Space, *quit swearing in titles*; space.

[woot]

Anybody care about rockets and such? I tend to follow this stuff very closely, so if anybody else does perhaps we can chat about it. There's a lot of exciting stuff happening lately.

The first test of one of the giant solid rocket boosters for the SLS is about to happen in Promontory, Utah.

Video here: http://spaceflightnow.com/2015/03/10...utah-for-nasa/ scheduled for 9:30 MST.

[Dwight Schr-ute]

Anybody care about rockets and such? I tend to follow this stuff very closely, so if anybody else does perhaps we can chat about it. There's a lot of exciting stuff happening lately.

The first test of one of the giant solid rocket boosters for the SLS is about to happen in Promontory, Utah.

Video here: http://spaceflightnow.com/2015/03/10...utah-for-nasa/ scheduled for 9:30 MST.

I have a coworker who somehow got a media pass to this week's events. He's been geeking out on FB and Twitter about it.

https://twitter.com/dsyzdek

[wuapinmon]

Harry Tic might contribute to this. I hear he gets a blast out of amateur rocketry.

[Dwight Schr-ute]

Pretty good GoPro footage. Until the camera melts.

http://youtu.be/XybLjSUYgII

[woot]

Very cool indeed. I don't love that NASA is sticking with SRBs for SLS, but I guess they had to make a choice between liquid boosters and a better second stage. The new second stage increases the launch vehicle's capability nicely, but strapping SRBs to another potentially crewed vehicle seems like a bad idea. SLS itself is a pretty bad idea.

The Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) science mission is scheduled to launch from the cape on an Atlas V tonight at 10:44 eastern.

Weather is 70% go.

[woot]

Enceladus might have nudged ahead of Europa and Titan for the place outside Earth best able to support life, after researchers working on Cassini data found evidence for hydrothermal venting from warm oceans below its surface: http://www.popularmechanics.com/spac...rn-moon-ocean/

Other space stuff I'm excited about coming soon:

The Dawn spacecraft has entered orbit around Ceres, and next month will lower its orbit and get our first-ever high-res look at it.

Also next month, comet P67 gets close enough to the sun to supply enough power to possibly wake up the Philae lander, which has been camping out on the comet's surface for the last few months.

Check out the trajectory Rosetta took to get there:
.
Mesmerizing.

The New Horizons spacecraft will also get us our first real look at Pluto and its 5 moons when it flies by in mid-July. Here was its view of Pluto and Charon a few weeks ago:
150125-31-one-day.gif

Perhaps the thing I'm most excited about is SpaceX landing the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket on a barge in the Atlantic. They've tried once and didn't quite make it


but they've fixed the problem that caused things to go pear-shaped at the end there. They'll try again after the next ISS resupply mission two launches from now, tentatively scheduled for Apr 10. The ability to get stuff to orbit without throwing the rocket away every time is potentially revolutionary.

[Pelado]

The New Horizons spacecraft will also get us our first real look at Pluto and its 5 moons when it flies by in mid-July. Here was its view of Pluto and Charon a few weeks ago:

Read an article recently from a guy that didn't think Pluto should have lost its planethood. He talked about some of the upcoming imagery for Pluto and its moons, mentioning the possibility that with the new information, it could regain its former planetary status.

[woot]

Read an article recently from a guy that didn't think Pluto should have lost its planethood. He talked about some of the upcoming imagery for Pluto and its moons, mentioning the possibility that with the new information, it could regain its former planetary status.

I think much of the revolt is pretty silly, but the official definition of a planet that got Pluto demoted isn't very good either. I saw one proposal setting Pluto as an arbitrary lower bound for planet size, which would make Ceres a planet without also requiring a hundred Kuiper belt objects to be planets. 10 would be a nice round number of planets, but I don't know if including Pluto in that way would be satisfying. Astronomers are going through the same thing that happens constantly in my field -- the more you learn about a naturally varying group, the harder it becomes to draw lines between individuals.

[Dwight Schr-ute]

This Cassini data is pretty fascinating. http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/news/dis...?News_ID=48922

[Dwight Schr-ute]

Ted Cruz makes a bar graph for NASA!

http://youtu.be/8A6q6eGM_Aw

[Moliere]

Thanks! That's reminds me of why I stood in line for 3 hours just to vote against Raphael Cruz.

[woot]

Monday could be a big day. SpaceX has an ISS resupply launch scheduled (pending a successful static fire today and the crick don't rise), after which they're making another attempt to land the first stage (see the almost-successful attempt .gif above).

Check the map here.

They had to switch some launches around due to yet another helium issue. He is apparently a nightmare to work with but SpaceX has had an especially hard time with it. Another SpaceX launch is scheduled for the 24th (this seems likely to get pushed a bit), and then a pad-abort test of the Dragon2 in May.

Also on Monday, ULA (operators of the expensive but very reliable Delta and Atlas rocket families) will be announcing the name of their next generation launch vehicle. It'll most likely be called Vulcan, with an outside shot of Zeus and a small chance of GalaxyOne. It should be pretty cool -- it uses the new BE-4 engine built by Blue Origin (founded by Jezz Bezos of Amazon), thus ending their reliance on Russian-built engines. It'll burn methane/lox much like the next generation SpaceX Engine does. It won't fly for several years but early details suggest they're going to try for some degree of reusability to compete with SpaceX on cost.

[Uncle Ted]

Down to less than 10 minutes for this launch... showing live at: http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/13/wat...ship-recovery/

Edit: Launch was scrubbed due to weather at T- 3:07. Try again tomorrow at around 4:10pm ET.

[Dwight Schr-ute]

Down to less than 10 minutes for this launch... showing live at: http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/13/wat...ship-recovery/

Edit: Launch was scrubbed due to weather at T- 3:07. Try again tomorrow at around 4:10pm ET.

Pushed until tomorrow. Cloud cover violation. Or something.

[scottie]

Whenever this thread pops up, I try to guess woot's original title; I'm thinking either "Space, g-damnit; space," or "Space, shit; space."