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1500 questions
43
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2 answers
Legality of asteroid mining
Exploiting the moon's resources is covered by "The Moon Treaty". Is there something similar or in the works for regulating mining asteroids and other non-lunar bodies?
System Down
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Who installed the camera on the Moon to film the "First step"?
On Wikipedia page on Moon landing, Neil Armstrong is shown stepping down on the surface of the Moon using the spaceship's ladder:
Still frame from a video transmission, taken moments before Neil Armstrong became the first human to step onto…
Val
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43
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Why can't Falcon 9 fairings touch the water?
SpaceX is spending considerable effort to catch Falcon 9 fairings into a giant net on a ship. I am aware that salt water ruins almost everything in the long run, but the fairings are a composite material and seem to be painted. There are carbon…
filo
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Is a SpaceX launch completely automated?
Once the engines are ignited and liftoff occurs, are any operators/controllers on the ground making any manual changes to the flight? Or are they simply monitoring the entire event until the boosters return to earth?
v15
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8 answers
Why is the first launch of Falcon Heavy sending a car instead of something useful?
The first launch of the new Falcon Heavy will be sending up a Tesla Roadster owned by Elon Musk as its payload instead of something more useful.
Why spend all that money and effort sending up a car? Why not send up a new segment to the space station…
Cactus Kas
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2 answers
Would we be able to detect an extraterrestrial "Voyager" if it came near us?
Attached to the Voyager probes are the golden records, which are essentially messages-in-a-bottle sent out into the vast sea of interstellar space, containing, of course, the "message of humanity". Although the primary purposes of these records may…
Arturo don Juan
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How did NASA choose who descended in the LEM during the Apollo missions?
Referring to the Apollo missions,
As many know, during Apollo 11, Michael Collins didn't descend with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin towards the moon. I can only begin to imagine the sadness of not being able to walk on the majestic satellite. I…
faroukcharkas
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What's the baseball bat for? (seen in CRS-8 berthing NASA TV broadcast)
Watching the CRS-8 Berthing live broadcast on NASA TV I noticed a baseball bat resting on top of a console in the front left part of the room, so I took some screenshots.
Looking closer, it seems to be about a meter or two away from a large,…
uhoh
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Can fish really live in microgravity without water?
Yes, you read that title correctly. I saw the claim in "Colonies in Space", hosted on the NSS site.
In a weightless space farm, it may be possible to raise fish without water. On Earth, when a fish is taken from water, gravity makes its gills…
AlanSE
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What made NASA shut down the Shuttle program?
Recently NASA shut down its Space Shuttle program. Between the first launch on April 12, 1981, and the final landing on July 21, 2011, NASA's space shuttle fleet --Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour -- flew 135 missions, helped…
Hash
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Why are the GPS constellation satellites in such a high orbit?
Most satellites are in Low Earth Orbit. Some other satellites are in Geostationary Orbit because their function requires it.
The GPS (and other GNSS, e.g. GLONASS) satellites are in a much higher MEO orbit (sub-GEO):
Why to they need to be in such…
Max Q Lagrange
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Why doesn't James Webb have a larger supply of thruster propellant?
Reading Wikipedia's article on the James Webb telescope, I'm struck by the following information. I don't understand how it arose as an optimal and/or preferred mission choice.
So,JW is in an unstable orbit at Lagrange L2. Unlike many other…
Stilez
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42
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1 answer
What is the text on Neil Armstrong's space suit's left glove?
I was looking at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum's collection, and Neil Armstrong's Apollo 11 spacesuit has some text written on the left glove. It looks like some sort of instructions, related to photography:
Was this some sort of…
Timothy G.
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2 answers
How do US citizens vote in space?
Astronaut Kate Rubins tweeted that she has voted while being on the ISS:
How does that work? Did she have some paperwork with her that she can send down to earth with a spacecraft soon? The expedition 63 crew departed a day earlier, so maybe she…
DarkDust
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42
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Why is the supply of RTGs running short?
I always hear that NASA has only a limited amount of radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs) remaining.
I did some superficial research on how they work and what is needed to produce them and couldn't really understand what is the problem with…
Zaibis
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