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Kerbal7

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46 minutes ago, tater said:

If they cannot be bothered in 2018 to have HD live streams, I cannot really be bothered to care much.

I guess if you look around Sina Weibo you'll found one.

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21 minutes ago, YNM said:

I guess if you look around Sina Weibo you'll found one.

Live? I follow space reporters who cover China, and I think I would have seen (and posted here) any official CNSA content that they reported.

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Just now, YNM said:

You know they drop boosters over people's head right ? Those poor heads I mean, not the gov't. 

My point about no one caring about their Moon rover is that if they are super secret about everything... that's to be expected. We're all rocket geeks, and we know about it, and can still only see decent images after the fact---BO has the same problem, so they switched to live coverage, vs flashy, after the fact videos.

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17 minutes ago, tater said:

live coverage vs flashy, after the fact videos

I'll admit that live coverage makes you feel you were a part of it, so it does sounds cooler.

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2 minutes ago, YNM said:

I'll admit that live coverage makes you feel you were a part of it, so it does sounds cooler.

Yeah, when you think of human spaceflight as the "cool" (but not as good in terms of RoI WRT science), the best example is the 1960s Space Race. I think that aside from getting to the Moon first, the US was in a far better position via the press coverage. I was always a space geek, and a buddy of mine loved Soyuz, etc, and I literally knew almost nothing about it. The only video we ever saw on documentaries was really lousy, or we'd see their Moon probe images (which were pretty lousy). It turns out that the US lunar mappers did so well that the published images were intentionally crapified so as not to show off spy say tech (maybe the same was true of the published CCCP images?).

In a race for cool, you need to _be_ cool. These days that means live streaming.

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6 hours ago, tater said:

The only "coverage" was random people really far away with cell phones. The same was true of the Soviets

There were no cellphones in the Soviet times, lol.

6 hours ago, tater said:

when you are not willing to show your program LIVE,

then nobody knows about the fakeups with N-1, problems of original Soyuzes, and other things, nobody knows about the wars between the competing constructors leading to the unpleasurable results.

On another hand, this gives the "bomber gap" and the "missile gap" when you suddenly realise that your opponent is frightened too much.

P.S.
Not to insult somebody, but I won't believe in the China lunar landers until some independent proof.
Too much strange looking things with them. Yutu looks too cartoonish for me.

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On 12/7/2018 at 11:02 PM, YNM said:

Alright, give me one example.

 

Unmanned ? They require waay less and still is limited (you are still subject to light speed delays), and still have nothing on human research (remember we need long-term, and no we wouldn't accept sacrifical endeavors - not even the polynesians were as stupid as that, they know well what they were doing in their seafaring, they won't just kill off their most valuable human resources like their very well versed navigators and their best ship crew).

Manned exploration beyond LEO ? They require waay more than 150 billion.

 

And boy oh boy I'm not talking the politics of spending money. Some of it is bloody obvious (if you spend more you get more back) but the way they're spent, I believe they're off limits on this forum.

7

Example. I'd like to find out what's going on, if anything, under the ice of Europa. That's not going to happen with astronauts anytime soon, if ever. If it's done it's going to be done with robotics. I'd have invested heavily in the robotic explorations of Europa, Enceladus, Titan, etc. I'd have robots all over these moons. Possible life. Human spaceflight is a stunt. And that's fine if it inspires people into science fields and the money invested is secondary to real science. 

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7 hours ago, tater said:

It turns out that the US lunar mappers did so well that the published images were intentionally crapified so as not to show off spy say tech

Doubtful. When ACTUAL spy tech was involved, NRO torpedoed the design: NASA wanted to strap KH-7 camera gear in place of an LM (and have the photos retrieved by a hand stuck through the airlock), and even had four recon modules partially built, but they were badly short on Saturn Vs.

https://falsesteps.wordpress.com/2012/10/24/

Similarly, Soviet deep-space cameras had little in common with the contemporary Zenits - Zenits were much heavier, and could return the reels.

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4 minutes ago, Kerbal7 said:

I'd like to find out what's going on, if anything, under the ice of Europa. That's not going to happen with astronauts anytime soon, if ever.

Yeah, but how do we know whether the humans can survive at Europa with all those waters ? Can they bottle them home ?

Spoiler

billboard.png

 

The point of human spaceflight is humans itself. The point of people climbing Everest is the person himself. The point of why we venture out into the Pacific ocean is for humans and humanity itself.

If you think that humans are absolutely OK not doing anything, well I suppose you wouldn't appreciate those pioneers and expeditioners as well.

Robots can well do the menial work (ie. drilling the hole), but penultimately we'll have to get ourselves out.

I myself have been very critical on whether we even need to be out there or not - but eh, we'll always find firsts, victories and fame.

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Imho, the point of human spaceflight is to replace a semi-sapient robot with a bucket of cheap protein-based computing devices.

If there were no lightspeed delay, avatars could do all work.
But far from the Earth you need a local sapient unit to rule them.

Ideally, humans should stay in their homeworld, gorgeously sitting around a crystal pool filled with a shining liquid, dressed in white clothes, and send their single-use avatars around.

Edited by kerbiloid
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4 hours ago, DDE said:

Doubtful. When ACTUAL spy tech was involved, NRO torpedoed the design: NASA wanted to strap KH-7 camera gear in place of an LM (and have the photos retrieved by a hand stuck through the airlock), and even had four recon modules partially built, but they were badly short on Saturn Vs. 

https://falsesteps.wordpress.com/2012/10/24/

Similarly, Soviet deep-space cameras had little in common with the contemporary Zenits - Zenits were much heavier, and could return the reels.

What was published at the time in the 60s vs the actual image:

old-moon-new-moon.jpg

NASA link to real image:

1101_H2.jpg

 

https://loirp.arc.nasa.gov/loirp_gallery/

 

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4 hours ago, Kerbal7 said:

Example. I'd like to find out what's going on, if anything, under the ice of Europa. That's not going to happen with astronauts anytime soon, if ever. If it's done it's going to be done with robotics. I'd have invested heavily in the robotic explorations of Europa, Enceladus, Titan, etc. I'd have robots all over these moons. Possible life. Human spaceflight is a stunt. And that's fine if it inspires people into science fields and the money invested is secondary to real science. 

I'm sorta in the same camp, honestly, except for the reality of the way things need to happen.

I think that government-sponsored spaceflight should concentrate on science, which means concentrating on unmanned probes, no question. The problem of course is that probes are by far so much more cost effective that having any crew program at all means that crew will be the lion's share of the budget.

The "keep the doors open" cost of a human spaceflight program (in the US) is a 2+ B$/yr cost, and that's without actually doing anything off the ground. As soon as you need to start buying hardware (or paying for launches, perhaps) it starts getting into real money.

It's a tough call, really.

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22 minutes ago, tater said:

What was published at the time in the 60s vs the actual image:

Ah, yes, space imagery archeology, that new and undervalued field that involves chasing the actual data tapes or negatives rather than scanned copies of whatever was published in glossy journals at the time.

Which is how you go from that

C_Zond08_X38.jpg

to that

moon_zond8_1735.jpg

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I think what they were concerned about was not camera resolution, but that they had the capability to shoot, develop, then scan and transmit film in an era when spysat images were shot on film and literally deorbited and caught for sending to the darkroom on Earth.

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3 minutes ago, tater said:

I think what they were concerned about was not camera resolution, but that they had the capability to shoot, develop, then scan and transmit film in an era when spysat images were shot on film and literally deorbited and caught for sending to the darkroom on Earth.

Actually the concern was even more extensive - both sides denied having spysats in the first place, and any evidence to the contrary was politically sensitive. Plus, quite interestingly the roughly comparable capabilities in film-scanning probes did not translate into comparable spy-sats - the Soviets actually went on with the man-tended photo station (Agat camera seen below), and the last film return capsules reentered in 2015.

Spoiler

f.jpg

 

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On 12/9/2018 at 12:14 PM, YNM said:

Yeah, but how do we know whether the humans can survive at Europa with all those waters ? Can they bottle them home ?

  Reveal hidden contents

billboard.png

 

The point of human spaceflight is humans itself. The point of people climbing Everest is the person himself. The point of why we venture out into the Pacific ocean is for humans and humanity itself.

If you think that humans are absolutely OK not doing anything, well I suppose you wouldn't appreciate those pioneers and expeditioners as well.

Robots can well do the menial work (ie. drilling the hole), but penultimately we'll have to get ourselves out.

I myself have been very critical on whether we even need to be out there or not - but eh, we'll always find firsts, victories and fame.

Yes, i get your point, the point of human spaceflight is to learn about the effects of space on humans themselves, but there are some place humans don't have to go, or should not go, not for colonization nor exploration.

Europa is definitely one of those places, why would you need to learn how to live on Europa? Its right in the middle of a radiation belt that will fry the Astronauts in minutes, and Astronauts could contaminate the ocean beneath it, not only ruining the science that can be done, but also ruining the life that might be living in that water-world. Sure, you can learn new ways for protecting humans from ionizing radiation, but you don't necessarily have to go to Europa in order to do that. Even going to in orbit around that thing is quite difficult, because its right near the gravity well of the biggest planet in our solar system.

If there is a place humans need to learn to live in order for them to colonize, its most likely nowhere near the inner Moons of gas giants, those places are ionizing radiation baths.

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1 hour ago, YNM said:

Someone somewhere will try.

That someone needs to convince the people from the Asteroid mining company that those megawatts of energy they spend on splitting the water and producing the metal for the ship isn't a complete waste of their resources.

Edited by NSEP
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1 minute ago, NSEP said:

those megawatts of energy they spend on splitting the water and producing the hydrogen for the ship isn't a complete waste of their resources.

That's where Europa Water™ comes in.

Edited by YNM
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Just now, YNM said:

That's where Europa Water™ comes in.

CallistoWater is cheaper though. Callisto in general is much more exciting than Europa tbh. Who doesn't like gaint ice spikes? Those are only temporary on Europa. It has a subsurface ocean, and also, it isn't in the middle of a radiation shower and a gravity well.

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