The Space Thread - Launches, Events, Live Streams, Governments, Corporations, drama in Spaaaaaaaaaaaace

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What I find intriguing is that there is evidence the Sun was hotter in earlier days, but it must have been cooler by current models.

There is also a theory that the Sun had a binary partner in the past. Wouldn't a binary partner be a valid explanation for why things were hotter? Or am I going to far into skizo lizzid people conspiracy?
 
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mindlessobserver said:
I still like the theory of the gravitational anomalies in the outer solar system being caused by a primordial black hole. Sadly it would be almost impossible to prove.
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That might be really cool. There's a remote chance that, if it's old enough to have evaporated to the mass of a typical asteroid, it's trapped inside one now. At that kind of mass its Hawking radiation will be quite hot and melt the asteroid around it, making it more likely to feed it mass, cooling it down, until it starts getting hot again and so on.
In that case we could see an asteroid that is suspiciously heavier than it should be, and likely a bit warmer.
And then one could nudge away the asteroid, blast the black hole with charged particles, and use electromagnetic fields to spin it up. Then use the Penrose process to extract energy from its ergosphere, or just try and use the Hawking radiation directly when it gets light enough to be really hot.
 
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Attempting to reuse the booster is pretty impressive but the whole Agile approach to rocket development is so weird. On the face of it, every time you make a change you're potentially invalidating any previous testing you've done.
 
A Starship flight field? Ooooo, what time is it again? Ahhh yes:

1748396470920.webp
 
Combustion Engine said:
It seems more likely by the hour Isaacman won't be the next NASA admin (link, archive). This is the worst case scenario, regardless of what you think of Elon.
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Wonder what the reason could be. If it was because he and Elon had a spat like Dems are claiming you'd think he'd have no problem spilling it on Truth Social. If it was something like he donates to Dems you'd think they would have caught that earlier on basic background research.
 
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The Vera C. Rubin Observatory, formerly the Large Sneedoptic Survey Telescope, could be more exciting than the JWST when it finally starts delivering results later in 2025 (it has been delayed by years). It may find new dwarf planets or even Planet Nine rapidly.

Combustion Engine said:
It seems more likely by the hour Isaacman won't be the next NASA admin (link, archive). This is the worst case scenario, regardless of what you think of Elon.
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grump said:
Wonder what the reason could be. If it was because he and Elon had a spat like Dems are claiming you'd think he'd have no problem spilling it on Truth Social. If it was something like he donates to Dems you'd think they would have caught that earlier on basic background research.
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The Eric Berger article is up:
Ars Technica: Trump pulls Isaacman nomination for space. Source: “NASA is f***ed” (archive)
This private information is unavailable to guests due to policies enforced by third-parties.

I don't think it's necessarily doom and gloom for NASA's budget. We've seen the Trump administration propose NASA budget cuts and telescope cancellations in the first term, only for Republicans in Congress to largely ignore it. That's an upside of spreading your operations across the country to take advantage of pork bipartisanship.
 
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The Mass Shooter Ron Soye said:
I don't think it's necessarily doom and gloom for NASA's budget. We've seen the Trump administration propose NASA budget cuts and telescope cancellations in the first term, only for Republicans in Congress to largely ignore it. That's an upside of spreading your operations across the country to take advantage of pork bipartisanship.
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The narrative was that Elon was 'defeated' and kicked out by the antiDOGE anti cut camp. So the anticut crowd kicked out the champion of government cutting to be able to cut down NASA? I get that Musk may be more proNASA than other parts of the government. But that seems weird.
 
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grump said:
The narrative was that Elon was 'defeated' and kicked out by the antiDOGE anti cut camp. So the anticut crowd kicked out the champion of government cutting to be able to cut down NASA? I get that Musk may be more proNASA than other parts of the government. But that seems weird.
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While he was still on the job, Musk said this back in April:
Politico: Musk calls Trump’s looming NASA cuts ‘troubling’ (archive)

I don't think DOGE could affect NASA's budget much, it's in the hands of Congress. See this article from 2024:
Science: U.S. Senate spending bill sets up congressional clash over research spending (archive)
The 25 July vote by the Senate appropriations committee marked the first step toward finalizing the Commerce, State, and Justice (CJS) spending bill, a $73.7 billion measure that includes funding for NSF, NASA, the National Institutes of Standards and Technology (NIST), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
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NASA would get a 2.25% increase to $25.43 billion—$50 million more than Biden’s request and $257 million more than proposed by the House.
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Musk generally benefits from increased NASA funding and missions not being cut, because most big launches are going to be handled by Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy, and possibly Starship later.

Advisors are playing tug-of-war to influence Trump, and may have forced Musk out even if it seems like an amicable departure on the surface. I don't think these people are necessarily "anti-DOGE, anti-cut" either, but they are "anti-Musk" and "pro-themselves", or have seen Musk and DOGE as politically unsuccessful. They don't like that Musk was Trump's right-hand man for months. Tanking Isaacman's nomination could be done out of spite like Berger's source says, nothing actually to do with the budgets. They would have the ammo to get rid of him, like the Dem donations, or publicly assuring Congress that NASA science funding is safe in contradiction with the Trump budget request.

Looking for xeets, I guess this was it so far:
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1928870061348901068 (archive)
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1928893063763567010 (archive)
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1928923374929014871 (archive)
 
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Isaacman might have dodged a bullet with the current attitude towards funding NASA. No need for a visionary leader if you're in maintenance mode.
 
Pedophobe said:
Isaacman might have dodged a bullet with the current attitude towards funding NASA. No need for a visionary leader if you're in maintenance mode.
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All the cool space stuff is being done by the DoD right now and while they aren't coming out and saying it, the defense budget has basically eaten NASAs budget. Sure, we COULD spend money to develop a new space plane to do science and shit. But Space Force really wants one that can blow up Chinese and Russian Sattelites.

There just is not much incentive right now for peaceful space exploration. Never really was if we are being honest. The Appollo program was always just a patina of space exploration over what was really ICBM development.
 
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