Great video. It points out the similarity of "Uranus" and "uranium"; we should pronounce the first 2 syllable of those words the same if we want to be consistent, and I think we all know how uranium is pronounced.
Because it's hard to notice, but "Uranus" sounds like "your anus". It's funny to point this out, each and every time "Uranus" comes up in any context whatsoever.
One of the ideas I have, but will not have time to do, it's to make a site or browser extension to allow users to send extra content, reactions, memes, pictures, etc on Hacker News submissions and comments without having fear of the downvotes.
There's many many times that I wanted to post a funny reply but I'm certain that I'd get many downvotes from it.
Also a very old idea of mine :)
But in part that's what reddit does.
Also a general-purpose geographic forum, where you can leave notes to people in a certain area ("I lost/found this item around here"/"beware of the crazy old lady leaving poison for dogs in this area"/"beware the child toy in the park catches on children hands; make sure they keep their hands above the seat at all times").
I also thought about tinder before smartphones had finger touch screens.
'Uranus' is the same as 'Europa' (and many more terms): "breadth" - the former used for the vast cover which is the sky, the second for the land extension.
There's nothing funny about it unless one really hunts for coincidences in sounds through unduly overlappings.
What has «first language» do with it? If you read 'Al' in 'Alcohol' as "Alfred", you are reading it wrong: "Al" is a definite article there, irregardless of coincidences.
It's a good point about the first language, not so important.
The rest I dont' get, the fact Uranus actually sounds like "Your Anus" is just a thing, it can't be helped.
When I hear the word Alcohol, I do sometimes think of the nickname for Allan or Alistair which is often Al; However, it's not just as funny as thinking about a planet being called "Your Anus, Uranus".
You have not been "cancelled": you were being "noisy" - distracting on pretty weak basis of a joke as old as mold - and brought to margin. "Cancelled" is someone who found a nice theorem but boo, a bad guy cannot do culture. There's a difference, and again quite some proportion.
On the other hand, as you may see in the page, I have been called an AI and a "fake account" - which, you know, also tends to be quite insulting about one's person. Anything wrong with the air today?
I only meant, the reference from 'Uranus' to 'anus', that I referred to as the "joke". I am not sure about what was your initial comment, as it was hidden as flagged before I could read it.
Not to hurt your feelings but the fact you find it tiresome won't change anything, people aren't going to wake up one day and just decide its not a funny name.
We're not going to start to teach children classes on why it's wrong to laugh at the name Uranus.
I was just being practical when I said what I said. It's not a great name.
At least a couple of billions, when they have 'tachycardia', 'hydraulic', 'geosynchronous', 'Uranus' in their vocabulary.
> A lot more people hear
Well, they are missing a module, aren't they?
> coolness
The label you choose for "knowing your language" is "cool"? Some would say, "duly".
> today's world
What entitlements has that "world" you are mentioning?
> the choice of language
Unclear. If that is arguing against the choice of the ancients, entitlement for judgement remains appropriate. But sure, if you want to call it "S7" in your papers, it will probably work and nobody will stop you. Of course, others will call it as they deem appropriate - oftentimes with reason.
Well, you are writing already in a forum of relatively selected participance, are not you? Even today if you checked averages, medians and modes (types) there would be (there is) little to be happy about. The context here is about the "milestone setters" we had them then and we have them today. Not all of the progressive instances of the past are strongly seen today - far from it. And in fact,
> all progress we have made in medicine
the current extreme focus on disease and neglect of health which can be perceived nowadays in some areas should suggest that the "primitiveness" you see is really not gone and transversal though history. Of which it is said, "a curse which will force those who ignore it to repeat it" (similarly to gambling as "the tax on those ignorant of mathematics").
Sure, we have this exciting creational power to exploit "today": nonetheless, you have to "cultivate the man" - otherwise, what you will get is "a brute with heightened power at hand".
In that context,
> the words are still used
in my former reply I was literal and brief when I enumerated transliterations («'geo-' 'synchro-' etc)». More than the words, the roots are still used. In all of these tokens we in turn threw in. To have some proper acquaintance with the terms you use should be part of the art - they are your instruments... You can have different priorities, but if you work with wire or pans or blades, it is welcome to spend an adequate degree of consideration of those entities. And you use language. When you look into it, its origins become relevant.
I think GP is suggesting it be renamed to Urbutthole or something like that to make it specifically distinguished as camp and pun so as to filter out anyone who would set their scientific priorities based on the name of the celestial body.
I’m not one to scream about kids these days but it seems really weird that someone would suggest renaming a planet to avoid elementary school puns. And the puns probably help with Uranus science.
Of course, some DNA sequences were recently renamed to avoid Excel errors so maybe we’re entering the era of trying to make subjective changes because it’s hard to understand or hard to change objective things.
Disclaimer: I am neither a planetary scientist nor a biologist.
Can someone help me understand the desire to put a DNA sequencer on the Enceladus mission? I haven't previously read anything that suggests DNA as being so fundamental to life that it's a safe assumption exotic moon microbes have it. In fact, discovering that exotic moon microbes have DNA exactly like Earth life would seem like the biggest discovery humanity has yet made.
Actually it's exactly that: within the Sol system we know DNA was favored. The lack of evidence of other encoding systems strongly suggests that at the very least, once DNA happens it outcompetes everything else in Earth-like biospheres. Since we're looking for life in Earth-like locales - and Enceladus is targeted for that reason - then it's reasonable to expect we'd find DNA.
The benefit of DNA is it's conclusive: if we find DNA, then life (or an exceptionally bizarre natural process) must be their, and if we grab a sequence then it's high probability we'll be able to figure out what type of life it is due to some Earth-local proteins being basically limited in improvement by physics itself, and heavily conserved - i.e. even totally alien life would be expected to manufacture a close analogue.
Not to mention that if we turn up something totally weird, we can still synthesize it up in a lab to study.
> The lack of evidence of other encoding systems strongly suggests that at the very least, once DNA happens it outcompetes everything else in Earth-like biospheres.
In 50 years:
The lack of evidence of other languages in use besides JavaScript suggests that at the very least, once JavaScript happens it outcompetes everything else...
I'm just saying it doesn't follow. DNA could be an "average" encoding mechanism or even a poor one. We don't know since we have no other good examples other than contrived lab creations that can't be tested in a real evolutionary scenario since we don't live for millions of years.
DNA could have outcompeted because some lineage of DNA-based organisms acquired an adaptation that led to them outcompeting everything else, even if other encoding mechanisms were superior.
GP isn't saying DNA is the only way, or even the best. They are saying it's a higher probability than anything else we know of. There's value in decisive tests, even if it's improbable.
It does beg the question; doesn't it? Is there another form of encoding compared to DNA that we may not be aware of and that put our conception of life on its head.
Basically, discovering DNA is sufficient but not necessary to discovering life.
And if we did find DNA (itself a monumental discovery), sequencing it would be the next most important bit of information we could want, since it might allow us to check if there is some relation to life on earth.
But I guess my question is this: we're going to spend $XB to send a probe to a distant moon. Once it lands, we get to ask exactly two questions. Question one is confirm/deny organic life (the microscope). Why is question two's ability to provide a meaningful answer so contingent upon a very specific outcome of question one?
Is this a combo of a) the cost of the second question (i.e. the weight and size of sending the DNA sequencer) is fairly small, b) we're confident enough about question one that putting resources toward question two is worth the opportunity cost of asking a different question, or c) we have no other questions that we can reasonably ask for the same amount of resources?
> Why is question two's ability to provide a meaningful answer so contingent upon a very specific outcome of question one?
Because "within the Sol system we know DNA was favored" [1]. If question one is yes, the chances that question two will meaningfully resolve is high enough, and then answer interesting enough, that the bet makes sense. (Also, we are asking more than two questions in a mission.)
If you don't ask question two, there's no point in asking question one.
Unless they find the place teeming with life, which nobody expects, it's more likely that anything they find hitched a ride from Earth instead of originated on the planet. So if they're not willing to rule that possibility out, they'll just end up causing decades of speculation and conspiracy theories.
> Disclaimer: I am neither a planetary scientist nor a biologist.
I think asking the question is fine, especially if you aren’t these things. Further, you don’t have to be either of those to understand a subject. Kind of silly to assume a biologist would have better insight to your question anyway, most biologists aren’t going to specialize in that area.
Europa is already getting a visitor in the form of the Europa Clipper, which along with Mars sample return was the top priority of the previous Decadal Survey.
> Uranus has not been explored up close since a flyby of the Voyager mission in 1986.
Whenever I start feeling down about everything good being done, I like to think about how much we just don’t know. It’s amazing to me that we have these planets nearby and know almost nothing about them. Also the deep sea, etc. we still have a lot to explore.
Near enough to get to it. We were there in 1986 so could go back if we want. (As opposed to planets around other stars that we haven’t even gotten to yet.)
Uranus is an interesting choice, because besides its name (and perhaps its tilt) it's pretty much the most boring planet in our Solar System. The article mentions a gravity assist that would help line things up, but I'm wondering if the findings are intended to also apply to Neptune, which is a lot more active.
The name isn't that interesting either. Sure, Uranus is father of the titans and grandfather of Zeus, but the only significance in popular culture is the hilarious mispronunciation that's prevalent in English-speaking countries.
Uranus got a reputation as a boring planet after the Voyager 2 flyby, but that was a least partially a generalization from a single datapoint. Specifically, Uranus was near solstice at the time, and as it has moved along on its 84-year orbit, Earth-based telescopes have observed its atmosphere becoming much more dynamic. That's one reason why scientists are so eager to see it again up-close, this time during a different season. See, eg. https://www.planetary.org/articles/20170621-revisiting-ice-g...
It’s not that simple. Even if getting into earth orbit gets cheaper and less risky, planetary exploration will still be hard, because it is hard and getting into space is not the hardest part.
Besides just cost, the engineering constraints can be lower by making designs less complex and easier to do, also, faster. Free delta-v or smaller size constraints, as well as more predictible pricing. Or, 2 for the price of one, or, split up instruments on multiple spacecraft. Reusable spacecraft are a little like that :)
The relative costs give you an idea of what parts of the mission are hard. A Falcon Heavy launch costs somewhere on the order of $100 million. For a $4.9 billion program, it is not the driver.
Yes, lower launch costs have enabled a lot of missions and cheaper spacecraft than would have been possible otherwise. But space is still hard. There is also an element of the fallacy where if there is more resources available the expectation is cost will go down, but the response ends up people just use more of the resources (there is some economics fallacy/paradox term for this that escapes me right now). Larger launch vehicles enable larger more complex spacecraft. I expect that the capability of the Falcon heavy means that the size of the Uranus spacecraft will be much larger and more complex than something like Voyager 1/2 or New Horizons.
Some of the high mission cost is over-engineering to guarantee success given the already high costs. OTOH the public doesn't want to see NASA failures even at lower costs so there's that...
Yes, especially since the survey recommends sending a probe this time. I can be amused at that while still respecting the scientific value of the mission.
My sincere hope is we revisit both uranus and Neptune within my lifetime.
Each has only been visited once and that was over 30 years ago with the Voyager missions. We learned a lot but now we have way better tech, way better cameras and can learn way more.
It takes a particular planetary alignment to make such a trip possible. The next such window is in the early 2030s. These outer Solar System missions are really expensive and take a long prep time so that window to prep a mission in time is rapidly closing. And that's to get there around 2040.
People don't realize just how hard it is to reach these outer planets. New Horizons was a flyby on Pluto because an intercept mission was essentially impossible. Crossing such a large distance to a slow-moving planet means a massive delta-V budget (which is impractical or impossible) or it takes so long you risk instrument or mission failure.
At least Uranus and Neptune have a much larger gravity well and have higher orbital speeds so gravitional capture is much more practical.
We won't see both visited in the next window but I'd settle for at least one.
I believe that's what the GP means, yes. With a future superheavy launch vehicle, however, a tandem mission could be possible, with separate Neptune and Uranus probes being inserted into different trajectories by the same LV/upper stage. Both spacecraft would still do a Jupiter slingshot but at different times.
Voyager launched on a couple of Grand Tour alignments [1]. One was Jupiter, Saturn and Pluto. The other was Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune. And yes, that occurs every ~200 years.
But that's not really relevant for reaching Uranus. That requires a more common alignment, which is with Jupiter. Jupiter orbits every ~12 years. Uranus orbits every 84 years. Jupiter is the vast bulk of mass in the Solar System that isn't the Sun, which is why it's such a good slingshot. So there's a window every ~12 years.
If we miss the early 2030s window, we'll be waiting to at least the mid 2040s.
Maybe SpaceX can send a few probes. I'm sure Elon would be thrilled just for the meme potential, and they could treat it as product development for navigation and reconnaissance. If it became a regular thing, they could start sending swarms of probes wherever the current conjunction of planets makes optimal.
Yeah, about that "impractical" part. I think it's time to reconsider it. With the Falcon, SpaceX has made access to space if not cheap then at least very affordable. The sheer cost of the Mars missions, as an example, make the market launch price look like change. The design also has to be perfect due to this "once in a decade" mentality.
So I really think it's time to focus on "get there quickly" to make missions cheaper. Design a relatively simple vessel weighing around 40t or so with enormous ISP (electrical or chemical, whatever fits the bill) and then use it twice per year or even more often to send more or less standardized probes to whatever target you find interesting.
I am well aware that this concept sketch trivializes many aspects of space missions: Communication, power, navigation to name just a few aspects. But I still think that oversizing and then using the same design often would be much cheaper in the long run.
I'm looking forward to lifting fuel into orbit as the next major progress item for this. A lot of the math changes if you lift fuel into orbit. Our mindset is currently very confined by the need to launch everything in one shot. I'm not sure exactly how fast you could get to the outer planets, but I expect it's at least enough that you would no longer need a "grand tour" to do it. (Also depends on whether you just get there fast as a fly-by or whether you want to go into orbit, I'm sure.)
Honestly kind of unsure why we're not hearing more about this already. The costs of it are an increasingly small fraction of what we're spending on these probes anyhow.
I mean fuel as the payload, to be used as fuel for future missions via something rendezvousing with it in orbit and picking up the fuel. You could think of it as one more stage, mathematically that's how you might treat it, but from an engineering perspective it's a qualitative difference versus what we have now.
Yes and no. They're lifting fuel into orbit, but all at once. That has three implications of needing more thrust for the engine than if we did it in multiple trips
That's true, but there is extra energy cost associate with putting it in orbit and then breaking orbit. Orbital calculations are about velocity, and delta-velocity, more than they are about height-above-ground.
Getting above the atmosphere is a big win, and may well make it worth it to do the final fueling from orbit. But in the end, getting to orbit may be as little as 100 miles of a multi-billion-mile trip.
I find it weird how your first paragraph is correct, then your second paragraph kinda seems to ignore it?
The whole reason I'm interested is obviously not that lifting fuel a vanishing fraction percent of the distance is helpful. The whole reason is that with a full fuel tank that's already in orbit, a probe ought to be able to take off straight for a planet without having to wait for an energy-impoverished orbit to be available. Or take off on a much more energy-intensive orbit that involves more aggressive slingshot maneuvers, or whatever else; having more energy doesn't preclude using that energy cleverly as well.
I also find myself curious about what we could do with an ion drive... or set of ion drives... fed with lots of fuel. And maybe an RTG for power, or some other real power source other than solar (which isn't much of a source out there in the gas giants). Or fed by solar cells, but first it takes a swing around the Sun for the almost sole purpose of gathering solar energy and driving the ion drives with it. All sorts of interesting things become possible if we can just use multiple lauches.
The impractical part is really about carrying that much fuel. The problem is you to speed up and then slow down at the other end. Slowing down takes fuel (obviously) but you have tos peed up that fuel at the beginning as it increases the overall payload. That's what I mean by impractical.
New Horizons launched on an Atlas V 551. Falcon Heavy has a larger payload capacity so it might be more possible.
But if you're relying on an engine to decelerate more than gravity then that creates another problem: whgat engine do you use? Remember it has to probably survive in space for possibly 10+ years and fire successfully. The Apollo lander used a super-simple engine for this reason, so much so that it could only ever be fired once (to launch back into Moon orbit) so it couldn't even be test-fired [1].
So what you'd put on a deep space probe is a significant unsolved problem.
If you look at the comment from NortySpock in this there was a study to get a probe direct to Neptune and with a Falcon Heavy and extra kick stage it was "only" 3800 kg.
This is still an order of magnitude more than previous deep space probes (Voyager, New Horizons), but still not huge. It is still significantly smaller than something like our current geostationary communications satellites.
I love NASA and science and all, but this seems like such an atrocious way to waste such a huge amount of money. We're literally destroying our own planet in every way imaginable by the second, we're on the verge of a nuclear WWIII on top of that, and now we're looking to spend money exploring a cold and gassy planet that's 2 billion miles away? Is there really nothing closer or more worthwhile to spend that money on? Missions to Mars and the moon are ones we can at least dream of being useful before we wipe ourselves off our own planet, but Uranus...?!
Turns out its trivial amounts of money compared to lots of things. And the old saw "Why do things in space when its not perfect down here!" is called "False Dichotomy". We can easily do both.
No, I don't see it as a false dichotomy. We "can" do both only because it takes time to see the biggest negative effects of everything we're already doing, and we're only getting glimpses of them right now, so we think we can still afford to waste more. With the amount of debt the US has, pretty much anything it spends money on is trivial at this point. The correct reaction to that is not to just ignore it and go even further negative.
That money doesn't disappear from the economy. It pays for materials and jobs and work that gets done. The only financial value that is "lost" to the planet is the materials value of the probe itself and the contents thereof, which once you reduce them to raw mineral value is a mere few thousand dollars at worst.
Space missions generate far more value than they cost, also. It takes brilliant minds solving unique problems as a group and once that is done, the information and knowledge generated do not simply sit in a vault somewhere but are then appropriated by other people for terranean uses, most famously like the microwave oven, but also all of the things this this list:
If you can do that without investing extra money I'm 100% rooting for you. (Actually I'm still rooting for you regardless even if you do it by spending extra money.)
It wouldn't cost any money, it "just" needs governments, corporations, and countries to stop being dicks.
Yup, this is a very facetious post. I'm making the point that we humans have a lot that we should stop spending on before we should stop funding science.
It’s .004% of global gdp for a mission that will have its cost spread out over years, and has a much more likely chance to generate knowledge than research into less concrete topics. Even from a utilitarian point of view, there’s something to be said for pursuing things that help encourage humanity’s curiosity and interest in science.
At first this seems logical: solve the existing probleme on Earth, and only then devote resources to 'nice to have' projects. The counter arguments are:
The money saved would probably not go to solving real problems (who gets to decide what problems are real?), but rather various politically favored boondoggles or just politicians' salaries
It's relatively small chnage compared to other budget items
space is a major driver of technological advance which can then be used on Earth
space has the potential for enormous economic growth (admittedly this is a long term thing)
Uranus is NASA's target! And there's going to be a "4.2 billion flagship mission to the ice giant"!!
chortle, chortle...
"Uranus has not been explored up close"
"After decades in the shadow of the other planets, Uranus should become NASA’s focus of exploration"
"NASA ... will launch a $4.2 billion orbiter and atmospheric probe to Uranus"
"It was Uranus’s turn."
"Uranus also holds its own individual appeal."
"It has two sets of rings, along with a densely packed set of primordial moons and oddball objects, likely trapped comets or objects from a region beyond Neptune"
"flights through those plumes revealed abundant organic molecules, necessary to build life, along with silica and hydrogen gas, a sign that the ocean feeding the plumes probably has hydrothermal vents in its depths"
The comedic potential is worth a hell of a lot of publicity and public interest.
People take rovers driving around mars for granted these days. It took 20yr of driving a few feet a day and accompanying monthly press releases about interesting rocks disseminated to the scientific community and then trickled down to the public. Rovers driving around mars is firmly in the status quo. When one runs out of things to do we send another. We don't stop and debate about if it's worth it.
Enough memes about probing Uranus and outer planetary missions will become normalized in the public consciousness. That changes the dichotomy from "if we send a mission to <outer planet>" to "this time the mission will be to <outer planet>".
Incidential, out of a number of posts that seemed to be a bit too - let us say - "random" in reading the term:
-- In some languages, the sky takes its name from the concept of "cover". Even the more Germanic 'sky', which comes from the cloud barrier, is related to a form of "cover" and is related to e.g. "hide" (and 'Haut', 'scutum' etc). Otherwise, in the more Latin area, "celestial" and "color" (and forms of "cover") are related (at least in some identified paths).
-- 'Uranus' is similarly identified as coming from roots common to 'velor' ("velated" etc) - in terms of "cover", "protection" etc. 'Urn' is one related term. Again forms for further ideas of "cover" can be found from those roots, such as other IE forms for "color". From that the idea of "extension", hence other related terms such as, notably, 'Europe'.
-- Other analysis have been proposed which brought to other meanings (e.g. relations to 'rain').
-- 'Uranus' is the Greek name for the sky - and the associated divinity, father of Chronos (or Cronos - proper definition debated since antiquity), father of the Olympian deities. The term should recall this directly, and its roots, above described, as its core.
And certainly not - in a different paragraph out of sense of proportions -, an equivocal sound out of some inflection of voice found in the Philippines or Tierra-del-fuego that may remind you of a way they have to describe a rattly motorbike or anything.
One minor note: Uranus was the father of Cronos/Cronus/Kronos the Titan (an old agricultural deity), father of Zeus; not the father of Chronos, the personification of time.
Explain yourself. I was, and am, very very serious. I spend time trying to produce quality posts, somebody comes, cannot grasp and calls this an AI?! That is a slur. Can you see how?
I am all for the insult when proper - though you can read the quite controlled expression in these pages -, on the expressed condition that it is deserved. No issue when you call red what is red and pink what is pink. But when one has full legitimacy in a post, and somebody comes and states that that must be the product of a machine, that is first an insult, and secondly a very gross fault - the here writing "non-machine" has all the qualifications. The insult cannot pass, here: we'd like this place to be civilized.
I expect that kind of approach to be censored with gravity, and I am surprised dang has not made an explicit note about it. I do fully expect any expression of such tendency to be corrected.
I swear, the day in which AI remotely comes close to this one writing...
We had conceived Turing tests to see when a machine starts becoming "adequate" in at least appearances, and now the public is that which cannot even make sense of very normal writing?! Everything upside down now?!
In case you have not even understood the context, as I now suspect: a number of posts have been downvoted, flagged and hidden because "they were reminded of 'anus'" - or whatever. That's the «rattling motorbike». So the post was: "What you have to be reminded of is the following - not whatever coincidence suggests you. You think of a term, that's what you may think of, this is the realm in which you are supposed to think". Not clear? Language is there for you to understand, not to absorb.
Otherwise, how can you grow higher than """AI""".
You don't understand what is written (you call it «nonsense»), why it was written, and you do not get the suspect that the fumbling one is you?
I think I can see what you're getting at with your last post, but you might also want to work on the coherence of your written English. You are writing based on the spoken word, which doesn't lend itself to reader comprehension (in English).
As an example:
> You think of a term, that's what you may think of, this is the realm in which you are supposed to think.
That's more of a series of phrases than a sentence, which is also a common characteristic of computer-generated text.
All this is combined with the allusive nature of your posts, which will set off "conspiracy theorist troll" or "AI-generated" alarms everywhere it goes.
> * You are writing based on the spoken word ... an example*
That is intentionally didascalic for the intentional expression of clarity, and it is enclosed in quotes, which do denote a switch. It intentionally describes a process in blocks.
> your posts, which will set off
My dear friend, do you realize that when something is labelled through «common characteristic[s]», that would be the shallow labelling that a machine does? And it is not even Bayesian, because important amounts of texts are written in a way similar to that in which I write - machine learning itself mocks human learning after all. Maybe it would be important in this time and age for information accessors to realize that either they put themselves seriously into understanding expressions, or if they have to break a guinness world record of processed text per time unit (cpr.: "Spedread War and Peace, 'ts about Napoleon in the east"), it's more serious to renounce to actual judgement - after all, there are machines for preprocessing (and really they cannot but guess on normalspeak because they are stupid)?
You should see even more the absurdity.
Again - the point is very important: rushed prejudice-like labelling ("Cialis - spam") is not appropriate, it's machine-level, and a sign of decadence.
No Cipater. But probably the language I use is not the language you intend: I use language actively, not patterns. Nonetheless, the vastest majority of the language instances I "deal with" are in English... Or anyway a few more post-Latin and post-Germanic languages - but I do not think the expression would change in other """dialects""". I know that there is 'la bagnole' and there 'el coche', and for terms I would pick the one that seems appropriate irregardless - but the logic is unchanged.
If your objective is to make it harder for folks to parse what you're saying then you're succeeding. But you're not a "troll" so I don't think that is your aim.
If language is a system of communication, you are not using it actively; quite the opposite in fact.
Which leads me to ask, why do you choose to express yourself this way? For the fun of it?
Do you speak this way too?
I'm really curious. Your comments almost seem AI generated.
> If your objective is to make it harder for folks
I know (at lest presume) you wrote it that way just rhetorically, but: no, of course that's not the objective. :)
It's just that - rushed hence imperfect formulations aside, that can also happen of course - if a relatively complex idea is to be expressed, its form will follow. When I wrote «actively», it means that I craft the expressions - if you wish, that I check and vet and adjust the expression, until I find it well constructed. (And yes, this also means that implicitly I do verify whether it is understandable - but implying, "by somebody who actually intends to do their part in understanding it".) James Joyce once got furious against some editing of his work, (rightfully) stating that "he chose those expressions very intentionally" - that is an "active use of language", adopting some effort, in a conscious process.
Yes I do speak this way too. :) I have been told that to listen to me requires extra concentration - but that was by professors during oral exams...
...so actually, it's "/may/ require": it depends on the expressed idea really. I guess that certainly you would not find all of my posts "hard to read". Probably, "not all lunches are soft and buttery Big Macs" - sometimes "you have to chew" (because such is the material).
Hi again Cipater. It seems I replied to your post while you were editing it. (And by the way: apologies for said reply, which I now re-read and is full of typos and imperfections. Time constraints, rushing, culpable omission of re-reading it properly...)
I express myself that way because I use what I believe is the proper process in composing, and that is the outcome. I "think, evaluate, consider, formulate, hone": you formulate and judge in cycle (and that is valid for the structure, the ideas, the nodes which are the terms and should be as "right" as possible...). It's how one should be supposed to think... (And in fact, it's not a formal process: it's natural.) In a way, you formulate the expression as if you sculpted. Of course I am just guessing what you find "strange", because, as you surely understand, to me it is not.
The "result" you indicate could also be a consequence of the fact that I read a relatively large amount of literature since the earliest age. In some ways to be defined, that must have an impact.
About communication, as said, it is a work shared by both parts: you express something and the part of your interlocutor is to put the right effort into understanding it or just postpone. Otherwise, the "common" part fails. Your duty is to be understandable. If the other one did not perform its own processing, the shared object would remain "communicated" (by the first) yet not "made common".
Of course, more on a practical interpretation, the problem of the /targeted/ form of expression is not trivial (in the sense that there is little to do about it): the "ideal sculpture" is for the general, untargeted communication - and it will be inadequate for some. These will require explanations, which you cannot anticipate in full, and will want to add upon being requested clarifications - the intended reader does not want to be bothered with redundant (to them) «With 'term1', what is meant...» (and you do not want to write the equivalent of a legal document per post).
About aspects of my comments reminding of AI: I do not know why some of you see them that way (apart from the inexcusable case of that which does not understand and _consequently_ decides "it must be nonsense" - remarkable paradox). Current AI is depthless (in content grasp), and I have quite strong grounds to say that here it's the opposite (meaning that the consideration is "conceptual" and reflective).
One guess (of those most relevant) is that some individuals are not used to identify complex structures outside the strict realm in their work (note that I have read posts in HN of people that say "they do their job for the money" - you will not "export" what you dislike).
By the way: just minutes ago I was awarded a «That is exceptionally well articulated, fully on your side» from a co-member at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31121890 . As you see, this way of expression is the "rule" (on this side), but while some show occasionally to be confused others do appreciate it, further to subscribing to it.
Ice giants are really interesting because it appears that even when controlling for our observational biases, they (as well as super-Earths and sub-Neptunes) are a really common type of exoplanet, so studying our own ones could tell us a lot about other planetary systems out there.
Reading this makes me wish we could have all of the above right now, no limits. Public/private missions to Venus, Mars, Moon (and stay), Ceres, Saturn moons, and outer planets, and some laser + light sail interstellar to boot, all launching this decade. I understand budgets are a problem and this is highly naive, but seriously, can't we do all that instead of wars?
Can we do something much more grand and hope to see something, unlikely within our lifetime a full possibility? What great wonders of joy if this happens!
Oumuamua was such a remarkable event. Let's plan and have ready to launch and land on another Oumuamua-like visit. We just need to have it ready so that we can launch and land. It can then surf along a magical ride.
We should have ready also a relay system of nodes in space. This way it can readily relay back to the previous node(s) without it getting too far away from us.
Who is onboard this plan or, or possibly could one already be in process?!! I am happy to contribute a draft writeup.
I'd argue it would be pretty uninteresting to follow Oumuamua where it's going. It was traveling at 0.001% c and the nearest star is 4 light years away, so even if it was aimed directly at that star system, it would take 400,000 years to get there. Oumuamua is going to spend a LONG time cruising in the darkness.
> We just need to have it ready so that we can launch and land
This is like really really hard. Oumuamua was traveling through our solar system at about 87.3 km/s (relative to the sun, I think based on the link below). Earth travels around the sun at about 29.7 km/s. So if Oumuamua and Earth are traveling in the same plane (the is a REALLY BIG IF) then we still need to make up 57.5 km/s of delta V from a rocket. The fastest object we have ever launched from Earth was New Horizons which was launched with an escape velocity of 15.26 km/s and this was, generally speaking, a very light spacecraft launched on a very powerful rocket.
Now even with our more powerful rockets now, overcoming that difference in delta V is still incredibly difficult. To put it another way, in order to land something on the asteroid we already have to get it moving as fast as the asteroid. A more plausible mission would be doing something like Deep Impact that can still get an idea of what is going on in the composition of the comet. There was the "impactor" spacecraft that was launched from the main spacecraft and successfully collided with the comet. But it is less like we hit the comet with something and better to think about it as we got something in the way of the comet's path and the comet smashed in to it. As you might imagine getting something to survive this impact would also be incredibly difficult.
I'm no space expert but like to entertain the obstacles mentioned here (no pun intended =). I learned so much from your post already which is packed with useful information.
Okay, so let's say we can't overcome this delta V. This would be perspective from having a good relative speed to do a nice, graceful landing.
How about blowing (again no pun intended) right into it? Maybe some projectile form and it can stick to it without blowing the payload into pieces, a different challenge. Imagine either shooting a stick of gum with some payload at the car, or have the car run right into it. If you can't beat'em, join 'em :). I would call this project mosquito, except it doesn't get splat.
I see there is good production value in knowing more about the asteroid composition. What get's me excited is reaching far out into space we might not have thought of possible within our lifetime. Maybe attach a beacon along with it and who know's, maybe something else discovers it and it points right back at us.
Glad I can help! I always like teaching people about space stuff (that's obviously the technical term we use in the aerospace industry).
There would still be some serious engineering to have some sort of meaningful electronics (even just a comm beacon with a heartbeat) to survive that impact. A closer analogy might be trying to stick a piece of gum to a supersonic aircraft.
Lets take the Deep Impact as a reference starting point. From the mission data info on Wikipedia [0] the impactor collided with the comet at a relative speed of 10.3 km/s (23,000 mph) and the impact energy was estimated to be the equivalent of 4.7 tons of TNT. Getting something to just straight survive the impact is going to have to be really really tough.
The other option that I am just spitballing (many puns intended) is to get something that would hook the asteroid attached to the payload at the end of a very very long spool.
Step 1: you get the hook in to the asteroid/comet. This has its own challenges. The surface of asteroids and comets is often just very fine dust and small rocks (regolith) attached to the asteroid by it's own small gravity. So perhaps a gigantic net would be better, but again it still needs to be strong enough to survive that initial impact.
Step 2: Attached to the net/hook is a very very very long (like probably hundreds of kilometers long) spool of a very high tension wire that you start spooling out. Again this has to spool out at the relative velocity between the two objects. So something very low friction and probably some sort of active cooling radiator in order to take away the heat. There are missiles that spool out wire behind them to the thing that fired for guidance, i'm envisioning something like that but even crazier.
Step 3: The velocity of the spool starts gradually slowing due to the friction and the relative velocity between the asteroid and the probe. And eventually the probe is being pulled along behind the asteroid. You probably also need some sort of independent thrust and control system on the probe to prevent it from flying around wildly behind the asteroid or possibly smacking in to it again as the spool whips you around.
Step 4: Realize that for all of this effort you are only really traveling about 3-4 times faster than something like New Horizons and its still going to take you 4000 years to reach Proxima Centauri (the nearest star to the Sun) assuming you are pointed in the right direction.
The best shot we have at actually reaching another star system with current (or close to current) technology is something like Breakthrough Starshot. A tiny tiny satellite with a huge solar sail being continually propelled by a system of 100 GW lasers on the ground. The early concepts estimate that it could get to Proxima Centauri in ~30 years. But we've still got a lot of technical obstacles to overcome for this one.
For those hungry for a mission proposal, Planetary Radio did a podcast April 6th on a Neptune orbiter proposal.
The best news was that, using an extra kick stage, either SLS or SpaceX Falcon Heavy could launch 3800kg direct to Neptune for a 16 year cruise, meaning they would not be dependent on gravity assists from Jupiter, which would be out of position if the mission schedule slips.
That seems to exemplify design by committee. So we'll learn that Uranus has 37% more lightning than we previously thought. I'd much rather see a Europa lander. Better yet, a Europa melt-though-the-ice probe. A solar gravitation lens for exoplanets [1] study fleshed out. A Venus blimp thingy. Mars polar lander. Something with more vision.
Everything will be completely different once Starship works. All the mass limits evaporate. There would be no need for RPG power, because you could just carry enough fuel. No 13-year transit time needed; just blast straight out there.
But to me, the mission I most want to see, far beyond any other, would be into a lunar lava tube skylight. It probably would need to have stork legs, and move mostly by hopping.
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