SpaceX--Spacecraft, rockets, and Mars

[Ghjhero]

6 hours ago, maarsen said:

My sources are the members of RASC. The Royal Astronomical  Society of Canada. I am a member. 

As to passing through the ecliptic twice, the orbit is a hyperbola  and the gravity of the sun as it passes close by flings it back out up throught the ecliptic again. There is a lot of info on the web. Just search for interstellar asteroid. 

Ah I see, yup a hyperbola would do it. 

Ive read a lot about the asteroid online, but I haven’t seen anyone directly compare it to Rama. Maybe I’m jumping to conclusions here. Are you saying it’s behavior simply mirrors Rama’s or are you implying the “asteroid” is indeed an alien spaceship?

[A wilding]

11 minutes ago, Ghjhero said:

... are are you implying the “asteroid” is indeed an alien spaceship?

We will never know now ....

Obligatory XKCD:  https://xkcd.com/1919/

 

[maarsen]

5 hours ago, Ghjhero said:

Ah I see, yup a hyperbola would do it. 

Ive read a lot about the asteroid online, but I haven’t seen anyone directly compare it to Rama. Maybe I’m jumping to conclusions here. Are you saying it’s behavior simply mirrors Rama’s or are you implying the “asteroid” is indeed an alien spaceship?

The behaviour does mimic Rama, but professional astronomers are shy about raising aliens as an explanation until all else is exhausted. Me, not so much.

[Ghjhero]

1 hour ago, maarsen said:

The behaviour does mimic Rama, but professional astronomers are shy about raising aliens as an explanation until all else is exhausted. Me, not so much.

I’m gonna hope you’re wrong only because it looks like we’re not gonna have any chance of investigating further and finding out the truth. 

[SpaceChampion]

Bringing this around back to SpaceX, someone imagined how we could go chasing after the alien vessel...  ahem, I mean interstellar asteroid... with a probe launched by SpaceX's BFR:

Project Lyra: Sending a Spacecraft to 1I/’Oumuamua (former A/2017 U1), the Interstellar Asteroid. On page seven of the article, the authors suggest (among other ideas) sending a BFR/BFS craft using a Jupiter flyby followed by a close solar flyby to achieve the necessary hyperbolic excess velocity of 30km/s to intercept the object at a range of approximately 85 AU in 2039, following a launch in 2025.

Note: Pluto varies between 30-40 AU, so the rendezvous point is way way out there.

 

[SpaceChampion]

Falcon Heavy first launch expected now in early January.   Work preparing Pad 39A for it seems largely complete, should be done this week.  Pad 40 is ready to resume launching Falcon 9's, beginning with a resupply flight to the space station.  Whatever "Zuma" is, it's unknown when that one is going to launch.

[Yukle]

How incredible is this?! A scale model of the solar system.

 

[SpaceChampion]

I'm not sure if Elon is drunk tweeting again or if this (the 2nd tweet) is serious...

He says he's serious...

 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

16 hours ago, SpaceChampion said:

I'm not sure if Elon is drunk tweeting again or if this (the 2nd tweet) is serious...

He says he's serious...

 

Well... that’s one way to draw attention to the launch.

[maarsen]

22 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Well... that’s one way to draw attention to the launch.

It is not just to draw attention but to prove a concept.  I think he wants to put a large mass in orbit around Mars as proof that he can. What is the weight of a Tesla? If he can park a Tesla in orbit around Mars,  he can park robots and space station bits just as easily. 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

3 minutes ago, maarsen said:

It is not just to draw attention but to prove a concept.  I think he wants to put a large mass in orbit around Mars as proof that he can. What is the weight of a Tesla? If he can park a Tesla in orbit around Mars,  he can park robots and space station bits just as easily. 

So, why not try it with something that be useful in Mars Orbit.  A Tesla Roadster is just orbital debris to worry about on later missions.

[SpaceChampion]

The usual payload for a test launch is something like a useless metal cube of sufficient mass.  So orbital debris regardless.  I imagine they'll do something with the Roadster like encase it in lucite so it doesn't actually interfere with the launch and cause a rapid unscheduled disassembly.  But hey, it already has dash cams and batter power, so they're going to send back video too.

A Verge reporter is claiming Musk told him he "totally made it up" but didn't publish any screencap of the email.   Eric Berger of Ars Technica then immediately confirmed the launch is real by speaking to Musk directly.  It think what happened is the Verge reporter asked him obnoxiously if he was lying, and he responded sarcastically.  Now they're making a big stink about it.  Many SpaceX employees have also confirmed it is real.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

13 minutes ago, SpaceChampion said:

The usual payload for a test launch is something like a useless metal cube of sufficient mass.  So orbital debris regardless.  I imagine they'll do something with the Roadster like encase it in lucite so it doesn't actually interfere with the launch and cause a rapid unscheduled disassembly.  But hey, it already has dash cams and batter power, so they're going to send back video too.

A Verge reporter is claiming Musk told him he "totally made it up" but didn't publish any screencap of the email.   Eric Berger of Ars Technica then immediately confirmed the launch is real by speaking to Musk directly.  It think what happened is the Verge reporter asked him obnoxiously if he was lying, and he responded sarcastically.  Now they're making a big stink about it.  Many SpaceX employees have also confirmed it is real.

I did not know that.  It makes more sense now.  It’s also more fun than a mere chunk of metal.

[Spockydog]

18 hours ago, SpaceChampion said:

I'm not sure if Elon is drunk tweeting again or if this (the 2nd tweet) is serious...

He says he's serious...

 

Hahahaha. I freakin' love that guy!

 

[SpaceChampion]

'Bad Astronomer' Phil Plait confirms the story and clarifies (as expected by anyone who understands the rocket science) this it's not landing on Mars, or going into Mars orbit, but on a Hohmann transfer orbit (an elliptical orbit around the sun) that'll take it out to Mars distance on the apogee and back to Earth distance on the perigee, repeatedly, forever (unless someone retrieves it one day or it hits something).  It's apogee would coincide with Mars on the first orbit, but miss it on subsequent orbits (since it'll be less than a Martian year when it's back in that location), and possibly be decades before they coincide again, at a guess.

[Ghjhero]

First article I’ve seen to reiterate what has already been mentioned up thread about the possibility of the oddly shaped asteroid being a spaceship- https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/huge-object-passing-earth-could-be-alien-spacecraft-from-another-part-of-galaxy-say-scientists-a3716961.html

[Werthead]

24 minutes ago, Ghjhero said:

First article I’ve seen to reiterate what has already been mentioned up thread about the possibility of the oddly shaped asteroid being a spaceship- https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/huge-object-passing-earth-could-be-alien-spacecraft-from-another-part-of-galaxy-say-scientists-a3716961.html

Yes, they're going to be scanning it for radio transmissions starting tomorrow. Presumably it would have already detected our radio transmissions on its way through, if it was looking and wasn't dormant. Assuming it is artificial. It's almost certainly natural and gained that shape through billions of years of interstellar travel (although how is another question).

[Werthead]

On 24/11/2017 at 4:48 AM, SpaceChampion said:

Bringing this around back to SpaceX, someone imagined how we could go chasing after the alien vessel...  ahem, I mean interstellar asteroid... with a probe launched by SpaceX's BFR:

Project Lyra: Sending a Spacecraft to 1I/’Oumuamua (former A/2017 U1), the Interstellar Asteroid. On page seven of the article, the authors suggest (among other ideas) sending a BFR/BFS craft using a Jupiter flyby followed by a close solar flyby to achieve the necessary hyperbolic excess velocity of 30km/s to intercept the object at a range of approximately 85 AU in 2039, following a launch in 2025.

Note: Pluto varies between 30-40 AU, so the rendezvous point is way way out there.

 

Voyager I is currently 141 AU distant and travelling at 17km/s, so operating at that distance is no problem. They should definitely go for this, as we may never, ever get another chance to study such an object.

[SpaceChampion]

CRS-13 mission to ISS is currently scheduled for Dec 15th (10:33 EST).  This mission is the 13th commercial cargo resupply flight for SpaceX, and not only will they be reusing a first stage booster from the CRS-11 mission (still sooty too), but they're also going to reuse a previously flown Dragon cargo vessel from CRS-6.  This will also be the first launch from pad SLC-40 since the explosion destroyed the pad last year.  SpaceX took the time to upgrade the pad considerably, optimizing it for F9 launches and using a new design for the throw-back tower to speed operations.

Look to SpaceX's twitter feed for updates on launch date if they push it to later.  If they do have to push it, it'll be to after Christmas for technical reasons due to unfavourable positioning of the ISS during that interval.

Issues with the fairing that delayed launch of the mysterious Zuma payload has been resolved, and the next launches with it are an Iridium comsat on the 22nd from the west coast Vandenburg airforce base, and Zuma on January 4th target dates from pad SLC-40.

Falcon Heavy launch with the Tesla Roadster headed out to Mars is still scheduled for early January.  Should have a static fire test before the end of the year.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

7 hours ago, Werthead said:

Voyager I is currently 141 AU distant and travelling at 17km/s, so operating at that distance is no problem. They should definitely go for this, as we may never, ever get another chance to study such an object.

I would love to see them do this.  Even if it is only a strange asteroid it is worth investigating.