http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CGpNG9MkOo

Ace videoclip.

See :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteors#History

for the source of the quote on the originof the term ‘meteor’ cited in #25.

In this context, it may be worth noting that :

… the cosmic origin of meteors was now firmly established. Still, they remain an atmospheric phenomenon, and retain their name “meteor” from the Greek word for “atmospheric”.

Source : Wikipedia (under meteors -history)

Also the term for someone who studies meteors is …

… an astronomer!

@15. Gary Ansorge & 22. Nigel Depledge :

A few quotes for y’all on the usefulness of gold :

“Gold is an outstanding heat insulator, many spacecraft have been gold-plated, not as a symbol of extravagance but because a thin layer of gold is the most efficient way to keep the spacecraft from overheating.”
- Page 172, Ben Bova, ‘The Story of Light’, Sourcebooks Inc., 2001.

&

“When human explorers head out toward the stars, they will bring gold and diamonds with them – not only as personal adornments, but as practical and efficient materials for their starships as well.”
- Page 320, Ben Bova, ‘The Story of Light’, Sourcebooks Inc., 2001.

Additionally, remember that gold comes in very handy for defending against cyberman too!

(In the same way that the study of meteors is meteorology, right?)

. . . the world market for platinum? Of course, unlike gold, it IS a very useful industrial metal.

Gold is very useful in electrical circuitry. Although it is a slightly less good conductor than silver, it does not corrode in air, so a gold-plated silver electrical contact gives you the best of both worlds.

–Michael

There is a lot of difference between boosting a payload into earth orbit or boosting the same load up from the sun, using solar power 16 times more intense than that available at earth orbit(roughly 20,000 Watts/m^2) to power a vasimir engine. In space, free fall and vacuum allow continual low level acceleration to move mountains anywhere you want. It just takes a while. At earth orbit, dropping that payload to the surface is easy.

Not all at once, of course,,,

Gary 7

@3. Mapnut :

Are there known objects between the orbits of Earth and Venus? Or between Venus and Mercury? I don’t recall hearing about any such objects.

Add to the list linked by #4.Chris (if they’re not incl. already) – Sun-grazing comets.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sungrazing_comet

Plus at least one semi-famous asteroid named Icarus :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1566_Icarus

That apparently glows red-hot at perihelion. Arthur C. Clarke has suggested it could be used as an observing post.

I wonder if sungrazer comets could help in the Vulcanoids search too?

Of course, any future explorers there might have to ask that Spanish womans’ permission :

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/11/30/you-cant-own-the-sun-no-not-yours/

for straying close to “her” solar territory – NOT!

Gold, Platinum, etc. I can imagine a 400 meter wide solid chunk of platinum. What would THAT do to the world market for platinum? Of course, unlike gold, it IS a very useful industrial metal.

Gary 7

Your generalization about space telescopes is too broad.

Whether a space telescope can point close to the Sun depends on the design of the telescope! Hubble was not designed to do so, but SOHO obviously was!

Any satellite designed to search for Vulcanoids while outside Earth’s shadow simply has to incorporate features SOHO and other near-Sun exploring probes have, such as using shields and positioning to prevent direct sunlight on some of the equipment. Doing so with Hubble would’ve interfered with optimizing its design for its primary missions of observing faint objects in the majority of space that isn’t close to the Sun’s direction.

Yes, that’s true, but space telescopes cannot point too close to the Sun for other reasons, such as preventing direct sunlight from illuminating the equipment. Hubble, for instance, can’t even observe Mercury. I figure any satellite like this would suffer similar restrictions, which Earth’s permanent shadow would prevent.

Of course, it would be hard to justify the expense if this is the only purpose of it; who would spend so much for the sole purpose of looking for little asteroids that probably don’t exist. You’d have to think of other scientific goals for the satellite. Or maybe you could go halvesies with a telecommunications company; they are always putting satellites into geosynchronous orbit.

The occultations would be darn fast, a one km vulcanoid traveling at 200 km/s would cause the star to dim out for only 5 milliseconds! The search plane, 10 to 30 million km from the Sun’s surface would cover a staggering 2400 trillion square km and five minutes following a bright star would sample only about 60,000 of these. If we optimistically assume there are 1,000 vulcanoids, we should have one chance in 40 million of observing an occultation in five minutes. Of course, each observer more than 1km apart gives an independent observation, so a thousand amateurs along an eclipse path could narrow the odds…

anything smaller than a few hundred yards across would be long gone from the inner solar system by now… By the middle to late 20th century, these upper and lower bounds for both size and location were well defined.

Does the ‘few hundred yards’ limit take account of the Yarkovsky effect, which I thought had only been taken seriously in the last 10 years or so?