For Questions That Don't Merit Their Own Thread

[razark]

11 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Hello, Mr. MacReady.

Hello, Mr. IHaveNoIdeaWhatYouAreReferingTo.

[TheSaint]

8 hours ago, razark said:

Hello, Mr. IHaveNoIdeaWhatYouAreReferingTo.

You've never seen The Thing!?

[razark]

29 minutes ago, TheSaint said:

You've never seen The Thing!?

No, I have not.

Somehow, I've never gotten around to it.

[magnemoe]

9 hours ago, razark said:

Problem: I want to set that thing on fire.  Thing is some distance away from me.

Solution: I will use a device that throws flames at thing.

Result: I have thrown flames at thing, however there is no oxidizer available for thing to continue burning, so thing is not on fire but merely somewhat warmer than it was.

A spaceflamethrower should not use a mix of fuel + oxidizer sufficient for the amount of fuel, but a mix of fuel + an extreme amount of oxidizer.  The problem then becomes "How do I keep the oxidizer in contact with the additional fuel (thing that I want to set on fire)?".

You could use two beams and cross them.  This would bee an very very inefficient weapon however as its just an heat source and stuff in space tend to handle heat well. 
You could use an laser, but that is more of an precision weapon of limited power with today's technology. You could use cannon shells who explodes then close to target or rockets who also can aim towards it. 
Benefit is that most stuff in space is lightweight and fragile so don't handle shrapnel or bird shot well. 
Now crossing the beams could work if you use antimatter but then just trowing antimatter dust into the enemy path works better. 

On 11/4/2022 at 6:13 PM, steve9728 said:

The other extreme from quiet is the graphics card with a 'turbo' I have in my computer now, but unless I turn it on in the official software, it's generally pretty quiet. But... once I tried to pull the full speed... The sound made me wonder if there was an aero engine inside this computer.

Who is nice then flying an fighter jet, but kind of weird trying to sneak trough an scary empty building

[kerbiloid]

Thermite. It contains everything to burn in vacuum, and is 3 000 K hot..

Though, it's a solid powder, so either blow the powder and ignite it with laser, or launch an arrow with thermite inside, or catch the thing and apply a suppository.

Spoiler

 

[kerbiloid]

Are there official native English names for constellations?
Can't recall if have ever met them.

Or in English only the Latin names are in use?

[StrandedonEarth]

25 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Are there official native English names for constellations?
Can't recall if have ever met them.

Or in English only the Latin names are in use?

Well, the core stars of Ursa Major (The Big Bear) are The Big Dipper, so there’s that…

[kerbiloid]

Thank you.

So, if I get this right, there are colloquial nicknames, but not alternative official English names.

Edited November 7, 2022 by kerbiloid

[ARS]

12 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Thermite. It contains everything to burn in vacuum, and is 3 000 K hot..

Though, it's a solid powder, so either blow the powder and ignite it with laser, or launch an arrow with thermite inside, or catch the thing and apply a suppository.

  Hide contents

 

So technically, instead of Fuel-Air-Explosive, we got Fuel-Space-Explosive?

[DDE]

2 hours ago, ARS said:

So technically, instead of Fuel-Air-Explosive, we got Fuel-Space-Explosive?

Air-Independent Propulsion Perdition

[kerbiloid]

2 hours ago, ARS said:

So technically, instead of Fuel-Air-Explosive, we got Fuel-Space-Explosive?

It's not explosive, just hot burning with sparkles.

Spoiler

 

 

[Rutabaga22]

Could JWST take a picture of earth?

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

18 minutes ago, Rutabaga22 said:

Could JWST take a picture of earth?

No. 

It's sensors are so sensitive that exposing them to the sun would permanently damage the observatory. 

Given its orbit in the Lagrange point it would have to view the sun to view the Earth. 

 

Also - somewhere up thread there is a picture of Jupiter and Mars - they're almost overexposed and too bright for Webb

[ARS]

How hard it is when it comes to storing rocket fuel in space compared on Earth? Is it easier or harder to store? (especially cryogenic ones such as liquid Hydrogen and Oxygen)

[kerbiloid]

They were never storing hydrogen for more than several hours.

The Buran liquid oxygen tanks were equippped with a electromechanical skimmer to keep the oxygen uniformly cold for 2..4 weeks.

They store both nitrogen and helium as gases in the high-pressure spherical balloons.

They either make the craft rotate or equip the tanks with electric heater to store the hypergolics.

They stored the nitric acid without warming for a year, due to its very low melting point.

[TheSaint]

12 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

They were never storing hydrogen for more than several hours.

Not completely true. The Apollo service module had liquid hydrogen tanks to supply the fuel cells, and it was rated to operate for up to two weeks. Granted, these were not large tanks, but they did hold liquid hydrogen for more than a couple of hours.

Edit: Actually, on the Skylab missions, the Apollo CSMs stayed in orbit for months. So, those tanks actually held liquid hydrogen for even longer than that.

Second Edit (Sorry, slow this morning): Monopropellants can be stored for a very long time. Cassini ran on NTO/MMH, and it operated for almost twenty years on one fuel load.

Edited November 11, 2022 by TheSaint
Just remembered

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

9 hours ago, TheSaint said:

Not completely true. The Apollo service module had liquid hydrogen tanks to supply the fuel cells, and it was rated to operate for up to two weeks. Granted, these were not large tanks, but they did hold liquid hydrogen for more than a couple of hours.

Edit: Actually, on the Skylab missions, the Apollo CSMs stayed in orbit for months. So, those tanks actually held liquid hydrogen for even longer than that.

Second Edit (Sorry, slow this morning): Monopropellants can be stored for a very long time. Cassini ran on NTO/MMH, and it operated for almost twenty years on one fuel load.

You Kerballed that answer up nicely

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

@SunlitZelkova You might find this interesting:

 

[LHACK4142]

I watched this video about how it is possible to decode the golden record on Voyager, and it mostly makes sense, except at 3:56 the video uses hertz to decode the record. Looking at Wikipedia, it seems that hertz are defined based on seconds, which in turn are based on "The duration of 9192631770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom". This doesn't seem to be stated anywhere on the record, so how would aliens (if they somehow decide that that one specific bit of space junk is worth sending an entire mission to) decode the record?

Edit: The Wikipedia page for the golden record says that all the times are defined based on the time period associated with a fundamental transition of the hydrogen atom. So basically the video was translating that into human units for clarity.

Edited November 14, 2022 by LHACK4142
found explanation

[SunlitZelkova]

8 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

@SunlitZelkova You might find this interesting:

 

Thanks! ‘‘Twas interesting indeed.

Makes me wonder what the possibilities of non-nuclear EMP based terrorism are.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

5 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Thanks! ‘‘Twas interesting indeed.

Makes me wonder what the possibilities of non-nuclear EMP based terrorism are.

Well, there was a movie with a lot of famous guys using EMP to do a heist in Las Vegas.  (Not everything is politically motivated!)

[Rutabaga22]

Question from non-forum goer friend.
" What would happen if one astronaut really p'd off one of their crewmates and they were like REALLY mad. Like, deep hatred between them. What would NASA do? Would they switch the crew? What if they didn't have backup crew?

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

29 minutes ago, Rutabaga22 said:

Question from non-forum goer friend.
" What would happen if one astronaut really p'd off one of their crewmates and they were like REALLY mad. Like, deep hatred between them. What would NASA do? Would they switch the crew? What if they didn't have backup crew?

Look into the woman who drove x number of hours in her Space Diaper to yell at another woman over a man.

[Rutabaga22]

51 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Look into the woman who drove x number of hours in her Space Diaper to yell at another woman over a man.

That was outside of her spaceflight career. I mean two astronauts who hated each other.

[SunlitZelkova]

1 hour ago, Rutabaga22 said:

Question from non-forum goer friend.
" What would happen if one astronaut really p'd off one of their crewmates and they were like REALLY mad. Like, deep hatred between them. What would NASA do? Would they switch the crew? What if they didn't have backup crew?

6 minutes ago, Rutabaga22 said:

That was outside of her spaceflight career. I mean two astronauts who hated each other.

Well, either the aggressor or both (if both are the instigators) would probably be dismissed.

Such a scenario is nigh impossible, however. Astronauts specifically train to work coherently together. Think the level of professionalism *cough cough* seen on nuclear powered submarines. That's how disciplined astronauts are*.

I coughed because an extremely disturbing article emerged not too long ago regarding the behavior of seamen on British submarines. That's a discussion for another forum though.

*Are supposed to be.