Mars really is a shit planet.
I’ve terraformed Mars several times over already. It’s easy!
Romalar
4335
People love to assume we’re fully out of options for Mars. If we get to the point where we can throw around that many comets, there are going to be other options for protecting Mars’ atmosphere other than a normal magnetosphere.
For example:
Naturally, Green and his colleagues acknowledged that the idea might sounds a bit “fanciful”. However, they were quick to emphasize how new research into miniature magnetospheres (for the sake of protecting crews and spacecraft) supports this concept:
“This new research is coming about due to the application of full plasma physics codes and laboratory experiments. In the future it is quite possible that an inflatable structure(s) can generate a magnetic dipole field at a level of perhaps 1 or 2 Tesla (or 10,000 to 20,000 Gauss) as an active shield against the solar wind.”
Romalar
4336
Also, Ingenuity has proven it can maneuver longer distances now.
Part of the team (and some from the Dragonfly flying Titan probe team) is doing an AMA:
Michael Collins has died. RIP.
Buzz is the last living member of Apollo 11.
Just found out about this. :(
Highly recommend his memoir “Carrying the Fire” to anyone interested in what the Apollo program was like for one of the astronauts in it.
This entire situation depresses the hell out of me. That no one even seems to care about it depresses me even more.
jpinard
4341
Is there more they can be doing to darken them? Maybe coat them with that ultra dark black hole paint?
Matt_W
4342
Vantablack? I have a piece of aluminum painted with that stuff sitting on my desk. It does look like a hole in the universe.
RichVR
4344
But they will still occult stars and other things. More shit in orbit is still a bad thing.
IMO more shit in orbit is a positive thing. Starlink is a case in point. The slow degrading of terrestrial astronomy is the price we’re going to pay for being a space-faring civilization.
On the plus side, the cheaper it gets to put stuff into orbit - also thanks to SpaceX - the more space telescopes we can have.
RichVR
4346
Which space-faring civilization are you talking about? What a joke.
The one I hope that we will become. There are so many valuable things we can do in orbit and further out (and going further out will require more facilities in orbit to stage from), limited so far by the expense of getting there. As launch costs continue to drop, the arrow is only going to point in one direction on this.
RichVR
4348
I agree with everything you say. But this will never happen in my life. Good luck to you youngsters. :)
Matt_W
4349
Like what?
Another facet of having 40,000 objects in LEO is that it only takes a collision or two to start a cascade and deny us space altogether for generations. It seems like the space around a planet is huge, and it is, but every one of those orbits crosses the equator twice per 90 minute circuit, and the equator is only about 25,000 miles around. Keep in mind, the most populated ring of space right now is the geosynchronous ring, which is about 100x farther away and thus 100x bigger and a dozen times slower than LEO orbits. And there are only a few hundred satellites up there.
Starlink alone can account for over 1400 satellites in LEO. And the advantage of saturated LEO is that those satellites will naturally decay out of their orbits in a few decades if they malfunction and lose propulsion.
If we clutter up Near Earth Oribit thoroughly enough we can make sure it’s impossible to ever get off this shit heap!
I read Carrying the Fire, and I’m sorry to say I really don’t remember much about it. Michael was overshadow by Neil being the first man, and Buzz being such a personality. But I think he was content with his achievement, his immorality and his art.
I’m sad at his passing, but I’m going to be devastated when we lose Buzz. I’ve noticed the last couple of year his tweets have been less frequent and more official and friend who has meet Buzz a number of times has said, his memory was noticeably slipping in 2019.
