Can Humans Make Gravitational Waves & Other Deep Space Questions 20

[@kwan3217]

On a "launch escape" system for an inanimate payload: I used to work with an experiment that was carried on a sounding rocket. This particular experiment was carried on a two-stage Terrier-Black Brant IX. The payload was designed to get up above 250km (we routinely hit 285km) and do an experiment for about 5min, before reentering the atmosphere, popping a parachute, and landing softly on the ground. The payload was designed to be re-used, and in fact has been re-used multiple times. On one of its flights (I think in 2015), the guidance failed and they had to set off the flight termination system (boom button). This is a much milder flight termination than you may have seen in other orbital rockets -- it just unzips the side of the second stage so it splits open and stops thrusting. In that flight, the parachute recovery system went on to properly sequence and deploy and save the payload. We were able to fly that exact same experiment again on multiple other flights, and still plan to fly it about once every two years. I don't know if any though was put into the parachute system to save the payload from a failure like this, or it just happened that the system said "x altitude and descending, time to pull the chute" and didn't care if there was a failure on the way up. Does that count?

[@CAMacKenzie]

I was thinking about the Blue Origin New Shepard flight of this year Sept 12. New Shepard was built as a human carrier, and has an escape system, but this flight was with instrument package only.

[@paulmichaelfreedman8334]

Thank you, very interesting. I don't think it would count because it's not purpose built for payload emergency bailout, it's more of a side-effect? Nevertheless I think it's awesome that your rocket works in a way that does not destroy the entire stack when terminated, although admittedly, It's impossible to not destroy an orbital gargantuan when terminating the flight - the intention IS to break it up into smaller pieces so there is no 1 big impact, just many small ones that are easier to handle/manage in case any infrastructure is hit. The flight termination system on an orbital rocket is most important for the first 30-60 seconds of flight, after that aerodynamic forces do the work when a rocket is malfunctioning (most cases veering off course) But who am I telling man, you know all this already! And correct me if I'm wrong in any of this!

[@phpART]

definitely counts 😄

[@phuzz00]

I was wondering about the Soviet Unions first spy satellites, because they were basically using the same Vostok booster and casual that were used for manned launches, it's possible that they used the launch escape system from the manned-Vostok

[@zyeborm]

simple is good, I'll take it :-)

[@priceringo1756]

Our best chance at a human created, detectable, gravitational wave is dropping the cumulative budget for SLS on the launch pad at one time.

[@bazinga1831]

that, or your mother

[@joshuagollaher9614]

@@bazinga1831 damn

[@Galactis1]

Yeah, no. There's no one else that can launch a rocket that big, that powerful, with all the requirements.

[@channelchin8911]

@@Galactis1 space X is doing it bigger, it’s reusable, cheaper, and on like half the budget lol

[@nagualdesign]

The Apollo Program cost almost twice as much as Artemis when adjusted for inflation, and that's not including the cost of Mercury and Gemini. Considering that Apollo was primarily an exercise in outdoing the USSR (although it undoubtedly had a far greater impact on humanity), whereas Artemis aims to establish a permanent presence on the Moon, it seems like money well spent to me. The fact that SpaceX might end up taking the batton after Artemis has run its course, and Starship, if successful, will be far more economical than the SLS, is by the by.

[@kataseiko]

"Lorenzo von Matterhorn" is from "How I met your mother". You should look it up, it's explained quite well..

[@DrDeuteron]

"Nuclear weapons are always an option" -Scott Manley quote of the week

[@Sniperboy5551]

I think it’s bulls**t that they’ve banned atmospheric nuclear testing, I wanna see one in my lifetime. Who knows, if the conflict in Ukraine heats up, maybe I’ll get my wish! 😂😆

[@AndersWelander]

They could do a whole battery of nukes all at once. It would then be a great way to measure how quickly CO2 gets sucked out of the atmosphere. Because there would be a spike in an isotope of carbon.

[@icannotfly]

It's one of the most menacing things he's said to date

[@gregorychaney7604]

He should make Tee shirts 👕

[@noeoep]

@@icannotfly Up there with “Fly safe!”

[@seldoon_nemar]

Scott, you forgot one thing when talking about narrow spectrum lights. We used Sodium Vapor street lights for decades. they emit a near perfect 589 nm wavelength light. you can even look at old photos of berlin when half the city was lit with more modern lights, and the other half still had sodium lights

[@scottmanley]

But the earth has a natural sodium glow.

[@jhonbus]

Plus, the "used for decades" thing is important. If we're only sending out a detectable signal for a few decades, then the aliens have to be pointing their telescopes towards us during a specific period the same length of time. A few decades is a pretty narrow window to hit compared to the multiple billion years spanning an alien civ's abiogenesis, multiplication, evolotion, technological and cultural development, progression, decline, and... sublimation? I quite like this though, as it makes sense of an unanswered question. Scott touched on part of it in the video. We used to wonder why we didn't detect any extra-terrestrial radio signals if there was intelligent life out there. The signals we were radiating should be obviously artificial, so if there were aliens out that had got to the point of inventing radio, we might be able to detect it if we listened hard enough. But that was based on the naive assumption that we were doing radio the only way it could be done, so presumably would be for as long as our civilisation lasts, hopefully thousands of years. But we don't really use narrowband, obviously-artificial signals any more. The spread-spectrum digital signals we've moved on to, all overlapping and coinciding, look exactly identical to random noise unless you know exactly how to decode a particular signal from it.

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

If we look at different spectrums, we're sending out radio signals for a century. Assuming the signals are strong enough and the alien instruments sensitive enough, everyone within a couple dozen lightyears should know there is something going on here. Narrow band signals with precise rhythmic modulation aren't that common in nature.

[@fist_bump]

"You really dont know me? What a refreshing change of pace." -Lorenzo von Matterhorn

[@olafzalm]

He is legen....wait for it....

[@fist_bump]

@@olafzalm and I hope you're not lactose intolerant because the second half of that word is diary.

[@ncdavis888]

SNASA log 38207: ask Scott Manley how to get to the Smoon

[@Jonathan-zf6ho]

@@olafzalm …dary, legendary!

[@TheGeoffable]

Phallumegaly is no laughing matter.

[@charliefeld1201]

When the new shepard aborted last flight it didn't have people on board but they didn't disable the auto abort. So you could say that the abort was for the inanimate experiments flying on it and it wasn't an abort test but a commercial flight.

[@NileMcMillion]

Good point, plus I'm pretty sure the capsule that aborted was never intended for humans.

[@StarCreche]

The 3 “new” Orion capsules announced this week are actually refurbs of the Artemis 3, 4 and 5 capsules. So they will be getting re-used, but will need extensive work.

[@erictheepic5019]

I find it amazing that they're predicting they'll need heavy refurbishment before they've even flown a single Orion capsule (barring the boilerplate Orion flown on Ares I). Perhaps they're just anticipating the decades worth of rust and cobwebs they'll acquire while waiting for launch?

[@bbgun061]

wait, they're refurbishing capsules for missions that haven't flown yet? What had to be done? Why are they calling them new?

[@Hevach]

They're contracting now for them to be refurbished when they are flown. These things are set up a lot like commodity futures, the government contract process is slow but has a lot of lead time.

[@dalel3608]

*** referb Artemis 3 Orion, but new builds of two more Orions. Brings the Orion count to 5 reusable models, enough craft for three Artemis flights each. Expect more contracts to refurbish the rest as the Artemis flights get moving.

[@simongeard4824]

@@erictheepic5019 It seems a fair prediction, given how much refurbishment the Artemis 1 booster has needed without even launching yet...

[@yexela]

There was a recent CERN workshop "Storage Rings and Gravitational Waves" discussing the topic of gravitational synchrotron radiation from the LHC for example. I guess the hope is to produce the high-frequency gravitational synchrotron radiation coherently, like in a free electron laser.

[@PrimatoFortunato]

As I didn't understand anything I'll go around telling the LHC will create not one but TWO black holes which will spin around and kill us all with (air quotes) high frequency gravitational waves.

[@konradcomrade4845]

seems, since they found nothing exciting at CERN, recently; they start discussing "hot air ballons, and bridges to nowhere, in 30 years" to have something to do. Or maybe we don't understand, what they are thinking about; but being skeptical, I tend to the first explanation.

[@bionova7]

I think it's really cute that your son is taking interest in what you do, great job kid!

[@luckyrashes]

It also has to be said, Great job Dad!

[@andrewwhite1793]

Very good point! The short time a civilisation goes from its first Morse code radio broadcast to when everything looks like broadband noise is tiny compared to the age of the universe, so SETI never really stands a chance.

[@DrWhom]

You make a good point. Although I am personally at least as pessimistic as you are, one could raise the point of the maximum amount of Joules a given civilisation learns to control and manipulate. That leaves open the possibility of deliberate signal creation at a staggering scale in both space and time - although the vast majority of sentient species will probably never reach such a stage. I think the point of SETI is philosophical: it is _not intrinsically incoherent_ to look for intelligent alien life elsewhere, even though the chances of "getting" anything in this particular way are infinitesimally slim.

[@konradcomrade4845]

then there is only left the 60Hz and 50Hz frequency of US and EU power lines. They emit quite something! Of course, an advanced civilization would use superconducting DC lines for power transmission; or shielded AC lines.

[@slaphappyduplenty2436]

The sound of black holes colliding is one of the most satisfying things in all astronomy.

[@zyeborm]

boooooowooooop

[@gordonstewart5774]

That bit about having a station at lower inclination for less heat buildup was interesting. Thanks.

[@dandil]

regarding detecting alien signatures: I've heard one pitch where we could use spectroscopy on planetary atmospheres to try to detect industrial chemical pollutants, such as CFCs

[@zerothis23]

Detecting artificial nuclear isotopes might be better.

[@dalel3608]

@@zerothis23 Problem with that is there would need to be a massive (far far larger that what humans have done with all the weapons testing and Chernobyl + Fukushima) nuclear accident to put enough artificial nuclear isotopes into the surface to have it detectable from here.. we'd be detecting a tomb world.

[@Wawet76]

I googled "Lorenzo Von Matterhorn". He seems to be a famous and rich explorer.

[@YossiRafelson]

The recent BlueOrigin failure had an abort system with only inanimate objects on board. Also, spacex iss supply missions use a dragon capsule with escape capability.

[@johannesgutsmiedl366]

Only because they are primarily designed to be manned and you'd have to actively remove the launch abort system, and both have the LES integrated so it's not even an extra tower or anything. Building a launch escape system for a high value payload like JWST as suggested would be a lot more tricky, not least because surviving the launch escape would be pretty tricky for a complex satellite unless you specifically design for it.

[@nixonperez]

Cargo Dragon 2 does not have the SuperDraco abort engines

[@miroslavmilan]

@@johannesgutsmiedl366 True, although I can imagine NASA would much rather have a recovered telescope that’s been a bit shaken and mangled, than one blown into pieces or in a wrong orbit.

[@johannesgutsmiedl366]

@@miroslavmilan eeeh for complex instruments like that if they're not specifically designed for a certain load case you have to take them apart and inspect, repair and recertify every single little nut and bolt... you'll very quickly get to the point where just building a new one is cheaper, especially because the most expensive components (mirrors and instruments) are also the most likely to be damaged.

[@Bmac2112]

8:39 Lorenzo von Matterhorn was a hot air balloon enthusiast and adventurer who disappeared during an expedition to/over the Arctic in 2009.

[@Stephen-vu2gk]

A launch escape system might be a good idea for any sort of fissile payload. If we want to use SMRs on the moon or mars we probably don't want those to RUD at almost any cost.

[@HuntingTarg]

The very idea of needing such a system for such a payload rather puts a damper on putting that particular reactor design, fully assembled, into orbit. Hello, PHWR 😉

[@advorak8529]

Apollo 13

[@YodaWhat]

Fission Reactor fuel has only low-level radioactivity *before the reactor is FIRST activated.* Even then, it takes a while for the lingering radioactivity to build up. So the danger of a failed launch is almost entirely about the _perception of danger_ by an uninformed populace. Still, even idiots can influence politics.

[@Stephen-vu2gk]

@@YodaWhat Perception is 90% of any political argument. Reality, is 0-3% and the rest is some combination of gibberish and trace considerations. I really appreciate it when I'm wrong about this but it doesn't happen enough.

[@YodaWhat]

@@Stephen-vu2gk- Sounds about right. :/

[@jasoncampbell4532]

Re: Launch Escape Systems for cargo After CRS-7's failure the investigation found the capsule could have survived had the parachutes been deployed. Elon then stated SpaceX would modify Dragon Cargo's software to do such early parachute deployment during launch failure in order to save the capsule and its contents in some scenarios. I haven't seen confirmation this software change happened, but if so it would be at least a partial cargo-only launch escape system.

[@blackhat4968]

For the Boca Chica to Cape Canaveral hop.... I would think the cost of the fuel for the hop would exceed the cost to ship the booster on a truck/train/ship (not sure how they do it now)

[@lewismassie]

13:45 Didn't Blue Origin use their abort system on an unmanned mission recently? Also shuttle RTLS landing payload margins were about 19 metric tons at the start of the program, and about 21 mT by the end of the program

[@TheClintonio]

230t of thrust sounds like a lot but for example "The Shard" in London's steel structure weighs _over_ 12,500 tonnes. We're very good at engineering with large forces as a species. (And yes I am comparing static to dynamic forces).

[@johncarlaw8633]

@ClintonxA the static and shock loads on couplings of 90,000 ton railroad locomotives and wagons the forces on the turntable pin between a prime mover and road train. And then the enormous cyclical and shock forces in the tiny contact areas of ball and roller bearings that are just standard parts.

[@andersmusikka]

@@johncarlaw8633 Do 90000 ton railroad lokomotives exist? Are there even complete trains with such mass?

[@Rorschach1024]

I'm reminded of Larry Niven's "Hole Man" in which an ancient civilization Mars had trapped a charged quantum black hole in what was essentially between two superconducting voice coils.

[@jdrissel]

@ScottManley Getting boosters from Boca Chica to Florida actually sounds fairly easy to me. The trick would be to fly them from Boca Chica to a barge in the gulf and then take them by barge to Florida. I think would be simple relatively easy to pull off and you might even get a launch out of it for the in the bargain.

[@unclefrogy743]

flying boosters from Texas to Florida might be possible might even save some time though they would need servicing and inspection but it would probably not be any cheaper then shipping by ship which would have the advantage of being able to transport more then one at a time thus reducing the fuel cost even more. the S-II of the Saturn V was built in Seal Beach ca. and shipped by ship to Florida so I presume there are facilities available for handling ships and bulky cargo at hand.

[@konradcomrade4845]

I think it wouldn't be that challenging at all: just fuel up to the nesseccary amount (maybe 1/4 full) and don't do a too high parabola, don't go more than Mach 2, boost brake, and precision land. The booster could even fly back from Florida to Boca Chica, just for fun and practice!

[@vernepavreal7296]

I am a blind KZbin user and enjoy channels like this one because of their particularly verbal nature I find it interesting however when the resolution of description is kilometres miles galaxies etc never down to millimetres or inches when it comes to that somehow the human brain finds it easier to move fingers around rather than say millimetres or inches Scott has this common response as well Cheers

[@realulli]

He's mostly talking about space. "Space is big, mindbogglingly big", to quote Douglas Adams. These distances are incomprehensible for any human. Personally, I can relate to distances up to a few hundred kilometers, but beyond that it starts getting difficult. I think the ability to relate to a distance is tied to our travel capability and the difficulty to travel that distance. E.g. can you walk 400m? Probably yes and you can probably imagine how that distance looks or feels (sorry for the comparison, I can only go from my own experience). Can you imagine standing in front of the Empire State Building, how tall that is? Unless you're a pilot or mountain climber, probably already somewhat incomprehensible, even if those 381m are not an issue if you just have to travel horizontally. Regarding the relations - you do realize 1 mm relates to 1 m the same 1 km does, just the other direction? That's the beauty of SI units, they're mostly related to each other (time as the black sheep of the family stands out a bit ;-)). Milli- is just the syllable for 1/1000th, kilo- is just the syllable for 1000, unlike imperial units, where 1 ft ist a fairly odd number of inches, 1 mile ist some weird number of feet... (I hope I understood your question correctly :-))

[@vernepavreal7296]

I just remembered that Scott works for Apple I certainly owe Apple appreciation for their VoiceOver feature on all iPhones it really has become my only access to electronic media with the multiple upgrades windows has gone through leaving my screen Reader skills behind Cheers

[@DrWhom]

@@realulli It would take about a millennium to "see planet Earth" (all of it) whilst hiking - and not doing anything else.

[@realulli]

@@DrWhom yup. So, it's fairly impossible to relate to the dimension even of just our planet. Maybe introducing "class of transportation" will help. Today, you have human powered, mechanical ground travel, sea travel and air travel. In the future, you might have reaction travel (based on reaction drives like the chemical rockets we have now), reactionless and possibly some form of jump travel. Maybe something we can't even imagine today. A short distance in the next higher class is barely imaginable in the lower class, e.g. a short trip by car (e.g. 50 km) is barely imaginable hiking. The borders are somewhat fuzzy, though.

[@webchimp]

To get a booster from Boca Chica to Florida, just stick it on a barge and light one engine.

[@ericlotze7724]

Very Kerbal; *Polar Land Speed Record Attempt When*

[@Baronvon_bonbon]

I love the vomit of information that never seems to stop coming from your face. Either you've legitimately just have all of wikipedia's space history pages in your brain, or this is the best clipping and editing for a Q&A blog on KZbin Thanks for keeping my lunch breaks interesting.

[@Safetytrousers]

If you are very enthusiastic about a subject you know this level of stuff. I could have done a round on analogue synthesizers on Mastermind at one point. But Scott would not pick questions he couldn't answer.

[@brianargo4595]

@@Safetytrousers that and he's got time to do some research, take notes, refresh his memory and whatnot before recording.

[@randomnickify]

Or he is doing what every public speaker does- prepares in advance :)

[@seabeepirate]

The resonance is also a huge factor in the engines. At high temp the compounded forces of resonance are significant.

[@emilsp]

Great job on the editing Orion! Couldn't tell there was a new editor until I read the description.

[@rkirke1]

8:30 Re: Lorenzo von Matterhorn's question - For anyone interested, have a look at Hydraulic Press Channel for some great visual examples of compressive strength of everyday items! Never ceases to amaze me how much force it actually takes to crush some relatively mundane materials..

[@KingSvenDeluxe]

Indeed, and the frame of the press has survived 145+ tonne loads for decades now.

[@cameronhunt5967]

One widely used light with a narrow frequency band is low pressure sodium lamps. They are even sometimes used in cities near to telescopes because they are easy to filter out, so looking for that might be a good bet

[@mytube001]

I can imagine a Super Heavy flight in stages, where it takes off, glides, descends, does a second burn, glides and then descends for a landing, or a "truncated parabola" where it accelerates more horizontally for a bit near the top, then performs a braking burn before going back deeper. Should have enough fuel for that, and it would cut the heating quite a lot, I would imagine. The distance along the ground is only about 30 % longer than the longest planned FH core booster flight (Arabsat 6A, though the center core failed that landing).

[@davidb6576]

A little thought would have to be put into controlling fuel slosh, yes?

[@mytube001]

@@davidb6576 How would that be any different from a normal flight profile?

[@wybewestra7050]

For those interested in more info about the how and why of the development of liquid rocket propellants, I'd reccommend reading "Ignition!: An informal history of rocket propellants.". (It has an unsurprising amount of annecdotes about explosions and near-misses)

[@owensmith7530]

The plan for Orion is to refurbish the pressure vessels, some details are in the announcements just made of the Orions ordered this week.

[@markrichards9646]

I love it. Asteroid Billiards. For the guy who was asking if the bell of a rocket engine is supporting all that thrust, Scott’s explanation is spot on. I would only add to remember, that the engine bell is pretty much the interface between the force of thrust going in one direction and the entire rocket going the other direction. As Scott explained, the force of thrust is spread out over the entire inner surface of the bell just like the weight of an airplane is spread out over the wings. For aircraft, that’s known as wing loading, and is calculated as the mass/weight of the aircraft in pounds divided by the square footage - metric would be the mass in kilograms divided by the wing area in square meters. Math is fun. For fun I like to calculate the wing loading of fighter aircraft. Usually a pretty high number, and then remember that wing has to be strong enough to handle the G-forces those aircraft are capable of!

[@theinterfaithshepherd9075]

Big LIKE to your editor! Nice work Scott's son!! :)

[@insu_na]

similar to how radio waves are going away, so are single-wavelength light-sources. Sodium lamps which are *exceptionally* popular street lamps are going away and being replaced by LEDs. These LEDs have *narrow* wavelength bands, but sodium lamps had a single, exact wavelength

[@ItsDesm]

Regarding the flying of boosters between Space X facilities... How expensive is the rocket fuel? Would the wear on the booster and costs of the hop out weight the savings of traditional transporation?

[@simongeard4824]

The booster is supposedly being designed for multiple flights per day. If the cost in either fuel or wear from the occasional trip to the factory is a problem, they've completely failed in their goals...

[@ItsDesm]

@@simongeard4824 Right, good point. But Space X charges tens of millions per launch. They would gain no benefit, besides saving on transport costs. I'm sure they would rather make money on each launch and not waste a launch to just transport a booster between sites.

[@simongeard4824]

@@ItsDesm Personally I don't think they'll fly boosters between launch sites... they're just not designed for it. But if SpaceX are aiming for rapid and cheap reuse, then I don't see cost or wear being a reason not to do it... those factors cannot be significant if the design goals are to be met.

[@elmar_wermuth]

Hahah, Lorenzo von Matterhorn :) it's a reference to the TV series "How I Met Your Mother", where Barney Stinson plays this character from his Playbook.

[@macdjord]

2:53 - This is why you never outsource core functions.

[@jamescomstock7299]

Ligo estimates they can detect 2 merging neutron stars that max out around 3 solar masses at 160 MParsecs, or around 450millions light years. Assuming that's the case, and assuming an accelerating mass at 1km from the detectors, which would be about 4x10^21 times closer, I get a mass needing to be between 1 and 2 million tons to be detectable by Ligo at 1km.

[@JargonFootprint]

However, the term "detectable" has developed a fulminant dynamic in the last 150 years. Take radio waves, for example: In 1864, Maxwell predicted the existence of radio waves. We may assume that Maxwell and many of his contemporaries questioned the practical detectability of radio waves. It took more than two decades before Hertz was the first to actually succeed in detecting radio waves. And now history is repeating itself on the subject of gravitational waves. Einstein had predicted the existence of gravitational waves, and it again took several decades until Hulse and Taylor were able to provide proof. In 150 years, our descendants will read in the history books in disbelief about the gigantic and inefficient effort science is making in 2022 to improve the detectability of a phenomenon as simple as gravitational waves are.

[@MorRobots]

Regarding the 10 billion dollar JWST, not all of those funds in orbit. I would imagine a second observatory would cost an order of magnitude less. This is because they would only need to pay for the manufacturing and verification of the components and not the RnD.

[@gerardlabelle9626]

Only if they manufactured an exact duplicate. If they made a 2d JWST after the first launch had failed, each scientist, manager, and engineer would insist on making “a tiny but highly beneficial change”. And you’d have a brand new telescope design, $20,000,000,000 + tax.

[@csabanagy8071]

There is a way to generate gravity wave what does not require huge size and big mass. Gravity is behaving like vawe. That means you can pump up the amplitude. What else we need: we need particle accelerator/decelerator rings. A lot of them right after each other. The rings are accelerating particles for a few picoseund and slow them again. Using harvested energy for the next ring. We need many ring pairs to phase them properly and space them properly. Gravity vawe is traveling with light speed. In the middle of the ring loop a gravity fluctuations will start to propagate. If the loop big enough the fluctuation can grow on s certain point.

[@bryfunkenstein]

There's a series of books about communication using gravitational waves. It's REALLY not what the books are about....but it gets there eventually. Lots of other things going on. It's a Larry Niven Collabo with another author who's name escapes me. It's called Bowl of Heaven

[@tomhansen45]

It would be interesting to know the energy (delta-v) differences between an object from earth getting into Mars equatorial orbit versus getting into a Polar Mars orbit.

[@thedroolfool]

Re: LES for payloads, the recent blue origin launch failure demonstrated they keep theirs active for non crewed flights. It wasn't developed for payloads, but it's being used in that way.

[@scottmanley]

Kinda bizarre that I forgot that already.

[@thedroolfool]

@@scottmanley If a rocket crashes in the desert and there's no video, does it make an explosion?

[@dalel3608]

@@thedroolfool From the satellite photos.. yes.

[@Willy_Tepes]

I have seen some people who could probably make gravitational waves.

[@riparianlife97701]

Yo mama.

[@drunkpaulocosta]

@@riparianlife97701 Wow smart woman.

[@eugenecbell]

Like a square dance at a Weight Watches meeting?

[@Willy_Tepes]

@@eugenecbell Like a average day at Burger King.

[@Sniperboy5551]

Do you think that if they started spinning around they would start pulling everything else in like a black hole? 😂

[@RWBHere]

At around 14:00 - The recent Blue Origin rocket failure payload was rescued by a launch abort escape system, and that particular capsule had never carried humans.

[@maxcrazyhorse]

If I am not mistaken, Orion has been signed for another 3 flights recently starting at Artemis 7 through ten (or some numbers in that range) and two will be built new however one of the Orion's will be refurbished (this cut the cost to 1.9 billion for 3 spacecraft).

[@Markle2k]

Sodium vapor lamps were discussed as a tecnosignature at one point. But LEDs are replacing them and are designed to reduce light pollution from escaping upward. So, that technology window is closing.

[@brianhawthorne7603]

Every time this video title scrolls past in my stream, I think: “Damn those would have to be seriously massive humans!”

[@lancelotlake7609]

Methane rockets are not new... Blue Flame, broke the land speed record in October 1970 using a LNG (methane) rocket engine. It held the record for 13 years.

[@7om986]

reminded me of the gravitational wave transmitter in the ‘Remembrance of the Earth’s past’ trilogy by Liu Cixin - basically huge towers with strings made out of incredibly dense material inside that vibrated rapidly to broadcast information to all directions like a beacon

[@channelchin8911]

This sounds like a very interesting book, would you care to elaborate on the plot a little bit?

[@DerHenker_]

more like the gravitational pulese used to communicate in the honor harrington novels although those work a bit differently since they ripple along the space/ hyperspace boundary and thus are ftl

[@johannesgutsmiedl366]

@@channelchin8911 Unfortunately it's almost impossible to talk about those books without spoiling them... it's an amazing series though, if sometimes VERY dark. Highly recommended!

[@7om986]

@@channelchin8911 Well it's a really complex story spanning centuries, I'll try to sum it up without spoiling much, but it's impossible to explain the plot without spoilers so - *contains spoilers* - In the 20th century we make the first contact with very advanced alien lifeforms in the Alpha Centauri system. Alpha Centauri system consists of three stars, making orbit of their home planet very unstable and not ideal for life, so after making contact with humanity and probing Earth, they decide the best for their species is to colonize us. But it'll take centuries for them to arrive, so to stop us from developing effective defense, they send particle-sized drones to mess with results of our experiments (particle accelerators, chip development, material science...) freezing development of our species... and that's just a tiny bit of the story, imo probably the best written sci-fi and it introduces a lot of interesting concepts (like the gravitational wave transmitters), it's definitely worth a read

[@Emexx]

I remember the days where i watch scotts videos about Kerbal Space Program and now he teaches and speaks about gravitational waves 😀 what a plot twist ^^ Scott you are awesome 😘

[@mrjava66]

Space station inclination. You could also do the opposite. Put a station in a polar orbit. Sun synchronized. Say a 6-O’clock orbit. Then it’s Always, nearly always, in sun. Setup the solar collectors to shade the station. Now it takes a bunch less mass to have power. Cooling is simpler, since it is almost always on full cool mode. And no day/night cycle complicating evas.

[@negirno]

It seems Scott is secretly an Azumanga Daioh fan, there's an Osaka-san pic in his laptop slideshow screensaver.

[@gordonlangell754]

I noticed the image, thank you for providing the sauce. You are clearly a cultured individual.

[@macdjord]

Osaka-san doing the Demon Core Screwdriver experiment, in fact.

[@railgap]

In one of his SF stories, Larry Niven proposed a gravity wave communicator which used a "captured" (how exactly wasn't specified) quantum black hole, kept in a vacuum chamber (merely room sized) which had been given sufficient charge so that it could be "shaken" using big electromagnets. :)

[@dakotahrickard]

I'm not an enormously active ham radio operator, but one thing I do know is that there's a metric heck ton of radio noise we have going on in our atmosphere. Wall chargers and clothes dryers in particular radiate a 60 hz hum all over the radio spectrum. I know the odds of a civilization using alternating current are less than fifty percent, and I don't know what a direct current system would sound like over radio (maybe just an open carrier?), but one pretty solid bet is that a technical civilization will have pretty similar electrical standards across the surface of the world. Those standards will mean that the planet in question would radiate pretty solidly in terms of whatever electrical standard is being used. In other words, we are using things like morse code and rtty and other radioqrams less and less, but we are not at all moving away from radiating in a steady, potentially detectable way. Assuming other civilizations are at all like ours, they'll radiate solidly too, even if that radiation is incidental. But it'll have patterns, just like our electrical devices do, which don't match up with the patterns generated by non-technological radiating sources: too complex to be pulsars, too uniform to be gas giants. But that's just a hypothesis that I can't test, based on an anthropocentric model of technological development, fostered by an extremely limited knowledge of radio operations, radio interference, radio telescopy, and radiation patterns of various celestial phenomena. Please tell me all the ways what I propose won't work, because if it were that easy, wouldn't we already have found something?

[@timebert9467]

I love that Scott is know picking the faults out of his own videos 😁

[@jackb3822]

“Nuclear weapons are always an option.” - Scott Manley 2022

[@ericlotze7724]

As per using Methanol down here on earth, one of the main concerns is Water Contamination in case of a spill. Granted one could make the argument that it is the same as/better than regular petrochemical fuels, but the concern is valid nonetheless.

[@ericlotze7724]

Also it has the same issues of Ethanol (water contamination, and thus corrosion)

[@ericlotze7724]

Granted it can be used, especially as a blend stock, *but personally i love Dimethyl-Ether.* It stores like propane, and has a high cetane value, but no c-c bonds that can cause soot, so it’s basically a dream diesel fuel, and propane substitute. Also I’ve been reading up on SOFCs using it/recorders etc. I T ‘ S. G R E A T

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

For that "moving the booster under it's own power", maybe have the had include some additional fuel reserves, heat shield and extra grid fins. Just to take load off the booster itself. Won't break it before it even goes to it's mission.

[@BabyMakR]

In relation to the light question, need to specify "visible light". Light emissions is already used to look for alien life on other planets. Radio waves are photons too.

[@Danji_Coppersmoke]

19:00 alien light detection topic. (my 2c) The reason you don't want to detect the artificial (visible) light generated by alien is that if those intelligent aliens generate light, they will generate spectrum pretty close to the spectrum of the host star since their life will evolve using that light spectrum. So their artificial light will have pretty close spectral properties as their sun. I think Cool World (YT channel) suggest that if you want to detect visible light, detect a narrow green light since no thermal light will generate green light. Because when the star temperature match its peak spectrum at green, the width of the spectrum is large enough that its apparent color is not green. So if you seen a narrow green light, that is highly likely artificial.

[@stargazer7644]

Everything you said about green light detection is peculiar to how our limited biological eyes work. It is our eyes that see “green” stars (stars with peak emission in the green) as white, not that the sources actually are white. There is no reason to expect this would apply to alien eyes. If alien eyes had more than 3 color receptors, of if the receptors were more spread out in frequency, they’d see “green” thermal light.

[@paulkerman8906]

8:24 *gives concise, insightful summary of his thoughts on Methane as a rocket propellant "I'm completely clueless about this, I'm just giving you my take." Oh Scott, if THAT's being clueless, I don't know what I am 😅

[@Fabric445-2]

I've been a fun of you for several years now, and I spend a lot of time watching your content along with many others on the science side of yt. I wanted to ask you what are some good places outside of youtube to learn more about astronomy, what NASA and other rocket launchers are up to, and advances in science.

[@simongeard4824]

Of course, given that JWST was already pushing the limits of an Ariane 5, adding an abort system would have added enough mass to ensure that you wouldn't need the abort system since it wouldn't get off the ground.

[@stevenschiro1838]

Yo Babe Hold On Scott Manley just dropped a new video

[@YodaWhat]

Re: Making Mars Livable: The best way to move planets is to use a continuous stream of asteroids as momentum transfer devices, doing (essentially unpowered) slingshot maneuvers around a planet at each end of the asteroid orbit. For example, to bring Mars closer to Earth, the asteroids would loop around the 'back side' of Mars, slowing Mars while accelerating the asteroids. Later those asteroids would have close encounters with Venus in which they looped around the front side and thus increased the orbital speed of Venus, raising that orbit. Both Mars and Venus would end up closer to Earth's orbit. It would take *a long time* to achieve any meaningful adjustments of the planetary orbits. _Relatively small_ amounts of propellant would be needed to precisely adjust the asteroid trajectories. Solar sails on the asteroids could help considerably. It might be necessary to also use a gas giant planet in some of these looping asteroid trajectories, to conserve propellants, but that extra planet greatly complicates matters and in general, greatly extends the required time for completing the desired move(s). To use lightsails for the 'heavy lifting' (skipping the streaming asteroids), would mean the lightsails (used as gravity tractors) would need to continuously intercept and reflect _major fractions_ of the Sun's entire light output, for at least thousands of years. Slight adjustments to Earth's orbit could be accomplished along the way, without incurring too much extra time. Either way, it is a LOT of time and effort, just to put planets in more convenient orbits. *Spinning up MANY large cities in space would be FAR easier.* That said, it would be pretty impressive to have Earth, Mars and Venus each in their best part of the 'Goldilocks Zone' of habitability.

[@matsv201]

Modern colored light, like the one that used on runways and stop light, use special wide bandwidth LED to have a light that is sufficiently close colored lenses on normal bulbs to not be jaring. There is also regulatory reasons for that. To make a wideband red and yellow/amber lights was fairly simple. Bot to make a wideband green light prove to be very difficult and took much longer time that to make an efficient blue LED. For a time in the late 90-tys they made stop light with red and amber LED but a Green filter on a halogen lamp. But eventually they fixed the green light as well and now there is really no problem with it.

[@stuartgray5877]

The beauty of the "Nuclear Option" (for Asteroid Redirect) would be the "Standoff Nuclear Blast" where the nuke is set off very far from the asteroid (or Comet). This blast of radiation (light) will illuminate one side of the object to be nudged. The photon energy being reflected by the object ("solar sail" effect) AND the heating of surface materials enough that they "evaporate" will contribute to a momentum impulse in the opposite direction of the blast. Call it "ablative impulse propulsion" if you like :-) This nudge is tiny and over the entire surface of the object, so it is unlikely to "break up" the object like most people imagine for a direct nuclear blast like in the movies. Launch a string of these guided standoff nuclear warheads such they can hit the object over and over in the course of years/months and you could "move mountains" I proposed this form of redirection mission many years ago since I worked closely on the Deep Impact Mission. The spare "Impactor Mass" of copper than we hauled to the Comet in 2005 was coincidentally just about the same mass as one of our smaller nuclear warheads today. The Deep Impact mission literally demonstrated this capability complete with "Auto-Nav" Guidance for the impactor to hit the comet. It would just "auto-nav" to the correct coordinate in space relative to the object and detonate instead of impact directly. The "Impactor" would not even need to match velocity with the object, just be "in the right place at the right time" which vastly reduces delta-V requirements for the overall mission.

[@mtpaley1]

5:40 The detector only needs to be 10 times the size of the galaxy which is not really practical. The best understatement ever!

[@peterallen5575]

I can't remember if it was Percival Lowell or Nikola Tesla who hypothesized that hypothetical Martians would surely have known that Earth was inhabited by intelligent life from observing the city lights in New York City and London at night.

[@richardzeitz54]

My waistline has grown to 42" over the COVID19 lockdown. I'm pretty sure I generate gravity waves when I spin around.

[@matthewcox7985]

I think I gained about that much myself - Shall we dance? 😁

[@Sniperboy5551]

@Matthew Cox Just don’t both dance at the same time! It might create a singularity 😆

[@realulli]

@@Sniperboy5551 Oh, then can dance just fine. They just shouldn't get too close to each other, left either one of them turns into a ring or both turn into a singularity. Speaking of Covid... I seem to have developed planetary tendencies. My weight stays roughly the same but all the mass seems to aggregate around the center and less on the extremities...

[@owensmith7530]

Ah this is what I come to Scott Manley's channel for. Idle speculation that you could modulate two Neutron Stars interacting with each other to transmit data over gravitational waves.

[@modrarybivrana5654]

In the Honor Harrington series. one of the sub plots is the development and use of grav-wave detectors and transmitters for faster than light communications

[@Vamptonius]

Cheers for the jump scare! Fly safe, indeed.

[@LeutnantJoker]

I'd say ordering 5 Orions is something I would do as well. You always need a minimum for a fleet of spacecraft, if you plan to refurbish them or not. I'd imagine while 1 Orion is in space, 1 will be held on standby for a possible rescue mission (which dragon or someone else could also do, but you want that capability, especially since you probably don't want to get rescued by the Russians right now), another one will be an emergency backup, and the remaining two will be in testing, refurbishment or whatever else you want to do with them in the meantime. So I think 5 is a pretty good number. After that you can start using refurbishments, but I personally would never order less than 5.

[@andymeng8680]

maybe not what the question was asking, but the most recent blue origin launch (ns23) used its launch escape system and was an uncrewed launch. We had a payload onboard and will get another chance to launch because of it :D

[@douginorlando6260]

Regarding tidal energy inversely proportional to the distance between the two bodies to the -6Th power, this means the moon’s orbital distance could be calculated backwards in time. Currently the moon’s orbit radius increases about 2 inches per year. When the moon was 1% closer, the rate of change in distance was 2/0.99^6 or 2.07inches per year. When only half the orbital distance, the rate of change would have been 128 inches per year or about 2000 miles closer orbital radius in a million years. This is a sloppy estimate but it does provide a way to estimate time since the moon was created.

[@neutronium9542]

For hopping the booster to the Cape, good luck getting permission to reenter something that big over a populated area.

[@IanZainea1990]

6:35 would be a cool bit in a sci-fi though, like a Mass Effect or Halo, where there was the ancient long dead civilization. And they discover that these neutron stars are actually still sending a message from a billion years ago or w/e

[@anttihartikainen3009]

"Several months without sunlight, that is not the best idea." That's the thing I've been yelling over 30 winters in Finland.

[@D.Eldon_]

Wouldn't such a sensitive gravity wave detector be overwhelmed with low-level gravity waves from around our solar system and our galaxy? It seems it would be too sensitive to discriminate and be useful.

[@zyeborm]

you just need to have a pulse coded system. like a temporal spread spectrum system ;-)

[@dalel3608]

Orion reuse segment is partially incorrect. Artemis I & II Orions are older test designs that lack the docking tunnel.. technically the tunnel is there, but it is welded shut with end plates, thus not being reused. The Orion on Artemis 3 is the first to be reused; it's part of that "three new orions" deal signed recently, it's only two new build Orions and a refurbishment of the A3 Orion. There is 5 "reusable Orions" total on the build list, which is enough to fly each three times (if they add two more SLS to the build order).

[@LabRatJason]

IIRC - Blue Origin's failed launch on Sept 12 had the launch escape system enabled and successfully returned the payload. I was honestly surprised they had the escape system enabled, I imagine it was to save the capsule, not the payload.

[@therombaro]

Regarding the Boca Chica to KSC self-transportation, it’s probably substantially cheaper and efficient to just use boats - drone ships maybe.

[@cylonred8902]

The fuel costs alone for hopping a booster to the Cape has to be prohibitive, also not forgetting that it is more wear and tear on the engines. While yes - they are reusable - using the engines to get payloads into orbit would be a far better way of using the wear...

[@windsaw151]

I think the question was less "methane instead of kerosene" but "methane instead of hydrogen". That would be a really interesting question, one that I have not yet heared a conclusive answer for.

[@Sniperboy5551]

I assume it’s because it’s easier to store methane and I believe one reason why Space-X uses it is because it’s easy to produce on Mars, which will (hopefully) be relevant one day.

[@windsaw151]

@@Sniperboy5551 That would be the answer to the question why Space is using it now. Which makes the original question even more interesting.

[@kman2747]

According to people I have met at the Artemis 1 launch attempts, there are actually components of the Orion that will be reused for Artemis 2

[@Lucius_Chiaraviglio]

I wonder about the possibility of creating extremely short wavelength gravitons (if they exist at all) that might be more easily detectable, such a Higgs boson (which we can make) decaying into a pair of 62.5 GeV gravitons (although the branching ratio might be very low).

[@milliesoftpaws]

7:35 Ahhh the anime girl playing with the demon core in the slideshow truly iconic

[@AndrewJonkers]

Not to mention your gravity wave detector would detect EVERY such event in the galaxy of a mass accelerated like a hit baseball. So, you would have quintillions (shorthand for too many to count) of such events per second to disentangle.

[@williamgreene4834]

It would also take several hundred thousand years for the laser beam to bounce back to the detector.

[@gerardlabelle9626]

Mere implementation details.

[@aggonzalezdc]

There are so few flights with Orion I could see how it might not make financial sense to certify it to be reused. Especially if that would require further test articles. When you could just build another 5 capsules.

[@tonym480]

An obvious source of high power radio radiation that is not likely to go away anytime soon is surely long range search radar, such as that used to watch for ballistic missile launches. I remember reading a suggestion some years ago that our search radars would be one of the most easily detectable signs of a technological civilisation on earth for an alien civilisation.

[@TheEvilmooseofdoom]

I was given the same impression but was told the radar signals used to range space craft and other things in the solar system (Arecibo was one that used to do that) were the ones most likely to be picked up. I think it all comes down to watts. :)

[@oetgaol]

I think Dr Becky just talked about using an Einstein ring around the sun so you can image planets directly and this would also allow you to detect light pollution on the night side of a planet. NASA is planning/exploring the feasibility of a mission like that.

[@jaycweingardt11]

Superheavy booster has 8800m/s delta V, pretty sure that would be enough to get to orbit and then power all the way to the surface again without drag. correct me if i'm wrong.

[@jimparr01Utube]

Very interesting stuff Scott. Here is another question I have asked before. No answer, from others, let alone a satisfactory one... 'The heat tiles on re-entry vehicles seems like an on-going challenge (with mixed reliability) that might be solved in a different way.' For example, suppose their is an orbital tanker available to re-tank a Starship. Then would it be possible to avoid the re-entry velocities when touching Earths' atmosphere again by effectively using retro-burn to decelerate (all maneuvering degrees of freedom may be required in respect of thrust) so that an approximate reversal of climb to orbit is achieved - where no excessive hull-heating is experienced - to the best of my oh so limited knowledge? Does the math work?

[@ErnieC53]

On the ability of the nozzles to carry the load........combine that with the comments about the pressure in the combustion chamber. The combustion chamber pressure times the throat area would result in a thrust - would this not be a significant percentage of the total thrust (as if you had no bell at all)?

[@davecondliffe2952]

Scott, potentially the Dragon CRS vehicles have an escape system. After CRS7, Elon stated that the internal payload (not the IDA, sadly) would have survived if the parachutes had been enabled during the launch as the capsule survived the initial disintegration after the stage 2 overpressure event. Assuming this is still the case, this would count as a LES!