Science. Freaking awesome science.

[StN]

Well, as they say, all data is good data.

I'm no rocket scientist, but it looks like the decision not to do a flame diversion tunnel under the launch mount may have contributed to this. Seems up to nearly 20% of the engines weren't firing during ascent, possibly due to damage from blown back concrete - the crater under the launch mount is showing a fair bit of exposed dirt - so all of the re-enforced concrete was ablated. That may have led to engine and hydraulic damage resulting in the yellow flames - methane is supposed to burn cleanish with a nice pink purple flame. And I think this was the last to use hydraulic steering - the newer model have electric, so something less to get damaged (The hydraulics are housed on the outside under the squarish sections on the lower half of the booster - susceptible to concrete blowback I think).

That doesn't explain why it didn't separate though - unless the software got mixed up. Seems like it may have started the flip prior to boost back without disconnecting stage-2, which left it tumbling uncontrollably.

Very successful test of the Flight Termination System though, so there is that...

[Know me.]

Yeah there were some huge chunks of something solid flying up into the air when the rocket was still on the ground. Impressive it was able to flip a number of times at speed while the whole stack was together. Also impressive was that it was able to maintain attitude with so many engines failed/failing. At least the rocket structure looks robust.

[Ab]

I'd be pretty annoyed if I were a SpaceX engineer and been bullied into testing prematurely just because Elon wanted a win on "4/20"

[Lightspeed]

Some science history:

The 1969 Apollo Guidance Computer

Succinct video about how the Apollo Guidance Computer functioned, how the astronauts used it, the hardware bug that manifested during the moon landing and how the system recovered and was able to keep the lander flying.

[MadMax]

Have watched similar through: https://www.youtube.com/@CuriousMarc/videos

[StN]

I like the one where the guys found the remaining versions and wired them together over a few weekends in a hotel room.

[StN]

Arrgh - yeah, as Madmax said

Full playlist:

TL:DR

WSJ summary

[Lightspeed]

[StN]

The Twitter comments - ughhh. I liked it better when the Internet was stuck in academia and you had to build your own PPP stack to make it work.

[wazza]

That's a neat picture. I do wonder what that building/structure is in 3rd crater to the right, and why does it have a shadow like it's a huge mast/attenna?

[Lightspeed]

Given it's the moon and billions stare at it nightly I bet you can find those particular features described ad nauseam should you look.

It is a great pic, right? Like echoes of a future that might await us.

[Lightspeed]

New record! 17 people are in Earth orbit at the same time right now

https://whoisinspace.com/

(Also how many toilets in space and robots exploring space.)

[DrTiTus]

Now only 13. That was short-lived.

[StN]

...and no love for Voyager2?

[Lightspeed]

Originally Posted by StN

...and no love for Voyager2?

Yeah, I'm guessing they have some particular definition.

[Lightspeed]

NASA’s Webb Scores Another Ringed World With New Image of Uranus

[Lightspeed]

James Webb Space Telescope spies earliest complex organic molecules in the universe

Astronomers have detected the oldest known examples of complex organic molecules in the universe, a new study reports.

These chemicals — much like ones found in smoke and soot on Earth — reside within an early galaxy that formed when the universe was about 10% of its current age, according to the study.

[Ab]

the fuuuuuck

[Lightspeed]

So much that's cool in that article.

Like this:

"This pushes back the old record for detections like this by about an extra billion years," Spilker said.

[Lightspeed]

Fascinating read:

In New Paradox, Black Holes Appear to Evade Heat Death

[Lightspeed]

A white supremacist took MDMA for a study, and it snapped him out of his beliefs: 'Why am I doing this?'

So much great progress in therapeutic psychedelic studies.

[Lightspeed]

We Live in the Rarest Type of Planetary System

[Ab]

Yeah, I saw that this morning myself. Two quick reactions:

1. Scientific American, lol, fuck 'em. The "Scientific" in the name is as meaningful as commentary on Ukraine in an RNZ news article. I'm not bitter, you're bitter.

2. Our planetary system is quasi-ordered - Earth is bigger than Mars, Jupiter is bigger than Saturn, Uranus is bigger than Neptune, and we've got a massive chaotic pile of jumbled shit smack in the middle of our system. In fact the absence of a mention in the article of our asteroid belt seems to me to be a glaring omission.

3. We would be so fucked without Jupiter. The inner planets would get smashed by meteor/comet/asteroid impacts every second year if Jupiter's gravity well were not on base defense for us.

[StN]

I think the fact that we can make such a survey and draw data from it is pretty awesome. Although I do wonder about the sample size - how many multi planetary systems has Kepler found?

Maybe that's the problem - we can't really see and collate the data that well except for the ones that trigger the "Similar" catergory, and systems like ours are harder to detect from afar, and may well be more populous.

JWT to the rescue!

/Google...

Oh - holy shit, 859.

Ok - maybe it's not as bad as I thought. Seems systems with 3 detected are most prevalent though.

[Lightspeed]

Originally Posted by Ab

1. Scientific American, lol, fuck 'em. The "Scientific" in the name is as meaningful as commentary on Ukraine in an RNZ news article. I'm not bitter, you're bitter.

I'll remember this for the next time you post Daily Mail content.

Originally Posted by StN

Oh - holy shit, 859.

It's cool they include "Planet 9" as a potential planet for the Sol system.

[Ab]

Originally Posted by Lightspeed

I'll remember this for the next time you post Daily Mail content.

At least when it's in the DM, one knows that the editorial slant of the publication, and that it's, well, the DM. When people read things in SciAm they don't necessarily realise that it's not the publication that it used to be.

[Lightspeed]

Originally Posted by Lightspeed

Fascinating read:

In New Paradox, Black Holes Appear to Evade Heat Death

This is seriously worth the read. It's not so much about black holes or heat death, but the potential equivalence of understanding physics through computer science (and vice versa).

[Cyberbob]

Certain segments of the science industry are very excited about an upcoming announcement.

On June 29th, the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) will be making a major announcement during a live-streamed event! This is in coordination with results being released by other PTAs around the globe.

We invite all interested members of the public to join our public announcement event on Thursday, June 29, 2023 at 1:00 PM Eastern US Time. The announcement will report results of the analysis of NANOGrav’s 15-year data set, and interpretations of those results.

5am Friday for NZ.

https://nanograv.org/news/2023Announcement

[Lightspeed]

Oh, very cool. What have they found in the deep?

[Lightspeed]

Scientists have finally ‘heard’ the chorus of gravitational waves that ripple through the universe

They reported Wednesday that they were able to “hear” what are called low-frequency gravitational waves — changes in the fabric of the universe that are created by huge objects moving around and colliding in space.

“It’s really the first time that we have evidence of just this large-scale motion of everything in the universe,” said Maura McLaughlin, co-director of NANOGrav, the research collaboration that published the results in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

[Cyberbob]

It's Nobel Prize level stuff.
It's an entirely new field of gravitational wave astrophysics being created here.

Using pulsars as gravitational wave detectors seems so far fetched, but it's now proven to be possible.

[Ab]

This is some insane shit.

[StN]

Forget outside the box thinking - that stuff is outside the solar system!

[Lightspeed]

Wavelengths with periods of years is pretty intense.

Looking forward to seeing the maps of objects they put together once there's a bunch of these online, now the method is demonstrated.

[StN]

They used Arecibo

[Lightspeed]

Oof.

[Ab]

Originally Posted by Lightspeed

Oof.

[StN]

Time to ditch any shares in Secret Server and LastPass...

Google and the Q-bits.

[Lightspeed]

He said: “This is a very nice demonstration of quantum advantage. While a great achievement academically, the algorithm used does not really have real world practical applications though.

This is still the big hurdle from what I understand.

[Lightspeed]

Antimatter falls down, not up: CERN experiment confirms theory

Physicists have shown that, like everything else experiencing gravity, antimatter falls downwards when dropped.

This outcome is not surprising — a difference in the gravitational behaviour of matter and antimatter would have huge implications for physics — but observing it directly had been a dream for decades, says Clifford Will, a theoretician who specializes in gravity at the University of Florida in Gainesville. “It really is a cool result.”