JoeSchmuckatelli

Grin! Yeah - I know; that's why I originally cited to the dust devil vid

Okay - but when I watched 'The Martian' they made weather on Mars look exciting.

I keep wondering why nasa or Elon or someone doesn't send up an EM Drive attached to some off the shelf remote control rig as ballast. If it works, fly it around for a while and get bragging rights. If it doesn't - well copper is good for the ocean

With my dog and potatoes? They're harvested as soon as I am not watching

Um... Doesn't Mars have weather? ... https://youtu.be/zb94PxX_q38 They're gonna leave some ultra light flying craft sitting on the ground for 30 days? Ok, yeah. Kickass landing aside - that's definitely NASA. =/

So pointing straight at the sun isn't noisy?

I like the 'low noise' image. What's the noise picture like two weeks later?

BRAVO ZULU!

You have a special chamber that can pressurize around the suits - making it much safer for the astronaut to enter a suit with a much smaller / normal port - basically take what they drew for suitport and put a box around it. Astronaut still enters the main part of the ship / inner lock station via the port in the back of the suit. The dust remains in the chamber. Bonus - upon return to earth - more samples. One of the biggest things I've seen in suit design lately is greatly improved mobility. The full suitport turtle back look like it will eliminate those advantages - so I'm suggesting a compromise. Won't be perfect exclusion of regolith but will be miles ahead of what Apollo enjoyed

That's not a bad idea - but would take a pretty big rework of the suits. Edit: @kerbiloidthanks for the info on suitport - had not seen this Having looked at it - I would make it a ton smaller and put it inside the first hatch - so that the astronaut is getting into and out of the suit while the lock is pressurized. Doing it this way means that all you need is a good seal for dust - and not a whole 'lock on your back' apparatus

My one trip to KSC, we spotted a bunch of skeletons around the launch pads. Gators apparently don't excite the Sierra Club

If / when folks return to the moon... would it make sense to have a compressed 'air' blower system available outside the airlock / hatches to dust off the spacesuits before re-entering the craft? I hear regolith in the lungs is not fun.

So - they got 6 flights out of that one booster... any idea of how much they saved over single use rockets?

I've been in a lot of places that look like that ... ...absent the hostile atmosphere. On Earth, they're quite interesting.

Interesting question - the problem is with government is the desire to do too many things with the one thing (and build them in congressionally powerful districts). Example: the USMC is still using amphibious tractors first used during Vietnam (yes, the same hulls) - we had an opportunity to get a new vehicle for the 21st century. Mission creep killed it. From what I've seen, SLS got hit with the same problem. NASA "We want a heavy lift rocket" Congress: "Cool, it needs to be able to go to the moon" ".. . And Mars" "... And carry lots more people - make it wider" "... And go to the ISS" "Make it cheaper" "... Oh-and make sure you build it in Alabama"

Perhaps look at some of the new stuff coming out about Charon? Our system may have a lot more water than expected. So possibilities for Laythe expanding?

So... does this mean Japan gets credit; they threw that rock Edit: UAE may not have thrown their stone, but do they get any credit for running the insertion burn?

Not the sharpest tool in this shed - but AFAIK - its atmospheric drag as the primary culprit "Space" as we know it, does not exactly have a sharp boundary with the atmosphere - thus some satellites can be in orbit, in space, but still experience atmospheric drag.

Anyone seen the 'estimated costs' for a static fire of engines? I'm guessing it's 'worth it' in the long run to prove the systems work... but it can't be cheap

Like @StrandedonEarth I found myself astounded by some of the things I saw. There were parts where there were very clearly flow structures; like river valleys... and asked myself 'what am I seeing???' *50:00 - 53:00 There's another take-away... the question is 'how thick is the regolith, exactly'? There are multiple instances where you can see huge, deep, sharply edged (new) craters... and the sides are all smooth. No rocky deformations. Every crater looks like a stone dropped in a box of calc, except in some of the mountainous areas. It's a stunning video: thanks @Brikoleur! Edit: oh - and you owe it to yourself to watch the Earthrise!

This is cool: Alpha Centauri from New Horizons (left) and Earth (right). TNKgS8X.jpg (3790×1952) (imgur.com) Parallax, baybeee!

I actually came here to ask about this - is the transfer speed lower than the orbital speed? Why take the risk? Lower fuel costs? Edit: oh, and you know we're getting cocky when NASA says 'hold mah beer and watch dis'

That's because NASA is government funded. There's always bloat in Gov't

... And back to Determinism. In another thread, the Determinist argued: I get this. You roll a 20 sided die, and it comes up 17. Of course no other outcome was possible, because that is what occurred. We can look back at a single timeline and agree that what has happened, happened. Looking backward, our timeline is deterministic, not probabilistic. What I don't necessarily agree with is that even during the moment when the die was being tossed that it was guaranteed to become a 17. As I toss the die and it flies toward the table, it can come up with a number, any number or even no number (edge roll) constrained by the media. I'm guessing the determinist would argue that if we knew the material properties of the die (composition, weight, friction, etc) the speed and spin of the throw and the properties of the table - heck even the time of day, temperature and relative humidity of the air, position of the Moon and Jupiter and whether a pair of neutron stars recently collapsed into a black hole (etc, etc, etc) that with all that data we could reduce or eliminate any uncertainty and know - absolutely - that this die will show a 9 when it stops spinning... I'm guessing the logical extension of this is that the universe is constrained by its existence and current state in a deterministic way that it cannot encompass random, unexpected occurrences (while we, with limited knowledge are allowed to be surprised by the unknown - and perceive that as 'random'). That the universe is what it is, and will be what it will be, because it is what it is. Further, that for any truly random, unexpected thing to occur within the universe... that it would, by definition, have to come from outside the universe, which has some logical inconsistencies. "God does not play at dice" makes more sense, now. The problem, for me, is that this view seems a bit smug. To be true, you* would have to know (i.e. have observed) literally every thing. It's the Schrödinger Cat idea: in the box the cat is both dead and not dead... and once we reduce the variable to knowledge by testing / observation, looking backward it was clearly determined (especially from the moment of observation) - but for it to be forwardly determined seems like cheating - like eliminating the instance of 'now' as time flows. To declare that our living in the now is an illusion. It is the equivalent of declaring that we are actually living or factually repeating that which has already occurred. Reading a novel that has already been written - of course it can't end any differently; the story arc was determined before we even picked up the book. So, the problem for me is that the instant (or expanse) of time before the instant of now has to be indeterminate, and can be probabilistic regardless of how informed our predictions can possibly be... because within the universe, that instant before 'now' incorporates all of the possibilities that haven't been reduced to knowledge through having occurred. *I don't mean to imply a sentient observer 'you' - the Universe could 'know' a thing that has happened, once it has happened, because it has happened. .

Those were fantastic. Thanks for sharing!