Space stuff

pechelman

well that was pretty cool. got to see and hear the landing from what seemed to be almost front row seats

tody

Is this the right thread for a picture like this?
Tsuchinshan-ATLAS barely visible at the upper edge of the photo.

endo

and also pretty cool how the Space X people caught back the booster, were you involved @pechelman?

pechelman

That was absolutely incredible to watch @endo but I wasn't involved. I'm really hoping to be able to post some things but we've been very quiet since earlier this summer after a couple of tests we posted short videos.

mikebarhoot

i’ve had ties to JSC/NASA my whole life. as indicated by my forum name.

“you mean not every kid grew up playing on Guppies & re-entry pods?”. -BarHoot

mclaincausey

A wonderful gift for the space nerd in your life. An old National Geographic book called Our Universe is probably what ignited my lifelong obsession with space. This new book about JWST could provide similar inspiration for a younger generation.

pechelman

Just gonna put this right here. Many long days and nights to make this happen; tired but really stoked.

https://x.com/JeffBezos/status/1872824935732916265

Edit to add a link with more context but no video
https://x.com/davill/status/1872826008774041719

SKT

@pechelman this is awesome. Thanks for sharing with us

endo

"When all seven pump fuel and oxygen from the BE-4's common shaft, they produce enough horsepower to propel two Nimitz-class aircraft carriers at full tilt."

pechelman

Anyone catch the launch?
If not, scroll to 1h45m in. Such an exciting and stressful and fun evening on console last night.

Giles

I have to say that I cant watch something like this without my eyes filling with tears, in admiration and sheer "how the absolute fuck"......Amazing.

And I loved the "Let's light this candle"......

You in here?

pechelman

Thanks for those words @Giles. I just watched the replay before posting this and also got a little teary. I was so focused on my systems and capturing data I didn't even really get to watch much.

That's a different support room from where I sat, but it looks very similar. Ours was off of the video feed circuit so we didn't get uniforms to wear.

seawolf

Holy shit! Wow. I'm blown away.

Giles

I was only trying to get a good view......Sorry.....

mclaincausey

Incredible. Much congratulations. There are few more meaningful endeavors for humanity than space exploration.

Giles

And sorry to bring a negative to this thread. But for fucks sake, this use of lack of clarity is pitiful, or is it unwoke to say what actually happened....

"Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly during its ascent burn. Teams will continue to review data from today's flight test to better understand root cause," SpaceX posted on X."

Rococo

@Giles "One of our more resource intensive performance vectors..." Quote from the Simpsons parody of the military, wish I knew which episode...

pechelman

@Giles space is really hard. They may not know exactly what happened yet, but I agree with you and I despise the dumbing down or obfuscation of information with things like "rapid unscheduled disassembly" phrasing. Just be up front; we don't know yet and will get back when we know.

But today's SpaceX launch was incredible. Even more incredible was this footage of the second stage breaking up over t&c
https://x.com/deankolson87/status/1880026759133032662

steelworker

Beautiful @pechelman !

mclaincausey

Apologies in advance for any existential dread this creates, but here is a to-scale rendering of the solar system if the Moon were 1 pixel: https://joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsystem.html

If we consider the solar system to include the sun’s gravitational influence all the way out to the farthest suspected reaches of the Oort Cloud, I think the diameter would be something like 6 light years. This is probably the most generous estimate as to the size of the solar system, as you could define the boundary to end at the heliosphere instead. The diameter of the Milky Way galaxy is something like 100,000 light years. So the most generous sizing of our solar system relative to (divided by) a fairly conservative sizing of the galaxy is 0.00006 or 0.006% of the galaxy’s width if I’ve done my math correctly.

Then the closest major galaxy, Andromeda, is 2.5 million light years away, and the observable universe has a diameter of 93 billion light years. To me the preponderance of evidence suggests that the universe continues infinitely beyond the boundary of this observable universe.

So that’s space. We are less than a speck in it.

What about time?

The universe is thought to be 13.8 billion years old. Most cosmologists believe that the universe will expand infinitely and ultimately reach maximum entropy and conditions where star formation is no longer possible, stars will burn out, and even black holes will evaporate. It will become impossible for life to exist. This will play out over 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years, and the dead universe will as far as we can tell continue in this state infinitely. The conditions where life is possible will asymptotically approach non existence over this time scale.

All this to say, we occupy a place in time in space that is beyond infinitesimal and we should embrace this with gratitude.

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Space stuff