Recent content by JBUMAerospace

This is a truly old school video proving that the speed of light can't be exceeded. Amazing what a slide rule can do plus great eyesight! The Ultimate Speed - An Exploration with High Energy Electrons - Bing video

I understand that space itself has particles in it albeit far far apart. It occurs to me that if we accelerate towards the speed of light that we'll actually meet some space resistance that might cause heating on the surface of our ship.

I have read numerous accounts by astronauts who say that there is a distinct "gunpowder" smell to space. I believe the Apollo astronauts reported the same in reference to their excursions on the moon. I can imagine the moon having a smell but not space itself. How can this be?

I think that's a safer solution to the heating dissipation problem. But more costly in terms of repair and refurbishment. Thank you for the update.

According to CNET "SpaceX and Elon Musk have big ambitions to send the Starship around the moon and eventually to Mars. The eye-catching stainless-steel spacecraft now under development will use a metallic heat shield, and that heat shield is already undergoing a pretty serious stress test "...

Elon likes simple so that makes sense. Thanks....anybody else? I also wonder if Starship is intended to return to earth's atmosphere and if the steel can withstand reentry heating from a re-entry speed of about 25,000 mph?

What does SpaceX say?

Thank you Cat for your cogent reply. Perhaps I did not state my conundrum clearly. I know that distance measured by the JWST and Hubble and any other telescope is based on the cosmological red shift meaning the further an image is in the infra-red part of the light spectrum the further away it...

Hi all! I joined and would like to follow this thread with a Q that has been with me since I heard we can look back towards the time of the Big Bang (one theory of the birth of everything as we know it). Question: How can we see the early birth of the Universe that occurred 13.5+ Billion years...

Correction! Not Mercury 7 but Apollo 15 astronauts.

Hello All, I'm John who graduated from the University of Michigan (Go Blue) with an Aerospace Engineering degree way back when. At the cost of dating myself I will say my orbital mechanics professor - Dr. Harm Buning - taught astrophysics to the original Mercury 7. I remember hearing Sputnik...

What contingency does SpaceX plan for if the elevator fails? e.g. how else do the astronauts get down to the surface and back up?