Space Stuff

That 3D-printed rocket company just got $35 million in private financing
A test flight is planned for late 2020, with commercial launches beginning in 2021.
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Hello, Aeon 1 rocket engine.
Relativity Space aims to not only 3D print its rocket engines but also nearly all of the booster itself. And now it has raised a considerable amount of money for a company with just 17 employees. On Tuesday, Relativity Space announced an additional $35 million round of funding to help bring its Terran rocket to market.
 
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Russian cosmonauts were sent into space with a triple-barrelled pistol and a machete.



... to defend against bears after they landed in Siberia.
 
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Galaxy seems to lack dark matter, stumping astronomers
“This thing is astonishing—a gigantic blob that you can look through.”
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The recently discovered galaxy is so diffuse that you can see other, more distant galaxies right through it.
Dark matter and galaxies normally go hand in hand. Dark matter seems to be needed to draw in sufficient material to form the galaxy and its stars, and halos of dark matter keep galaxies from spinning apart as they rotate. So scientists were more than a bit surprised to find a galaxy that has little to no dark matter at all. Confusing things further, the galaxy appears extremely similar to others that are nearly entirely composed of dark matter.

Slow motion
This was one of those cases where discovery began with the phrase "huh, that looks weird." The weirdness came courtesy of the Dragonfly Array, a collection of small telescopes designed to pick up faint objects. When observing a collection of galaxies called the NGC 1052 group, the array spotted an object that had shown up in other surveys of that region of the sky.
 
This spacecraft will get closer to the Sun than any before it—without melting
The Parker Solar Probe is set to launch this July and will reach the Sun in November.
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Artist’s concept of the Parker Solar Probe spacecraft approaching the sun. Launching in 2018, Parker Solar Probe will provide new data on solar activity and make critical contributions to our ability to forecast major space-weather events that impact life on Earth.
 
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SpaceX has a busy weekend ahead of it
Company will attempt to launch two used boosters.
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The booster to be used as early as Monday for CRS-14 flew last August during the CRS-12 mission.
SpaceX
SpaceX has launched five rockets so far during the first quarter of 2018, but now the company will amp up that pace by tryng to go for two launches in four days. If successful with these flights, the cadence would put the company two months ahead of 2017's record pace, when SpaceX launched a total of 18 rockets. Last year, SpaceX didn't launch its seventh rocket until June 3.
 
Robert said:
Galaxy seems to lack dark matter, stumping astronomers
“This thing is astonishing—a gigantic blob that you can look through.”
heic1806a-800x533.jpg

The recently discovered galaxy is so diffuse that you can see other, more distant galaxies right through it.
Dark matter and galaxies normally go hand in hand. Dark matter seems to be needed to draw in sufficient material to form the galaxy and its stars, and halos of dark matter keep galaxies from spinning apart as they rotate. So scientists were more than a bit surprised to find a galaxy that has little to no dark matter at all. Confusing things further, the galaxy appears extremely similar to others that are nearly entirely composed of dark matter.

Slow motion
This was one of those cases where discovery began with the phrase "huh, that looks weird." The weirdness came courtesy of the Dragonfly Array, a collection of small telescopes designed to pick up faint objects. When observing a collection of galaxies called the NGC 1052 group, the array spotted an object that had shown up in other surveys of that region of the sky.
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On the flipside, from the same team...

Scientists Discover Massive Galaxy Made of 99.99 Percent Dark Matter

MAUNAKEA, Hawaii — Using the world's most powerful telescopes, an international team of astronomers has discovered a massive galaxy that consists almost entirely of Dark Matter. Using the W. M. Keck Observatory and the Gemini North telescope – both on Maunakea, Hawaii – the team found a galaxy whose mass is almost entirely Dark Matter. The findings are being published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters today.

Even though it is relatively nearby, the galaxy, named Dragonfly 44, had been missed by astronomers for decades because it is very dim. It was discovered just last year when the Dragonfly Telephoto Array observed a region of the sky in the constellation Coma. Upon further scrutiny, the team realized the galaxy had to have more than meets the eye: it has so few stars that it quickly would be ripped apart unless something was holding it together.
 
adz said:
On the flipside, from the same team...

Scientists Discover Massive Galaxy Made of 99.99 Percent Dark Matter

MAUNAKEA, Hawaii — Using the world's most powerful telescopes, an international team of astronomers has discovered a massive galaxy that consists almost entirely of Dark Matter. Using the W. M. Keck Observatory and the Gemini North telescope – both on Maunakea, Hawaii – the team found a galaxy whose mass is almost entirely Dark Matter. The findings are being published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters today.

Even though it is relatively nearby, the galaxy, named Dragonfly 44, had been missed by astronomers for decades because it is very dim. It was discovered just last year when the Dragonfly Telephoto Array observed a region of the sky in the constellation Coma. Upon further scrutiny, the team realized the galaxy had to have more than meets the eye: it has so few stars that it quickly would be ripped apart unless something was holding it together.
Click to expand...
“Motions of the stars tell you how much matter there is, van Dokkum said. “They don’t care what form the matter is, they just tell you that it’s there. In the Dragonfly galaxy stars move very fast. So there was a huge discrepancy: using Keck Observatory, we found many times more mass indicated by the motions of the stars, than there is mass in the stars themselves.”
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I love that there are boffins out there figuring out amazing stuff like this that I'd never have the talent nor motivation for figuring out myself.
 
Robert said:
I love that there are boffins out there figuring out amazing stuff like this that I'd never have the talent nor motivation for figuring out myself.
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At this stage, I just take their word for it :lol:

My understanding of astrophysics is probably rudimentary at best, but the more I read the more things start to fall into place.
 
Kesa said:
In the tradition of Doom BFR is actually big f**king rocket.
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Erm, well, yes.
I had thought that implication was too obvious even for here but perhaps not.
 
Kesa said:
If you thought of it first you would have said it!
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:lol:
Indeed!

However, this begs the question, has the phonetic similarity between falcon and fuckin' escaped your notice thus far?
 
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Robert said:
:lol:
Indeed!

However, this begs the question, has the phonetic similarity between falcon and fuckin' escaped your notice thus far?
Click to expand...

ahhhh, yes it had ;)

In construction it is common to hear someone ask for a BFH, which someone then retrieves from the tool box without any other description of tool.
I have a custom BFH I use which is an 8lb sledge mounted on a 16" hammer handle
 
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The closest exoplanet to Earth just got doused with deadly flares
"This suggests that life on Proxima b will have to undergo complex adaptations."
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An artist's impression of the view of the surface of the planet Proxima b orbiting the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri.

Amid much excitement in 2016, astronomers revealed the discovery of an Earth-sized planet around Proxima Centauri, the star closest to our Sun. This exoplanet, just 4.2 light years from Earth, was close enough to its red dwarf star that water might well exist on its surface.

Alas, now we know that life probably does not live on the planet, at least not on the surface. In March 2016, astronomers using an array of telescopes known as Evryscope observed a "superflare" 10 times larger than any previous one detected from the red dwarf star. Based on these observations and those of other instruments with spectrographs, the astronomers determined that about five of these superflares occur in a given year.
 
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Robert said:
The closest exoplanet to Earth just got doused with deadly flares
Alas, now we know that life probably does not live on the planet, at least not on the surface. In March 2016, astronomers using an array of telescopes known as Evryscope observed a "superflare" 10 times larger than any previous one detected from the red dwarf star. Based on these observations and those of other instruments with spectrographs, the astronomers determined that about five of these superflares occur in a given year.
Click to expand...

metalman said:
Considering the vastness of the Universe, if the message came from Proxima Centauri , the latency between messages would be 8.4 years
Click to expand...

if the message came from Proxima Centauri

Closest Stars to earth



 
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