The Official Space and Astronomy Thread v. Well, this is weird.

[CrimsonSunrise]

That is just breathtaking...  This thread has been a really fun journey.  I'm a dreamer who's always had his gaze turned towards the stars.  At the same time, I'm about as mathematically minded as a box of rocks.  I see two camps here...  the adventurous camp (Chino) and the Analytical camp (Wasteland)  Chino...I want in your camp    (sorry Wasteland)  I'd give my left nut to get into Space.  I have no idea what awaits us when we move on from this life, but I sure the hell hope it involves some kind of  existence out among the stars.

As far as the picture Boom posted, that is just spectacular.  I was recently in a remote area of Indonesia.  One of the biggest things I looked forward to before going there was the potential for crystal clear skies with very little light pollution.  Sad to say, I was greeted with cloud cover for most of my 10 nights there.   There were 2 semi clear nights, where I put the better half to bed and went and sat on the beach just star gazing for a few hours.  Quite the experience in my book.  Being from Los Angeles, we really don't get to see much in the way of a nice night sky.  Here are a couple crappy pics I took one night.......

[MrBoom_shack-a-lack]

I'm a dreamer who's always had his gaze turned towards the stars.  At the same time, I'm about as mathematically minded as a box of rocks.

Yep you basically described me. 

That's some beautiful pics you got and i'm in the same situation that we have alot of light pollution in my area. I told this little story earlier in the thread:

Yea i had one of those jaw moment too a couple of years ago. I was on a trip with my class at the time in north of sweden in "nowhereland" and i remember one night when we were outside and looking up at the sky in awe because i had never in my life seen so many stars in the sky, i could even see very clearly the milky way arm stretching across the sky and that made a big impact on me, no photo could ever stun me as the real thing. After that i went into a deep fasination about astronomy and space which lasted pretty long until i touched the one area i seriously lacked in: Math! 

So yea that experience made a big impact on me and still do.

[CrimsonSunrise]

I remember taking an Astronomy course at the local community college back in the 80's, it turned out just a tad much for me to sort out.  Think I got a "D" in the class.  I also started to toy with the notion of doing stellar photography a few years back.  I started pricing out telescopes and associated gear, then saw how complex the picture taking task was.  Let see... spend $5-10k on gear, drive 2-3 hours each way to the desert to have a good view, stay up all night, and maybe get a shot.  Most shots required multiple exposures, like 30.....   I changed my mind.....

[Chino]

That is just breathtaking...  This thread has been a really fun journey.  I'm a dreamer who's always had his gaze turned towards the stars.  At the same time, I'm about as mathematically minded as a box of rocks.  I see two camps here...  the adventurous camp (Chino) and the Analytical camp (Wasteland)  Chino...I want in your camp    (sorry Wasteland)  I'd give my left nut to get into Space.  I have no idea what awaits us when we move on from this life, but I sure the hell hope it involves some kind of  existence out among the stars.

I'm not 100% sure what you mean, but I'll agree. My camp is pretty desirable!

I remember taking an Astronomy course at the local community college back in the 80's, it turned out just a tad much for me to sort out.  Think I got a "D" in the class.  I also started to toy with the notion of doing stellar photography a few years back.  I started pricing out telescopes and associated gear, then saw how complex the picture taking task was.  Let see... spend $5-10k on gear, drive 2-3 hours each way to the desert to have a good view, stay up all night, and maybe get a shot.  Most shots required multiple exposures, like 30.....   I changed my mind.....

Yesterday I got my thousand dollar signing bonus from the new place I started working at..... I'm really tempted.

https://www.telescopes.com/telescopes/dobsonian-telescopes/zhumellz10deluxedobsonianreflectortelescope.cfm

[CrimsonSunrise]

I actually was just messing around on youtube, and some astrophotography websites.......  man, scary expensive stuff....    Where are you at Chino?  Low light pollution area?

[Chino]

I wouldn't be doing any photography. I'd just want it to look through. I live in a very remote chunk of town on top of a mountain. It used to be a farm and light pollution is very low.

[CrimsonSunrise]

Sounds ideal!  If I had that scenario, I'd probably pull the trigger on a telescope.  Do you have a good field of view nearby? I wonder how nice of a used scope you could manage for a grand.   Might be worth looking into.

[MrBoom_shack-a-lack]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bbc.com/future/bespoke/20140304-how-big-is-space-interactive/index.html

Fun little interactive site.

[puppyonacid]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bbc.com/future/bespoke/20140304-how-big-is-space-interactive/index.html

Fun little interactive site.

Agreed! It's little quotes like the one at the end:

"23,000,000 years of continuous scrolling...." boggles the mind!

Similar site here that compares things from the smallest (quantum) to the largest (universe).

https://htwins.net/scale2/

and videos like this are pretty mind blowing too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEheh1BH34Q

[Dublagent66]

Awesome stuff!   

[MrBoom_shack-a-lack]

Physicists have found a long-predicted twist in light from the Big Bang that represents the first image of ripples in the universe called gravitational waves, researchers announced today. The finding is direct proof of the theory of inflation, the idea that the universe expanded extremely quickly in the first fraction of a second after it was born. What’s more, the signal is coming through much more strongly than expected, ruling out a large class of inflation models and potentially pointing the way toward new theories of physics, experts say.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/gravity-waves-cmb-b-mode-polarization/

 

Some more:

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-26605974

[rumborak]

ruling out a large class of inflation models

You could probably hear a collective "fuck." across half of the universities

[lonestar]

 

[MrBoom_shack-a-lack]

Here's a nice little video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJYc9YmKIO8

[MrBoom_shack-a-lack]

Let's talk about the future for humans in space.

111 years ago the Wright brothers piloted the first powered airplane.
53 years ago we had the first human in outer space.
45 years ago was the first time a human being sat his foot on a celestial body other than the earth.
10 years ago the first manned private spaceflight completed it's flight beyond the Kármán line.



Imagine the day when it's possible for a regular person with presumably some form of license, can take a spacecraft and leave our atmosphere and fly into space. I'm not saying that the spacecraft have the ability to travel to another planet or go very far for that matter. I'm talking more a trip out in space and back kind of thing. I mean once a private spacecraft have the technology and ability to leave our atmoshpere there's no real boundaries for how far out in space you can go as long as you have the necessary assets to keep you alive in outer space and how long those will last.
Even by todays standards it's not really for everyone to have a pilot license so let's say you have a relative that have the money and will to earn a space pilot license or whatever you would call it. He then invites you to travel out in space for a couple of hours and then you head home. Yes it's probably far into the future but someday it will happen or something like this, you get what I mean.

1. So my questions are when we actually have the ability to do what I just described how do you think regulations and law will work in space?

2. If a US citizen commits a crime in space what countries laws will be in hand? The US? Will we maybe have a universal space police? 

3. Will there be boundaries on how far out in space we actually can go and if so, what country will control that and how?

4. Should every human have the right to leave earth and live in space if the possibility were in hand?

5. If non of these topics are solvable in the future what will then stop everything outside the earths atmosphere to become lawless territory?

[kári]

A lot of those questions can be applied to regular airspace .... There are probably answers for them.

[Big Hath]

2. If a US citizen commits a crime in space what countries laws will be in hand? The US? Will we maybe have a universal space police? 

Green Lantern Corps?

[MrBoom_shack-a-lack]

A lot of those questions can be applied to regular airspace .... There are probably answers for them.

Yea but I find them a little bit more abstract though. You either have airspace within a country's territory or outside and it's international airspace. Outer space is a pretty big chunk of area....

I found this though:
Space law is an area of the law that encompasses national and international law governing activities in outer space. International lawyers have been unable to agree on a uniform definition of the term "outer space", although most lawyers agree that outer space generally begins at the lowest altitude above sea level at which objects can orbit the Earth, approximately 100 km (60 mi).

and

https://www.oosa.unvienna.org/oosa/en/SpaceLaw/index.html

Damn people have already figured stuff out. 

[Dublagent66]

MrBoom.  I think in order to properly answer those questions, humans need to figure out how to answer them here on Earth first.  Then and only then will we be able to expand outward with at least a shred of success.  However, I can imagine complete and utter chaos out there.  Kinda like right here on Earth.   

[kári]

I found this though:
Space law is an area of the law that encompasses national and international law governing activities in outer space. International lawyers have been unable to agree on a uniform definition of the term "outer space", although most lawyers agree that outer space generally begins at the lowest altitude above sea level at which objects can orbit the Earth, approximately 100 km (60 mi).

and

https://www.oosa.unvienna.org/oosa/en/SpaceLaw/index.html

Damn people have already figured stuff out. 

Yeah you can even get a master's degree in space studies at my university.  https://onderwijsaanbod.kuleuven.be/opleidingen/e/SC_51016979.htm#bl=01,02

[Azyiu]

Even by todays standards it's not really for everyone to have a pilot license so let's say you have a relative that have the money and will to earn a space pilot license or whatever you would call it. He then invites you to travel out in space for a couple of hours and then you head home. Yes it's probably far into the future but someday it will happen or something like this, you get what I mean.

1. So my questions are when we actually have the ability to do what I just described how do you think regulations and law will work in space?

2. If a US citizen commits a crime in space what countries laws will be in hand? The US? Will we maybe have a universal space police? 

3. Will there be boundaries on how far out in space we actually can go and if so, what country will control that and how?

4. Should every human have the right to leave earth and live in space if the possibility were in hand?

5. If non of these topics are solvable in the future what will then stop everything outside the earths atmosphere to become lawless territory?

You've raised some very legit and good questions, and I am trying to give my 2 cents here.

1) It will be heavily regulated for security reasons similar to today's air traffic controls. You do not want some major accidents to happen over  our head that may end up causing more damages on the ground. Plus, terrorist threat would become more scary if they can go into space.

2) I imagine it would be handled like today's crimes committed in the air. The country of flight's origin would have jurisdiction over the matter.

3) Like above, it should be heavily regulated like today's traffic controls, and an international treaty / agreement has to be signed by countries that allow / offer this type of space travel.

4) Yes, as long as you can pay and are physically fit to fly this way. I can imagine potential travelers MUST pass some sort of health check before each space flight.

5) The space isn't as lawless as you imagine, and I am sure countries with space flight abilities already have their own set of rules and plans in place.

[MrBoom_shack-a-lack]

Good answers! 

[Chino]

Anyone watch the Dragon V2 unveil last night?

I'm blown away. Elon Musk always brings the wows.

[Azyiu]

Anyone watch the Dragon V2 unveil last night?

I'm blown away. Elon Musk always brings the wows.

I didn't, but I surely did check out their official site afterward.

https://www.spacex.com/dragon

[jasc15]

Our plan is simple: we intend to contact the ISEE-3 (International Sun-Earth Explorer) spacecraft, command it to fire its engines and enter an orbit near Earth, and then resume its original mission - a mission it began in 1978. ISEE-3 was rechristened as the International Comet Explorer (ICE). If we are successful it may also still be able to chase yet another comet.

Working in collaboration with NASA we have assembled a team of engineers, programmers, and scientists - and have a large radio telescope fully capable of contacting ISEE-3.  If we are successful we intend to facilitate the sharing and interpretation of all of the new data ISEE-3 sends back via crowd sourcing.

NASA has told us officially that there is no funding available to support an ISEE-3 effort - nor is this work a formal priority for the agency right now. But NASA does feel that the data that ISEE-3 could generate would have real value and that a crowd funded effort such as ours has real value as an education and public outreach activity.

Time is short. And this project is not without significant risks.  We need your financial help. ISEE-3 must be contacted in the next month or so and it must complete its orbit change maneuvers no later than mid-June 2014. There is excitement ahead as well: part of the maneuvers will include a flyby of the Moon at an altitude of less than 50 km.

Our team members at Morehead State University, working with AMSAT-DL in Germany, have already detected the carrier signals from both of ISEE-3's transmitters.  When the time comes, we will be using the large dish at Morehead State University to contact the spacecraft and give it commands.

In order to interact with the spacecraft we will need to locate the original commands and then develop a software recreation of the original hardware that was used to communicate with the spacecraft. These are our two greatest challenges.

The funding we seek will be used for things we have not already obtained from volunteers. We need to initiate a crash course effort to use 'software radio' to recreate virtual versions all of the original communications hardware that no longer physically exists. We also need to cover overhead involved in operating a large dish antenna, locating and analyzing old documentation, and possibly some travel.

This activity will be led by the same team that has successfully accomplished the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP) SkyCorp and SpaceRef Interactive.  Education and public outreach will be coordinated by the newly-formed non-profit organization Space College Foundation.

Our trajectory efforts will be coordinated by trajectory maestro Robert Farquhar and his team at KinetX.  We are also working in collaboration with the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters, NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center, and the Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute (SSERVI) at NASA Ames Research Center.

On Thursday a group of space enthusiasts announced that they had established two-way communication with the International Sun-Earth Explorer 3 (ISEE-3), a satellite launched in 1978 and used throughout the 80’s to study solar winds.

After the satellite had completed its mission, NASA used the Moon’s gravity to fling it into an orbit leading Earth around the Sun. Contact with the ISEE-3 was officially suspended in 1998. Many years later, the ISEE-3 is about to catch up with Earth from behind, an occasion which led the space enthusiasts at the ISEE-3 Reboot Project to try to make contact with the dormant spacecraft.

With NASA funds perpetually low, using resources to make contact through the space agency was an impossibility. But last week, NASA handed the keys to the satellite over to the ISEE-3 Reboot Project, which is backed by a company called Skycorp, Inc.

The project wrote today on its blog:

"The ISEE-3 Reboot Project is pleased to announce that our team has established two-way communication with the ISEE-3 spacecraft and has begun commanding it to perform specific functions. Over the coming days and weeks our team will make an assessment of the spacecraft's overall health and refine the techniques required to fire its engines and bring it back to an orbit near Earth.”
The group first made contact at the Arecibo Radio Observatory in Puerto Rico. As it describes in more detail:

We have successfully commanded both of ISEE-3's data multiplexers into engineering telemetry mode. The current bitrate is 512 bits/sec. We have been able to verify modulated data through ground stations in Germany, Morehead State in Kentucky, and the SETI Allen Array in California. We will not be transmitting over the next few days after this success but concentrating on telemetry. When we are confident of the state of the spacecraft, we will be placing the bird in engineering telemetry mode as soon as possible. We will keep everyone updated on this. We are setting up, with the cooperation of Arecibo, a means to remotely command the spacecraft.
Although the news is good for ISEE-3 lovers, it’s still uncertain whether the ISEE-3 reboot project will be able to fire its engines after such a long time out of contact. If the engines can’t be fired, the satellite will swing out of reach, perhaps for two centuries or more.

[MrBoom_shack-a-lack]

That is pretty fucking cool! Fire up the engines? Is there really fuel left? I'm guessing though they only use it shortly to give the spacecraft a push.

[MrBoom_shack-a-lack]

Ok so I just found out about this:

https://en.spaceengine.org/

SpaceEngine - a free space simulation program that lets you explore the universe in three dimensions, from planet Earth to the most distant galaxies. Areas of the known universe are represented using actual astronomical data, while regions uncharted by astronomy are generated procedurally. Millions of galaxies, trillions of stars, countless planets - all available for exploration. You can land any planet, moon or asteroid and watch alien landscapes and celestial phenomena. You can even pilot starships and atmospheric shuttles.

I tried it for 5 minutes and was immediately sold. It's crazy immense. You can either click on any star and I do mean any star in the sky and get info and travel there or you can manually go there. Luckily you can manage your travel speed. God damn it's immense!

[Onno]

Following this thread now because it's epic. Hi!

[MrBoom_shack-a-lack]

Ok so I just found out about this:

https://en.spaceengine.org/

SpaceEngine - a free space simulation program that lets you explore the universe in three dimensions, from planet Earth to the most distant galaxies. Areas of the known universe are represented using actual astronomical data, while regions uncharted by astronomy are generated procedurally. Millions of galaxies, trillions of stars, countless planets - all available for exploration. You can land any planet, moon or asteroid and watch alien landscapes and celestial phenomena. You can even pilot starships and atmospheric shuttles.

I tried it for 5 minutes and was immediately sold. It's crazy immense. You can either click on any star and I do mean any star in the sky and get info and travel there or you can manually go there. Luckily you can manage your travel speed. God damn it's immense!

Sry for quoting my own post but i've been trying space engine now for a week and I urge anyone mildly interested in astronomy to try this program out. It's just fantastic!

[Onno]

Will check it out, sounds great!

[MrBoom_shack-a-lack]

This is pretty damn cool!

Virgin America rendezvous with White Knight Two and SpaceShipTwo

[BlobVanDam]

Ok so I just found out about this:

https://en.spaceengine.org/

SpaceEngine - a free space simulation program that lets you explore the universe in three dimensions, from planet Earth to the most distant galaxies. Areas of the known universe are represented using actual astronomical data, while regions uncharted by astronomy are generated procedurally. Millions of galaxies, trillions of stars, countless planets - all available for exploration. You can land any planet, moon or asteroid and watch alien landscapes and celestial phenomena. You can even pilot starships and atmospheric shuttles.

I tried it for 5 minutes and was immediately sold. It's crazy immense. You can either click on any star and I do mean any star in the sky and get info and travel there or you can manually go there. Luckily you can manage your travel speed. God damn it's immense!

Sry for quoting my own post but i've been trying space engine now for a week and I urge anyone mildly interested in astronomy to try this program out. It's just fantastic!

Sounds awesome, but the damn thing just instantly crashes.  Hopefully by the time it gets to v1.0 they've made it a bit more stable.

[MrBoom_shack-a-lack]

Hmm can't say I had the same issue, it worked great for me. I haven't played in a while though.

[BlobVanDam]

It would be due to different hardware, probably graphics card. Being a small project, they wouldn't have thoroughly tested it on all configurations. Maybe it didn't like my Quadro.

[MrBoom_shack-a-lack]

Yea most likely, it's a huge project run by a small team. It's pretty damn impressive though.