Eyes Turned Skywards

[nixonshead]

I thought so too - but Nixon is clearly including both active and retired rockets for comparison anyway (cf. the Saturn V).

Exactly. Saturn 1C is also retired, as are the earlier Europas, but I included them for completeness - and because I have the models anyway

IIRC, Proton launched TKS ITTL before the debut of Vulkan. Which is handy, because it looks a lot like the Proton-with-Safir from the model I did for Kolyma's Shadow

 

[Athelstane]

For whoever has been keeping the Wiki page updated - I believe I've caught at least three of Nixon's media pieces that somehow got overlooked. I'm having difficulty adding them myself, so...I'll just mention it here and leave it to the Powers That Be.

 

[Kirk Kerman]

IIRC, Proton launched TKS ITTL before the debut of Vulkan. Which is handy, because it looks a lot like the Proton-with-Safir from the model I did for Kolyma's Shadow

Does this say anything about the design of Safir?

 

[nixonshead]

Does this say anything about the design of Safir?

It uses a conical re-entry capsule and is coloured green. That's all I'm saying for now

 

[nixonshead]

For whoever has been keeping the Wiki page updated - I believe I've caught at least three of Nixon's media pieces that somehow got overlooked. I'm having difficulty adding them myself, so...I'll just mention it here and leave it to the Powers That Be.

Thanks for the catch. I've been updating the Wiki as I post the images, but I was away for a couple of weeks in March and must have missed these. I'll add them tomorrow, assuming no-one beats me to it

 

[Dathi THorfinnsson]

When people talk about using the Lunar Farside for Radio Astronomy, they talk about the hundreds or thousands of km of rock between the observatory and Earth.

Any near-farside site (reachable from the pole, for instance), would have very little rock between it and Earth. Little enough that you could build the equivalent in Earth orbit using a metal shield (far thinner, but conductive, and so far more effective.)

I can't find any discussion of how much rock would be necessary/desired to make farside astronomy worthwhile. But I remain to be convinced that a polar base will do it.

 

[Workable Goblin]

Any near-farside site (reachable from the pole, for instance), would have very little rock between it and Earth. Little enough that you could build the equivalent in Earth orbit using a metal shield (far thinner, but conductive, and so far more effective.)

Not reasonably, given launch costs and launch geometry limits. It would take many launches to duplicate what the Moon provides for free. Sure, launching stuff to the Moon is more expensive than to LEO, but not that much more expensive. No one does that on Earth, either, even though it would be even cheaper; they just find isolated areas and make them radio-quiet zones.

I can't find any discussion of how much rock would be necessary/desired to make farside astronomy worthwhile. But I remain to be convinced that a polar base will do it.

Very little, actually, though you might expect this given the existence of on-Earth radio-quiet zones (they just aren't quite as good as what you can get on the Moon). The main limits are set by lunar libration, which will periodically bring sites too close to the limb into line-of-sight with Earth, not the diffraction of radio waves around the Moon (less than 100 kilometers even for 300 m wavelength waves). A polar base site, with advantageous topography, will be more than capable of providing radio-quiet zones, at least radio-quiet enough zones.

 

[Shevek23]

I still don't see how any trace of Earth-source emissions, or even say from Molniya or Sierra orbits that go to high latitudes at geosynch or higher-apogee orbits are going to be detectable once their sources are below the horizon by even just say one degree. I know the Moon does not present exactly the same face to Earth all the time, but libration seems to be mainly east-west; the north-south variation is smaller and I'd think say 200 km from the pole away from Earth (about where the map we were shown cuts off) would be plenty to guarantee silence from all Earth-centered sources.

Already that site, and the ideal site down on the equator at nadir to Earth, would be contaminated with the various L-2 orbiting components of Artemis/Orion themselves. Still, the near-polar site "today" in the timeline would be superior (for southern sky observations) to the ideal site some decades hence when there will be a relative Bedlam of noise from L-2 operations and Farside communications. Even the residual black body emissions of shut-down spacecraft in that hemisphere of sky will be objectionable to the astronomers, but that will just be tough; I imagine that everyone will be willing to abide by rules to minimize the noise but the irreducible minimum will be painful to any astronomer contemplating the lost astronomical Paradise that exists--as long as human beings are not up to the challenge of reaching and operating at Farside.

Once we can build it, we spoil it. Them's the breaks.

 

[Michel Van]

on 14 July 2015 the probe New Horizon fly by Pluto

in EtS its Voyager 2 who fly by in June 1988

and here newest Picture of Pluto by New Horizon

and Black and white picture

Seems that Pluto got hell of a scar on South pole,

i have the Theory that Charon is not a Moon of Pluto but a big asteroid that hit Pluto
it smash parts out the planet, who became the other Moon, while Charon goes into orbit around Pluto.

 

[TaintedLion]

So are we getting any more parts?

 

[e of pi]

So are we getting any more parts?

Yep! As a matter of fact, the only undrafted post remaining is the finale, then there's some unifying edits and cleanup on the remaining posts to do. I think we'll be posting before the end of this month, but we'll see when it's ready. Could be later, might even be earlier.

 

[Shevek23]

When I was perhaps 3 1/2 years old (and Apollo moonlandings were still in the future, though very very near--after the Christmas message of Apollo 8 perhaps) me and my little little sister visited the home of one of my mother's aunts, a lady who would send me books to read, and pass on a few years later. My baby sister and I ventured into Aunt Mae's bedroom, where she had some peacock feathers. In later years my sister would prove fearless and strong in the Peppermint Patty mode, whereas I have always been a nervous wimp...but she was very little and just learning to talk; I was relatively far older than her then than I ever have been since (of course, just basic math with a half-handful of dozen months between us). So she was still a bit timid, and feared the peacock feathers. "Eyes! Eyes!" she said!

So I react to every hint of this TL going forward. With awe and wonder. And now fear of the finale. But it has inspired so much.

I fear to start the final round, but I still look forward greedily, as a child of one year and few more months might gaze on a peacock feather.

 

[22iron thunder]

I just love this TL.
But i was wondering. In Eyes, is Pluto still considered a planet or was demoted to Dwarf planet like OTL?

 

[e of pi]

I just love this TL.
But i was wondering. In Eyes, is Pluto still considered a planet or was demoted to Dwarf planet like OTL?

Given the increasing discoveries of objects in the same size category in the Kuiper Belt and beyond, as well as the long-known existence of Ceres, it seems likely that at least some revision of the planet rules is likely. Workable Goblin has a shpiel on the topic he might drop by and share again, and I'll leave the question of the results of IAu deliberations ITTL to him. I have to say that to me, including Pluto and Ceres in with Earth and Venus and then those in turn with Jupiter and Saturn but not with Luna or the Galilean moons of Jupiter seems like bad categorization--the "planets" are so diverse that some kind of classification within it seems valuable, while there's much more geological similarity between our understandings of the dwarf planets and some moons.

 

[Workable Goblin]

I just love this TL.
But i was wondering. In Eyes, is Pluto still considered a planet or was demoted to Dwarf planet like OTL?

That's a good question, actually. On the one hand, the "demotion" was a long time coming--whether you agree or not (and I don't, entirely, but that's besides the point), Pluto is clearly in a different class of planets than the inner planets--smaller and therefore less unique, distinct composition, and so on and so forth, so there was definitely a strong case that it ought to be recognized as something distinct. On the other, in reality there wasn't that much of a Pluto community or even a Kuiper belt community to defend it, just the public; here, of course, there is such a community, people who have been studying the place for a good twenty years, who got their Ph.D.s looking at Voyager data. A small one, to be sure, but it exists, and will probably try to prevent Pluto from being "demoted," so any such demotion will probably be delayed relative to OTL.

Here's how I see it: In OTL, the reclassification was in 2006, shortly after the discovery of Eris, as that body was believed to be larger than Pluto. There's no particular reason to suspect Eris won't be discovered ITTL, nor that its size won't initially be overestimated. That will certainly spur talk of a reclassification, as will the probable detection of other large KBOs and outer-system objects like Eris, Makemake, or Haumea. However, as I said there will be something of a Pluto community here, which will probably push back against reclassification, and therefore delay it by dividing the astronomical community more evenly between "big tent" people like OTL's Alan Stern, and "small tent" people like OTL's Neil deGrasse Tyson (as an aside, we considered making him an astronaut on one of the early Artemis missions, but the timing just didn't work out). If there has been a reclassification, then it would probably have been quite recent and still be rather controversial (think 2006-2007 rather than now).

 

[Athelstane]

Given the increasing discoveries of objects in the same size category in the Kuiper Belt and beyond, as well as the long-known existence of Ceres, it seems likely that at least some revision of the planet rules is likely. Workable Goblin has a shpiel on the topic he might drop by and share again, and I'll leave the question of the results of IAu deliberations ITTL to him. I have to say that to me, including Pluto and Ceres in with Earth and Venus and then those in turn with Jupiter and Saturn but not with Luna or the Galilean moons of Jupiter seems like bad categorization--the "planets" are so diverse that some kind of classification within it seems valuable, while there's much more geological similarity between our understandings of the dwarf planets and some moons.

It's clear that planetologists don't like the IAU rule. In your timeline, it will depend on whether they get more say in the rule than they did in ours, once the discovery of KB objects begins in earnest in the early 00's.

And many of them will say that moons are planets, too - at least the ones that have achieved hydrostatic equilibrium (the Moon, Charon, the Galilean moons, Titan, etc.). Heck, Triton was initially not a moon, only later captured by Neptune. So suddenly it ceases being a planet?

The better way to go is to say that all of these objects are planets, and then to offer subcategories. Rocky Planets. Gas Giant Planets. Kuiper Belt Planets. And yes, planets acting as satellite planets. Something like that. We have subcategories for stars, after all.

As a side note, there's been some interesting discussion in recent weeks about Charon's classification, now that we confirm that the barycenter of the Pluto-Charon system lies outside Pluto. In this sense, Charon is not actually orbiting another planet, and it may be better to describe it as a binary dwarf planet system, with Charon classified as a dwarf planet, too. But I don't expect the IAU to address that any time soon.

Looking forward to the resumption of ETS updates.

 

[wietze]

talking about Pluto, the most recent New Horizons photo:

 

[B787_300]

Because I personally do not really like viewing and reading the main posts on the forum I decided to combine all the main posts into a more easily readable format. The result is linked below and is my first attempt at making a book like presentation of large text documents.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/c4agenier605y3j/Eyes Turned Skyward.pdf?dl=0

I kept the images that were embedded in the main storyline posts and plan on going back through and adding applicable Artwork to the individual post soon. Also I do plan on adding Part IV and some of the information on the Wiki as appendices, it will take more time as i am a college student (go AE) heading into my senior year and taking the GRE in a week. I just wanted to be able to get comments on what I have written so far.


Things planned
* Appendices
* Acknowledgements (If e of pi / workable goblin want it)
* Glossary
* More Pics in doc


Please feel free to comment

 

[Workable Goblin]

e of pi and I have agreed that our remaining buffer is sufficiently full, so we are going to resume posting starting this Friday, July 24th, and continuing every Friday after that. Since I am a feckless graduate student and e of pi is a Hardworking American(c), I will be taking posting duties for this last part (except possibly for one Friday in August when I will be out of town and may not be able to post myself).

 

[Brainbin]

e of pi and I have agreed that our remaining buffer is sufficiently full, so we are going to resume posting starting this Friday, July 24th, and continuing every Friday after that. Since I am a feckless graduate student and e of pi is a Hardworking American(c), I will be taking posting duties for this last part (except possibly for one Friday in August when I will be out of town and may not be able to post myself).

Glad to see the timeline making a triumphant return! And especially glad to see you finally taking the helm when it comes to posting, Workable Goblinn! A shame about having your run possibly be interrupted by pre-planned excursions, and definitely interrupted by your most frequent guest writer making one last pop culture post!