What "weed need" is a space mission!

[firejuggler]

Juno send her first few images, and it's stunning
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=6613

[chalsall]

Originally Posted by kladner

I think of Mote as an ultimate Malthusian warning. It would be well for humankind to pay attention. In this household, we blame Pournelle for all the royalty/nobility stuffed into a good story. I guess you gotta have some social framework, though.

Niven was the brain. Pournelle was the mouth.

I also don't like Pournelle that much (mostly because of his Byte writings about computing).

Niven has written a lot of worthy stuff independently. Ringworld, for example (levering on Dyson, and leveraged upon by Pratchett).

[xilman]

So that's where the damned thing has been trying to hide.

[chalsall]

Originally Posted by xilman

So that's where the damned thing has been trying to hide.

Unfortunate that the anchor didn't fire. (Bounce, bounce, bounce...)

Perhaps next time there will be redundancy.

[chalsall]

Ambition the film by ESA was pretty cool.

But, then again, so was the Seven Minutes of Terror: The Challenges of Getting to Mars video by NASA.

A pity the latter video had the audio drowned out by unnecessary music.

That previously was a bloody good video, serous engineers talking seriously.

[only_human]

Elon Musk Asks for Help Solving SpaceX Rocket Explosion

Musk tweeted about the loss of the Falcon 9 hours after the incident, noting that the explosion appeared to originate "around upper-stage oxygen tank" but the cause was "still unknown." SpaceX provided more updates about the incident on Sept. 2.

Then, Musk's account went quiet until about 12:30 a.m. EDT this morning (0030 GMT), when he began tweeting actively about the explosion.

"Still working on the Falcon fireball investigation. Turning out to be the most difficult and complex failure we have ever had in 14 years," Musk wrote. "Important to note that this happened during a routine filling operation. Engines were not on, and there was no apparent heat source.

"Particularly trying to understand the quieter bang sound a few seconds before the fireball goes off. May come from rocket or something else," he said.

Musk also answered questions and responded to comments from the public.

When Twitter user @ashwin7002 tweeted at Musk that "there are some videos on YouTube claiming something hit the rocket. Any reality there?" Musk replied, "We have not ruled that out."

Twitter user Matt Stohrer wrote, "that sound at 0:54 sounds like a metal joint popping under stress. e.g. weld failing on strut, welded seam bursting, etc." Musk replied, "Most likely true, but we can't yet find it on any vehicle sensors."

[chappy]

Red Heaven Kickstarter project

They are making a documentary about pretending to be on Mars.

It stars the wife of a friend of mine.

Let's get off this rock.

[jasong]

Originally Posted by chappy

Red Heaven Kickstarter project

They are making a documentary about pretending to be on Mars.

It stars the wife of a friend of mine.

Let's get off this rock.

I'm kind of hoping dark energy is something we can imitate and maybe we can get off the planet for way cheaper than it is now. The LHC keeps coming up with new stuff, so who knows.

But then the problem would be how do you prevent idiots from trying to go to the moon in their cars?

[Dubslow]

SpaceX Mars Announcement from IAC starts in 1.5 hours!

https://spacex.com/mars

[LaurV]

Originally Posted by Dubslow

SpaceX Mars Announcement from IAC starts in 1.5 hours!

https://spacex.com/mars

A bit disappointing. It looked a lot like advertising, he didn't seem "prepared" for the talk, a lot of "aaaaarrr" and "eeerrrrr", he didn't say anything about the cosmic radiation and all the dangers of the trip, etc. Looked like he only wanted to boast about his luxury design with restaurant on board, etc, and the 200k tickets (i think they are still expensive, the real cost could be cut to at least a third), and about how much money is he going to collect, to be spent on March and nowhere else...

[xilman]

Originally Posted by LaurV

and the 200k tickets (i think they are still expensive, the real cost could be cut to at least a third), and about how much money is he going to collect, to be spent on March and nowhere else...

The BBC had a discussion on this issue. I pointed out that a good number of British baby-boomers could easily afford $200K if they wanted to because they had had a free university education and now own their (greatly inflated) houses outright. The only other qualification was that (by and large) some had not reproduced and so didn't need to support their offspring directly or through bequests.

Reaction was mixed. 7 voted up my post, 16 voted down.

FWIW. I could afford a $200K ticket for the reasons outlined above. In practice I will probably be too old for the likely time period when tickets go on sale, even if I wanted to emigrate to Mars, though the idea is very tempting. At my age, I don't give a damn that I'm 20% more likely to develop a radiation-induced cancer because it's almost certain that I'm going to die of something in the next 40 years.