ThatGuyWithALongUsername

NG-10 now NET 4:01 am EST on Saturday. I'll see what I can do- the trees in my neighbor's yard may pose a small problem, but the skies look clear enough.

I wonder how much it would take to restore it, if anyone was interested? I know nobody is, but I'm just wondering here... I'm sure the roof collapse doesn't help. Won't lie, it looks like a screenshot form a video game at first glance. I'm sure some plot could be thought up around this... Actually, this could be a good plot of some kind... now I'm interested in a nonexistent video game.

NG-10 has been pushed back a day due to weather, and there's a chance that it will be pushed back another day. Personally, living close enough to Wallops to see these launches from home, I kinda hope it gets pushed back again- better cloud coverage for me. I haven't actually been able to see any of them yet (except for one Minotaur launch in 2013 that I saw, but I went to Wallops for that one) due to weather or scheduling problems. But, if it isn't delayed again, the Progress MS-10 launch is on the same day. That makes two ISS launches in one day, and if I'm not mistaken about the flight plans here, they'd be docking on the same day as well! Has that ever happened before?

I guess I misworded that- it's not a "problem" by any means, just a limitation. It would certainly be better to be able to image more, but being able to image just a few is still amazing and far, far better than nothing, if that made any sense. Exactly- very exciting!

This is the first time I've been ninja'd. Yeah, other examples include 51 Pegasi B and a few others. The problem is, this currently only works on large planets orbiting far from their stars.

Today, I tortured my computer. We'll see how this goes. No, it hasn't finished loading yet. EDIT: actually, it's been a while but IIRC Realism Overhaul can be much worse than this.

I have edited the last question on the poll to be a bit more reasonable. Everyone who voted for older options are now voting for something else... you might want to change your answer. Sorry!

Bingo! I haven't known about this concept for more than 12 hours, and it's already looking incredibly promising. The trick is, of course, building a 1-kilometer disc or ring in space, plus a starshade. Actually, could the starshade be smaller and closer to the sensor? Perhaps the starshade could even be combined with the smaller disc preventing light from coming through the center of the ring.

Ok... I have never heard of these before. I am intrigued. I've watched Cody's Lab before, but somehow missed this video. I'll be back in approximately nine minutes and thirty-two seconds... EDIT: huh... interesting. My question now is how one wold put a coronagraph on one of these, exactly? This promises a much cheaper solution, but it could still be equally technologically challenging if you want to use it for exoplanets. EDIT 2: Crazy idea here... what if we didn't have to bring up material for these? Step 1: find an asteroid Step 2: Somehow find a way to cut a large, completely circular disc out of an asteroid, or mold asteroid material from an asteroid into a disc Step 3: Somehow make large circular disc out of asteroid Step 4: Profit! Actually, wait... could... we use a sphere instead of a disc? (EDIT 3: No, they don't) I think you can see where I'm going with that one- the trick is finding a relatively flat object with no atmosphere. I'm sure some Hubble-style software corrections could help... These suggestions are a bit more far-off, obviously.

At the same time, it's almost too complicated for mobile.. I guess I just want some way to play KSP when I'm bored and away from my PC.

...And it's out! https://store.steampowered.com/app/870200/SimpleRockets_2/ Given that this is early access, it is a fairly promising competitor to KSP! I really like the proceduralness of it. I'm tempted to buy it, but I may wait until a mobile version comes out, which is actually fairly likely.

I hate to be that guy, but... *interferomety

As optimistic as my OP sounds, I completely agree with this. There is no way that this will happen in the next five years. With some effort, the 2040's sounds like the closest possible time period. I will note, however, that while the ELT and TMT won't be able to do these, the PLANETS foundation does seem to be working towards this goal. While their first telescopes won't be able to do this, the COLOSSUS telescope, with a 74 meter effective diameter, will be built to work in an large array, which could theoretically be built large enough to accomplish this goal. The atmospheric diffraction is still a problem here, but they seem like they know what they're talking about- besides, there's still three generations of technology demonstrators before this. This could happen in the 2030's or something? Yeah, there are problems with this, and they're gonna need a lot more funding than one measly kickstarter, but they're trying, and it sounds... possible. Then again... maybe I am being a bit too optimistic.

Hmm... so, if someone managed to find a way to mass-produce space telescopes, and shot them into space with a BFR or something... that might work? I wonder if manufacturing the telescopes on-orbit, given some drastic reduction in materials shipping costs in the medium future, would help make telescopes more precise for cheaper? Again, don't know much about these. After that, they could be transported (ACES might be the better job for this, as they never touch the atmosphere) to a lagrange point or something.

In 1990, the Voyager I spacecraft was more than 6 billion kilometers from Earth. Its main scientific mission was over, but perhaps its most famous piece of data was still to come. It was in a unique position to take a picture of the entire solar system from essentially an outsider’s perspective, showing our tiny place in this universe. These images (a “family portrait” of the Solar System) capture 7 of the Solar System’s 8 planets (Mars was kinda in a bad position in its orbit, if they used a different filter they might have gotten it even at that point though) as no more than tiny dots against a grainy backdrop. None of them may look particularly special from this viewpoint, but those dots are the planets we are all familiar with- these dots are all entire worlds. Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and, of course, Earth. As Carl Sagan put it, “look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.” But we know there are more dots out there. Wouldn’t it just be awesome, in the original sense of the word, to see those as well? Not just eight, but thousands of worlds, all tiny, distant dots (until we can do better). Accomplishing such images, even for relatively “nearby” systems, will not be easy. There is so much we need to solve first. But I think, and I hope you will agree, that this is definitely a goal worth pursuing. How, exactly, is the subject of this thread. What technologies might come in handy to do this, and what problems do we need to solve first? And how might we incrementally go from tiny dots to entire worlds? Now, quick disclaimer, I realize this may be the greatest necropost of all time. The last post on this thread was 10 months ago. But I saw something on this that got me really excited, so I decided to revisit the idea, make a new OP, and loosen the definition of what counts as direct imaging here. Instead of looking for ways to build a telescope capable of seeing surface details of a planet (too outrageous, but still on-topic if anyone has anything to add to that one), this thread can discuss ways of just getting images of planets as dots. It still has to be able to do this for pretty much any nearby planet, though- we have seen direct pictures of really huge, hot, and distant-orbiting planets. There aren’t many of those, though. Such a system would completely revolutionize exoplanet astronomy. Current indirect methods of detection are very, very limited. Transits, for example, only catch transiting planets, and if the star is particularly bright then only the larger ones. There are almost certainly thousands of potential exoplanets just around nearby stars that we haven’t found yet. And with direct observations of the planets themselves, we could learn so much about them- their composition, possible moons, their exact sizes and orbits, answering so much about what kind of a solar system an average star would be expected to have. And, of course… there’s always that slight possibility… one day, through such a telescope, out of hundreds of similar specks of light, we may find another pale blue one. And maybe it will also be a home to someone. --- So, what problems would such a telescope face? Well, obviously, one of the big problems here is distance. The nearest star system to our own is over 4 light years away. An Earth-size exoplanet around Proxima Centauri (Prox b?) would have an apparent diameter of around ~0.00003 arcseconds. I don’t really have a good comparison for that but you can tell by the number of zeroes after the decimal point that that’s, like, reeeeeaaaally small. Distance isn’t the only problem, though, we also have to deal with other pesky sources of light. Planets are incredibly dim compared to their parent star (citation: I looked down and was not blinded), so we need a way of blocking the star’s light so it doesn’t overpower the image. That’s not all they have to stand out against, though- since they’re so dim, they almost blend in with random static background noise-you also have to separate them from that. Take another look at that family portrait picture- it was taken much, much closer to the planets shown in it then any possible target here, and yet it is clearly starting to suffer from some of these problems. There’s a lot of static, and Earth isn’t just “a mote of dust,” it’s “a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.” Get too far out and you might just get the sunbeam. To block the parent star’s light, the use of a Starshade has been proposed, and it’s probably the closest and most well-known approach to solving this problem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Worlds_Mission Now, for these kinds of observations, for some planets, the telescope doesn’t have to be stupidly bg. A starshade on the James Webb Space Telescope could probably make out a bunch of planets. But unfortunately JWST is not launching with a starshade (at least they tried) and certainly not on schedule. An if we ever wanted better detail- views of exomoons, even discs or even surfaces of planets- we’d have to go bigger. But how? Here’s a couple ideas. Here’s an interesting concept that doesn’t get much attention: The other idea is that thing I found that got me really excited that I mentioned earlier. It’s a new idea for a telescope that kind of acts like an Aragoscope but using the Earth’s atmosphere: the Terrascope. It seems unfair for anyone to ever try to explain it since the actual researcher explained it so well. On YouTube, no less. How much original research is on YouTube? I mean, that’s pretty cool on its own. Might be the least developed concept here, but certainly one with potential.

I can't believe nobody's posted the Scott Manley video yet! I still think the chance of it being aliens, while extremely low, is enough to justify SETI-scanning some of those possible parent stars or something.

Back on topic a bit, Martin Molin (of Wintergatan) just volunteered and I'd definitely choose him. I don't know who else, though. I also love how this thread just sounds like a co.pletely fictional forum game or something. This does not sound like a real thing in the slightest... it's great.

I've only seen one, the ORS-1 launch from Wallops on a Minotaur 1 a few years ago. I hope to return to Wallops or even Kennedy one day (been there once, but didn't see a launch) and see another.

Could be flight 5 or even 6, according to the SpaceX website Inmarsat and Viasat each have 1 satellite lined up to launch on the FH.

Well, a cool logo was promised, so a cool logo you shall recieve! I guess it also works as a patch-y thing for contributors.I made it myself, so I hope it isn't too terrible. Assuming that the next StarMods is next Monday, if you want to write chapter 3, say something! As for @Gyrfalcon5, don't feel pressured or anything. If it's not done by whenever the next StarMods is released, we'll wait. Real life comes first. Besides, there wouldn't be many people waiting, we don't have many followers .

Ok, thanks! Can't wait to see the final product!

It honestly took me a minute to figure out what was going on here (the fact that I forgot that line was in the story didn't help)... Anyway, thanks for your support! Chapter 2 looks like it will be written by @Gyrfalcon5, but I haven't heard anything from him saying he can do it...

Ok, I know this was a day late, but this week's mod is Advanced fly-by-wire! @Gyrfalcon5, you're the only one who expressed interest, so it looks like you'll have to fly a plane somewhere... if you don't have a controller just use a keyboard and have Jeb comment on the handling or something. Remember to use the save file! P.S. just remember you can make it a sandbox if you want

No, second-to-last reused block 4. EDIT: or third-to-last, if B1042 is usable.

Thank you very much! I hope to see many different writing styles as well. To "sign up" just say you're interested- I'll put your name in the OP and choose between whoever else is interested by Monday. Still not sure if that's the best way (author of last chapter chooses author of next chapter), would a poll work better?