I don't think NASA actually wants to launch SLS that many times but is saying it can and will if it has to. I think it's too keep Senators away from NASA as well as insurance just in case Musk manages to run SpaceX into the ground.
Maybe even a bit of motivation for newer players like SpaceX to adopt some exploration and research focused divisions. Boeing and NG are obviously profit seeking comp but they also how to work with NASA is trying to do to do some money burning, 0 profit, scientific research.
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Lilithvia Thread Directory| Go Utes!
"There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite. " -- Ghostcrawler
"The bit about hardcore players not always caring about the long term interests of the game is spot on." -- Ghostcrawler
"Do you want a game with no casuals so about 500 players?"
@Lilithvia brought it up, and I'm still not sure what they are talking about. And their usual lack of clarity/communication is making tough. If they come back with more details or info it could be interesting.
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Yeah, no - it came from this:
"There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite. " -- Ghostcrawler
"The bit about hardcore players not always caring about the long term interests of the game is spot on." -- Ghostcrawler
"Do you want a game with no casuals so about 500 players?"
What part of how dirt easy it is to convert regolith into fertile soil do you guys not understand? You just need atmosphere, bacteria, and to introduce nutrients.
And there's several thousand asteroids that are carbonaceous condrites.
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Yet another uneducated post from Osmeric. Please, please do reading on something for once.
Carbonaceous condrites don't typically contain a lot of rocks on their surfaces. More like patches of fine regolith with minerals typically suitable for encouraging life if given the other building blocks.
Have you guys *ever* read up on how earth got those minerals? Gd.
Last edited by plz delete account; 2022-10-18 at 07:47 PM.
Lilithvia Thread Directory| Go Utes!
I was merely pointing out the vacuity of the notion that carbonaceous chondrites must be good for farming because they have organic compounds.
Organic compounds in soil on Earth are a highly specific subset of possible organic compounds. They come from living matter and its decomposition. Plants are evolved to live in soil containing these sorts of compounds.
The organic matter in CCs was produced by abiotic processes. There's no reason it should even be nontoxic. And the water released by heating of CC meteorites shows elevated levels of lead and mercury.
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1810.04154.pdf (see table 3)
"There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite. " -- Ghostcrawler
"The bit about hardcore players not always caring about the long term interests of the game is spot on." -- Ghostcrawler
"Do you want a game with no casuals so about 500 players?"
Okay, lead and mercury are problems, but not unsolvable. As for whether the regolith would have toxins, I'm pretty sure that we'd be able to catalogue which ones have them or not, and while that does reduce the number, it's still yet to be seen or documented in any meaningful way (eg the only asteroids visited so far are Bennu, Itokawa, Diomedes/Dimorphus etc... all rubble pile asteroids. It'll take Lucy a few years to get out to the Trojans in Jupiter's L4/L5 regions, etc.
Lilithvia Thread Directory| Go Utes!
Sure sounds like a certain and inexpensive way to grow crops - much easier than growing then on earth, where we know they grow, and don't need soil, and where gravity actually works.
Remember when you asked:
From your own information, I would say "never". But that's only if your opinion is an informed one.
Plants don't need gravity, see the ISS lettuce closet for that. And farms take up a lot of space... where there's a ton of space in space
And if we're taking the "Don't need soil" route, plants technically don't need it in space either.
Either way, a lot of people will be living and working in space a whole lot sooner than you think. And it's expensive to ship food up a gravity well as opposed to down that gravity well.
Last edited by plz delete account; 2022-10-19 at 12:23 AM.
Lilithvia Thread Directory| Go Utes!
Exactly. Farms take up a lot of atmospheric space. Setting up protected domes on an asteroid would be nearly impossible. And certainly beyond any practicality it might solve. And while Vertical Aeroponic gardens don't need soil, they do need tons of other stuff. Especially if you're talking about feeding 30B - which you suggested it would solve.
It won't.
Not that many. Not in this century. I would be shocked if we had more than 10,000 people working in space. And that wouldn't include colonists on the Moon or Mars or other.
You're talking about mass farming efforts on a randomly orbiting, non-controllable, asteroid with few people on it and huge costs to transport whatever was "grown" on it to the people who need. Since the product of that asteroid farming effort would be in other areas of our solar system, and since that product would take massive amounts of coin and effort and blood to grow on an asteroid, and since we can already do all that growing on Earth, and since Earth's gravity well is getting cheaper and cheaper to go up (thank you SpaceX!), I can almost guarantee that asteroid farming-of-food will likely never happen.
Interesting thought exercise though. Thanks for that.
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Asteroid mineral farming will more than likely be almost 100% automated, with perhaps human visitors to set up and monitor. So keeping those people alive on the asteroid, if it's even necessary to have people on an asteroid we're mining for minerals, won't need a hydroponic solution to keep said people alive. We can just send them ISS food.
Ariane 6 debut delayed to Q4 2023, which obviously means 2024. Arianespace is going to be without heavy lift capability for quite a while.
The US is also about to be without heavy launchers if there's any deals.
SLS is technically a heavy but it's not really going to be used for anything but human flight.
Starship will have heavy lift capabilities but it will be like the space shuttles where it might not be feasible (at least until SpaceX has a ecosystem that supports the theoretical capabilities of Starship).
Delta Heavy - effectively retired. Production of the rocket has ended.
Falcon Heavy - I don't know why this rocket rarely gets used but there some scheduled flights in the future. Got to see it go (think it's only flown twice). Beautiful night launch.
Vulcan - new rocket in line to replace Delta, planned maidan flight at the beginning of 2023. It's success relies on Blue Origin being able to keep up with the demand for engines.
Finally there's New Glenn. I'd be surprised if one goes up before the end of 2024.
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