Recent comments in /f/space

Decronym t1_jayk33q wrote

Reply to Half of all active satellites are now from SpaceX. Here’s why that may be a problem by ye_olde_astronaut

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

|Fewer Letters|More Letters| |-------|---------|---| |ASAT|Anti-Satellite weapon| |ITAR|(US) International Traffic in Arms Regulations| |L2|Lagrange Point 2 (Sixty Symbols video explanation)| | |Paywalled section of the NasaSpaceFlight forum| |LEO|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)| | |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)| |SN|(Raptor/Starship) Serial Number| |SRB|Solid Rocket Booster|

|Jargon|Definition| |-------|---------|---| |Raptor|Methane-fueled rocket engine under development by SpaceX| |Starlink|SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation|

^(7 acronyms in this thread; )^(the most compressed thread commented on today)^( has 29 acronyms.)
^([Thread #8649 for this sub, first seen 5th Mar 2023, 01:41]) ^[FAQ] ^([Full list]) ^[Contact] ^([Source code])

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FlingingGoronGonads t1_jayaw3v wrote

Reply to comment by tghuverd in Canadian rover to help in global search for frozen water on dark side of the moon, in a future planned mission by thawingSumTendies

Somewhere, Robert Heinlein is smiling (you might really like The Moon is a Harsh Mistress).

Seriously though, who is going to be extracting the water just to remove it from Luna? I'm pretty sure that water/resource recycling is going to be a huge focus once the basic surface infrastructure is in place, more so than aboard the ISS. Even if one or two human crew operations are being stupid with it, there is a fair bit of the stuff (considering), it's not going to disappear that quickly.

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simcoder t1_jayapsk wrote

Reply to comment by PEVEI in Half of all active satellites are now from SpaceX. Here’s why that may be a problem by ye_olde_astronaut

A XX,000 satellite constellation going full debris cascade is going to leave a mark on LEO for quite a while. And that debris will have to traverse the orbits of the space stations and Hubble and who knows what else as it deorbits.

It's pretty common for the SpaceX superfan to completely disregard the impacts of such a thing. I'm not sure how they do it but they seem to be able to filter out any and all bad outcomes when their favorite corporation is involved.

I guess it's their super power.

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PEVEI t1_jaya2sl wrote

Reply to comment by simcoder in Half of all active satellites are now from SpaceX. Here’s why that may be a problem by ye_olde_astronaut

It's real, but incredibly overblown in the popular imagination, especially for LEO.

https://aquarid.physics.uwo.ca/kessler/Kessler%20Syndrome-AAS%20Paper.pdf

The reality is that it's going to be a source of debris going forward, but it's incredibly unlikely to become the sci-fi nightmare people mean when they refer to it. In reality it's just another added cost of doing business, barring some sort of extreme event such a war in orbit, or suicidal nuclear strikes.

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Sunflower_After_Dark t1_jay9si8 wrote

Reply to comment by DBDude in Half of all active satellites are now from SpaceX. Here’s why that may be a problem by ye_olde_astronaut

Nothing wrong with good business. But, Elon tried to extort Ukraine, a US ally, by threatening to disable the satellites unless we gave him more. He did come to his senses on that one. But, again he threatened to disable drone use for Ukraine, because he has a interest in selling Starlink to Putin. He’s a loose cannon.

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tghuverd t1_jay8y9k wrote

Reply to Canadian rover to help in global search for frozen water on dark side of the moon, in a future planned mission by thawingSumTendies

There does seem to be ice water on the Moon...and knowing us, we'll suck it all up and then bemoan the fact that it's all gone a century from now. Which will cause an existential crisis for Moon bases that were relying on it.

Is there any chatter about protecting this probably non-renewable resource from rapacious consumption?

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FlingingGoronGonads t1_jay8x2j wrote

Reply to Canadian rover to help in global search for frozen water on dark side of the moon, in a future planned mission by thawingSumTendies

Even by the very, very low standards of Canadian science reporting, this is a badly written article. Here's some actual, useful information about the mission:

  • The rover would be the first to carry a neutron spectrometer to the south polar region, which will be able to detect hydrogen (in or out of water molecules) and do some basic mineralogy of the surface
  • Hydrogen detection would be followed up with UV analysis (a first for a surface mission)
  • Do some good old proper rock-sniffing (mineral detection) with a space Christmas tree array of coloured LEDs (sincere apologies to r/fuckyourheadlights)
  • Work on its polar tan, Canadian-style (while keeping track of the radiation dose it receives from UV, cosmic rays and the like)
  • The one instrument with a proper French name (LAFORGE) comes from... Maryland, namely the Pentagon's research arm Applied Physics Lab at Johns Hopkins. This will be a sort of thermal sensor that will give the rover night vision and allow it to determine the stability and consistency of the surfaces it will be driving on.

The last rover to land, Chang'e 4, carried a similar neutron spectrometer and radiation detector, but the other instruments are fairly new to Lunar surface science, and this mission could prove very useful if successful (the same set of instruments would work well on comets, or the poles of Mercury, for example).

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