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Thread: What's NASA Up To And Other Space Stuff

  1. #121
    I dunno Steely. Current estimates put savings at about 30% compared to their current launch costs, but the current reusability scheme also seems to require a 30% reduction of the payload weight. Obv they're aiming for much higher reusability and I expect them to do better than the space shuttle program on that front, but it's too early to tell how likely they are to hit their more ambitious targets.
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  2. #122
    No way you'll be able to get two orders of magnitude reduction in costs, even if you recover all of the stages.
    To be honest, I think they intend to do it anyway, wiggin. Given their accomplishments in such a relatively short period of time (in aerospace terms), I have to believe that if they say they think there is a way to reduce costs 100 fold then they probably have a viable plan to reduce costs 100 fold. Having a plan and actually implementing it are two different things, of course, and they might fail but I don't think it's reasonable to claim what they're shooting for is just barely plausible pie in the sky stuff when they know their field far, far better than you or I ever will.

    Likewise, for the Mars stuff - at least as far as establishing a permanent antarctic-style presence there, and probably far cheaper than the 100s of billions you talk about. I'm much more skeptic about building an actual colony, I'm not sure how you'd convince subsequent generations to actually *stay* there given that Earth is just so much nicer a place to live.

    Unless his plan is to strand them there, which I have ethical qualms about
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  3. #123
    Quote Originally Posted by Steely Glint View Post
    To be honest, I think they intend to do it anyway, wiggin. Given their accomplishments in such a relatively short period of time (in aerospace terms), I have to believe that if they say they think there is a way to reduce costs 100 fold then they probably have a viable plan to reduce costs 100 fold. Having a plan and actually implementing it are two different things, of course, and they might fail but I don't think it's reasonable to claim what they're shooting for is just barely plausible pie in the sky stuff when they know their field far, far better than you or I ever will.
    From what I can tell reaching that goal will, crucially, require every major part of their rockets to be reused dozens of times or more. Even apart from the engineering challenges and accidents this will be difficult unless we figure out a lot more things to do with rockets a lot more often

    Still, I've got my fingers crossed.
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  4. #124
    Quote Originally Posted by Aimless View Post
    I dunno Steely. Current estimates put savings at about 30% compared to their current launch costs, but the current reusability scheme also seems to require a 30% reduction of the payload weight. Obv they're aiming for much higher reusability and I expect them to do better than the space shuttle program on that front, but it's too early to tell how likely they are to hit their more ambitious targets.
    More or less everything SpaceX does a stepping stone for something else they want to do. That's how they operate. The purpose of the Falcon 9 stuff is just to learn as much possible about the reuse of rockets at some incredibly arcane technical level, which will inform the design of the next rocket and so on. I doubt it would worth doing if the end goal was just slightly cheaper Falcon 9 launches.
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  5. #125
    Quote Originally Posted by Steely Glint View Post
    Colonizing any of the rocky bodies in the solar system has the problem that all of them have far lower gravity to that of earth, which has implications for the health and comfort of long-term inhabitants.

    A more realistic model is to put a habitat in orbit around any body which has some kind of economic purpose, which can be spun to produce a comfortable 1g.

    Then people can travel down to the surface to harvest the resources, or do so remotely. The orbital station is a more convenient platform for trade with Earth or other habitats. The resources could be stored on the planet itself if space is limited in orbit, and then only shipped up to orbit when a ship has docked ready to take the goods elsewhere. If there is some reason that processing the raw materials is better in low gravity, then the habitat might be larger and have facilities for doing that or it may be shipped to another habitat which specializes in such activities (say, over mars which is closer to earth and might have massive complexes of farms on the surface to support city-scale population living in orbit) before ultimately being taken on to Earth where it is ultimately turned into Useful Stuff. Earth in turn would supply these habitats with manufactured goods both practical and luxury as well as trained personnel and other benefits of it's vast population and long established infrastructure.

    Eventually, habitats would start trading directly with each other too. And thus Mankind will Conquer Space.
    Why colonizing when mining? Shouldn't a drone do the job?
    If you need manual operation, use VR and robot arms.
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  6. #126
    Quote Originally Posted by Steely Glint View Post
    More or less everything SpaceX does a stepping stone for something else they want to do. That's how they operate. The purpose of the Falcon 9 stuff is just to learn as much possible about the reuse of rockets at some incredibly arcane technical level, which will inform the design of the next rocket and so on. I doubt it would worth doing if the end goal was just slightly cheaper Falcon 9 launches.
    How Will SpaceX Get Us To Mars?
    https://youtu.be/txLmVpdWtNc

    Quote Originally Posted by wiggin View Post
    To be fair, I don't think that setting up a colony on Mars even remotely qualifies as investing in the United States.
    To be fair, I don't think that setting up a colony on USA even remotely qualifies as investing in England.

    Dude, I never thought you didn't get this. I just don't get why you think it counts as investment in America. The same capital could be put to much better use.
    Why go to Mars? it is like asking Why go to Everest, or why go Antarctica. In 2018 Argentina will open Antarctica for tourism. People already go to Everest. What is "better use"? If Raytheon did not have radars, you would not have microwave ovens.
    Last edited by ar81; 08-11-2016 at 08:46 PM.
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  7. #127
    Quote Originally Posted by ar81 View Post
    it is like asking Why go to Everest, or why go Antarctica.
    Do we have anything that can be wholeheartedly considered a sustainable colony in either of those places? Even though making them, well, sustainable, is far, far easier than making anything located on Mars sustainable.
    Don't get me wrong, I'm a chemist - I know the most popular answers to "why go to/try/research X". All the range from "it will give us knowledge that we might be able to use to perhaps figure out Y" to "because we fucking can!". For me, there are no problems with question "why go to Mars" - the more problematic question is "why stay there longer than it is absolutely necessary for taking a selfie while planting a [insert country here] flag".
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  8. #128
    Quote Originally Posted by Steely Glint View Post
    To be honest, I think they intend to do it anyway, wiggin. Given their accomplishments in such a relatively short period of time (in aerospace terms), I have to believe that if they say they think there is a way to reduce costs 100 fold then they probably have a viable plan to reduce costs 100 fold. Having a plan and actually implementing it are two different things, of course, and they might fail but I don't think it's reasonable to claim what they're shooting for is just barely plausible pie in the sky stuff when they know their field far, far better than you or I ever will.

    Likewise, for the Mars stuff - at least as far as establishing a permanent antarctic-style presence there, and probably far cheaper than the 100s of billions you talk about. I'm much more skeptic about building an actual colony, I'm not sure how you'd convince subsequent generations to actually *stay* there given that Earth is just so much nicer a place to live.

    Unless his plan is to strand them there, which I have ethical qualms about
    I am not at all convinced that Musk genuinely believes that a 100-fold decrease in launch costs is even remotely feasible. I think he was more musing about the comparison to other capital-heavy forms of transportation that don't throw away the capital after a single use. The engineering challenges are enormous to imagine that you'd be able to reduce launch costs as much as you suggest. I doubt it's feasible even on a century timescale.

    I don't know why you think my 100s of billions is unreasonable. Look at the cost of current manned programs and $500 billion for a continuous Martian presence is quite reasonable. Reducing launch costs might - might - cut that in half or so, but even so we're talking about a massive investment. Obviously part of this might be definitional - I'm including all of the capital that is going into the program, which includes upfront R&D costs. The actual operating costs of a Mars mission would still be very high but would be substantially lower than the all-in cost. So you could argue that some of the capital cost is being defrayed by his LEO launch business, and to an extent that's true. But even with this consideration there's going to be a lot of Mars-specific development he's going to need to do, and the running costs are still going to be quite high.

    It cost us about $2.5 billion to get a car onto the Martian surface; the launch cost of the Atlas V rocket was probably ~$100 million. Even if you magically make that $100 million go away instead of just cutting it in half, you've still got very substantial development, construction, and operation costs. Now imagine how expensive it would be to send up habitats, life support systems, manned spacecraft, food, etc, especially for an indefinite period of time. Two order of magnitude higher cost is conservative IMO.

    edit: Another way of looking at things is how much it costs just to run our Antarctic program. I think we currently spend about $400 million a year to keep a few hundred people on Antarctica year round and another thousand or so during warmer months. Setting up the stations was probably quite a bit more expensive (albeit amortized over some years), but that gives us a rough idea. That is a program on our own planet, reachable by plane and (often) boat, and with much more straightforward life support requirements. And it costs $4 billion every decade to keep running. I think adding at least a zero just for running costs is very reasonable, and capital costs are much, much higher. Yes, the scale of a Martian colony will be smaller, but the marginal cost per astronaut is likely not as high as the capital cost of getting everything set up (though we shouldn't discount marginal costs, either).

    Quote Originally Posted by Steely Glint View Post
    More or less everything SpaceX does a stepping stone for something else they want to do. That's how they operate. The purpose of the Falcon 9 stuff is just to learn as much possible about the reuse of rockets at some incredibly arcane technical level, which will inform the design of the next rocket and so on. I doubt it would worth doing if the end goal was just slightly cheaper Falcon 9 launches.
    I think decreasing launch costs to LEO/GTO by ~50% is incredibly worthwhile and a very good investment. There's a lot of very useful stuff we put into orbit, but the cost of putting stuff up there is part of why it has been so limited in execution (c.f. Iridium). That's a laudable and very profitable goal in and of itself. I am well aware that Musk's ambition is without limit, and he has - so far - done a reasonably good job of turning his ambitions into some version of reality. Yet there are fundamental engineering limits he is facing that do not have easy solutions absent a large number of technological breakthroughs that are hard to predict. I have no doubt that with sufficient experience and testing (and money), either Musk or one of his competitors will break the code of how to best reduce launch costs of smallish satellites to LEO with currently available technology. With a bit more work, they'll probably figure out how to do it for bigger payloads and higher orbits. But absent something truly revolutionary (wildly new materials, new methods of propulsion, etc.) it's not going to be a step change in how humanity interacts with space. It will make things cheaper, yes, but still out of reach for all but the highest value items.
    "When I meet God, I am going to ask him two questions: Why relativity? And why turbulence? I really believe he will have an answer for the first." - Werner Heisenberg (maybe)

  9. #129
    I don't know why you think my 100s of billions is unreasonable.
    Because you're talking like way NASA and the traditional space industry does things is basically the cheapest possible way to do that thing, minus a few optimizations here and there. But it's just not. It's just like the world of defence procurement, but probably more so. For example, take a look at the development costs of Dragon V2 vs Orion - comparable vehicles but one costs 1/8th the price of the other. Also, very frequently NASA does things exactly once and comes up with bespoke shit each time, of course the costs are going to be huge when they have to split the RnD cost over so few missions. There are no economies of scale, no effort to make existing or past manned missions self-sufficient so you have to send all the shit they need up with them. If you're not really bothering to optimize for price - and perhaps even the opposite, when part of the goal of a given project is to maximize employment in, e.g. certain marginal congressional districts (if you even have those) - then obviously things are going to get extremely expensive extremely quickly.

    Also, you talk as though currently unsolved engineering problems in space travel are ipso facto unsolvable until some invents a new type of metal or warp drive. I realize you're probably more knowledgeable in this area than me, but it's still not your field and I don't see how you can make such claims.

    Anyway, Musk is going to reveal the architecture for the Mars missions next month, so we'll know more then.
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  10. #130
    Quote Originally Posted by wiggin View Post
    Dude, I never thought you didn't get this. I just don't get why you think it counts as investment in America. The same capital could be put to much better use.

    You implied that not funding a Mars trip and/or limited colony amounts to 'disinvesting' in the United States. That's my only complaint.
    I think there has been disinvestment in space science, manned and robotic, Mars specific or not. And I think what SpaceX is trying to do IS an investment - technology and engineering and infrastructure and, gasp, vision - in the US. "Better use" is subjective. An argument can be made that any investment toward humanity as a space faring and/or multi-planet civilization is of the utmost importance to our long term survival and the long term survival of life itself. I guess "better use" depends on the return you're looking for, on the amount of money you're tying up for how long and what you're NOT doing with that money too.... I think if that investment threshold for orbital power, asteroid mining, and probably zero g manufacturing, can be crossed, the return will be gargantuan, world changing and many-faceted. Turning away from that for shorter term "better uses" here seems, sigh, short sighted and self-defeating. It feels a little like giving up.
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  11. #131
    Quote Originally Posted by Aimless View Post
    I dunno Steely. Current estimates put savings at about 30% compared to their current launch costs, but the current reusability scheme also seems to require a 30% reduction of the payload weight. Obv they're aiming for much higher reusability and I expect them to do better than the space shuttle program on that front, but it's too early to tell how likely they are to hit their more ambitious targets.
    What we really need is the space elevator.... reusable boosters is an incremental improvement, but to move enormous quantities of stuff to space, the elevator's the way to go. But again, it's got a very high up-front cost and a return solidly in the realm of what-could-be. Hard to quantify for a business case, so nearly impossible to get done in our short-sighted economic system.
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  12. #132
    Quote Originally Posted by Steely Glint View Post
    . I'm much more skeptic about building an actual colony, I'm not sure how you'd convince subsequent generations to actually *stay* there given that Earth is just so much nicer a place to live.

    Unless his plan is to strand them there, which I have ethical qualms about
    Nationalism would do it, probably. People do stupid things when you appeal to humanity's tribal nature. They'd live and die on Mars if they identified as Martians.
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  13. #133
    Quote Originally Posted by ar81 View Post
    Why colonizing when mining? Shouldn't a drone do the job?
    If you need manual operation, use VR and robot arms.
    I think any kind of mining in space will be based on robotics and AI. Human presence will not be required, mostly because it costs way too much to keep people alive in space.
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  14. #134
    Has Choobs become the forum's new Alberjohns?

    That said, every time NASA or any private 'space agency' makes historical news, it just proves how pedestrians are funding space research, often unwittingly.

  15. #135
    I think it will be interesting to see what knock on effects happen due to cheaper launches. When a launch is expensive you want to really maximize the distance your money goes so alternating on insurance, extra r&d, and making sure your satellite is equipped with the best great money can buy makes sense. A halving of launch costs should more than half the cost of getting a satellite into orbit.

  16. #136
    By that metric, shouldn't all cell phones and satellite TVs be pretty cheap? And wouldn't everyone have broadband?

  17. #137
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    Quote Originally Posted by GGT View Post
    By that metric, shouldn't all cell phones and satellite TVs be pretty cheap? And wouldn't everyone have broadband?
    Because of the enormous reduction in costs for electronics, you can get better phones than you used to for much less money than you used to. Or pay the same and get far far better phones. Satellite TV isn't pretty cheap because launching a satellite is still very expensive.
    Keep on keepin' the beat alive!

  18. #138
    Quote Originally Posted by Flixy View Post
    Because of the enormous reduction in costs for electronics, you can get better phones than you used to for much less money than you used to. Or pay the same and get far far better phones. Satellite TV isn't pretty cheap because launching a satellite is still very expensive.
    The initial costs for electronics (and internet) were made by governments (and space programs). That's how the household microwave oven became commonplace. I wouldn't be comparing my household TV service options if our government hadn't launched satellites to begin with, right?

  19. #139

    Default Proxima Centauri has an Earth-Sized Planet in it's Goldilocks Zone

    This is interesting...

    The Earth Next Door

    Astronomers find an exoplanet that could be habitable—and it’s as close to us as it could possibly be
    By Lee Billings on August 24, 2016

    It was just over 20 years ago—a blink of a cosmic eye—that astronomers found the first planets orbiting stars other than our Sun. All these new worlds were gas-shrouded giants like Jupiter or Saturn and utterly inhospitable to life as we know it—but for years each discovery was dutifully reported as front-page news, while scientists and the public alike dreamed of a day when we would find a habitable world. An Earth-like place with plentiful surface water, neither frozen nor vaporized but in the liquid state so essential to life. Back then the safe bet was to guess that the discovery of such a planet would only come after many decades, and that when a promising new world’s misty shores materialized on the other side of our telescopes, it would prove too faraway and faint to study in any detail.

    Evidently the safe bet was wrong. On Wednesday astronomers made the kind of announcement that can only occur once in human history: the discovery of the nearest potentially habitable world beyond our solar system. This world may be rocky like ours and whirls in a temperate orbit around the Sun’s closest stellar neighbor, the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri just over four light-years away. Their findings are reported in a study in the journal Nature.

    Although technically still considered a “candidate” planet awaiting verification, most astronomers consulted for this story believe the world to be there. Scarcely more than the planet’s orbital period and approximate mass are known, but that is enough to send shivers down spines. Proxima Centauri shines with only about a thousandth of our Sun’s luminosity, meaning any life-friendly planets must huddle close. The newfound world, christened “Proxima b” by scientists, resides in an 11.2-day orbit where water—and thus the kind of life we understand—could conceivably exist. And it is likely to be little more than one-third heavier than Earth, suggesting it offers a solid surface upon which seas and oceans could pool. In a feat of discovery that could reshape the history of science and human dreams of interstellar futures, our species has uncovered a potentially habitable planet right next door.
    “Succeeding in the search for the nearest terrestrial planet beyond the solar system has been an experience of a lifetime, and has drawn on the dedication and passion of a number of international researchers,” says the study’s lead author Guillem Anglada-Escudé, an astronomer at Queen Mary University of London who spearheaded the observations. “We hope these findings inspire future generations to look beyond the stars. The search for life on Proxima b comes next.”

    For some, Proxima b is a fitting capstone to the astronomical revolution that began when the first exoplanets were found. “For more than 20 years the history of exoplanets has been defined by studying stars tens to hundreds of light-years away, when the Holy Grail—a small, rocky, potentially habitable planet—was just waiting to be discovered around our closest neighbor,” says astronomer Debra Fischer, a veteran planet hunter at Yale University who has led independent surveys of the Alpha Centauri system. “When we launch our first robotic explorers to stars beyond the solar system, we know where we should send them!”

    Caleb Scharf, director of astrobiology research at Columbia University, says the the new planet represents “a tremendously important psychological moment for the field, as well as for our species. Discovering who lives in the house next door can change perspectives and priorities—and that's what Proxima b will do.”

    Although it is barely more than four light-years away, Proxima Centauri is too faint to be seen with the naked eye. It drifts at the outskirts of the twin Sunlike stars Alpha Centauri A and B, forming a stellar trio that appears as a single gleaming point in the southern constellation of Centaurus. The tiny star is fated to slowly slip further away from us on the Milky Way’s celestial currents, but will remain the closest one bearing a planet for perhaps the next 40,000 years.

    “For the first time, we have an exoplanet within our reach that could be a host to biological organisms,” says study co-author Mikko Tuomi, an astronomer at the University of Hertfordshire. “And that makes Proxima b not only one of the most fascinating discoveries astronomers have made but also one of the most important that can be made.”

    Even so, it is a discovery that almost didn’t happen. “People seem to think we just found the planet. But no, we have believed it was there for years,” Anglada-Escudé says. “We just had to build an argument to convince others it exists.”

    <snip>
    Full Article here:

    http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...rth-next-door/
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  20. #140
    I think I know where we're headed when the sun uses up its hydrogen and burns the earth to a crisp
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  21. #141
    Quote Originally Posted by Steely Glint View Post
    I think I know where we're headed when the sun uses up its hydrogen and burns the earth to a crisp
    Well, not really. Proxima Centauri will only be our nearest neighbor for about 40k years, according to the article. Given the sun's probably got billions of years b4 it fries Earth, Proxima B's not the answer.

    On a side note, considering that time frame, it would be surprising if humanity, by then, isn't:

    a. extinct entirely

    b. technologically god-like, so dealing with the sun issue would be a minor engineering problem

    c. (perhaps a subset of b, but still...) self-evolved into something that can live anywhere there's an energy source - emphasis on anywhere.
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  22. #142
    "When I meet God, I am going to ask him two questions: Why relativity? And why turbulence? I really believe he will have an answer for the first." - Werner Heisenberg (maybe)

  23. #143
    Quote Originally Posted by EyeKhan View Post
    Well, not really. Proxima Centauri will only be our nearest neighbor for about 40k years, according to the article.
    Because it's going to fuck off into some other part of the milky way, or because it's ridiculous huge orbital period will take it to the other side of it's primary, rendering it the closest stars?

    Given the sun's probably got billions of years b4 it fries Earth, Proxima B's not the answer.
    Only got another 5 to go.

    On a side note, considering that time frame, it would be surprising if humanity, by then, isn't:

    a. extinct entirely
    Speak for yourself, buddy.

    Quote Originally Posted by wiggin
    Fermi Paradox, solved:
    Perhaps they're concerned about encountering these guys:

    http://www.theonion.com/article/inte...in-dista-27276
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  24. #144
    Quote Originally Posted by Steely Glint View Post
    Because it's going to fuck off into some other part of the milky way, or because it's ridiculous huge orbital period will take it to the other side of it's primary, rendering it the closest stars?
    I got the impression that the whole system is making a slightly different path around the galactic center and that's what will move it away...

    Speak for yourself, buddy.
    Can anyone truly do more, whatever position they have taken, or even been granted, by others?
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  25. #145
    Quote Originally Posted by EyeKhan View Post
    I got the impression that the whole system is making a slightly different path around the galactic center and that's what will move it away...
    Yeah. Right now our relative motions are bringing us closer together but the Centauri system moves at something of a tilt relative to the galactic plane. We'll be at closest approach in 27,700 years or so, and after that we'll start drawing apart. I don't think any star in our neighborhood is part of a genuine "family" cluster with us though.
    Last night as I lay in bed, looking up at the stars, I thought, “Where the hell is my ceiling?"

  26. #146
    So this is fun, if very unlikely to pan out. But just the fact that they've gone public about it makes it worth noting, given how serious SETI people are usually very cautious. I find the gargantuan energy requirements to create the signal most interesting. Why do anything like that? You really would have to build an energy-collecting mega-structure to fund the energy budgets of projects like this.

    Scientists Looking For Alien Life Investigate 'Interesting' Signal From Space

    The SETI Institute — the private organization that looks for signals of extraterrestrial life — has announced that it is investigating reports of an unusual radio signal picked up by Russian astronomers.

    The signal was detected on a much wider bandwidth than the SETI Institute uses in its searches, and the strength of the received signal was "weak," SETI Institute astronomer Seth Shostak wrote in a blog post.

    It was unusual, both in its design and its "beam shape," he says.

    The signal might be coming from a solar system called HD 164595, some 94 light-years away from us, Shostak wrote. It seems to be coming from that direction, at any rate.

    That system has a star similar to ours. There's one known planet circling that star, about the size of Neptune and very close to the star. That planet doesn't seem like a good candidate for hosting life, but other planets might also be in the system, Shostak wrote.

    But there's no guarantee that the signal is, in fact, coming from the system. And even if it is, that doesn't mean it's definitely coming from intelligent lifeforms.

    Astronomer Nick Suntzeff told Ars Technica that there's a "significant chance" it could be military — that is, coming from covert satellite communications instead of beaming to us from HD 164595.

    And there are "natural sources" that could conceivably cause a wide-band signal like the one detected, Shostak told GeekWire.

    Even the astronomers who first detected the signal, in May 2015, didn't immediately alert the scientific community and ask for help confirming the signal. That suggests they were not persuaded this was extraterrestrial life reaching out, he says.

    And Shostak wrote on SETI's site that it's "not terribly promising" that this is a message from alien lifeforms.

    So now is not the time for either delight or panic, depending on your feelings about encountering alien lifeforms.

    But it is time for more investigation, Shostak says. The SETI Institute's Allen Telescope Array in California has been turned toward HD 164595 since Sunday evening, looking for a repeat of the signal.

    METI International is also using a Panama-based observatory to investigate in that direction, GeekWire reports.

    You might remember that in 1977, astronomers detected the "Wow" signal, an odd burst that might, possibly, have been sent by alien lifeforms. But it has never been detected again, leaving scientists with little to work with.

    If things are different this time around and one of the arrays finds a repeat of the new signal, that would "immediately spur" follow-up research, Shostak writes.

    In the meantime, it's prompted speculation.

    Again, astronomers are cautioning that this might easily be a false alarm. But if the signal were sent from alien life in the HD 164595 system, what would that mean? There are two primary options, Shostak says.

    One scenario is that the lifeforms sent a powerful signal in all directions — a "here I am" sent to the universe in general. To reach us at its current strength, that would mean the planet had access to 100 billion billion watts of energy, "hundreds of times more energy than all the sunlight falling on Earth," Shostak wrote, indicating a very advanced alien society, with capabilities far beyond ours.

    Alternately, the message could have been directed at us. That's a lower energy requirement — about equal to "the total energy consumption of all mankind."

    But in that case, they'd have to know we're here. The system is too far away to have picked up any TV or radar from humans on Earth, "and it's hard to understand why anyone would want to target our solar system," Shostak says
    .
    link: http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-w..._campaign=news
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  27. #147
    Quote Originally Posted by EyeKhan View Post
    What makes that comic even more absurd is that Earth is never going to send anyone to Mars. We fantasize about it but that's it. So to use the metaphor of the joke it's more like Earth is watching Mars porn instead of doing the Moon.
    My bet is Moon will be the stepping stone for Mars.
    My bet is we will have people living on the Moon before Mars.
    And mars will be the stage for the final show.
    Freedom - When people learn to embrace criticism about politicians, since politicians are just employees like you and me.

  28. #148
    SpaceX Falcon 9 just exploded on the pad during a test fire, loss of rocket & payload
    When the sky above us fell
    We descended into hell
    Into kingdom come

  29. #149

  30. #150
    Asteroid sample return mission got off like clock-work. Woo!

    While this is a science mission, the various asteroid mining startups are looking at it as a sort of proof-of-concept mission.


    http://www.space.com/34020-nasa-hail...adline+Feed%29
    The Rules
    Copper- behave toward others to elicit treatment you would like (the manipulative rule)
    Gold- treat others how you would like them to treat you (the self regard rule)
    Platinum - treat others the way they would like to be treated (the PC rule)

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