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Post by fretslider on May 16, 2009 22:44:07 GMT
Does anybody remember all that talk in the early seventies of a Grand Tour of the Solar system. And how the geometric alignment of the planets at the time made a fly-by of all of the giant outer planets a real possibility. NASA went for the tour, but opted to miss out on Uranus and Neptune due to the costs involved. The twin Voyager spacecraft were launched in 1977 to explore Jupiter and Saturn. The spacecraft were built to last five years. But as the mission went on, and with the successful achievement of all its objectives, the additional flybys of the two outermost giant planets, Uranus and Neptune, proved possible - and irresistible to mission scientists and engineers. And Voyager has become iconic, one can find them referenced in school science texts, in a prominent role in an old Star Trek movie, and even in an image subtly placed on a Moody Blues album cover. Their five-year lifetimes stretched to 12 and is now near thirty years. I, myself, remember the launches well, but where are the Voyagers now? On 22/08/2009 Voyager 1 will be 110.81 AU, or 16,576.94 million Km from Earth and Voyager 2 will be 89.88 AU, or 13,445.86 million Km away. And that's a long way from the nearest Berni Inn! The Voyager of the Grand Tour has become The Voyager Interstellar Mission . The Voyagers are not only the most distant man made objects, but they will be the first craft to make it into true interstellar space. Voyager - The Interstellar Mission Beautiful Neptune, Voyager and that invitation... Baby, its a big Cosmos.
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Post by fretslider on May 17, 2009 15:54:31 GMT
Earth from 4 billion miles out - June 1990
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Post by beth on May 23, 2009 16:50:47 GMT
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Post by Liberator on May 24, 2009 1:54:54 GMT
There's a lot of science around now that explains the Star Trek Warp Drive idea in terms of changing the space around to fit you instead of you to fit in the space around. It does not explain how you would appear to that space around. They might deny the existence of any real absolute fixed time and space, but that does not preclude setting any as some arbitrary fixed basis. In fact, it requires it. Real observation of just simple electricity required the invention of 'imaginary' numbers as square roots of negatives. So why can't they take a further leap to 'imagine' something similar where 'reality' doesn't fit?
There's some good stuff around in the current New Scientist looking at ways to pass beyond Einstein as much as he did beyond Newton. The one big change is that 100 years ago, what Victorians called 'The Aether' could not be proven, but now it is a necessity in physics under the name of 'Quantum Foam'
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Post by fretslider on May 24, 2009 12:01:48 GMT
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Post by Alpha Hooligan on May 24, 2009 18:03:49 GMT
Our space exploration attempts are woeful...we should've sent men to Mars by now...we only have a small window of opportunity to get into space while we depend on fossil fuels, when they run out, we lose the ability to A: escape the earth's gravity, and B: lose our industry, thus killing any space program (and modern earthbound civilisation for that matter). People need to pull their effing fingers out. AH
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Post by beth on May 25, 2009 21:05:45 GMT
Our space exploration attempts are woeful...we should've sent men to Mars by now...we only have a small window of opportunity to get into space while we depend on fossil fuels, when they run out, we lose the ability to A: escape the earth's gravity, and B: lose our industry, thus killing any space program (and modern earthbound civilisation for that matter). People need to pull their effing fingers out. AH That's a good point, AH, and something I'd never even thought of - which goes to show how so many of us go around with our loopy, optimistic heads in the clouds.
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Post by fretslider on May 28, 2009 18:05:10 GMT
In the US the space programme has always been a military thing. The hijacking of the shuttle programme is a case in point. But there is one really big problem with long term space flight, no matter how fast you're going, and that is muscle and bone wastage.
We are going to need some form of artificial gravity as no one has yet come up with a way of preventing wastage.
Mars is a long shot, its not just the time taken to get there, its waiting for a launch window for the return trip too. So we can also add in a Cuckoo factor. Hell is being locked in a room with your friends!
If there's two things we badly need its a means of warping space-time, and nuclear fusion.
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Post by Liberator on May 28, 2009 22:33:29 GMT
Spacecraft don't depend on fossil fuels but quite right, getting off the planet is 90% of the problem and doing it by rocket is one of the worst ways. I don't know why by now we can't fly into Space. That is how the pre-Sputnik X series rockets were launched, slung under a high-flying aircraft. With aircraft, you are using the air for lift where most energy goes just to get off the ground and it gives rockets a serious drag problem. Modern aircraft should be able to carry a much heavier payload far higher and faster. Even then 'Bouncing Bomb' Barnes-Wallace had plans for an aircraft to fly faster than escape velocity so it would be flying upside-down to stay in the atmosphere.
Next thing, I believe government and competition both have their place. Orbital space has for far too long been the place for commercial competition that hs not been allowed there. War developed the aircraft but commerce developed the air liner. Yes it is very dangerous and there will be fatalities. But quite apart from fickle government funding, Nasa and Esa should be exploring the edges for commerce to follow. It shouldn't be their business to launch commercial satellites, even for a fee. Buzz Aldrin had some good ideas worked into a science-fiction novel about ancient aliens. Exploration beyond the moon can only seriously launce from orbit, particularly if manned.
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♫anna♫
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Post by ♫anna♫ on May 30, 2009 5:40:23 GMT
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Post by fretslider on May 30, 2009 15:52:41 GMT
New Horizons passed Jupiter on Feb. 28 2007, using the planet’s gravity to boost its speed and shave three years off its trip to Pluto. That's the beauty of astro-navigation. Pluto, Charon and their two moons
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Post by fretslider on Jun 18, 2009 19:00:41 GMT
Interplanetary missile.... LRO is scheduled for a one-year exploration mission at a polar orbit of about 31 miles, or 50 kilometres, the closest any spacecraft has orbited the moon. It will conduct investigations to prepare for future exploration of the moon. LCROSS will search for ice on the moon by sending the spent upper-stage Centaur rocket to impact part of a polar crater in permanent shadows. LCROSS will fly into the plume of dust left by the impact and measure the properties before also colliding with the lunar surface.
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Post by Liberator on Jun 21, 2009 1:45:56 GMT
I am a total devotee of Kim Stanley Robinson's political science-fiction set about Martian colonisation. But he followed it with short stories called the Martians, one of which has the psychologist observing hopefuls in Antarctica recommending against any full-scale attempt to live there as too dangerously attracting people with the initiative to imagine an alternative life and in a position to do so - as his main trilogy documents. So in that alternative, Mars becomes only ever a quasi-military base for rotating commercial personnel with no opportunity to put roots down in human relationships making an independent home for ourselves and raising children in it to feel we have a 'stake' (just as society has in reality been encouraged to be since 1980).
Is it possible that space development beyond simple scientific exploration and possibilities of colonisation were deliberately suppressed for the same reason, that the necessities of providing for life out there would require a 'socialist' mutual reliance and valuing human relationships above commercial exploitation that might feed back to Earth to change its ruling values, especially as just that sort of challenge and change was very strong at the time?
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