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New Horizons Reaches Ultima Thule

nytimes.com

81–88 of 88 posts

Re: New Horizons Reaches Ultima Thule

#81
post #10

The timing is sensational: humanity begins 2019 with an astronomical milestone event.

Also, asteroid sample-return mission Osiris-REX acheived orbital insertion around its asteroid target.

Which was Really Hard, because that is a tiny object to use as a gravitational anchor. About the mass of a terrestrial mountain. The precision is incredible.

https://www.asteroidmission.org/

Re: New Horizons Reaches Ultima Thule

#82

I’ve been working a side project to build a more mobile friendly and scroll friendly version of NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day at http://lookupat.space The most recent update hopefully makes it a lot more useable with including both attribution of the work and an explanation of what the picture is about. As always, there is a link to the original page, and I plan on adding sorting features soon. I hope this help…

Awesome page! Any chance it could have a "click here for the next page" version? Autoload of new content messes with my mouse/browser/head in ways I don't like. But, otherwise great site!

I was going for an instagram, infinite-scroll vibe, so a change to paginated would stray from the original intention a bit. Any particular reason you don’t like the autoload? I may just have a poor implementation of it. :) Thanks for checking out the site though, I appreciate it!

Re: New Horizons Reaches Ultima Thule

#83
post #57

I’ve been working a side project to build a more mobile friendly and scroll friendly version of NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day at http://lookupat.space The most recent update hopefully makes it a lot more useable with including both attribution of the work and an explanation of what the picture is about. As always, there is a link to the original page, and I plan on adding sorting features soon. I hope this help…

Thank you for this!!

Thank you for being one of the first to visit and enjoy it! :D

Re: New Horizons Reaches Ultima Thule

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Awesome page! Any chance it could have a "click here for the next page" version? Autoload of new content messes with my mouse/browser/head in ways I don't like. But, otherwise great site!

I was going for an instagram, infinite-scroll vibe, so a change to paginated would stray from the original intention a bit. Any particular reason you don’t like the autoload? I may just have a poor implementation of it. :) Thanks for checking out the site though, I appreciate it!

Could you make it work without Javascript? Build pagination by default, then with JS, progressively enhance to infinite scroll. I had to enable JS for your domain and a few others before anything meaningful appeared. Your content turned out to be photos, which is something that you do not need JS for!

Re: New Horizons Reaches Ultima Thule

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was going for an instagram, infinite-scroll vibe, so a change to paginated would stray from the original intention a bit. Any particular reason you don’t like the autoload? I may just have a poor implementation of it. :) Thanks for checking out the site though, I appreciate it!

Could you make it work without Javascript? Build pagination by default, then with JS, progressively enhance to infinite scroll. I had to enable JS for your domain and a few others before anything meaningful appeared. Your content turned out to be photos, which is something that you do not need JS for!

You don't need javascript to display photos, but for the functionality of simulating an "infinity-scroll" where images are fetched based on the position of the viewport relative to the bottom, I'm not sure how this is accomplishable without javascript (Javascript considered harmful? :P).

I'm certainly open to the idea of pagination if the agent has javascript disabled by default, but that would then require paginating 6800+ images and seems like it would impact performance moreso than the current method of fetching as the user scrolls (although, there is something to be said about my hacky implementation of infinity scroll).

I appreciate the feedback!

Re: New Horizons Reaches Ultima Thule

#86
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nor can they. The cost of that would exceed the potential benefits.

Unless of course there was a website you could log into and pick the top-10 things you want your tax dollars spent on. And an accompanying Law directing that x-percent (>60) of your (unmanipulated) choices be apportioned accordingly to the programs you choose. The cost of that would be relatively close to nil (except for those who'd rather you see you with no choice at all).

There is a lot more to it than just making choices avaliable.

Let's say you are right.

I do not want taxes turned into a market. Doing that is a patch for not doing civics better in the first place.

When more of us get involved, the funding scenario inproves right a long with a lot of overdue things.

I am completely willing to revisit this idea when we are doing more of the basics right.

Re: New Horizons Reaches Ultima Thule

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly the ices. No need to go so far out for that though. Bennu likely has a fair bit of water as hydrates and there is a fair bit of water ice in Saturn's rings.

Don't be inner-solar-system-centric :) Once the frontier has been pushed back to the outer solar system, volatile KBO and Oort Cloud objects become the new frontier. We can imagine a distant future where humanity planet-hops from object to object, transforming these volatile rocks into vibrant cities each with their own culture.

Don't mean to be an inner-solar-system-centric, but we all have to respect the economics of deltaVee. I'll grant you that if we're harvesting reaction mass from the Oort, it may become moot, provided we have some way to accelerate it to high velocity. Solar thermal probably isn't practical, there probably aren't practical concentrations of fuel for fusion and certainly not fission. I wonder if Mercury has relatively easily mined fissile material?

Re: New Horizons Reaches Ultima Thule

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't be inner-solar-system-centric :) Once the frontier has been pushed back to the outer solar system, volatile KBO and Oort Cloud objects become the new frontier. We can imagine a distant future where humanity planet-hops from object to object, transforming these volatile rocks into vibrant cities each with their own culture.

Don't mean to be an inner-solar-system-centric, but we all have to respect the economics of deltaVee. I'll grant you that if we're harvesting reaction mass from the Oort, it may become moot, provided we have some way to accelerate it to high velocity. Solar thermal probably isn't practical, there probably aren't practical concentrations of fuel for fusion and certainly not fission. I wonder if Mercury has relatively…

What delta-V? I'm not suggesting it go anywhere too distant. In a few thousand years there will be trillions of sentient beings living in the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud, trading with each other and building lasting, self-sufficient civilizations.
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