The Astronomy Thread

Sanrith Descartes said:

I had read it was over 5m across. 6 feet will burn up in the atmosphere wont it?

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From the link you posted:

"Asteroid 2018VP1 is very small, approx. 6.5 feet, and poses no threat to Earth! It currently has a 0.41% chance of entering our planet’s atmosphere, but if it did, it would disintegrate due to its extremely small size," NASA Asteroid Watch said on Twitter.

The part that amazes me is that we can detect and track stone refrigerator at all.

Gavinmad said:

Depends on velocity, composition, and entry angle, but generally speaking I wouldn't expect a 6 foot meteor to be capable of much. The Chelyabinsk meteor (2013) was 20m but came in so fast and shallow that it burst in mid-air.

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The Chelyabinsk meteor sounds like it was approximately 1000 times the volume of this 6 foot rock.

That's so vivid! I wonder if the blue area is iron rich

I remember us talking in here about the big energies involved in hitting tiny grains of dust or gas while going up near C. A book I just read (scifi) had a cool thing where they ambushed a big arkship (like a 30 mile long asteroid hollowed out) by pumping gas out of a gas giant into the path of the oncoming ship, which had slowed down to .25 C or so.

It messed that ship up BAD hitting that gas. I've no idea if the author did the math but I was surprised how it ablated tons of rock off the front in seconds.

I remember in the revelation space books they would put like a mile of ice on the front of their ships to soak up dust impacts.

4th landing for this 1st stage booster

SN6 made a successful 150m hop today.

Furry said:

Just a salt? I remember when mudcrush was the guardian of stupid ideas, the one garbage can who would make sure nothing was of value. Now here we are, with him giving salts like a common khorum. This forum is truly on it's death bed.

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Says the negative number disbeliever!

Hovering in the air in exactly the way that rocks don't.

Slightly different video maybe of it. Was wonderous.

7 years to go from 1 to 10 launches. 7 more to go from 10 to 100+ launches.
Now launching grain silos for fun.
SpaceX is really pissing all over these big "space agencies" that barely do shit.

Ukerric said:

Yea. When they announced that SLS would cost 30% more, my first reaction was "Are they putting it on the Apple Store?"

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That is just a shrimp on a captain's deluxe platter though.
How many shitty space agencies are there that barely have a functioning rocket.
Then there is all the horseshit contracts to get a few people to the moon, which by the time they go, they'll probably just land and dock at the Musk International Moon Port.