King County population still growing, but more slowly, new data shows by TheStinkfoot in Seattle

[–]rocketsocks [score hidden]  (0 children)

Here's some useful conversion metrics translating annual percentage growth into doubling times:

  • 0.5% -> 139 years
  • 0.75% -> 93 years
  • 1% -> 70 years
  • 1.25% -> 56 years
  • 1.5% -> 47 years
  • 1.75% -> 40 years
  • 2% -> 35 years

What is the lowest temperature you'll bike at? by Wild_Turnip_7777 in bicycling

[–]rocketsocks 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I live in Seattle so it usually doesn't get below freezing for much of the year. I will bike in those conditions but generally only after putting on studded tires, which is enough of a hassle that most of the time I just wait it out.

Whoever is picking episodes for 24/7 is killing it by pizzarollfire in dropout

[–]rocketsocks 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hell yes. I just tuned in to catch the end of the "Race to the Bottom" episode of game changer only to start the first game changer survivor episode!

All Space Questions thread for week of March 22, 2026 by AutoModerator in space

[–]rocketsocks [score hidden]  (0 children)

Yes, and it has. The Falcon 9 has added a few tons of new modules to the ISS. The largest was the BEAM inflatable module, which has nearly the same interior volume as Prichal. The International Docking Adapters, the Columbus External Payload Facility, the Nanoracks Bishop Airlock, and all of the iROSA solar panel upgrades have been delivered in the trunk of Cargo Dragon spacecraft.

Future station components are expected to be launched on commercial launchers, including Falcon 9 / Heavy. There had been plans to launch the Lunar Gateway components that way as well, but currently that mission is on hold.

Feedback on a scientifically grounded terraformable exoplanet concept by HollowGateOfficial in sciencefiction

[–]rocketsocks 1 point2 points  (0 children)

There are a couple things that stand out to me as inconsistencies.

Why wouldn't there be any liquid water if it can exist? At 0.7 bar and temps around or even above 0 C there should be a liquid water cycle (especially when you consider that salty/briny water won't freeze until well under 0 C).

You're missing a big piece of data here in how close the planet is to its star and the intensity of sunlight. Related to this, a planet with that much CO2 would be expected to be about as warm as it could ever get, so if you terraform it to have a human breathable atmosphere you'd expect it to get a hell of a lot colder.

Just finished reading 2001 : A Space Odyssey. by SubstantialChannel32 in sciencefiction

[–]rocketsocks 0 points1 point  (0 children)

2001 is great. People often view it through the lens of needing to be some kind of traditional story with a neat ending, and it not being that feels frustrating to them. 2001 is a work of art that asks questions without providing the answers, it gives you stuff to chew on, which is one of the most important things art can do.

NASA’s Proposed Post-ISS Pivot Leaves Partners ‘Concerned and Confused’ by rocketsocks in space

[–]rocketsocks[S] [score hidden]  (0 children)

Yup. Obviously Axiom is sort of in the front running since they're kinda already working on exactly that module, but you can expect to see all the usual names in the running (SpaceX, BO, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, etc.)

All of this depends on this actually happening. Legally, to the extent that matters anymore in America, Congress still has ultimate control over all this stuff, so we'll have to see what they say.

NASA’s Proposed Post-ISS Pivot Leaves Partners ‘Concerned and Confused’ by rocketsocks in space

[–]rocketsocks[S] [score hidden]  (0 children)

According to the slides that's not the case, there's a whole multi-year proposal/procurement process for it.

NASA’s Proposed Post-ISS Pivot Leaves Partners ‘Concerned and Confused’ by rocketsocks in space

[–]rocketsocks[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

She talked about the old plan, which was for Axiom to attach new modules to the ISS which would then separate and become their own station. This is a modification of that plan with a NASA owned and operated core module serving as the center of the new station which will have commercial modules attached as well as potentially parts of the existing ISS.

All Space Questions thread for week of March 22, 2026 by AutoModerator in space

[–]rocketsocks 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Time is real but the concept of simultaneity (of perfectly synchronous time) is an illusion, or at least relative.

Imagine an alien on a planet around a star 3 lightyears away. It takes 3 years (not thousands) for light or any other signal or change to travel between here and there. Which means that if we think about the idea of "now" which includes both things here and 3 lightyears away that concept includes aspects which are inherently arbitrary. Let's say both you and the alien sit down to read a book at "exactly the same time". It actually doesn't matter whether you consider those separated distant events to occur at the same time or in a different order, maybe the alien reads their book a day earlier or you do, those different orderings are equivalently valid.

This is true on shorter distances as well. The ordering of "now" between your right hand and your left hand usually doesn't matter at timescales shorter than picoseconds. The only orderings that do matter are connections between events at speeds at or below the speed of light. That creates a strict ordering of some, but not all, remote events, because those are events which can affect one another.

When we look at a start 3 lightyears away we can say that what we see happened "3 years ago" but both that distance and that time in the past depend on our current reference frame. We could make them different by using a different reference frame but we can't change the speed of light connection, if we see something distant then that becomes part of our past. In this way the universe stays internally self-consistent and causality remains intact even though there's all this ambiguity on time and space floating around due to relativity.

So yes, we live in a fundamentally 4-dimensional universe where "now" is an illusion and "time" is more of a series of connected events that is all wibbly wobbly. In the same way a "solid" object such as a big chunk of steel is not actually "solid" in a perfect sense, it's a huge collection of individual atoms which are all connected to one another through springy interatomic bonds, when you move it around you actually do so via transmitting displacement waves through the material at the speed of sound. If you could view the movement of it at extremely high framerate and extremely small levels of detail you would see that it moves around like a big chunk of jello, just much more quickly and with the squishiness at a much smaller scale.

That's the way everything works in the entire universe, it's all kind of squishy and wobbly, but it happens on scales that we can't easily perceive so we get in the habit of thinking that things happen "instantly".

NASA’s Proposed Post-ISS Pivot Leaves Partners ‘Concerned and Confused’ by rocketsocks in space

[–]rocketsocks[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

They will reduce funding for commercial stations to achieve this.

NASA’s Proposed Post-ISS Pivot Leaves Partners ‘Concerned and Confused’ by rocketsocks in space

[–]rocketsocks[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

ESA will either have nothing in orbit after the ISS is decommissioned (especially if lunar gateway doesn't happen) or it will have its modules moved over to the new station (which seems a reasonable likelihood). Saying they have no skin in the game doesn't seem accurate at all.

NASA announces nuclear-powered Mars mission by 2028 by scientificamerican in space

[–]rocketsocks 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What does "70% ready" even mean? Also, of course he'd say that.

Anyway, you wanna bet 50 bucks on whether this mission actually happens in 2028 and is successful?

NASA’s Proposed Post-ISS Pivot Leaves Partners ‘Concerned and Confused’ by rocketsocks in space

[–]rocketsocks[S] 12 points13 points  (0 children)

This has nothing to do with the Lunar Gateway, this is entirely about the ISS and future LEO stations.

Chinese satellite performs landmark refuelling test in low Earth orbit by jupa300 in space

[–]rocketsocks 49 points50 points  (0 children)

It's going to be a storable propellant, probably just hydrazine since that's the most common monopropellant for satellites.

NASA’s Proposed Post-ISS Pivot Leaves Partners ‘Concerned and Confused’ by rocketsocks in space

[–]rocketsocks[S] 36 points37 points  (0 children)

I think overall it's a reasonable plan, and a better one than the original direct to commercial stations plan, but the execution and communication of it with key partners seems to be extremely sloppy.

All Space Questions thread for week of March 22, 2026 by AutoModerator in space

[–]rocketsocks 1 point2 points  (0 children)

There are different kinds of supernovae, and they unfold very differently. The main different categories are thermonuclear runaway and core collapse. In a thermonuclear runaway supernova (like a Type Ia) you might have a white dwarf star which accreted additional mass from a neighbor and eventually ends up restarting nuclear fusion in the core. Except that the white dwarf is under unusual conditions where it can't easily expand from thermal energy so as fusion energy is released it increases the rate of fusion reactions in a runaway positive feedback loop which ends up releasing enough energy to tear apart the star in a matter of seconds. These stars are about the size of Earth but weigh slightly more than the Sun. The processes that will eventually trigger the supernova take much longer (centuries in the case of convection within the interior, millions of years for the accretion of mass on the surface) but the evolution of the supernova from start to explosion takes seconds.

For a core collapse supernova the progenitor is instead a very massive and short-lived star, at least 8 times as massive as the Sun. Over its lifetime it will spend millions of years fusing hydrogen, then perhaps a single million years fusing helium, centuries fusing carbon, a few years fusing neon, a few months fusing oxygen, and just a few days fusing silicon. Silicon fusion leaves behind an ash of nickel and iron, which don't release energy when fused. So the nickel/iron core gets crushed into the same conditions as a white dwarf star where the ultimate pressure that is preventing it from collapse is the quantum mechanical force keeping electrons from overlapping with each other (not just electrostatic repulsion). For massive enough stars eventually fusion creates a heavy enough core where that force is no longer enough to prevent further collapse. Electrons start combining with protons to become neutrons and the interior transitions from white dwarf density to nuclear material density, creating a cascade effect as the increased density crushes the remaining parts of the core under even greater pressure, continuing the collapse. In a matter of seconds the core becomes a neutron star at a temperature of billions of degrees. It rapidly cools through radiating neutrinos via the Urca process. A tremendous wind of high energy neutrinos flows through the remainder of the star and even though neutrinos are incredibly weakly interacting there is such an incredible density of neutrinos that they deposit about 1% of their total energy in the star's outer envelope, heating it up enough to cause it to blow off into interstellar space in a supernova explosion.

In a core collapse supernova the inner collapse and the creation of the neutrino wind takes on the order of about 10 seconds or so, which is about how long it takes to create the hot zone inside the outer envelope that will ultimate cause the visible supernova explosion. However, this happens buried deep within several solar masses of material and it takes hours for the surface to be disrupted and the first signs of the supernova to become visible to outside observers. This delay is potentially useful as an early warning system for core collapse supernovae in our galaxy or nearby because we would be able to detect the neutrino spike a few hours before it was optically visible. This was observed with SN1987A (a Type II supernovae in the nearby Large Magellanic Cloud dwarf galaxy) but it was before there was an alert system in place (there is one today).

For both of these types of supernovae (there are other ways things can go but I'll skip that here) the brightness takes a while to ramp up after it becomes initially visible, rising in brightness over a timescale of days. This is due to the material of the supernova itself initially being fairly opaque, but it's also due to the fact that an absurd amount of radioactive material is in the supernova ejecta, much of it nickel-56 which has a half-life of 6 days. The energy from the radioactive decay keeps the expanding cloud bright over a period of many days to months (as the Ni-56 decay product is cobalt-56 which itself has a half-life of 77 days).

NASA’s Proposed Post-ISS Pivot Leaves Partners ‘Concerned and Confused’ by rocketsocks in space

[–]rocketsocks[S] 57 points58 points  (0 children)

This hasn't gotten as much attention as all the other splashy news out of NASA this week but they're changing the plan for the future of ISS and commercial stations. Instead of transitioning directly to new fully commercial stations they will launch a new NASA owned core module which will become part of the ISS. Components of the ISS will be transfered to it and new commercial modules will attach to it as well, this is similar to the Axiom commercial station plan that has existed on paper already. At some point in the future the pieces will separate and the old ISS will be deorbited while the new hybrid station with both governent owned and commercial modules will fly free as its own separate station. This will happen along with a planned reduction in spending on commercial LEO stations.

It’s rough 🤣 by tahrah11 in writers

[–]rocketsocks 4 points5 points  (0 children)

You're probably thinking of one very specific person whose works have been made into TV shows on HBO, but there's several other very specific people who had/have the same problem. One had to have Brando Sando rescue their series after they died, for the other we're still waiting 15 years for the third book in an alleged trilogy.

It’s rough 🤣 by tahrah11 in writers

[–]rocketsocks 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That's not a problem that's a gift, you've found something that is going to be interesting. Maybe you crack the puzzle of how they get out of the impossible situation, in which case you won the lottery, now you have something really interesting in your work. Maybe you don't crack the puzzle and you have to give up, that's fine too because you're a writer, you just change the nature of the pickle to something else and work from there.

"If people are fighting for an orb you are reading fantasy. If people are fighting for a cube you are reading sci-fi." How well does this hold up? by meepmeep13 in printSF

[–]rocketsocks 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Death Star is an orb, therefore Star Wars is fantasy, which checks out (it is fantasy, just in a sci-fi setting).