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Posted on 03/19/2017 9:34:12 PM PDT by Paul R.
A SpaceX Dragon spacecraft splashed down in the Pacific Ocean Sunday (March 19), returning to Earth with more than 2 tons of science experiments and other gear from the International Space Station.
(Excerpt) Read more at space.com ...
STUNNED it didn’t explode upon re-entry! :l
I was a little surprised to not see this posted. This success is encouraging!
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I’m glad for the success, but they are making it routine. A lot of the launch successes and landings don’t get posted either for the same reason.
NASA are so dead on their a$$.
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Nice Pics!
We could be mining asteroids and have a base or two on the moon. This has all already been done before.
It has been done, but not at these kinds of lower costs. Lower costs, and willpower are what’s really needed to make mining asteroids and setting up Moon bases practical. Musk definitely seems to have the willpower; we’ll see if he can keep the costs down.
“make mining asteroids and setting up Moon bases practical”
Mining asteroids is pretty scary I think. The solar system is a delicate balancing act. It’s kind of miraculous that we don’t get hit more often by these stray asteroids, comets and chunks of whatever else is out there flying around at 50,000mph.
As a species I don’t think we’re really smart enough to calculate the effects of multiple explosions to loose the precious metals from any of these mineable asteroids. Could easily set in motion a chain of events resulting in an extinction level event.
I’m glad I wont be around when that happens. But before we start mining asteroids, we’d better hedge our bets and locate habitable planets and colonize them. I’m just sayin... Don’t Soil the plate that you eat from.
I guess I am old because “routine” space flight doesn’t bore me.
Until we build a warp drive in Earth orbit, we will be playing in our little eart sand box.
The drive needs vast space to test it, and we are now on it.
Space X is not doing any warp drive research.
NASA is:
http://www.davidreneke.com/nasa-research-to-create-a-warp-drive-bubble-in-lab/
White–Juday warp-field interferometer:
“The White–Juday warp-field interferometer is an experiment designed to detect a microscopic instance of a warping of spacetime. If such a warp is detected, it is hoped that more research into creating an Alcubierre warp bubble will be inspired. A research team led by Harold “Sonny” White in collaboration with Dr. Richard Juday[1][2] at the NASA Johnson Space Center and Dakota State University are conducting experiments, but results so far have been inconclusive...........”
Results
“White announced the first results of his interferometer experiment at a 2013 space conference. According to White, these results showed a vanishing but non-zero difference between charged and uncharged states after signal processing, but this difference remains inconclusive due to external interference and limits in the computational processing.[10][12] It is now clear that no exotic matter is involved in such an experiment, but some other concept is being used.[13][14]”
Good Read:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White%E2%80%93Juday_warp-field_interferometer
NASA should hire Juday on staff to work with Sonny.
Sonny White and Juday warp drive experiment slide show :
I rather doubt that asteroid mining will be done with explosives. The gravity of an asteroid is way too low, for one thing. So, any debris will have to be contained. Even a pebble is dangerous if on a significantly different trajectory and you meet it...
Most people don’t comprehend well the vastness of space (even in our own neighborhood) because it is so big as to be incomprehensible by experience.* So, there are lots of “stray” objects out there, but, huge amounts of empty space between the larger ones (and usually, us.) Still, the results of a big hit are so dire, and we know they DO happen once in a while (on a geologic time scale), that the #1 priority should be developing a defense — or perhaps getting on a track to be able to do so.
As for colonizing habitable planets, that’s a massive undertaking even for Mars (have you read Elon Musk’s plans?) And to go further, ie., outside our Solar System, you probably have to have that asteroid and / or Moon mining just for the raw materials to build the ships to “go there”. This assumes we do not attain the tech to build a space elevator, or perhaps a space fountain, a launch loop, a Skyhook, a space tether, or large scale magnetic catapults (per “The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress”).
*Haha, “incomprehensible by experience.” Sort of like a lib trying to comprehend Trump as President!
(I see I’ve “made” the sidebar - gotta put up a good pic!)
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