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Four Earth-sized planets detected orbiting the nearest sun-like star

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Re: Four Earth-sized planets detected orbiting the nearest sun-like star

#261

Post by ExactoKnight »

jessaustin wrote: post #235
imron wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess we need to discover life on another planet, to convince the military to start spending its budget on space related technology.

Since money is what motivates the military-industrial complex, we only need to decide that all future telescopes will be built by armaments manufacturers, because after all the aliens could be planning a preemptive strike. Then all sorts of senators, lobbyists, etc. will be trying constantly to increase telescope spending.

What you're describing is actually a brilliant approach for increasing NASA budgets. Simply put, make astronomy a matter of national security. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Securitization_(international_...

Re: Four Earth-sized planets detected orbiting the nearest sun-like star

#262

Post by meric »

vidarh wrote: post #255
meric wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh well I stayed in Pakistan cities and villages and farms and there's clean water, housing and mobile broadband... Sorry to hear the state in India - I incorrectly assumed they were ahead due to higher GDP per capita.

From https://www.dawn.com/news/1319157 "ISLAMABAD: Eighty-four per cent of the population does not have access to safe drinking water in a country where commercial banks posted windfall profits exceeding Rs475 billion in three years, the Senate was told on Tuesday. Quoting a study, Provision of Safe Drinking Water, conducted by the Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources (PCRWR), Minister for Science and Tech…

Ok apparently I have been served unsafe drinking water.

"For Pakistan’s majority, the main source of drinking water is groundwater. The most common instrument for extracting groundwater in rural areas are the hand pump and the motor pump. Hand pumps and motor pumps together provide 61 percent of households with drinking water; in rural areas this percentage rises up to 70. "

http://nation.com.pk/blogs/13-Jun-2015/provision-of-safe-dri...

"In 2015, 91% of the population had access to an "improved" water supply.[15][16] This was 94% of the population in urban areas and 90% of the population in rural areas."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_supply_and_sanitation_in...

Re: Four Earth-sized planets detected orbiting the nearest sun-like star

#263

Post by Dylan16807 »

dmix wrote: post #242
sqeaky wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a slim profile and large ablative shield are two good ideas. that largely solve both of these issues. Build something like the TransAmerica Pyramid (without the two white flanges) and put the motor(s) where the foundation would be as to make the building fly like a rocket. Put the motors on at one G and you get artificial gravity, a slim profile and damage equally distributed along the bulk of the ship and mo…

TIL about Ablative Armour, thanks for the interesting read. Isn't turning the ship at those speeds nearly impossible? You'd either have to slow the entire ship down first (the whole idea) or burn a ton of fuel to turn it while accelerating at a percentage of light speed, while avoiding debis and the spaceships engines explosions. I believe this is why scientists researching this prefer magnetic sails as a means to sl…

Huh? Speed is irrelevant to turning. Fire a tiny rocket at the front to get the ship rotating at .01 degrees per second and then take a nap.

Re: Four Earth-sized planets detected orbiting the nearest sun-like star

#264

Post by fsiefken »

kibwen wrote: post #21
fsiefken wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the EMdrive it'll take around 150 years (give or take a century), so it's within the realm of possibility if we can engineer a ship with shielding that can last that long. The mission becomes an order of a magnitude more difficult if you want to put a viable human population on it... watch Pandorum for one scenario.... perhaps it's best to send a seed ship (as written about in the excellent SF story by Pamela Sa…

150 years by what calculations? Are you also factoring in deceleration time?

it was an estimate based on a vague memory of this article https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2015/04/evaluating-nasas-fut...

Re: Four Earth-sized planets detected orbiting the nearest sun-like star

#265

Post by hyeonwho2 »

ExactoKnight wrote: post #257
mturmon wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The corresponding space telescope for exoplanet detection and spectral characterization is being planned for sooner than you may expect: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/habex/ . This, or a similar concept, is hoped to be in the upcoming National Research Council decadal survey which recommends astronomical priorities for the 2020s. Current designs require as little as 4 meters. Stability is one advantage of space telescopes…

Promising developments, but christ, could they move any slower ?! We know what technology we need to build. Why must we wait a full two more years for a report to get finished before even beginning funding proposals on which path to pursue, before beginning any construction or engineering?! None of us are getting any younger. I know this is complicated technology to build, but contrast how fast technology moves in th…

When money is tight, those in charge of allocations get more beaurocratic, thus wasting more money.

It would be fun to see part of NASA run on design/execution challenges. Have 5000 postdocs on salary, then offer a ($1B-X) bonus for the team which designs and launches a space telescope for X.

Re: Four Earth-sized planets detected orbiting the nearest sun-like star

#266

Post by hyeonwho2 »

ExactoKnight wrote: post #257
mturmon wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The corresponding space telescope for exoplanet detection and spectral characterization is being planned for sooner than you may expect: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/habex/ . This, or a similar concept, is hoped to be in the upcoming National Research Council decadal survey which recommends astronomical priorities for the 2020s. Current designs require as little as 4 meters. Stability is one advantage of space telescopes…

Promising developments, but christ, could they move any slower ?! We know what technology we need to build. Why must we wait a full two more years for a report to get finished before even beginning funding proposals on which path to pursue, before beginning any construction or engineering?! None of us are getting any younger. I know this is complicated technology to build, but contrast how fast technology moves in th…

When money is tight, those in charge of allocations get more beaurocratic, thus wasting more money.

It would be fun to see part of NASA run on design/execution challenges. Have 5000 postdocs on salary, then offer a ($1B-X) bonus for the team which designs and launches a space telescope for X.

Re: Four Earth-sized planets detected orbiting the nearest sun-like star

#267

Post by ugh123 »

aaronblohowiak wrote: post #182
ugh123 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm all in favor of science funding, especially projects that drive and give back technology capabilities to society. But I would like to see more balance and preference to solve hunger and poverty around the world. To me that question is high on the list as well. And preferably more so.

What would your target be for government funding of space as a percentage of all government spending?

Without going too deep into it, some kind of system that allows spending somewhere only if gains/improvements are made elsewhere.

Re: Four Earth-sized planets detected orbiting the nearest sun-like star

#268

Post by kamaal »

andrepd wrote: post #200
ExactoKnight wrote: post #101

I am flabbergasted that as a society we aren't rushing to build a 100 metre wide telescope mirror large enough for us to directly image the spectra of the potentially habitable exoplanets around us. A telescope this large could tell us whether any of these potentially habitable planets contain oxygen, and thus, biological processes. Yet thanks to funding cuts in science the biggest telescope we have in the pipeline r…

Putting it bluntly: I'm not flabbergasted because I don't live in a bubble. The great majority of people in this planet have more pressing things to worry about than a 100 metre telescope, things like housing, having food for tomorrow, money, not getting killed, not getting raped, not getting exploited by rich oligarchs/the government, etc etc. Man, I too wish we had more money for large scale scientific endeavours,…

>>The great majority of people in this planet have more pressing things to worry about than a 100 metre telescope

If we had thought the similar way in case of microscopes, we would still be dealing with pandemics cluelessly about how to prevent them.

Sometimes thinking long term can solve a lot of short term problems.

Re: Four Earth-sized planets detected orbiting the nearest sun-like star

#269

Post by PhasmaFelis »

bpodgursky wrote: post #188
hueving wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I am flabbergasted that as a society we aren't rushing to build a 100 metre wide telescope mirror large enough for us to directly image the spectra of the potentially habitable exoplanets around us. This is because most of society is still struggling with day-to-day tasks like getting housing, clean water, reliable food, healthcare and dealing with physical conflicts. Even people rich enough to not be stuck in the s…

The world had less reliable housing, less clean water, less reliable food, worse healthcare, and more physical conflicts in the 60s, and we still had the Apollo program put people on the moon. Only the most pathetic hacks would argue that we are the worse for having invested that money to push the bounds of exploration. At a point, there are 6 billion people on the earth, and there will always be _some_ problems unso…

There are some very good arguments for increasing space funding, and this is not one of them. It seems like you're just saying "social problems can't be fixed, so we should ignore them." It's also weird that you don't consider bringing clean water, health care, etc. to more people to be "moving forward as a civilization".

You might, for example, instead point out that even extravagant space budget proposals are a drop in the bucket compared to military spending.

Re: Four Earth-sized planets detected orbiting the nearest sun-like star

#270

Post by yoz-y »

spenczar5 wrote: post #129
ExactoKnight wrote: post #101

I am flabbergasted that as a society we aren't rushing to build a 100 metre wide telescope mirror large enough for us to directly image the spectra of the potentially habitable exoplanets around us. A telescope this large could tell us whether any of these potentially habitable planets contain oxygen, and thus, biological processes. Yet thanks to funding cuts in science the biggest telescope we have in the pipeline r…

Very large telescopes can achieve great resolving power, but they run up against atmospheric turbulence, particularly in many of the spectral regions we care about for checking out exoplanets. Radio light passes right through the atmosphere for the most part, which is why you see very large radio telescopes, but they're not very practical for infrared or visible light scopes. Space-based telescopes are a better avenu…

What is the practical limit for a size and weight of an object that we can realistically put into space now? I imagine that a, for example, 10meter wide lens would be extremely heavy and can not be really split into pieces for shipping. How much smaller space telescopes are for the same performance?
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