The Astronomy Thread

khorum

khorum

Murder Apologist
24,338
81,363
We understand the stresses and engineering for a ring, but building a BIOME like Elysium's is a harder problem. We'd have to simulate cyclical precipitation, which means we have to simulate regular jetstreams, which means we have simulate tidal forces ---assuming the orbital is tidally-locked or is in a Langrange parking orbit.

It's pretty interesting that the innards and environmentals of a orbital is actually less understood than extruding enough nanotube to build the ring.
 
  • 1Like
  • 1Picard
Reactions: 1 users
Tuco

Tuco

I got Tuco'd!
<Gold Donor>
45,409
73,480
LachiusTZ said:
Bringing it to orbit isn't an issue, unless you want it done fast. The ring is to get the rare materials back to the ground.

With BFR launch costs, prolly a decade of "war"? I honestly have no idea. I don't see it ever happening TBH. To fragile, takes to long, costs to much, won't further enough agendas etc etc etc

Edit:. In truth, there is no real benefit to bringing rare materials to Earth. Not en masse.
Click to expand...
To me, an orbital ring is like the American pioneers looking at the frontier and saying, "It sure is hard to cross from the colonies to Oregon territory. I KNOW! let's build an massive metropolis that spawns all the way from the east coast to the west coast, and just take the public hyperloop!"

It's like, we're trying to do step #1 here of getting a couple tons of gear into space that can do even the most basic of manufacturing/mining, and people are talking about climbing that step using what we'll have by step #53.
 
  • 1Like
Reactions: 1 user
khorum

khorum

Murder Apologist
24,338
81,363
Why build a hyperloop when self-driving cars are AT LEAST ten years away?
 
  • 1Like
  • 1Salty
Reactions: 1 users
LachiusTZ

LachiusTZ

Rogue Deathwalker Box
<Silver Donator>
14,472
27,162
khorum said:
We understand the stresses and engineering for a ring, but building a BIOME like Elysium's is a harder problem. We'd have to simulate cyclical precipitation, which means we have to simulate regular jetstreams, which means we have simulate tidal forces ---assuming the orbital is tidally-locked or is in a Langrange parking orbit.

It's pretty interesting that the innards and environmentals of a orbital is actually less understood than extruding enough nanotube to build the ring.
Click to expand...


I'm the orbital ring video he details some really interesting things I never knew, like counter rotating cores to levitate the ring. Guy is super interesting.
 
  • 1Like
Reactions: 1 user
Break

Break

Silver Baronet of the Realm
4,252
11,770
With a $1000 budget, what telescope would you folks recommend? Is there one that can be controlled from a PC with a camera, so i can scan around with a PC/Mac and then go look through the eye piece for a better view?
 
  • 1Like
Reactions: 1 user
wormie

Asshat wormie

2023 Asshat Award Winner
<Gold Donor>
16,820
30,963
LachiusTZ said:
Anyone tried great courses plus, or brilliance? I think that is what they are called. Basically online classes for no credit. PBS side time and answers with Joe advertise then.
Click to expand...
If you want University style courses go to EdX and Coursera.
 
  • 1Like
Reactions: 1 user
Mudcrush Durtfeet

Mudcrush Durtfeet

Hungry Ogre
2,428
-758
Tuco said:
BrutulTM BrutulTM I've pumped asteroid mining a lot in this thread, and there really is a huge upside to it for both on-planet industry and off-planet. It really is the real pathway we have to get off this rock.

But until we make real strides in propulsion tech it's going to be really hard to go millions of miles away, mine some platinum and rutheneum and get it back to earth or earth-orbit. It might be that humanity spends billions of dollars in asteroid mining and a huge part of that investment is propulsion tech that gets us there. Or it might be that in thirty years and a trillion dollars later we're still using rocket fuel we pull from the ground because there's nothing else and our efforts to convert water from asteroids / helium3 on the moon aren't panning out.
Click to expand...

Rocket fuel isn't such a limiting factor if its not at the bottom of a gravity well like Earth's. Mars is a lot easier to get it from if they can get production going there (which is a plan of SpaceX as y'all may have heard). That's why the Raptor engine that is being developed for the BFR.
 
  • 1Like
Reactions: 1 user
LachiusTZ

LachiusTZ

Rogue Deathwalker Box
<Silver Donator>
14,472
27,162
That and in space you can use nuclear with double the specific impulse (I think that holds even for the BFR engines). Like I said, only an issue if you want it fast. If you can wait a year or two, it's easier, 5 years even more so etc.
 
  • 1Like
Reactions: 1 user
meStevo

meStevo

I think your wife's a bigfoot gus.
<Silver Donator>
6,370
4,648

1525221315208.png
 
  • 4Like
Reactions: 3 users
pharmakos

pharmakos

soʞɐɯɹɐɥd
<Bronze Donator>
16,306
-2,239
in trying to google an answer myself, i found an unrelated but interesting factoid:

"I heard yesterday that relative to their size, galaxies are much closer together than stars. I’d never heard that, so I looked into it. Just using orders of magnitude, the sun is 10^9 meters wide and the nearest star is 10^16 meters away. The Milky Way is 10^21 meters wide, and the Andromeda galaxy is 10^22 meters away. So stars are millions of diameters apart, but galaxies are tens of diameters apart. "
 
  • 3Like
Reactions: 2 users
meStevo

meStevo

I think your wife's a bigfoot gus.
<Silver Donator>
6,370
4,648
Yeah, the scale is a little hard to wrap your head around, and the number of them just makes it hard to believe that all but the 1st and final images aren't just a Photoshop noise filter or something.
 
  • 1Like
Reactions: 1 user
Ukerric

Ukerric

Bearded Ape
<Silver Donator>
7,907
9,509
Don't forget that Andromeda is much bigger than our pitiful small Milky Way...
 
  • 1Like
Reactions: 1 user
Tuco

Tuco

I got Tuco'd!
<Gold Donor>
45,409
73,480
pharmakos said:
not really, right? just the way it looks from our perspective?
Click to expand...
Yes. Not only because the stars saturate the image sensor of the camera (so the stars themselves look bigger) but also because we're seeing a 3d galaxy projected in 2d. So even stars that would appear extremely close could be separated by a massive distance in the camera's axis of depth.

I was mostly making a joke related to how dense the picture of stars looks.
 
  • 1Like
Reactions: 1 user
Dandain

Dandain

Trakanon Raider
2,092
917
The density of stars in the center of the Milky Way is very high also. The night sky would look very different from the interior. Even if those stars are still light years apart. Within any given radius in the sky it will be saturated with a star density that would be remarkably greater than what we experience in our own night sky.
 
  • 1Like
Reactions: 1 user
You must log in or register to reply here.