The Astronomy Thread

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BrutulTM

Good, bad, I'm the guy with the gun.
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Pretentious small scale bullshit for rich people excepted, American/Canadian beef is without peer.
 
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meStevo

I think your wife's a bigfoot gus.
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NASA press conference tomorrow to discuss the latest discoveries via the Curiosity rover.

It's not aliens.

...

......

 
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Cybsled

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It's going to be the same as always.

The rover discovered XYZ chemical markers which demonstrate that Mars had conditions ideal for life in its distant past!
 
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Brad2770

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Yup.

Building Blocks of Life Found on Mars Building Blocks of Life Found on Mars

These are the only building blocks that matter.

B8561FD0-21EE-4267-A6E6-43BD763D6748.jpeg
 
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Melvin

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Feel like we've had almost the exact same announcement form nasa on mars every year for the past decade.

It's been "announced" so many times now that I didn't even click the link when I first saw it. I have to assume that there's something new and interesting about the quantity or location or specific type of chemistry or some combination of the above that makes this discovery worth mentioning. Maybe it takes a chemistry or biology degree to get super excited about the specifics of these new details though?


I'm gonna watch that video while I eat dinner and drink a couple beers, maybe I'll care by the end of it. :)
 
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Melvin

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Yep. Video confirms that the newest science data from Curiosity is an important evolutionary step forward toward a more complete understanding about where and how life originated billions of years ago. There are literally billions of worlds in the universe where life may, or may not have, or may possibly in the future, exist, and we Homo Sapiens have scratched the surface of approximately three of them.

My hot take on this hubbub about Martian organic molecules is that it's a crystal clear case of NASA needing their budget significantly increased so they can work more efficiently. There's a huge amount of overhead involved in designing, testing, refining, retesting, etc, the cutting edge technology that gets built and sent to Mars, and they could have put two rovers of Curiosity's design on Mars with less than double the funding. Unfortunately I bet they'll make the same mistake in 2020 when they launch the next single solitary rover.
 
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Kiroy

Marine Biologist
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Yep. Video confirms that the newest science data from Curiosity is an important evolutionary step forward toward a more complete understanding about where and how life originated billions of years ago. There are literally billions of worlds in the universe where life may, or may not have, or may possibly in the future, exist, and we Homo Sapiens have scratched the surface of approximately three of them.

My hot take on this hubbub about Martian organic molecules is that it's a crystal clear case of NASA needing their budget significantly increased so they can work more efficiently. There's a huge amount of overhead involved in designing, testing, refining, retesting, etc, the cutting edge technology that gets built and sent to Mars, and they could have put two rovers of Curiosity's design on Mars with less than double the funding. Unfortunately I bet they'll make the same mistake in 2020 when they launch the next single solitary rover.

They need to stop designing their own rockets and craft from scratch and just focus on making rovers for science missions and spend 1000x less on transport by using space-x and others. They don't need more money they need less waste and bloat.
 
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Ukerric

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They need to stop designing their own rockets and craft from scratch and just focus on making rovers for science missions and spend 1000x less on transport by using space-x and others. They don't need more money they need less waste and bloat.
As usual, the main problem isn't NASA, it's Congress & Senate. As long as the appropriation committees will consider NASA as a pork barrel rather than an end, you'll get Senate Launch Systems redux.

(there was a budget line a year or two ago that dictated that NASA should research small rocket engines, to the tune of a few dozens M$. Funnily enough the only company that was doing small engines was on the district of the guy who pushed this "opportunity")
 
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khorum

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The USAF just certified the Falcon Heavy for launch contracts AND just signed up for a FH launch in 2020. That's like shockingly quick...NASA still hasn't committed so much as a cargo SLS mission for the Heavy.

UPI said:
June 22 (UPI) -- Space Exploration Technologies Corp., or SpaceX, will send a satellite into orbit atop its Falcon Heavy rocket in 2020, the U.S. Air Force announced on Thursday.

The massive rocket will deliver a secretive military satellite, known as AFSPC-52, into space, in a $130 million fixed-price contract.

The contract announced by the Department of Defense on Thursday is the first awarded to SpaceX.

DOD contracts are literally ULA's mealticket and they cannot HOPE to outbid SpaceX on future contracts on costs--and now--on specs. It's curious if ULA holds onto some smaller launches in the future tho.
 
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