Mitchz95

Why de-orbit two healthy sats?

Darn. What about brown dwarves? Or even rogue planets?

As cool as this is, I'm almost more intrigued by the fact that the star itself wasn't discovered until 2003 despite being twelve light-years away. Could that mean there may be other dwarf stars lurking in the vicinity, maybe even closer than Alpha Centauri, that we've overlooked?

I apologize if this is a dumb question. I was reading about the Indian anti-satellite missile incident from March, and it occurred to me that if space debris' orbits naturally decay over time, it might be possible to speed up the decay by putting additional stuff in their way to slow them down. Anything solid is going to shatter it, of course, and there's way too much debris to account for all the stuff in orbit, so you'd need something fairly gentle and indiscriminate. Such as gasses. Here's what I mean: instead of a kinetic/explosive missile, you launch a bunch of gas canisters on a suborbital trajectory, and detonate them in the path of the debris you're trying to deorbit. The debris flies through the gas and slows down ever so slightly, maybe enough to make a difference over time. Would this be at all practical? Flying through a thin cloud of gas wouldn't fragment a dead satellite, would it?

On average, how much physical damage does a supernova do to the planets orbiting it? Are they physically shattered/vaporized, or "merely" have their surfaces melted but remain mostly intact?

"Captain's log, stardate 2713.5. In the distant reaches of our galaxy, we have made an astonishing discovery: Earth-type radio signals coming from a planet which apparently is an exact duplicate of the Earth. It seems impossible, but there it is."

I wouldn't have thought gas giants could form in red dwarf systems, what with the star being so small.

I think the public would absolutely accept a Phobos mission, so long as it was promoted as a prelude to landing on Mars. And can you imagine the kinds of pictures the astronauts would send home? The surface of an asteroid, with a giant red planet dominating the sky above them... it would be a scene straight out of classic sci-fi.

Soon...

Not working for me either.

Already being discussed here.

Someone pressed the spacebar a bit too early.

Older design, yes, but I thought the current version would also have a cargo variant with this capability. Hubble is 4.2m wide, so it should fit inside for repairs or recovery, right?

I would hope BFR is capable of doing EVAs! With 100+ people on board, you can't exactly decompress the whole ship to do repairs.

Good news is, it's almost over.

The way I see it, it's not about preserving humans as a species, but human civilization. Yeah, a post-apocalyptic Earth will still be more habitable than Mars, but that doesn't do a lot of good if you have hordes of Mad Max-style reavers killing and plundering at will. It'd take decades or centuries for things to settle down enough to rebuild in a meaningful way, and any "doomsday backups" (whatever that means in this context) on the surface would be ripe for plundering in the meantime. Whereas if we have self-sufficient space colonies, civilization still exists and rebuilding Earth will be easier to organize and execute.

Chris Hadfield mentioned this in his book, An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth. When you're relying on a small ship like the Soyuz to take your people to space, you really can't afford to bring along people who can't do five different jobs themselves. Whereas with a larger ship like the shuttle, you have enough legroom to bring along mission specialists who aren't really qualified to operate the ship itself, but are nonetheless useful because of a few skills that make them valuable for the mission. So it's the size of the ship that determines what kind of people you can bring, and I don't see why that alone should reflect whether someone on board counts as a "real" astronaut. When we have regular space tourism happening, then we can talk about whether someone counts as a passenger or an astronaut.

There's a chance. Just not a very good one.

BFS still has engine-out capability, only needs 3 engines for landing! When asked when he personally might go to space, Elon jokes(?) that he might accompany Yasuka on the flight...

"It's 2018, why is there no base on the damn moon!"

Elon estimates development cost for BFR is around $5 billion.

Elon again says he wants to name the first ship Heart of Gold, and hints that they choose a new name for BFR in the future. May also use a floating platform to land/launch it. They're not sure yet how much training the passengers will get, will "start a discussion" soon. Less than 5% of SpaceX's resources are devoted to BFR, but will ramp that up soon. Top priority is still satellite launch and Commercial Crew.

I may have misheard, but I think Elon just confirmed that Yasuka was one of the two people who commissioned the Dragon 2 moonshot.

First orbital flight in 2-3 years! Will "probably" try an unmanned lunar flyby before sending people.