Tuesday, January 24, 2023

Ask a Planetary Physicist - Discussion with Pecier

Discussion with Pecier Decriedo (of the Mind Museum)

  • He showed a Hohmman Transfer spreadsheet. Given a particular Distance from a 1 Solar Mass, how many days travel to a Target of X AU distance. 
  • How to calculate Delta VMap
    • Transfer Orbit = Orbit of the Sun. Leaving a planet's Sphere of Influence and being under the Suns Influence. 
    • Clarification of Sphere of Influence Calculations 
    • Escape Velocity is RELATIVE To the Planet/Origin. Once you reach the 11kms escape velocity and either 
      • Fail to reach escape velocity - you are 0kms RELATIVE to the origin. 
      • Exceed the escape velocity - you are the difference Relative to the orbit. if you exceed it by 1m/s then you are 1m/s relative to earth 
    • To get Gravity I can use the Surface Gravity Equation to get the Gravity of a LOCATION relative to the SUN (the Transfer Orbit). Then use the Escape Velocity to Calculate the Delta-V budget to escape that Transfer Orbit. (to have X kms relative to the sun). 
  • Relativistic Thrust and Rocket Equation. Basically, it has Exponential Factors that INCREASE the energy cost as we reach faster than Light. Its just like Kinetic Energy Calculation. I don't get it why people are not interested in this - the Exponential Factors is similar to most Compound interest calculations - which is essential for Present Value calculations (even if a person like me who needs a spreadsheet to do the math, knows it's important and can Guess an approximate answer). 
  • Planetary Physics and Materials Sciences. The Jovian Forge and Life in Gass Giants and Terrestrial Biochemically rich planets (Including dwarf worlds - like Titan and Io). Particulary how dwarf planets we named under conventions of Detections and not under Planetary Physics criteria. To a Planetary physicist its still a planet (a small plant but still a planet - and of course some support in using Ceres Mass, Lunar Mass, Earth Mass, and Jupiter Mass). 
  • Luhman 16 A/B Hot Gas Giants - proto stars and life in such. 
One of the things that crossed my mind as we were doing the math was that - My son and the generations after him would find these easy and trivial. I noticed the algebra my son was taking in 6th grade was comparable to the one we took in Highschool. 

Before we would take forever to do drills, I used khan academy to brush up and back when I was in college in 1999 we didn't have those tools and I was Bachelor of Science math. Now everything is at our fingertips and its a matter of making time. 

Yeah, guys in their 20s doing the 3 body equations - and have visual modules in their head of orbital mechanics is not far-fetched... but then the GAP - the surface dweller vs spacer social gap. I encounter computer and system illiteracy regularly and have to change communication modes to adapt to different audiences - for Students they need to know keywords to google and jargon, for aging employees who are struggling with the computerization dig deep from my tagalog or depend on my ability to communicate it well to my staff. 

my son and his classmates being terrible with tagalog/filipino is a social class phenomenon. I have friends and classmates who grew up in the Philippines unable to speak filipino - marking the cultural compartmentalization. We did recruitment for BPOs and the demographics shocked me, its a 5000-10,000 hour exposure and use problem - its not something 200 hours a month can overcome. Its mental REWIRING.  Much of education - and the inclination to be an autodidact is mental rewiring/ 

Mneme and the Hard Scifi calculation as Pecier introduced the Hohmman transfer calculations and parabolic trajectories for Higher Delta V Budgets - this shit will be grade school problem solving in 20-50 years. (stories of what they taught back then and the teaching tools and techniques). 

Of course - the social class thing. that's why I am an open source advocate/evangelist and teach and try to implement ERpnext, Pfsense, Next Cloud, FreeCAD, Blender,  and partner with schools that way its not inaccessible to so many people. (teaching so people can implement it as cheaply as possible and still have a net benefit). You bet I like thinking of characters who are in the edge - social class wise - access to tech and trying to change their circumstance. 


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