Kiroy
Marine Biologist
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The Astronomy Thread
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Cybsled
Avatar of War Slayer
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They're a really awesome concept. The hardest part will be identifying an ideal exoplanet for imaging, since everyone will want to prioritize one in the habitable zone of a star that might potentially have life
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Burns
Golden Baronet of the Realm
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It would be great if Musk started taking on independent astronomy missions like developing and building advanced telescopes, but I don't see that happening with SpaceX, as a potential profitable venture. It would probably need to be a separate not for profit type company that he could use as a philanthropy write off.
Anything from the US will most likely be using SpaceX to get there though. NOAA has a solar weather watching satellite in development by a company in Australia that is planed to launch on a Falcon in 2025 and head to Lagrange point 1. We also need some asteroid watching satellites in L3, L4, or L5, but no one has anything in the works for that yet.
Tuco
I got Tuco'd!
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Once Starship starts yeeting blue whale sides payloads into orbit, I can only imagine there will be a desire to start building relatively massive space telescopes (among other things) into space. The James Webb Space Telescope is like, 7% of Starship's payload to orbit mass. With refueling, Starship would be able to move a telescope 10x the mass into Lagrange, Ganymede, wherever orbit we want. SpaceX doesn't even need to make the telescope, they just need to get NASA to make it.
I also bet SpaceX will launch their own telescopes though, just for their own missions as they build up their presence in space. SpaceX already has the most satellites looking inward, won't be hard for them to have the most satellites looking outward also.
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Sanrith Descartes
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Musk has said he never expects SpaceX to be profitable so he has no need to constrain himself so as to not impact the bottom line. Dude is literally going to reach for the stars, cost be damned.
So are Falcon 9/Heavy; they just happen to also overlap with necessary technology development. The entire enterprise is designed as a self-sustaining engineering/funding engine with a big target on Mars.
Kiroy
Marine Biologist
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Might be a multi decade timeline but spacex is going to have to make (or buy out companies that make) it's own spacescopes and other 'scientific' craft post mars landing/colony so it can collect and be in control of it's own datasets not covered by nasa scientific packages, for both planning and proprietary reasons. They'll need this to facilitate moving past mars, asteroid mining, eventually pushing out of the solar system.
Sanrith Descartes
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Company already has a valuation of $125b
That is a higher value than LMT, RTX, GD or NOC. it is also greater than GD and NOC combined.
That is a higher value than LMT, RTX, GD or NOC. it is also greater than GD and NOC combined.
Ukerric
Bearded Ape
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Even today. A Falcon Heavy can sent 17 tons to TLI (Translunar Insertion), which is nearly three times James Webb. You need a little more Delta-V for the lagrange point that Webb was sent to, but not that much more.
The James Webb cost 8.8 billion to make, and 700 million to launch (mostly because of the usual shenanigans). Reducing the cost to 97M $ (public price of FH) saves you 10% of the entire cost of the project already. Starship probably shaves the launch cost by half (if not more), but it's peanuts compared to the payload itself.
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Tuco
I got Tuco'd!
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A key consideration is whether the immense cost of the JWST is related to constraints imposed by the launch systems when it was designed. I imagine few people could answer that with authority but my guess is that if they were given the massive size and weight budget that Starship could provide they would be able to produce the satellite for much, much less. If they could produce that satellite with a much higher allowable risk (Because the launch costs are lower, they were producing mulitple of them, the payload isn't as valuable, whatever reason you want) it'd reduce the cost even further.
You look at this unfolding sequence, it really is a marvel. Now imagine how much easier it'd be if the compartment it was stored in was 10x bigger and had 10x larger allowable mass?
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Big Phoenix
Pronouns: zie/zhem/zer
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That just tells me canceling the Saturn V in favor of the Shuttle cost us even more than imagined.
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meStevo
I think your wife's a bigfoot gus.
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It’s the BOAT: Astronomers observe “brightest of all time” gamma-ray burst
It's a "once-in-a-century opportunity" to address fundamental questions of these bursts.
On the morning of October 9, multiple space-based detectors picked up a powerful gamma ray burst (GRB) passing through our solar system, sending astronomers around the world scrambling to train their telescopes on that part of the sky to collect vital data on the event and its afterglow. Dubbed GRB 221009A, astronomers say the gamma ray burst is the most powerful yet recorded and likely could be the "birth cry" of a new black hole. The event was promptly published in the Astronomer's Telegram, and observations are still ongoing.
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Sanrith Descartes
Veteran of a thousand threadban wars
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Eventually one of those gamma bursts will hit the earth directly and then we wont have to worry about WW3 or inflation. Or anything else.It’s the BOAT: Astronomers observe “brightest of all time” gamma-ray burst
It's a "once-in-a-century opportunity" to address fundamental questions of these bursts.arstechnica.com
On the morning of October 9, multiple space-based detectors picked up a powerful gamma ray burst (GRB) passing through our solar system, sending astronomers around the world scrambling to train their telescopes on that part of the sky to collect vital data on the event and its afterglow. Dubbed GRB 221009A, astronomers say the gamma ray burst is the most powerful yet recorded and likely could be the "birth cry" of a new black hole. The event was promptly published in the Astronomer's Telegram, and observations are still ongoing.
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Cybsled
Avatar of War Slayer
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It’s been a while, but pretty sure the source would have to be close enough so that the burst was still concentrated to do appreciable damage. It also wouldn’t evenly encompass the entire planet - the opposite side would be relatively unharmed, although damage caused by a concentrated burst would have negative world wide impacts
It was pointed at Earth, otherwise we wouldn't have seen it.
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Burns
Golden Baronet of the Realm
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The chances of that happening before our sun turns into a red giant are minimal.
Lenas
Trump's Staff
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