Well of Souls Forums

Like I said, they upgraded the turbo pump to have a higher flow rate, something that was within the design's capabilities, though never utilized in testing. Regenerative cooling is certainly nothing new (late 1800s, early 1900s), you put tubes around the engine bell and pump propellant through it, ...

hi hi Actually, the Fastrac was heavier than the Merlins, but whatever. Tweaking the nozzle was cool and all, but it is still an iteration on past work. I look forward to seeing if they can succeed in making recovery cost effective, they've got one step out of the way, I'll be sure to follow them a...

hi hi Hold up a second. Merlin is most definitely not Space X's own design, or at least, it is as much their design as an AJ26 is not a Russian motor with some tweaks and aerojet's name slapped on. Merlin is a Fastrac MC-1 rocket motor with a different turbo pump and some tweaks. (Fastrac was devel...

hi hi I could be wrong about this, but to my knowledge, NASA has not been sharing their rocket motor blueprints with the Russians or the Chinese. There are some very real concerns with launching rockets with a large number of small motors. I mean, I am really hoping that low cost space launches wil...

hi hi Well, when you put it like that, it sounds basic and easy. It's SpaceX. They aren't pursuing cost reduction via the use of ultra-complex supertech, that's Reaction Engines (and pretty much every other spaceplane and SSTO project that's ever existed). They like "basic and easy" wherever they c...

hi hi I mean, it's very impressive that they landed the first stage, don't get me wrong. There are very few people who have done a successful vertical landing of a rocket. But plenty of rockets have delivered satellites into LEO, so that's really not a first. I am, of course, very curious to see if...

hi hi Grats to Space X. They've joined a relatively small club, with the good ol' McDonnell Douglas DC-X, and the Blue Origin New Shepard. They did that a few years ago with the Grasshopper. They've started a new club with this...that's the first stage (and 9 of the 10 engines) of a rocket that jus...

Hhmm.. probably. But a neutron star hitting, or even passing close by the sun isn't going to do good things to the Earth. I cannot imagine there not being some sort of seismic events on the planet. Big ones. And this is assuming the orbits of the inner planets aren't shuffled/disarrayed. A neutron ...

I was referring to the possibility of Earth being in the sun's shadow. The nova's going to be from hydrogen piling up on the neutron star from its collision with the sun. The sun would be massively disrupted, but better off being exposed to that than being in direct line of sight of what's going on...

Ammonia was thought to be a major component of Earth's atmosphere early on, but more modern models lack it. Ammonia's relatively reactive and unstable (as is methane, also considered a candidate), so N2, CO2, CO, and H2O is a more likely composition, with a good bit of SO2 and H2S from volcanism......

Earth's initial atmosphere was supposed to have contained ammonia as well. And the detected ammonia on Ceres could as well be brought in by a cometary impactor. Ammonia was thought to be a major component of Earth's atmosphere early on, but more modern models lack it. Ammonia's relatively reactive ...

How would Earth be shielded? It would be screwed even if it was just a nova. The atmosphere would be gone, the planetary crust shattered and magma coming out in countless places. The radiation burst would have fried, killed any lifeforms and the heat boiled away any water with the atmosphere. I can...

Maybe I didn't make myself clear enough. He didn't use the RTG for energy for the rover , the electricity he saved comes from not having to operate the built-in rover heater. The rover either couldn't tap enough energy out of the RTG to do anything at all as it was designed to only do the fuel conv...

How is the radiation and heat supposed to go around the shielding pusher plate in space? By being emitted from matter that has gone around the pusher plate. If the event is large enough to produce a usable impulse on a pusher plate, it will engulf the vehicle. It'd be like relying on waterproof boo...

It's only usefull for the general education of the public, astronomers make very little distinction between big bodies and small bodies of the Solar System. I think this is the larger point: the definition has almost nothing to do with science. And it's confusing to the public, because they mistake...

Renamed the topic to be more accurate to subject matter. **cough** So, from what I can parse of the Op, the subject is: 1. There's a computer network 2. There's a virus in the network 3. What's a respectable rate of replication given: 4. Something about energy cost For a post that goes into a lot o...

I don't see mention of a binder anywhere in this. I hope you're not proposing iron (melting point) or aluminum (arguing against it due to unavoidable stress-related degradation was the point of that part of the post). No, I was thinking of something more conventional. You need very little binder co...

Sorry about the lack of clarity, I was assuming the more extreme threat as well, but with the quirk of building the escape ship from lunar materials instead of terrestrial materials, thanks to very early launches of mining equipment to the Moon via Orions. For bulk materials, it strikes me as a pre...

hi hi First of all, the result of the collision is going to depend on the velocity and the angle of the collision. If the collision velocity exceeds the escape velocity, then you'll likely get a nova. If the collision velocity is lower than the escape velocity, it could potentially just form a Thor...

I doubt very much that you would be able to accurately predict the exact path of a neutron star through our solar system 70 years in advance of the encounter. I don't think it's possible to know the mass of the object to a close enough precision to be able to say with certainty what would happen. T...