It’s my understanding that the idea of a dense asteroid belt (the kind Han Solo might try to hide in) is basically pure fiction, they don’t exist. However… that is essentially exactly what some parts of a planetary ring system may look like up close. So perhaps Han could hide in a planetary ring.
Alright thanks, those are some good suggestions. And don’t get me wrong, the nas does technically work, I can do whole drive images, just not the differential file-level backups. What I really wanted was to be able to restore a single file quickly and easily. That was the dream 🙄
Ok, so I’m going to weigh in here because I have first-hand experience, but keep in mind I am a relative novice at self hosting.
I’ve been using a machine that has evolved over the years from primary gaming PC, to backup server, to Bitcoin rig, to Plex server, etc. Well I finally got tired of complex raid backup solutions and bought a 4 drive Synology nas. I figured I might as well just go with the name brand because I’d probably pay a bit more, but everything would work right away.
Everything did not work right away.
I fought so hard to get incremental backup working… So hard. But it just refuses to copy some files. It actually struggles with filenames! It can’t handle names that have too many characters or use certain characters. (Filenames that Windows and the MacOS have no problem with). So if I want that backup to work, it appears I have to rename hundreds of files on that PC and hope nothing breaks… While their hardware seems fine, I am thoroughly unimpressed with Synology’s software.
Kessler syndrome is no joke.
Except it kind of is.
It can’t really happen at very low earth orbit, where the majority of satellites are, as any unpowered space junk would deorbit relatively quickly. And it can’t really happen at geostationary orbit, where most of the rest of them are, because when you go out that far there’s just so much space between every single object… The only way you run into something out there is on purpose and after a lot of calculations.
So there’s medium orbits and higher LEO those are the only areas we need to be really careful with.
Hell yeah! Actual useful industrial endeavors are the way we finally get humans off the planet, this is the way to the future. Once there’s a reason for industry in space, there’s a reason for support industries, construction, material supply, fuel supply, maintenance, etc. With those support services comes reasons for people to start to actually live in space, where they work. And from there, we can start to spread our legs and really “move in” to solar system, and the story of the human race truly begins.
It’s like the rings of Saturn: the likelihood of a collision is so remote that they didn’t even consider it when we had a satellite move through it.
I didn’t realize that, what mission is this your talking about? Cassini?
Wow, that is technically impressive, very cool!
How many full seeds are there? I mean how many could there be? Who has 300 Tb to throw at this?
I’m sorry, it seems like you think anybody is suggesting that launching nuclear waste to space should be a means of disposal for it. Clearly that’s not a workable solution for a dozen reasons.
A common (and reasonable) objection to nuclear powered spacecraft is the question of “what happens if the rocket explodes?” That’s really what I was responding to.
The solution for nuclear waste is frustratingly simple, bury it. It’s only a political problem because of misguided nimbyism.
Basically, yeah it works. One aspect that makes it easier is that the hotter something is, the more effective radiative cooling methods are. A nuclear reactor like this is designed to run in the area of 1000 F, and it turns out that you can pump liquid salt through a radiator that size, and it can take the salt from 1200F to 700F.
Your right though, convection does make radiators far more effective, air or water just work a whole lot better than relying on radiative cooling. But regardless, you can still make radiative methods work. Every satellite in orbit has to do it, the ISS has to do it (and you can see the big grey radiators on it). And every space base will probably need to do it too.
That’s why we don’t do that already.
But we do, we do a lot. Russia does it more. It’s why the Voyager probes are still working and sending back data. It’s why the curiosity and perseverance rovers persevere to this day.
I wonder how they would hope to cool it though?
A big radiator, that’s all.
I mean, the surface of the moon, Mars, or any other body in the solar system without an atmosphere and magnetic field is already heavily irradiated. So ya know, dump some radioactive waste there and really it’s no worse than it was before.
Well, at the poles, in deep craters, the bottom of the crater will never get sun, ever. As a result, these polar craters are very cold. This is pretty special because it means that any water ice that may have fallen from comet impacts or other sources will stay frozen on the surface, never melting.
Water is everything on the moon, it can be used for drinking, and as a source of oxygen for breathing, but probably more importantly, it’s rocket fuel (hydrogen and oxygen). If you can collect ice on the moon you can refuel a rocket there, on a full tank you can easily make orbit given the moon’s low gravity, and still have enough gas in the tank to go literally anywhere in the solar system. The moon becomes a launching point to anywhere.
For sure, and that can definitely work. But, you will need three times the number of solar panels (since half the time the panels are doing nothing and if you’re storing a lot of energy, that means there’s a proportional amount of storage losses.)
And I honestly don’t know how much mass in batteries would be needed for 15 days worth of storage, but my instincts say too much.
Keep in mind that total mass to deliver can sometimes be the biggest cost limitation. A nuclear generator that gets delivered in one launch could be cheaper than otherwise much simpler solar panels and batteries if that solution requires two or three launches.
Yeah, theoretically if your positioning is perfect you can get that eternal twilight, where the sun just travels across the horizon in a circle. But you know the moon wobbles a bit, so while you might get a month or two of straight sun, you might get a month or two of straight darkness, where the sun is just below the horizon, just barely out of reach…
So what stops people from walking into the bathroom, lighting up, and laughing at the honest poopers now perfectly visable?
A friend of mine had a pretty shitty marriage, which ultimately led to a divorce. When he finally wanted to start dating again he figured he’d try tinder. Used the app to hook up just once, decided to start dating the woman, ended up marrying her, they’re happy to this day. I think they’ve been together 6 years or so, maybe married for 4.
I think he had planned to use it to hook up with a lot of people, but he couldn’t escape his monogamous nature. He wasn’t really gonna sleep with a bunch of women and never speak to them again, I don’t think he could.
Well, if you’re just in it for the points, I’d recommend telling jokes, that’s pretty reliable. But, just an observation here, what I’m seeing in this thread is your having real conversations. Making the kinds of comments that might just as soon get a downvote, not the witty one liners that are guaranteed karma. So I wonder if that’s really why you’re commenting, or if maybe there’s something else you’re getting out of it. Could be worth considering.
I totally understand where you’re coming from and I mirror the sentiment, 100%. I’m tired billionaires steering the country, and I’m especially tired of musk, I hope I never have to hear his name in the news ever again.
That said, I think your take is misguided. For all that I hate musk, spaceX has achieved some truly astonishing things. And not only have they achieved their goals, but they’ve done it at an unprecedented rate and at a shockingly low cost. SpaceX is developing technology at a similar rate to NASA way back at the beginning, during the Gemini and Apollo programs, except back then NASA was getting 4% of the federal budget. SpaceX has not had anything close to that level of funding. In fact, though they have most definitely taken government contacts, for the most part, they’ve been able to foot the bill themselves (and with investors) for the majority of their development costs. When you compare costs and outcomes directly - what spaceX delivered vs what it cost us against any other launch provider, the difference is astonishing.
But that’s all business stuff. What spaceX has done that impresses me is the technical stuff. They developed a relatively inexpensive rocket engine with a 184/1 thrust to weight ratio. That’s the best thrust to weight ever achieved by an orbital class engine, like by a lot. Before that, I believe the record was held by the F-1 engine that powered the Saturn-V and took us to the moon, it boasted a 94/1 ratio.
For their next major rocket engine spaceX developed the raptor, a full flow staged combustion engine, running on methane. Explaining why “full flow staged combustion” is impressive is probably outside the scope of this comment, but please believe me, this is a huge technical achievement and it provides some very real benefits. And running on methane is a good choice for reusability, it burns cleaner, and there’s potential for producing it off earth.
And of course most importantly they changed the industry by landing rockets. That’s not a small feat, some of their competitors called them foolish for wasting time even trying, the industry was very much not moving in the direction of reusability. Now that SpaceX has proven the viability and in fact the huge advantage of reusable rockets, there are many rockets being designed for this, from Rocket Lab, Arianespace, Stoke Space, Blue Origin, Relativity Space, eXpace (a hilariously named Chinese company), and probably many more; this is now the way the industry is going, that’s a big deal.