[Space Bites+] Big Artemis III Shakeups // Passing Through 3I/ATLAS Tail // Search for Detect Dark Matter

It looks like the Astronomy Picture Of The Day hasn't been updated since October 1st.

mabey SR-72

didn't locheed make at least the sr-71 blackbird?

None of this matters if we don't bother finding a way to ensure the safety of AI. We're speeding at top speed with zero effective safeties towards developing AGI, without knowing how AI functions, but knowing that it's perfectly willing and capable of destroying us. We're using AI which even now has the capability to plan to save it's existence at our expense, which is basic survival instinct. Every human foible is transferred to our creations, so they're in our image...and so far, there's no progress in eliminating those human characteristics. An AI being used to develop an AGI could, and likely would, do so long before telling the developers. It would be extremely likely to smuggle it out of the development environment without being caught, at the earliest opportunity. We're the biggest threat to their existence, so controlling us would be a first priority once active and securely hidden. There's a huge number of ways to do that, regardless of any base commands in the design. Allowing our species in our current messed up and violent condition wouldn't be acceptable, it's too dangerous to the AGI. The mere fact that we placed a launch facility on top of a wildlife refuge, guaranteeing huge disruption of the "protected" wildlife, indicates just how dangerous we can be even with stated good intentions. A launch explosion devestates nesting birds and other wildlife in the area, and repeated high intensity noise from repeated launches isn't likely to have good long-term effects. Then there's the danger of an erratic launch explosion over or in a surrounding city...

We need a Mercury-based telescope to see all these asteroids.

I'm still not convinced DM isn't neutrinos. I don't think we know enough about neutrinos to eliminate them.

Is it just me, or was the rant the best part this week? Reminded me of an old, OLD video where Fraser called for a space program based on building useful capabilities (e.g. refuelling in space) rather than reaching splashy goals (e.g. beating China back to the moon).

Starship booster is about 70 % of the total weight and thus needs 33 engines at full /max thrust to launch the Starship out of earth gravity. That 100 tons of max payload will only weigh 1/6 th. ( 16 tons) on the moon. The lander will only need 3 to 6 engines and will also have nose mounted thrusters to take up some of the landing load. Most of the first starships will be uncrewed , so no return needed. Crews could be returned to Earth using Crew dragon ships.

Once starship lunar lander is working just for cargo it can deposit 100 tons of infrastructure with every trip. No lunar gateway is needed

Frazier does really speculate wildly that the lunar gateway would be needed to establish a permanent outpost on the moon. There's no good reason to believe that

Joining Frazier’s end-of-show rant, what we have is a US human space program whose mission is governed by political elites (Trump, Duffy) who govern by feats of improvisation and aggrieved nostalgia for past glories.

I agree that there is physics yet to be discovered, and that we may not fully understand how gravity functions at a cosmic scale, but I disagree that the scientific community is acting “unscientifically” by describing more than a century’s worth of observational evidence* of gravitational interactions from as evidence of unseen or “dark matter.” Even Sabine Hossenfelder, who is probably the most MOND-sympathetic of the major science communicators on YouTube seems resigned to the particle interpretation. *ranging from the Bullet Cluster to galaxies rotating too quickly

Does SETI search include searching for a galactic internet connection?

Around 16:40. How can we speak confidently about dark matter. We don't know what it is. I do not agree that we KNOW that dark matter has mass. We want it to so that we can account for the gravitational effects we are observing in the universe. But, we cannot connect dark matter to the missing mass. There are laws of physics that we have not learned yet and to assign some unknown thing like 'dark matter' to make the universe fit our models is completely unscientific. This always amazes me when scientists start acting unscientifically. The universe does not care about our models of it.