March 20: A Bright Star Winks Out

An exceedingly rare celestial event is predicted for early this morning when an asteroid will briefly hide one of the brightest stars in the sky from view. The asteroid in question is 163 Erigone, and the star that it will obscure is Regulus, in the constellation of Leo, the Lion.

April 14-15: Lunar Eclipse and Mars close approach

Mars will come to within 57.4 million miles (92.4 million km) of our planet, making its closest approach to Earth since January 2008. All through the night, Mars will resemble a dazzling star shining with a steady fiery-colored tint; its brightness will match Sirius, the most luminous of all the stars.

As a bonus, later that very same night (actually the early hours of April 15), North America will have a ringside seat to a total lunar eclipse when the full moon becomes transformed into a mottled reddish ball for 78 minutes as it is completely immersed in the shadow of the Earth. This total lunar eclipse will be the first one widely visible from North America in nearly 3.5 years.

April 28-29: A “Ring of Fire” Eclipse that Nobody Will See?

It is quite possible that only penguins will witness the annular (ring) phase of this eclipse, as it will occur within the uninhabited region of Wilkes Land in Antarctica. A partial solar eclipse will be visible from Australia.

May 24: A Possible Outburst of Bright Meteors

Perhaps the most dramatic sky event in 2014 could come at the start of Memorial Day weekend. In the predawn hours of Saturday, May 24, our planet is expected to sweep through a great number of dusty trails left behind in space by a small comet (known as P/209 LINEAR).

Aug. 10: Biggest Full Moon of 2014

On Aug. 10, the moon turns full at 2:09 p.m. EDT, and just nine minutes earlier it will arrive at its closest point to the Earth in 2014 at a distance of 221,765 miles (356,896 km), making this a so-called “supermoon.” Expect a large range in ocean tides (exceptionally low to exceptionally high) for the next few days.

Aug. 12: The Perseid Meteor Shower

This one is more of a lowlight than a highlight, unfortunately. The annual summer performance of the brilliant Perseid meteor shower will be severely hindered by the light of a nearly full moon.

Aug. 18: A Brilliant Double Planet

An hour before sunrise, low in the east-northeast sky, the two brightest planets, Venus and Jupiter, will be strikingly close together. The two worlds will be separated by less than two-thirds of the apparent width of the moon in our sky, making for a very eye-catching sight.

Oct. 8: Another Total Lunar Eclipse!

This eclipse favors the western half of North America, the Hawaiian Islands, eastern Asia, Indonesia, New Zealand and the eastern half of Australia. Across central and eastern North America, the moon will set while still completely immersed in Earth’s shadow.

Oct. 19: Near Collision of a Comet with Mars

All eyes will be on the Red Planet in October as Comet C/2013 A1(Siding Spring), discovered by Robert H. McNaught at Australia’s Siding Spring Observatory, will pass extremely close to Mars. The comet will come so close, in fact, that its coma may envelop Mars, as well as create a stupendous shower of meteors as seen from the Martian surface.

Oct. 23: A Partial Eclipse of the Sun

The moon’s penumbral shadow will fall over much of North America as well as extreme eastern Siberia, producing a partial solar eclipse. Greatest eclipse, with more than four-fifths of the sun’s diameter covered by the moon, will occur in M’Clintock Channel, an arm of the Arctic Ocean which divides Victoria Island from Prince of Wales Island in the Territory of Nunavut, Canada.

Dec. 13: The Geminid Meteor Shower

This is another lowlight. The Geminids, regarded by many observers as the best of the annual meteor showers, has the misfortune of occurring during the time of a last-quarter moon, which will pretty much squelch all but the brightest meteors.

I approve this thread : )

Apologies for the tangent, but what would happen if a comet passed that close to Earth?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C/2013_A1

“Mars will come to within 57.4 million miles (92.4 million km) of our planet, making its closest approach to Earth since January 2008. All through the night, Mars will resemble a dazzling star shining with a steady fiery-colored tint; its brightness will match Sirius, the most luminous of all the stars.”

Just don’t tell us that it will appear ten times bigger than usual in the sky, and that this won’t happen again for a million, billion trillion years, give or take a month.

Aquila said:

I approve this thread : )

moi aussi

really good meteor shower DA. that is if we went through the coma. otherwise how good a shower will depend on where is passed us, ie do we cross its orbit closely (good showers) or further away (poor showers).

Plus widespread panic, conspiracy theories, mass suicides and general pandemonium.

March 20: A Bright Star Winks Out

An exceedingly rare celestial event is predicted for early this morning when an asteroid will briefly hide one of the brightest stars in the sky from view. The asteroid in question is 163 Erigone, and the star that it will obscure is Regulus, in the constellation of Leo, the Lion.
———————————————————————————

Well that is a very convenient event.

Was the asteroid very big or very close…

And did it happen?

Was the asteroid very big or very close…

very close compared to the distance to the star.

ChrispenEvan said:

Was the asteroid very big or very close…

very close compared to the distance to the star.

Slow down egg-head

very close compared to the distance to the star.
———————————————————-

Yes indeed…

With a shadow length at least as long as the distance from Earth, no doubt.

Just how long would it take for that asteroid to move across a star?

obviously. stars are just point source of light unless seen through a good scope so any asteroid in the solar system will subtend more arcseconds.

blink and you’d miss it i reckon.

ChrispenEvan said:

blink and you’d miss it i reckon.

Mhmm

Lots of rocket launches this year mostly for satellites

58 so far

2014 in spaceflight

and around another 137 + to be launched

Russian Launches and Orbital Operations

Zarya, Soviet, Russian and International Space Flight

ABC Science 2014 Aussie sky guide

Timeline of Solar System exploration

NASA 2014 Launch Schedule

ESA Launchers
ESA Missions

obviously. stars are just point source of light unless seen through a good scope so any asteroid in the solar system will subtend more arcseconds.
————————————————————-

That doesn’t make any sense.

tough.

International Space Station 2014 Launches

International Space Station

United States SpaceX CRS-3 30 March

Russia Soyuz TMA-12M 25 March

Russia Progress M-23M 9 April

United States Cygnus CRS Orb-2 1 May

Russia Soyuz TMA-13M 28 May

United States SpaceX CRS-4 8 June

Angular diameter: the angle subtended by an object

Angular diameter: the angle subtended by an object
———————————————

Yeah so the object in the diagram is one third the size of the Sun…

What size does an asteroid need to be to blink out a close star at the distance of the Oort cloud?

dunno, would depend on the size of the star and how far away it was.

regulus is 73ly and a few million kms in dia and erigone is in the asteroid belt and 73km dia.

Mr Ironic said:

Angular diameter: the angle subtended by an object
———————————————

Yeah so the object in the diagram is one third the size of the Sun…

What size does an asteroid need to be to blink out a close star at the distance of the Oort cloud?

there are no stars at that distance.

http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/brits-are-banning-aussie-upspeak/story-fniym874-1226829312130?utm_source=outbrain&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=lifestyle

about time too

its the idiot that tends to use this type of language where at least one word has that inflection at the end of a word that normally denotes a question

I’ve often found it the dialect of the uneducated

there are no stars at that distance.

you don’t read the right websites…

;-)

just as a pointer to anyone that hasn’t ever thought of it

when you look at the sky almost everything that you can see is in the milky way (our galaxy) there are few object observable to the eye that are outside the galaxy except perhaps Andromeda (off the top of my head)

all those stars you can see are all in our galaxy

look at the tail of scorpio and perhaps down to the left slightly across about an inch or so, congratulations you are looking at roughly the centre of our galaxy

there are no stars at that distance.
—————————————

Here, add one my spare commas,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

wookiemeister said:

just as a pointer to anyone that hasn’t ever thought of it

when you look at the sky almost everything that you can see is in the milky way (our galaxy) there are few object observable to the eye that are outside the galaxy except perhaps Andromeda (off the top of my head)

all those stars you can see are all in our galaxy

look at the tail of scorpio and perhaps down to the left slightly across about an inch or so, congratulations you are looking at roughly the centre of our galaxy

Six visible unaided according to wiki.

dunno, would depend on the size of the star and how far away it was.
———————————————————————-

Yeah and what ever that size is I bet there are asteroids smaller…

Just nick picking…

Anyhoop, they did say it was a rare occurrence. Otherwise we could be blacked out by the Oort Cloud…

Maybe that’s why stars twinkle…

jjjust moi said:

wookiemeister said:

just as a pointer to anyone that hasn’t ever thought of it

when you look at the sky almost everything that you can see is in the milky way (our galaxy) there are few object observable to the eye that are outside the galaxy except perhaps Andromeda (off the top of my head)

all those stars you can see are all in our galaxy

look at the tail of scorpio and perhaps down to the left slightly across about an inch or so, congratulations you are looking at roughly the centre of our galaxy

Six visible unaided according to wiki.

Andromeda is only going to get bigger I’m afraid, eventually it will crash into us

Andromeda is only going to get bigger I’m afraid, eventually it will crash into us
————————————————

Where crash means misses….

Same as marriage, lots of gravitational pull but fuck all contact.

Other Space Missions

India
Indian Space Research Organisation

China
China National Space Administration

Japan
Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency

Category:Space programs by country

ChrispenEvan said:

obviously. stars are just point source of light unless seen through a good scope so any asteroid in the solar system will subtend more arcseconds.

Um, I assume you meant to say mere arcseconds.

But even that’s a rather large over-estimate of the apparent size.

According to the Astronomical Journal the angular diameter of Regulus is around 1.35 milliarcseconds.

On 28 March 1980 an occultation of Regulus (= alpha Leo) was observed in two colors from Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory. The best-fit uniform disk angular diameters (in milliarcseconds) derived from these data are 1.32 + or – 0.2 (yellow channel, lambda = 5768 A) and 1.37 + or – 0.11 (blue channel, lambda = 4356 A), in excellent agreement with the measurement obtained through intensity interferometry and in reasonable agreement with a daytime occultation observed at Kitt Peak National Observatory.

FWIW, Regulus is a multiple star system, consisting of two pairs of stars, but 3 of those stars aren’t particularly bright, so they wouldn’t really interfere with the measurement cited above.

Wikipedia

Regulus (α Leo, α Leonis, Alpha Leonis) is the brightest star in the constellation Leo and one of the brightest stars in the night sky, lying approximately 79 light years from Earth. Regulus is a multiple star system composed of four stars that are organized into two pairs. The spectroscopic binary Regulus A consists of a blue-white main-sequence star and its companion, which has not yet been directly observed, but is probably a white dwarf star. Located farther away is the pair Regulus B and Regulus C, which are dim main-sequence stars.

Note that the red giant Betelgeuse, which is roughly 700 ly distant, has an angular diameter of around 56 milliarcseconds.

Wikipedia

On 13 December 1920, Betelgeuse became the first star outside the Solar System to have the angular size of its photosphere measured. Although interferometry was still in its infancy, the experiment proved a success. The researchers, using a uniform disk model, determined that Betelgeuse had a diameter of 0.047 arcseconds, although the stellar disk was likely 17% larger due to the limb darkening, resulting in an estimate for its angular diameter of about 0.055”. Since then, other studies have produced angular diameters that range from 0.042 to 0.069 arcseconds.

Mr Ironic said:

Andromeda is only going to get bigger I’m afraid, eventually it will crash into us
————————————————

Where crash means misses….

Same as marriage, lots of gravitational pull but fuck all contact.

you have been misled

have a look at the graphics at what will happen when we collide

Mr Ironic said:

dunno, would depend on the size of the star and how far away it was.
———————————————————————-

Yeah and what ever that size is I bet there are asteroids smaller…

Certainly asteroids are much smaller than stars. But because they are vastly closer they can easily have larger angular sizes than stars.

Mr Ironic said:

Anyhoop, they did say it was a rare occurrence. Otherwise we could be blacked out by the Oort Cloud…

WTF?

The Oort cloud

The Oort cloud /ˈɔrt/ (named after the Dutch astronomer Jan Oort), or Öpik–Oort cloud, is a hypothesized spherical cloud of predominantly icy planetesimals that may lie roughly 50,000 AU, or nearly a light-year, from the Sun. This places the cloud at nearly a quarter of the distance to Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to the Sun. The Kuiper belt and the scattered disc, the other two reservoirs of trans-Neptunian objects, are less than one thousandth of the Oort cloud’s distance. The outer limit of the Oort cloud defines the cosmographical boundary of the Solar System and the region of the Sun’s gravitational dominance.

Mr Ironic said:

Maybe that’s why stars twinkle…

Um, no. Stars twinkle because of dynamic density variations in the Earth’s atmosphere causing the light path to shift slightly. Those density variations are mostly due to variations in temperature and humidity.

have a look at the graphics at what will happen when we collide
———————————————————-

Yeah artist impressions of, I bet.

Space is big, really big.

Most stuff will miss most of the other stuff, in the short term.

wookiemeister said:

just as a pointer to anyone that hasn’t ever thought of it

when you look at the sky almost everything that you can see is in the milky way (our galaxy) there are few object observable to the eye that are outside the galaxy except perhaps Andromeda (off the top of my head)

all those stars you can see are all in our galaxy

look at the tail of scorpio and perhaps down to the left slightly across about an inch or so, congratulations you are looking at roughly the centre of our galaxy

For those of us in the Southern Hemisphere, the Magellanic Clouds are probably easier to see (and to find) than the Andromeda galaxy.

A recent xkcd comic thread mentions that the mean distance to the visible stars (not counting stuff like is Andromeda, Magellanic Clouds and the bits of the Milky Way where you can’t resolve individual stars with the naked eye) is fairly small – roughly within 100 light-years.

xkcd #1342
published 14 March 2014


Ancient Stars




Transcript
((All of the panels of this comic are white-on-black.))

{Two figures stand facing each other, looking up at the sky.}
Figure One: Just think – the light from that start was emitted thousands of years ago. It could be long gone.

{Figure One looks at Figure Two, who is still looking up.}
Figure Two: That’s Sirius. It’s eight light-years away.

{Figure One looks up again.}
Figure One: Oh.

{The two figures look at one another.}
Figure One: Just think – the light from that star was emitted in the previous presidential administration.
Figure Two: Hmm, doesn’t pack quite the punch.

Anyhoop, they did say it was a rare occurrence. Otherwise we could be blacked out by the Oort Cloud…

WTF?
—————————-

well it has already been determined that,

any asteroid in the solar system will subtend more arcseconds
———————————————

So ergo… the Oort cloud must blanket us from the light of stars…

It’s not clear how far away from 163 Erigone will be at the time on transit, but based on best and worse case scenarios it will be between 22 and 93 times as wide as Regulus.

away from Earth that is.

Mr Ironic said:

Most stuff will miss most of the other stuff, in the short term.

Yes and no. When the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) collides with the Milky Way the odds of a star (&/or planet) of one galaxy colliding with a star of the other galaxy is very low. OTOH, there’s more to a galaxy than just stars and planets – there’s an awful lot of gas and dust, too. The collision will put pressure waves through that gas and dust, leading to lots of new star formation. Some of those pressure waves will be a direct result of the galactic collision, some will happen due to the modifications of the orbits of the existing stars.

Mr Ironic said:

Anyhoop, they did say it was a rare occurrence. Otherwise we could be blacked out by the Oort Cloud…

WTF?
—————————-

well it has already been determined that,

any asteroid in the solar system will subtend more arcseconds
———————————————

So ergo… the Oort cloud must blanket us from the light of stars…

When any one of the asteroids in the Oort Cloud passes directly in front of a star that are in line of sight visible from earth

The Oort cloud is not a cloud that can blanket out stars, it is a ring of asteroids lying nearly one light year away form the sun

see

Oort cloud

Mr Ironic said:

Anyhoop, they did say it was a rare occurrence. Otherwise we could be blacked out by the Oort Cloud…

WTF?
—————————-

well it has already been determined that,

any asteroid in the solar system will subtend more arcseconds
———————————————

So ergo… the Oort cloud must blanket us from the light of stars…

Except that the Oort cloud is a lot further out than the bulk of the asteroids, so a body in the Oort cloud would have to be huge to have a big enough angular diameter to noticeably block light coming from outside the solar system. And so far, nobody has, in fact, noticed that, which is why the Oort cloud is still hypothetical.

CrazyNeutrino said:

The Oort cloud is not a cloud that can blanket out stars, it is a ring of asteroids lying nearly one light year away form the sun

Assuming it exists, it’s not a ring, it’s a sphere – it’s so far out that it didn’t get caught up in the flattening process that caused the inner system material to lie in a disk. And it’s expected that its components are primarily ices, with virtually none of the rocky or metallic components of the asteroids.

When any one of the asteroids in the Oort Cloud passes directly in front of a star that are in line of sight visible from earth
————————————

Well no, not any one at any time…

Meh anyway we still haven’t convinced ourselves that that the Oort cloud exists…

PM 2Ring said:

Mr Ironic said:

Most stuff will miss most of the other stuff, in the short term.

Yes and no. When the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) collides with the Milky Way the odds of a star (&/or planet) of one galaxy colliding with a star of the other galaxy is very low. OTOH, there’s more to a galaxy than just stars and planets – there’s an awful lot of gas and dust, too. The collision will put pressure waves through that gas and dust, leading to lots of new star formation. Some of those pressure waves will be a direct result of the galactic collision, some will happen due to the modifications of the orbits of the existing stars.

whats going to happen when the whole order of the milky way gets thrown out the window?

its not going to be pretty

so a body in the Oort cloud would have to be huge to have a big enough angular diameter to noticeably block light coming from outside the solar system. And so far, nobody has, in fact, noticed that, which is why the Oort cloud is still hypothetical.
———————————————-

Yeah I be all over that…

wookiemeister said:

PM 2Ring said:

Mr Ironic said:

Most stuff will miss most of the other stuff, in the short term.

Yes and no. When the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) collides with the Milky Way the odds of a star (&/or planet) of one galaxy colliding with a star of the other galaxy is very low. OTOH, there’s more to a galaxy than just stars and planets – there’s an awful lot of gas and dust, too. The collision will put pressure waves through that gas and dust, leading to lots of new star formation. Some of those pressure waves will be a direct result of the galactic collision, some will happen due to the modifications of the orbits of the existing stars.

whats going to happen when the whole order of the milky way gets thrown out the window?

its not going to be pretty

Not sure. It’s doubtful that we’ll retain spiral structure. Last time I was reading about this stuff, the prime theory was that we’ll end up as an elliptical galaxy , but I guess we need to know a bit more about dark matter to predict that kind of stuff accurately.

Of course, by then the Sun will be in its red giant phase, and hopefully we’ll have interstellar travel capability, assuming anything recognisably Earth-human still exists. :)

PM 2Ring said:

wookiemeister said:

PM 2Ring said:

Yes and no. When the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) collides with the Milky Way the odds of a star (&/or planet) of one galaxy colliding with a star of the other galaxy is very low. OTOH, there’s more to a galaxy than just stars and planets – there’s an awful lot of gas and dust, too. The collision will put pressure waves through that gas and dust, leading to lots of new star formation. Some of those pressure waves will be a direct result of the galactic collision, some will happen due to the modifications of the orbits of the existing stars.

whats going to happen when the whole order of the milky way gets thrown out the window?

its not going to be pretty

Not sure. It’s doubtful that we’ll retain spiral structure. Last time I was reading about this stuff, the prime theory was that we’ll end up as an elliptical galaxy , but I guess we need to know a bit more about dark matter to predict that kind of stuff accurately.

Of course, by then the Sun will be in its red giant phase, and hopefully we’ll have interstellar travel capability, assuming anything recognisably Earth-human still exists. :)

by that time the world won’t be recognisable

man as we know him will have most likely evolved or have died out

chances are it will be machines that save the galaxy and the universe (assuming they haven’t already and this is isn’t universe number 42 since they attained awareness).

what will really blow their socks off is when they learn that there wasn’t just one big bang x billion years ago

Divine Angel said:

Apologies for the tangent, but what would happen if a comet passed that close to Earth?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C/2013_A1

From your link:

It is possible that Comet Siding Spring could create a spectacular meteor shower on Mars or be a threat to the spacecraft in orbit on its closest approach to Mars. It will have to be extremely close to Mars for its debris to pose any risk. Millimeter-sized grains will be ejected at about 1 m/s (2 mph), and would take more than a year to travel 100,000 km from Comet Siding Spring.

Note that the atmosphere of Mars is very thin – roughly 1% the density of Earth’s. So if it got that close to us we’d be protected from a lot of the debris – most of it’d burn up invisibly in the upper atmosphere. OTOH, our gravity is stronger than Mars’s so the comet particles falling towards Earth would do so with a higher speed & hence more kinetic energy.

ChrispenEvan said:

really good meteor shower DA. that is if we went through the coma. otherwise how good a shower will depend on where is passed us, ie do we cross its orbit closely (good showers) or further away (poor showers).

Depends on the comet. New comets (i.e. ones that have never visited the inner system before) don’t have a lot of large loose debris associated with them, but old comets have lost much of the icy material that cements them together, due to being heated when they get close to the Sun, so they do tend to spread a fair bit of shrapnel around.

Don’t forget Voyagers…

“While Voyager 1 is commonly spoken of as having left the Solar System simultaneously with having left the heliosphere, the two are not the same. The Solar System is usually defined as the vastly larger region of space populated by bodies that orbit the Sun. The craft is presently less than one seventh the distance to the aphelion of Sedna, and it has not yet entered the Oort cloud, the source region of long-period comets, regarded by astronomers as the outermost zone of the Solar System.

Future of the probe
Image of Voyager 1’s radio signal on February 21, 2013Voyager 1 will reach the Oort cloud in about 300 years and take about 30,000 years to pass through it. Though it is not heading towards any particular star, in about 40,000 years, it will pass within 1.6 light years of the star Gliese 445, which is at present in the constellation Camelopardalis. That star is generally moving towards the Solar System at about 119 km/s (430,000 km/h; 270,000 mph). The Voyagers are destined—perhaps eternally—to wander the Milky Way.

Provided Voyager 1 does not collide with anything and is not retrieved, the New Horizons space probe will never pass it, despite being launched from Earth at a faster speed than either Voyager spacecraft. New Horizons is traveling at about 15 km/s, 2 km/s slower than Voyager 1, and is still slowing down. When New Horizons reaches the same distance from the Sun as Voyager 1 is now, its speed will be about 13 km/s (8 mi/s).”

Wiki

Um, I assume you meant to say mere arcseconds.

But even that’s a rather large over-estimate of the apparent size.

no more, the asteroid will appear larger than any star.

and yes, a lot smaller than arcsecs.

:-)

ChrispenEvan said:

Um, I assume you meant to say mere arcseconds.

But even that’s a rather large over-estimate of the apparent size.

no more, the asteroid will appear larger than any star.

and yes, a lot smaller than arcsecs.

:-)

Rightio.

PM 2Ring said:

CrazyNeutrino said:

The Oort cloud is not a cloud that can blanket out stars, it is a ring of asteroids lying nearly one light year away form the sun

Assuming it exists, it’s not a ring, it’s a sphere – it’s so far out that it didn’t get caught up in the flattening process that caused the inner system material to lie in a disk. And it’s expected that its components are primarily ices, with virtually none of the rocky or metallic components of the asteroids.

Ok

Tomorrow morning at 6 AM AEDT, a rock the size of 30 Sydney harbours will strike the earth precisely at Tooleybuc.

SpaceX Resets Space Station Launch with Revolutionary Rocket Legs and Robonaut Legs to March 30

The first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket sports a quartet of never before tried landing legs and the Dragon freighter is loaded with a set of lanky legs to enable mobility in space for NASA’s Robonaut 2 standing at the cutting of robotics technology.

a leggy mission

Hey CN,

What do you think of the Lofstrom launch loop ?

FWIW, Keith Lofstrom is a regular poster on xkcd.

PM 2Ring said:

Hey CN,

What do you think of the Lofstrom launch loop ?

FWIW, Keith Lofstrom is a regular poster on xkcd.

Its like a high tech sling shot

Awesome idea for $3/kg, seems feasible, what would be the engineering obstacles?

A computer simulation would be interesting

There is still talk of the space elevator

Does this count as space in 2014?

http://riaus.org.au/doctorwho/

Possibly not. But there might be people interested who didn’t know about it yet.

CrazyNeutrino said:

PM 2Ring said:

Hey CN,

What do you think of the Lofstrom launch loop ?

FWIW, Keith Lofstrom is a regular poster on xkcd.

Its like a high tech sling shot

Awesome idea for $3/kg, seems feasible, what would be the engineering obstacles?

A computer simulation would be interesting

There is still talk of the space elevator

First you have to work out how many orders of magnitude the price is underestimated by.

ESA satellite Gaia was the big news in Jan 2014 when it started taking data.

This satellite is billed as being able to determine the distances to 1,000,000,000 stars. Or to put it another way, able to find distances to stars about 100 times as accurately as any previous measurements.

ESA’s LISA pathfinder has been delayed to 2015, it was initially supposed to be launched this year.

The Mars Rover Opportunity had its 10th birthday in 2014, and is still in operation.

The 17 year old Cassini spacecraft is still producing startling new photographs of Saturn, and just recently found that Titan’s seas are mirror-smooth.

New gully on Mars found on Mars a few days ago by HiRISE camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter wasn’t there three years ago.

NASA launches 2014:
June 6 2014. ISS-RapidScat instrument, a replacement for NASA’s QuikScat Earth satellite to monitor ocean winds for climate research, weather predictions, and hurricane monitoring.

July 2014. OCO-2 is an Earth satellite mission to study carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Nov 2014. SMAP is an Earth satellite mission designed to measure and map Earth’s soil moisture and freeze/thaw state.

CrazyNeutrino said:

PM 2Ring said:

Hey CN,

What do you think of the Lofstrom launch loop ?

FWIW, Keith Lofstrom is a regular poster on xkcd.

Its like a high tech sling shot

Awesome idea for $3/kg, seems feasible, what would be the engineering obstacles?

A computer simulation would be interesting

There is still talk of the space elevator

See Keith’s website for more details.

Sure, it’s not cheap to build compared to a rocket-based system, but over the long term it’d be much cheaper per kilo delivered to orbit, assuming that you’ve got enough cargo to justify the running cost, i.e, you’d want to be sending stuff up pretty-much constantly. OTOH, once it’s up & spinning it’s energy requirements are fairly modest.

It’d also be much cheaper to build than a space elevator, and it could be done with existing technology, unlike a space elevator, which needs cable with a strength to weight ratio that we can’t yet make in the length required. Also, a broken Lofstrom launch loop wouldn’t be anywhere near as disastrous as a collapsing space elevator.

PM 2Ring said:

It’d also be much cheaper to build than a space elevator, and it could be done with existing technology,

Have we got evidence of that?

It is way outside any structure that has been constructed, or even proposed as a real project

PM 2Ring said:

It’d also be much cheaper to build than a space elevator, and it could be done with existing technology,

The Rev Dodgson said:

Have we got evidence of that?

Nothing tangible, just Lofstrom’s calculations. He is an engineer, but this stuff isn’t exactly within the specialty he was trained for and worked in. OTOH, he is rather meticulous in his attention to details and he has put a fair bit of time into investigating the practicalities of this idea, as you can see from the Launch Loop PDF on his site.

The Rev Dodgson said:

It is way outside any structure that has been constructed, or even proposed as a real project

Very true.