KG3

A star like the sun will get bigger as it goes into it's red giant phase. As the interior of the sun heats up the outer layers will get fluffed up and expand, the surface will be cooler and redder. I think you are right that compressing a star would make it brighter but you might run into some troubles with the amount of time you are talking about. Stars are generally really big so any event that affects the entire star might take a bit longer than an hour. Another thing to consider would be conserving the angular momentum of the star's rotation. As the star gets "crushed" it would start spinning faster and faster, probably causing some really crazy things to happen with it's magnetic fields. You also might get some kind of gravitational wave signal detected at LIGOS of the event. I have a hard time buying the idea that a stellar process could be "contagious" between stars. Also, if this was happening in our little corner of our galaxy chances are we would have detected the same thing happening somewhere else in the universe. Good luck with your story!

If a rocket is on the launch pad fueled for flight but the launch gets delayed, do they need to remove the fuel to fix the problem? How do they do that?

Maybe we can get another international treaty that says the military can ONLY operate in space, preferable at a safe distance from innocent civilians.

Ok, I think there is some confusion happening here. The wheels of are not driving the aircraft forward, it's the propeller. If you really want to mess with the aircraft try it with the parking brakes on, on the back of a flat bed truck driving down the highway the opposite direction the aircraft is pointing.

Just out of curiosity (ha), if we could bring just on gram of material back from mars, out of all the stuff examined by the rovers so far what would we most want to bring back? Ok, maybe a single gram isn't much to work with but what's the highest priority material for a return to earth?

Zombies as depicted in most genre do seem to violate at least a couple of the laws of thermodynamics. However maybe the zombie's cells revert to an anaerobic type of metabolism which could keep them alive without oxygenated blood. I've also noticed that the zombie's bones seem to become weak and brittle over time. Maybe it's because nutrients like calcium leech out into surrounding tissues. They also seem to eat anything that moves.

That's exactly what I was thinking. The photons would wander through the mirror once they had enough energy.

There is nothing particularly special or different about our galaxy compared to the rest of the universe. If it's in this galaxy it's also in other galaxies. It's difficult to see individual stars in other galaxies because of the distance involved.

Scott Manly did a video a while ago about "flying" a fighter in space. What I got out of the video is that wings in an atmosphere provide a whole lot of thrust when making a turn. He points out that while the engine pushing the craft forward at a fraction of a G the wings can pull something like 9 Gs! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYPxJtra1ws Flying in an atmosphere without any gravity would be interesting. I think you can try it in KSP if you turn off the gravity?

It almost sounds like the landing lights on an airplane. If you are along the approach to an airport and you have an aircraft flying towards you while decreasing it's altitude the light at the nose of the plane can seem to hang motionless in the sky for quite a while. Even small aircraft have very bright lights. I've been fooled by this before. However 85 degrees above the horizon would put this thing almost directly over head, wouldn't it?

Is there a difference between "altitude" and "distance"? For instance Wikipedia says that: "The Moon's average orbital distance at the present time is 384,402 km" but Wikipedia also says that: "A geostationary orbit can be achieved only at an altitude very close to 35,786 km" Is there some point where altitude changes to distance, or does one refer to a natural object, or maybe one refers to an object that was manufactured on and left the surface of Earth?

It should be pointed out that super nova take hours or days to brighten and can hang around for weeks. If it was only visible for a few minutes then it wasn't a supper nova.

Ok, in this video they claim 505 mph from a hand held radar for a glider. Very cool!

Wow, another Jaws remake! The original Jaws did have a fair amount of humor in it. This one doesn't seem to take itself too seriously either. Looks like it could be a really fun movie.

Out my way we have this place. Might be a good name too! Char­gogg­a­gogg­man­chaugg­a­gogg­chau­bun­a­gung­a­maugg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Chaubunagungamaug

Large container ships are built with a relatively flat bottom to reduce it's draft (or depth below the waterline). It's a tradeoff. The more hydrodynamic the shape the deeper the draft is going to be. Ports need to dredge channels to accommodate these bigger ships and this just gets expensive.

I watched a documentary about von Braun recently. What I got out of it was that if you look at the number of people actually harmed by the V2 rocket vs. what it cost to design, build and deploy the thing you will find that it was by far the most expensive and least reliable weapon ever built. At least von Braun managed to tie up lots of vital resources that could have been used elsewhere in the war effort.

The article says that it uses water as a coolant. Would they actually use water for this, would they need antifreeze or something? Star power "The solar panels that power those instruments—as well as other electronics on board—are on wing-like flaps that extend out from under the radiator. Exposed to the intense radiation, these arrays are specially designed to handle the heat and are equipped with their own cooling system. That system involves a gallon-sized water tank and pump inside the craft that streams cool water through the arrays to keep them at operating temperature." As far as making any kind of mods, it's probably best that I stay away from any kind of computer code.

According to the article in the original post for this topic this space probe has a very interesting heat shield. Taking the heat "The surface of the spacecraft will survive the brutal temperatures with an 11.43cm-thick (4.5 inches) carbon-composite shield, coated with a white ceramic layer. The outer white layer allows the probe to reflect back as much radiation as possible. At the closest approaches, the outer layer will face temperatures of 1,400 degrees Celsius. But the underside will maintain a much cooler 315-371 degrees Celsius,..." Scott Manley posted a video a while back where he tried to get a KSP space probe as close as possible to the sun. He used a regular ablative heat shield like you would use for reentry. I'm assuming that this is the wrong type of heat shield for getting close to the sun. I tried it myself and seemed to get closer using the bell of the biggest rocket engine as a heat shield instead. I figured that engines are build to withstand allot of heat too.

I heard about this mission to the sun. I assumed they were going at night.

Cool! Ok, I can tell that wasn't Boston. NOT because the guy was speaking Russian but because the traffic was being way too polite!

So what would the equivalent booster in KSP? If he had used the flea SRB would he have gone much higher?

Honestly I haven't look closely at how the system works. The wires do cross at intersections and the busses are able to make turns. The poles do slip off the wires somewhat frequently. I would assume a driver over time gets to know where along the rout this might happen and how to drive to keep it from happening. When they do slip off the bus just stops in the middle of the road and the driver jumps out and guides the poles back onto the wires via ropes (to the sound of blaring car horns). They have replaced these busses with regular diesel busses in most places around Boston. From what I can find it seems that there is a bus stop at Harvard that is in a tunnel and they use the trackless trolleys on that bus rout for reasons of air quality.

There used to be such trolley busses around Boston years ago. I seem to recall the pantographs slipping off (usually in the middle of a busy intersection) and the driver having to jump out and guiding it back onto the catenaries via a rope amid dozens of angry motorists. Ok, just checked. There are still some trackless trolleys left in the Boston area.

Yah, I know! When I read "repulsive gravity" I just wonder if this is for real. The article says that the theory should be testable with the next generation of gravity wave detectors. Is repulsive gravity the same as antigravity?