Pretty neat illusion! @ Keith 35: Bebop FTW! Music is indeed epic!

About the fact that it’s domed rather than a crater, I suspect it may actually be an erosional feature (maybe with regional uplift however) – it’s quite possible the heat/shock of impact could fuse the rock, making it more resistant to erosion. Thats similar to why you see tall, thin, ancient volcanic necks occasionally poking out of the plains, the basalt is much more resistant to erosion than relatively loose ash that made up the mountain.

Thanks for the awesome blog!

Okay, time to watch Bebop again. Crank up the surrounds! (Now if I can only remember between which episodes the movie fall in…)

I’m another one with a general reverse-perception on the crater/dome illusion; it always looks like a dome when the light comes from above rather than below.

And Merry Belated Christmas to anyone who celebrates it!

“But it’s an unfathomably huge chunk of change with very little payoff other then the coolness factor, as things stand now”

“Now”,,,ummm, yeah, but, it won’t always be like “now”. When Gerard O’Neille first postulated Power Sats in the ’70s, he used the figure $100 billion to build the first (10 GigaWatt) sat and $ 10 billion for each succeeding one. That was predicated on the figures NASA predicted for space shuttle launch costs. (and we know how well THAT went). These days, I’d probably be inclined to wait on either nuc powered primary launchers(the Nuc Light Bulb), Space tethers or mag launchers(like those from Launch Point Technologies). That reduces the launch costs to more reasonable levels(around$ 100 to $200/lb). The big thing about Power Sats is the 24 hr solar availability and higher intensities(1350 watts/m^2 vs 400 on earths equator at noon).

,,,but the power is just an economic justification that provides a rationale for other kinds of space development. Once you have the installed infrastructure and a primary economic driver, the rest follows.

Gary 7

PS I too, really enjoyed Cowboy Bebop. Reminded me a little of the Firefly universe.

IIRC, the anime “Cowboy Bebop” took place in a universe where the mother of all industrial accidents had essentially blown up an enormous chunk of the moon and showered the earth with fragments to the point that it became pretty much uninhabitable*. I believe the earth had rings of moon debris, too.

*This actually resolves an important realism issue with a lot of sci-fi that involves space colonization, being “Why the heck did people spend all that money to colonize the rest of the solar system, and in a relatively short time (a hundred years or so)?”
Let’s face it, we could colonize mars or the moon NOW if we really wanted to. But it’s an unfathomably huge chunk of change with very little payoff other then the coolness factor, as things stand now.

The asteroid that made a really bad day for the dinosaurs was half again as wide as this crater. So many big impacts in such a short time frame. Hopefully, clusters such as these won’t occur as often today as they did then(or be as big). (Have we “cleared” our local orbit yet?).

It would be way cool if earth captured a large asteroid in geosynchronous orbit. I wonder how large it would have to be to be broken up by tidal stresses? Rings, RINGS I say, for lovers and near earth (asteroid) miners.

Merry Xmas, Y’All.

Peace.

Gary 7