PB666

Coffee makes the worst circumstances tolerable.

Wait a minute now, the whole purpose of recreational boating is driving around like an idiot and ignoring danger warnings. There aren't too many recreational boaters heading south into mexican waters from BSC. they are typically heading out down the channel ship lane that goes west, so as long as the rocket launches east there should not be to much of a problem. Most of the fishermen are headed in the direction of offshore reefs that are scattered along the coast, there are a few sunken boats, 42 ft reef is up closer to mansville, that pretty much eliminates everyone except those lingering off the coast to watch a rocket launch. Most of the charter fisherman have a list of GPS so if you given a latitude they can stay north of that latitude.

This is nothing, take a look at the 'alien megastructure' thread. Eventually ole freddy will figure it out, he usually does, cannot say the same for other posters.

See the video, the most stable habitable zone orbits are binaries that are close together within the orbit of mercury and the habitable zone begins at earth orbit and extends to Mars.

Thing is the wind blows hard from the south-south east some days dead south, not inland as one might expect. Of course the winters are mild as hell, cold fronts barely reach boca chica, its easy for one to pass over while you are on the water an not notice it. Silo in boca-chica would simply bobble up like a cork. Around 3AM the wind dies down stays down until about noon.

I've fished the sides of both channels there is no comparioson whatsoever in traffic, literally to cross the houston ship channel you have to dodge barges some times 6 long and double wide, and the wakes of ocean going ships including fully loaded oiltankers. There are 4 port facilites along the channel, the is the port of galvesto, the brand new bayport favility, the port at baytown, the various portages for refineries along the channel and the port of houston ,w hich happens to handle more industry shipping than any othe port in the country. The biggest problem for a small boat is you have gulf swells that cross ship wakes they can toss things up pretty bad if you have more than two lrage craft passing. Even down at sargeant the brage traffic is still pretty heavy. You sit on the side of briwnsville and you might see a barge pass way off ine the distance, youll see shrimpers come and go with a flock of seagulls in tow, and occassionally you will see a ship pass, maybe every three hours. Having said that the port of Brownsville is more than adequate, the channel is deep, it has a double step that goes down to about 65 feet at the jetties, routinely caught small snapper off the second edge. The inner channel is basically a deep barge canal. Queen triiger, snapper, grunt, sheephead, blackdrum, gulf trout, spade fish, large rays, sharks, The fact there is less trasfic off the brownsville channel is a plus, imo, they have fairly good development areas to the south, as long as they stay west of South Bay, thats going to get politcal fast. That liite road from the POBv to BCv aint going to carry anything that those ships can bring invanyway, assembled. Like I said if they can get a permit to canal to the wset sude of BCv then they could really bring in heavy stuff, but that means buying all the land on the other side of the road all the way to the beach, creatin a drawbridge . . . . .Otherwise they are going to have to beef up 4 to handle heavy loads. 12 inch concrete slabs. They arent going to be doing anything heavy yet, they are going to have to assemble close to the launch site. Mention here one thing, winds in florida may be bad but boca chica has the highest summer wind in Texas. The wind can blow white chop for days, and its a given after 2pm youll have chop on the bay. On the beach the sand blows hard enough to sting when it hits you, again this can go on for days in september. I was out off the coast about 15 miles out and we got hit by a rogue squall lines that was carrying 16 foot waves, the boat pulled about 8 kts and could not keep up withbthe waves they were passing us with about 2 knts to spare. After that i don't fish offshore anymore. Its one thing to be thrown up and down 16 feet over and over, but to be drenched in salt water and the occasional stinging jelly fish tentacle, but then have to smell the blowback from diesel for 2 hours. Its not unusual to have 20 knt strait line winds. (forgivr the typos, posted from an iOS)

Ever here the roman saying 'divide and conquer' . So the apply this strategy to star hunting. 1. If you know absolutely nothing about exoplanets, which is basically were we are when kepler was designed, literally. We could only see binaries and super huge gas giants (those on the verge of becoming stars themselves) and not very many of them. Then your science strategy is basically to see if you can find planets around any stars. In this case you want a pretty broad field and you are going to generate tons of data, which you can't process and so you crowd source it. Also this scope will not last very long, so you want to be able to pan large sections of the sky in fairly short time. 2. Now you have a short list of targets you are interested in. You have seen alot of stars with gas giants vacuum cleaning the habitable zone of the star, lots of binaries that would never support life, and all kinds of weird configurations. The problem with transits is this they only work if the planetary disk is roughly planer to the telescope. That severely limits the stars you can observe transits of. Theres another problem, light scattering is the inverse forth power of the wavelength, that widely fantastic halo you see around stars is about 1000 times bigger than the star itself. You need to shave that way down. Telescope also produces optics that need to be gotten rid of. So the bottom line here its not just about mirror size and camera pixels, its about telescope design, wavelength, cooling systems, starfinders, etc. Ultimately you do want a bigger telescope, because ultimately you want to point it and generate 5 pixels or so and use the spectrophotometer and get an idea of what the atmosphere/surface is. Right now we are not there. There are some who have proposed building a scaffold a km across and having three mirrors, I think we need to invest in a manned space telescope, 100 times bigger than hubble, built basically in space. We can see stuff on close stars, on distant stars you are limited to transects.

ALot of junk is not satellites, it parts of satellites, which I think is fair game. We have ground based stuff that can, in a pinch take out and rogue acting satellites.

100,000,000,000 meters over 300,000 seconds = ~ 1/3 million m/s If earth transects mars. If mars is on the opposite side of the sun then its around a million meters per second. speed of light is around 300 million meters per second.

Not north, that would be SPI. There are things the could do, like telescoping vanes a tail drag devices that could use GPS to target certain LZ. Port of Brownsville (obviously) is not a big port, there is traffic but not like the Houston ship channel. If spend the whole afternoon in the turn basin fishing, you might see one or two ocean going ships pass. There are a ton of shrimp boats though, so port in brownsville and many port isabel, there are a few charter fishing boats, but far less trips than before they implimented to new federal snapper limits (and long line commercial fishermen started taking down the snapper stocks). You are actually more likely to hit a shrimp boat than any other vessel. Alot of mexican brown shrimp are packaged in Brownsville. The laguna madre is so well preserved (heavily grassed on the south end), that on a good night if you hit the side of the boat, live shrimp just hop right in. This is the problem with South Bay, it is one of the most pristine bays in the country, it has a relatively shallow channel that makes it difficult for a majority of boats to enter, combine that with the fact that alot of the SE quadrant is owned by TxP&W and you have major dev problems. The thing about the launch pad side is that it catches overflow from the riogrande, its already degrade because the Mexican side dumps untreated human waste right into the river. Thats actually good for the site because althoughs docs in the water will lower the redox and prevent corrosion of the iron. If you dig into the mud and all you see is black (iron II sulfide) and smell is sulfides . . . . . . .

Not reallly, deepwater horizon was one of the highest pressure wells ever drilled in the gult and it was at full untapped pressure ((IIRC 12,000 PSI on the gas pressure, but rumor has it that it was actually much higher, BP under estimated well head pressure), these old wells basically are close to the end of their life and ooze oil out. In addition there are blow out preventers at the well head. I've heard (rumor wise) that some of the companies that started projects will not be able to complete them, its likely whatever assets they have will be turned over to the fed because they are unable to pay for their leases, most of this is on the upper coast. Companies of course stll try to pump as much as they can as prices drop inorder to have total revenue as high as they can but those wells finished 2 years ago even on the shale have played way down in production, they have a higher taper rate. Some of the platforms are operated by contractors, which are the first to be let go, so thats another way to save money. Theres a trade off there. What should be happening if prices were higher is reworking and going after deeper pockets (some formations are 3 layers deep) each layer separated by 1000s of feet. That isnt happening as it normally would. Aside from that a rocket shell traveling at 55 miles per hour is not going to take out a standing rig (even at terminal velocity its highly unlikely to take out a rig). These rigs are designed to withstand category 4 hurricane blowing over wind profiles of 100s of meters, calculate the drag forces (and some rigs have disappeared and never been found). The producing rig has its piping mostly underwater, its not in harms way, and the workers can simply go to the lowest deck. There are a few precautions that Space X could make to prevent high velocity impacts, like steering vanes. The upper Texas coast has a few set areas that are populated by rigs, but also a training area for military craft, so there is already some exposure ot oil wells to 50 ton craft flying at 200 mph. I don't think this is a major problem at all, I have been in the gulf off of PI many unfortunate times, there are not alot of platforms and they are spread far apart you can go for hours with out spotting one, so . . . its a very low risk thing for a collision.

This is why we let NASA, ESA and RSA do the hard stuff, we can justify the cost businesswise, the businesswise cost of space is a future estimate, to get their you need seed organizations. Its like building the panama canal or intercoastal canal or an interstate freeway system. Once you have it in place then every business under the sun is attracted to it. In physics this is know as the diffrence between kinetic and thermodynamic restrictions. Obviously thermodynamically under the right conditions making habitable places pays off because we have earth as an example, look how many businesses have chose to do business on earth (wierd as the example seems), but the kinetic and energy restrictions to building an earth are high. That does not mean that all restrictions are as high as building an earth, so it is the research into colonization that has to be done, and that were the G sponsered space programs come in. Science is not a profit industry, I keep being told this by the admins, the best science can do with industry and/or govt funding is break even, the net product is something that isn't sold by the researcher, makes a profit only for the publisher (basically for the chore of approving, editing and publishing). Therefore public funds ------>[Science: design, execute, evaluate]-----> Papers, trained and experienced engineers.

But for life, which adapt to the circumstances in which they live, the question is how stable are the surface temperatures. There is stability and choas. Because the stars are so similar in size you have to examine then in the double elliptical. Geeze you pay 25$ for a program and it can't even do an elliptical binary, rip. yep.

They are already up a meter and half though it looks like they have pushed the back-dunes back and brought in aggregate. Looks like to the left they have already brought in concrete or asphalt waste (good choice compressed concrete, is dense, waste drains well and avoids erosion, bad on the feet and tractors, and they will need a hell of alot more of that, the iron in the concrete lowers the redox and prevents corrosion, but you have to bury it well). There is a portion of their site that in the sat image was below water, lol. The one caveat (forgot to add) is that when you go to pier down your concrete, you will have to remove the salt water leach long enough for the pour. If it infills then the concrete will degrade over time. But I wonder if passive removal will suffice. The fenced off area is a small fraction of the total site. Good ole boca chica, haven't been there in 3 decades, looks the same. Sand, dead grasses, scrag brush, Most of the production rigs along the lower Texas coast are old. Some of them aren't even manned, There is no exploration going on now that I know of, many of the companies have basically run out of cash for exploration, you can expect a spike in the price of oil in about 4 years. I think if a rocket accidentally hit a few of them you would be saving the company the cost of cutting them down. If you go to the end of the jetties off of SPI with a pair of good binoculars and take a look offshore in the NE direction of the launch pad, what you will see, about 5 miles offshore is a line of tankers basically just north of the shipping lane, anchored waiting to port. Beyond that, every here and there off in the distance you will see rigs. I know someone with alot of holdings off the Texas coast mainly gas fields, I can ask what the active rig count is south of Corpus. As for moving rigs, they are literally welded to the bottom, they have to be cut by divers to be removed, its a lengthy salvage process, the old fields the rigs can be pulled leaving a well head that basically trickles out oil, companies tend to come back to these after a decade or so and rework them horizontally, but many aren't willing to pay the leases so they eventually abandon them.

Those people who suggest alpha centauri can support life are, simply stated, way too optimistic, sure it would be nice that the closest star can support a space colony, but i think any sensible space traveler would think, ther but by the grace of god there go i. I would be seriously surprised if there was any planet between a 1 unit and b 1 unit. there size diiference is 0.81, which basically means things need only get close to the mid zone and n-body physics takes over, its a no brainer those satellites are either toast or intestellar objects. Proxima centauri would be a decent target because its possible to do searches for bodies that are in dark orbits that you could probably land and exploit, which is really what is needed.

But a pulse rubidium laser would be effective a miles and has little gravitational effect, railguns do.

You didn't read, just because it orbits a its attracted to B, once it achieve a apoapsis of 6AU it can be pulled from A to B but since A/B are pulling equally it will simply be ejected. There may be a moment in which X is in a habitable zone, but that moment would not last long enough for the appreciable advancement of life. You can have stable orbits very close to A and to B but not orbits that are say 1/10th as close to B as they are to A if B and A are approximately the same size. Having and sustaining habitable zones are two different things. Track an orbit see what happens. Two disparaging results take the most conservative.

Tiles are not completely solid, well placed pulse laser could blast paticles and erode the tiles, no problem, they reflect radiant heat as long as the energy density is not to high, if you exceed surface energies to vaporize the surface atoms its just like any other material.

Quite impossible its the n-body problem in spades. A planet would have to orbit between AB and P to be in a stable orbit. IOW it would have to be so far from B at B's apoapsis and planets periapsis that perturbations by B were trivial. Run an N-body dynamic for any orbit that does not fry life around A and B and follow it for say 1000 B orbits. Bs mass is about 80% of A so any planet X would not want an orbit where at perialpha is 11.2 AU/2. That orbit immediately throws X into a death or exit orbit. So luminosity of A is 1.5 Sol which means X has to be 1.5AU from alpha. This places X in a orbit between 1.5 and 5.5 AU, but the problem is that for many passes of B as B approaches peri, X is eventually lifted up into a eccentric orbit until B recedes, moreover if Bs plane and Xs inclination are not spot on B will send X into a wildly eccentric orbit. As B passes in its 70 year orbit it will spend about 15 years at a proximity to A that it can seriously affecting the orbit of X Lets take an example suppose B is currently close to minimum of A say 15' from the minimum theta in its orbit, its about 14 AU away, X is traveling around A at 1.5 AU and is now traveling directly toward B in its orbit this means its got about 3 months till it achieves the minimum distance from B. So the pull of A is its M (1.1x *k /(1.5)^2) the pull of B is (0.9 * k / (14) ^2). Lets say the stars gravity is 0.002 at that point. Looks bad but watch out, X now begins to acceleration toward B at 10-5 N/Kg. Not bad until you consider there are 100,000 secs in a day and you have 90 days, worse that the distance between B and X is going to close down. The orbital response of X is to travel outward and slow down, but Bs pull will not subside because A has to make several passes, its not until B is moving away from A that the process reverses somewhat, but by that time all niche selection on X is gone, habitats are gone, its evolution killed.

I like their ship, its totally impractical for light speed travel, you would need a blast shield facing forward.

That because B orbits A over thousands of years. here: Taa-dah, but, it doesnt take a phd to read wiki [cough] Bb is to close to B to sustain life, and around proxima it might, given that on followup post I stated that P did not periapsis to A at 11.2 AU. Proxima has lower gravity, so its SOI is closer, but since it apparently orbits is either highly elliptical or hyperbolic. meh, it could have planets in the hz

If wishes were horse beggars would ride. HZ of p would be in the kill zone of b. Of course b can have a larger holding elliptical, its got stronger gravity, in the three body system it has a higher SOI. Mercury orbit an M=1 star at 58 days, this planet orbits b (an M=0.8 star) at 20.4 days, this planets surface likely glows a decent red color. P does not come close to A at saturn-sun distances, its b that has a periapsis at saturn sun distances, P has an periapsis prolly beyond the epoapsis of b relative to a. Given this P can have small planets at great distances that would not be detectable in the experiments.

If alpha centauri gets that close then only a large rocky planet very close (basically skimming its corona) to proxima could survive. If alpha came that close with the planet was in between the two stars it would be pulled into a highly elliptical orbit, several occurances and it would be thrown from the entire system, which may explain why there are no detected planets.

From bad ideas to worse. Do you know how mines work? If they have disabled your electrical system, its better to abandon ship, before they disable your escape pods. Spikey space mines would make you the world enemy #1. Think about it, in space that conventional gun has a range of maybe 1/2 mile, well calibrated maybe a kilometer. The laser can self target up to 10,000 miles, we can laser target stuff on the moon, the intensity per unit area drops, but that can be compensated by multiple devices and increased intensity. The other problem, at a 1/4 mile you blast a pressurized craft with a bullet, you have no idea which way the debris is going to go if the pressure hull cracks, the debris could come right back at you. In fact a good defense would create an interior pressure sensitve bag of ball bearings, so that if anyone cracks your hull they are going to be pummeled by chaff. The best strategy is to disable the craft and force any inhabitants to abandon it. then you can tow it off to someplace safe and destroy it or scrap it. Remember the wrath of khan, two dimensional thinking in a three dimensional nebula. You don't want to use conventional logic in space.

proxima is not a stable red dwarf, it goes through periods of intense ion production.