The first ones were. There are a number of scientists that argue more cheap small rovers would yield more science than large expensive singular rovers, but so far they're not winning the NASA awards for contracts. I think we'll start to see more diversity of size in the future awards, given how successful small satellites are becoming.

I helped do some testing for a company using DMLS printing of advanced materials for small rocket engines a few years back. About 1/3 of the prints would be so flawed they wouldn't even bother testing, about 1/3 of the remainder would fail to hold pressure when capped, about 10% of those that passed would fail flow test (have some obstruction) and about 8% would fail under hot fire test once they got to temperature. So, sure, you can give it a fancy brand name, but getting the secret sauce just right, is not easy nor cheap. For reference, we were producing engines aimed at the small satellite market primarily but could be used as upper stage roll thrusters, so 50-100 lbf regeneratively cooled biprops using LOx on one side and a variety of fuel options on the other.

That is the well published intergalactic approach vector when observing primitive species such as Earthlings.

That's very close to the mark for the primary issue in their use for launch vehicles. Since repeatability is not great for printed parts that means each piece has to be thoroughly tested before use which adds expense of its own, or risk if you don't follow a full test program. I think we will see that reliability is a challenge with their approach.

The other issue is that once you've caught up with it, you're now stuck travelling where it's going, which is unlikely to be toward any nearby star, so now you're just hanging on getting yeet'd out of the solar system into the great void between stars.

So even if you did spend all the effort (enormous, many stage rocket, very very tiny delivered payload to match the object's velocity) you're not necessarily going anywhere interesting. The only thing working for you in this scenario is you are sitting on a big pile of potential resources for building something else. But even then you need to build quickly as your access to abundant sunlight to power any construction is going away quickly as you leave the vicinity of the sun.

THIS. It's a BIG search area because things are further away from each other that far out and thus the gravity perturbations on the other planets and small bodies is small. Small effect means we only know the general area it's in. Couple that with the dim lighting that far away from the sun and it means you have to stare for a long time to see the dim objects, and thus it takes longer to search that part of the sky with enough sensitivity to see things this dim.

And most of the Exoplanets are actually found by observing the small doppler (color) shift of the parent star light as the planet tugs the star towards us then away from us, which is why most of the planets found so far are close to their parent stars (means we can find the color/doppler shift with shorter observation times). Since this object would be beyond the orbit of Neptune, its orbit period is longer, thus one would have to make very precise observations over baselines of a century or so to see the signal start to show up in solar observations. We might just be getting close to that threshold now though if someone wanted to try to compile the last century of data and try to correct for all the instrument bias and other sources from the rest of the known solar system. That would only give us the general orbit period and distance though.

Issues, poppycock! Nothing wrong with spinning. Just attach the crew section to the engine section via tether and let it reel out so they're far enough apart that it's not disorienting as you spin them like a set of bolos. 80% of the time it works every time.

They're trying to convey the gravity of the situation!

I'll see myself out...

I'm a fan of these kinds of solutions in general. If you set up the system to properly reward the behavior you want then it takes a whole lot less effort to manage.

Well, you *could* but it would be very expensive because the rapid dispersal means you'd need so much of it do do anything that you'd require thousands of rockets just hauling gas to orbit. While that would drive down the cost of rockets individually, no one has that kind of money to spend.

The most effective way to implement this is to have an agreement where every new launch pays a fee based on the orbital debris potential of what they're launching. So that would factor in things like what orbit they are going to, how many objects, what size, what the potential is for explosions, and what their capability is to self de-orbit. The fees collected from new launches should be used to establish bounties for cleaning up the most hazardous objects in the most sensitive places. Let the bounties be collected by whoever gets there first. Let market forces figure out the most efficient method of collecting the bounties.

Actually they have been proposing using lasers for a while now and it seems promising: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/51946228_Removing_Orbital_Debris_with_Lasers

While using gas would work too, it rapidly disperses, requiring an enormous supply and potentially dragging down working spacecraft too.

What I really want to know is if there's any spare capacity for secondary payloads with this opportunity. The New Glenn looks to have a lot of GTO capability so getting to a C3 for Trans Mars Injection should be well within their capacity to bring some additional payloads. Anyone have any intel on that possibility? NASA's general policy is to make secondary launch available whenever they can so I'm hoping this is the case here.

That's actually a big concern with a new player. The launch window to Mars doesn't care what bugs you're ironing out. If they miss the closing of the launch window it's another 2 years before they can make the trip to Mars. I wish them luck.

Number 6 is a big factor in the limitations and I have more typically seen 200-300% sure as the navigator rule of thumb.

Mike Malin had proposed the Junocam instrument and been rejected. He will point out that JPL-run missions have a much higher than statistically expected predominance of JPL-developed payloads. However, Mike managed to convince enough folks to eventually get HQ to add Junocam to the payload suite anyway, partly by arguing that it would be a very effective way to engage the public in the mission.

There is none without a customer to pay for the service and the only logical customer would be government or similar. We're in real need of some agreements that would actually fund useful cleanup operations, but probably a reasonably long way from getting them.

$29M would beg to differ on the lateness. Apparently a lot of new suckers can be born in 2 years.

Rewilding rivers will certainly help. The effect on the LA river alone was significant in achieving better ground water recharge. We do need to take that further and undo a lot of the concrete channels constraining urban river beds. We also need to develop and employ more agricultural processes that work with nature and result in less dependency on irrigation and tillage. There needs to be state and federal level leadership on this to make stewardship of the land just as important to industrial farming as the bottom line profits.

As a recipient of some of this water, I hope it keeps coming! We do desperately need it in the SW US.

Actually a better tactic is using static electric fields on the ship (negative side facing forward) and an electron gun to charge the incoming dust so it's repelled to the side as the ship approaches. Neutralize the ship with positive particle emission to the rear such as an ion engine which gives you net positive thrust due to the ion's higher mass and velocity.

Almost all efforts to search for signs of life are limited to our galaxy alone which is only ~53,000 light years across. So at most, the light we're seeing from our galaxy is only ~ 40,000 light years away and thus reflects what was happening 40,000 years ago. Since the universe is roughly 13.7 Billion years old, 0-40,000 years ago all should be roughly "now" on an evolutionary time scale. You're right that when we look at the furthest objects we can see we're looking back billions of years in time, but those objects are so far away we won't have any hope of getting information about planets and their atmospheres or hearing radio signals they might transmit so that's not where we have the ability to look now.

I think the right way to do this is by making the entire life cycle cost part of the calculation for the tax on the items. If it's made of plastic that is going to harm the ecosystem and us, then those costs should be levied up front. Otherwise, cheap and dirty will be our doom.

I could answer any basic questions you have. Feel free to DM.