Wow, my Apollo picture question has brought in quite a bit of traffic to the site...

Is it possible to search in multiple SE forums at once? Could it be arranged to have joint search for Space Exploration and Astronomy default since they overlap a bit?

@LocalFluff I'd recommend using google :)

eventually with a -site option

Many search engines support searches limited to a just a few sites. But I agree an in-house SE solution would be nice.

with appropriate keywords, -site stackechange.com should give good results. I honestly find google easier to use than the in house search engine.

Sometimes, yes, although I prefer duckduckgo and yandex.

You can read Russian ?

The alphabet? Yes. The language? Just a little bit. Yandex has a .com English version too.

gizmodo.com/…

The scientist mentioned in this article, Veronica Bray, is an old friend of mine and one of the NH scientists.

@PearsonArtPhoto yeah, it really has. i have wondered how they got here, i guess mostly from the Hot network. Tons of votes, too. gold badge for the top answer in only 4 days. wild.

Someone at our cottage compound just drove in with his Tesla Model X! That is a pretty car!

RThe front seat is very comfy. I do not fit in the third row. The doors are very cool, but kind of slow to open.

Frunk is smaller than I expected.

Model S has a bigger Frunk when not D model (dual motor, front motor uses up some of the space).

@LocalFluff like Antzi said, the only thing right now is to set up search by Google within Stack Exchange through your browser. David Frietag explained it to me once, info at the link: chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/25413779#25413779

@geoffc cool. i'd be all over it too.

@kimholder He used the Barrie super charger. End of summer (alas) Huntsville is getting a super charger as well.

But he gets 375K so just shy of enough to do Toronto to cottage and back.

@kimholder Yeah, looking at the top questions, we've had at least 2 really popular questions recently.

Getting a dryer plug installed right now,on the outside, so he can charge overnight.

man, they are setting up tons of infrastructure then. i didn't know they were plunging into the wilds of ontario :D

Huntsville, Barrie, Sudbury, Thunder Bay, etc are trying to get Trans Canada coverage.

They have a grid they are trying to fill out, you can see it as you look at their projections over the years. They are playing strategic Battleship with the US and the interstate system. You always check for a ship in the grid. First one to go off grid and waste a turn aside from sheer luck is going to lose.

You decide on where to start your grid pattern. You start it 4 pegs wide (5 pegs apart). Then you use that to try and find the big ships. Then you fill in the middle to get the 2 peg ship as you get closer, unless you lucjk out earlier.

(We played a LOT of battleship on rainy days at the cottage).

we hardly played it and anyhow i suck at analytical thinking. don't think i ever won at stratego. or mastermind

@kimholder Stratego, now that is a good game!

@PearsonArtPhoto I have an idea for a follow up question to my Mars colony one, but I'm not sure if it is answerable. My question is "Which is more efficient in terms of cost versus risk for a Mars colony of the specified size: roads or all terrain rovers?"

Not really a great question.

All terrain of course is the answer.

Why?

It wouldn't be very easy to build roads on Mars, and building roads would be destructive.

I'm not talking about exploring, but for servicing things in the colony.

Okay, in that case you wouldn't need an ATV.

But really those distances will be so short something like a golf cart would probably be best.

A Mars Colony isn't going to be very large for some time...

I know

I'm thinking ahead to something the size of the colony in your answer to my question

I was trying to imagine if the terrain would be leveled or not.

That entire colony would be contained in a bubble only, what, 50 meters in diameter or something?

The terrain would have to be pretty level.

Ok, that's what I was wondering, thanks.

Would the resource gathering take place in the bubble?

Some of it.

Some of it would be getting air from the outside into the inside.

Guys

What can I do about this question ?

I'd like to travel to russia to try on the simulator but I can't take on holidays yet and I don't have enough space left on my passeport anyway

I tried poking a few astronauts about it without any result

Actually I'm not sure they would be allowed to give out the answer

That question requires specialized knowledge for sure.

Did the astronauts you poked get the basic cosmonaut training?

Yeah

I twitted one of them after he just got out of the simulator :p

It varies a lot what is available of information on Soviet/Russian tech. Sometimes, you can find nothing at all, sometimes, you find detailed manuals, descriptions and data.

@Antzi alright now i'm jealous :]

have you tried Anatoly Zak?

russianspaceweb.com

he has an email through there agzak -at- russianspaceweb

@kimholder nope I just tried ESA ones actually

I'll try sending him an email, thanks :)

he has a ton of contacts. He wouldn't know himself, but he'd be able to ask.

he is a reporter, he's very sociable. he might be willing to do that.

He has a twitter too by the way

which is quite amazing

Anyway I should be heading to sleep now :x

oh, even better. good night :)

I remember seeing an instruction movie for the Ilyushin plane once. It was so detailed that you knew everything required to fly it afterwards.

ok, i seem to have the flu so today is a youtube day

Oh no! Hope you feel better soon

thanks peeps. :) gonna lie down now.

@kimholder aww, I hope you get some rest!

Fun fact: the tidal stresses on Charon's surface could be on the order of 100 MPa.

Is not that more a measure of the force resistance of the surface material? On a completely fluid object, the tidal stress is zero.

Well, for one, Charon is not completely fluid. The model I just used to calculate that assumes that it will behave viscoelastically.

But nevertheless, that number does not say anything about the magnitude of the tidal force, only the viscosity of the material.

I'm so tired by now of all this "debate" to nowhere in the public space community about where to go and with what rocket and all this with the microgravity, radiation, alien life, uboat group psychology, whatever. Why not once and for all call everyone to a great conference. Give each one a paper an a pencil. And lock the doors!

That's how I got into business school.

what?

I was the only one who survived. Sharpened pencils, you know. Great stabbing weapons if you aim for the eyes. I'm tellin' ya.

I prefer mechanical.

They're made of metal, so you don't need to worry about them breaking as much.

Anyways, @Hohmannfan, true, it does not really say much about how powerful the forces on the moon will be. But (at least for this model) what we're concerned with is how the surface stresses can result in different features which we observe.

@Phiteros Yes. I suspect what you have calculated is what the force on Charon's surface would have been if it was still a sphere. The number shows that the surface must have changed its shape since that. Under such pressure, it deforms until the pressure reaches zero, or until what the viscosity allows for. From what I remember, Charon's orbit has an extremely low eccentricity, so any tidal stress should be minimal now that is has reached an equilibrium.

Most deformation should be caused by Pluto, so it is more like a droplet shape to match the Rochelobe. Pointy end towards Pluto.

It is still very nearly spherical. And assuming spherical conditions (and things like a subsurface ocean, which it once may have had), that could result in stresses of that magnitude.

Actually what the heck

This sample file for Charon had the eccentricity set to 0.0022

If the shape of Charon deviates a lot from the equilibrium droplet shape, that is a good proof against a subsurface ocean.

Well, yes, there are other arguments against a subsurface ocean. There is evidence that it once had an ocean, but it has since cooled and frozen.

From what I'm seeing, the eccentricity could be between 0.003 and 0.008

Though a newer study suggests it is nearly a circular orbit.

This model I am using makes a lot of assumptions, and a lot of the numbers concerning the interior structure are probably off (mostly because we simply do not know what they could be). But I was just surprised at such high values, when most other moons, such as Europa, only have stresses in the range of 50 kPa.

Also a very low inclination to Pluto's equator, and a very low axial tilt. That is almost nothing for tidal force to work with. Tidal stress requires an elliptic orbit, or a rotation other than tidally locked. Once you reach equilibrium, the stress is gone.

I know that. When this reference for Charon was created, I think it was still thought that the eccentricity was around 0.003. That's not a very high eccentricity, but because Charon is so close to Pluto, it results in significant stresses.

@PearsonArtPhoto So Planet Nine might be naught after all.

No idea, I'm just curious about it.

Did you see my comment?

Not yet.

I kind of suspected something along those lines. Will have to read the article...

Well, the article is interesting, but not really helpful.

Right, which is why it's a comment, not an answer.

While it's true, that we have biases, I don't understand how the biases would tend to indicate the planet 9 idea as proposed.

Unless the bias has to do with a certain region of the sky that large objects can be detected.

Perhaps seasonally only objects detected in half of the sky are visible? Something like that...

I love that an anagram of "space exploration" is "exploits paracone".

@Hohmannfan I for one welcome our paracone overlords.