YNM

Coded messages are a thing, you know. Can't break to the uneducated masses just what the message really is, unless you've gone and do lots of experience with similar technologies and can cleanly tell what is it. The average joe might not get what it is, but someone who have work to do with the fighters that recorded it* would be able to tell. * or any other fighter - if your fighter was so bad it doesn't have technology anywhere close to what they're showing you then you're going to be outdone so badly in a showdown.

Or if it hadn't been assembled alongside the other things, and only assembled once everything is ready.

Probably for testing purposes, as well as testing against the "urban canyon" effect. Bad naming selection I suppose. Hey, our planetarium in the downtown of a 30-million pop conurbation is still doing regular observation of the Moon and planetary objects. Still the best way for scientific outreach. *looks at hobby machining and 3D printing* Although, don't get me wrong, cheap, easy and somewhat decent access to the Internet around the world is sure going to be convenient - something that the current situation has only highlighted further (even in the US given some amount of monopoly in some areas). At the same time we have to look at what we might potentially be giving away in return for getting back other things at the same time, be that the ability to observe easily from the Earth (no spacecraft could do like 100 m dish), to potentially wreaking havoc in low earth orbit (sure, remote possibility, but we frequently use remote possibilities in planning, ie. earthquake resistance, wind resistance etc, not to mention relying on entirely space-based infrastructure exposes the network to direct solar storms, whereas before we only worry about geomagnetic storms).

I'd wager more that space exploration is partly motivated by trying to solve looming problems back at home, or a way to show the world what they can really do. For example, autonomous robotic missions and equipments shows that you can solve problems related to labour shortage all on your own without resorting to foreign labour (we still have a way to go before having autonomous probes, most are still pre-programmed, but autonomous equipments are coming in). Manned space exploration shows that you can do the same back on Earth too, regardless of the terrain or environment (even if said environment involves extreme coldness or thin atmospheres at high altitude). If you can go and aim at an asteroid tens to hundreds of millions of kilometres away and come back, you could probably aim any part of the Earth's surface (and beneath) as easily. If your outpost on another celestial body can survive with very few resource input, largely relying on recycling and highly-efficient processes, that means you can do the same back on Earth as well. Living in space in large proportions, while it would take quite a while to, is a likelihood we might have to get to. It's clear that interest in finally keeping a permanent presence on another celestial body is now present, with new players in the 'space race' starting to gain a pace. The surface of the Earth might change a lot in the coming decades, making many places not quite ideally habitable. And while there's a lot of surface of the Earth, there's only so much of it before you run into another party. While elemental resource scarcity are currently far away, and it's likely to remain as such, land scarcity is a different story altogether. Keeping your potential future space plots in hand would be needed in short timescales, before we finally do run out of space down here. At least expect it to be the case after we've scrambled for Antarctica or something.

And it's not like we only have our imagination to play with anymore, like it would be for someone in the victorian era to imagine space travel - we have 5 robotic sample return mission (Genesis, Stardust, Hayabusa, Hayabusa2, OSIRIS-REx) from asteroids, comets and solar wind, 4 robotic sample return mission (Luna 16, 20, 24 and Chang'e 5) and 6 manned (Apollo 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17) from the Moon, and one sample prepared for Mars (taken with Mars 2020 rover). If you really want to plan ahead, then use the realistic data we've gathered.

So 16 Psyche, 200 km across, likely the solid bodies... We'll send a probe to it in ~2022, arriving at 2026. It will have a lot of imagers, but sadly no lander (and no sample return). Our best imagery so far ? We'll do a sample return of Phobos (~ 6 km diameter), likely a former asteroid, in 2028 (arrival on body 2025). But just to be clear, the only unadulterated asteroid sample we have back at home are the rubble pile ones. Since we currently have exactly one of them (325 m diameter) and only micrometer-sized at that: and the other one is just arriving (1 km diameter) : Trying to determine what's best to try and mine a celestial body we haven't even sent a probe to is going to be harder than you think. Honestly given what asteroid you're proposing we'd most likely do it much like how it would hypothetically be done on a planet or major moons, namely with actual bases on the surface. But the smaller rubble piles might simply be scooped in to a processor.

What asteroid are we talking about ? As you know that we have both solid-body asteroids and rubble pile asteroids. Many asteroids fall on the latter than the former. Larger ones (from ten km above) are indeed monolithic (and by mass they'd stand out) but by the number of bodies most of them are going to be smaller, rubble-pile ones (largest suspected rubble pile is 253 Mathilde which measure about 50 km across). Some of the extremely small asteroids (only tens to hundred meter in size) are possibly whole rocks however.

Didn't know this thread exist XD posted in JAXA thread instead... I'll copy some things over. EDIT : Said copy-over. Livestreams from capsule separation and re-entry + landing : Various views of the capsule re-entry : Capsule recovery : Finally, the doll have all the eyes filled... ... but it would be too quick for this all to be over. New mission : Asteroid 1998 KY26.

Hayabusa2 Return Capsule Re-entry and Landing livestream started : EDIT : Re-entry ! (look at the small tailed thing on the left) Zoomed in : Soichi Noguchi also took video from the ISS. EDIT 2 : Landing confirmed, although there weren't much indication for it, so still waiting until they do recover it in the morning. In the meantime, time to plot the crosshairs to another asteroid... This asteroid is classified in the abnormally-fast-spinning-small-asteroid (under 200 m in radius but more than 2 hrs rotation period) so it'll be visited primarily for such reason. EDIT 2.5 : They confirmed the Hayabusa2 spacecraft itself is fine - during closest approach it was not able to be contacted due to proximity (they only rely on DSN, not TDRS or such). Made a really loud commotion in the control room, as that means the new extended mission can go forward. 11 years is such a long time ahead ! EDIT 2.75 : Ok now they're showing the video for the new mission. So I guess it's a go for 2031... This is like asking New Horizons to get to Sedna after Pluto or something XD

I wonder how does this compare against RocketLab's Electron...

41 minutes to return capsule release Streaming started 20 minutes ago Streaming links : in Japanese, in English EDIT : Probe closest approach with Earth seems to be about 290 km EDIT 2 : Capsule release successful, wires cut confirmed at 4 mins before, release confirmation 5 minutes after release time EDIT 3 : TCM-5 is going to be carried out in 3 bursts.

Yeah, and honestly that's the saddest part of the whole thing - it failed out of neglect, all the while still being in full swing of operations for at least 2 years.

Slides from press conference this afternoon (Japan time) : Recapped schedule : Capsule retrieval will only be attempted in daylight, to avoid encounters with wild animals (well, safety reasons).

Ah, so I presume like a tubular soil sample, and what was left was more from the hole collapsing again.

Is it that darker patch on the right ? How much sample did they took ? Wonder if there's a way to make the image more like a normal pano...

Why not just move out the instruments that are rarely used, or whose job can be done from other observatories ? That'd have lessened the load on the structure, therefore you don't end up with 5-story-building-crashing-down-150 m rubble wreck, you end up with vintage instruments probably in top notch state... They could've lowered the platform and re-create a smaller dish radius (the mesh can be re-positioned) so you end up with less stress on the 50+ years old main cables (as for how that works, mind that hecause the cables are holding vertical loads at an angle for it to be taunt there has to be horizontal forces acting on it depending on how far is it from vertical, and lowering the platform would've meant less angle from vertical)... While they did said it was quite redundant given multiple cables per tower, statically it's really not at all that redundant to start with (6 reaction forces is the minimum for stability, and there were only 6 groups of cables keeping the platform fixed, 3 main cable groups on 3 main towers plus three more that holds it down so it doesn't rotate too much) so failures are bound to be catastrophic. If we take the recent (ok, 2017) hurricane into account, then I'd say that this structure is done even before it actually failed as it has gone through one extreme loading event (most buildings are only designed to hold them once in their lifetime). At least the NSF might've been able to salvage it properly back then.

Well, Cargo Dragon is unmanned, so using CBM and the arm would've been fine, operations-wise. I could see that this might not be foreseen by SpaceX (or they simply won't even consider it), their new design only considers docking rather than berthing. For instance, I question any part of the trunk or the capsule can be fitted with Canadarm grapple fixture for both Crew Dragon and Cargo Dragon.

You do realize the dish isn't solid right ? XD

Depends a lot on the story being developed. There's very little way to know without any spoilers. I'd be interested to know if a plot as varied as Detroit could be done without any spoilers that they do, though - imagine just soldiering forward having absolutely no idea what else could've happened, which the game progression menu plainly tells you.

You could have simplified this by having a free-floating astronaut just do squats in space and expect overall acceleration. Moving mass around inside any vessel would only move the CoM wrt the vessel but the CoM itself doesn't accelerate wrt the "static" inertial observer. We have coolant liquid (ammonia) flowing in a closed loop around the ISS between the pressurized modules and the radiators, and to the best of my knowledge we haven't seen any thrust coming off of them. Although you could be exchanging rotation with the station much like the way CMGs work. But CMGs only rotate your ship around and not have it shoot out (or fall off) the orbit.

The current IDA adapters only fit to existing APAS docking ports, of which there has always been 2 available for docking (the 3rd one is used to permanently connect USOS and ROS). That means there're only 2 IDA docking ports available on ISS as of right now. Adding a 3rd one would be converting the larger CBM to IDA - essentially yet another PMA.

So IDA, not CBM ? How would you (say) get Starliner demo to dock if there're both Crew Dragon and Cargo Dragon occupying all the IDA ports ? I get that IDA adapters are smaller, and using CBM isn't possible if they want to keep the thrusters just off the docking port, but perhaps someone might need to make a good schedule out of them - or maybe we can put on a CBM-IDA adapter on the station...

Well sometimes there's nowhere else to place it due to other requirements. What they *should* have noted down was how long it can really last before going bad so they can actually use it and not leave it rot in a warehouse.

I'm quite surprised on the cables. Thought there'd be a sheath much like bridge cables but it's all unsheathed bar some paint... Well, one to add to the "what happens if you don't inspect closely during lifetime" list. Though, for an interesting look at how the towers fail : you might notice that the tower where the cables had been failing first were toppled outwards while the rest toppled inwards. This is in line with the temporal increase in stress - on the place where it first collapsed, the outer cables now have nothing to hold onto other than bending the towers out, while on the other two now they suddenly have to tow in the massive platform structure by itself. Towers seems not really designed to handle much bending, given the stepped cross-section. Cables be cables, they do fail catastrophically in tension, once thinning (and necking) has set in there's not much else to do given constant loading. EDIT : Seen this news release from the NSF, dated from Nov 19, 2020. What interests me more was the attached recommendation of actions from the Engineer of Record, dated Nov 12, 2020. To be short : They knew it was hopeless after the second cable breakage, none of the safety factors calculated for remediation actions were even above the original limit set in during construction in the 60s (let alone the SF set during upgrade in the 90s), even using the predicted (not observed) strength. The most damning part however was the fact that no one knew how deteriorated it has actually really become... which is the sad part to me, more than the eventual collapse. The only course of action recommended was immediate demolition... and we kind of get it.