Shpaget

Well, they're called Queensland lungfish because they live in Queensland.

Well, there are binary stars, which are mostly gas. Stars occasionally have planets orbiting them. Pluto has Charon and those two have their moons. So, sure there could be binary gas giants.

Somewhat related to the cost of the satellites... Apparently there is a direct or indirect cost of an orbit slot. There is a limited number of "slots" available in the GEO, and companies, at least occasionally, auction them. According to this, such slots alone can cost at least up to $682.5 million.

There are living fossils such as Queensland lungfish, horseshoe crabs, nautilus, sharks... which haven't changed much during the last 100 or more million years. While the evolution of humans will most likely go on and we can't predict what the descendants of humans will look like in a million or more years, it is possible that they will retain fundamental features we observe today. Presently, there is a significant lack of predators that concern humans, so natural selection from that perspective is not happening. I'm not saying that humans have stopped evolving, but the main mechanism of evolution - the ability to procreate is practically universal among the population.

@K^2, you believe that there will be no humans in 100 million years? As in an extinction, or that our descendants will not call themselves humans any more?

That would likely be caused by the specific nature of this community. Another INTJ here. Introvert(22%) iNtuitive(38%) Thinking(47%) Judging(6%) Skimming through the texts on it, they describe me pretty well. Then again, so does pretty much every horoscope I've ever read, regardless of the sign I'm reading.

The only complain about BO I have is their unwillingness to live stream or even announce their upcoming missions. I could, and probably am wrong, but somehow I get the feeling it is so so they can decide to not publish the fact they attempted a launch/landing/whatever, just in case something blows up. I like transparency. That being said, well done BO!

To answer the question you are repeating and not getting the answer... It depends on how long you want the trip to take. For the purposes of this post, disengage brain activity related to relativistic effects. If your goal is to get to Alpha Centauri in 10 or so years, your average speed should be around 0,5 c, so to accelerate to it, and then come to a stop once you reach AC, you need 2 x 0,5 = 1 c of dV. If you can accelerate at a comfortable 1 G, your acceleration and deceleration burns will take (relativistic effects put aside) about half a year to reach the speed of 0,5 c and again that much to stop, so they won't affect the travel time a lot. If you can manage 20 years in space, your dV requirements drop by half.

Yep, foam physically blocks airways. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17234833 The last two sentences in the abstract say: "In both foam- and CO(2)-euthanized broilers, lesions are consistent with anoxia or hypoxia. This suggests that foam acts by physically induced hypoxia, whereas CO(2) causes chemically induced hypoxia.". I also found this. http://www.worldpoultry.net/Broilers/Processing/2013/7/Gas-foam-The-humane-euthanasia-method-1297207W/ They claim that nitrogen bubbles are perfectly fine since they don't trigger the breathing reflex (which is CO2 based, not O2), and that animals don't notice that they are dieing. This goes against the first link, though. If the foam physically blocks the breathing, then it doesn't matter what's in the foam. It could very well be oxygen, if the airways are blocked, you suffocate.

If you can achieve near light speed, then you just don't worry about using the most efficient transfer, you already have all the dV required. Hohmann transfer is not mandatory. In the case of interstellar travel, the time it takes to use Hohmann would be prohibitive. Launch windows happen very rarely. Since its birth, the Sun has made only 18 or so rounds around the galactic core.

A horrible but clean death. /Horatio Cane

The idea is that you just add this one to your existing calendar. You can have multiple calendar sources displayed on the same calendar. This is what the calendar widget on looks like on my phone. Grey triangles are from one source, the green from another.

I'll bump this, just in case someone missed it, but I guess the interest is low. Ah well...

You need to define the requirements. For how long does it need be capable of supporting life? If all you need is 10 seconds to reach the nearest airlock, then your own skin will do the job well enough. You'll even survive for a bit longer than that if a friend helps by pushing your unconscious body to safety.

Air pirates would need to operate in a controlled and heavily armed airspace with a nearest air to air missile just minutes away.

Actually, if freighters are traveling on direct routes and are not using Hohmann transfers or similar, then dv to intercept is in the same ballpark as the dv for transfer.

I've been toying with this idea for some time now, but after completely forgetting about and missing the stream of Jason 3 launch by SpaceX I realized I need to start adding reminders about such interesting events to my calendar. Since I use an Android phone, and already use its integrated Google Calendar for other stuff, I decided to start adding stuff there, then realized that this calendar can be shared and collaborated on. So, I'm here to ask you guys if you would like to see this thing happening? The idea is to have a few individuals that would have permissions set up so that they can add and edit events and the everybody can enjoy the timely reminders. The stuff that would be included in this calendar are some interesting launches, possibly the ones being streamed live, and any other interesting milestone or stage in an ongoing space mission, such as an interplanetary probe entering the orbit around its target planet or landing on it, an interesting experiment being conducted... anything interesting, really. Now, I've started populating the calendar and got up to the end of the first week of February, listing only launches, nothing else. I haven't picked the interesting ones, just added everything from http://spaceflightnow.com/launch-schedule/ with a very short description of what's going on, just for you guys to see what it would roughly look like and decide if it's something you think is worth spending time on. If yes, I would certainly need help with population the calendar since there is a lot going on. Of course, the format is open for discussion and alteration. The calendar should be accessible on the following link https://calendar.google.com/calendar/embed?src=3aa0hbnirrh9fm0jf668p99b9s%40group.calendar.google.com&ctz=Europe/Paris If you want to add it to your other calendars, use the following string 3aa0hbnirrh9fm0jf668p99b9s@group.calendar.google.com The easiest way I found to add it is to go to the Google Calendar thingy in your browser and paste the above string into the Other calendars -> Add a Friend's calendar. After that, if you want your smartphone to sync with it, you need to tell it to do so in the calendar app on the phone.

More interesting, at 30:55 someone made an error. The text on the right talks about Orbcomm.

Which would logically mean "any number of RPis necessary to achieve the same performance as a single desktop PC". Otherwise the question would make absolutely no sense, considering that any other quantity that fits the description of "a bunch of" could be either cheaper or many times more expensive than a PC.

Even with all the explanations, I still don't get the "joke".

Then why bother with multiple Pis? One Pi will always be cheaper than any desktop PC. Also, the price has gone down a bit: https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/raspberry-pi-zero/

Isn't that Rosetta?

Admit it, you want to be abducted by aliens. Anyway, I had a similar issue on W7 and this article helped me. I don't know which particular issue was it, since I did them all, but my PC is sleeping better than me now.

Years ago I saw a machine that embroiders multiple items simultaneously. It can embroider shirts, caps, hats... I see no reason why it wouldn't be capable of working with a small patch. It was a CNC machine that used what looked like a very simple interface and worked with multiple colored threads. While this was a machine intended for large runs I suspect that any business that produces promotional material and has such or a similar a machine would be able to produce single items as well. It might cost you more than ordering 50 (per item), but the cost still shouldn't be too high, if that's something that you want. Once you get the patch, you can stitch it yourself to a velcro that attaches to the jacket, or directly to the jacket if the jacket doesn't have the velcro patch intended for patches. A quick search finds this: https://www.tjmpromotions.com/products/patches.html The minimum order quantity is 10, so it might not suit you, but if you find a few like minded folks, you can divide the cost. Other services might have lower minimum orders.

When does a rocky planet with dense atmosphere stop being a rocky planet and becomes a gas giant? Imagine Earth like planet slowly accumulating atmosphere. At one point it becomes Venus like. If it continues to gather gases, eventually it starts to resemble Jupiter, doesn't it? Surely there is some iron in the Jupiters core.