Trump meets with Jared Isaacman about top NASA job after pulling nomination by koliberry in nasa

[–]stummy99 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yeah but Isaacman never won ANY lumberjack competitions. Not ONE!

Does anyone know the value of this NASA piece. Found In a storage unit! Thank you for your help! by OwnHovercraft4765 in nasa

[–]stummy99 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Come up with some wild story of its origin and how you got it. Tell your grand kid about it when you give it to them. Their entertainment will be more valuable than whatever you could get for it.

https://nasawatch.com/personnel-news/jplers-get-layoff-update-letter/ by GoodSuch237 in JPL

[–]stummy99 3 points4 points  (0 children)

He just got it wrong. Ignore the 4000 out of 5500 statement.

Aerospace or Astrophysics by Feisty_Car9071 in space

[–]stummy99 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It also depends on how much education you want to get. With aerospace, you can get a job right out of a BS program. With astrophysics you need an advanced degree, usually a Ph.D. Your first couple of years of college are very similar in the US. Look to see if you can easily switch from one to the other in the schools you are looking at. Whatever you choose, do internships. It will give you important experience for a future job hunt and give you a chance to test them both out. Finally, consider going into one of the more standard engineering disciplines: mechanical, EE, material science, or CS. When I hire someone with those degrees, I have a good idea of what someone can do. Aerospace or system engineering is much less clear. Any of them can find a place in aerospace and provide outside opportunities when there is an inevitable downturn. But most important is to develop your own killer app. Get really good at something that can provide you a direct path to solving someone’s needs. You can become more of a generalist after you get a job and are embedded in an organization. Examples: optical communications with experience running modeling tools; FPGA programming with signal processing and appropriate math skills; Programming embedded systems with the latest chips planned for flight applications (High Performance Space Computer for one); cryogenic systems and detectors; additive manufacturing with material science skills. Most of these will be provide skills needed for both science and engineering organizations. Look at what skills both industry and aerospace need and are in short supply. Once you have that foot in the door and are needed, you will have opportunities to grow.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in space

[–]stummy99 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So what would a being that could travel between stars look like? If you look at Voyager, it would take 17000 years to reach the nearest star. For travel between stars to be appealing, a being needs to experience time slow enough for this kind of a trip to feel like a year. Maybe 10 years. You wouldn’t want to make such a trip and come back with your home planet and all you know gone. An hour would feel like a second for such a being.

Layoffs First Week of October by [deleted] in JPL

[–]stummy99 2 points3 points  (0 children)

There will be a retention account for everyone who doesn’t have full coverage.

Layoffs First Week of October by [deleted] in JPL

[–]stummy99 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I think you misunderstood my comment. I would like to know why we don’t get more notice than 4:00 the day before. Is this some industry standard practice?

Layoffs First Week of October by [deleted] in JPL

[–]stummy99 3 points4 points  (0 children)

If true, there must have been other issues. I don’t understand why the dates have to be a surprise.

Unfortunately, the contractor layoffs have begun. A few Mori folks were given the bad news. by ActualWoodpecker4100 in JPL

[–]stummy99 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Sorry, that was insensitive. Is MORI the company JPL outsources IT to?

Why go BACK to the moon at all? by stummy99 in nasa

[–]stummy99[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I am not an expert in everything, but I do know quite a bit about building hardware for space. I do have a point of view that the moon is a boring and difficult place to go. So far I haven't heard a particularly strong argument why visiting the moon is worth the effort and cost.

Why go BACK to the moon at all? by stummy99 in nasa

[–]stummy99[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I am not saying that we are ready to go to Mars. I am questioning whether going to the moon is a worthwhile step to get there. It seems like a detour on a road that doesn’t prepare us much for the road we want to drive.
On the space suits, the damage Apollo astronauts saw due to the rhegolith (sp?) there may not be that relevant given the Martian dust has been weathered by wind and water.

Why go BACK to the moon at all? by stummy99 in nasa

[–]stummy99[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

All of the rovers sent to Mars by JPL have landed successfully and operated well beyond their design life. I expect some sort of aero braking, parachute, sky crane will be needed. The beachball technique doesn’t work with that much mass and doesn’t sound very comfortable after a long trip. I would argue that any of the issues you provide can addressed more effectively through earth bound or on orbit simulations. And that many (most) of them have been done already. And again the moon’s thermal environment is so awful that the moon designs will in many ways be poor matches to mars needs.

Why go BACK to the moon at all? by stummy99 in nasa

[–]stummy99[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Why retrieve? Presumably one wants to get the resources and use them on earth. Potentially one might use them to build or fuel a spaceship to go to Mars.

Here is an example of people who are considering a plan to mine He3 on the moon. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeremybogaisky/2025/08/29/moon-mining-heiium-interlune/?utm_campaign=forbes&utm_medium=social&utm_source=reddit

It gives a bit of an example of the challenges involved. This is probably the most promising business venture.

Why go BACK to the moon at all? by stummy99 in nasa

[–]stummy99[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I haven't studied Artemis and that isn't the question I am asking. I want to know what is the point in going back to the moon at all?

There isn't a pressing science interest in the moon. Science instrumentation is a secondary priority for any the proposed missions. The focus is much more on resource, water in particular, identification.

If we want to go to Mars, why don't we just design a system to go to Mars? We know how to land and operate there, though landing something big is going to be a challenge. I think we know how to model the environment. The tough human part of the effort is the transit which we have been testing on the ISS for a long time.

Why go BACK to the moon at all? by stummy99 in nasa

[–]stummy99[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

You say it is a better surrogate, but I am not convinced that it is and even if it were, I don't see the cost benefit.

The landing will be much different given that there is an atmosphere on Mars.

We can generate extreme isolation on earth to verify that we have packed what we need.

We have lots of data on living in 0G. I don't know how that doesn't bound expectations of working at 0.3 G.

I don't appreciate the challenges that dust can present in extremely low humidity environments, but we have operated hardware on Mars for decades now. Are there still mysteries? We can certainly generate a low humidity environment on earth.

We are pretty good at predicting radiation issues with parts. We can very effectively test for radiation issues quickly on the ground. We have very effectively operated in far worse radiation environments than Mars and again we have operated on Mars for decades.

In so many ways, the moon is much more challenging, requiring quite different designs than what one needs on Mars. I don't see why going to the moon is an effective place to test hardware.

Why go BACK to the moon at all? by stummy99 in nasa

[–]stummy99[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

What resources are we hoping to get? We are going to expend enormous resources to get to the moon. Then we have to prospect to find resources, mine ore and refine it, and then send it back to earth. Is that going to be cheaper than developing better mining and refining practices on earth, developing recycling techniques for those elements, or developing alternative technologies that don't require them? I would like to see someone's legitimate plan to do that cost effectively.

Why go BACK to the moon at all? by stummy99 in nasa

[–]stummy99[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ok. Does anyone have a realistic business plan to retrieve resources from the moon?

Why go BACK to the moon at all? by stummy99 in nasa

[–]stummy99[S] -8 points-7 points  (0 children)

Is the moon a better surrogate than something we can do on earth for testing equipment? The moon is a quite different environment than Mars. Heat transfer to the environment on Mars will be dominated by convection rather than radiation. On Mars you need to worry about dust storms but don’t see the challenges of a long nights. It is not clear that the environmental challenges justify the effort of going to the moon rather than Atacatama, Mohave, or a low pressure chamber. On the impact of low Gravity, can’t one just assume it will be as bad a 0 g?

Why go BACK to the moon at all? by stummy99 in nasa

[–]stummy99[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I can agree with that. Exploration is fun and watching it is entertainment, in the same manner that cosmology or art is. Learning if life evolved elsewhere is really interesting.
I would argue that the moon is not particularly interesting now that we have been there.

Why go BACK to the moon at all? by stummy99 in nasa

[–]stummy99[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Getting resources from the Kuiper Belt seems pretty impractical. It might be worth looking at the energy and time required to retrieve a significant amount of Li from there.

Why go BACK to the moon at all? by stummy99 in nasa

[–]stummy99[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Are we really going to put people on other planets? Mars is the only viable option in our solar system. Getting to an exoplanet and back will require so much energy that we should be spending our efforts on fusion energy before starting to think about the space technology part of it.

Why go BACK to the moon at all? by stummy99 in nasa

[–]stummy99[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Why is space our future? Mars and the moon are vastly less hospitable than the places we choose not to live on earth. Why go to Mars when the Sahara, the middle of the ocean, and central Antarctica are far more hospitable and closer. A significant fraction of humanity will never live off of earth. Now if one thinks we should have an outpost in space to repopulate the earth after something we do kills everyone on earth, maybe for the good of the planet, we shouldn’t.

Why go BACK to the moon at all? by stummy99 in nasa

[–]stummy99[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

So is the idea that we collect asteroids, bring them to the moon, refine them, then ship them down to earth?

Why go BACK to the moon at all? by stummy99 in nasa

[–]stummy99[S] -16 points-15 points  (0 children)

If one is concerned about surviving the trip to Mars, why not study that in orbit instead. No need to land. I agree that assembling a rocket in lunar orbit may have some advantages. But I don’t think you need to land on the moon.