Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is super cool! Can you please ask him to put some larger images on there because I only get these tiny little thumbs.
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If the Earth were 100 pixels wide
171–180 of 216 posts
Re: If the Earth were 100 pixels wide
#172I'd really like to see a few more markers: 1) 3100 px: Farthest humans have been from Earth (Apollo 13, April '70: 400,171 km) 2) 10 px: Gemini 11, farthest from Earth on non-lunar mission (Sept '66: 1,374.1 km) 3) 3 px: Apogee of ISS (farthest a human has traveled for... a while: 424 km) (I'm probably forgetting something, can't find a good list of spaceflights by distance...) Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L…
Several years ago J. Richard Gott and Mario Jurić of Princeton put together an awesome logarithmic map of the entire universe:
Re: If the Earth were 100 pixels wide
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're talking about a first-person view, aren't you? But we don't start with that, we start with a third-person view of Earth and then "pan" across the sky... So wouldn't panning across the sky from whatever vantage point actually produce that movement? Same as when you point a telescope and pan, the stars move against your view...?
You're right, we do start with a 3rd person view of Earth .. but I still interpreted the motion as translation rather than rotation. By your interpretation, the camera lens is at a fixed point and then simply "swings" from pointing at Earth to point at Mars. But, from such a supposed point, both the Earth and Mars would be fixed points rather than objects with "multi-pixel" width. So the fact that both the Earth & Ma…
It is simple.
1. Choose a position where the proportional sizes of the Earth, Moon and Mars are what they are on the page. This is likely far away above the ecliptic (the plane the planets are in).
2. Choose a telescope focal length to set the right scale for the planets. Ie magnification.
3. Pan and imagine there is an object in the ecliptic plane at the center of your field of view. Mention the calculated speed of the object.
This all results in a moving star field.
Re: If the Earth were 100 pixels wide
#174It bothers me a little that they show the motion against a starfield like that -- the stars are so far away that they won't shift perceptibly even on a journey to mars. I mean, I don't have any better ideas, but given that the whole point is to give an idea of scale I wish they'd come up with something else. :)
Does it bother you that Florida and the Mediterranean have gone missing? :)
A little bit about the Mediterranean. But not at all to Florida, I think we all would be better off without Florida. (The geniuses that inhabit that peninsula need to go with it.)
Re: If the Earth were 100 pixels wide
#175I'm glad he didn't decide to do distancetobrunomars.com
Re: If the Earth were 100 pixels wide
#176Cool. Unfortunately though, on my regular setup of Firefox on Windows, the background image abruptly 'runs out' shortly after the "You're currently travelling at 70000 pixels/second" message appears, leaving me with a blank white screen. I believe this is due to this browser bug I've just found out about: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=816917 Fine on Chrome though.
So one more site that works only in Chrome. Sad.
Re: If the Earth were 100 pixels wide
#177Is anyone else a little bothered by the fact that the reported speed was 1/5 the speed of light, yet the flyby necessarily increased to well over the speed of light in order to actually get you to Mars before you got bored and closed the tab? Traveling at the speed of light would have taken 5-20 minutes. Traveling slower than that would have taken even longer...
Travelling at the speed of light would have taken 0 seconds for you, the traveller, but 5-20 minutes for your observer. However, the Lorentz factor at 20% of the speed of light is ~1.02. This means the distance you travel is only about 2% shorter, so relativistic effects aren't the reason for the discrepancy.
Plus, if it was large enough to have an effect on perceived time, it would affect the apparent distance as well, thus negating the point of the demo!
Re: If the Earth were 100 pixels wide
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
Every time I see that page it makes me realise just how small and insignificant we are in the grand scheme of things, and how badly I really want to go exploring everything that is out there.
Yet you could spend an entire lifetime exploring everything that is 'here', and still not manage it. Space is unfathomably big, and we are a grain of sand on the beach of the universe. But that grain of sand contains enough complexity and variety to fascinate for a practically unlimited period of time. Mars is cool, and grand, and inconceivably different. I'd rather see the cherry blossoms in Japan, or go for a walk…
Space is boring. Flyunder territory.
Re: If the Earth were 100 pixels wide
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
For me it currently says "You're currently travelling at 7,000 pixels a second 200,000 km/h" - which is clearly wrong, as at that speed it would take an hour to get to the moon. Good idea, well intentioned. But they got the numbers wrong...
100 pixel earth = 13KM 1 pixel = 0.13KM 7K pixels/s = 910 KM/s 910 * 60 * 60 = 3.3 Million KM/h
The Earth is not 13 km in diameter. Maybe you meant 13 Mm, or roughly 13 000 km? The result is ~3 billion km/h then. I haven't timed it, but that seems to align with how long the animation took (around half of a minute).
Re: If the Earth were 100 pixels wide
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm more bothered by the authoritative fact that 'the timeline for a manned mission to Mars is the 2030s'. Says who, NASA? They're not the only ones trying to get there.
Essentially all Mars missions under serious consideration rely on special alignments of planetary orbits to minimize the fuel required. That leads to very specific "launch windows" that may only occur every few years. For an Earth-Mars trip, the basic launch window is available roughly every two years, but there are particularly low-energy opportunities every 16 years or so. My understanding is that the next of those…
The difference between the Hohmann transfer orbit available every two-ish years and the low-energy opportunities is not significant enough to impact mission viability.
The reason a mission to Mars is "scheduled" for 2030's is because that's the nearest date outside of government budgeting schedules. It would take us 10 years to put together a focused effort (like the Apollo program), there's absolutely no plan to do so right now or over the next 10 years of the government budget. So by that sketchy line of thinking, the earliest this could happen is 2013 + 20 years, or 2033.
Maybe I'm showing my age, but I remember a decade ago "the Mars landing" was scheduled for the 2020's. In the 90's we were talking about the 2010's (now!). I bet you when 2020 rolls around, it'll be the 2040's that we're looking towards.