The space thing-a-ma-jig is suppose to arrive tomorrow morning sometime and we should have some great photos soon to help resolve this mystery. Who knows, perhaps even a spectacular event of earth shaking proportions.

This is why science is so much fun and so delightful. New knowledge and information is always an advancement for the species.

It will even eventually get down to only 375 km from surface revealing everything.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawn_%28spacecraft%29

"Dawn '​s mission profile calls for it to enter polar orbit around Ceres at an initial altitude of 13,500 km for a first full characterization (RC3). One RC3 orbit will take 15 days, during which Dawn will alternate taking pictures and sensor measurements and then relaying the resulting data back to Earth.[104] Dawn will then spiral down to a survey orbit at an altitude of 4,430 km. This phase will last for 22 days, and is designed to obtain a global view of Ceres with Dawn '​s framing camera, and global maps with the visible and infrared mapping spectrometer (VIR). Dawn will then spiral down to an altitude of 1,480 km, where in August 2015 it will begin a two-month phase known as the high-altitude mapping orbit. During this phase, Dawn will continue to acquire near-global maps with the VIR and framing camera at higher resolution than in the survey phase. It will also image in stereo to resolve the surface in 3D. After spiralling down for another two months, Dawn will begin its closest orbit around Ceres in late November 2015, at a distance of about 375 km. This orbit is designed to acquire data for three months with Dawn's gamma-ray and neutron detector (GRaND) and gravity investigation."

I hope it is coke. The Mexican drug cartels will spend so much developing the tech to.get there, we will.habe transporters, shuttle.craft, and.warp.drive in 18 months

I'm checking out this at least twice daily now.

http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/...ce_gallery.asp

Over/under for white spots? Something else?

water ice?

Guess I'm among the believers in the white spots now...

Hydrogen costs approximately $10/kg, so the sun doesn't exist?!?

Unlike Hydrogen, cocaine is not a natural product independent of life (requires eg a plant) so the particular kind of humans suggested would have had to create it, extract it etc, representing a value larger than the war economy.

The main point of the joke post was to offer for the first time a suggestion about the true size of the spot and maybe some lower limit of its mass. The remaining sarcasm reflected criticism about what passes for publication these days thats all. Other than that V2 rockets couldnt even leave earth's gravity back then.

The obvious answer was there earlier itt.

Throw in God, and you have the explanation of anything!

God has more money than God. He can afford the market price on hydrogen.

Yes, that has to be true, because he is almighty. He's maybe playing golf, using the craters as holes? Snorting white spots in between? Hawing fun with the hydrogen, combining oxygen? As icing of the cake.

Driving a golf ball in space would be fun. **** trying to find a lost ball though.

BREAKING NEWS: the probe has picked up a transmission from Ceres!

The message was "would the owner of a blue shuttlecraft parked in the south crater please return to your ship, you have left the headlights on."

A human in the surface of Ceres that jumps at only say 2m/sec speed (when you jump for eg basketball its probably over 3m/sec at take off point from the ground) would be able to go up as high as 7m, the entire jump lasting over 2 min lol! Imagine running on Ceres (gravity is 3% of g). You can essentially travel "easily" across the planet by simply jumping in soft 0.3-0.5m/sec impact steps (what is it on earth when we are running, 1m/sec? Do we go up say 5 cm between steps?).

If you only had say a pace of 3 m/sec horizontal speed and 0.3m/sec upwards when leaving the ground (imagine a guy running basically) each step would last 2 seconds and take you ahead 6 meters with very little effort. I bet you can create some pretty high speeds if you did that and each time you added a bit more momentum while touching the ground briefly (ie friction in the step). Falling down would be rather easy to correct while on "flight" lol essentially postponing it by converting a bad/clumsy move to further "flying" until you regrouped while in flight to manage to touch better next time on the ground and regained better control of the motion. Try stopping now without turning upside down with the angular momentum thing lol.

Driving also with a rover would be very funny almost like flying in jumps.

You should calculate the velocity you'd have to hit a golf ball to have it hit you in the back of the head.

(also, don't explain yourself when you make a silly joke such as the one about cocaine - it is insulting)

Very good. I would have made it:

The message was "would the owner of a pink Cadillac parked in the south crater please return to your vehicle, you have left the headlights on."


But that's a minor quibble.

You cannot hit things in Ceres and take them into orbit. Moreover the small gravity, the escape velocity to get an idea of the order of magnitude, is still 500m/sec, so far from the ability to hit things like golf balls or tennis balls in some fast service etc (eg probably we can do only 50-100m/sec on such things) but maybe a bullet could do it. You would need to go up in some top to do it though and probably the lack of perfect spherical geometry would mess things up. It would take about 2-3 h to get back to you all the way around if you could clear the obstacles and aim like nobody humanly possible could lol.

Also if you do not want insulting explanations do not use insulting analogues that fail to produce sarcasm properly by using the wrong properties (like Hydrogen independent of life, Cocaine not).


PS: Zeno that would have had to be some 20 km type car!!!

Ps2: I cant believe they havent yet used some kind of CCD spectroscopic analysis to see what on earth it is they are looking at from its wavelength properties. You would imagine its rather doable. Probably not a priority in their perfectly designed choreographed mission.

I wonder how high a house cat could jump on Ceres.

You have the option of choosing an elliptical orbit.

I assume that, given your dislike of my silly disregard for the practicality of human physical strength in my suggestion of the initial velocity necessary to make a full revolution of the dwarf planet, that you have finally come to realize that you ought not be making silly long-winded treatises on how people and societies ought act?

Also, I wasn't insulted. "Insulting the intelligence of the reader" is an idiom that means, roughly "don't over-explain simple things." "Don't explain your jokes" is, I believe, common knowledge in every culture. Specifically here, do you really think that anyone took your cost analysis of cocaine to be even the slightest bit serious or even remotely related to reality?

That depends entirely on how high you place the houseplant that you'd like it to not knock over.

I wonder how much mental effort is put into making spacecraft look cool...

Pimp my intergalactic ride!

Try it! (plus in fact almost all "feel" orbits not "superfinetunely" designed are elliptic anyway). Going elliptic (necessary of course in a real properly designed trajectory for some project that is more serious) to avoid the obvious surface morphology and non sphericity issues will only require even more speed and further accuracy in other areas. Dont forget also to take into account the rotation of the planet and the lack of complete mapping of it yet (Coriolis etc). In any case imagine some 370+ m/s type thing when finally decided how from some computer/ephimeris program.

As for the rest of the post, i deleted how i wanted to respond to you out of respect for the forum and eventually you too. Just a warning though. If you do not change your permanently sarcastic insulting style towards me and others (plus i never called what you say elsewhere silly, even when i disagree with it, and i offer reasons then because i care for you) and convert all your criticism to well intentioned proper suggestions (that are encouraged from all real friends) with examples to support the arguments, i will quickly reach a point of not caring enough to respond to you ever again.

My interaction with you is not a facking game for me. I value your input and i never play games with you as if you are part of some social experiment i do for my own amusement. My fellow posters in SMP are not my toys...i respect and embrace their humanity moreover our differences and i do not see them as targets for fun and games. My presence here is not some audition for some Charles Dickens story 19th century orphanage teacher role or some Aristophanes' comedy to caricature philosophers/thinkers of his time. I choose my time here to be a pleasant experience. I leave it to you how pleasant it is to have to spend time to childish insults and games thrown at each other instead of actual exchange of information and ideas and occasional properly designed humor that is creative and is offered at the expense of nobody here.

You should take some anti-crankiness pills. You aren't my fault.

Have you made any important discoveries in physics based on your time screwing here? Half of an idea? A quarter of an idea? What benefit have you derived other than what you would obtain from taking a lunch break?

How about any new insights into experimentation and design? Anything that would not have occurred to you if it weren't for you screwing around here instead of doing something productive with your time? What benefit have you derived other than what you would obtain from taking a lunch break?

That sounds harsh, but I am very much for a wonderful life of achieving nothing, so it is the opposite of harsh. I think that you screwing around here is a fine and honorable use of your time (it is laudable to collect a paycheck while 'facking' around on the internet instead of doing anything productive!), for it amounts to nothing! You seem, at times, to want to aim for something higher than a forgotten life, so why are you here? What benefit do you derive from screwing around here instead of doing work?

(not counting your work in helping people with their intro to adding and subtracting work in this)

And to return to Ceres and a recently posted fun video about futuristic bubbleworlds (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_habitat#Bubbleworld) and how all this could relate to the throwing of balls to hit your back etc imagine this;

Say in the future some asteroid is decided to be converted to space habitat of amazing technology and quality of life in the final product that relates well to an artificial earth style ecosystem inside. Now the project can go about in many ways. For example electromagnetic guns can be installed in the surface to accelerate material extracted from the asteroid and properly processed to send it to orbit where it will be captured and assembled into Stanford Torus type colonies. The material building the outside colonies and even some sent to remote locations like Mars (ie water for rocket propulsion H2/O2 mix fuel and other needs) is extracted gradually from the interior of the asteroid. While it is accelerated and thrown out in orbit it essentially alters the angular momentum of the asteroid even a tiny bit with each electromagnetic ejection event (billions over the years from various locations of course will be needed and will make the difference). That way you over time can accelerate enough the asteroid through that process (faster rotation) to be able to have on the inside a feeling of near 1g gravity (provided the entire thing proves stable though for such fast rotation). So the process not only creates the outside colonies and opens the interior of the system to development but it gives it the proper angular momentum too. Not sure how realistic this proves in all possible problems and structural integrity it may face but it would be super cool to start with some potato rock of a few hundred or dozen km and end up with some amazing resources extraction site and high tech habitat that can help us expand to the inner solar system with its resources and low gravity that make it far more efficient than taking material from earth for such purpose (30 times larger gravity well and even far more than that in energy requirement).

For example all of human civilization on earth probably hasnt used more than say 10m of earth crust of material to build all we have out there. (please correct that or make it more accurate if you see something wrong or have some seen some reference anywhere before ).

If that was true then say it represents only 10^18-10^19 kgr of materials civilization infrastructure. By comparison Ceres is 10^21 kgr or over 100 times that (and my number of civilization mass is probably an overestimation too as it would force each human to own some 100000 tons of material which is probably ridiculous eg a typical home is probably <200 tons per person in infrastructure or so )!

So there, we can turn your fun comment of shooting yourself in the back, to a potential futuristic project if we approach our exchanges here with a little bit more care for the true purpose of SMP and a little less sarcasm.