Author Topic: Space. The Final Frontier.  (Read 75570 times)

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Offline Ali the Baseball Cat

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Re: Space. The Final Frontier.
« Reply #500: September 12, 2013, 04:45:26 PM »
My uncle worked on Voyager...he just retired after about a million years at JPL.  I'll bet he's pretty jazzed.

Offline Slateman

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Re: Space. The Final Frontier.
« Reply #501: September 13, 2013, 08:28:44 PM »

Offline GburgNatsFan

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Re: Space. The Final Frontier.
« Reply #502: September 13, 2013, 08:34:38 PM »
Doesn't it eventually crash into a star and get turned back into atoms?

Man, saw this thread bumped and was afraid someone beat me to the punch. I'd go so far as to say this is the most amazing, spectacular, wondrous and exciting news in my lifetime. (Born after Apollo missions.)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/out-there-nasas-voyager-1-becomes-first-spacecraft-to-speed-through-interstellar-space/2013/09/12/55a9b094-1bd4-11e3-80ac-96205cacb45a_story.html

Voyager 1 has left the building, ladies and gents. (Although it actually, apparently, happened a year ago.)

Now to address the inevitable 'so what?'s, why is this so important and thrilling? Admittedly, all Voyager detected was a difference in magnetic fields and the strength of particles from outside our solar system. That's largely all this is.

But...

We have left our solar system. Voyager 1 is now the first human made object, possibly (although most certainly not) the very first life based object to leave the stellar system of that specie's birth. It's an amazing accomplishment. And it means that no matter what happens to us, whether we wipe ourselves out, our sun goes buh-bye, or whatever - there will always be a piece of humanity drifting about the cosmos, at the very least for millions of years. Bravo, NASA of old, bravo.

Online HalfSmokes

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Re: Space. The Final Frontier.
« Reply #503: September 13, 2013, 08:42:23 PM »
Doesn't it eventually crash into a star and get turned back into atoms?


30,000 years to actually exit the solar system if you count comets- in 40,000 it will get near to a star- too bad by 2025 it will stop sending out signals- absolutely insane to think something made on earth will last that long- it's entirely possible (likely?) that humans will be extinct by the time it leaves the solar system

Offline Ali the Baseball Cat

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Re: Space. The Final Frontier.
« Reply #504: September 14, 2013, 11:07:37 AM »
Jesus will ride in on his dinosaur & save the day
30,000 years to actually exit the solar system if you count comets- in 40,000 it will get near to a star- too bad by 2025 it will stop sending out signals- absolutely insane to think something made on earth will last that long- it's entirely possible (likely?) that humans will be extinct by the time it leaves the solar system

Offline JCA-CrystalCity

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Re: Space. The Final Frontier.
« Reply #505: September 15, 2013, 05:39:01 AM »
Doesn't it eventually crash into a star and get turned back into atoms?

Nah, it comes back in a mysterious cloud named V'Ger.

Offline Coladar

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Re: Space. The Final Frontier.
« Reply #506: September 15, 2013, 08:04:40 PM »
Doesn't it eventually crash into a star and get turned back into atoms?


In all likelihood I suspect such to be the case, eventually. While the odds of such a tiny craft's path crossing that of a star given the vast emptiness of space is almost zero, unfortunately all that's needed is for Voyager to get caught in a star's gravity field, an exponentially larger area, and then gradually get sucked in.

That said, as already noted by others, it'll be 40,000 years before Voyager even approaches our closest neighbor at a distance of well over a light year. Voyager will be floating through space for tens of millions, if not hundreds or even billions, of years. It will outlive humanity by a crazy amount - it will possibly, probably even, outlive our sun's remaining life.

Plus, figure we have four shots of survival - two Pioneers and two Voyagers. Assuming New Horizons survives its encounter with Pluto, which isn't definitive given how far away it is (It could, could meet up with some tiny satellite of Pluto's, a captured Kuiper object too tiny for our scopes to have a possibility of resolving.) Let's say it does, and then we have five emissaries to interstellar waters.

While we can't say for sure when or if any of them will meet an end considering the insane scale of time that needs to be factored in, all of them will be drifting for at the very, very, very least millions upon millions of years. Multiply our chances by five different craft, and who knows, one of them might just be lurking around the darkness when the last stars blink out and die.

The only thing I don't know, and imagine there isn't a ready answer for via Google, would be the galactic notion... These craft obviously all will escape our solar system, but none will escape the galaxy. I don't know if, as a consequence of that, over billions or even trillions of years whether or not the black hole at the center of the Milky Way will exert just the tiniest of pulls to eventually suck them in should any of them otherwise survive after quadrillions of years.

Regardless though, it's just such a magnificent feat and the pinnacle of our species entire existence. We've got things that were made by human hands on the planet of our birth that will last for an inconceivable amount of time. No matter what happens to us, or our entire planet, there will be five tiny reminders drifting in darkness to let the universe know we were here and just how much we accomplished as a people. Amazing.

Offline Coladar

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Re: Space. The Final Frontier.
« Reply #507: September 30, 2013, 10:23:22 PM »
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/09/30/cassini-detects-plastic-ingredient-on-saturn-moon/2896957/

Why again are we not going to Titan, instead spending absurds amount of money, time and energy on a dead world - Mars? Discovering plastics is admitedly insignificant to the average joe, but it highlights just how insanely dynamic, complex and rich Titan is and offers us discoveries found nowhere else in the solar system save Earth. And if life exists anywhere else near us, it's Titan.

Sucks that I'm only 30, yet odds are I'll never see us send a lander/rover to Titan in my lifetime or get an answer to whether or not it has life.

Offline mitlen

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Re: Space. The Final Frontier.
« Reply #508: September 30, 2013, 10:27:17 PM »
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/09/30/cassini-detects-plastic-ingredient-on-saturn-moon/2896957/

Why again are we not going to Titan, instead spending absurds amount of money, time and energy on a dead world - Mars? Discovering plastics is admitedly insignificant to the average joe, but it highlights just how insanely dynamic, complex and rich Titan is and offers us discoveries found nowhere else in the solar system save Earth. And if life exists anywhere else near us, it's Titan.

Sucks that I'm only 30, yet odds are I'll never see us send a lander/rover to Titan in my lifetime or get an answer to whether or not it has life.

Mars sells tickets.

Offline Terpfan76

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Re: Space. The Final Frontier.
« Reply #509: September 30, 2013, 10:38:13 PM »
Mars sells tickets.


and candy bars...

Online HalfSmokes

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Re: Space. The Final Frontier.
« Reply #510: September 30, 2013, 10:38:24 PM »
and martians,don't forget martians

Offline mitlen

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Offline Coladar

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Re: Space. The Final Frontier.
« Reply #512: September 30, 2013, 11:37:19 PM »
Mars sells tickets.

Yeah, but not so much... First, a couple other recent articles beyond some relatively lame finding of plastic molecules in the atmosphere:

http://www.ibtimes.com/saturns-moon-titan-may-have-active-ice-volcanoes-cryovolcanic-areas-could-harbor-conditions-1406060

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2013/09/saturns-titan-providing-a-mirror-of-the-origins-of-life-on-earth.html

Anyways, a premier mission to Titan? To land on Titan, not just on land, but on liquid seas? $425 million. That's it. If life exists there, odds are it exists in the seas of Titan. Regardless of that, exploring another world via freaking boat? If that wouldn't capture the world's fascination, I don't know what would. The science returns of investigating complex liquid seas of hydrocarbons and the building blocks of life alone would be worth it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_Mare_Explorer

All for $425 million. To put that in perspective, Mars? Curiosity? $2.5 goddamn billion. As much as I get $425 is an insane amount of money, and NASA is strapped for cash as it is, you're talking about 1/5th the cost of just a single mission to Mars. It'd be different if getting to Titan meant twice as much as a Mars mission, but a fraction of one?

Like I said, it just plain sucks that the few images Huygens snapped might well be the only snapshots from Titan I'll ever see. And it kills me I'll probably never know whether or not microbial life exists lurking amidst the methane seas. C'est la vie, I suppose.

Oh, on another note of space news - with a government shutdown, 97% of NASA gets furloughed. So not only can't we send men and women into space anymore, so long as the shutdown lasts we don't even have any space program at all. What I read said support for the ISS is considered essential - I'd think that alone takes more than 3% of NASA. I have a bad feeling Curiosity and Opportunity's drivers ain't essential, so our rovers might just stop roving, temporarily, come tomorrow.

Offline Coladar

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Re: Space. The Final Frontier.
« Reply #513: October 01, 2013, 11:02:07 AM »
Sure enough, I was right - rovers are shut down. All science is shut down. Even our "asteroid watch" is shut down.

I don't know about you, but keeping an eye on the .0000000001% chance a monster asteroid wipes out all life on Earth is more "essential" than anything else. Given the way things always seem to go, just watch, the silent monster dinosaur killer is now incoming, and by the time Congress gets its head out of its ass and the asteroid is discovered, it will be hours too late to save the planet.

Hey, that's not a bad idea for a Deep Impact sequel - Bruce Willis, battling asteroids and Congress. Deeper Impact - Sequestration

Offline cmdterps44

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Re: Space. The Final Frontier.
« Reply #514: October 01, 2013, 12:53:17 PM »
Yeah, let's take our eyes off space. That sounds like it will work out for us.

Offline Coladar

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Re: Space. The Final Frontier.
« Reply #515: October 01, 2013, 01:19:55 PM »
Yeah, let's take our eyes off space. That sounds like it will work out for us.

Why do I have this weird thing with the timing of ISON - government shutdown lasts about a month, comet of the century makes closest pass...

I joke, sort of, but it does suck - if they don't end this, no NASA observations will be made of ISON - no Hubble snapshots, no spectrographs, nada. Hubble is mothballed, all our weather satelites and the like are mothballed - everything except for supporting our two guys on the ISS is mothballed for as long as this continues. God help them all if one of our missions currently in space, billions of dollar and several year projects, a mission like New Horizons to Pluto, ends up dead over this... a routine bug that would've required a simple reboot ends up going into the sun while the lights are off.

I'm flabbergasted that even the Mars Rovers, a handful of dudes who I guarantee, between coming to work to drive on Mars for free or sitting at home for free playing GTA Online, would choose the former... Remember, Curiosity will die one day. Every day we don't use it is one day less we used it while it still worked. Odds are it dies due to radiation damage, meaning shutting it down now doesn't give us 'extra days' later... What a bunch of idiots.

Offline mitlen

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Re: Space. The Final Frontier.
« Reply #516: October 01, 2013, 01:25:15 PM »
Why do I have this weird thing with the timing of ISON - government shutdown lasts about a month, comet of the century makes closest pass...

I joke, sort of, but it does suck - if they don't end this, no NASA observations will be made of ISON - no Hubble snapshots, no spectrographs, nada. Hubble is mothballed, all our weather satelites and the like are mothballed - everything except for supporting our two guys on the ISS is mothballed for as long as this continues. God help them all if one of our missions currently in space, billions of dollar and several year projects, a mission like New Horizons to Pluto, ends up dead over this... a routine bug that would've required a simple reboot ends up going into the sun while the lights are off.

I'm flabbergasted that even the Mars Rovers, a handful of dudes who I guarantee, between coming to work to drive on Mars for free or sitting at home for free playing GTA Online, would choose the former... Remember, Curiosity will die one day. Every day we don't use it is one day less we used it while it still worked. Odds are it dies due to radiation damage, meaning shutting it down now doesn't give us 'extra days' later... What a bunch of idiots.

I too am concerned about our inability or "refusal" to look out.   Your point about comets, etc. raises a question for ya.    How would you proceed if we did discover that "killer" closing in on us?

I wholeheartedly agree with your observation that the guys/gals at JPL and the like would rather play with our current toys, even with no pay,  than sit at home.

Offline Coladar

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Re: Space. The Final Frontier.
« Reply #517: October 01, 2013, 02:21:39 PM »
I too am concerned about our inability or "refusal" to look out.   Your point about comets, etc. raises a question for ya.    How would you proceed if we did discover that "killer" closing in on us?

I wholeheartedly agree with your observation that the guys/gals at JPL and the like would rather play with our current toys, even with no pay,  than sit at home.

You warm my geek heart asking that question!

There's such a ridiculously simple, and effective way, if we ever found one with enough advance notice (a year or so.) A bucket of white paint.

Seriously. Douse that sucker in white, it alters the solar heating of the body, which alters its orbit. Problem solved. Simulations show that method would work as good as any other, guaranteeing something on course for Earth avoids us entirely.

That's why advance notice is crucial - as time as we can get. 'Nuking' a threat just creates a ton of smaller threats. The best option is actually the simplest, cheapest, seemingly stupidest one of all - painting it white.

If we had less time, the best bet Is to gravitationally alter it: Tow another body nearby to tweak it slightly, or launch multiple somethings of combined mass significant enough and set them into orbit around the threat, having the same impact by 'pulling' it in the direction of the mass.

Online HalfSmokes

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Re: Space. The Final Frontier.
« Reply #518: October 01, 2013, 02:24:39 PM »
You warm my geek heart asking that question!

There's such a ridiculously simple, and effective way, if we ever found one with enough advance notice (a year or so.) A bucket of white paint.

Seriously. Douse that sucker in white, it alters the heating of the body, which alters its orbit. Problem solved.

That's why advance notice is crucial - as much time as we can get. 'Nuking' a threat just creates a ton of smaller threats. The best option is actually the simplest, cheapest, seemingly stupidest one of all - painting it white.

I have no faith that Boeing Raetheon EADS... would all propose the most expensive complex solution they could think of. 

Anyone remember this debacle http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/01/14/border.virtual.fence/index.html

Offline mitlen

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Re: Space. The Final Frontier.
« Reply #519: October 01, 2013, 02:29:59 PM »
You warm my geek heart asking that question!

There's such a ridiculously simple, and effective way, if we ever found one with enough advance notice (a year or so.) A bucket of white paint.



Interesting idea  ...  thanks

Offline Coladar

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Re: Space. The Final Frontier.
« Reply #520: October 01, 2013, 02:40:49 PM »
Interesting idea  ...  thanks

Not the most romantic notions worthy of Hollywood hype, I know. Probably why space has so few advocates nowadays... The ideal way to go usually isn't very inspirational to the public/Apollo era type adventure.

Offline mitlen

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Re: Space. The Final Frontier.
« Reply #521: October 01, 2013, 02:44:36 PM »
Not the most romantic notions worthy of Hollywood hype, I know. Probably why space has so few advocates nowadays... The ideal way to go usually isn't very inspirational to the public/Apollo era type adventure.

That's similar to the point I was making in the Titan/Mars discussion when I said, "Mars sells tickets."   Mars is Hollywood hypeable (<-- not sure there is such a word).

Offline Slateman

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Re: Space. The Final Frontier.
« Reply #522: October 01, 2013, 03:06:49 PM »
Do they have booze on Mars?

Offline mitlen

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Re: Space. The Final Frontier.
« Reply #523: October 01, 2013, 03:31:58 PM »
Do they have booze on Mars?

BYOB  ...  like NC and Utah back in the day.    Similar ambience as well  ...  little atmosphere and no life forms that are familiar to most of us.

Offline Ali the Baseball Cat

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Re: Space. The Final Frontier.
« Reply #524: October 01, 2013, 04:04:05 PM »
Wasn't Virginia a dry state not so long ago? 

I guess "dry" in the taxed sense.  Plenty of wisps of smoke in the woods, I'm sure.

 
BYOB  ...  like NC and Utah back in the day.    Similar ambience as well  ...  little atmosphere and no life forms that are familiar to most of us.