Reply With QuoteI have a great view of the Venus transit, in theory, but it's getting cloudy. And rainy. Still, sunset over the Adirondacks beckons.
That begs the question what does the NRO have available now that they can give away such valuable equipment?Originally Posted by Alan Dunkin
I have a great view of the Venus transit, in theory, but it's getting cloudy. And rainy. Still, sunset over the Adirondacks beckons.
Whoa. They want to crowdsource a Mars mission? Sell the TV rights for funding? Funky. Let them put it up on Kickstarter and let's see what happens ;)
It's a beautiful, beautiful dream, but I just don't see the necessary billions becoming available from the public's interest. On the other hand, it looks as if The Avengers is going to make a billion dollars, so who knows?
The one way trip thing does make sense. And for some who would like to be in the history books, I'm sure it would be worth it.
And not just one Hubble-level scope, two of them.
Well, telescopes that are way better. I imagine there's a particular selection of Keyholes that were still being constructed when better models were developed and deployed, and hence these were just sitting around gathering dust.
--- Alan
The irony is that NASA doesn't have the budget to use them.
fire, that looks amazing!
This one is so awesome!
I made a t-shirt design for the next one:
Awesome pictures. Is that yellow ring around Venus its atmosphere or an effect caused by the light of the Sun?
I'm under the understanding that NASA would need to seriously modify the satellites first. Spy satellites are designed to focus on objects that are <200 miles away, which is nothing on a cosmic scale. You just can't turn that the satellite around and have it focus on a field of deep space for hours on end.
It's the same reason why Hubble would be shitty to use to take photos of the Earth. It's not designed to focus on something that close.
http://www.aol.com/video/air-force-h...6pLid%3D167875
So the Air Force has a spy shuttle in orbit?
But, alas, so low resolution, thus squashing my desire to blow it up to 2+ feet, have it printed on metal, and hang it in my son's room so that he can grow up knowing the grandeur of the universe. :(This one is so awesome!
Maybe the X-37B is why multiple spy satellites are being given away. Also: AOL still exists?
Yay for NASA getting free telescopes, but does it piss anyone else off that ONE of those telescopes probably cost more than all of the taxes you and every member of your family for the next generation will pay over your entire lifetime, and they were purchased and sat unused in a warehouse until they were so out of date they could be declassified? Really pisses me off when the government randomly wastes hundreds of millions of dollars over and over again.
It'll never happen. At least, not their plan. Even as a layman space nut, I can see numerous technical aspects of the mission that are much more difficult than they present. (Never mind the impossibility of funding what it will actually end up costing.)
And the one-way plan is a stupid suicide mission, too. So they plan to send four people, and then two more people every two years? Even if they somehow managed to keep funding coming in after the excitement of the first landing, you'd be lucky to get two or four more people out there. And then everyone on earth gets to watch this small colony that can't sustain itself long-term and that isn't large enough to create a future generation slowly die.
Unless they found something on Mars that could make a multinational corporation very rich and encourage billions to establish two-way transport, they'd probably be doomed to die in a decade or less, once some critical system failed, they had a bad greenhouse harvest, or one of the colonists realizes the futility of their situation and murders everyone.
I hope this harebrained scheme doesn't distract from more viable plans. But my guess is the most impressive thing they'll accomplish is their Youtube video of their fantasy mission.
There's a 960x722 version here. I imagine NASA must have higher-res versions; gotta look.
Everyone MUST check out the NASA SDO Youtube video of the transit. Amazing.
Aside from what DennyA has said, who the hell would even want to spend the rest of their natural life in a tiny metal box? What about the quality of life? The only volunteer I could imagine is someone sentenced to death and this is the only other option. I am sure after a few years they would consider death to have been a better choice.
A South Korean MMORPG player maybe.
That 1,800,000 ms lag can be a bitch when online gaming, though.
You wouldn't like the ping times.
edit: curse you DennyA!
The Straight Dope takes on this question today:
Link to the answer: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/...sts-from-earthDear Cecil:
TV programs about space exploration and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) often say our broadcast signals are traveling into space and will someday be seen by intelligent beings many light years from here. On the other hand, on the program Life After People they said these signals disperse after a few light years and are too scattered and weak for anyone to see or hear them. What’s your take on this?
The Mars rover Curiosity is landing on Mars on Sunday, August 5, 2012! There are viewing parties all over the nation, and also streamed online.
Looks like the VAB at JPL (vehicle assembly building). I hated that damn place - no flipping elevator to the second floor. Seeing the projects get assembled was kind of cool, but carrying shit up the stairs - I mean, we can put a man on the moon, but an elevator in a building...?
Maybe not a cromulent question for this thread, but one that I just thought of looking at fire's invitation above. I live in a pretty heavily light polluted city. Approximately how far away do you have to get from a major city to be able to view an awesome meteor shower, or just be able to see tons of stars with the naked eye?
Drive until you can distinguish the Milky Way, then you're set for a shower.
http://gizmodo.com/5940957/the-most-...fying-in-video
Video and pictures of a huge solar flare, really high detail compared to the more gif-like nature of previous photorecordings of it.
Volcano Shoots Geyser Of Water Up Into Space
First, a photo of a geyser (of water) exploding on one of Saturn's moons (Enceladus).
Then, we find out that one Saturn's rings may be made of water and ice that exploded from geysers and just got stuck there (in orbit).
Take a look at this image of the same moon, Enceladus — it's the dark spot inside the bright flare — getting real close to the E ring. According to Sascha Kempf of the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, this moon is "feeding" water crystals into Saturn's ring.
...
Nobody imagined that the rings would be fed by geysers. But that seems to be what's happening to the E ring. According to Kempf, the ring will carry those ice nuggets around Saturn for an orbit or two, until they meet the moon again and are recaptured. But some crystals just keep circling and circling for 50, maybe 400 years.
The space shuttle Endeavour is going to do a bit of a tour before settling in to it's final resting spot. Check out the schedule here at http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2012...ry_Flight.html
--- Alan
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