JoeSchmuckatelli Posted November 21 Author Share Posted November 21 3 hours ago, AckSed said: asteroid So... We need two sample return missions. If the sample is as close to Mars chemistry as the moon is to Earth - impactor is correct. If the sample is not, then capture. Except - Olympis Mons sticks out of the atmosphere - and could have splattered the moons with Mars stuff - so we will need a follow up mission to DRILL BABY DRILL! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
darthgently Posted November 22 Share Posted November 22 The Exploration Company A European crew service? Maybe? https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/11/how-real-is-this-european-space-startup-that-aims-to-launch-astronauts/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kerbiloid Posted November 23 Share Posted November 23 Quote This vehicle, similar in size to SpaceX's Cargo Dragon vehicle, will have the capacity to dock with the International Space Station, or other space stations, and also be recoverable for reuse. The current timeline for Nyx's debut is 2028 Spoiler Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DDE Posted November 23 Share Posted November 23 On 11/23/2024 at 12:32 AM, darthgently said: The Exploration Company A European crew service? Maybe? https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/11/how-real-is-this-european-space-startup-that-aims-to-launch-astronauts/ Quote The opportunity she saw was to provide an alternative to SpaceX based in Europe. This would yield 100 percent of the market in Europe and offer an option to countries like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Australia, and other nations interested in going to space. So, implicitly, they expect an EU-backed monopoly, while at the same time all their plans hinge on launch services from their own competitor. Brilliant. Quote As for the vehicle's rocket, the spacecraft is compatible with Europe's Ariane 6 and a host of other boosters, including SpaceX's Falcon 9, Rocket Lab's Neutron, Japan's H3, and India's GSLV. Oh, I'd love to see the mountains of paperwork certifying that compatibility. No? Oh. A crew capsule by 2028 would require 1960s NASA levels of funding and focus. Sorry, this is just a sad echo of the private space start-up bubble. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
darthgently Posted November 23 Share Posted November 23 30 minutes ago, DDE said: So, implicitly, they expect an EU-backed monopoly, while at the same time all their plans hinge on launch services from their own competitor. Brilliant. Oh, I'd love to see the mountains of paperwork certifying that compatibility. No? Oh. A crew capsule by 2028 would require 1960s NASA levels of funding and focus. Sorry, this is just a sad echo of the private space start-up bubble. I agree overall. Unless ESA and European space industry culture drastically changes there is not a lot of hope. They are waking up, but a day late and a dollar short. Still, I try to be optimistic for the kerbals across the pond Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JoeSchmuckatelli Posted November 24 Author Share Posted November 24 4 hours ago, DDE said: the mountains of paperwork As long as it's all written in French, there should be no problem. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Codraroll Posted November 24 Share Posted November 24 10 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said: As long as it's all written in French, there should be no problem. With authenticated and equally valid copies in English, German, Italian, Spanish, Polish, Dutch, Greek, Swedish and a tiny handful of dozens of other languages, of course. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JoeSchmuckatelli Posted November 24 Author Share Posted November 24 Google researchers... use GPS signal measurements pulled from millions of anonymous Android mobile devices to map the ionosphere. Google used millions of Android phones to map the worst enemy of GPS | Popular Science The blue dots in the graphic above show several regions where the Android ionosphere map exceeded the accuracy of monitoring stations. Credit: Google Researchers ...compared the Android phone map to measurements from a database that includes readings from monitoring stations around the world. The phone method greatly expanded coverage, particularly in areas of India and Eastern Europe where there’s a lack of monitoring stations. In the image above, the blue dots show roughly 100,000 locations around the world where sufficient numbers of phone measurements were available to help map the ionosphere. That’s compared to just 9,000 monitoring stations. “In many parts of the world, the performance of our model is equivalent to using the state-of-the-art global ionosphere map fit on measurements from monitoring stations,” the Google blog post reads. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kerbiloid Posted November 24 Share Posted November 24 15 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said: As long as it's all written in French, there should be no problem. Written in French... Spoiler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_(tunic) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AckSed Posted November 30 Share Posted November 30 https://www.livescience.com/space/space-exploration/students-homemade-rocket-soars-faster-and-farther-into-space-than-any-other-amateur-spacecraft-smashing-20-year-records Students fired off a rocket of their own design (with its own in-house thermal protection paint for hypersonic speed) and it reached 143.3km above Earth's surface. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
darthgently Posted December 5 Share Posted December 5 Nice progress on lunar PVs Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AckSed Posted Thursday at 11:33 PM Share Posted Thursday at 11:33 PM Both this and Blue Alchemist are encouraging, but both use regolith simulant: sorted and graded Earth volcanic tuff and crushed basalt. Lunar dust has two unique properties. The jagged nature of the particles can be approximated, but the other... can't. Namely, that it melts with a modest amount of microwave energy. I'll just quote the paper "MICROWAVE PROCESSING OF LUNAR SOIL" by Lawrence A. Taylor and Thomas T. Meek: Quote Space weathering of lunar regolith has produced myriads of nanophase-sized Fe0 grains set within silicate glass, especially on the surfaces of grains, but also within the abundant agglutinitic glass of the soil. It is possible to melt lunar soil (i.e. 1200-1500 deg. C) in minutes in a normal kitchen-type 2.45 GHz microwave, almost as fast as your tea-water is heated. Dr. Taylor knows this because Dr. Meek tested it with actual soil gathered by Apollo 17. Putting aside for the fact that you should never, ever, under any circumstances heat water for your tea in a microwave *shudder*, the paper proposes grading a surface like dirt on Earth and sintering either a continuous slab to make a road (apparently a normal magnetron-generated beam penetrates and sinters to half a metre, and melting the top surface completely to glass can be done with a second pass) or using magnets to gather particles with more iron and sintering road slabs out of it. You can even gather the solar-wind particles released: hydrogen, helium (including He3), carbon and nitrogen among others. If glass can be made that easily, it's probably a good way to make foundations, structures, radiation shielding, glass fibres... even a substrate for a solar cell. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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