Starship Asterisk*

NoelC wrote:
Vesta is vaguely spherical...

At 300 miles in diameter, the gravity can't be all THAT great... What would a human weigh on Vesta? 5 or 6 pounds (assuming roughly 1/30th of Earth's gravity)? Or am I way off here?

NoelC wrote:
I'm a bit fuzzy on the density of the stuff that likely makes up Vesta... Rock, iron, ice?, I assume...

NoelC wrote:
What would be the pressure exerted by 150 miles of rock in all directions at the center of Vesta? Would it still be a horrendous crush? Or just like what we have here down in, say, a salt mine?

NoelC wrote:
Could one imagine hollowing it out and making an outpost there?

NoelC wrote:At 300 miles in diameter, the gravity can't be all THAT great... What would a human weigh on Vesta? 5 or 6 pounds (assuming roughly 1/30th of Earth's gravity)?

I'm a bit fuzzy on the density of the stuff that likely makes up Vesta... Rock, iron, ice?, I assume...

What would be the pressure exerted by 150 miles of rock in all directions at the center of Vesta? Would it still be a horrendous crush? Or just like what we have here down in, say, a salt mine?

Could one imagine hollowing it out and making an outpost there?

Beyond wrote:
Some of those impact craters look a bit on the strange side.

http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00003127/ wrote: On speculation in today's Dawn press briefing
The Planetary Society Blog
By Emily Lakdawalla Aug. 2, 2011

<<One thing that took me by surprise about today's Dawn press briefing was how the scientists were responding to scientific questions. When a spacecraft has visited a new body for the first time, the usual answer to any scientific question is "it's too early to know; we need to study the data more." Scientists are usually very careful to avoid speculation while they're on press panels. But today's press briefing wasn't like that at all. All three scientists on the panel -- Chris Russell, Holger Sierks, and Enrico Flamini -- were unusually open in their speculation about what the very early data returned from Dawn might mean. They speculated about what might have caused the grooves, they speculated about how the spectral data could be interpreted, they gave early numbers on what age the surface might be based on crater counts (4 billion years). This is such an unusual behavior for scientists on press panels that I, not expecting to get so much in the way of scientific goodies, couldn't catch up with them to write it all down.

After the briefing was over I walked up to Chris Russell and thanked him for being so willing to speculate, and he clapped his hands over his mouth and said "I wasn't supposed to do that!" >>

Beyond wrote:
Those big gouges around parts of Vesta, make me think it came a bit too close to an apple peeler at some time..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonograph_cylinder wrote:

[size=150]Wax phonograph cylinders in a variety of diameters[/size]

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[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_Golden_Record][size=150]Voyager Golden Record[/size][/url]

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<<The phonograph was invented by Thomas Edison on 18 July 1877. His first test using tin foil wrapped around a hand-cranked cylinder. Tin foil was not a practical recording medium for everyday use and commercial production. Within a few years Edison developed wax cylinders licensed by Charles Sumner Tainter, Alexander Graham Bell, and Chichester Bell, as the American Graphophone Co. – Later absorbed by the Columbia phonograph Co.

By the late 1880s wax cylinders were mass marketed. These had sound recordings in the grooves on the outside of hollow cylinders of wax. These cylinders could easily be removed and replaced on the mandrel of the machine which played them. Early cylinder records would commonly wear out after they were played a few hundred times. The buyer could then use a mechanism which left their surface shaved smooth so new recordings could be made on them. In 1890 Charles Tainter patented the use of hard carnauba wax as a replacement for the common mixture of paraffin and beeswax used on phonograph cylinders.

Early cylinder machines of the late 1880s and the 1890s were often sold with recording attachments. The ability to record as well as play back sound was an advantage to cylinder phonographs over the competition from cheaper disc record phonographs which began to be mass marketed at the end of the 1890s, as the disc system machines could be used only to play back pre-recorded sound. Over the years the type of wax used in cylinders was improved and hardened so that cylinders could be played over 100 times. In 1902 Edison Records launched a line of improved hard wax cylinders marketed as "Edison Gold Moulded Records".

In 1906 the Indestructible Record Company began mass marketing cylinder records made of celluloid, an early hard plastic, that would not break if dropped and could be played thousands of times without wearing out. This hard inflexible material could not be shaved and recorded over like wax cylinders, but had the advantage of being a nearly permanent record. (Such "Indestructible" style cylinders are arguably the most durable form of sound recording produced in the entire era of analog audio before the introduction of digital audio; they can withstand a greater number of playbacks before wearing out than later media such as the vinyl record or audio tape.) This superior technology was purchased by the Columbia Phonograph Company. The Edison company then developed its own type of long-lasting cylinder, consisting of a type of plastic called Amberol (which was blue in color) around a plaster core (the plastic was a phenolic resin, similar to the contemporary "Bakelite"); these were called Blue Amberol cylinders, the earlier Amberols being made of wax. Around the same time Edison introduced 4 minute cylinders, having twice the playing time of standard cylinders, achieved simply by shrinking the groove size and spacing them twice as close together in the spiral around the cylinder. Amberol cylinders are of the four-minute variety. Edison made several designs of phonographs both with internal and external horns for playing these improved cylinder records. The internal horned models were called Amberolas. Edison also marketed its "Fireside" model phonograph with a gearshift and a reproducer with two styli that allowed it to play both 2-minute and 4-minute cylinders.

In the era before World War I, phonograph cylinders and disc records competed with each other for public favor. The audio fidelity of a sound groove is debatably better if it is engraved on a cylinder, due to much improved linear tracking, and this was not resolved until the advent of RIAA standards in the early 1940s.

Cylinder recordings continued to compete with the growing disc record market into the 1910s, when discs won the commercial battle. In that decade, Columbia (which had been making both discs and cylinders) switched exclusively to discs, and Edison started marketing its own disc records. However Edison continued to sell new cylinder records to consumers with cylinder phonograph machines through 1929. The latest of the new cylinders were simply "dubs" of disc records, and were therefore of lower fidelity than the disc originals.

In an attempt to preserve the historic content of the recordings, cylinders can be read with a confocal microscope and converted to a digital recording format. The resulting sound clip in most cases sounds better than stylus playback from the original cylinder. Having an electronic version of the original recordings enables archivists to open access to the recordings to a wider audience. This technique also has the potential to allow for reconstruction of damaged or broken cylinders.>>

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

NASA's Dawn spacecraft, the first ever to orbit an object in the main asteroid belt, is spiraling towards its first of four intensive science orbits. That initial orbit of the rocky world Vesta begins Aug. 11, at an altitude of nearly 1,700 miles (2,700 kilometers) and will provide in-depth analysis of the asteroid. Vesta is the brightest object in the asteroid belt as seen from Earth and is thought to be the source of a large number of meteorites that fall to Earth.

The Dawn team unveiled the first full-frame image of Vesta taken on July 24. This image was taken at a distance of 3,200 miles (5,200 kilometers). Images from Dawn's framing camera, taken for navigation purposes and as preparation for scientific observations, are revealing the first surface details of the giant asteroid. These images go all the way around Vesta, since the giant asteroid turns on its axis once every five hours and 20 minutes.

"Now that we are in orbit around one of the last unexplored worlds in the inner solar system, we can see that it's a unique and fascinating place," said Marc Rayman, Dawn's chief engineer and mission manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

After traveling nearly four years and 1.7 billion miles (2.8 billion kilometers), Dawn has been captured by Vesta's gravity, and there currently are 1,800 miles (2,900 kilometers) between the asteroid and the spacecraft. The giant asteroid and its new neighbor are approximately 114 million miles (184 million kilometers) away from Earth.

"We have been calling Vesta the smallest terrestrial planet," said Chris Russell, Dawn's principal investigator at UCLA. "The latest imagery provides much justification for our expectations. They show that a variety of processes were once at work on the surface of Vesta and provide extensive evidence for Vesta's planetary aspirations."

Engineers still are working to determine the exact time that Dawn entered Vesta's orbit, but the team has reported an approximate orbit insertion time of 9:47 p.m. PDT on July 15 (12:47 a.m. EDT on July 16).

In addition to the framing camera, Dawn's instruments include the gamma ray and neutron detector and the visible and infrared mapping spectrometer. The gamma ray and neutron detector uses 21 sensors with a very wide field of view to measure the energy of subatomic particles emitted by the elements in the upper yard (meter) of the asteroid's surface. The visible and infrared mapping spectrometer will measure the surface mineralogy of both Vesta and Dawn's next target, the dwarf planet Ceres. The spectrometer is a modification of a similar one flying on the European Space Agency's Rosetta and Venus Express missions.

Dawn also will make another set of scientific measurements at Vesta and Ceres using the spacecraft's radio transmitter in tandem with sensitive antennas on Earth. Scientists will monitor signals from Dawn and later Ceres to detect subtle variations in the objects' gravity fields. These variations will provide clues about the interior structure of these bodies by studying the mass distributed in each gravity field.

"The new observations of Vesta are an inspirational reminder of the wonders unveiled through ongoing exploration of our solar system," said Jim Green, planetary division director at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

[url=http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/dawn/multimedia/pia14317.html][size=120][b][i]Full-Frame Image of Vesta[/i][/b][/size][/url]

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[url=http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/dawn/multimedia/pia14322.html][size=120][b][i]Close-up View of Vesta's South Pole Region[/i][/b][/size][/url]

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[url=http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/dawn/multimedia/pia14323.html][size=120][b][i]Close-up View of 'Snowman' Craters[/i][/b][/size][/url]

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[url=http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/dawn/multimedia/pia14324.html][size=120][b][i]Close-up View of Craters in South Equatorial Region[/i][/b][/size][/url]

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bystander wrote:

neufer wrote:
Dawn has now done a complete orbit since I last posted and she is back again on the dark side of Vesta. It has been 10 whole days (and more than a whole orbit) since Dawn's last released image taken on July 18, 2011. That was a distance view from about 10,500 kilometers. Dawn has since been at a distance of only ~5,500 kilometers but no new pictures.

Has NASA discovered alien artifacts & is covering it all up

NASA will host a news conference on Monday, Aug. 1, at noon EDT, to discuss the Dawn spacecraft's successful orbit insertion around Vesta on July 15 and unveil the first full-frame images from Dawn's framing camera.

They don't mention any alien artifacts, could still be a cover up.

bystander wrote:
NASA To Unveil Vesta Images At News Conference

NASA will host a news conference on Monday, Aug. 1, at noon EDT, to discuss the Dawn spacecraft's successful orbit insertion around Vesta on July 15 and unveil the first full-frame images from Dawn's framing camera.

They don't mention any alien artifacts, could still be a cover up.

neufer wrote:

neufer wrote:
Dawn is now on the dark side of Vesta while picking up speed from a minimum of about 100 mph.

Presumably [she] will swing around the front and get some nice closeups of the northern hemisphere.

Dawn has now done a complete orbit since I last posted and she is back again on the dark side of Vesta. It has been 10 whole days (and more than a whole orbit) since Dawn's last released image taken on July 18, 2011. That was a distance view from about 10,500 kilometers. Dawn has since been at a distance of only ~5,500 kilometers but no new pictures.

Has NASA discovered alien artifacts & is covering it all up

NASA will host a news conference on Monday, Aug. 1, at noon EDT, to discuss the Dawn spacecraft's successful orbit insertion around Vesta on July 15 and unveil the first full-frame images from Dawn's framing camera.

neufer wrote:
Dawn is now on the dark side of Vesta while picking up speed from a minimum of about 100 mph.

Presumably [she] will swing around the front and get some nice closeups of the northern hemisphere.

Beyond wrote:

neufer wrote:
Vesta is now on the dark side of Vesta...

It would seem that Vesta is quite beside itself. Or at the least--a terrific contortionist Or has it just gone over to the 'dark' matter side

neufer wrote:Vesta is now on the dark side of Vesta...

neufer wrote:

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Dawn is now on the dark side of Vesta while picking up speed from a minimum of about 100 mph.

Presumably it will swing around the front and get some nice closeups of the northern hemisphere.

neufer wrote:

Ann is always posting pieces of Americana (when she is not correcting our English).

bystander wrote:

Beyond wrote:(I didn't get neufer's post at all.Must be a Swedish reference to something?)

Pippi Longstocking
Not sure I get it either

Beyond wrote:(I didn't get neufer's post at all.Must be a Swedish reference to something?)

Ann wrote:

Beyond wrote:

Ann wrote:Beyond???

You rang?

Beyond? Is that you?



Well... have a nice day!

Ann

Ann wrote:

• Pippi Långstrump

Beyond wrote:

Ann wrote:Beyond???

You rang?

Chris Peterson wrote:

DDSD wrote:The asteroid belt IS the remains of what once was a rocky planet-that was probably busted up by an impact with an asteroid long long ago.

There is nothing to support this idea, and a good deal that argues against it.