Random Space Thoughts and News

[ygolo]

Chinese astronauts perform record-breaking 9-hour spacewalk outside Tiangong space station (video)

The Dec. 16 - Dec. 17 EVA beat the old duration record by 10 minutes.

www.space.com

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

Chinese astronauts perform record-breaking 9-hour spacewalk outside Tiangong space station (video)

The Dec. 16 - Dec. 17 EVA beat the old duration record by 10 minutes.

www.space.com

It was the longest spacewalk.

I feel like since the dawn of the new millennium. Asia's been doing all the great and beautiful things. The last time the U.S. had the tallest building in the world was in the 90s.

Kessler Syndrome and the space debris problem​

This stood out to me:

Humanity has launched about 12,170 satellites since the dawn of the space age in 1957, according to the European Space Agency (ESA), and 7,630 of them remain in orbit today — but only about 4,700 are still operational.

I'm thinking we should send craft up there to recycle them for metal or parts.

 

[The Cat]

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

This stuff below is fascinating. Honestly, it surpasses our wildest science fiction.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

Forget “Earth-Like”—We’ll First Find Aliens on Eyeball Planets​

An eyeball planet is a planet with a narrow habitable strip along the terminator, which stays in the same place due to tidal locking. (The same side is always facing the sun, just like how the same side of the moon always faces the Earth.)

Didn't Asimov write about a planet like this in one of the Foundation books?

Let’s take a step back. The easiest planets to find are those that orbit close to their stars. The sweet spot for finding a habitable planet—with the same temperature as Earth—is on a much smaller orbit than Earth’s around a star much fainter than the Sun. But there are consequences of having a smaller orbit. A planet close to its star feels strong tides from its star, like the tides Earth feels from the Moon, but much stronger. Strong tides change how a planet spins. Tides drive the planet’s obliquity to zero, meaning that the planet’s equator is perfectly aligned with its orbit. The planet will also be “tidally locked”: It always shows the same side to the star.

 

[ygolo]

Forget “Earth-Like”—We’ll First Find Aliens on Eyeball Planets​

An eyeball planet is a planet with a narrow habitable strip along the terminator, which stays in the same place due to tidal locking. (The same side is always facing the sun, just like how the same side of the moon always faces the Earth.)

Didn't Asimov write about a planet like this in one of the Foundation books?

It's pretty common in Sci-Fi. I'm not sure where Asimov got the idea from, but tidal locking is an old idea.

Immanuel Kant even mentions it when asks "Whether the Earth Has Undergone an Alteration of Its Axial Rotation."

It could be much older. People have known about tides in some cultures since antiquity.

Eyeball planets maybe a step further maybe, but it doesn't seem that far away.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

It's pretty common in Sci-Fi. I'm not sure where Asimov got the idea from, but tidal locking is an old idea.

Immanuel Kant even mentions it when asks "Whether the Earth Has Undergone an Alteration of Its Axial Rotation."

It could be much older. People have known about tides in some cultures since antiquity.

Eyeball planets maybe a step further maybe, but it doesn't seem that far away.

I didn't know that about Kant. I wonder who first figured out the tides.

I think the concept of an eyeball planet is so cool. It would be awesome to visit one and see the sun stay in the same place, in an eternal twilight.