Recent content by Meteoric Marmot

The reality is that companies will continue to allow this to happen as long as it's cheaper than doing something to prevent it. With the launch cadence that SpaceX is doing, it is inevitable that they are going to drop a piece of junk somewhere bad and kill someone. They need to be forced to...

A secret Chinese rover... maybe carrying an anti-spacecraft weapon to establish Chinese dominance in the area? (Just kidding, but...)

The commentator on the official NASA broadcast referred to the features as "space weather" during the lead-in to totality in Mazatlán so the misinformation came from a "reliable" source.

I notice that the word "radiation" is not used anywhere in the article. A safe space habitat requires more than just an air-filled space. Without shielding, it is deadly to spend too much time there.

I'm sure the ground security is tight. What I was wondering about is if they have any planned security during the descent phase where snagging the parachute using an aircraft is a proven technique for airborne recovery of returning capsules.

This is obviously a high-value product. I wonder what security measures they plan to incorporate to prevent the capsule being snatched during the parachute descent phase?

I have to say that the credibility of Space.com just took a major hit for me. This article is, to put it bluntly, trash. Tereza Pultarova needs to be virtually smacked for putting out this mess.

The "photo" of the black hole produced earlier (last year?) suggests that the answer to that is "No" as stars should have been visible through the hole. The data was heavily massaged to produce the image, so it is definitely not definitive proof of the negative.

But what if an ice rock splats down in the vicinity and covers the area with a mix of liquid water and hot ejecta? That might produce a favorable environment for them to wake up for a while. How long do they have to be functional to constitute a colonization? Our "colonization" of Earth will end...

For anyone else who watches the video, be forewarned that the audio cuts out just when things get hot. I checked for a problem with my system when this happened, but quickly realized that it was the source that cut out.

Rotational maneuvering is often accomplished using reaction wheels that are powered by the bird's solar panels and so don't run out of power until the panels die. While these can be used to keep antennas aligned properly, they cannot be used to adjust the orbit. Satellites can still be...

"Softly" is a bit of a stretch since it landed hard enough to bust a leg and topple onto its side.

It's not relevant that it is still operational. It cannot maneuver and therefore is a danger to everything else in a similar orbit. It should have been de-orbited before it ran out of fuel regardless of operational status. SpaceX regularly deorbits birds because they're running out of fuel, even...

Since neither satellite has maneuvering capability, the depiction of the Russian satellite as the "bad guy" is highly prejudicial. I fault both nations for failing to de-orbit these birds before they lost maneuverability.

Too bad that they didn't give it a proboscis to prevent this from happening. Even something the size of a standard automotive airbag inflated with nitrogen would have probably have been enough to shift the COG to make it tip bask onto its side.