldops

    Mr Bulldops If you’re juiceless, you’re useless
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    Not my pic
    631C1972-059D-48BD-B592-73607EFBB7BE.jpeg
     
  28. Bankz

    Bankz Well-Known Member
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  29. Emma

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    Have been lucky to catch 2 of those

    One when I was camping in a remote stretch in Banff, backdrop being the clearest sky full of paint splashed stars

    And the second time was with my dad while we were night canoeing on our cabin's lake, streaked across the sky and filled the entire lake with light
     
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  30. Emma

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    "Curiosity’s Mastcam snapped the panorama images from a location 327 meters (1,073 feet) above the rover’s landing site, which is out of view behind a slight rise. But nearby Yellowknife Bay, where Curiosity found carbon compounds and evidence of an ancient freshwater lake environment, is visible, along with weathered relics of ancient stream beds that once carried water into Gale Crater some three billion years ago."

    Article with more info: https://astronomynow.com/2018/01/31/curiosity-snaps-spectacular-mars-panorama/
     
  31. billdozer

    billdozer Well-Known Member
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  32. Emma

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    Click for animated gif


    As on Earth, auroras are produced by the interaction of a planet's magnetic field with its atmosphere. The Jupiter auroras observed by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope are some of the most active and brightest ever caught by Hubble, reaching intensities over a thousand times brighter than those seen on Earth. We wouldn’t be able to see them with our own eyes but Hubble's sensitivity to ultraviolet light captures the glow of the auroras above Jupiter's cloud top.

    Source: https://hubblesite.org/contents/media/videos/2016/24/868-Video.html?news=true

    Credit: NASA, ESA, and J. Nichols (University of Leicester); acknowledgment: A. Simon (NASA/GSFC) and the OPAL team

    From 2016
     
  33. Mr Bulldops

    Mr Bulldops If you’re juiceless, you’re useless
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  34. Why?Pokes

    Why?Pokes Take me back to the kine
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    Anyone been following the protests at Mauna Kea over the installation of the new TMT? They’re not only blocking access to the build site, the whole mountain is shut down and maintenance crews can’t make it up to do repairs, adjust the instruments, refill necessary coolants, etc... It’s getting to the point they’ll have to power down places like Keck, and scientists who’ve spent decades submitting grants and waiting on extremely short observational windows will see their life’s work flushed down the drain. It’s extremely sad and disheartening.

    Meanwhile none of the activists seem to give a flying fuck about the thousands of acres of construction 20 miles away at the resorts, nor the fact that the entire commercial green waste network was shut down for a week for nothing, nor the fact that the island’s recycling infrastructure is a fraction of what it could be.

    But yeah let’s run off a $3 billion gift from god that will do nothing but support pure research, cause minimal environmental impact, and enable a generation’s worth of ground-breaking advancements in astrophysics with no preference for any one nationality and no beholding to the military industrial complex. Sounds like a great plan.
     
    #2636 Why?Pokes, Jul 28, 2019
    Last edited: Jul 28, 2019
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  35. soulfly

    soulfly Well-Known Member
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    It’s been a tough follow for me, and I’m sure there’s a lot I’m probably ignorant on. I’m about as staunch on this board as it gets as it pertains to native rights, but I don’t find myself on board this particular platform. Science reigns supreme in my eyes.
     
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  36. Emma

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  37. soulfly

    soulfly Well-Known Member
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    Emma god damnit. I love you for bringing me deep sea and and universal knowledge at the same damn time.
     
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  38. Why?Pokes

    Why?Pokes Take me back to the kine
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    What's really frustrating here is the only thing the natives physically used the mountain for was a stone quarry. There aren't any archaeological sites of past habitation; no religious artifacts like the medicine wheel, no graves--it's literally just neolithic trash (which isn't affected), and a small modern worship shrine on the actual summit (which, also, won't be touched).

    I know it's impossible and anathema to evaluate the genuiness of sincerely held religious beliefs, and we could go back and forth about the propriety of colonialism and pacific missionaries, but at the end of the day 99% of the protesters are probably evangelical Christians too, and not a heavily syncretic kind but a pretty died-in-the-wool praise Jesus type.

    So it boils down to a cultural thing, which, fair enough, it deserves some amount of deference and I don't mean to hand waive it. Still though, out of ALL the things that people could put up there (gas stations, shopping malls, hotels, etc...) and ALL the pressing civic issues we could be addressing, it seems like a "new" telescope array, and I use quotation marks there because they're going to decomission and remove others if the build goes through, should be the least of our concern.

    I'm not so sure the issue is the telescopes themselves as much as they function as a symbol for the Hawaiian sovereignty movement, the Hawaiian homeland movement, the issues people have with the large military presence here, etc... and all that those entail.
     
  39. soulfly

    soulfly Well-Known Member
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    You’re obviously more in tune with all things Hawaii, but man, you managed to say quite a lot of belittling things in your first three paragraphs.

    I imagine the last one is what it’s all about. And maybe if people didn’t do what you just did, there’d be a much better approach towards equal understanding as to why this is important. But I’m guessing this is happening because this is the one key thing they can get actual coverage over.
     
  40. Why?Pokes

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    Oh people are much more diplomatic about it than I just was, and even then I was pulling punches. I could go on and on about the subjugation of the Marquesas settlers by the Tahitians, the human sacrificing that persisted into the 18th century, the repugnant caste systems and brutal treatment of women and the poor, the concentration of land into the hands of the royal elite that predated European contact...there are no shortage of points to critique ancient Hawaiian culture.

    At the same time there are a lot of beautiful things about it, and a complicated intersection between the ruling Hawaiians, European settlers, and US annexation. And there are real present problems facing natives.

    If you're thinking about it through a lens of what Native Americans went through or general colonialism you're doing it wrong, IMO. It's a unique situation with its own distinct issues. Still though, I grew up around reservations, and the last thing I want to see is this place turned into a reservation system. In my admittedly ignorant and uniformed opinion, a lot of the talk around it strikes me as exactly the same as I used to hear on the Crow, Cheyenne, and Sioux lands, only by people with no conception of what it's like to live in those places versus this tropical paradise which generally functions at an extremely high level for everyone, relatively speaking.
     
  41. soulfly

    soulfly Well-Known Member
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    Shit. I think I’ve actually gotten into it a few times with you as it pertains to the Sioux, now that you bring it up.

    Like I said, I’m team science over everything, and I’d love to see this come to fruition. but I can understand the kickback if this is the sort of argument that is being brought up.

    As a white person to a white person, what you’re saying is absolute cancer.
     
  42. Why?Pokes

    Why?Pokes Take me back to the kine
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    I don't want to clutter up the thread with this tangent or a political pissing match. If you care to know my background or thoughts on this matter feel free to PM me.
     
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  43. Henry Blake

    Henry Blake No Springsteen is leaving this house!
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    https://www.sciencealert.com/how-much-water-and-air-sustains-the-earth
    https://boingboing.net/2008/03/11/all-the-water-and-ai.html
    https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/all-earths-water-a-single-sphere
     
    #2645 Henry Blake, Jul 28, 2019
    Last edited: Jul 28, 2019
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  44. billdozer

    billdozer Well-Known Member
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    NASA gives SpaceX a challenge with the moon as a prize
    Recently, near the sleepy south Texas beachside town of Boca Chica, a stubby vehicle that looks like a water tank with legs, shining with its stainless-steel hull, rose 20 meters, wreathed in fire and smoke, before it descended back to the ground. The brief flight test of the Starhopper took a few seconds, though it started a grass fire that took a long time to put out. If Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, is right, the short hop is just the beginning of a journey that will take humankind back to the moon, on to Mars — and then beyond.

    SpaceX is developing a massive rocket it calls the Starship. Propelled into space by a first stage dubbed the Super Heavy, it promises to change space travel as profoundly as the ocean-going caravel did sea travel. Starship, Musk has boasted, will carry the first colonists to Mars. He has also suggested that the new rocket could land on the moon in two years. Musk has contracted with a wealthy, Japanese businessman to take a crew of artists and writers in a free return voyage around the moon.

    The rocket ship would be totally reusable. The Super Heavy first stage would lift the Starship into orbit and then return to its launch site and land, much like the first stage of the Falcon 9 does on a regular basis. The Starship, with refueling, could land on the moon or Mars, taking with it 100 metric tons of passengers, cargo, or a combination of both. The Starship would refuel using local materials mined from either world and then return to Earth. Musk’s proposed lunar surface mission would likely take cargo useful to future moon explorers and an eventual lunar base.


    Musk’s rocket ship has caught the imagination of many space enthusiasts. NASA’s Artemis program is built around a super-heavy rocket called the Space Launch System. The SLS is an expendable launch vehicle that has proven expensive to develop and will be costly to operate. Why, say outside space experts, does NASA insist on using the super-expensive super-heavy launcher when it could just partner with SpaceX for far less money and far more capability?

    Thus far, NASA has demurred. The space agency is reaching out to the commercial sector, including SpaceX, to build and operate a lunar lander. But the Space Launch System has too many political supporters to scrap just when it is within a couple of years of flying. The SLS may be costly, but it does provide lots of jobs and fat contracts in key congressional districts. Besides, NASA does not think that Starship will ever fly. It is just too incredible a quantum leap in space technology.

    Nevertheless, according to Business Insider, Jeff DeWit, NASA’s chief financial officer, threw down the gauntlet to SpaceX. If SpaceX is able to land a Starship on the lunar surface, the space agency will partner with the company to conduct voyages to the moon on the rocket ship.

    Of course, DeWit hastened to add that he thinks that Musk’s chances of pulling off a lunar landing are “slim.”

    SpaceX has thus far not responded to the challenge laid down by NASA. However, Elon Musk is nothing if not competitive and is always up for a challenge. If any organization can pull off a private moon landing on the scale that Starship could accomplish, it would be SpaceX, in two years or perhaps a bit longer, considering the nature of space development projects. The company has already pioneered the first commercial partly reusable rocket. The Dragon is taking cargo to and from the International Space Station and will, in due course, do the same service for people. The Falcon Heavy is the first commercial heavy-lift vehicle, also partly reusable.

    In other words, it’s game on for Musk. Somehow, one thinks his chances are a little bit better than slim.
     
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  45. WhiskeyDelta

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    They better name the first Starship mission Jefferson or why are we even doing this
     
  46. southlick

    southlick "Better Than You"
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