
Hayabusa-2: Japan Spacecraft Touches Down on Asteroid - scaryclam
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-47293317
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sohooo
If you haven't already, take a look at their awesome dashboard
[http://haya2now.jp/en.html](http://haya2now.jp/en.html) linked a couple of
months ago
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18046274](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18046274)

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hypertexthero
Brings to mind the user interface for Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain.

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throwmeback
Yeah, it's kinda nostalgic in that it reminds me of those hacker-ish designs
of late '90-'00s. Cohesive, readable, not too much whitespace.

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pault
Wow, I looked at it and was just about to come back here and bash non-
functional science fiction design, but it's actually completely usable and
every element is displaying relevant data.

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Gravityloss
Space resource usage could first happen with asteroids, not on the Moon or
Mars. Propellants mined from asteroids can be transferred anywhere with very
low delta V and low thrust. It just takes time.

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sisu2019
It sounds cool sure, but what resources do we even want from asteroids? We
have plenty rocks and ice on earth and even something like iron ore is just
0,08$ per kilo. Getting that kilo to LEO is 2200$ and getting cheaper every
year. We have all the resources and infrastructure we need right here on earth
while absolutely no one has any idea how to manufacture things in space.

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whiskers08xmt
A lot of heavy rare earth metals can only be found in very limited
concentrations in the earth's crust, with the largest concentrations all being
from asteroid impacts. As a consequence, these metals are incredibly valuable.
A single high-concentration asteroid, could provide more of these metals than
has been mined in the history of the earth, in high concentrations, and may be
able to make a host of applications economically viable, which previously
weren't.

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metalliqaz
but it would be, by far, the most expensive mining operation in the history of
mining operations

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mr_overalls
Yes, but if several thousand tons of iridium, platinum, or various rare-earth
metals could be captured & towed to Earth orbit, the payoff could be
astronomical.

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HarryHirsch
Suddenly there would be so much of a supply that the sale won't be profitable
any longer. That's probably the reason why no one is extracting rhodium from
nuclear waste, where it is a common fission product.

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mr_overalls
That's why I suggested orbit, where the supply could be parceled out (or its
true extent even kept secret) so as not to crash the market.

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HarryHirsch
The demand is mostly in chemical industry and very inelastic. No one is going
to put another plant on line because platinum group metals are cheap (but
plants may be pulled off line because the economy is in the dumps, as happened
in 2008 and 2017). Even small increases in supply will lead to great drops in
price. You can only hope that a plentiful supply would encourage new uses.

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atupis
Is space exploration / commercialization speeding up? It is now that almost
every day we hear some new awesome space mission.

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fnord123
In the case of commercialization, should we worried about a failure-to-launch
scenario? We supposedly only have enough fuel to get a volume of about Mount
Everest into space. Given the economics of climate change being so fucked up
and a tragedy of the commons, could we doom our species to spending the rest
of eternity on this decaying rock if we allow market forces to shit away all
the fuel required to make us interplanetary?

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haxiomic
I’m not convinced we do have a limited earth fuel budget as you say. There’s
lots of options for rocket fuel and many of them are highly abundant or can be
synthesised.

For example, hydrogen and oxygen are the 1st and 3rd most abundant elements in
the universe, so liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen fuel is always going to be
an option

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fnord123
Thanks!

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rkagerer
Gotta love them Japanese...

 _Hey let 's go visit an asteroid.

Might as well stick a rover on it.

Why send one rover when you can send four!

Hey guys, let's bring back a chunk of it.

You know what'd be great? Explosives! Let's blow off a deeper chunk and bring
that back too._

So many moving parts to this mission.

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bsenftner
Why does space advancements made by non-US agencies only receive after-the-
fact notice in the US media? I would like to know about these before, and in
much more detail!

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maxxxxx
I think they have to be more proactive in engaging journalists. NASA is really
good at doing this.

And in general US media is very centered on the US. The outside world doesn’t
exist much to them if there is no connection to the US.

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tempodox
What an interesting project. Congrats to the team for what they've
accomplished so far.

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uprasad
Couldn't find this in the article: How is it expected to reach the Earth in
2020 when it took 3.5 years to get to the asteroid? Will it begin its return
when the asteroid is closer to the Earth?

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canadaj
I couldn't either, but on the Wikipedia page[1] for Hayabusa-2, there is a gif
of the flight path. Maybe it took 3.5 years to achieve proper alignment/speed
to land on the asteroid, but due to the larger size of earth and the position
of Hayabusa-2 when it begins its return, it will be much more straightforward?

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayabusa2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayabusa2)

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wongarsu
Getting into an orbit next to some other small object is kind of hard. In the
GIF you can see Hayabusa-2 making multiple orbits below the asteroid's orbit
to catch up (lower orbits are faster) before it raises its orbit to the height
of the asteroid. Once it reached the asteroid it had to do another correction
to the orbit to make sure they stay together.

In comparison, meeting something massive like a planet is very single: go into
any orbit that nearly hits the planet, and when you are there slow down enough
to let charit gravity pull you into an orbit around that planet.

tl;dr: more gravity makes rondevous easier and quicker

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zepearl
just fyi:

>>Due to its high density, shaped charge and explosively formed penetrator
liners have been constructed from tantalum. Tantalum greatly increases the
armor penetration capabilities of a shaped charge due to its high density and
high melting point.

(
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tantalum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tantalum)
)

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csunbird
This is a very cool thing ! I did not even know that Japan had a space
program.

I guess they are not advertising as much as NASA does.

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TheSpiceIsLife
I am flabbergasted that you were not aware of JAXA.

How is this possible. What are people been taught?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JAXA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JAXA)

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goto11
> How is this possible. What are people been taught?

For each and every think you know, there was a time where you didn't know it.

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godzilla82
It would be interesting, if you could give a proof by induction!

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huffmsa
Some poor alien is going to come across this rock in a few million years and
think it's been weaponized.

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chmod775
Chances are that a highly developed alien race won't be as bloodthirsty and
barbaric as the human race, so "weapon" might not be their first thought.

If you're space faring on a _large_ scale you probably had to leave conflict
and infighting to lesser races, just so you could focus energies on making
that leap.

IMHO.

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Hendrikto
What are you talking about? Infighting among humans has always been one of the
main drivers of innovation. Do you know who invested rockets, and why? The
Germans did during WW2.

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chmod775
War and conflict is a driver for _mankind_. You could say it is our way of
"gamifying" technological advancement, because it is _our_ strongest drive.

That's just another argument that humans are truly a race of barbarians.

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xj9
> That's just another argument that humans are truly a race of barbarians.

relative to what? we don't know how violent alien species are. they could be
very peaceful in comparison, but it is just as likely that they are more
violent than we are.

