Recent content by motie

The universe is a big blender. Galaxies collide. All of the heavy elements on Earth come from supernova explosions a long time ago. An old solar system like Alpha Centauri would likely hold its masses in stable orbits. But there will always be disruptive events like collisions, especially...

Do we have the tech to bomb an asteroid? The timing of the detonation would have to be accurate to a few milliseconds, assuming a fly-by and not an impact.

Yes, land on Phobos. Do not land on Mars. Mission risk, fuel needs, and cargo needs are much less. Syncing to its rotation could be challenging. Controlling robots on the Martian surface would be easy from Phobos: simple transmitters and receivers; just a few milliseconds latency. You can...

Why do they need propellant or reaction mass? The electron beam collides with the back of the spacecraft, and transfers its momentum to the spacecraft. 100% efficiency. What is wrong with this? I agree that you need a way to slow down. I don't know how to do that. There is a big problem...

Even with one pixel, you can do spectroscopic analysis of the light. Let's say water is blue and soil is gray. You can resolve those colors and figure out which color is dominant. What if soil is covered with snow in winter? The gray gets replaced by white. Most astronomical images seen by...

I believe the angular resolution of JWST is roughly 0.05 arc-second. 0.05arc-sec = 1.3889e-5deg. Then tan(0.05arc-sec) = 2.424e-7. What if an object is X miles away from JWST? The smallest feature that JWST can see is X * 2.424e-7. What if an object is one light-year away? That's 5.88e12...

Even worse, the "fudge factors" like dark matter and dark energy make up most of the equations, not just a tiny percentage.

Whenever you see a picture of a greenhouse on Mars or the Moon, just smile and ignore it. It's just eye candy for the masses. Greenhouses are difficult to manage ON EARTH, for crying out loud. I contend that the best place to grow plants on Mars or the Moon is underground. You've got a fairly...

Any inhabited body flying through a solar system at very high speed relative to the local system is going to have a lot of "stuff" flying at it with very high speeds and very high impact energies.

There was also the misfiring thruster on the Russian module back in 2021, which everybody seems to have forgotten. It jerked the whole ISS out of position.

Has Chris Hadfield explained why the noise worries him? Did the noise just start recently? If it's acoustic feedback, it should have been there from the beginning. Why has it gone away? Did they fix it? Did it just randomly stop? I don't like problems that randomly stop.

Probably at the doc getting his ulcer treated.

And it also doesn't fix the mysterious overheating thrusters.

Can the Helium plumbing be fixed in space?

Does the window glass filter out the sun's UV? Is he up high enough that cosmic rays become a problem?