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Science & Alternative Science / Re: I work at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Ask me anything

« on: June 01, 2020, 04:33:58 PM »

Thank you. I'm convinced. I'm sorry if that was a bit of an ordeal, but I hope you can understand some of my initial skepticism. Funnily enough, usually those with demonstable ties to NASA try to keep it private around here, and those who openly claim to be working there usually turn out to be teenagers looking for a laugh.

Did you work there prior to the 2016 election? If so, I wonder if there has been much change in the working culture or priorities that you personally witnessed between the Obama and Trump administrations?

That's no problem! I started working there about a year ago, so I can't speak to that.

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Science & Alternative Science / Re: I work at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Ask me anything

« on: June 01, 2020, 02:42:49 PM »

This is my HSPD-12 card with all identifying information removed, along with my username. Is this enough proof?

It raises more question than it provides answers, but I appreciate the effort. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. I'd appreciate it if you humoured me with my follow-up questions, but you are of course completely within your right to decline.

Your card (one of the very few bits you didn't censor out) states that you're not a NASA employee, but rather a contractor. What gives?
Why did you edit out the month and year of expiry on your PIV?
Similarly, why did you edit out the zone affiliation colour code, while still leaving the colour itself prominently visible?
Finally, are you currently located in the state of California?

Your card (one of the very few bits you didn't censor out) states that you're not a NASA employee, but rather a contractor. What gives?

All employees of JPL are contractors, as we technically work for Caltech, and JPL is an FFRDC.

Why did you edit out the month and year of expiry on your PIV?
Similarly, why did you edit out the zone affiliation colour code, while still leaving the colour itself prominently visible?

That's fair, I suppose. Here's the card with those in

Finally, are you currently located in the state of California?

I'm currently not in California due to the mandatory telework policy in effect at my site currently: https://nasapeople.nasa.gov/coronavirus/coronavirus.htm.

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Science & Alternative Science / Re: I work at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Ask me anything

« on: June 01, 2020, 03:10:14 AM »

Thank you for your thoughts and feedback.

Some final questions:

1) How do Physicists / Astro-Physicists measure the distance of the Earth to the Moon and the Earth to the Sun?

2) And how are the diameters of each body measured? I believe the Moon is about 239k miles away, while the Sun is 94 million miles away.

3) And, to what degree of accuracy are these distance and diameter measurements?

4) With Flat Earth theory, the Moon and Sun are described as being only a few thousand miles away from Earth, with each body being only 30 or so miles in diameter and moving in a circle above the Flat Earth. What additional evidence, other than measurements, might make these FE suggestions not accurate or not correct / or perhaps correct and accurate?

Thank you.

• We usually have it as readily made constants, but it's the same way we measure the distance to any other celestial object - by parallax. When observed from two different angles, objects that are closer to you shift faster than objects farther from you. You can draw two similar isosceles triangles this way, each of which shares a point. So, by observing something like a solar eclipse at two different points, and knowing the distance between those points, as well as the radius of the Earth, you'd be able to tell how far you were from the body, as well as the diameter of the body. The Apollo missions also put reflectors on the Moon that we shine lasers on to measure the distance.
• See above for close-by bodies. For other stars, we can measure the diameters through interferometry, since the light coming from that star comes in at different points in its wave function, we can find the diameter by looking at the interference pattern.
• Since I'm not an astronomer, I won't be able to say for certain. However, for the Moon at least, given how accurate lasers and clocks are today, I'd estimate we'd have at least centimeter accuracy for the distance to the Moon.
• I'd like to hear how nuclear fusion can occur in a star that small, and how it all stays together, for one. Almost all stars are at least the size of Jupiter, not including neutron stars. I'd also like to know how exactly half the Earth could be illuminated when light (and all electromagnetic radiation) radiates out in sphere. I'm also not sure what forces are acting on them to move in this manner, since if they're rotating around the center of Flat Earth you'd also need a radial acceleration.

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Science & Alternative Science / Re: I work at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Ask me anything

« on: June 01, 2020, 12:57:56 AM »

As per the title, I'm an employee of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where I work on the Mars 2020 rover. I'm required to add that anything I say does not necessarily reflect the views of NASA or JPL, and are fully my own.

That said, I'm not a believer in flat earth, but I'm trying to understand what your arguments are. As my expertise is in space systems, I'll be able to expound on any physics or astronomy-based arguments for a flat earth. Would anyone here be willing to share some of their explanations or theories regarding a flat earth?

Hi. I am a Round Earther with some quick inquiries.

If you click on the "Wiki" link in this site, followed by the sub-link called "General Physics" and then finally the next sub-link towards the bottom called "Sunrise and Sunset", Flat Earth theory attempts to explain using a theory called EA (Electromagnetic Acceleration).

There has been a lot of spirated debate and push-back from Round Earthers (including myself) about the plausibility of EA and so would be interesting to get a Physicists / Astro-Physicists take on this overall theory, which talks about light bending.

I am a Mechanical Engineer by trade but not as astute on the finer points of Astro-Physics.

Thank you.

Hello. After giving it a general look, here's some of my thoughts.

Straight line trajectories rarely, if ever, occur in nature.

I've got no complaints with this. However, comparing a particle under the laws of classical mechanics (e.g. car, airplane) to one under the laws of quantum mechanics (like a photon) doesn't work too well.

If two potential explanations can describe the same phenomena, the matter then becomes a philosophical question of what one might interpret as more reasonable.

As a scientist, I'd first try to find other phenomena that one model explains better than another, or then resort to Occam's Razor.

an approximate formula for large-scale bending has been authored and proposed by Parsifal.

I don't know what a "Dark Energy potential" is, and the equation doesn't seem to explain. I'm not sure how this equation is testable.

Some thoughts off the top of my head based off of this:

• In this model, all light has to curve up. If so, that would also apply to laser gyroscopes, which have to register a slight tilt downwards if they're turned upside down. Not only that, but that'll mean laser gyroscopes are only accurate at one latitude.
• If all light is curved towards the sun, and then back towards the globe, we'd see a distorted view of the stars in different time zones. But the stars we see in each time zone are the same.

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Science & Alternative Science / Re: I work at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Ask me anything

« on: June 01, 2020, 12:46:09 AM »

Also, what effect does the free expansion of gas in a vacuum have on rocket propulsion in space?

I'm not a rocket scientist, so I won't have a definite answer for this.

However, the net thrust generated by a rocket engine is governed by the following equation:

F_n = mv_e-opt + A_e(p_e - p_amb)

Where m is the mass flow of the exhaust, v_e-opt is our effective jet velocity when atmospheric pressure is equal to the pressure at the nozzle's exit, A_e is the flow area at the nozzle exit, p_e is the pressure at the nozzle's exit, and p_amb is atmospheric pressure.

As p_amb in a vaccum would be 0, while all other variables would stay constant at all times given a steady, constant stream of exhaust, a rocket in space would be more efficient than a rocket in the atmosphere.

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Science & Alternative Science / Re: I work at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Ask me anything

« on: June 01, 2020, 12:35:32 AM »

Does the n-body problem make an accurate simulation of the solar system impossible?

It depends on the time scales we're talking about, as well as the precision needed. For calculations that are accurate enough for space missions currently, NASA uses the SPICE toolkit I mentioned above. You can download a copy for yourself and examine the source code here: https://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/naif/toolkit.html.

Any perfectly accurate simulation is impossible, since any computer system needs to be as large as the system it's simulating in order to provide an accurate simulation. Though the n-body problem does not have an exact answer, we can use numerical integration to give us an answer to any arbitrary accuracy needed. This becomes more processor-heavy as time goes on, due to the time complexity of the calculation being in O(n²). That's why we use approximation methods, since we can significantly decrease our time complexity, up to O(n), in return for some accuracy.

Keep in mind that when we call it an approximation, it's an approximation within immensely tiny scales. SPICE gives us 20 digits of accuracy, and that's not even running on a supercomputer.

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Science & Alternative Science / Re: I work at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Ask me anything

« on: May 31, 2020, 08:03:31 PM »

How does your model explain, however, the three minute delay in data transmission from Earth to the rover and vice versa? Also, how could we orbit other celestial bodies without expending energy to maintain that orbit?

We've actually had to create an entire software suite to calculate the correct angles for the Deep Space Network to send data to Mars: https://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/naif/spiceconcept.html.  Are you telling me that all the data in the kernels and the calculations in there are incorrect?

Its not my model, I'm NOT a flat Earther  sorry if i came across that way, its just we have to be careful what we say on the forum otherwise we'll receive a warning and possible ban for mocking their theory.

I'm with you on this, Newtonian mechanics work for me 

I'll let a flat Earther answer your question.

 

Ah, I didn't mean to let it go across that way. I'm just trying to understand how flat earthers reconcile their theories with common observations.

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Science & Alternative Science / Re: I work at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Ask me anything

« on: May 31, 2020, 07:27:57 PM »

Can space exploration work on a flat Earth that accelerates upwards at 9.81 m s^-2 ?

That depends, I suppose, on whether the flat earth is still in the solar system. If not, the current methods we have for using gravity assists to get places wouldn't work. If it still rotates around the sun, supposing it had the same mass and gravity, it potentially could.

Thanks for the reply

The thing is, in flat Earth theory, the Earth is at the centre of everything and all the planets, comets, asteroids etc in the solar system rotate around the Earth, so do the stars, once per day. And at the same time they also accelerate with the Earth due to universal acceleration, all celestial bodies in the universe accelerate upwards with the Earth, so You will feel the same force (weight) if you were standing on Mars than you would on Earth.

The good news is in flat Earth theory the observable universe is very small compared to RE, in fact the stars are at a distance of just a few thousand km, which means the planets will be even less, so a mission to Mars should only take hours instead of months.

Does this make thing any better in terms of space exploration like a missions to Mars?

How does your model explain, however, the three minute delay in data transmission from Earth to the rover and vice versa? Also, how could we orbit other celestial bodies without expending energy to maintain that orbit?

We've actually had to create an entire software suite to calculate the correct angles for the Deep Space Network to send data to Mars: https://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/naif/spiceconcept.html.  Are you telling me that all the data in the kernels and the calculations in there are incorrect?

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Science & Alternative Science / Re: I work at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Ask me anything

« on: May 31, 2020, 05:45:32 PM »

Hi! How are you?

Hello! I'm doing fine, but it's pretty busy lately since we're so close to launching Mars 2020! How are you?

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Science & Alternative Science / Re: I work at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Ask me anything

« on: May 31, 2020, 05:43:57 PM »

Is it possible for you to prove your claim without violating your privacy and/or any contractual obligations? I mean no offence, but if I had a dollar for every person who came here and claimed to be an astronaut/NASA employee/sailor/Vladimir Putin, I'd be able to at least afford a large pizza, maybe even two.

This is my HSPD-12 card with all identifying information removed, along with my username. Is this enough proof?

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Science & Alternative Science / Re: I work at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Ask me anything

« on: May 31, 2020, 05:33:54 PM »

Why do we get false color images of Mars from rovers and such and not like real color images from a color camera?

You can get the real color images directly from NASA as they are released here: https://pds-imaging.jpl.nasa.gov/volumes/msl.html

HAZCAM and NAVCAM provide black-and-white images, but MAHLI, MASTCAM, and MARDI do provide true color images. As these images are in the data format stored on the rover, you'll need to convert it with our IMG2PNG tool here: http://bjj.mmedia.is/utils/img2png/

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Science & Alternative Science / Re: I work at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Ask me anything

« on: May 31, 2020, 05:29:11 PM »

Can space exploration work on a flat Earth that accelerates upwards at 9.81 m s^-2 ?

That depends, I suppose, on whether the flat earth is still in the solar system. If not, the current methods we have for using gravity assists to get places wouldn't work. If it still rotates around the sun, supposing it had the same mass and gravity, it potentially could.

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Science & Alternative Science / I work at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Ask me anything

« on: May 31, 2020, 02:50:31 AM »

As per the title, I'm an engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA, where I work on the Mars 2020 rover. I'm required to add that anything I say does not necessarily reflect the views of NASA or JPL, and are fully my own.

That said, I'm not a believer in flat earth, but I'm trying to understand what your arguments are. As my expertise is in space systems, I'll be able to expound on any physics or astronomy-based arguments for a flat earth. Would anyone here be willing to share some of their explanations or theories regarding a flat earth? Also, as per the title, feel free to ask me anything.