useless, but cool
John Larkin
alie...@gmail.com
<jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
> http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/slideshow/ALeqM5gI3x65BuamKDkNfyx...
"Liftoff, in fact, occurred 48 years and one day after the first
launch of a Saturn rocket"
Fucking Liberals.
Mark L. Fergerson
Dirk Bruere at NeoPax
> http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/slideshow/ALeqM5gI3x65BuamKDkNfyxY_tMNME96tQD9BK7KOO6?index=0
It should be obvious that NASA is going nowhere.
Martians will speak Chinese.
--
Dirk
http://www.transcendence.me.uk/ - Transcendence UK
http://www.theconsensus.org/ - A UK political party
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/onetribe - Occult Talk Show
ChrisQ
Scientific achievement like that transcends everyday cynicism, just be
showing that it can be done.
I hope they get the funding to continue their work. A drop in the ocean
compared to all the foreign adventures...
Regards,
Chris
Rich Grise
>
> http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/slideshow/ALeqM5gI3x65BuamKDkNfyxY_tMNME96tQD9BK7KOO6?index=0
>
were taking off or landing real fast. :-)
Cheers!
Rich
Rich Webb
<dirk....@gmail.com> wrote:
>John Larkin wrote:
>> http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/slideshow/ALeqM5gI3x65BuamKDkNfyxY_tMNME96tQD9BK7KOO6?index=0
>
>It should be obvious that NASA is going nowhere.
>Martians will speak Chinese.
Back during the Age of Exploration (to simplify a LOT), the ships set
out to find markets for stuff and more stuff to take to market, along
with ways to control land that had stuff or could grow stuff.
There's no stuff out there. Yet.
It's not that hard to get "out there" (it's only, what, a couple hundred
km or so to the border?) but there's no stuff (yet) that yields a useful
return on the investment.
The unmanned probes aren't as sexy but they do give us a look, albeit
limited, at what's up there. So far, there doesn't seem to be any stuff
that there's a market for, down here at the bottom of the gravity well.
If/when some stuff is found then boots on the ground become a pretty
strong argument for who makes money on the stuff. Until then... meh.
--
Rich Webb Norfolk, VA
alie...@gmail.com
> n...@bid.nes wrote:
> > On Oct 28, 10:56 am, John Larkin
> > <jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
> >>http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/slideshow/ALeqM5gI3x65BuamKDkNfyx...
>
> > "Liftoff, in fact, occurred 48 years and one day after the first
> > launch of a Saturn rocket"
>
> > Fucking Liberals.
>
> Scientific achievement like that transcends everyday cynicism, just be
> showing that it can be done.
It WAS done 48 years and a day before.
> I hope they get the funding to continue their work. A drop in the ocean
> compared to all the foreign adventures...
Not a chance. NASA's all about the robots any more. Humans are
doomed to stay on Earth because Socialis^H^H^HLiberals might lose
control of those who would leave.
Mark L. Fergerson
Dirk Bruere at NeoPax
Stuff "out there" worth visiting will be placed out there by Humans.
The argument is over who gets to do it.
My bets are on the Chinese.
By 2020 the Chinese economy will be larger than that of the US by PPP
measure. The spirit of Apollo died in Vietnam.
John Larkin
<dirk....@gmail.com> wrote:
Apollo accomplished nothing, and the Space Station carried on that
tradition decades after Vietnam. People are finally waking up to the
fact that putting people into space is expensive, dangerous, and
useless.
There's a lot of vacuum out there. The Chinese are welcome to all they
want.
John
Jan Panteltje
<jjla...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote in
<fpehe5thmhutmkihd...@4ax.com>:
>Apollo accomplished nothing, and the Space Station carried on that
>tradition decades after Vietnam. People are finally waking up to the
>fact that putting people into space is expensive, dangerous, and
>useless.
Look at the bigger picture, from a humanity point of view.
Apollo was indeed a big step for mankind, first time
anyone left the planet.
In the long run one day the sun will go out, long before that
it will burn earth and make it impossible to live there.
You children's children, and further down the line
will be extremely grateful if they have the technology to leave
the solar system, and possibly the galaxy, before that.
>There's a lot of vacuum out there. The Chinese are welcome to all they
>want.
It does not really matter who builds the bases, history shows
that empires come, and empires go.
We have the sum of all there achievements.
>John
>
>
John Larkin
<pNaonSt...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>On a sunny day (Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:47:21 -0700) it happened John Larkin
><jjla...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote in
><fpehe5thmhutmkihd...@4ax.com>:
>
>>Apollo accomplished nothing, and the Space Station carried on that
>>tradition decades after Vietnam. People are finally waking up to the
>>fact that putting people into space is expensive, dangerous, and
>>useless.
>
>
>Look at the bigger picture, from a humanity point of view.
>Apollo was indeed a big step for mankind, first time
>anyone left the planet.
>In the long run one day the sun will go out, long before that
>it will burn earth and make it impossible to live there.
>You children's children, and further down the line
>will be extremely grateful if they have the technology to leave
>the solar system, and possibly the galaxy, before that.
>
Chemical rockets firing people into LEO, or the moon, or even Mars are
not useful steps towards another star; it doesn't scale. Let's let
technology mature a few thousand years and maybe better ideas will pop
up. There's no rush.
And it wouldn't be hard to move Earth into larger orbits as the sun
expands, so there's no need to transport the population to another
sun.
I wonder if people will still exist in another billion years, when the
sun changes.
John
Rich Grise
> On Wed, 28 Oct 2009 20:47:30 +0000, Dirk Bruere at NeoPax
>>> On Wed, 28 Oct 2009 18:37:21 +0000, Dirk Bruere at NeoPax
Up until somebody goes out and snags a 150 gigagram iceberg from the
rings of Saturn and drops it on Mars, making an atmosphere.
Cheers!
Rich
Rich the Philosophizer
>
> I wonder if people will still exist in another billion years, when the sun
> changes.
>
different than those predicted by sages throughout the millennia.
Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist and other seers have predicted
similar events marking 'the end of time.' And the Maya are only one of
many indigenous cultures that have spoken of their deeply held vision for
the events near and immediately after the end of time.
"All of these prophecies point to a relatively sudden awakening into much
greater awareness for some or all of Humanity. What has been well hidden
within the folds of your present four-dimensional world will be clearly
revealed by the additional Light available in the unfolding of the new,
five-dimensional world.
--- http://godchannel.com/grandfatherinterview2.html
So, I guess it's up to you. ;-)
Cheers!
Rich
Dirk Bruere at NeoPax
Come 2013 I'm really going to rub their noses in this shit.
Martin Brown
NASA's Apollo programme achieved exactly what it set out to do. Put a
man on the moon and return safely back to Earth along with a few rock
samples before the decade was out. It was a stunning accomplishment!
And it was worth going. Even if the rocks were not all that exciting
chemically they are a lot older than anything found on the Earth.
Stuffing billionaire tourists into the ISS and doing high school science
fair experiments in near zero g doesn't hack it at all.
And it is useful for the US to have a high lift capability rocket again.
We will want ever larger and heavier science experiments in space.
> fact that putting people into space is expensive, dangerous, and
> useless.
It is now that we have robotics capable of doing almost anything that a
human in a clumsy pressure suit can do in space. In the 1960's it was
entirely different - only humans could do the job. Robots are less
inclined to drop tools - and no one mourns a robot. Although the
designers tend to be more than a bit upset when they vanish.
>
> There's a lot of vacuum out there. The Chinese are welcome to all they
> want.
I still expect to see you foaming at the mouth when the Chinese plant a
flag on the moon. Be fun if they went back to one of the Apollo sites.
Regards,
Martin Brown
Martin Brown
> On a sunny day (Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:47:21 -0700) it happened John Larkin
> <jjla...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote in
> <fpehe5thmhutmkihd...@4ax.com>:
>
>> Apollo accomplished nothing, and the Space Station carried on that
>> tradition decades after Vietnam. People are finally waking up to the
>> fact that putting people into space is expensive, dangerous, and
>> useless.
>
> Look at the bigger picture, from a humanity point of view.
> Apollo was indeed a big step for mankind, first time
> anyone left the planet.
Agreed. It was stunningly well done and an important milestone.
> In the long run one day the sun will go out, long before that
> it will burn earth and make it impossible to live there.
Shock horror!! The sun will run out in 4 or 5 billion years. I must
remember to cancel the newspapers.
> You children's children, and further down the line
> will be extremely grateful if they have the technology to leave
> the solar system, and possibly the galaxy, before that.
It is so far down the line that humans will be long gone and replaced by
whatever we evolve into. Dinosaurs lasted about 200 million years before
being out evolved to put things into perspective.
You have been watching too much Bladerunner - we are never going to get
out of the solar system with chemical rockets. The specific impulse just
isn't there. Voyager the fastest man made objects ever has not yet
reached the heliopause after more than thirty years and only another
40000 before it reaches the first star.
http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/interstellar.html
The fantasy of the rich all moving to another planet and leaving the
plebs on the rancid remains of the Earth is a right wing fantasy.
>> There's a lot of vacuum out there. The Chinese are welcome to all they
>> want.
>
> It does not really matter who builds the bases, history shows
> that empires come, and empires go.
> We have the sum of all there achievements.
Oh I expect a lot of hubris and hand wringing from the Americans after
it happens. Much like they did after the launch of Sputnik.
Regards,
Martin Brown
Martin Brown
Previously as an astronomer I have wasted time debunking lunatic fringe
End of the World bullshit. Last serious one was Heavens Gate when comet
Hale-Bopp went past with a long period ephemeris.
But in this case I think it might be helpful to cull some of the
credulous B-Ark material so here is one to get you all going ;-)
I wonder if the site will still be there on 1/1/2013 ?
Regards,
Martin Brown
Jan Panteltje
<|||newspam|||@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote in <eZbGm.541$zr....@newsfe04.iad>:
>Jan Panteltje wrote:
>> On a sunny day (Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:47:21 -0700) it happened John Larkin
>> <jjla...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote in
>> <fpehe5thmhutmkihd...@4ax.com>:
>>
>>> Apollo accomplished nothing, and the Space Station carried on that
>>> tradition decades after Vietnam. People are finally waking up to the
>>> fact that putting people into space is expensive, dangerous, and
>>> useless.
>>
>> Look at the bigger picture, from a humanity point of view.
>> Apollo was indeed a big step for mankind, first time
>> anyone left the planet.
>
>Agreed. It was stunningly well done and an important milestone.
>
>> In the long run one day the sun will go out, long before that
>> it will burn earth and make it impossible to live there.
>
>Shock horror!! The sun will run out in 4 or 5 billion years. I must
>remember to cancel the newspapers.
Well, you should cancel those anyways and read online.
Paper kills trees, and distributing stuff spreads viruses.
>> You children's children, and further down the line
>> will be extremely grateful if they have the technology to leave
>> the solar system, and possibly the galaxy, before that.
>
>It is so far down the line that humans will be long gone and replaced by
>whatever we evolve into. Dinosaurs lasted about 200 million years before
>being out evolved to put things into perspective.
That sounds a bit like denialism? Sure if we sit and do nothing we will go the dino's way.
I am not saying humanity will not, but we have the ability to use technology to spread
this life form, whatever it may look like in the long run, across the universe.
That may even be in a form we do not yet know, perhaps by shooting containers
with DNA and some other stuff to the stars, the 'plans' so to speak, and let nature
evolve, in millions of years, an other species like us, so seeding the universe.
Maybe that is how we came about anyways?
>You have been watching too much Bladerunner - we are never going to get
>out of the solar system with chemical rockets.
I have never watched 'Bladerunner' that I know about.
>The specific impulse just
>isn't there. Voyager the fastest man made objects ever has not yet
>reached the heliopause after more than thirty years and only another
>40000 before it reaches the first star.
Look I know all that stuff, there are other ways, now we will get Vasimir,
there is nuclear, even that Voyager is still working after all that time on a RTG.
It is just the LEFTIST WEENINES anti nuclear politics that have stopped us from going
to other planets,
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
>http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/interstellar.html
I love that thing, very very nice.
>The fantasy of the rich all moving to another planet and leaving the
>plebs on the rancid remains of the Earth is a right wing fantasy.
Well, I was thinking everybody, rich or poor.
Maybe we will even be able to slingshot the whole planet to elsewhere, technology advances.
Think about it, if 200 years ago, and what is that compared to how long humans have been around,
if your were to mention that *everybody* on earth would have a little box the size of a slice of bread,
and be able to talk and listen to anybody else, even far away, over the seas, you would have been locked
up, possibly burned as a witch by the church, declared insane.
And you should not mention the earth was round, it orbits the sun, and that people will be able to fly,
color paintings (TV) in each house would show a reality and phantasy better then any painter that ever existed,
magic (electric) lights would appear with the touch of a finger, or commanded by voice,
people would ride in carriages without horses at incredible speed, weapons would destroy whole cities at once...
the list is endless.
200 YEARS.
And here you claim limits for the future?
You should really kick the old neural net into gear, its rusted...
>>> There's a lot of vacuum out there. The Chinese are welcome to all they
>>> want.
>>
>> It does not really matter who builds the bases, history shows
>> that empires come, and empires go.
>> We have the sum of all there achievements.
>
>Oh I expect a lot of hubris and hand wringing from the Americans after
>it happens. Much like they did after the launch of Sputnik.
Sure, they may want to catch up, but the money printing presses could break down, and are made in China
how to order new ones ?
>Regards,
>Martin Brown
>
Paul Keinanen
<|||newspam|||@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> In the long run one day the sun will go out, long before that
>> it will burn earth and make it impossible to live there.
>
>Shock horror!! The sun will run out in 4 or 5 billion years. I must
>remember to cancel the newspapers.
The gas density at the "surface" of a red giant is much less than the
athmosperic pressure a few hundres kilometers out of the Earths
atmosphere. So in practice Earth would rotate around the sun for quite
a while "inside" the red giant "surface".
Remember that the average solar density is in the same order of
magnitude as water and if the Sun would grow from current 750.000 km
radius to 150 million kilometer radius to engulf the earth, so the
average density would be 1/8,000,000 of the density of water or
1/10,000 of the density of air at ground level.
The problem is of course that the power output from our star will
increase significantly before this.
In order to change the orbital parameters of our planet to navigate
into a more comfortable orbits and hence radiation levels, some solar
sails on the ground could be used. After all, there is 5E9 years to do
the trick.
Using a huge number of 1x1 m movable reflectors should be enough .eg.
with the reflectors acting as spring morning reflectors and spring
evening and autumn morning acting as absorbers would slowly harness
the radiation pressure to change the orbital orbit and slowly increase
the semi-major axle of the Earth to something similar than the orbit
of Mars.
Paul
Rich Webb
wrote:
Rather a lot of bother. Simpler to just fire up the Sheewash drive.
WangoTango
jjla...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com says...
>
> http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/slideshow/ALeqM5gI3x65BuamKDkNfyxY_tMNME96tQD9BK7KOO6?index=0
I guess the big question is why aren't you upset that the big mean
government wants to strap people inside these dangerous things and shoot
them into space. There outta' be a law!
John Larkin
wrote:
>On Thu, 29 Oct 2009 08:01:17 +0000, Martin Brown
There's lots of angular momentum in the asteroid belt. It takes
careful aiming but nearly no energy to nudge an asteroid into a
hyperbolic fly-by of Earth and steal most of its momentum. The math
has been done and it would work. Again, we'd have a long time to do it
and there are lots of asteroids.
John
Jim Thompson
Sounds like another bird-brain idea "thunk" up by the climate change
"scientists" ;-)
...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, CTO | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: Contacts Only | |
| Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |
With Half My Brain Tied Behind My Back
Still More Clever Than Mr.Prissy Pants
ChrisQ
> On Thu, 29 Oct 2009 08:20:14 -0700, John Larkin
> <jjla...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Paul
>> There's lots of angular momentum in the asteroid belt. It takes
>> careful aiming but nearly no energy to nudge an asteroid into a
>> hyperbolic fly-by of Earth and steal most of its momentum. The math
>> has been done and it would work. Again, we'd have a long time to do it
>> and there are lots of asteroids.
>>
>> John
>
> Sounds like another bird-brain idea "thunk" up by the climate change
> "scientists" ;-)
>
> ...Jim Thompson
They'd be dead set against it, as moving the earth somewhere else would
cause climate chaos, unless you could do it fast, to identical conditions.
I guess there are no easy answers to some problems :-)...
Regards,
Chris
alie...@gmail.com
> On Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:50:43 +0200, Paul Keinanen <keina...@sci.fi>
Too dependent on "special skills". Anybody can run a spindizzy.
Mark L. Fergerson
Phil Hobbs
>
> But in this case I think it might be helpful to cull some of the
> credulous B-Ark material so here is one to get you all going ;-)
>
> http://2012apocalypse.net/
>
> I wonder if the site will still be there on 1/1/2013 ?
>
> Regards,
> Martin Brown
It'll be on the Wayback Machine. ;)
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal
ElectroOptical Innovations
55 Orchard Rd
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510
845-480-2058
hobbs at electrooptical dot net
http://electrooptical.net
Phil Hobbs
Given that many red giants fluctuate, and none of them has a very long
life--they're the stellar equivalent of the 90-year-old marrying a
fashion model--it hardly seems worthwhile. What's a few million years
anyway? ;)
Martin Brown
> On a sunny day (Thu, 29 Oct 2009 08:01:17 +0000) it happened Martin Brown
> <|||newspam|||@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote in <eZbGm.541$zr....@newsfe04.iad>:
>
>> Jan Panteltje wrote:
>>> In the long run one day the sun will go out, long before that
>>> it will burn earth and make it impossible to live there.
>> Shock horror!! The sun will run out in 4 or 5 billion years. I must
>> remember to cancel the newspapers.
>
> Well, you should cancel those anyways and read online.
> Paper kills trees, and distributing stuff spreads viruses.
I only buy newspapers at weekends or on holiday. It is very hard to
light a fire using online media or digital paper.
>>> You children's children, and further down the line
>>> will be extremely grateful if they have the technology to leave
>>> the solar system, and possibly the galaxy, before that.
>> It is so far down the line that humans will be long gone and replaced by
>> whatever we evolve into. Dinosaurs lasted about 200 million years before
>> being out evolved to put things into perspective.
>
> That sounds a bit like denialism? Sure if we sit and do nothing we will go the dino's way.
> I am not saying humanity will not, but we have the ability to use technology to spread
> this life form, whatever it may look like in the long run, across the universe.
It is one of those jobs that is sufficiently difficult that the fastest
way to get to the desired result is to wait until there is appropriate
technology. The same rules of the game apply to anything that requires
more than about 3 or 4 years continuous computation. It is faster to go
to the beach for 2 years and then start from scratch using hardware that
is twice as fast. Moores law is still holding up so far - though you may
have to work at load spreading to get the full benefit.
> That may even be in a form we do not yet know, perhaps by shooting containers
> with DNA and some other stuff to the stars, the 'plans' so to speak, and let nature
> evolve, in millions of years, an other species like us, so seeding the universe.
> Maybe that is how we came about anyways?
Perhaps. But with present technology we are not in the game.
>> You have been watching too much Bladerunner - we are never going to get
>> out of the solar system with chemical rockets.
>
> I have never watched 'Bladerunner' that I know about.
It is a good 1980's scifi thriller film. DVD quality is poor. Ridley
Scott produced it. Opening sequence based on Teesside steel furnaces.
Music by Vangelis. Original had an inappropriate sentimental ending
because of Hollywood suits. Directors cut(s) are a bit more hardline.
Based on "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep".
>> The specific impulse just
>> isn't there. Voyager the fastest man made objects ever has not yet
>> reached the heliopause after more than thirty years and only another
>> 40000 before it reaches the first star.
>
> Look I know all that stuff, there are other ways, now we will get Vasimir,
> there is nuclear, even that Voyager is still working after all that time on a RTG.
It is doing very well indeed considering its design lifetime. Radio
telescopes have become more sensitive and bigger too so we can still get
a decent signal. I hope that is true when it reaches the heliopause.
> It is just the LEFTIST WEENINES anti nuclear politics that have stopped us from going
> to other planets,
> HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Sending people even at solar minimum to Mars would be like signing their
death warrant. At best they would have to be tended by robotic nurses on
arrival and at worst they would not survive the journey.
>> The fantasy of the rich all moving to another planet and leaving the
>> plebs on the rancid remains of the Earth is a right wing fantasy.
>
> Well, I was thinking everybody, rich or poor.
> Maybe we will even be able to slingshot the whole planet to elsewhere, technology advances.
It takes a fair bit of energy to move the Earths orbit.
>
> Think about it, if 200 years ago, and what is that compared to how long humans have been around,
> if your were to mention that *everybody* on earth would have a little box the size of a slice of bread,
> and be able to talk and listen to anybody else, even far away, over the seas, you would have been locked
> up, possibly burned as a witch by the church, declared insane.
> And you should not mention the earth was round, it orbits the sun, and that people will be able to fly,
> color paintings (TV) in each house would show a reality and phantasy better then any painter that ever existed,
> magic (electric) lights would appear with the touch of a finger, or commanded by voice,
> people would ride in carriages without horses at incredible speed, weapons would destroy whole cities at once...
> the list is endless.
OTOH we are running out of new physics. That is a dangerous thing to say
though - shortly after the last time someone announced that physics
would be solved within the decade someone observed the radioactivity and
the photoelectric effect. I cannot rule that out but any technology that
facilitated the energies needed for interstellar travel would be very
dangerous. A speck of dust at relativistic speed does a lot of damage.
>
> 200 YEARS.
> And here you claim limits for the future?
> You should really kick the old neural net into gear, its rusted...
Not at all. I made the comment about chemical rocket technology which is
completely irrelevant to travelling to the stars.
>>>> There's a lot of vacuum out there. The Chinese are welcome to all they
>>>> want.
>>> It does not really matter who builds the bases, history shows
>>> that empires come, and empires go.
>>> We have the sum of all there achievements.
>> Oh I expect a lot of hubris and hand wringing from the Americans after
>> it happens. Much like they did after the launch of Sputnik.
>
> Sure, they may want to catch up, but the money printing presses could break down, and are made in China
> how to order new ones ?
The dollar is far too easy to forge.
Regards,
Martin Brown
Martin Brown
> Rich Webb wrote:
>> On Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:50:43 +0200, Paul Keinanen <kein...@sci.fi>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> On Thu, 29 Oct 2009 08:01:17 +0000, Martin Brown
>>> <|||newspam|||@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>>>
>>>>> In the long run one day the sun will go out, long before that
>>>>> it will burn earth and make it impossible to live there.
>>>> Shock horror!! The sun will run out in 4 or 5 billion years. I must
>>>> remember to cancel the newspapers.
>>> The gas density at the "surface" of a red giant is much less than the
>>> athmosperic pressure a few hundres kilometers out of the Earths
>>> atmosphere. So in practice Earth would rotate around the sun for quite
>>> a while "inside" the red giant "surface".
>>> Remember that the average solar density is in the same order of
>>> magnitude as water and if the Sun would grow from current 750.000 km
>>> radius to 150 million kilometer radius to engulf the earth, so the
>>> average density would be 1/8,000,000 of the density of water or
>>> 1/10,000 of the density of air at ground level.
The drag at orbital velocity would still be a problem and once the star
surface came within the Roche limit of the Earth we would accrete matter
from the solar atmosphere. Red giants shed a fair amount of gas in their
old age. M57 is a canonical example.
>>>
>>> The problem is of course that the power output from our star will
>>> increase significantly before this.
>>>
>>> In order to change the orbital parameters of our planet to navigate
>>> into a more comfortable orbits and hence radiation levels, some solar
>>> sails on the ground could be used. After all, there is 5E9 years to do
>>> the trick.
>>>
>>> Using a huge number of 1x1 m movable reflectors should be enough .eg.
>>> with the reflectors acting as spring morning reflectors and spring
>>> evening and autumn morning acting as absorbers would slowly harness
>>> the radiation pressure to change the orbital orbit and slowly increase
>>> the semi-major axle of the Earth to something similar than the orbit
>>> of Mars.
>>
>> Rather a lot of bother. Simpler to just fire up the Sheewash drive.
>>
>
> Given that many red giants fluctuate, and none of them has a very long
> life--they're the stellar equivalent of the 90-year-old marrying a
> fashion model--it hardly seems worthwhile. What's a few million years
> anyway? ;)
They don't stay red giant for all that long but the core gets to live on
as a white dwarf, neutron star or black hole according to the mass it
has when the fuel runs out and it implodes under gravity.
I am reminded of a risque late 1970's lecture title by an expert on
cataclysmic variable stars:
Can a degenerate white dwarf find lasting happiness in the arms of a red
giant? The answer was no. It all ends in tears.
Regards,
Martin Brown
Rich Webb
Good point but can a city-sized drive be scaled up to push a planet
around?
Have to root around in my dusty stacks -- haven't read "Cities" for
<cough> a while.
Bill Sloman
wrote:
> Jan Panteltje wrote:
> > On a sunny day (Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:47:21 -0700) it happened John Larkin
> > <fpehe5thmhutmkihd7rj39v78ie0arf...@4ax.com>:
>
> >> Apollo accomplished nothing, and the Space Station carried on that
> >> tradition decades after Vietnam. People are finally waking up to the
> >> fact that putting people into space is expensive, dangerous, and
> >> useless.
>
> > Look at the bigger picture, from a humanity point of view.
> > Apollo was indeed a big step for mankind, first time
> > anyone left the planet.
>
> Agreed. It was stunningly well done and an important milestone.
>
> > In the long run one day the sun will go out, long before that
> > it will burn earth and make it impossible to live there.
>
> Shock horror!! The sun will run out in 4 or 5 billion years. I must
> remember to cancel the newspapers.
>
> > You children's children, and further down the line
> > will be extremely grateful if they have the technology to leave
> > the solar system, and possibly the galaxy, before that.
>
> It is so far down the line that humans will be long gone and replaced by
> whatever we evolve into. Dinosaurs lasted about 200 million years before
> being out evolved to put things into perspective.
Dinosuars weren't out-evolved - they just didn't put enough money into
their asteroid-watch program, and were collateral damage when a decent-
sized asteroid got around to hitting the earth. That particular global
extinction does seem to be the only one that has been caused by an
asteroid impact, while global warming seems to have been a factor in
several of the others.
<snip>
--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen
WangoTango
|||newspam|||@nezumi.demon.co.uk says...
>
> I only buy newspapers at weekends or on holiday. It is very hard to
> light a fire using online media or digital paper.
Then what is the Amazon 'Kindle" good for?
Sounds like it is perfect for the job!
Jeroen Belleman
Just driving a nail through the lithium battery should do
the trick.
Jeroen Belleman
JosephKK
They did it in the book "Cities in Flight". The City Fathers concept
in that book is interesting as well. Though Mayor Amalfi turned out
to have gotten pretty old.
JosephKK
I do suspect that the asteroid(s) would become notable (navigation)
hazard(s) as a byproduct.
Martin Brown
Not unless they got the deflection trajectory wrong. There is an Earth
watch program to find and catalogue the orbital elements of all near
Earth asteroids to check for future potential collisions. An asteroid of
just a few km across would really spoil your day of it hit the Earth.
http://www.space.com/news/japan_spacewatch_000426.html
There are a handful of asteroids known to be in complex bound orbits
around the sun and the Earth. One such is #3755 eg.
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap970618.html
The objective would be to drop them in so that they slow the Earth down
in its orbit and the asteroid exits the solar system on para/hyperbolic
orbit taking some of our momentum with it. You wouldn't want to leave
them in a bound elliptical orbit - that would be asking for trouble.
We would have to be pretty desperate to try this sort of measure.
Imagine what the press would make of it given their response to QQ47
doomsday asteroid panic.
http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/ccc/cc090803.html
Regards,
Martin Brown
John Larkin
Mathematics is often more useful than suspicions. It would be easy to
design a hyperbolic path that would steal most of the angular momentum
of an asteroid. What happens to an object 90e6 miles from the sun that
has nearly no angular momentum?
NASA has long used ultra-precise hyperbolic flyby trajectories to
boost spacecraft into deep-space paths, farther out than we could
easily accomplish with direct rocket thrust. Orbital momentum transfer
is already a useful tool.
John
John Larkin
<|||newspam|||@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>JosephKK wrote:
>> On Thu, 29 Oct 2009 08:20:14 -0700, John Larkin
>> <jjla...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
>>
>>> There's lots of angular momentum in the asteroid belt. It takes
>>> careful aiming but nearly no energy to nudge an asteroid into a
>>> hyperbolic fly-by of Earth and steal most of its momentum. The math
>>> has been done and it would work. Again, we'd have a long time to do it
>>> and there are lots of asteroids.
>>>
>>> John
>>
>> I do suspect that the asteroid(s) would become notable (navigation)
>> hazard(s) as a byproduct.
>
>Not unless they got the deflection trajectory wrong. There is an Earth
>watch program to find and catalogue the orbital elements of all near
>Earth asteroids to check for future potential collisions. An asteroid of
>just a few km across would really spoil your day of it hit the Earth.
>
>http://www.space.com/news/japan_spacewatch_000426.html
>
>There are a handful of asteroids known to be in complex bound orbits
>around the sun and the Earth. One such is #3755 eg.
>
>http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap970618.html
Wow, that's cool.
>
>The objective would be to drop them in so that they slow the Earth down
>in its orbit and the asteroid exits the solar system on para/hyperbolic
>orbit taking some of our momentum with it.
Or drop them into the sun.
John
Jim Thompson
<|||newspam|||@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:
[snip]
>
>There are a handful of asteroids known to be in complex bound orbits
>around the sun and the Earth. One such is #3755 eg.
>
>http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap970618.html
>
[snip]
"Suggestions are being taken for a good name for this asteroid. "
How about "Obamaturd" ?:-)
...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, CTO | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: Contacts Only | |
| Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |
Obama says, "I AM NOT a cry baby, Fox REALLY IS out to get me!"
Martin Brown
> On Thu, 05 Nov 2009 08:29:05 +0000, Martin Brown
> <|||newspam|||@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> JosephKK wrote:
>>> On Thu, 29 Oct 2009 08:20:14 -0700, John Larkin
>>> <jjla...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> There's lots of angular momentum in the asteroid belt. It takes
>>>> careful aiming but nearly no energy to nudge an asteroid into a
>>>> hyperbolic fly-by of Earth and steal most of its momentum. The math
>>>> has been done and it would work. Again, we'd have a long time to do it
>>>> and there are lots of asteroids.
>>>>
>>>> John
>>> I do suspect that the asteroid(s) would become notable (navigation)
>>> hazard(s) as a byproduct.
>> Not unless they got the deflection trajectory wrong. There is an Earth
>> watch program to find and catalogue the orbital elements of all near
>> Earth asteroids to check for future potential collisions. An asteroid of
>> just a few km across would really spoil your day of it hit the Earth.
>>
>> http://www.space.com/news/japan_spacewatch_000426.html
>>
>> There are a handful of asteroids known to be in complex bound orbits
>> around the sun and the Earth. One such is #3755 eg.
>>
>> http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap970618.html
>
> Wow, that's cool.
There is a *much* cooler one with an orbit that is like a long sausage
bent around the Earth's orbit. And this newer one I found while looking
for it.
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/asteroid-03a.html
>
>> The objective would be to drop them in so that they slow the Earth down
>> in its orbit and the asteroid exits the solar system on para/hyperbolic
>> orbit taking some of our momentum with it.
>
> Or drop them into the sun.
Paradoxically it takes a lot more energy to drop something into the sun
starting from our orbital velocity than it does to send it out to
infinity. Probes bound for Mercury need very big rockets!
Regards,
Martin Brown
John Larkin
<|||newspam|||@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:
But our goal is to steal all the angular momentum that we can. Ideally
we'd leave the asteroid nearly motionless after we suck it dry, and
let it drop directly into the sun. Splat!
John
Jeroen Belleman
> On Thu, 05 Nov 2009 08:29:05 +0000, Martin Brown
> <|||newspam|||@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>>
>> There are a handful of asteroids known to be in complex bound orbits
>> around the sun and the Earth. One such is #3755 eg.
>>
>> http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap970618.html
>
> Wow, that's cool.
>
That would be Cruithne. It's orbit looks weird indeed, from
an earth-centered perspective.
However, the asteroid simply orbits the sun in an elliptical
orbit that happens to have a period very close to one year.
It looks much simpler that way.
Apparently it *does* exchange momentum with the earth from time
to time, so that over a period of several hundred years, it is
locked to the earth's orbit around the sun. The lock-in transient
hasn't died out yet, it would seem.
Jeroen Belleman
Jim Thompson
Using the Al Gore Rules of Physics ;-)
John Larkin
It apparently alternates sign on the momentum transfer, so long-term
it averages to about zero.
John
JosephKK
<jjla...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
Part of the problem is that you need is not precisely zero WRT the
sun, but that you need something that is on the order of 1E-40 of its
previous momentum about the sun. Otherwise it misses and becomes a
problem again, of course this assumes that "dropping" that much mass
(many megatons to several gigatons) into the sun will not have
unwanted effects. A better plan may be to impact Mercury or Venus
instead, much smaller targets, but far less to drop that much mass
into.
John Larkin
"JosephKK"<quiett...@yahoo.com> wrote:
Mercury and Venus are easier to hit than the sun? Wow, you learn
something every day here on usenet.
John
JosephKK
<jjla...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
Momentum transfer is a useful tool to be sure, but there is a big
difference between managing 5 tons at 1E-8 accuracy and managing 1E6
tons to 1E-14 accuracy. Say about a billion times the impulse
required? How much would it take to loft a billion times the impulse
available to voyager after Mars flyby?
John Larkin
"JosephKK"<quiett...@yahoo.com> wrote:
The sun is about a degree wide as seen from earth. That's a pretty big
target. Voyager 2 slingshotted Jupiter, then Saturn, then Uranus, then
Neptune. A quad slingshot requires much higher precision than a simple
dump into the sun. A few hundred million years from now, technology
should be up to it.
The impulse is available almost for free, from other asteroids in the
asteroid belt. Just slingshot them.
John
krw
<jjla...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
The sun is an easy target. Cancelling the delta-V of an orbiting body
isn't so easy. Do the second and the first is a done deal. The only
way to do it, in fact.
Martin Brown
> On Thu, 05 Nov 2009 06:27:43 -0800, John Larkin
> <jjla...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 04 Nov 2009 21:23:38 -0800,
>> "JosephKK"<quiett...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On Thu, 29 Oct 2009 08:20:14 -0700, John Larkin
>>> <jjla...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> There's lots of angular momentum in the asteroid belt. It takes
>>>> careful aiming but nearly no energy to nudge an asteroid into a
>>>> hyperbolic fly-by of Earth and steal most of its momentum. The math
>>>> has been done and it would work. Again, we'd have a long time to do it
>>>> and there are lots of asteroids.
>>>>
>>>> John
>>> I do suspect that the asteroid(s) would become notable (navigation)
>>> hazard(s) as a byproduct.
>> Mathematics is often more useful than suspicions. It would be easy to
>> design a hyperbolic path that would steal most of the angular momentum
>> of an asteroid. What happens to an object 90e6 miles from the sun that
>> has nearly no angular momentum?
It is still easier to fling them out of the solar system entirely. And
there is a *lot* more of it to aim for.
>> NASA has long used ultra-precise hyperbolic flyby trajectories to
>> boost spacecraft into deep-space paths, farther out than we could
>> easily accomplish with direct rocket thrust. Orbital momentum transfer
>> is already a useful tool.
Although we tend to use one of the gas giants. Much more bang per buck.
> Part of the problem is that you need is not precisely zero WRT the
> sun, but that you need something that is on the order of 1E-40 of its
> previous momentum about the sun. Otherwise it misses and becomes a
> problem again, of course this assumes that "dropping" that much mass
> (many megatons to several gigatons) into the sun will not have
> unwanted effects. A better plan may be to impact Mercury or Venus
> instead, much smaller targets, but far less to drop that much mass
> into.
Comets do crash into the sun and/or get very close indeed. SOHO data is
released in realtime precisely so that keen amateurs can use software to
search for them as professionals are not really that interested in them.
1600 comets found so far in 13 years operation. That is more than any
other comet detection system and it is a byproduct of the solar
coronagraph. Even have their own website.
http://sungrazer.nrl.navy.mil/
BTW the sun would barely notice if the Earth hit it head on.
There are a handful of old observations from noted comet seekers of
comets that were brilliant one night setting just after the sun and
never seen again (respected observers). They were generally not
believed. These days SOHO shows the ones that go in but do not come out.
Regards,
Martin Brown
Paul Keinanen
In order to drop something into the Sun, you need to kill the orbital
motion of the Earth (30 km/s).
Going from circular orbital velocity into escape velocity the speed
needs to be increased by sqrt(2), thus the escape velocity from
Earth's orbit is 42 km/s, thus the additional velocity is only 12
km/s, much less than ther delta-V required to drop into the Sun.
If you have some really nasty things (such as nuclear waste) that you
would want to get rid of, do not send it to the Sun, but instead send
it to the intergalactic space.
Paul
JosephKK
Damn, you bruised my earthian pride. Just to help others what is the
two masses?
JosephKK
<jjla...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
That ASSumes that there were zero course correction delta v available,
which is false.
>
>The impulse is available almost for free, from other asteroids in the
>asteroid belt. Just slingshot them.
Where in the planets do you get this? Something must give them the
initial nudge, plus we need the delta v to get that something out
there.
>
>John
John Larkin
"JosephKK"<quiett...@yahoo.com> wrote:
A small rocket could slingshot a small asteroid around a bigger one
and transfer momentum to it. That can be cascaded to the point that a
massive asteroid could be flung out of the asteroid belt to a
near-earth flyby. There's no reason why modest mid-course corrections
couldn't be applied. The math of deflecting asteroids, even using
current rocket technology, has been done, and it's feasible if you're
careful.
People have done the math on this. It's just an engineering problem.
John
Michael A. Terrell
How about the 'Blink Drive'? ;-)
--
The movie 'Deliverance' isn't a documentary!