Recent comments in /f/space

PandaEven3982 t1_j8thfbl wrote

Reply to comment by Excellent-Pattern119 in Terraforming a magnetosphere possible? by Pornelius_McSucc

I agree with everything you've said. I would add one caveat. We haven't really tried to terraform, with realistic amounts of resource applied. You'd need a significant amount of resources to actually attempt remediation. Resources equivalent to a significant percentage of worldwide military expenditure for 5-10 years.

You'd need a world government.

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PandaEven3982 t1_j8tgeme wrote

Reply to Terraforming a magnetosphere possible? by Pornelius_McSucc

I don't think you can toss the masses around as casually as you think you can. You want to move planets? That's some immense values snd vectors of P you're going to need to change. How do you apply the ∆ V? I don't know the otder of magnitude of energy needed, but you'd probably need to convert solar energy into something that reshapes orbit.

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JakeTurk1971 t1_j8tew8s wrote

Reply to comment by CockroachNo2540 in Once manufacturing moves almost entirely into space and the workers want drugs, gambling and prostitution and wanted criminals on Earth can escape to space, the solar system away from gravity wells will become largely lawless. Who will do the policing and how? by [deleted]

The aesthetic of that movie and the other great "working class stiffs in space" movie, the original Alien, largely defined my childhood "what I want to do when I grow up" fantasy (Alien minus the title character, or Outland minus the drugs). "Alien if the Nostromo had never stopped at LV 426" wouldn't make for a very exciting movie, but it would've been my childhood fantasy of being an adult. The literally fatal flaw to Outland is that it's set on Io, which is inside Jupiter's radiation belt, so unless every individual miner was in a suit with more lead than a bank vault, mining on Io would be like mining the inside of a microwave oven running 24/7. If Outland ever gets a remake, an asteroid would be a better setting, or at least Callisto (the only one of Jupiter's four big moons safely outside of the radiation zone). And no, this doesn't negate the much-discussed possibility of life on J's other two big moons, Ganymede and Europa, because the hypothesis there is life in deep underground oceans safely insulated by miles and miles of surface ice. TL/DR I want to be a space trucker.

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slickhedstrong t1_j8t8hcs wrote

Reply to comment by WorstHyperboleEver in The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope - the next major step in astronomy that will help unlock the secrets of the universe's expansion and dark energy. by upyoars

we should call these things heimdall array or the Horus satellite or the Panoptescope and not run the risk of later finding out that webb was a racist or that nancy grace roman supported something, especially when our entire era is going to be seen as complicit in asian child labor the way we see everyone in the past as complicit is slavery or systemic misogyny and shit.

the hermes orbiting mirror, what a romantic name for something.

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Excellent-Pattern119 t1_j8t10t3 wrote

Reply to Terraforming a magnetosphere possible? by Pornelius_McSucc

I will put it bluntly: we can't even terraform the Sahara Desert, the Namibia Desert, and the Atacama Desert to be inhabitable and people are talking about terraforming a planet that has not have enough gravity to maintain an atmosphere for geological time unless that is a very heavy gas: the tail end of Maxwell velocity distribution of speeds will make all those molecules get to the escape velocity and leak to the space after a few million years or less. So If you can breathe sulfur hexafluoride maybe we can. It is a calculation so easy you can do it yourself, it is usually one of the problems or examples that are given in the kinetic theory of gases course. So come back with your feet to Earth and spare me the Elon hype.

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WorstHyperboleEver t1_j8sz0w0 wrote

Reply to comment by slickhedstrong in The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope - the next major step in astronomy that will help unlock the secrets of the universe's expansion and dark energy. by upyoars

So you’re saying we SHOULDN’T honor one of the most influential people in the history of NASA because her name is similar to someone else’s name? That’s her name, and it should be used as she wished to be called. context is enough to make it clear who is being honored.

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AtomicPow_r_D t1_j8su0rq wrote

Reply to Terraforming a magnetosphere possible? by Pornelius_McSucc

I suggest placing Mercury in orbit around Mars (or Venus). Mercury is supposed to have a magnetic field as strong as Earth's, but for the effect of the Sun's nearby solar wind. If it was instead in orbit around Mars or Venus, and much farther out from the Sun, you'd have the strong magnetosphere of its moon to help protect your main planet. Hey look, it's the only other planet with a magnetosphere in the Solar System -

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riyehn t1_j8st9ai wrote

Reply to Hypothetically Can us humans build an artificial planet? by prof_chaos7

The answers to your questions are yes and yes. Yes you could do it, and yes it would be stupid.

To make a planet, all you'd need to do is find enough matter and put it all in one place. You'd get the matter from asteroids and other orbital bodies. You'd put it all in one place by putting some kind of engine on the orbital bodies to change their orbits so that they slam into each other, creating an even bigger body that orbits the sun.

Once the collection of matter is massive enough, its own gravity would eventually turn it into a sphere, at which point it would meet the current definition of a dwarf planet. If your goal is a full-on, non-dwarf planet, it would have to be big enough that its own gravity also eventually pulls in everything else of a similar size that's orbiting the sun nearby.

But here's the thing - we already have a lot of planets. If the reason you want a planet is to make a place for humans to live, it would be a lot easier just to terraform an existing planet like Mars. This is reason #1 why it would be stupid.

Reason #2 why it's be stupid: "planet" is just a matter of definition. Technically, all you need to do to create a planet is add a bit more matter to the most massive non-planet you can find, then wait. It's not as cool as it sounds. You're just making a big thing a little bit bigger so that it fits a definition that humans invented.

Finally, scientists have changed the definition of "planet" before. This is why Pluto is no longer considered a full planet. So technically, scientists could "create a planet" today by changing the definition to label more things as planets.

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