ThatGuyWithALongUsername

There was also a higher resolution pic on the briefing, not on Twitter yet...

2019 is looking to be great... and it's already exciting with all the New Horizons stuff! In short, and in no particular order, we have... Ultima Thule flyby (check!) Commercial crew (x2) Like 4 different lunar missions New smallsat launchers two asteroid samplings twice the falcon heavy we had last year Another exoplanet 'scope Probably some more that I'm forgetting about and, of course, Small question, though, what was so special about Es'hail 2? I don't remember anything happening on that one? As for my top launches of 2018, that's a bit tricky. Obviously Falcon Heavy top the list of launches, but there were pent of cool launches competing for second and third place. With payloads, I'm even more confused: I'm not sure about a first place thing here. I can list 6 payloads and 6 launches, but not in order: LAUNCHES: Falcon Heavy 2-6 (in no particular order): Last Delta II One of those neat little Electron launches Bangabundhu-1 CRS-16 MS-10 PAYLOADS: 1-6 (In no particular order): InSight BepiColumbo TESS SSO-A Parker Solar Probe Chang'e 4

If I recall, it's 11:30 today with the second failsafe image (just before flyby, but with shape) and 2 or 3 PM EST every day after that for new flyby images. In the meantime, I think they're about to go live in a minute for the acquisition of signal at 10:30, confirming that, well, the flyby happened.

Congratulations! This sounds pretty tricky, given the low gravity and irregular shape. Out of curiosity, what's OSIRIS-REx's average orbital speed around Bennu? It has to be going pretty slowly, at least in spaceflight terms.

Uh, wow. Not to get too political, but that seems very... American. Also: ...

So... what you're saying is we need a reconnaissance satellite reconnaissance satellite in a higher orbit to spy on the reconnaissance satellites?

It looks more like the old Rockomax parts to me.

Yeah. Changing one's mind in 2 months is still a bit more than a few hours. This is the new architecture.

Also, this:

Hey, you never know... plenty of rocks out there. Since there probably wouldn't be a chance to encounter much else, I'd say that just about ANYTHING would be large and interesting enough. More data is more data! It's always great to make sure the mission lasts as long as possible. That being said, you're right- that should wait until after the flyby.

It has begun!

Scrub

Oh wow, I missed one. That's even better!

If we're willing to bend the rules a bit and allow suborbital launches, that's 4 LAUNCHES IN 1 DAY and TWO AT THE SAME TIME! This is crazy! (Even ignoring the BO launch, that's still 3 orbital launches!)

I'm ok with that... I have an exam early-ish morning tomorrow. I'm already up a bit late, I really do need to sleep tonight, though.

There is still a connection. The RS-68 was designed based off of the proposed STME, a simplified SSME for the proposed National Launch System of the 1990's. Of course, the resulting engine was very different, but technically that strenuous link does exist.

And the next logical question: How much would people pay for dishes made from Bennu? We're gonna need a bigger TAGSAM, people! Actually, more seriously, could you make bricks out of this stuff for some kind of base construction? Hmm...

Scrub for the night.

The stream has been live for a few minutes now, btw. Just hit 10-min planned hold.

Elon time or not, that is one friggin exciting tweet! I don't know if I can handle the pictures, that's just too much... might pass out from excitement.

Well, composites and aluminum are out... there were discussions about just steel a bit earlier?

Just to be clear, I never said I was in the first group...

The fact that there are a bunch of these things turning up either makes it more likely or less likely to be a Dyson sphere... we should probably investigate at least one of them a bit more closely just to settle the issue a bit.

To be honest, none of them are really plausible yet until we find a way to make negative mass, assuming that exists. It may not be possible, but we don't really know yet. Hopefully it is! There's a whole cosmological model focused on trying to make sure it's possible... but sadly, there's little evidence for it (it fits the data just as well as other models) and may suffer from a bit of "ad hominem" as the guy who made it is... a bit crazy... But hey, I'm still hopeful. One day...

Fixed. I'm sure I just confused the heck out of a lot of people, but if you aren't keeping up with the latest Wintergatan Wednesdays, that's your problem, not mine.