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[alway]

So SpaceX did an Orbcomm launch a week or so ago. They apparently got onboard video of it; though the camera is a bit iced over.
http://www.spacex.com/news/2014/07/22/spacex-soft-lands-falcon-9-rocket-first-stage

[WillowLuman]

Awesome! Space footage!

[10ebbor10]

Meanwhile, esa is planning to film re-entry and desintegration of it's next atv.

http://www.gizmag.com/atv-break-up/32998/

Also, spaceplane.

http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2014/07/esas-experimental-space-plane-gearing-november/

[10ebbor10]

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/esa-european-cargo-ship-on-its-way-to-space-station/

ATV George Lemaitre launched. Last of the 5 spacecraft program.

[McDonald]

Has anybody considered using poop as fuel? Poopellant?

[LordSlowpoke]

waste of biomass

[GiglameshDespair]

You could decompose it into methane, I suppose, and use that as fuel, though you'd have negligible amounts compared to the quantity you'd need.

In other words, not worth it in the slightest.

[10ebbor10]

http://www.livestream.com/eurospaceagency

Lifestream of Rosetta arriving at 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Soonish.

[PTTG??]

Have we all gotten hyped about the Cannae/EMdrive thing already?

Because it would be pretty cool if it worked.

[10ebbor10]

Is that the massless drive thingy. Because people, me included, aren't very optimistic about it.

[andrea]

Most likely, there is something wrong in the experiment.
However, there is still a tiny hope that it could actually work. If it does, it will be an absolute game changer. and by that I mean that it would be a sudden switch to science fiction. Bringing fuel along is one of the biggest challenges in space travel.

But yes, hard to be optimist. Several things in the experiments don't look promisiong. ( finding thrust even in the model that SHOULDN'T work, big differences of thrust between chinese and NASA experiments, etc.).

[Gentlefish]

Shouldn't work based on the current model of physics. I think we're about due for a nice big breakthrough like this, similar to general relativity. I'm excited, but as anyone should be with scientific matters, a little skeptical. I'd love to build the drive for myself.

They should mount it on a near-frictionless cart and see if it pushes it. That would be so cool to see.

[MonkeyHead]

Shouldn't work based on the current model of physics. I think we're about due for a nice big breakthrough like this, similar to general relativity. I'm excited, but as anyone should be with scientific matters, a little skeptical. I'd love to build the drive for myself.

They should mount it on a near-frictionless cart and see if it pushes it. That would be so cool to see.

I dont think we can no anything frictionless enough with a low enough mass for it to actually get it moving in a perceptible way in a sensible timeframe, even if said propulsion mechanism is actually producing thrust.

[USEC_OFFICER]

Well, from my limited understanding of things, we can generate electricity from two sources. Either chemical energy as certain atoms/molecules react and electrons are shuffled around, or kinetic energy by spinning things through a magnetic field. I'm probably missing out on a couple alternative sources, but those are the two major ones. So converting thermal energy directly to electricity is (most likely) impossible. After all, thermal energy is just atoms/molecules being highly energetic but without any unified direction or force. So we can't convert it to electricity without going through another step using the two methods we have. To convert thermal energy directly, we'd need some kind of substance that shuffles around electrons when it heats up. Which I'm pretty sure is impossible, or we don't have a substance like that. Or it converts the thermal energy into chemical energy before turning it into electricity.

Am I kinda making sense here?

[USEC_OFFICER]

Better than I had thought I'd do. What parts aren't making sense?