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Re: Science/Techno Babble Random, Random

#91

Post by Suliso »

NASA is of course taking a substantial risk, but I agree with the author of the article below that if successful the effect would be a technological revolution in space research and commerce. Bold parts (mine) are particularly important points.

NASA’s bold bet on Starship for the Moon may change spaceflight forever

"It is transformational to degrees no one today can understand."

When NASA astronauts return to the Moon in a few years, they will do so inside a lander that dwarfs that of the Apollo era. SpaceX's Starship vehicle measures 50 meters from its nose cone to landing legs. By contrast, the cramped Lunar Module that carried Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin down to the Moon in 1969 stood just 7 meters tall.

This is but one of many genuinely shocking aspects of NASA's decision a week ago to award SpaceX—and only SpaceX—a contract to develop, test, and fly two missions to the lunar surface. The second flight, which will carry astronauts to the Moon, could launch as early as 2024.

NASA awarded SpaceX $2.89 billion for these two missions. But this contract would balloon in amount should NASA select SpaceX to fly recurring lunar missions later in the 2020s. And it has value to SpaceX and NASA in myriad other ways. Perhaps most significantly, with this contract NASA has bet on a bold future of exploration. Until now, the plans NASA had contemplated for human exploration in deep space all had echoes of the Apollo program. NASA talked about "sustainable" missions and plans in terms of cost, but they were sustainable in name only.

By betting on Starship, which entails a host of development risks, NASA is taking a chance on what would be a much brighter future. One in which not a handful of astronauts go to the Moon or Mars, but dozens and then hundreds. In this sense, Starship represents a radical departure for NASA and human exploration.

"If Starship meets the goals Elon Musk has set for it, Starship getting this contract is like the US government supporting the railroads in the old west here on Earth," said Rick Tumlinson, a proponent of human settlement of the Solar System. "It is transformational to degrees no one today can understand."

We will nonetheless try to understand some of the ways in which Starship could prove transformational.

1. Starship ahead of schedule

Ahead of NASA's announcement on April 16, I did not expect SpaceX to receive the only, or even the largest, award from NASA this early on in the lander-development process.

About a year ago, NASA selected three different bids for a Human Landing System. Over the course of 10 months, each of the three contractors fine-tuned its design and worked with NASA engineers to explain how its lander could meet the space agency's needs. A team led by Blue Origin submitted the most conventional design, tailored to NASA's request for a three-stage lander. Dynetics proposed an innovative lander, with a nod toward reusability, but it was also sized to bring just a few astronauts to the lunar surface.

SpaceX, by contrast, submitted a version of its Mars vehicle as a lunar lander. For the last five years, SpaceX has largely self-funded development of Starship as the reusable upper stage of a massive rocket, Super Heavy. The vehicle is intended to take dozens of people to Mars at a time in a six-month voyage. Thus, Starship is massively oversized to take two or four astronauts down to the surface of the Moon. But of the three landers, it is the only one with a direct path toward full reuse.

Starship is also the most technically demanding of the three vehicles because of its size and aspirations. Among the biggest hurdles are learning to land Starship, both on the Moon and back on Earth. And to conduct missions to the Moon and beyond, SpaceX must develop the technology to refuel Starship with methane and liquid-oxygen fuel in low Earth orbit.

"One of the hardest engineering problems known to man is making a reusable orbital rocket," SpaceX founder Elon Musk told me about a year ago. "It's stupidly difficult to have a fully reusable orbital system."

Because there are so many technological miracles needed to validate the Starship design, I felt that NASA would not fully commit to the SpaceX vehicle as a potential lander until it had flown. Perhaps launching Starship into orbit would be enough of a technology demonstration for NASA. Or maybe SpaceX would have to land one on the Moon. This perceived need to demonstrate the viability of Starship is one reason why Musk and SpaceX have built and launched Starships at such a frenetic pace in South Texas during the last year. Only by doing, the thinking went, would NASA believe in Starship.

Instead, NASA has committed to the ambitious program even before Starship has safely landed after a high-altitude flight test. In this sense, NASA's support for Starship has come ahead of schedule.
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Re: Science/Techno Babble Random, Random

#92

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2. SpaceX needs NASA for Mars

After seeing SpaceX launch more than 100 rockets over the last decade, what has become abundantly clear is that its engineers are now the best in the world at designing, building, and flying new and innovative rockets. The execution of the Falcon 9 program, proving out first-stage reuse, and development of the Falcon Heavy rocket attest to this.

But building great rockets is one thing. It is another thing to develop all of the other capabilities needed to ensure that humans can travel to Mars, land on the red planet, and survive there.

When it comes to in-space activities, SpaceX has leaned on NASA's expertise for Crew Dragon as part of the commercial crew program. And with respect to the kinds of technologies needed for long-duration travel to Mars, through deep space, SpaceX has limited experience—there is very little recycling of air, water, and other consumables on a Crew Dragon spacecraft. NASA, on the other hand, has been working on these problems for more than a decade with astronauts on the International Space Station.

The space agency has also been conducting studies of Moon and Mars missions for decades, said Abhi Tripathi, who worked as a systems engineer at NASA from 2000 to 2010 performing these kinds of analyses. Tripathi left NASA to work at SpaceX on the cargo and crew versions of the Dragon spacecraft until 2020, when he moved to the University of California, Berkeley.

"NASA will undoubtedly bring to bear a wealth of invaluable information, technology, and subject matter experts to help SpaceX achieve their shared goal of putting humans on Mars," Tripathi told Ars.

NASA and SpaceX collaborating this early on Starship also helps with a host of other issues not related to transportation. A government agency will be needed to facilitate the development of nuclear-based power for the surface of Mars, for example. And any human missions to Mars will raise planetary protection questions and other international concerns. Having NASA alongside SpaceX means the US government will help address all of these issues.

Suddenly, human landings on Mars about a decade from now seem a lot more realistic.

3. NASA bets on game-changing technology

The world has never seen a vehicle like Starship before. If successful, the massive spacecraft would open up new possibilities to NASA not before available. This is because Starship could realize the long-desired goal of rapid, low-cost reuse of a launch system.

Consider the status quo. The large Space Launch System rocket under development by NASA will be able to launch 95 metric tons into low Earth orbit. NASA and its contractors, led by Boeing, will be able to build one a year. The expendable vehicle will launch one payload, at a cost of about $2 billion per mission, and then drop into the ocean.

In terms of lift capacity, the vehicles are similar. Starship and Super Heavy should be able to put about 100 tons into low Earth orbit. However, SpaceX is already capable of building one Starship a month, and the plan is to reuse each booster and spacecraft dozens of times. Imagine the kind of space program NASA could have with the capacity to launch 100 tons into orbit every two weeks—instead of a single annual mission—for $2 billion a year. Seriously, pause a moment and really think about that.

In their decision to select SpaceX, NASA officials appeared to recognize this potential. "We were looking to see what industry partners could bring in terms of innovation and solutions," said Lisa Watson-Morgan, the Human Landing System program manager. The emphasis here is on innovation and new solutions to old problems.

"In picking the Starship architecture, NASA is helping enable a path toward a super heavy launch vehicle, in-space propellant storage, in-space refueling, and large up and down mass to planetary surfaces," said Tripathi, who has examined these problems from both NASA and SpaceX's perspective.

Put another way: if Starship is successful, NASA no longer needs to pick just one or two big things to do in space. The agency will be able to do many different things at the same time.

4. NASA funds an SLS competitor

So why is NASA funding a launch system that will directly compete with its SLS booster? That, to be clear, was not the space agency's intent. In explaining the award during a news conference, agency officials were careful to say that SLS and the Orion spacecraft remain an essential part of the Artemis architecture. But in reality, NASA may well be putting its SLS rocket out of business.

With the Human Landing System award, NASA has put its stamp of approval on Starship and Super Heavy. The launch system will eventually go into the catalog maintained by NASA's Launch Services Provider program, allowing other agency programs to procure the vehicle for missions. This could be a real boon for large, space-based telescopes that would find the large volume of Starship's payload fairing useful.

"If I were an official in one of NASA's other directorates, I would personally be dreaming up all kinds of ideas for what I can someday do with all these substantive new capabilities," Tripathi said.

In the big picture, $2.89 billion is not a lot compared to what NASA has already invested in the SLS rocket. The space agency spends that much every year in development costs for the rocket and its associated ground systems. Because the SLS rocket is funded through cost-plus contracts to major space contractors like Boeing, there is less incentive to control costs or deliver a timely product. Predictably, the SLS vehicle is significantly over budget and now five years behind its original launch date of late 2016.

All of this has led to criticisms that SLS is a jobs program. Indeed, it provides jobs in all 50 states and supports hundreds of small businesses. And perhaps this explains why Congress has steadfastly supported SLS despite its costs and delays.

By contrast, Starship is not a jobs program. Rather, it's a jobs-killer program from the perspective of Congress.
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Re: Science/Techno Babble Random, Random

#93

Post by Suliso »

5. Is SpaceX too dominant?

SpaceX has enjoyed a remarkable string of NASA contract wins. Over the last decade, it has landed NASA awards to deliver cargo and crew to the International Space Station, launch the Lunar Gateway, supply this Gateway with cargo, and now deliver humans to the surface of the Moon.

The Artemis Program could also plausibly morph into the SpaceX Lunar Program. How? Under the current plan, a Super Heavy rocket would launch Starship to lunar orbit. Days later, an SLS rocket would launch crew inside an Orion spacecraft, which would dock with Starship in lunar orbit. The crew would transfer to Starship and go down to the Moon. After coming back to lunar orbit on Starship, the astronauts would board Orion and fly back to Earth.

But if Starship is safe for humans to land on the Moon, why would it not be safe for humans simply to launch from Earth on board the vehicle? This would save NASA the cost of an SLS plus Orion launch—about $3 billion per mission, combined—and a tricky rendezvous and docking in lunar orbit. This is probably the future of a truly sustainable lunar exploration program.

That's good for NASA and for SpaceX, but what about the other spaceflight companies? Under the (much) more expensive plan using SLS and Orion, NASA is also funding a who's who of aerospace companies: Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Aerojet Rocketdyne, United Launch Alliance, and many, many other smaller players across the United States. Starship directly supports SpaceX, its limited number of suppliers, and... whatever company ends up building spacesuits for lunar forays.

It is therefore difficult to see a SpaceX-only exploration program winning broad congressional support for Artemis. History suggests that all of the losing contractors would urge the politicians they bolster with contributions to actively oppose the program.

And what of international partners and the geopolitical implications of this? During a confirmation hearing this week before the US Senate Commerce committee, incoming NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said expanding the coalition of nations participating in the Artemis Program was one of his big goals. Increasing the space agency's reliance on SpaceX likely would work against this.

With the low-cost, reusable Falcon 9 rocket, SpaceX has already badly damaged the commercial launch industries in Europe, Russia, and Japan. For the Artemis Program, Europe is contributing the Service Module for the Orion spacecraft. How would these officials react if NASA now says, "non merci" to that contribution because of SpaceX?

"The nation's activities in deep space remain very tied up in international policy, alliances, adversaries, and security, as well as space exploration and science," an industry source told Ars. "There are a number of foreign policy interdependencies and offsets that are managed through or impact space, generally below the surface. What does this choice signal to all of those players?"

In summary

With Starship, SpaceX has offered what appears to be the best technical solution to NASA's stated goal of a sustainable lunar exploration program. Starship would be able to take far more people and cargo to the Moon than any other solution for NASA—and it could do the job for far less money and far more often.

Furthermore, in awarding the Human Landing System contract to SpaceX, NASA has embraced a risky yet highly rewarding technology.

But whereas NASA is a space agency, its feet remain very much grounded in the political orbit of Washington, DC's beltway. Technically, Starship may be the best solution to NASA's needs. But politically, would it be? Probably not. If NASA wants to go to the Moon and beyond, it must work with a multitude of contractors and countries, at least for now.

Ultimately, physics will win out. If SpaceX can make Starship work, eventually NASA's other options for human exploration of the Solar System may come to look ridiculous by comparison. By placing an early bet on Starship last week, NASA has increased the ultimate odds of Starship's success.

For the space agency, this is an audacious and surprising play. But the potential payoff is huge. One day it may allow us to boldly go not just back to the Moon, but far, far beyond.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/04 ... aceflight/
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Re: Science/Techno Babble Random, Random

#94

Post by ti-amie »

“Do not grow old, no matter how long you live. Never cease to stand like curious children before the Great Mystery into which we were born.” Albert Einstein
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Re: Science/Techno Babble Random, Random

#95

Post by Suliso »

Some realistic talk about "quantum everything". The presenter is a theoretical physicist, currently a research fellow at Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies.

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Re: Science/Techno Babble Random, Random

#96

Post by ponchi101 »

Great video. I would love to see her talk with Seth Lloyd and discuss quantum computing. He is sort of the main cheerleader of that group.
This sounds very reasonable. I will look more into BRILLIANT.
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Re: Science/Techno Babble Random, Random

#97

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Biologists reeled in a 240-pound fish from the Detroit River that probably hatched a century ago

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A member of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service survey crew lies beside a 240-pound lake sturgeon pulled from the Detroit River. (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)

By
Paulina Firozi
Reporter
May 5, 2021 at 2:54 p.m. EDT

Jason Fischer was shocked at what his crew had just caught.

Fischer, a biologist who works with a Michigan-based Fish and Wildlife Service office, was on the water late last month, putting out setlines with hooks to catch and survey the lake sturgeon population in the Detroit River. It was his first setline survey with this three-person crew, and until then his research had focused on egg and larval stages — “we’re talking about a fish less than an inch.”

It was his teammates, fellow biologists Jenny Johnson and Paige Wigren, who took a look at the latest catch and said: “Oh man, that’s going to be a very big fish.”

“We thought it would be in the 100-pound range,” Fischer said. Typically, they may catch a 40- to 60-pound fish.

This time, the crew had reeled in a 240-pound lake sturgeon, a 6-foot 10-inch female they believe to be about 100 years old. It’s the biggest fish any of them had ever caught — the team’s previous record, before he joined the crew, was 123 pounds, Fischer said. It also may be one of the largest lake sturgeon ever recorded in the country.

In a post on Facebook announcing the “once in a lifetime catch,” the conservation office noted the 100-year-old sturgeon “likely hatched in the Detroit River around 1920, when Detroit became the 4th largest city in America.”

“When it’s in the water, you don’t have that great reference for size until you actually try to get the net on it,” Fischer said. “Our basket’s like four or five feet deep, and this fish wouldn’t fit in the net. … It only got bigger when we got it on the boat.”

It took all three of them to lift it up out of the water and get it on the boat, an effort that was “exhausting,” Fischer said.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife team weighed the fish, measured her and snapped a photo of one of them lying next to the fish for scale. Then they tagged the fish — a process that will allow the fish to be identified if ever caught again — before releasing it back into the water.


Scott Koproski, project leader with the conservation office, said he was amazed this fish had not yet been tagged.

“That tells us this fish, greater than 100 years in age, has never been encountered before, at least by biologists working with fish in the Great Lakes,” said Koproski, who was not on the boat during the catch. “That’s pretty fascinating.”

An annual effort by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to survey the St. Clair-Detroit River system to better understand the lake sturgeon population began in 2001. The lake sturgeon, considered a threatened species in Michigan, has endured a lot — from a boom in commercial fishing that continued into the early 1900s, periods of over-harvesting, and habitat loss driven by shipping channel construction and the damming of tributaries. All of that contributed to declines in population, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

“Given the age of this fish, it was probably around when some of the larger commercial fisheries were going in the Great Lakes in the early 1990s,” Fischer said. “Being able to avoid that effort, I think, was probably the most impressive part.”

There are now more than 33,000 lake sturgeon in the St. Clair-Detroit River system, 6,500 of which come from the Detroit River, according to Alpena Fish and Wildlife Conservation Office, which describes that as a “fraction of its historic size.”

James Diana, a professor emeritus of fisheries and aquaculture at the University of Michigan, said sturgeon are “very hearty fish” that “can survive pretty stressful situations.”

He said they “continue to grow and live fairly long lives, but normally you’re looking at a life expectancy around 60 or 80 years typically.”


“Over 100 is unusual,” he said.

John Hartig, a Great Lakes scientist and conservationist, said the age of this fish “speaks volumes to the resiliency of the species.”

Hartig, now a visiting scholar at the Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research at the University of Windsor in Ontario, ticked off some of the events a century-old fish may have experienced.

“The Detroit River during World War II was considered the arsenal of democracy, Detroit was. Oil pollution was rampant, and they discharged not only oil but other toxic substances,” he said. “She lived through that.”

Natasha Myhal, an enrolled citizen of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, is a PhD candidate at the University of Colorado writing her dissertation on nmé, the name the Anishinaabe people use for lake sturgeon.

She said the fish is “one of the oldest fish species in the Great Lakes, and nmé is central to the cultural and spiritual practices and lifeways of the Anishinaabe.”

“When I think about the age of the fish that was caught, the lake sturgeon that was caught, I think of the perseverance of nmé,” she said. “Just as the Anishinaabe and Indigenous peoples have persevered colonial policies and intense environmental change, so have sturgeon.”

Hartig said while the Detroit River used to be seen as a “working river that supported industry and commerce,” environmental policies and river cleanup efforts in recent years have sought to improve the quality of the waters and the life living in them.

“We’re trying to change that, we’re trying to say this is an ecosystem,” Hartig said. “We are also part of that ecosystem. What we do to the ecosystem, we do to ourselves.”

Diana and Hartig also pointed to efforts to construct spawning reefs to help the lake sturgeon begin to bounce back as a species.

Fischer said multiple agencies and universities, including the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and Michigan Sea Grant, are involved with efforts to restore spawning habitats within the Detroit River and St. Claire River to “improve the number of fish being born.”

“It’s great to see these old, large fish,” Fischer said. “But one of the projects our office is involved in is tracking younger fish. Those are really going to give us an indication of, are fish surviving to an age where they can reproduce and contribute to future generations?”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/ ... oit-river/
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Re: Science/Techno Babble Random, Random

#98

Post by ponchi101 »

One of my pet peeves. There are so many lakes and rivers to be cleaned, and that would help with climate change and would provide with considerable jobs.
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Re: Science/Techno Babble Random, Random

#99

Post by ti-amie »

I'm just glad this animal was found by scientists and not some yahoos. She will be able to live out her life.
“Do not grow old, no matter how long you live. Never cease to stand like curious children before the Great Mystery into which we were born.” Albert Einstein
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Re: Science/Techno Babble Random, Random

#100

Post by Suliso »

In this series an expert is asked to talk about his/her subject at five different levels. In this particular case about gravity. To be fair the highest level is the highest only in the sense that the partner is another subject expert. In a real professional setting a lot more scientific jargon and mathematics would be used making it inaccessible to all but few. Still it's fun to listen :)

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Re: Science/Techno Babble Random, Random

#101

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I forget now on what program I saw her too. She is pretty good at making it accessible.
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Re: Science/Techno Babble Random, Random

#102

Post by Suliso »

The same physicist who's video I posted above is also a decent singer. Sadly I've met a couple professors to whom this song refers to. Not necessarily retired and certainly not dead.

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Re: Science/Techno Babble Random, Random

#103

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You have met professors. I have met plenty of General Managers. :thumbsup:
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Re: Science/Techno Babble Random, Random

#104

Post by mmmm8 »

ponchi101 wrote: Sun May 09, 2021 4:47 pm You have met professors. I have met plenty of General Managers. :thumbsup:
I have met plenty of both and the combination of ego and insecurity/need for validation in academia is something quite unique. The general manager is a creature considerably more self-sufficient in its ego-feeding.
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Re: Science/Techno Babble Random, Random

#105

Post by ti-amie »

“Do not grow old, no matter how long you live. Never cease to stand like curious children before the Great Mystery into which we were born.” Albert Einstein
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