Spaced; the final front ear

[tomparryharry]

Very pleased to learn that Wales is about to launch its first-ever space satellite. Well done I say!

 

I wonder what it'll be called? Owain Glyndwr? Or, Splott-1 ?

 

Meanwhile, over at the John Toshack Space Centre (Ferndale).....

 

"Aw-right, butt, we have a launch situation"

 

" A lunch situation? What's the payload?

 

"A Clarks pie, and a kebab from Caroline Street "

 

"Prepare for an early abort...." 

Edited July 13, 2022 by tomparryharry

[Hroth]

38 minutes ago, tomparryharry said:

Very pleased to learn that Wales is about to launch its first-ever space satellite. Well done I say!

 

I wonder what it'll be called? Owain Glyndwr? Or, Splott-1 ?

 

Meanwhile, over the John Toshack Space Centre (Ferndale).....

 

"Aw-right, butt, we have a launch situation"

 

" A lunch situation? What's the payload?

 

"A Clarks pie, and a kebab from Caroline Street "

 

"Prepare for an early abort...." 

 

Will it achieve orbit if it flies over a 20MPH zone?

 

I do like the idea that the satellite is being constructed in a facility that once made burger vans.  Its a pity that there isnt a Welsh launch site too, but Cornwall seems appropriate.

There's no info about any payload, they could at least launch some small Raspberry Pis with Picams and broadcast its orbital peregrinations, whilst it stays in orbit.

 

Good luck to them!

 

Edited July 13, 2022 by Hroth
Spelin and caps...

[Reorte]

5 minutes ago, Hroth said:

I do like the idea that the satellite is being constructed in a facility that once made burger vans.  Its a pity that there isnt a Welsh launch site too, but Cornwall seems appropriate.

The bit that I find interesting there is that there's going to be a launch to orbit from UK soil, that's a first.

Edited July 13, 2022 by Reorte

[The Johnster]

Not the first; Boston Lodge sent a rocket up in the 60s and nothing’s been heard of it since so it must still be going, probably out beyond the Oort belt by now.  You can see it emerging from behind the hill at Portmeirion in a ‘Prisoner’ episode.  And don’t forget that the Millenium Falcon, the ship that made the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs, was built in an old shed in Pembroke Dock, though admittedly not launched from there. 

[Hroth]

28 minutes ago, The Johnster said:

 And don’t forget that the Millenium Falcon, the ship that made the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs, was built in an old shed in Pembroke Doc

 

12 parsecs ?

 

You mean, that like the GWR, it went the long way round?   :-)

 

[The Johnster]

The GW did not go the long way round, it went the best way round...

 

Parsec are units of distance, like light years, and not time.  The precise definition as given in Wikipedia is far too complex for my understanding.  But it suggests that the Millenium Falcon's achievement is not related to actual speed, but time.  It made the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs, the subtext being that it did it in 'only' 12 parsecs and that this is an acheivement.  The ability to travel great distances by 'jumping' through hyperspace, which the MF could do, is risky because you cannot precisely predict where you are going to emerge from hyperspace and have to be able to perform complex manoervring at high sub-light speeds as you are slowing down, to avoid hitting nearby stars or other lumpy bits of gravity, as you prepare for the next jump.  In the film. they emerge from hyperspace into a debris field, the remains of the destroyed planet they were trying to get to that Vader had just used the Death Star on.  Hyperspace jumping is not so much about actual speed, since while you are in hyperspace different laws of physics apply (though as Scottie said, ye still canna change the lawza fezziks lawsa fezziks lawsa fezziks, canna changed the lawsa fezziks lawsa fezziks, Jim), as it is about shortening the distance you have to travel, in this case to only 12 parsecs.  It's a bit meaninless unless you are aware of the starting point of the Kessel Run, and of the location of Kessel for that matter, but it is apparently, from the context, an impressive feat, only possible because of the combination of the ship's manoevrability and Han and Chewie's ship handling skills.

[Reorte]

3 minutes ago, The Johnster said:

The GW did not go the long way round, it went the best way round...

 

Parsec are units of distance, like light years, and not time.  The precise definition as given in Wikipedia is far too complex for my understanding.

Well, that's asking for it! Sorry!

 

A parsec isn't actually all that complicated. If you move your head from side to side a bit you see close by things moving more than distant things. That's parallax. You can measure the angle by which things appear to move (i.e. it would be 180 degrees if it moved all the way from one side of your head to the other). How big that angle is depends upon how close the thing is to you (the further away the smaller the angle).

 

When looking at distant stars moving your head isn't enough movement to produce a measurable apparent change in position, but the entire Earth's orbit is. A parsec is the distance at which that angle (the parallax) would be 1 second of arc (i.e. 1/3600 of a degree). So it's still a very small angle, but one that it's possible to measure with sensitive instruments. Every star outside the solar system is further away than 1 parsec.

 

A good example of stellar parallax can be seen in some pictures New Horizons (the mission that did the Pluto flypast) has taken of some nearby stars. It's moved so far the difference in the apparent positions of those nearby stars has visibly changed against the background of more distant ones.

[The Johnster]

As explanations of complex things for laymen go, that's a good bit easier to understand than the formulae in Wikipedia, Reorte.  Friend of mine went to Cambridge and got himself a doctorate in astrophysics, which they don't give away in cornflake packets so he's a good bit brighter than me, and I once asked him to explain to me what astrophysics was in terms that I could handle.  He told me 'well. you know the earth goes round it's axis, and the moon goes round the earth, and the pair of them along with the rest of the solar system goes around the sun, which goes around the centre of the galaxy, which is moving away from the site of the original big bang 14 and a half billion years ago'?  'Yes, it's mass, momentum, and gravity'.  'Yeah, that's how, but I know why'!!! 

 

Good answer, Jiff...

[Hroth]

1 hour ago, The Johnster said:

Parsec are units of distance, like light years, and not time.  The precise definition as given in Wikipedia is far too complex for my understanding.  But it suggests that the Millenium Falcon's achievement is not related to actual speed, but time.

 

The thing is that we are supposed to understand it as an achievement  in speed over distance, as if the MF can do 12 parsecs per hour (P/H) (if you get my drift) rather than an ordinary super-luminal craft that can only achieve 8 P/H.

 

Given the degree to which Han Solo was addicted to bragging about his and his ships abilities, I think it would be more correct to say that the Falcon could get from say London to Exeter via the cut offs, rather than going the long way round via Swindon and Bath, etc so it would be doing the normal achievable speed over a shorter distance.  However, the way its put in the film, it sounds like a boast about absolute speed.  In other words, the script writers got hold of a concept and misunderstood, or misused it. As usual!

 

At least we'll be able to quantify the escape velocity of WelshSat-1 (ok, ForgeStar-0) in the normal way!

 

[tomparryharry]

6 hours ago, Hroth said:

 

Will it achieve orbit if it flies over a 20MPH zone?

 

I do like the idea that the satellite is being constructed in a facility that once made burger vans.  Its a pity that there isnt a Welsh launch site too, but Cornwall seems appropriate.

There's no info about any payload, they could at least launch some small Raspberry Pis with Picams and broadcast its orbital peregrinations, whilst it stays in orbit.

 

Good luck to them!

 

20MPH? Well, as long as it goes straight up....

[The Johnster]

1 hour ago, Hroth said:

 

The thing is that we are supposed to understand it as an achievement  in speed over distance, as if the MF can do 12 parsecs per hour (P/H) (if you get my drift) rather than an ordinary super-luminal craft that can only achieve 8 P/H.

 

Given the degree to which Han Solo was addicted to bragging about his and his ships abilities, I think it would be more correct to say that the Falcon could get from say London to Exeter via the cut offs, rather than going the long way round via Swindon and Bath, etc so it would be doing the normal achievable speed over a shorter distance.  However, the way its put in the film, it sounds like a boast about absolute speed.  In other words, the script writers got hold of a concept and misunderstood, or misused it. As usual!

 

At least we'll be able to quantify the escape velocity of WelshSat-1 (ok, ForgeStar-0) in the normal way!

 

 

I prefer to visualise it as effectively shortening the distance over a given route between points, so a train/ship and crew that could handle the manoevering needed could reduce the distance between Paddington and Exeter via the Berks & Hants and the cutoffs compared to a less agile ship with a less skilled crew that would only be able to travel over the same route with a longer distance to run, thus taking longer even if their top speed is higher.  This is starting to resemble some of my late night beer-fuelled 6th form debates about 'if you could get a train to run from Cardiff General to Paddington faster than the speed of light enough, could you ring yourself up at Cardiff General from the lawn at Paddington (we didn't have mobiles in those days, and the phone call can only manage light speed) to tell yourself you'd arrived safely (no, because the rates of accelleration and decelleration involved would have killed you before you'd cleared platform 2 at Cardiff). 

 

Parsecs per hour are irrelevant because the space/time continuum is not in the same position at Kessel that it is at your departure point (Tatooine?).  If you are moving away from the universal central point, ground zero big bang, you are moving with time, but if you are moving towards GZBB you are moving against time, so can more easily move backwards in time as you can add the speed of light to your actual velocity.  This is why one can record very early events in the universe from earth, 14.5byn away, but cannot easily observe ancient or less ancient events beyond GZBB or further away than us from it. 

 

It's the similar problem to the one that early railways encountered when they instituted east-west routes that resulted in the use of 'railway time', GMT, as opposed to local Solar time which would have messed up the timetables*.  If you work on the hypothesis that 1 parsec is the distance covered by a hyperspace jump, then you can propose that 12 jumps is the least that anyone's ever done it in, and that this is an abnormally low number, but the actual distance is what varies, not the speed.  Kessel is closer for the MF than it is for lesser ships and crews.  You don't get there quicker, you get there having covered less ground.  My brain is starting to hurt now...

 

This is why I'm content to know how it all works, and for Jiff to know why...

 

 

*Don't get me wrong, timetabling is pretty messed up anyway, carried out by gaunt and grim men, some of whom may or may not be counted among the living, at least in the usual sense, whatever that is, and sleep in coffins with a pot of their native earth, wearing dark cloaks in gothic crypts to the accompaniment of eldritch (that's a game in Harry Potter, isn't it?) chanting and the screams of the sacrificial victims drowning out the gurgle of fresh blood in the gutters, in pentagrams lit by black candles and with obisidian blades doing the messy stuff.  The original WTTs had to be chained down in case they escaped and needed to be fed; entire trains dissappeared into different dimensions never to be hear of again.  Even in relatively recent times it accounts for the mysterious dissappearance of the Strategic Reserve and the Mattingley Pacific.  This was called 'time interval' working and is very, very, scary.  Nobody can hear you scream in Box Tunnel!  Be afraid, be a very fraid...

 

Mwa ha ha ha ha!

Edited July 13, 2022 by The Johnster

[Reorte]

2 minutes ago, The Johnster said:

 

I prefer to visualise it as effectively shortening the distance over a given route between points, so a train/ship and crew that could handle the manoevering needed could reduce the distance between Paddington and Exeter via the Berks & Hants and the cutoffs compared to a less agile ship with a less skilled crew that would only be able to travel over the same route with a longer distance to run, thus taking longer even if their top speed is higher.  This is starting to resemble some of my late night beer-fuelled 6th form debates about 'if you could get a train to run from Cardiff General to Paddington faster than the speed of light enough, could you ring yourself up at Cardiff General from the lawn at Paddington (we didn't have mobiles in those days, and the phone call can only manage light speed) to tell yourself you'd arrived safely (no, because the rates of accelleration and decelleration involved would have killed you before you'd cleared platform 2 at Cardiff). 

 

This is why I'm content to know how it all works, and for Jiff to know why...

 

"How" is for the physicists and "why" for the philosophers.

[Hroth]

1 hour ago, The Johnster said:

 

I prefer to visualise it as effectively shortening the distance over a given route between points, so a train/ship and crew that could handle the manoevering needed could reduce the distance between Paddington and Exeter via the Berks & Hants and the cutoffs compared to a less agile ship with a less skilled crew that would only be able to travel over the same route with a longer distance to run, thus taking longer even if their top speed is higher.  This is starting to resemble some of my late night beer-fuelled 6th form debates about 'if you could get a train to run from Cardiff General to Paddington faster than the speed of light enough, could you ring yourself up at Cardiff General from the lawn at Paddington (we didn't have mobiles in those days, and the phone call can only manage light speed) to tell yourself you'd arrived safely (no, because the rates of accelleration and decelleration involved would have killed you before you'd cleared platform 2 at Cardiff). 

 

Parsecs per hour are irrelevant because the space/time continuum is not in the same position at Kessel that it is at your departure point (Tatooine?).  If you are moving away from the universal central point, ground zero big bang, you are moving with time, but if you are moving towards GZBB you are moving against time, so can more easily move backwards in time as you can add the speed of light to your actual velocity.  This is why one can record very early events in the universe from earth, 14.5byn away, but cannot easily observe ancient or less ancient events beyond GZBB or further away than us from it. 

 

It's the similar problem to the one that early railways encountered when they instituted east-west routes that resulted in the use of 'railway time', GMT, as opposed to local Solar time which would have messed up the timetables*.  If you work on the hypothesis that 1 parsec is the distance covered by a hyperspace jump, then you can propose that 12 jumps is the least that anyone's ever done it in, and that this is an abnormally low number, but the actual distance is what varies, not the speed.  Kessel is closer for the MF than it is for lesser ships and crews.  You don't get there quicker, you get there having covered less ground.  My brain is starting to hurt now...

 

This is why I'm content to know how it all works, and for Jiff to know why...

 

 

*Don't get me wrong, timetabling is pretty messed up anyway, carried out by gaunt and grim men, some of whom may or may not be counted among the living, at least in the usual sense, whatever that is, and sleep in coffins with a pot of their native earth, wearing dark cloaks in gothic crypts to the accompaniment of eldritch (that's a game in Harry Potter, isn't it?) chanting and the screams of the sacrificial victims drowning out the gurgle of fresh blood in the gutters, in pentagrams lit by black candles and with obisidian blades doing the messy stuff.  The original WTTs had to be chained down in case they escaped and needed to be fed; entire trains dissappeared into different dimensions never to be hear of again.  Even in relatively recent times it accounts for the mysterious dissappearance of the Strategic Reserve and the Mattingley Pacific.  This was called 'time interval' working and is very, very, scary.  Nobody can hear you scream in Box Tunnel!  Be afraid, be a very fraid...

 

Mwa ha ha ha ha!

 

Doesn't eldritch mean oblong?

 

They might not hear you scream in Box, but the front wheels can come off anyway!

 

As for parsecs, perhaps we ought leave the meaning to scriptwriters and concentrate on occupancy graphs, which are more than enough to have your brains dribbling from your ears....

 

Muahahaha indeed!

 

 

 

[Michael Hodgson]

Is this what this thread is all about?

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMlfT5mw3GA

 

 

 

[peach james]

I thought the first Welsh rocket was made from an old winding engine found in the Rhondda and powered with coal?
 

 

 

[The Johnster]

Ah, yes, I’d forgotten about Bethania and the moon rock lettered throughout ‘Porthcawl’.  But that was in the 70s, postdating the Boston Lodge deep space probe…

[Classsix T]

It might have saved Johnster a lot of typing if he'd been aware the time/distance discrepancy in Star Wars lore was cleared up in the prequel movie Solo, Basically Han found a shorter route! (Which itself is handwaving away the original error as who needs a fast ship to travel less distance...but hey, Star Wars.)

 

C6T.

[Reorte]

55 minutes ago, Classsix T said:

It might have saved Johnster a lot of typing if he'd been aware the time/distance discrepancy in Star Wars lore was cleared up in the prequel movie Solo, Basically Han found a shorter route! (Which itself is handwaving away the original error as who needs a fast ship to travel less distance...but hey, Star Wars.)

 

Problem with Solo though doing that is that that entire sequence and the way it was portrayed might've known the difference between time and distance but looked like it didn't have a clue what sort of distances are involved in things like planets - it was harder to suspend disbelief for that than it was with the original line, even by Star Wars standards.

Edited August 1, 2022 by Reorte

[Classsix T]

20 minutes ago, Reorte said:

 

Problem with Solo though doing that is that that entire sequence and the way it was portrayed might've known the difference between time and distance but looked like it didn't have a clue what sort of distances are involved in things like planets - it was harder to suspend disbelief for that than it was with the original line, even by Star Wars standards.

Three words...giant, space-octopuss.

 

I loved it!

 

C6T.

[Reorte]

1 hour ago, Classsix T said:

Three words...giant, space-octopuss.

 

I loved it!

I'm a bit too much of a curmudgeon who's also interested in space for that - obviously Star Wars requires a good chunk of suspension of disbelief, but it very much crossed my boundaries. Altogether I agree with the view I've heard often enough, that overall Solo was an OK film that didn't really need to be made; the highlight of it was very definitely Donald Glover's Lando, he nailed that role.

[The Johnster]

You’d have to admit, though, that Millenium Falcon, the ship that made the Kessel run in 12 parsecs, was pretty good for something built in a shed in Pembroke Dock…

[Ramblin Rich]

32 minutes ago, The Johnster said:

You’d have to admit, though, that Millenium Falcon, the ship that made the Kessel run in 12 parsecs, was pretty good for something built in a shed in Pembroke Dock…

"You came in that? You're braver than I thought..."

[The Johnster]

HMS Warrior was also built at Pembroke Dock (a good number of Victorian and Edwardian era warships were, into the Dreadnought era), but never made the Kessel run in 12 parsecs TTBOMK...

 

It was all Nelson's idea; he came down with Lady H and stayed in the Lord Nelson Hotel in Milford Haven across the way, and was much impressed with the strategic value of this deep water harbour.  I've seen the bed they slept in, an impressive 4-poster, solidly built as it would need to be for any serious frolicing with Lady H; he may have been small and wiry, but she was a big 'un, what you'd call buxom, and very enthusiastic or so one is led to believe.  The harbour is well suited to suppressing Irish rebellions, and, as it turned out, protecting the Western Approaches after Irish independence denied the use of Cobh (called Queenstown by the British) to the RN. 

 

 

[Classsix T]

1 hour ago, Reorte said:

I'm a bit too much of a curmudgeon who's also interested in space for that - obviously Star Wars requires a good chunk of suspension of disbelief, but it very much crossed my boundaries. Altogether I agree with the view I've heard often enough, that overall Solo was an OK film that didn't really need to be made; the highlight of it was very definitely Donald Glover's Lando, he nailed that role.

I'll watch Star Wars...but Fox News can eff right off.

 

C6T.

[Reorte]

12 minutes ago, Classsix T said:

I'll watch Star Wars...but Fox News can eff right off.

I.e. that's where your suspension of disbelief gets broken? 😄

Edited August 1, 2022 by Reorte