Astronomical musings
Jun. 7th, 2004 01:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fluffymarkOh look! Satellite spots lost city of Atlantis from space. It was in Spain all along. Bah. I'm not convinced.
I'm getting all hyperexcited. On Tuesday morning Venus will pass in front of the Sun. The last time a Transit of Venus occured was 1882, so nobody alive has seen it. It won't be as spectacular as an Eclipse, but thats not the point, it's pure rarity and historical significance (apparently, Cook sailed out to the Pacific to watch the Transit of 1769, and accidentally discovered Australia and New Zealand while pootling around the oceans) make it worthwhile to get all excited over. I'm surely not going to miss it - I'm even tempted to take the morning off work and pootle down to Greenwich and have a looksee from there. So um yes, Tuesday morning 6:19 BST - 12:23 BST (London) - thats a whole 6 hours so theres no excuse to miss it.
Actually, it's an exciting week for astronomy - the Cassini probe enters the Saturnian system this week, with a flyby of the moon Phoebe on Friday, before going on to finally go into orbit around Saturn at the beginning of next month. I used to work with people who had the fun job of deciding which way to point Cassini's cameras at every instant of the mission - this is planned years in advance, and is non-trivial, as there are rotational constraints imposed by not pointing certain delicate sensors at the sun and suchlike. Worryingly, while performing potentially hazardous manoeuvres (like Saturn Orbit Insertion) some bureaucratic idiot has decreed that Cassini must point its main antenna at Earth at all times, crippling the efficiency of not only observations, but also the engines actually performing the manoeuvre. I doubt there will be any catastrophic problems despite these handicaps, and am looking forward to a scientific goldmine being opened. Yaaay!
Scaled Composites will launch the first manned private spacecraft into space in just two weeks time. This presumably means that the infamous X-prize itself will finally be won within the month. True it's not actually orbit, but it's damn close, and I suspect that there will be more baiting prizes and a flurry of breakthroughs to come in this field in the wake of this. We live in interesting times.
I'm very happy. This weekend I turned into an excitable schoolgirl and ended up buying a Bubble Gun and a Powerpuff Girls top. The world is now officially doomed!
I'm getting all hyperexcited. On Tuesday morning Venus will pass in front of the Sun. The last time a Transit of Venus occured was 1882, so nobody alive has seen it. It won't be as spectacular as an Eclipse, but thats not the point, it's pure rarity and historical significance (apparently, Cook sailed out to the Pacific to watch the Transit of 1769, and accidentally discovered Australia and New Zealand while pootling around the oceans) make it worthwhile to get all excited over. I'm surely not going to miss it - I'm even tempted to take the morning off work and pootle down to Greenwich and have a looksee from there. So um yes, Tuesday morning 6:19 BST - 12:23 BST (London) - thats a whole 6 hours so theres no excuse to miss it.
Actually, it's an exciting week for astronomy - the Cassini probe enters the Saturnian system this week, with a flyby of the moon Phoebe on Friday, before going on to finally go into orbit around Saturn at the beginning of next month. I used to work with people who had the fun job of deciding which way to point Cassini's cameras at every instant of the mission - this is planned years in advance, and is non-trivial, as there are rotational constraints imposed by not pointing certain delicate sensors at the sun and suchlike. Worryingly, while performing potentially hazardous manoeuvres (like Saturn Orbit Insertion) some bureaucratic idiot has decreed that Cassini must point its main antenna at Earth at all times, crippling the efficiency of not only observations, but also the engines actually performing the manoeuvre. I doubt there will be any catastrophic problems despite these handicaps, and am looking forward to a scientific goldmine being opened. Yaaay!
Scaled Composites will launch the first manned private spacecraft into space in just two weeks time. This presumably means that the infamous X-prize itself will finally be won within the month. True it's not actually orbit, but it's damn close, and I suspect that there will be more baiting prizes and a flurry of breakthroughs to come in this field in the wake of this. We live in interesting times.
I'm very happy. This weekend I turned into an excitable schoolgirl and ended up buying a Bubble Gun and a Powerpuff Girls top. The world is now officially doomed!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
X Prize
Date: 2004-06-06 05:42 pm (UTC)Re: X Prize
Date: 2004-06-06 06:08 pm (UTC)In terms of energy requirements, the extra effort required is huge - the required circular velocity is some 28000km/h or so (or alternatively, the energy to obtain orbit is the same energy required to lift the rocket to a height of 1 earth radius above the earth's surface, about 6600k, way above the 100km X-prize threshold). However, there is negligible friction at this height, so it's not anywhere near as unreachable as it first sounds.
It will be very interesting to see where this all leads. Scaled Composites are not the only group working to get into space - theres many others right behind them.
Oi
Date: 2004-06-06 07:00 pm (UTC)Re: Oi
Date: 2004-06-07 09:39 am (UTC)How was your birthday? :)
no subject
Date: 2004-06-06 11:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-06-07 09:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-06-07 12:10 am (UTC)I'm afraid that you now have to save the world before bedtime. It's fate. Deal with it.
From a personal viewpoint the most exciting thing that I've seen recently is Deep Space 1.
The ion drive.
IIIoOOnnnNNnnn DDDrrriiivvvee....
*salivates*
*bell rings*
*checks microwave*
Ooo. I got that all wrong, didn't I?
Pavlov's Bose.
no subject
Date: 2004-06-07 09:45 am (UTC)Give us a nuclear fusion rocket that propels itself by ejecting hot plasma, and see how fast we can go. Mars in a month? Rar.
no subject
Date: 2004-06-07 10:48 am (UTC)It'd be interesting to try for a long multi-stage ion drive, with a view to ramping up the acceleration you could obtain from a given amount of reaction mass. You'd have to build it in orbit, though.
no subject
Date: 2004-06-07 10:38 pm (UTC)Meh!
A thing I read about recently was a recapitulation of the structure of a chemical rocket, but cast in the following way: open-ended magnetic bottle as plasma containment and pressure vessel; microwave plasma heater via something called a helicon antenna. The idea is being statically trialled now. I think it was referred to as a VASIMIR rocket. It was claimed to give the same order of acceleration as a chemical rocket, but with a much higher specific impulse, so getting more bang per unit reaction mass.
The coolest thing though would be to have a silver rocket with sparks coming out the back a la Flash Gordon, crewed by robots with silver painted paper bag heads. I'd love to see *that* land on the lawn of The Whitehouse.
no subject
Date: 2004-06-07 02:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-06-07 06:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-06-07 09:52 am (UTC)Map of 2012 transit
no subject
Date: 2004-06-07 11:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-06-07 01:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-06-07 02:17 pm (UTC)