Space and Science BS Thread

Link for those unaware of his talents

 

What exactly are we protecting them from?

 

Clearly from the odd man rush...

 

Radiation. Venturing out side the earths magnetic field leaves people vulnerable to periodic sun spots expelling massive amount of high speed particles. Think microwaving a peace of meat. Also see “Solar Winds”.

Essentially, in all the moon landing we were lucky. Those trips were measured in days. The trip to and from Mars will be ~2 years, 6 months (each leg to from plus time of visit), (depending on orbital dynamics). For the total round trip of 2 years, the odds of getting caught in a sun spot eruption is really high.

 

^

High energy particles and, to some extent, waves. The moon trips were extremely fortunate to occur during lulls in Solar activity. A two year trip, or habitation in a Lunar space station, won't have the luxury of luck since storms tend to happen at shorter intervals than the length of those missions. Astronauts in the ISS are safe because the ISS is well under the Van Allen belts, which is where high energy particles get trapped by the earths magnetic field.

A ship the size of the Lunar Space Station would need approximately 5 kW of continuous power to produce a strong enough magnetic field to protect the station. Don't ask me the math, I took plenty of physics and this is beyond me but google can help you out if you need to know. Now this is totally possible since the ISS, for example, produces an average of 84 kW including dark time. However we have no idea how to efficiently produce that large of a magnetic field without causing other issues, like turning the whole station into a magnet which would mess up lots of things, and no one knows the effects of keeping astronauts in that strong a field. That's because the field in a space station would be much stronger by area, in order to product the desired protective field, than it is on the surface of earth. For all we know it could be like living in an MRI permanently, which is probably not good for you.

 

Lunar stations on the surface, or Mars stations for that matter, are actually relatively safe since you could cover the base in a few feet of dirt or have the base built in tunnels to achieve adequate protection. Obviously that's not an option for spacecraft.

 

Be a real SOB if someone from outside yells Turn It Down.

 

You need LOTs of water on these long duration trips . . . Crew compartment inside of a layer of H20.

 

Hadfield's got big brass ones:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zo62S0ulqhA

 

Then you have to calculate the minimum amount needed for shielding and then add in what is needed for consumption...plus pumps to keep all the water equal around the ship, compartments so you don't lose it all in the event of a micro-asteroid strike, etc.

Damn it! Where's the deflector screen technology!?!

 

Delta IV Heavy from Vandenberg

NROL-82

Link is live at 4:25pm EDT
https://youtu.be/gVoo0Q4hNpw

(I don’t know why the Corsair is in the graphic but it’s neat to see...)


Edit: Beautiful flight! Vandenberg launch will definitely be a bucket list item for me

Flawless at least from a viewer perspective.

Always a bit shocking to see the flames at start up though.

Nice commercial from the super secret NRO too!

 

Or you could just create huge fuel tanks at the bottom of a rocket carrying you to mars filled with thousands of gallons of fuel to help block it out.

 

SN15 Static Fire complete.

Looked good. No RUD

Official results pending.

 

The balloons have a funny story ..

https://fstoppers.com/film/how-sovi...far-side-moon-captured-air-force-kodak-325971

 

One would think he’d have other things to do.

Like maybe jumping sharks or similar...

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1386155357739921412?s=20

 

https://s3.amazonaws.com/images.spaceref.com/news/2021/BlueOriginProtest.pdf

Oooh salty!

 

I wonder where thats gonna go. It would be a lot more believable if they had launched something into orbit before.

 

Gotta go through the salt first. Even the first page..

 

Ooh. Much more interesting. Thanks.