Matthias M. M. Meier

The number depends on the specific properties of Starship, which aren't "stable" yet. But: Blue Moon 1.5 needs exactly zero refuelling launches...

Yes. But it's a render with a more realistic path to becoming a non-render compared to the render of the Starship Moon Lander...

Well, at least they won the first race to the Moon... 😉 Combining Orion with a Blue Origin Mark 1.5 lander would seem like the best bet if the US are to "win" this time again. But they need to act soon...

Since fanboi tears have no real value, the switch costs Musk nothing, but it might help to position SpaceX favorably in the upcoming funding battle against Blue Origin: who gets to (try to...) beat the Chinese in the race to land the next astronauts on the Moon?

Well, according to the diagram, I should plot solidly in the botton-left corner. But I do fancy the occasional script and/or tent, so... I guess I am lost. 🌔🧑‍💻🏕️

100% this. This is a brilliant metaphor.

He should care much more about conscience (for the damage he has caused to others) than "spreading consciousness"...

The idea (not mentioned in the article) that we could one day study materials from other star systems (!) using future beefed-up versions of @esa.int's comet interceptor (@cometinterceptor.bsky.social) to sample them as they pass through the solar system is fascinating! Just need to find them first!

A message to meteorite hunters: Put down your magnets! An MIT study finds the hand magnets often used by meteorite hunters to identify a meteorite usually erase the meteorite’s magnetic memory — and much of its scientific value.

Using Magnets for discovery: Put down your magnets!. Using a magnet for discovery or ID is an easy task, but it could damage or change the imprinted magnetic field held by the meteorite. Good read! news.mit.edu/2023/simple-...

Inside Switzerland's extraordinary medieval library The Abbey Library of St Gallen is a Baroque hall of globes, manuscripts and curiosities that has survived, improbably, for 1,300 years.

Allow this spectacular library to lift your spirits #booksky

Asteroid 2024 YR4’s Possible 2032 Moon Impact — What the Aftermath Could Look Like Learn about 2024 YR4, the asteroid with a 4 percent chance of hitting the Moon in 2032, and the possible timeline of effects that could follow.

Well, it would certainly not "look like" that because, as some of you might or might not be aware, the Moon has no real atmosphere so there won't be any meteors... 😉 (Ok, unless this shows ejecta reaching Earth!) A fine article otherwise. 🪐☄️🌖

We get big chunks of space iron delivered naturally all the time (iron meteorites), but extracting PGE+Au metals from them isn't worth it (too small+rare). Instead, extract the metals on-site and only fling those (and a heat-shield) towards Earth interception... Not economical today, but one day?

At the pointy end, you'd have almost lunar (artificial) gravity, about 0.14 Ge.

BTW, apparently its colors (its spectrum) are a good match for a C-type, which is slightly strange (as most of the meteorites associated with that type, the carbonaceous chondrites, are rather soft). It also seems to be elongated, so the artificial gravity at the "pointy" end will be even higher.

And if you "lower" a tether from that station, you can launch objects from its end at high velocity (while slowly despinning the asteroid accordingly, of course). So if it is really an iron, it would probably be great for a mining operation.

Betriebs- und Besuchermanager:in (m/w/d) im naturwissenschaftlichen Museum focusTerra focusTerra ist das Earth & Science Discovery Center der ETH Zürich. Es ist eingebettet in das Departement Erd- und Planetenwissenschaften, das in seinem Bereich als weltweit führend gilt. Als erd-…

Das naturwissenschaftliche Museum focusTerra der ETH Zürich sucht eine:n Betriebs- und Besuchermanager:in für den operativen Betrieb des Museums, der Ausstellungen und Veranstaltungen sowie die Organisation von Führungen und Workshops. #jobalert

Sorry. 0.8 ms^-2, not 0.8 Ge. About 0.08 Ge!

A fun thing I just noticed: if you anchor your spaceship to the equatorial surface of that asteroid, assuming T = 1.88 min and r = 250 m, you will experience an aritificial gravity of almost 0.8 Ge - "down" pointing outwards!

Well, it could be rock, just barely (your Fig 14). But you are right, it might be an iron, or even a stony-iron (like the mesosiderite or pallasite meteorites falling to Earth). A spectrum should be able to tell us the difference. Irons are M (or X) type, rocks would likely be S (or L, Q) type.

The sunlights differ, but there is only one darkness.

Tesla profits slumped 46% last year, as it lost its crown as the top EV seller The company announced it was ending production of its higher-end Model S and Model Y, and turning that production space over to making humanoid robots.

The company announced it was ending production of its higher-end Model S and Model Y, and turning that production space over to making humanoid robots.

I'm really excited about the Terra Hunting Experiment & 2ES survey.

Ten years of radial velocity monitoring at 10 cm/sec! We should finally find nearby Earth analogs.

www.terrahunting.org

Ein bisschen dümmer geht immer...

...actually true (that the Earth was hollow), they were just there for the interesting community. The moderators eventually found a reason to ban and that was the end of it. What I took from the experience: "hollow Earthers" (or any other conspiracy group) are never just a monolithic bloc.

When I was an Earth sciences undergrad, I was active in a "hollow Earth" online forum, for the fun of it and to see how they would react to being challenged. Interestingly, the community was really diverse. From complete cranks to very "normal" people who told me they didn't care if it was...

A possible ice-cold Earth discovered in the archives of the retired Kepler Space Telescope Scientists continue to mine data gathered by NASA's Kepler Space Telescope, retired in 2018, and continue to turn up surprises. A new paper reveals the latest: a possible rocky planet slightly larger ...

Popular write-up of that article - with a nice (non AI!) artists' impression to go with it.

A Cool Earth-sized Planet Candidate Transiting a Tenth Magnitude K-dwarf From K2 The transit method is currently one of our best means for the detection of potentially habitable "Earth-like" exoplanets. In principle, given sufficiently high photometric precision, cool Earth-sized ...

Venner et al., Arxiv: A cool 😎 Earth-sized planet transiting a [...] K-dwarf from K2. A cool world indeed! Just slightly larger than Earth, HD 137010 b gets about 60% of the irradiation of Mars.❄️ RV suggests an additional, more massive (likely substellar) companion in the same system (a "Jupiter"?)🪐

Warum gilt als "links", wer sich für Demokratie, Rechtsstaat, Menschen und Klima engagiert? Sollte das nicht für alle selbstverständlich sein?

Und wie kann es sein, dass manche die zunehmende Macht der Milliardäre, das Durchsetzen des Rechts des Stärkeren und Klimakatastrophe kein Problem finden?

Look geologists, it's a ternary plot, but for energy pathways!
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It's much harder to believe now that the balance of power between legislative, executive and judicative within the US works as advertised.