May God bless them. They are going to need it.
Thank you for flying Boeing.
Thank you for flying Boeing.
Enjoy the benefits of a premium membership!
Upgrade Account
-
TalkBass has been independent since 1998. Add your voice.
Create a free account to reply to discussions, view embedded media, and browse with fewer display ads.
Join free Log in
Want zero display ads or expanded classifieds tools? Compare plans.
SpaceX and other space stuff
- Thread starter bholder
- Start date
lyrics...........
Humans From Earth
T-bone Burnett
We come from a blue planet light-years away
Where everything multiplies at an amazing rate
We're out here in the universe buying real estate
Hope we haven't gotten here too late
We're humans from earth
We're humans from earth
You have nothing at all to fear
I think we're gonna like it here
We're looking for a planet with atmosphere
Where the air is fresh and the water clear
With lots of sun like you have here
Three or four hundred days a year
Bought Manhatten for a string of beads
Brought along some gadgets for you to see
Heres a crazy little thing we call TV
Do you have electricity?
I know we may seem pretty strange to you
But we got know-how and a golden rule
We're here to see manifest destiny through
Ain't nothing we can't get used to
We're humans from earth
We're humans from earth
NASA's Starliner launch to the ISS is tonight at 10:34 PM EDT. NASA.GOV coverage goes live at 6:30 PM.
What's the cargo weight allowance in a Boeing product for stainless steel spheres and rabbits' feet...? 
The surprise is not that Boeing lost commercial crew but that it finished at all
Invalid Link Removed
Good luck to 'em.
The surprise is not that Boeing lost commercial crew but that it finished at all
Invalid Link Removed
Good luck to 'em.
Ars posted a longer & more detailed writeup this afternoon about the Starliner launch, and its (very) long road to readiness:
SpaceX got the fanfare, but Boeing’s first crew flight is still historic
For whatever it's worth, my earlier post was not meant to imply that I'm wishing ill on this mission; I certainly do not want to see anything with a crew relying on it to fail in any way. Even so, it is hardly telling tales out of school to note that Boeing in general, and this program in particular, have had serious problems and deficiencies to contend with in its development. (See the above article for some notable examples.)
We'll be watching and hoping for the best, of course. I just hope the reality that emerges matches up to the optimism of the press releases.
Again, and sincerely: Good luck to them.
SpaceX got the fanfare, but Boeing’s first crew flight is still historic
For whatever it's worth, my earlier post was not meant to imply that I'm wishing ill on this mission; I certainly do not want to see anything with a crew relying on it to fail in any way. Even so, it is hardly telling tales out of school to note that Boeing in general, and this program in particular, have had serious problems and deficiencies to contend with in its development. (See the above article for some notable examples.)
We'll be watching and hoping for the best, of course. I just hope the reality that emerges matches up to the optimism of the press releases.
Again, and sincerely: Good luck to them.
Scrubbed for tonight. From NASA TV:
The launch attempt of NASA’s Boeing Starliner Crew Flight Test has been scrubbed as teams evaluate an oxygen relief valve on the Centaur Stage on the Atlas V. Our astronauts have exited Starliner and will return to crew quarters. More information will be forthcoming.
NASA TV Live - NASA
The launch attempt of NASA’s Boeing Starliner Crew Flight Test has been scrubbed as teams evaluate an oxygen relief valve on the Centaur Stage on the Atlas V. Our astronauts have exited Starliner and will return to crew quarters. More information will be forthcoming.
NASA TV Live - NASA
Launch was scrubbed for today. A valve in the Centaur 2nd stage was not performing correctly.
I'm not sure what's at the root of your skepticism, but this looks like a continuation and expansion of recent research into what black holes would actually look like. What happens to the light "seen" by the theoretical camera is just a matter of taking the math as far as it will go (the job of the Goddard "Discover" supercomputer mentioned toward the end of the video (additional info here).
The effects of the forces at work in & around supermassive black holes are far more powerful than most human experience allows us to instinctively comprehend, so it can look mind-bendingly weird, but the physics behind it are sound. In a very basic summary, the light that gets trapped by a black hole doesn't just go straight into it; The gravity of a black hole is so strong, some of the photons (light particles) get spun around the black hole several times, and compressed ever more tightly together, leading to a bright, built-up concentration of light that becomes part of the black hole's accretion disk. (More about gravitational lensing and accretion disks.) Someone (or a camera) falling into the black hole would be able to see these effects overhead, which is why it looks like space, and a bright line, loops around the camera's view several times; That's exactly what the photons are doing; getting "squeezed" together, and going around the black hole.
A lot of these developments got a nice boost a few years ago, when Christopher Nolan made the movie Insterstellar, and sought out physicists to consult with the goal of depicting a black hole more accurately than the "bathtub drain in space" so many people think of thanks to earlier TV & movies. (While dramatic, and easy for general audiences to relate to, that is very much not how black holes work.)
Once the Event Horizon Telescope array started getting data that allowed for accurate measurement and calculation, it turned out that Nolan, Thorne, & co. were actually proven right:
So for whatever it's worth, while you would definitely not want to try flying into a black hole in real life, I think we can safely take the NASA video as legitimate work, and an accurate visualization.
The effects of the forces at work in & around supermassive black holes are far more powerful than most human experience allows us to instinctively comprehend, so it can look mind-bendingly weird, but the physics behind it are sound. In a very basic summary, the light that gets trapped by a black hole doesn't just go straight into it; The gravity of a black hole is so strong, some of the photons (light particles) get spun around the black hole several times, and compressed ever more tightly together, leading to a bright, built-up concentration of light that becomes part of the black hole's accretion disk. (More about gravitational lensing and accretion disks.) Someone (or a camera) falling into the black hole would be able to see these effects overhead, which is why it looks like space, and a bright line, loops around the camera's view several times; That's exactly what the photons are doing; getting "squeezed" together, and going around the black hole.
A lot of these developments got a nice boost a few years ago, when Christopher Nolan made the movie Insterstellar, and sought out physicists to consult with the goal of depicting a black hole more accurately than the "bathtub drain in space" so many people think of thanks to earlier TV & movies. (While dramatic, and easy for general audiences to relate to, that is very much not how black holes work.)
Once the Event Horizon Telescope array started getting data that allowed for accurate measurement and calculation, it turned out that Nolan, Thorne, & co. were actually proven right:
So for whatever it's worth, while you would definitely not want to try flying into a black hole in real life, I think we can safely take the NASA video as legitimate work, and an accurate visualization.
Last edited:
Whoa, there, ol' hoss...
You're saying the "bathtub drain" theory, honed since I was a child, isn't correct?? Even though I've proven it many times by watching my plastic army men, after circling a few times, disappear into the inexorable pull of the vortex. And that vortex occurred every time directly over the bathtub drain!
My working theory, when black holes were more publicly known, was that anything entering the influence of the super-gravity well of a cosmic black hole will end up in home drain plumbing. My recurring proof was my parents showing me those same army men recovered by the plumber from our drain pipes. Parents didn't seem to understand these things and all I got was a butt chewing and references to bills.
Well, thanks for ruining my scientific future, Mr. Helper, with your well written write-up and NASA references. Back to my old theory work on lightbulbs being dark absorbers...
I think it's incredibly sad; those poor photons that managed to evade plunging into the black hole, only to be captured by that suicidal camera, and dragged into oblivion.
