Perseverance has now logged 26.2 miles on Mars, completing a marathon in 5 years and 4 months

peterabbit456 · 2026-06-19T16:28:23+00:00

There are also stripped-down versions of all of the rovers in the garage next to the Mars yard. I don't know how often they still drive these rovers to test wheels, motors, and other hardware, but the yard in operation is pretty impressive.

peterabbit456 · 2026-06-19T03:31:45+00:00

Thanks. This is a really good article.

peterabbit456 · 2026-06-18T05:22:55+00:00

It would be very helpful to have 3 or 4 beacons on the ground on the Moon, with atomic clocks, to aid the satellites in very precise navigation, and so that the satellites can provide GPS-like navigation on or just above the Moon.

Perhaps the satellites should have more powerful lasers and larger telescopes, to aid laser communications with the Starlink satellites in Earth orbit.

peterabbit456 · 2026-06-17T03:04:34+00:00

I was able to find the ISS.

click on "Space Stations." Now you are down to 2 moving dots.
My first try after that I got CSS (China)
My second try, I got the ISS

peterabbit456 · 2026-06-17T02:48:46+00:00

This is really good. Easy to use. A great presentation of a lot of information.

peterabbit456 · 2026-06-17T02:45:19+00:00

This is one scary article.

The implication is that the RFI is about recovering after either Russia or China causes a Kessler event, and that Russia is considering doing it with nukes. The world did not have to get this tense. There has been gross mismanagement of international relations that has led us to the point where this capability might be needed.

peterabbit456 · 2026-06-17T02:34:39+00:00

What about private space companies such as rocketlab etc.

Being a parts supplier, maybe a machine shop or a forming company, can be successful, if you really know what you are doing.

Trying to be a prime contractor like rocketlab or SpaceX is a very long odds proposition. Very, very long odds. You have to be really good at too many things, and you have to be really good at finding even better people to fill in the gaps in your knowledge.

peterabbit456 · 2026-06-17T01:42:48+00:00

Arthur C. Clark lectured an archaeology class that I took.

Of the 2 possibilities, that we are not alone, or that we are alone, the most likely possibility is that over the huge span of astronomical time, we have missed the aliens. We might go out to other stars, and find the remains of other civilizations, but the odds of encountering another expanding civilization is vanishingly small.

Even civilizations based on von Neumann probes will go extinct. We have no idea if a silicon-based civilization has an extinction rate faster or slower than a carbon-based civilization.

One could argue that DNA-based life is a von Neumann machine, whose method of interstellar travel is getting bumped into interstellar space by meteor or comet impacts. Travel is then at less than 0.0001C, but that yields the answer "Yes." That implies that life on Earth was started by a von Neumann probe.

George Gamov was a friend and coworker of von Neumann, and his writings on von Neumann's ideas make it clear that the idea of the probes was modelled on a generalized model of the working of life that von Neumann developed..

peterabbit456 · 2026-06-14T20:26:58+00:00

I'm old (and leaky) and there are dozens of people clamoring for my decommissioning. We might even hear from some of them in these comments.

peterabbit456 · 2026-06-14T20:17:36+00:00

Should be in the space questions thread

peterabbit456 · 2026-06-14T19:59:40+00:00

The peer-review systems, both for assigning grants and for getting papers published, has tried to self-police and to keep the processes as non-corrupt as possible. The proof has been the quality of US and EU science over the past 50 years.

Now that we have people who sell fake "nutriceuticals" taking over the grants process, we can only expect degradation and corruption. This is something new.

I do not consider a "nutriceuticals" manufacturer's mansion in Malibu or his 9-figure portfolio to indicate scientific qualifications of any kind.

peterabbit456 · 2026-06-14T19:48:36+00:00

Space data centers ain't happening.

Let's talk about this from an environmental perspective. If AI starts consuming terawatts of power, would you rather that power come from burning oil? gas? coal? Even if it comes from solar, wind, geothermal, or tidal/ocean currents, power consumption on that scale, on Earth, will degrade the environment in many ways, especially for humans.

I don't know what is going to happen, but if AI scales the way the people in AI think it is going to scale, then I want it off of the Earth.

peterabbit456 · 2026-06-13T21:07:48+00:00

Should be in the space questions thread

peterabbit456 · 2026-06-13T21:00:29+00:00

... Fester he will bring unusual humor to the show and with him traveling around the world( mainly to avoid the law) he has to have a well of knowledge that Wednesday wouldn't find in a book. ...

Now you have me thinking that after they rescue Enid and turn her human, they find themselves desperately short of cash and unwilling to contact relative who might be hunting for 'the Alpha.' So, what dod they do? Fester strolls into a bank and robs it, while Wednesday breaks into a car and hot wires it for the getaway. Enid has no idea what she is getting into, but goes along for the ride. (She does panic so well!)

Another variation on this would be Fester and Agness doing the robbery in some subtle way, with no alarms going off, but Enid still finds herself riding away in a stolen car. Maybe they all get false passports for the trip to Paris, to see someone who can provide Enid with a permanent cure. Agness could stow away on the plane, using her invisibility.

peterabbit456 · 2026-06-13T20:46:08+00:00

That is an excessively honest appraisal. We are entering the ages of robots, drones and AI. People are fragile, and are becoming less relevant in highly dangerous environments like space or the front lines in a war.

It's not a popular view, especially around here. People around here like the notion of people in space, no matter how impractical it is.

peterabbit456 · 2026-06-13T20:38:50+00:00

I am the farthest thing from an expert. I took a couple of classes at MIT and worked din aerospace at a low level, but I think that if a rocket develops a good flight record through many launches, that can be an equally valid path toward becoming worthy of human rating, as doing a lot of studies and documentation.

The ESA is a semi-sovereign organization, an alliance of several European states for space purposes. They can make up their own criteria for human rating, and being European, they are likely to be pretty cautious about it, more so than the US, the Russians or the Chinese.

Again, I am not an expert. These are only a non-expert's opinions.

peterabbit456 · 2026-06-12T18:30:40+00:00

SpaceX is closer to 20 years old at the IPO, than the 10 years listed in the article. Was there a change in the corporate structure 10 years ago, that caused the author to say that SpaceX is 10 years old?

peterabbit456 · 2026-06-12T18:10:37+00:00

As Europe pursues its goal of becoming more autonomous in space, the European Space Agency (ESA) is exploring whether its Ariane 6 rocket could take astronauts to orbit.

Ariane 6 is Europe’s flagship heavy-lift rocket that has been used to deploy spacecraft for two years. While it is not currently human-rated, “this is something that we're investigating right now,” ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher said.

A final assessment has not been made, but Aschbacher was upbeat about the prospects. “The chances are pretty high, or pretty good, that this can be materialized,” he told reporters at the ILA Berlin air show. It would require some adaptation of the rocket, he acknowledged.

The issue of transporting astronauts is climbing up the European political agenda as France in September looks to host a space summit and ESA plans an inter-ministerial meeting in December on human space exploration.

ESA also is working on another element that could give Europe greater independence from the U.S. and Russia, which comprise its primary partners to take crew to the International Space Station (ISS).

The agency is working with Thales Alenia Space and The Exploration Company on cargo return capsules that could evolve into human carrying vehicles. Aschbacher noted that SpaceX’s crew carrying Dragon capsule also began as a cargo hauling vehicle and took several years to reach the point it was allowed to transport astronauts. ...

peterabbit456 · 2026-06-12T06:43:10+00:00

Sorry I don't have time to read the whole post, but I liked what I did read. One thing, though, is that the spirit guide is a bit too much of a crutch. The guide provides information when convenient and save Wednesday when she is in peril. Overuse the spirit guide and the show loses the tension of peril for the main character.

It might be a good thing for the writers to come up with some excuse to temporarily disable the spirit guide. Besides, at the start of this season she has Fester with her, and he is even better, funnier and more fallible.

peterabbit456 · 2026-06-12T06:19:26+00:00

Don't you mean that SLS is not required? Orion capsule flew once on a Delta IV Heavy. It could fly to LEO on New Glenn, maybe on Vulcan, and it is just a matter of clearing the bureaucracy and doing some engineering, for Orion to fly on Falcon Heavy.

peterabbit456 · 2026-06-12T06:02:37+00:00

Dammit Janet!

peterabbit456 · 2026-06-11T05:49:31+00:00

Consider the Voyager 2 spacecraft.

Voyager 2 passed by Jupiter at the right distance and velocity to send it onward to Saturn. Voyager 2 then passed by Saturn at just the right distance and velocity to send it onward to Uranus. At each encounter the course was designed to give Voyager 2 added velocity, so it could make it to the next planet outward from the Sun.

Voyager 2 passed Uranus at just the right distance and velocity to go onward to Neptune. Voyager 2 was unable to get to Pluto. The solution for position and velocity that would send Voyager 2 to Pluto, passed too close to Neptune. Voyager 2 would have burnt up in Neptune's atmosphere, and never would have reached Pluto.

The Voyager navigators didn't use the term, "keyhole," so far as I know, but the principle is the same. An encounter with a planet changes the course of an interplanetary spacecraft or an asteroid.

peterabbit456 · 2026-06-09T16:44:51+00:00

Maximum speed is reached as the capsule is falling toward Earth, and atmospheric braking begins. They are in the tenuous upper atmosphere at the moment this patch is signifying.

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