Recent content by sciencecompliance

Thanks, but if that's what it entails, then I would prefer Googling to find the videos.

Why does Space.com have so many articles where they mention VIDEO footage in the headline and then there is no video to be found anywhere in the article and no obvious links to said video either? You guys are the journalists. I shouldn't have to Google something to find the video footage you...

Sonic booms do not happen from "crossing" the sound barrier. Sonic booms are a phenomenon that is continuously generated by objects moving faster than the speed of sound. You hear the "boom" when the shockwave passes your position.

Geology was never mentioned? That's literally what we're talking about. Wikipedia states that the Polynesians arrived in Hawaii between 940 and 1200 A.D. This means that that mountain has erupted since they've been there, so the idea that it would be some immutable thing according to their...

I don't care about their or anyone else's religion (including people of European descent). What I care about is space domain awareness. They can still be superstitious with a few buildings on top of that mountain.

500 years is nothing in geological timescales, certainly less time than the Hawaiian people have been on the island, and religion is a bad justification for anything, regardless of which culture it comes from. I apply the same standard to white Europeans in case you were wondering. Space...

The mountain literally spits lava, but a few buildings is sacrilege? Give me a break. Even 700 gallons of diesel fuel is nothing compared to the environmental havoc caused by a volcanic eruption.

This seems like a silly thing to do for a probe that's staying inside the solar system, to be honest. It would seem more befitting to etch the names of the engineers and technicians who built the thing, so future humans can see that.

Let's hope the hatch doesn't fly off.

I'm very cautiously optimistic at the prospect of finding life on (in?) any of the icy moons. For all we know, sunlight and/or lightning could be key components for abiogenesis, as well as other factors not present on these bodies. It's also possible that life was seeded from space in the...

Not that I'm not inclined to agree, but this is unfortunately more complicated than just strapping some solid rocket motors to the payload. You need a way to ensure that it can maintain a retrograde thrust vector for the duration of the deorbit burn, otherwise you could still have space debris...

Yeah, when they said it was made out of Inconel I shook my head. You mean the Inconel that's famous for its heat resistance? Jesus Christ, NASA. Get your **** together. I hope they pay for the damages to this guy's house, but, ultimately, this could have been a lot worse. There needs to be...

I'm going to look for another source of space news if I see too many more articles like this one. If you're going to look into how people's religious beliefs grapple with an event like an eclipse, I want to see a much broader picture than that of one Native American tribe. The Navajo aren't...

Not possible. Ice hitting the moon would not create liquid water. The lack of atmospheric pressure means it would either remain frozen as ice or vaporize.

I'm going to go on the record to say that Blue Origin's naming convention for their rockets is stupid.