Albert VDS

Had a live view of the barge on the Jason-3 Rocket and Countdown Only steam, it looked clear enough to see passed the barge. So a landing would be easily seen. It looked calm too or calm enough. It was a short clip.

According to Chris McKay, a planetary scientist at NASA, it would take 10-100 million years : http://esseacourses.strategies.org/EcosynthesisMcKay2008ReviewAAAS.pdf http://www.academia.edu/4166892/The_Creation_of_an_Artificial_Dense_Martian_Atmosphere_A_major_Obstacle_to_the_Terraforming_of_Mars So yeah, that's ample time to recover any lost atmosphere.

Why would we need to care about losing the atmosphere on Mars when it takes millions of years? Even if it looses it faster, it's again much easier to import an material from the asteroid belt to replenish it than ship it to Venus. So you don't need to build a sphere around Mars.

So they can get internet. One way of making internet a lot more useful is to have the usual stuff be send in intervals. Let's say every 4 hours a website gets updated in the cache of a server. But anything instant doesn't work, but we were used to that when letters were the only way of long distance communication.

Thanks for posting the time till launch, I thought it was way later.

@K^2 First you mention that Venus might be a little easier than Mars and the latter on you say that cooling planets down is harder. There are 3 major hurdles to terraforming Venus: - Removing a large part of the atmosphere. - Increasing the spin so it resembles an actual Earth day. - There is basically no water on Venus, the 0.002% in the atmosphere is just not enough. All these require a huge amount of asteroid(or even comets) with significant mass to be redirected at Venus, which is something we can't do. Even if we could then it would be cheaper to redirecting them at Mars, because it's closer to the asteroid belt. Mars transforming relatively easier than Venus, it only requires to overcome 1 major hurdle: - Increasing the atmosphere. This can be done by: - Heating up the Martian soil to releasing CO2, oxygen, water vapor. - Melting the polar caps

Terraforming means; to change a planet so that resembles Earth and possibly can support life. What you are suggesting for Venus is upper-aerisforming, to change the upper atmosphere.

How do you post twitter message? I tried just pasting the link to the message, but it doesn't convert it to the message. Edit: testing if this works: Ok, it's done by pasting the link and then hitting enter to create a new line, otherwise it wont convert the link into the actual twitter message.

Apparently NASA tested Am-241 and it's great for mission with a low energy requirement: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0ahUKEwj4pbyGiq_KAhWBeA4KHXUIAG0QFggdMAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fntrs.nasa.gov%2Fsearch.jsp%3FR%3D20140008746&usg=AFQjCNHAr1lLfw_M0mAX_khLCeXGOpzSGg&sig2=K9786Sd8CuE8-Tdny8kzFA

From what you posted it read as if they need to order them to make it for a specific mission. But the article actually state they are getting a set amount each year, with an increased amount at one point, and they can use it on any space mission they see fit.

From the article:

Actually we're not out of Plutonium-238, production has started again at the end of last year: Space Plutonium: US Once Again Producing Fuel for Deep-Space Missions

Maybe you didn't read the wont part. In any case, there's a lot of matter around starts when they are formed, so it's highly unlikely that there is nothing. Even more unlikely that the star closet to us doesn't have any planets when most other do.

I can't imagine that there wont be any planets around it, let alone a dwarf planet.

The rush is to get something fixed if it doesn't support your base anymore when it fails and it will fail at some point. Sure for Mars mass is an issue to if you are looking at the cost of it all, but it doesn't have a mass restriction because the hab wouldn't handle it or needs to be increased because of it.

It would actually be much more beneficial for humans if they is life on Mars. We would have a second example of life and could lead to an understanding on how life actually work and possibly got started. and most importantly answer questions we didn't ask. All of which could help us as a species. There is no reason to not colonize Mars if there is life there, the only problem is terraforming it. Which is a problem to begin with.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/688173528017850368 Edit: Is there some BB-code for twitter links, because it's not showing up as the previous twitter messages in this thread.

Mars has a lot of science to offer and possibly answer to the most important question "Are we alone?".

SpaceX isn't in the business to show off recorded footage of a static fire, let alone in Bezos' face. Let's assume they have recorded the static fire, what would it accomplish if they released it? Or what would happen if they didn't?

I think this has been discussed before, but it might be a combination of: - Raw or true color images are too bland and doesn't clearly show the information they want to show. - NASA assumes that people recognizes what false coloring is. Or they think it will get them more "likes" to show the false color photo's.

A turbo pump would be able to propel fast enough to get anything into orbit. You need to heat it up, in chemical rockets this is done by combustion. But this could also be done with a microwave beam and only hydrogen as fuel like what Escape Dynamics developing. The microwave beam heats up the hydrogen in the spacecraft and propels it out of the back. They are estimating the ISP above 800s.

Why would they need to release it? Or even better, who said they filmed it?