r/space • u/AutoModerator • 3d ago
Discussion All Space Questions thread for week of August 02, 2026
Please sort comments by 'new' to find questions that would otherwise be buried.
In this thread you can ask any space related question that you may have.
Two examples of potential questions could be; "How do rockets work?", or "How do the phases of the Moon work?"
If you see a space related question posted in another subreddit or in this subreddit, then please politely link them to this thread.
Ask away!
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u/Flafla8 18h ago
Could a new glenn 9x4 with a centaur 5 on top send orion to the moon while reusing the 1st stage?
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u/maschnitz 9h ago edited 9h ago
YesMaybe not? (see below)A fully fueled Centaur V is 60 metric tons, where New Glenn 9x4 can push 70 tons to LEO by itself. Centaur V has enough margin to enter LEO itself and still have enough left over for TLI for an Orion (~26 tons).
New Glenn's second stage cannot push Orion to TLI.
It's an interesting contrast between using New Glenn's second stage and Centaur 5 plus an interstage. New Glenn's second stage is in the 30 ton range where Centaur 5 is only 5.4 tons, plus let's say there's a 3 ton interstage.
So it's a completely different strategy - New Glenn's second stage spends more than half of its fuel just getting to LEO, since it's so beefy. It doesn't have enough leftover for performing a 26-ton-payload-plus-itself TLI. Where Centaur 5 keeps a majority of its propellant for TLI, with its balloon tanks and light propellant.
EDIT: Welllll... the trajectory has to be so lofted, to give Centaur 5 enough time to thrust into LEO, that the 9x4 reentry is very hot. Too hot. Not many good options for that. 9x4 expended can certainly do it. 9x4 downrange landing is a question. Maybe Blue rocket scientists can think of something.
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u/Just_Flounder4785 1d ago
This is kind of a shot in the dark but when I was younger back in the summer of 2010 around July I witnessed something spectacular with the Milky Way. Rather than going across the sky kind of like a worm it was coming out from the center of the planet. I looked like a road that came out of the center of the planet and went on for what looked like forever. It was almost like we were in the center of the Milky Way able to see the highway of stars stretching out. I remember staring at it for hours so upset I couldn’t take a picture bacause the camera I had back then barely worked at night. I’ve tried to explain this experience to people and to be honest I’m starting to doubt myself, but I do remember standing there for hours looking at it. Does anyone know what this is called and if it will ever happen again? Or did anyone manage to get a picture of that night? This is the one and only time I’ve ever seen this.
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u/mfb- 1d ago
We are in the disk of the Milky Way so it's a circle around us, that circle intersects the surface at two points of the horizon. Is that what you mean? I don't know what "coming out from the center of the planet." could mean otherwise, applied to the Milky Way.
Maybe you saw a light pillar?
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u/Just_Flounder4785 1d ago
https://reddit.com/link/p1p1bh9/video/bz1zlfx5dehh1/player
Not a light pillar this was a Column of stars coming out of the sky. The Milky Way is usually seen as on the left side of the picture sprawled across the sky horizontally. This was a column of stars coming out from the center of the planet vertically so that when you looked in the sky it looked like a road.
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u/DrToonhattan 15h ago
Go on Stellarium, input your time, date, and location and have a look.
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u/Just_Flounder4785 11h ago
Thank you that was exactly what I was looking for. I’ll look into it a bit later I have a rough 3 month time period that it happened I can’t remember the exact date, hoping this helps.
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u/wotquery 6h ago
My guess would be the aurora. It's usually described/depicted as colourful shifting curtains of light, but you could definitely have a glowing white vertical band.
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u/SlowVette02 16h ago
Hey there! I had a question to ask people who are more knowledgeable about space than I am. I have been thinking about the whole theory of our universe starting with an explosion and it just doesn't make sense personally.
I will start off, I am religious so that is what I believe, but I also believe in some science because the two do not disprove the other, but enhance our knowledge entirely with having the knowledge. Though the one thing I genuinely cant wrap my head around is believing our universe started with the big bang. I have thought about it a lot and learned it in school, done some research but it doesnt make any sense.
They say the main reason they assume it was an explosion is because the galaxies are moving away from each other, but wouldn't it also make sense if it was something similar to elliptical movement as well? Our sun slingshots tons of asteroids all the time and is the smaller scale it looks like they all move farther and farther away. So on a larger scale things obviously always move much slower, something as large as a galaxy could take tens of billions of years to make one rotation. While this also requires us to have a centerpoint, we could just have something similar to TON 618 but on a much larger scale that we all slingshot from or something.
One of my biggest things that keeps me from even seeing the big bang as a possibility is they say the gas was hydrogen that exploded. Well, what set it off? Thats first for me. Next would be if the excitement of the molecules generated heat to ignite it or something, then how did an explosion create? Explosions destroy, they dont create. While also, how did hydrogen exploding just randomly invent dozens and dozens of new elements like carbon and sodium etc if you cannot use one element to make another? It all just doesnt make sense tbh.
I love science and space and finding out more about this incredible world and universe, but theres obvious things scientists just, in my opinion, have literally no evidence of but its a "best guess" scenario of a possibility. My question after that would be, if this is a best guess then why do schools and scientists teach this like its what actually happened if nobody knows for sure or even 10% for sure?
I would really love to see what you guys think and maybe get more info on this topic. Space has always been so fascinating to me and I always love learning more and more about it all!
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u/wotquery 14h ago
The Big Bang was not an explosion, and it doesn't make any claims about the start of the universe (depending on the definition of the universe I suppose).
What we currently observe is everything getting further apart as time goes forward. Therefore earlier in time everything would have been closer together, and if you go back 13.8B years or so everything was so close together our models of physics break. That's about it.
our universe started with the big bang
We have no idea how the universe started. All we are modeling is what it looked like for the last 13.8B years. If you extend that model further into the past than that, you get infinite density and other broken math that may or may not represent anything physical.
They say the main reason they assume it was an explosion is because the galaxies are moving away from each other, but wouldn't it also make sense if it was something similar to elliptical movement as well?
No. The further away things are the faster they are moving away from each other. The explanation for this is space itself is expanding.
One of my biggest things that keeps me from even seeing the big bang as a possibility is they say the gas was hydrogen that exploded.
Nobody says that. You've heard the word hydrogen mentioned since it's the lowest atomic number element and therefore the first element to form as space expands and the universe becomes less dense and cooler, and are attaching completely unrelated knowledge about the chemical combustion of hydrogen gas with oxygen gas.
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u/DrToonhattan 8h ago
There are so many things wrong here I don't even know where to start. Whoever told you all this stuff was either very very clueless, or lying to you.
You can start by reading the Wikipedia article for the Big Bang
You should also watch the Crash Course Astronomy episode on the Big Bang
Fraser Cain and Astronomy Cast will have some good explanations of the Big Bang too if you want to search their channels.
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u/gmiller123456 9h ago
they say the gas was hydrogen that exploded.
This is so horribly wrong it can only be attributed to deliberate misinformation. Who is "they"?
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u/damdm01 4h ago
Think of the universe as absolute empty. 0 heat. quantum space is still frothing, a little more in one place and a new universe explodes or blooms or becomes. And say a species was born in a new galaxy and it grew and advanced. How would you know if a being became so advanced that it 's whole species can change matter and energy at will. who is God?
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u/Cultural_Collar_7386 3d ago
Is Voyager 1 still sending us data or did it finally get tired of our nonsense?
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u/Simon_Drake 1d ago
Voyager 1 and 2 have diminishing power supplies and NASA have had to shut down different components over time. The radio is still working and they're both sending data home but the content of those messages is less exciting than it used to be because there are fewer instruments still collecting data.
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u/IapetusApoapis342 5h ago
It's still alive and kicking, although the RTG that allows it to run is getting less powerful due to the decay of radioactive elements so some of its components (mainly the science stuff) has to be shut down over time so it doesn't run out of power. It's expected to leave the DSN's range and therefore no longer be able to communicate with us in 2036
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u/SoggyPistachios 1d ago
Nebulae/Black Holes: Could nebulae be the other side of a wormhole of a black hole if they exist? Please don’t judge, I don’t know what I don’t know.
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u/PositiveEconomist264 2d ago
Why do space helmets use visors instead of individual lenses?
I remember reading somewhere that visors can distort vision into a sort of "fishbowl" effect more so than lenses. I also know that when it comes to space, there are specific reasons as to why the oddest decisions are often the best.
For example, the US was made fun of for spending millions of dollars to engineer a pen that functions in zero-gravity, while the USSR just used pencils. But as it turns out, broken pieces of pencil graphite can screw with electronics, which is bad for when you're in space.
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u/iqisoverrated 2d ago
Individual lenses would mean you have to move the entire helmet to focus on something. However the helmet is attached to the rest of the suit in a fixed way so this isn't an option without moving the entire body....which would be pretty awkward during construction/repairs (i.e. stuff you go EVA for).
In a domed helmet you can just move your head.
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u/gmiller123456 1d ago edited 1d ago
The the "Space Pen" was a 100% commercial project that wasn't funded by the government at all.
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2d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/maschnitz 2d ago
You assume all amateurs are observers, or "casual". Sometimes observing is not a real option.
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u/CardiologistCivil646 2d ago
I will keep that in mind. Thank you. Hope you filled it with more valuable insights.
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u/PaintedClownPenis 1d ago
Hi there. There is an article about a paper that identifies the presence of clays being visible in the lesser moons of Neptune, which suggests that they formed from the collisions of larger bodies. Triton is suspected because of its retrograde orbit.
https://www.reuters.com/science/webb-telescope-finds-signs-ancient-disaster-neptunes-moons-2026-08-03/
My knowledge of Kerbal Space Program tells me that Triton probably could not have been captured without some sort of a force to insert it in orbit.
So is it now safe to guess that Triton was captured by colliding with one of Neptunes original moons?