Starship Asterisk*

We have a ways to go yet before we can ride an elevator into space.

Rob

PS
The CN Tower should have been in that graphic of tall buildings. It's about 550 meters tall.

mesinik wrote: ... a "robot" (short for Chech "robotnik", "worker" afaik) ...

From the wikipedia entry...
"In its original Czech, robota means forced labour of the kind that serfs had to perform on their masters' lands."

Rob

Of course, with a rover life expectancy of 3 months it wouldn't have been thought necessary, but it would have been soooo nice to have a tilt mechanism for the solar panels. I assume the next generation landers would have that feature?

Rob

it looks to me that the clouds are behind the moon. whats up with that? That happens sometimes when the clouds are so tenuous that the moon's light overpowers them. But I agree it looks odd. It looks the photographer took two or more shots of the scene and then combined them later digitally. Hard t...

They could be closer than we could imagine.... No planets found yet; it's just a computer model which shows small rocky planets should form in that kind of system. It sounds like the researchers have an interesting way of detecting these panets, and of course the search is well worth the effort. Rob

You're looking at an area there that is most of a kilometer across, so that would be a very big box indeed! I assume any such line would indicate an underlying rock feature of some sort, partly covered by the dunes. The color is false, made that way in order to more easily delineate subtle differenc...

... the number of technological societies that develop the capability to destroy themselves /N equaling the percentage of societies thet wind up doing just that. As we have been poised to do since bombing Japan in 1945. No, we weren't capable of doing that in 1945, nor even in the early 50s. It was...

...it seems unlikely that we will ever be visited by extraterrestrials, or that we will ever make such visits ourselves. can't help myself to stop thinking about mayas and incas who also thought europeans, if they exist, would never visit them. That's not quite the same situation. Europeans, and as...

THX1138 wrote:The universe is expanding,,,,,,ok. And it is expanding into what ? Space is expanding into more space, and or what is space expanding into ?

You're going to have to do some reading. Start with the mostly fine articles at wikipedia, maybe this one as a beginning point.

Rob

Yes, makes sense now. I haven't been to the beach lately.

Rob

In the description of that image they say... The brilliant stars are carving deep cavities in the surrounding material by unleashing a torrent of ultraviolet light, and hurricane-force stellar winds (streams of charged particles), which are etching away the enveloping hydrogen gas cloud in which the...

Now that the APOD robot is working and we're zeroing in on a name, how 'bout one final suggestion for improving APOD? Another bit of automatic software - yes, another robot - this one more difficult to program but at least I've already thought of a name: NoNuts. This 'bot would detect nut balls, wei...

Robo, aRob, Bob, etc.

While I am chuffed* by all these references to variations on my name, I hereby decline the honour, such as it is.

(the one and only) Rob

* chuffed, n., To be quite pleased with oneself in the manner of a child going potty unassisted.

There have been serious attempts to imagine terraforming Mars, both in fiction ( Mars Trilogy ) and more practically (if "practically" is a word we can use when we're discussing terraforming). Rob PS "I think everyone knows this is just an exercise. Right?" Yes, of course. But if...

Magic wands can also do amazing things.

Therein lies the problem with discussing what a wormhole can and cannot do: it can do anything at all, since it's not constrained by reality.

Rob

If I may offer up a counter view to the above post... Although I am almost the same age as you Bob, I am a neophyte when it comes to astronomy, finally scratching a life-long itch. As such, I came here to this forum in particular because of its link from APOD images, expecting to find -- and yes, pr...

APOD Robot wrote:... and delivered valuable space parts.

Maybe those were valuable spare parts?

Rob

It is with considerable trepidation that I dare to correct you Chris, but since my correction is based on what I think the OP was asking rather than any issue of astronomy, I will step forth. I think the OP was asking about Light-time correction . The only reason I know anything about it is that I r...

... although we are stuck, just now, with the URL, ... The following domain names are all currently available. You might want to obtain one or more of them for future consideration. the-asterisk.com, the-asterisk.net, theasterisk.org, the-asterisk.org theasterisk.net and theasterisk.com are not ava...

geckzilla wrote:Isn't it strange how brightly illuminated the solar panels are considering we are looking at the shadowed side of them? There must be a substantial reflection shining on them. Or they are more translucent than I thought.

This APOD might give you a better idea of what is illuminating them.

Rob

" Memes " might be of considerable interest to future historians wondering just when a particular idea got started. For example, Obama has only recently begun to be referred to as a "war president", so a search for "Obama war-president" say, six months ago, might be an ...

... just what is the football shaped object at the bottom of the "lake" where the white sand "beach" arrow like pointer is pointing to it. Everything in the picturre is either rock or sand. I can't tell for sure what you're referring to, but if you mean the dark rounded blob imm...

I'd go back to the 1950's; they were great! 8) :wink: I wouldn't change anything. Ah yes, the 50s... Bowls of cigarettes put out by the hostess at parties. Cars without seat belts. Polio. Yep, nothing there worth changing. :roll: I'd go forward and take my chances rather than go anytime into the pa...

mark swain wrote:A billion billion billion billion stars does not scare the dark away. Why?

Olber's Paradox

Rob

Thank you. Enlightenment has occurred.

Rob