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James Kerman
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Posts posted by James Kerman
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15 minutes ago, AbacusOnKSP said:
Would you be able to send the file?
Unfortunately this would be a violation of take 2's intellectual property as mentioned above by @Vanamonde.
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16 minutes ago, monstah said:
Talking about shoes, glad to see my old ones are so well-filled!
Wait, Beavis and Butt-Head avatar, is that right?
Yeah, Mate, it used to be.
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Welcome back, Monstah. Although I'm fairly new to the forum, there was some overlap while you were a mod and I believe that any person who owns a motorhead shirt is an automatic kindred spirit.
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41 minutes ago, magnemoe said:
Not talking about the ice moons but exoplanets. Bacteria under the ice will require an landing and an dive.
Sorry, Mate, I misunderstood.
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27 minutes ago, magnemoe said:
Looking for oxygen and other signs of life in the atmosphere is easier than an Europa mission, easier to get funding for too since telescopes are multi use.
I agree but in the case of Europa the atmosphere is primarily oxygen caused by charged particles hitting the ice so if you are looking for cyanobacteria or other organisms deep under the surface you would be dealing with a lot of signal noise. Even evidence of past life on these bodies would answer many questions and raise many more.
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Welcome to the forum @Sm1234.
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6 minutes ago, johnmorris said:
I'm actually wondering why they wanted to start the colonization of the Solar System with Mars and not with the Moon. I mean it's easier to get to the Moon, and they can test all the systems with creating a settlement on the nearby satellite.
I'm not sure that NASA has ever proposed a colony on Mars, besides some early, optimistic ideas that never got past the paper stage (I might be wrong about this but someone will correct me if it is so). I personally think that an outpost (as opposed to a colony) on the Moon could be useful to explore some of the issues involved in colonizing any body in the solar system. We have a cool thread on Mars colonization that explains some of the many problems any colony is likely to encounter if you would like to read more about it.
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I found it helps to keep yourself occupied, rather than dwell on the bad news. Maybe you could organize some special activities for Molly (if She's not too poorly) so that even if the worst happens both you and the dog have some really happy time together.
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Having lost a beloved companion myself, I empathize with the pain you are feeling, Cat.
I've recently lost a family member to cancer so I hate it too.
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NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) is beginning aero-braking operations to support Mars 2020.
Image Credit: NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio/Kel Elkins and Dan Gallagher
QuoteNASA's 4-year-old atmosphere-sniffing Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission is embarking on a new campaign today to tighten its orbit around Mars. The operation will reduce the highest point of the MAVEN spacecraft's elliptical orbit from 3,850 to 2,800 miles (6,200 to 4,500 kilometers) above the surface and prepare it to take on additional responsibility as a data-relay satellite for NASA's Mars 2020 rover, which launches next year.
"The MAVEN spacecraft has done a phenomenal job teaching us how Mars lost its atmosphere and providing other important scientific insights on the evolution of the Martian climate," said Jim Watzin, director of NASA's Mars Exploration Program. "Now we're recruiting it to help NASA communicate with our forthcoming Mars rover and its successors."
While MAVEN's new orbit will not be drastically shorter than its present orbit, even this small change will significantly improve its communications capabilities. "It's like using your cell phone," said Bruce Jakosky, MAVEN principal investigator from the University of Colorado, Boulder. "The closer you are to a cell tower, the stronger your signal."
A strong telecommunications antenna signal is not the only benefit of a tighter orbit. Coming in nearly 1,000 miles (about 1,500 kilometers) closer also will allow the MAVEN orbiter to circle Mars more frequently - 6.8 orbits per Earth day versus 5.3 previously - and thus communicate with the Mars rovers more frequently. While not conducting relay communications, MAVEN will continue to study the structure and composition of the upper atmosphere of Mars. "We're planning a vigorous science mission far into the future," Jakosky said.
The MAVEN mission was designed to last two years in space, but the spacecraft is still operating normally. With the mission managing its fuel to last through 2030, NASA plans to use MAVEN's relay capability as long as possible. The MAVEN orbiter carries an ultra-high-frequency radio transceiver - similar to transceivers carried on other Mars orbiters - that allows it to relay data between Earth and rovers or landers on Mars. The MAVEN spacecraft already has served occasionally as NASA's communication liaison with the Curiosity rover.
Over the next few months, MAVEN engineers will use a navigation technique known as aerobraking - like applying the brakes on a car - to take advantage of the drag of the Red Planet's upper atmosphere to slow the spacecraft down gradually, orbit by orbit. This is the same drag you would feel if you put your hand out of the window of a moving car.
Based on the tracking of the spacecraft by the navigation team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and at Lockheed Martin in Littleton, Colorado, engineers will begin carefully lowering the lowest part of the spacecraft's orbit into the Martian upper atmosphere over the next couple of days by firing its thrusters. The spacecraft will circle Mars at this lower altitude about 360 times over the next 2.5 months, slowing down slightly with each pass through the atmosphere. While it may seem like a time-consuming process, aerobraking is the most efficient way to change the spacecraft's trajectory, said Jakosky: "The effect is the same as if we fired our thrusters a little bit on every orbit, but this way, we use very little fuel."
Fortunately, the team has ample experience operating the spacecraft at these lower altitudes. On nine previous occasions throughout the mission, MAVEN engineers have dipped the orbiter into the same altitude targets for aerobraking to take measurements of the Martian atmosphere. As a result of these "deep dips" and other measurements, NASA has learned that solar wind and radiation had stripped Mars of most of its atmosphere, changing the planet's early climate from warm and wet to the dry environment we see today. MAVEN also discovered two new types of auroras on Mars and the presence of charged metal atoms in its upper atmosphere that tell us that a lot of debris is hitting Mars that may affect its climate.
MAVEN's principal investigator is based at the University of Colorado's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, Boulder. The university provided two science instruments and leads science operations, as well as education and public outreach, for the mission. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the MAVEN project and provided two science instruments for the mission. Lockheed Martin built the spacecraft and is responsible for mission operations. The University of California at Berkeley's Space Sciences Laboratory also provided four science instruments for the mission. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, provides navigation and Deep Space Network support, as well as the Electra telecommunications relay hardware and operations.
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48 minutes ago, MPDerksen said:
The next Interscet is in 29m, 26s. Separation of 3.0Km Relative Speed of 13.6m/s
Ninja'd by @Starman4308
Set a maneuver node a few minutes ahead of your vessels current position and play around with it until you get it to 2.2km or less. Your relative speed is good but you only really need to get within switching distance of your target (A kerbal on EVA has about 500m/s Dv - enough to go more than half way to the mun and in this case you only need to kill 13.6m/s) so that you have control of the kerbal. Don't worry about how much time you have to perform the transfer, this changes as you make adjustments.
You are moving towards your target when the prograde indicator
(actual direction of your kerbal/vessel) is close to your target marker 
. If you are moving away from your target you will see the retrograde indicator 
(opposite direction).
Your relative speed should only be zero when you actually get to the rescue vehicle so you don't need to perfectly match orbits - the fine tuning of the orbits is what happens as a natural consequence of keeping your markers lined up with RCS. For docking you want to minimize the amount of monoprop your vessel carries so in that case an orbit that varies by 1-2km is desirable for an easy, slow speed dock.
I have rescued kerbals with a vessel that was in an opposite orbit to the stranded wreck around minmus and often perform high speed intercepts to save on fuel up to 200m/s speed difference (but its best not to try this until you have a better understanding of the process).
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45 minutes ago, MPDerksen said:
It doesn't seem as simple as just pointing at it, thrust prograde, and then slow down with retrograde.
You're nearly there, you just need to match up your prograde vector
to your target marker on the navball and watch your approach speed. Relying on visuals for the approach is very difficult until you get really close. An example (I only use the navball information until I get 20-30m from the vessel):
When you thrust to slow down it will change the prograde vector so keep adjusting to keep the two markers lined up and you will make it.
Another edit: I only backward thrust to slow down, after that, if your prograde is above the target usle ctrl to lower it, if below use shift. Use a or d for left right adjustments.
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5 hours ago, <Joseph kerman> said:
could there be a 100% water planet
As far as I know the closest to an all water body known to science seems to be Gliese 436 b. I believe any large body of water or ice would have to include some other materials deposited as cosmic dust or meteor/asteroid impacts.
That said there are gas giants with densities lower than water and surface gravity higher than earth so it should be possible, just not probable.
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1 hour ago, DDE said:
Fertility correlates negatively with IQ. IQ is also significantly heritable.
Which means that this growing slice of the population is also of below-average intelligence, which will create a draw on the human capital of developed nations.
While I agree that IQ is partly influenced by the complex interaction of over 500 genes (the actual mechanisms are not well understood at this time) external factors also seem to be significant.
A lot of the material I am reading on the subject is highly controversial and may be biased by testing that concentrates too much on either; crystalized IQ (defined as the ability to use learned knowledge and experience), fluid IQ (defined as the ability to solve new problems, use logic in new situations, and identify patterns) or spatial IQ (spatial judgement and the ability to visualise information to solve problems) to determine Fullscale IQ (overall IQ).
While it is true that the Flynn Effect seems to be reaching a plateau, some researchers argue that this is due to saturation of education, health, 'cultural loading', nutritional values, new technology and global connectivity in the developed world (Flynn only used data from; Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Britain, Canada, China, Denmark, East Germany, France, Israel, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Northern Ireland, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, United States of America, and West Germany Flynn, 1994), the actual global rate is likely continuing on an upward trajectory when these additional factors and the developing world are taken the into account.
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Asteroid 2019 CB2 will pass the Earth at 1.04 million kilometers at 1.20am GMT (UTC) on Sunday, February 10.
Image captured from the interactive JPL Solar System Dynamics Small Body Database Browser.
Asteroid 2019 CB2, classed as on “Earth Close Approach”, will breach speeds of nearly 29,125mph or 13.02km per second as it passes our planet and the flyby comes just five days after NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory first observed the rock on February 2.
As of February 5, 2019, NASA has discovered a total of 19,585 Near-Earth Asteroids (NEAs). More than 8,500 of these objects measure more 460ft (140m) in diameter – these are additionally dubbed “Potentially Hazardous Asteroids”. Another 897 of the 19,000 asteroids measure a cataclysmic 3,289ft (one kilometer) or more across. Asteroid 2019 CB2 is a much smaller object estimated to be in the range of 59ft to 127.9ft (18m to 39m) in diameter.
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Welcome to the forum, @Sky The Heck.
Hopefully we can help you explore the rest of the system.
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NASA has released a 360° immersive video of Curiositys last drill site on Vera Rubin Ridge.
Video Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
QuoteAfter exploring Mars' Vera Rubin Ridge for more than a year, NASA's Curiosity rover recently moved on. But a new 360-video lets the public visit Curiosity's final drill site on the ridge, an area nicknamed "Rock Hall." The video was created from a panorama taken by the rover on Dec. 19. It includes images of its next destination - an area the team has been calling the "clay-bearing unit" and recently named "Glen Torridon" - and the floor of Gale Crater, home to Mount Sharp, the geological feature the rover has been climbing since 2014.
Even though the rover has left the ridge, Curiosity's team is still piecing together the story of its formation. While there have been a number of clues so far, none fully explains why the ridge has resisted erosion compared with the bedrock around it. But the rover's investigation did find that the rocks of the ridge formed as sediment settled in an ancient lake, similar to rock layers below the ridge.
"We've had our fair share of surprises," said Curiosity science team member Abigail Fraeman of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "We're leaving with a different perspective of the ridge than what we had before."
A NASA orbiter studying the ridge had previously identified a strong signal from hematite, an iron-rich mineral that often forms in water. Curiosity confirmed the presence of hematite, along with other signs of ancient water, like crystals. These signs appeared in patches, leading the team to suspect that over time groundwater affected certain parts of the ridge differently than others. Another discovery was that the hematite signatures Curiosity mapped didn't always match the view from space.
"The whole traverse is helping us understand all the factors that influence how our orbiters see Mars," Fraeman said. "Looking up close with a rover allowed us to find a lot more of these hematite signatures. It shows how orbiter and rover science complement one another."
The ridge has also served as the backdrop to a roller-coaster year: Curiosity's drill returned to action, only to be stymied by surprisingly hard rocks. Nevertheless, the team managed to get samples from the three major rock types of the ridge. To get around a memory issue, engineers also swapped the rover's computers (the spacecraft was designed with two so that it can continue operations if one experiences a glitch). While the issue is still being diagnosed, operations have continued with little impact on the mission.
The rover's new home, Glen Torridon, is in a trough between Vera Rubin Ridge and the rest of the mountain. This region had been called the clay-bearing unit because orbiter data show that the rocks there contain phyllosilicates - clay minerals that form in water and that could tell scientists more about the ancient lakes that were present in Gale Crater off and on throughout its early history.
"In addition to indicating a previously wet environment, clay minerals are known to trap and preserve organic molecules," said Curiosity Project Scientist Ashwin Vasavada of JPL. "That makes this area especially promising, and the team is already surveying the area for its next drill site."
Curiosity has found both clay minerals and organic molecules in many of the rocks it has drilled since landing in 2012. Organic molecules are the chemical building blocks of life. If both water and organic molecules were present when the rocks formed, the clay-bearing unit may be another example of a habitable environment on ancient Mars - a place capable of supporting life, if it ever existed.
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Welcome to the forum, @<Joseph kerman>. I used to be a believer in colonizing Mars until I realized the difficulties involved - even if you could terraform Mars (no small feat) you would still have the problem of solar wind and cosmic radiation bombardment because of the lack of a magnetosphere. I have read of a proposal of placing a solar shade at one of the LaGrange points (it would need to be many kilometers in diameter) to mitigate this problem but you are still left with a colony that requires just about everything to be delivered from Earth, at constant peril of disaster. Other issues are that we just don't know if animal reproduction is viable at low G's and such an endeavor would require huge amounts of cash and resources.
The discussions here on the subject have led me to believe orbital outposts are more viable until we discover better propulsion and energy production methods and we know more about long term space habitation.
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Personally I think we need to thoroughly search our own system, in particular deep sample drilling on Mars, Europa, Ganymede, the ice giants and Enceladus, before looking further afield. Our tree of life requires liquid water and until there is evidence of it on Tau Ceti e there are far better targets for research in our own backyard.
Life on other worlds will remain a mystery until we have a data set greater than 1.
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On reflection a role I can envisage for transport P2P is in bulky cargo, if it has the ability to land and be serviced at mostly unprepared locations.
The dimensions of the cargo space in an aircraft precludes some goods that are too heavy or can't be broken down into smaller pieces and it is fairly common in the industry for some companies (generally mining or shipping) to pay if the effect of downed machinery or loss of productivity will cost more than the cost of the flight. Bulky/heavy goods are also prone to being bumped from flights because airlines usually prefer to upset 1 customer than 100.
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I worked in international airfreight logistics for years and even though the actual flight might be 4 hours for P2P the paperwork and cargo preparation takes a lot longer than that (days). Also the infrastructure to refuel, service and load would need to be established at the major international cargo hubs before SpaceX could be a viable alternative to the current system.
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I'm not sure if it's a mistranslation - do Russian missions have a "warranty period"?
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Welcome to the forum, @jnbspace. I agree with Starhawk, the full version is fantastic, cheap and with continued development keeps getting better.
I don't justify my KSP addiction to my family, I just wake up 3 hours before they do.
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4 hours ago, Lankspace said:
having trouble in dealing with Duna, in that designing a ship one to get there and two landing it.
In career mode I usually build a mothership/lander with ISRU for Duna. There was a challenge a few years ago to visit Duna and Ike - you might find inspiration there.
Some tips:
You will need about 6600dv to land on Duna from the surface of kerbin. This assumes you follow standard procedures:
1. Get to low Kerbin orbit.
2. Depart low Kerbin orbit at the correct phase angle - this means leaving at a time when it is most efficient for a Hoffman maneuver to your destination.
3. Once you have an intercepting course, warp time to the half way point between Kerbin and Duna. Perform a course adjustment:
Create a maneuver node 10 or 20 minutes ahead of your vessel - just place it without changing anything. Then click on Duna and select focus view - this will change your view to the destination and should show your plotted course in the sphere of influence of your destination. Rotate your view until you can see both the path through the SOI and the node you just created and you can now use that node to plan and execute a burn that will bring you close to your intended orbit or even into an atmosphere for aerobraking. The course adjustment is usually very cheap on Dv and you get savings by doing your capture burn nearer your destination planet/moon (benefiting from the Oberth effect).
You will need about 1700dv to return to Kerbin from Duna (900dv to low Duna orbit, 800dv for return flight) follow steps 1,2,3 again) if you aero brake and capture at Kerbin.
If you don't need a pinpoint landing then aero braking and aero capture will save you a lot of fuel.
The thin atmosphere means parachutes are not as effective so I use a combination of chutes (set to open higher in the VAB) with a little bit of throttle for the last 100m of descent.
You don't need a heat shield or ladders to land on Duna.
(actual direction of your kerbal/vessel) is close to your target marker 
. If you are moving away from your target you will see the retrograde indicator 
(opposite direction).
NASA's SPHEREx Mission
in Science & Spaceflight
Posted · Edited by James Kerman
Added links for additional information.
NASA's Explorer program is planning to launch the Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer (SPHEREx) satellite to search for water and organic molecules.
Official website: http://spherex.caltech.edu/
Paper: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/269722306_SPHEREx_An_All-Sky_Spectral_Survey