The Astronomy Thread

khorum

khorum

Murder Apologist
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LMAO the water we would need to process the PERCHLORATES out of martian dust would make the costs of long-term colonization there kinda silly. Maybe we could boost an ice asteroid into the target colony site prior to landing, but 80% of it would dissipate into space before hitting the surface and MAYBE 1% of the asteroid will end up on the surface as solid ice at the -200 degree temps.

So yeah, we'd need a massive system of water just to mist out/wash out/filter out/recycle the perchlorates on every speck of Martian dust, since Martian dust has 1400% higher concentrations of toxic perchlorates than the maximum survivable by humans.

Did you watch "The Martian"? If even just A SPECK of martian dust ended up in Watney's potatoes without being washed out he would've died of thyroid failure in a week.
 
khorum

khorum

Murder Apologist
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I loved it! But the author acknowledged missing a lot of discoveries made by Curiosity after he finished the book. He wrote it before SpaceX got super huge too so he missed out on the privatization of it. Anyways he talked about missing the perchlorate thing and the discovery of trace water.

I bet if he had finished the book this year we would've seen the supply rocket from China fail and then spaceX comes in with a spare booster for the supply rendezvous. Then again I'm sure he could've found a way to manage the perchlorates in the book too. Prolly some kinda counter active pill that mitigates the thyroid damage?
 
Brad2770

Brad2770

Avatar of War Slayer
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New Ceres Images Show Bright Craters | NASA

rrr_img_131411.jpg
 
khorum

khorum

Murder Apologist
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SpaceX's CRS-8 booster comes home to Cape Canaveral for examination and refurbishment.... they're planning for a relaunch of the same rocket this Spring or early in the summer:


This is pretty much unprecendented. Since the rocket itself was basically a writeoff (since they weren't sure it was ever gonna fly again), SpaceX put the floor out there for a reusable rocket savings of30% off the already-low 60 million per launch. But SES, one of their investors and a major telecom satellite play thinks they should get a special 50% discount with the inaugural launch of a reusable rocket.

As an investor, SES must have access to the actual costs of refurbishing and reusing the falcon 9's and almost certainly feel a 50% discount still leaves a healthy margin.
 
I

Itzena_sl

shitlord
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Well, he's ambitious. I'll grant him that:SpaceX Is Sending a Red Dragon Spacecraft to Mars in 2018 [UPDATE]
SpaceX has been teasing potential Mars plans for a while now, but the company just announced a launch date-and it's soon. They plan to launch to the surface of Mars in 2018.

Especially intriguing is that the announcement refers to the spacecraft as the "Red Dragon." Does this mean that we'll be seeing an update to the spacecraft so that it can handle the conditions of the red planet? We hope so.

We've reached out to SpaceX for details and will update as they come in.

Update 1:30 pm: A spokesperson for SpaceX has shared some additional details about the planned mission-and they are, to put it plainly, thrilling.

It will be, as expected, an uncrewed flight. The purpose of these initial missions will be to figure out how safely land large payloads on Mars. To do that, SpaceX plans on launching their Red Dragons with the Falcon Heavy rocket-an ultra souped-up version of the Falcon 9 rocket that we saw land on a barge earlier this month.

Most exciting, though, is that these Red Dragon missions are also intended to lead into upcoming plans for building something on Mars. Elon Musk previously promised to reveal details about plans for a Martian city at the upcoming International Aeronautical Conference this September. According to the spokesperson, the Red Dragon missions will inform that future Mars colonization architecture.
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khorum

khorum

Murder Apologist
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ULA's been losing money for years. THIS year they cut muscle instead of fat---laying off hundreds of engineers and operations staff.

It got a LOT worse after SpaceX landed on a boat.ULA's Atlas-V launches usually cost somewhere between 130 million up to 500 million (and even over a billion) to boost a satellite into orbit. Once Falcon Heavy kicks in this year they'll be outclassed on cost, launch frequency AND weight.

Fool.com_sl said:
Last week, ULA announced plans to lay off as many as 375 employees this year, then lay off perhaps 500 more workers in 2017. The reason, quite simply, is cost.

Flying a combination of Atlas V rockets built by Lockheed Martin and Delta IVs manufactured by Boeing, ULA has so far been unable to match the low prices SpaceX offers on its launches. In a recent presentation at the University of Colorado, (ex-)ULA executive Brett Tobey lamented the fact that ULA's cost structure prevented the company from quoting prices lower than $125 million on its space launches, and admitted that when all costs are factored in, the company usually has to charge something closer to $200 million.
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