Recent comments in /f/space

Trips-Over-Tail t1_jdvp3ti wrote

Reply to comment by BariNgozi in Everyone talks about how huge Andromeda will look in the sky billions of years from now. I present you what the Milky Way *currently* looks like in the skies of our neighbor, the Large Magellanic Cloud. We appear absolutely huge in their skies! [Simulated view] by lampiaio

And yet all those stars are totally erased by a shining moon or a distant town or less than perfect spectacles.

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turtlechef t1_jdvnfl9 wrote

Reply to comment by Loupax in Everyone talks about how huge Andromeda will look in the sky billions of years from now. I present you what the Milky Way *currently* looks like in the skies of our neighbor, the Large Magellanic Cloud. We appear absolutely huge in their skies! [Simulated view] by lampiaio

I’m no expert (just an amateur astronomer) but it’s likely because

A) you firstly can only see either Magellanic Cloud in the southern hemisphere. There they can be seen with the naked eye

B) they are significantly smaller than the Milky Way, and are obscured by all the stars between us and them

They still are visible though and are beautiful. If you look up night sky photos from the southern hemisphere you’ll clearly be able to see them. It’s a personal bucket list item of mine to see them some day

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turtlechef t1_jdvmzhi wrote

Reply to Everyone talks about how huge Andromeda will look in the sky billions of years from now. I present you what the Milky Way *currently* looks like in the skies of our neighbor, the Large Magellanic Cloud. We appear absolutely huge in their skies! [Simulated view] by lampiaio

Idk why, but this picture makes me feel lonely. It doesn’t really matter for us, but I’m also glad that we happened to be born on a planet inside a bustling large galaxy rather than in a small remote galaxy, far flung star cluster or orbiting a lonely point of light in the void

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canadave_nyc t1_jdvmzaq wrote

Reply to comment by p-d-ball in Everyone talks about how huge Andromeda will look in the sky billions of years from now. I present you what the Milky Way *currently* looks like in the skies of our neighbor, the Large Magellanic Cloud. We appear absolutely huge in their skies! [Simulated view] by lampiaio

You're welcome. Here's kind of what it looks like in actuality (although even this photo shows it brighter than it actually is--the stars in the photo, for example, are brighter than they'd appear even at a very dark-sky site): https://p1-tt.byteimg.com/origin/pgc-image/26a4289388a84090929e80b9fcbc930b.jpg

It really just looks like a small very faint hard-to-find fuzzy ball to the naked eye in real life.

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electric_ionland t1_jdvjtjv wrote

Reply to IVO Quantum drive to test all-electric thruster on controversial basis of "Quantized Inertia" by J_K_

For anyone asking this is almost certainly in the same vein as the infamous "EM drive". They allegedly have a revolutionary propelantless propulsion system that has not been verified independently and where they cannot describe the physical principle behind it (not peer reviewed to boot).

Assuming it works it would break several fundamental physical principles like conservation of energy.

The company and its executives are also extremely sketchy with no real background in the field.

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Anthony_Pelchat t1_jdvi5i1 wrote

Reply to comment by binary_spaniard in Rocket Lab targets $50 million launch price for Neutron rocket to challenge SpaceX’s Falcon 9 by cnbc_official

>SpaceX is not lowering prices until they don't have other option.

We won't see SpaceX lower Starship prices until they are pushing for a very high flight cadence and are ready to replace Falcon 9. At that point, I would expect Starship to drop to $50M with F9 raising to $60M minimum and possibly much more. Falcon Heavy is going to be pushed back immediately after Starship starts flying as well.

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Anthony_Pelchat t1_jdvhkym wrote

Reply to comment by Charming_Ad_4 in Rocket Lab targets $50 million launch price for Neutron rocket to challenge SpaceX’s Falcon 9 by cnbc_official

One final thing, SpaceX has no reason to rush faster on Starship as there is no competition. Rocket Lab is not competing with Starship and never will. They will take the scraps that fall off the table once Starship hits it's goals. Starlink alone is liking to make more profit this year than Rocket Lab. And it isn't even at 1/10th it's final goal.

Try to keep that in perspective. SpaceX won't be making a push for customers for Starship as it simply has no reason to.

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Anthony_Pelchat t1_jdvgycn wrote

Reply to comment by Charming_Ad_4 in Rocket Lab targets $50 million launch price for Neutron rocket to challenge SpaceX’s Falcon 9 by cnbc_official

>They will have to learn to do it by themselves.

True, and I didn't otherwise. But SpaceX was extremely opened about many of the issues that Falcon 9 had.

>SpaceX has no reason to go slow with Starship.

Again, SpaceX has massive reasons to delay customers. They need the first several launches themselves with Starlink. That matters more to them than getting customers on Starship. And they need to focus on reusability first, which may mean many changes. Those changes have a chance to cause a flight failure. SpaceX would absolutely want to avoid damaging a customer payload. Not putting on customer payloads allows them to make more risky changes.

>Customers also don't care much about reuse at first, only for their payload to go to orbit, as they didn't care with F9 landing attempts.

They care about reliability. Period. Starship has none at the moment. That won't be the case for long, but a single failure would push customers back for a long time.

Plus why would any customers choose Starship over F9 right now? If Starship is more expensive per flight, they are choose F9. Starship won't be cheaper until it starts rapid reusable flights. The only other reason why someone would choose Starship is payload capacity. And if they are building something that big, they wouldn't have gone with RL anyways.

>Or Rocket Lab may move slower than expected, since even from first successful landing to reuse it took SpaceX 2 years time... And Starship can go a lot faster since its design has lessons learned from F9 landings and reuse.

RL could go slower and SS faster. However, that is unlikely. It took F9 two years as SpaceX was still learning to fly altogether. RL isn't going through the same issue. And again, RL has the ability to see the failures that F9 ran into to avoid the same. SS is trying to achieve something never before done. They will hit issues and delays. That's perfectly fine. SpaceX understands and accepts that.

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canadave_nyc t1_jdvfye7 wrote

Reply to comment by p-d-ball in Everyone talks about how huge Andromeda will look in the sky billions of years from now. I present you what the Milky Way *currently* looks like in the skies of our neighbor, the Large Magellanic Cloud. We appear absolutely huge in their skies! [Simulated view] by lampiaio

You can barely see Andromeda as a small ghostly pale splotch with the naked eye in a very dark sky. A slightly more resolved splotch if you use binoculars (you can see the centre splotch plus hazy oval splotch around it). It will be nothing like the well-defined colourful galaxy you see in photos. Just FYI :)

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