Recent comments in /f/space

shotsfired3841 t1_j62khkh wrote

Reply to NASA's Annual Day of Remembrance today, Jan. 26, honors the astronauts who died during the Apollo 1 fire and the Challenger and Columbia space shuttle disasters. by clayt6

I share this from time to time when I think people might find it interesting. I had a relative on Columbia, Dave Brown. The day before the tragedy he sent an email to friend and family that I'll share:

Friends,

It's hard to believe but I'm coming up on 16 days in space and we land tomorrow.

I can tell you a few things:

Floating is great - at two weeks it really started to become natural. I move much more slowly as there really isn't a hurry. If you go to fast then stopping can be quite awkward. At first, we were still handing each other things, but now we pass them with just a little push.

We lose stuff all the time. I'm kind of prone to this on Earth, but it's much worse here as I can now put things on the walls and ceiling too. It's hard to remember that you have to look everywhere when you lose something, not just down.

The views of the Earth are really beautiful. If you've ever seen a space Imax movie that's really what it looks like. What really amazes me is to see large geographic features with my own eyes. Today, I saw all of Northern Libya, the Sinai Peninsula, the whole country of Israel, and then the Red Sea. I wish I'd had more time just to sit and look out the window with a map but our science program kept us very busy in the lab most of the time.

The science has been great and we've accomplished a lot. I could write more but about it but that would take hours.

My crewmates are like my family - it will be hard to leave them after being so close for 2 1/2 years.

My most moving moment was reading a letter Ilan brought from a Holocaust survivor talking about his seven year old daughter who did not survive. I was stunned such a beautiful planet could harbor such bad things. It makes me want to enjoy every bit of the Earth for how great it really is.

I will make one more observation - if I'd been born in space I know I would desire to visit the beautiful Earth more than I've ever yearned to visit to space. It is a wonderful planet.

Dave

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Sweezy_McSqueezy t1_j62jrko wrote

Reply to comment by PreFalconPunchDray in Asteroid-Mining Startup Plans First Private Mission to Deep Space by psychothumbs

You make some good points, but I want to nit pick one thing: 'post scarcity' is not a real thing, and basically never will be. When expensive things fall in price dramatically, we generally increase our consumption of them dramatically. But, efforts are still made to use it efficiently at the margins.

One example would be screws. Screws used to be very expensive at all levels (the materials, the labor input, etc.) but are now extremely abundant and cheap (at least 1000x cheaper, maybe 1000000x). But, as a mechanical engineer, I can tell you that we definitely still try to use them economically. We try to use fewer of them in designs, we try to standardize them, and choose ones that are less expensive.

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mrbibs350 t1_j62ii2t wrote

Reply to comment by MyWALife in Mycotecture — the use of mushrooms and other fungal substances for architectural purposes — could be key to building affordable, fire-resistant, insulated habitats on the Moon and Mars. NASA aims to experiment with the technique on the Moon in 2025. by clayt6

I think so....

Locate at one of the craters with permanent shadow where ice forms. Use excess energy to melt the ice and pump water to the top of the crater. Let it flow during lunar night to cover the lapse in solar power.

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songsfrombeyond t1_j62fz76 wrote

Reply to Earth's inner core may be slowing down, but “Nothing cataclysmic is happening,” says Hrvoje Tkalcic, a geophysicist at Australian National University. “The inner core is now more in sync with the rest of the planet than a decade ago when it was spinning a bit faster.” by clayt6

Couldn't possibly be the sign of a catastrophic pole-shift that happens periodically and that the Earth is due for, no way

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Kenshkrix t1_j62fw1v wrote

Reply to comment by Sharlinator in Earth's inner core may be slowing down, but “Nothing cataclysmic is happening,” says Hrvoje Tkalcic, a geophysicist at Australian National University. “The inner core is now more in sync with the rest of the planet than a decade ago when it was spinning a bit faster.” by clayt6

>There’s absolutely nothing that could make it actually stop.

Nah the Earth's core could theoretically be stopped.

Just throw several moons/planetoids at it. The first one or two to blast the surface out of the way, the next to counteract most of the angular momentum, and maybe another one to really fine-tune things.

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raising_creampies t1_j62f2m5 wrote

Reply to comment by jalepinocheezit in Earth's inner core may be slowing down, but “Nothing cataclysmic is happening,” says Hrvoje Tkalcic, a geophysicist at Australian National University. “The inner core is now more in sync with the rest of the planet than a decade ago when it was spinning a bit faster.” by clayt6

Mom, can we have planetcoreologist?

No we have planetcoreologist at home.

planetcoreologist at home:

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