Imagine hijacking a 100-meter moon made of rare earth metals like gold, platinum, rhodium, ruthenium, iridium, etc. etc. More than enough to under write the mission and pay for a moon base.
The trick is getting it through the atmosphere intact.
Radar reveals two moons orbiting asteroid Florence
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Re: Radar reveals two moons orbiting asteroid Florence
#12Imagine hijacking a 100-meter moon made of rare earth metals like gold, platinum, rhodium, ruthenium, iridium, etc. etc. More than enough to under write the mission and pay for a moon base.
The trick is getting it through the atmosphere intact.
The Apollo module was 20,000-kg. We could do it in 50,000-lbs chunks but we would have to process it on the moon first so it wouldn't crater when it landed.
If the commodities market tanks, well, we'll value add it by selling it as "all weather platinum or gold siding" at Home Depot. ;-)
Apollo weight info: https://www.google.com/search?q=apollo+commad+module+weight&...
Re: Radar reveals two moons orbiting asteroid Florence
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Is the 'light' reflecting off the asteroid emitted from the sun? I had never seen or even knew radar could distinguish value like what is shown here. Yes it's emitted from the sun, it's clear given that the time-lapse shows "Inner moon eclipsed" when passing behind the site of the asteroid that is not lit.
I was always under the assumption that with Radar images that it didn't rely on a light source as technically the radar is the source. So that the impression that there is a light an dark side was based purely on the motion towards and away from the receiver. But, you have pointed out something interesting and that would appear to indicate other wise. The clear rotation independent of source already shows that I am w…
You are correct, the "light" is the transmitted radar pulse from Goldstone, not from the sun.
They do all sorts of fancy signal processing to get this sort of resolution.
Because radar power received goes down with 1/(distance^4), the inverse square law, squared, this is hard to do at astronomical distances.
The power level differential between transmitted and received power can be in the order of ~10^15.
Goldstone transmits a 500kW radio pulse but will probably get nanowatts back, which is amplified millions of times by the big dish, amplifiers and signal processing.
Re: Radar reveals two moons orbiting asteroid Florence
#14Is the 'light' reflecting off the asteroid emitted from the sun? I had never seen or even knew radar could distinguish value like what is shown here. I suppose terrestrial radar looks at much smaller objects and what it sees is emitted from the tower and bounced back in a straight line so that sort of makes sense. More info on the observatory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldstone_Solar_System_Radar
Yes. The radar illumination comes from the Sun.
Re: Radar reveals two moons orbiting asteroid Florence
#15Imagine hijacking a 100-meter moon made of rare earth metals like gold, platinum, rhodium, ruthenium, iridium, etc. etc. More than enough to under write the mission and pay for a moon base.
If we go grab a moon sized ball of gold, gold will lose most of its value. It'll be the next Aluminium.
Re: Radar reveals two moons orbiting asteroid Florence
#16Imagine hijacking a 100-meter moon made of rare earth metals like gold, platinum, rhodium, ruthenium, iridium, etc. etc. More than enough to under write the mission and pay for a moon base.
If we go grab a moon sized ball of gold, gold will lose most of its value. It'll be the next Aluminium.
That much gold would still be worth it for electronic and spaceflight applications. Gold's like a better copper or silver there. And let's not forget the most important application, stereo plug connectors.
For platinum or iridium, making it cheaper there would enable all sorts of catalytic chemical processes that are prohibitively expensive now. If abundant enough, new demand will keep the bottom of the market from falling out.
Re: Radar reveals two moons orbiting asteroid Florence
#17That's no moon.
Re: Radar reveals two moons orbiting asteroid Florence
#18Imagine hijacking a 100-meter moon made of rare earth metals like gold, platinum, rhodium, ruthenium, iridium, etc. etc. More than enough to under write the mission and pay for a moon base.
If we go grab a moon sized ball of gold, gold will lose most of its value. It'll be the next Aluminium.
I got a chuckle out of the Hobbit movie, where Smaug's gold treasure was so enormous the dwarves would be rendered penniless if they tried to spend it :-)
There is precedent. When the Spanish extracted all that gold and silver from South America and shipped it back to Spain, all they got was inflation.
Re: Radar reveals two moons orbiting asteroid Florence
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't understand how the phrase 'inner moon eclipsed' tells the reader that the source of radiation for this radar measurement is the sun.
Well, if the illumination was from the radio telescope, then the moon would be hidden behind the parent asteroid when it is eclipsed. We would not see it go dark, it would just be obscured.
That's just an artifact of the visualization; the point of view is above the north pole of Florence, which points decidedly away from Earth (probably +/- a few degrees from normal to the plane of the ecliptic).
Re: Radar reveals two moons orbiting asteroid Florence
#20Imagine hijacking a 100-meter moon made of rare earth metals like gold, platinum, rhodium, ruthenium, iridium, etc. etc. More than enough to under write the mission and pay for a moon base.
The trick is getting it through the atmosphere intact.
Not a real problem, you'll only lose the outermost layers going through the atmosphere.
The biggest problem is what happens when it lands. And also what happens to whatever it lands on.