Doesn't blue origin land every booster for its tourist hops?

Would optical observetories on the surface have any shot realistically? Or would it still move too fast

It will be moving too fast for Hubble or Webb to track during the flyby (and Webb can't point towards Earth and the Sun). But they can try when it is farther away and appears to move more slowly. Some weather and military satellites in GEO may be able to spot it, and every telescope and radar on the ground will give it a try. Osiris-REX will be chasing it, and will try to boop Apophis like it did for the sample collection on Bennu, but the sample head is gone now.

Yeah, Harvard hoste ADS which helps - but for e.g. Nature (astronomy) you still rely on arXiv publications for a year at least. Luckily, A&A and MNRAS don't have similar restrictions. But still, a good move on their part

Astronomer here! You are referring to the Astrophysics Data System (ADS). It has been around since the 1990s, and yeah, astronomy basically has been completely open access since back then. We are a very unusual field in that regard, and it is darn useful for things like finding good citations for your papers- it must be so hard in other fields that don't have a tool this nice.

1932 a decade before a government got involved

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_nuclear_power

1942 a government seeks to weaponize a new technology

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project

You're welcome

Atlas V would have a pretty tight confidence interval on that 100% reliability yeah.

With that number of flight there is only a 0.6% probability that Atlas' V "actual" reliability (partial or total success, were it to fly an infinite number of time) is less than 95%

So if I remember my Stats correctly, and its been over 20 years so bear with me, we can say with 99% confidence than Atlas V's is at least 95% reliable?

Disclaimer: I have a master's degree in astronomy. I no longer work in academia though.

I remember from my university days (between 5-10y ago) that nearly all astronomy papers were free access. Even the ones published in Nature had a free version somewhere. I don't remember the exact locations, but I think it was a Harvard resource that hosted nearly everything I ever needed. I never felt like I had to struggle to find papers and references when I was doing my projects.

Compare that to my partner who works in biochemistry and she has to rely on preprints on ArXive.org or mailing the original authors for a free copy.

It's slightly complicated, and depends on how you measure.

Many consider the Falcon 9 Block 5 to currently have the lowest chance of failure of any rocket. That being said, An earlier version had a failure on ascent (and 1 more on the pad testing).

Atlas V has never had a total mission failure, so you can't get better than "100% mission success". That being said, it has had some partial failures. People can debate the semantics of whether it is or not, and depending on which metrics they find most important, be correct. It can be said that it's an EXTREMELY safe rocket in it's current form.

edit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/11fyw2y/falcon_landings_are_now_more_reliable_than_any/

Here is an awesome post which makes the case that Falcon 9 landings are now more reliable than any rocket ever. The basis of this is that Falcon 9 has successfully landed 101 times consecutively. The highest any non-SpaceX rocket has had success launching is the Delta II, with 100 consecutive successful launches.

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The Aphophis flyby sounds like it will have immense scientific value for orbital and ground based telescopes to get a better look at it as well

I’m surprised nobody else (country or company) has tried landing boosters yet.

I remember the first time they pulled off a landing and how amazing it was to watch science fiction become engineering fact. Even then people were saying it would impossible to do it reliably and the costs of refurbishment would make it pointless, so it has been an incredible advance and permanently changed the space industry.

It’s got the longest current success streak of any currently operational rocket.

Older Soyuz may have beater it but that’s the only thing that could. Recent Soyuz qc is a mess and they don’t have the flight rate anymore.

Doesn’t this flight make Falcon 9 the most reliable rocket in history now?

Ah yes please explain how the Manhatten Project was originally about producing clean energy

> typical asteroid moves at what, 18 km/s, average?

Get off wikipedia and go hit the astrophysics books lmao.

Excerpt from the linked content^1 by Eric Berger:

>A Falcon 9 rocket blasted into the starry sky above Florida early on Thursday morning, sending four astronauts safely on their way into low-Earth orbit.

>Thursday morning's flight carried NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen, the mission commander, and Warren “Woody” Hoburg, its pilot, along with United Arab Emirates astronaut Sultan Alneyadi and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev, both mission specialists.

>Just prior to launch, Bowen offered these words to the SpaceX launch team: "Once more unto the breach, dear friends. Crew-6 is ready for launch." Bowen was quoting from Shakespeare's play "Henry V."

>Upon reaching orbit, Hoburg was clearly pumped about the heart-pounding experience he had just gone through.

>"As a rookie flier, that was one heck of a ride, thank you," he radioed back to SpaceX's flight control center. "I would say this is an absolute miracle of engineering and I just feel so lucky that I get to fly on this amazing machine."

> 

>After the Falcon 9 rocket separated—with the second stage and Dragon motoring toward orbit—the first stage burned back toward Earth. A few minutes later it made a bullseye landing on the Just Read The Instructions drone ship.

>Monday morning's launch was the 207th overall flight of the rocket.

>A little more than seven years have passed since the Falcon 9 rocket made its first successful landing back on Earth. That was just SpaceX's 20th launch of the Falcon 9 rocket.

>For a time, after that first landing, SpaceX had several misses as it continued to experiment with landing on a drone ship, as well as enduring a few mishaps.

>However, since a drone ship landing failure in February 2021, SpaceX had reeled off 100 consecutive successful booster landings.

>Monday morning's return made for lucky no. 101.

^1 Eric Berger for Condé Nast’s Ars Technica, 2 Mar. 2023, https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/03/on-its-second-attempt-the-crew-6-mission-soared-into-orbit-early-thursday/

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Dimorphos was “rubble pile” asteroid so the chance of it getting through the atmosphere wasn’t much probably.

>they wouldn't have been able to correct its course enough to hit the target.

Which is probably why you support more funding. We haven't perfected the weapon yet.

I would say it’s more like a proof of concept. It works and can be used but is it reasonable? Sort of like how Ingenuity is used on mars, yes you can fly a helicopter on mars but is it cost effective/reasonable?

>And yes, humans are the main cause of the current mass extinction event.

Glad we can agree. So instead of stopping that we keep that moving forward by sending resources to space.

>Yeah, like how the smallpox vaccine program was really about weaponization. /s

You don't know that it wasn't government funded research? Seriously? You put /s as if you think the opposite of what you wrote. Which means you think the government decided to fund medical advancements back in late 1700s. They didn't, specifically England didn't.

Governments have however funded the weaponizing of vaccine technology with little success.

>You are completely wrong.

Then you go on to explain how I'm completely correct... I'm confused. The government poured money into nuclear energy only to weaponize it. Your explanation is out of fear that someone would weaponize it.

Fear realized!

But we'll never do anything like that again, right? We're interested in controlling astroids for good not evil, but if one other person says it could be used for evil you think we'll definitely not repeat an endless cycle of history. I'm sceptical.

>Sure, a lot space technologies can have military applications. So what?

You support war funding. That's all, not peace funding. You should just be honest with yourself. You're about self preservation and "protecting the planet" is incidental if it happens. It's the least important thing to you, but at least it's on the list.

And if it did, we already tested and proved we can crash something into it and redirect it again lol