SunlitZelkova

@JoeSchmuckatelli Quoting you from the thread about SETI data… I’m on mobile and it won’t let me insert an empty quote box. ” Tangentially related: Neil deGrasse Tyson, "We can launch a probe from one moving, rotating planet and land on a COMET... we can measure, via LIGO, a wiggle less than the width of a photon... and yet Congress spends its time and money because someone saw a Tic-Tac on the screen of a Navy jet in a restricted airspace??? That's your best evidence for 'little green men'??? C'Mon!" ” It is the media and UFO enthusiasts who conflate the UAPs with UFOs… not in the normal definition of “an aerial object we do not know the nature of” but instead the “extraterrestrial spacecraft” UFOs. Congress/DOD’s interest is more open minded, considering things like the possibility of it being some ultra high tech foreign reconnaissance asset, among other things. In general the US defence establishment’s tendency is to treat every possible threat seriously, because the last time military intelligence got little bits of pieces of evidence, and even warnings, but shrugged it off as “silly” and “impossible”, Pearl Harbor got bombed. Not sure about nowadays, but the Soviet defence establishment had the same problem throughout almost the entire Cold War because of their traumatic experience with the Great Patriotic War. Which makes me wonder… do we have any idea of what other countries think of these “UAPs”? All I know at the moment is that Japan set up reporting guidelines for UAPs for its military around the time the DOD released its first report. ——— By the way, as UAPs don’t necessarily have anything to do with extraterrestrials, I don’t think that ND-GT quote is applicable to the SETI thread. SETI is searching for radio signals from distant celestial bodies, UAPs only relate to unidentified aerial objects as the name implies, not alien craft. The UAPs = aliens is something media and UFO enthusiasts are assuming, not something the UAP investigators themselves have said. And as UAPs are not inherently extraterrestrial, they certainly have no relation to SETI. Also SETI is not funded by the US government, also making the taxpayer funded UAP investigation irrelevant to SETI.

Yes. Kind of like how Grand Central Station in NYC is capitalized even though there are other central stations that are grand. A nice example of why you should read the full article at some point instead of reading the headline and thinking you are informed.

Is this the main “those UFO/UAPs from the last five years recorded by militaries” thread? NASA is joining… that auto-corrected to “joking”, lol… the UAP train. If not I think this belongs here anyway in case it ignites discussion in the Science News thread.

If William Nelson is “Ballast Bill”, can we call Rogozin “Deadweight Dmitry”? EDIT- Nope. This is what happens with low sleep

@Vanamonde @Gargamel Clean up on Isle Russian Launch and Mission thread The discussion of ROSS has veered into blatantly off-topic stuff. We might benefit from another explanation of just how far "space policy" discussion can go, and maybe even about what constitutes respectfully sharing opinions and what doesn't.

I guess a lot of SETI@home participants lived in China lol. I don't think UFOs can be conflated with SETI and the SETI Institute. SETI at least focuses on actually reasonably possible things (radio signals from distant celestial bodies) as opposed to blurry balls of light filmed by bumpkins. No offense to bumpkins by the way, but objects captured on an F/A-18's FLIR are certainly worth more investigation than a 15 second video from a Nokia.

@Codraroll I will recommend we agree to disagree and simply repeat what I said in my first post: the future is fluid. What we are talking about (ROSS) is something for the latter part of the decade, which is difficult to predict. If you look at what people in 1982 thought the world would look like in 1989, most were wrong. No one in 2012, perhaps apart from a few doomsday nuts and dazed and confused homeless people, thought the world would end up in a pandemic in 2020. Part of the problem nowadays is that information is so accessible, it seems as though people think lies and inaccuracies are an impossibility. This is probably part of why science denialism is so prevalent. Another danger of this is not recognizing the potential for propaganda and the hazards of falling into an "abyss of complacency". To use an example of history, during the Cold War, all past empires had collapsed in either foreign or domestic conflict, thus people were rather surprised when the USSR collapsed. In a reverse of this, many foreign observers had written off the Soviet Union as a corrupt, backwards undeveloped country in the 1930s, and thus were very surprised when the Red Army stopped the Germans outside of Moscow, as they had expected it to collapse in a matter of months. These mistakes very well could be being made today when discussing the Russian Federation, including it's space program. I don't think anyone can say for certain whether the ROSS will succeed or fail. With the level of information that can be cited here regarding the wider situation of the space program, both statements arguing it will succeed and those predicting it will fail are valid. By the way, there is no true "ISS successor". Once it goes down in 2031, there will be no Western human presence in LEO unless Axiom, BO, and Sierra Nevada succeed. The closest thing to an ISS successor is Artemis, which Roscosmos rejected prior to the conflict. Note- This is a presentation of my personal opinion, not an attempt to change yours

It’s a point worth bringing up. If the Soviet Union, in near-total isolation (with some support from Germany) could do what took Western countries a century* in a decade and industrialize itself to become capable of defeating a European great power in mechanized warfare, considering Russia has actually done space before and is still cooperating with a nation (China), an indigenous Russian space station isn’t too outlandish. Especially if a military mission gets tacked on. For comparison, China’s space program is still technically managed by the military** and all of China’s taikonauts are members of the military (also curiously, there were a lot of claims early in the Shenzhou program that it was somehow “dual purpose” and had a military mission, and similar claims have been made about Tiangong). Of course, that’s not to say it will happen. But the future is extremely fluid. If you look at predictions made by one side or another during the early stages of a conflict in the past, they often end up being wrong. Also as far as cuts to space go I am rather optimistic. After all, the last time the US economy looked like it did today, Apollo got canceled and the Space Shuttle’s funding got reduced. Today, no one seems to have done so much as bat an eye at SLS or Orion… Is there reason to believe Russia will be more frugal than the US in regards to “passion projects” (i.e. no real positive impact on the wider economy)? *Not the best example because these Western countries were doing it for the first time, but not many other countries elsewhere have done the same thing in the same period of time. **Not a super clear statement, the control over it is complex.

You would probably cause more disturbance with all appendages on the surface or whatever the first one is compared to standing up on both feet. I think weight distribution wouldn't matter too much if the glass is already cracked and vulnerable to disturbance from movement anyways, but that is just a guess.

If the launches of Wentian and Mengtian go smoothly, the crew of Shenzhou 14 will become the first humans to ever be present aboard a space station for the arrival of two modules. Both Mir and ISS modules were either launched so far apart the crews couldn't have been there for the arrival of more than one module, or the crew was swapped out just prior to the launch of a second one.

The US will be sending a classic wheeled rover, China will be sending a crawler/jumper, and Japan will be sending a sphere as part of this decades lunar exploration

Fun fact 1: The Myasishchev VM-T was originally supposed to be designated 3M-T (as a conversion of 3M bomber/aerial refueling aircraft) but was changed to VM-T when the aircraft’s chief designer, Vladimir Myasishchev, passed away in 1978. Fun fact 2: The An-225 never actually supported an Energia launch. All components for the launch of Polyus and Buran were ferried by the VM-T. Fun Fact 3: When the Energia and Buran began development, two other options for transport of Energia components and Buran itself to Baikonur were examined besides the VM-T/An-225. 1. Mounting the components or orbiter on a platform and having four Mi-26s carry it. This would have required building numerous helipads along the route because of fuel limitations, but in any case, testing the concept with a portion of an IL-18 showed the flight dynamics didn’t work. 2. Using airships. I haven’t found any other info on this, but it sounds like it would have been cool.

This isn’t space but… https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2022/05/world/iter-nuclear-fusion-climate-intl-cnnphotos/ “The world has been trying to master this limitless clean energy source since the 1930s. Now we’re closer than ever.” [Emphasis added]

Out of curiosity, what common people (like a big space watcher group or some media outlet)? I’m surprised Mars sample return isn’t there. Launching on Long March 9 might be a bit much for the 2028 deadline but the dual launch with LM-3 and LM-5 could be doable. Now that I think about it, I wonder if the asteroid sample return might provide info and experience for MSR.

Ah, yes, “imgbb.com service unavailable” is one of the best photos of the era! (joking of course) I think the most recent photos still showed a ton of work equipment and so on around and in the dry dock. If “the interesting thing” was to happen at the same time as a space event, it might be the launch of Wentian or, perhaps Mengtian + completion of stage 1 of CSS. If it was 2019 or so I would then make a joke about USS Gerald R. Ford and SLS Blk 1B.

In case anyone is wondering, I think the characters on the big boards in the second image from the top read “success”.

We don’t know the details. I would say “normal” as they are still testing and as much as Musk likes to talk about simplification a super heavy lift launch vehicle is a complex thing. Even if we get details saying it was a dumb human error or something I would inclined to say it’s alright, because SpaceX’s development philosophy encourages such incidents. Unlike Boeing which claims their method will lead to guaranteed success and then suffers a variety of issues.

What exact models of vehicles did the Soviets use for their astrovan? What do the Chinese use?

Yes. ------ These were the professionals btw. Nowadays they use Type 59 (T-54/55 license built) dressed up to look like an M1 Abrams.

OPFOR is military units dressed up to look like foreign soldiers and equipment for training purposes. Legend has it that in the 1980s, Chinese OPFOR was so realistic that a civilian who happened upon the troops during an exercise called the police to report that the Soviets were invading.

A CNN expert once said that the Long March 5B’s core stage weighs 22,000 tons. Also, it wasn’t in the article itself, but in a blog post about space history, I recall one commenter desperately trying to denigrate Soviet space achievements. ”Sputnik wasn’t the first artificial satellite because it was just a ball in orbit” “Yuri Gagarin wasn’t really the first person in space because Vostok was dangerous”

I think this is a matter more intended for worldbuilding and non-narrative SF rather than standard science fiction. I would much rather have a neat story about a lone space freighter pilot’s endeavors than a garbage forced drama about four crew members. Is this actually true though? I find it funny that a lot of times it seems to be engineers saying this, not medical doctors. I guess the truth depends on just exactly what you mean by “keeps the doctors away”.

Seismology. This requires sitting still in one place for a very long time. The seismometer doesn’t carry its own long range communications I think.

Just because someone says something doesn’t mean it is true. The reason Musk sets such high goals is because in his and a lot of the people at SpaceX’s view, if you don’t set high goals your people tend to get lazy or something happens and it messes up the plan. I’m sure Musk and SpaceX know just as you do that it sounds crazy but they don’t set such goals because they actually think it can happen or don’t care, they are setting it as a psychological motivator. IMO that is a little flawed and SpaceX needs to be careful with it. Space Shuttle had a goal of being in service in 1977- pretty quick considering it was the first ever spaceplane and was only approved in 1972- and that ended up killing 14 people. A thing to note about their Mars city is that it is a dream, not a plan. Things will change along the way like how Starship’s design changes. They may very well end up switching to a floating Venus colony if they find Mars to be unworkable.