Recent comments in /f/space

phunkydroid t1_j6409pd wrote

Reply to comment by james_randolph 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

It might be slower a decade from now, and then the fact that it's slower than the rest will make it speed back up again. It's likely just a slow oscillation between faster and slower as the moving liquid outer core stops it from ever being truly in sync.

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Corporation_tshirt t1_j63z6pw 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

Watched it live on tv in high school when it happened. My algebra teacher got up and ran out the door and we all heard her and another teacher crying in the hall. I lived in South Florida at the time so we might even have been able to see it happen had we been standing outside at the time.

Our school helped raise funds for the Challenger Memorial in Miami.

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carlossolrac t1_j63y9gu 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

Astronaut Kalpana Chawla (KC) went to my university and the dorm she stayed in is now named KC Hall. Her husband donated a few of her stuff and they have them in the engineer building and the dorm in her remembrance.

"The dorm named after Kalpana Chawla who was a proud UT Arlington Alumna and astronaut crew member aboard the Columbia space shuttle sadly destroyed over North Texas in February of 2003.

Two unique features to this community are the KC Remembrance Wall that tells the story of Kalpana's extraordinary life story and the building's Time Capsule to be opened in 2034."

You can read more of KC here

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JustAPerspective t1_j63vlzi wrote

Reply to comment by oalfonso 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

Magnetic North has been wandering around a lot the last decade or so. Might be related, though doubt it's causal.

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JustAPerspective t1_j63vchz 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

>It’s not a “magnetic engine” in any relevant sense.

Preposterous. Relevance is a matter of perspective; your prerequisite appears to be something along the lines of "if it ain't human-made it ain't real"?

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>It’s a huge rotating ball of iron and nickel and conservation of angular momentum is a thing! Truly ludicrous amounts of momentum would have to be transferred somewhere else for it to stop rotating.

...humans think.
See, until the 1960s, the existence of the core-as-a-core wasn't known. So the "obvious reality" you're assuming is younger than television.

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>(Now, to be fair, a mechanism does exist that slowly bleeds off Earth’s rotational momentum, and has done so for billions of years: the moon and its tidal forces. In the far future Earth would become tidally locked with the moon, and rotate very slowly, if the sun didn’t become a red giant first.)

Yes, that's how an engine operates on a timescale different from the ones humans focus on. You came that closet to getting the idea.

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> But somehow only slowing down the core? That would require magic.)

Magic is, by definition, merely reality: Magic is defined as a "supernatural force which influences reality" and "supernatural" merely means "attributed to some force beyond scientific understanding or the laws of nature" - and the "laws of nature" were written by humans who do not know everything.

See the one constant limitation here? Human understanding.

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>Anyway, my use of “absolutely” should be taken in the context of the discussion, just like everything else.

No - your use of a word will be taken at face value - the only use words have in true information exchange. If you are unable to use the words accurately or sincerely, that's your concern to manage.

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GuyD427 t1_j63v8q6 wrote

Reply to What time is it on the Moon? - Satellite navigation systems for lunar settlements will require local atomic clocks. Scientists are working out what time they will keep. by speckz

No need for different time zones on the moon as has been mentioned. I’d say UTC would be fine. With Mars you have to account for the extra 36 minutes. Like in DS9 Bajor had a 26 hour day. So, they are going to need new clocks. If we ever establish Martian colonies I imagine clocks will be a very minor concern.

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SailingNaked t1_j63uimy wrote

Reply to comment by OkProof136 in Asteroid-Mining Startup Plans First Private Mission to Deep Space by psychothumbs

I'm not disagreeing with you. If you controlled your supply of precious space material z, yes you could control the price of "space material z."

But if you pull space iron and try to control the supply, you're going to have a hard sell of your space iron. It's not special or precious. There might be the odd ball billionaire that might want to make a stupid "truck" from "space iron," but that's your only market.

If you're a cinema, you say no outside food or drink. Sure some people buy the $15 popcorn, but pretty much everyone sneaks in their own candies and drink.

Long story short - fettered markets are an exception to supply and demand.

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writemynamewithstars t1_j63tzaf wrote

Reply to comment by graboidian in 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

Thank you for sharing your work. I've always felt that the metric for poetry shouldn't be how sophisticated the language is - it should be if it can reach the reader and make them feel something. You wrote a good poem.

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Decronym t1_j63tvpy wrote

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

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

|Fewer Letters|More Letters| |-------|---------|---| |CLPS|Commercial Lunar Payload Services| |GEO|Geostationary Earth Orbit (35786km)| |NET|No Earlier Than|

|Jargon|Definition| |-------|---------|---| |Starlink|SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation|

^(4 acronyms in this thread; )^(the most compressed thread commented on today)^( has 26 acronyms.)
^([Thread #8487 for this sub, first seen 27th Jan 2023, 14:57]) ^[FAQ] ^([Full list]) ^[Contact] ^([Source code])

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tomi832 t1_j63s6h2 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

If you wanna hear a bit about the Israeli one, his family's sorrow didn't stop at his death.

His name is Ilan Ramon, and he was a pilot in the IAF before becoming an astronaut. He left behind his wife with 4 kids.

His eldest, Asaf, became a pilot just like him. In his last few months training to become a pilot, he flew an A-4 Skyhawk which had a problem and thankfully he ejected and survived, called it a miracle.

A few months later, while training for a mission, he probably had a black-out and died while crashing his F16, 6 years after his father died.

His close family lost two members in just a few shorts years, both from aerial accidents...

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capSAR273 t1_j63r8ey 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 was able to visit the Apollo 1 test site on the Cape Canaveral base a few years ago. The structure that held the capsule is still there, but is rusting and weathered from being near the coast. Very eerie to stand on this large flat concrete pad with just the support structure left.

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