• xxce2AAb@feddit.dk
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    3 months ago

    That or the right job application and a lot of propellant and oxidizer - but seriously, don’t do that. It didn’t end well for Icarus. Gravitationally-driven open-core fusion reactors are best admired from a safe minimum distance.

    • marcos@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      lot of propellant and oxidizer

      You can only realistically get close to one of them that way.

      You are better off studying plasma containment fusion. And that’s a fuckton of math.

      • xxce2AAb@feddit.dk
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        3 months ago

        Oh no. You can get close to any star of your choosing with only minuscule amounts of reaction mass if you start out in vacuum away from significant gravity wells - eventually. Granted, the star in question may or may not have gone supernova or collapsed into a black hole by the time you arrive, but I doubt that’ll make a lot of difference to the person doing it at that point.

        With that said, I’m not about to discourage anybody from taking an interest in fusion of the up-close-and-personal-kind. And if people aren’t into the math of Magnetohydrodynamics? Well, first off, sucks to be them, but second: Then donate to the cause to pay those who are. Fusion is fucking awesome, and we desperately need it.

      • CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social
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        3 months ago

        Even fusion constrains you to the limits of the rocket equation. Laser sails on the other hand, could let you put the bulk of your propulsion system in orbit of the sun or something where you don’t have to carry it with you.

  • stray@pawb.social
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    3 months ago

    If you learn just a little bit of math you can realize that no one else is getting anywhere near them either.

    • I_Has_A_Hat@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Next year, Voyager I will have traveled 1 light day. It will also be over 49 years old at that time. Think about that for a moment. Almost 50 years to travel the time it takes light to travel in a single day. Our closest star is Proxima Centauri at 4.25 light years away. To reach Proxima Centauri, Voyager I would need to travel ~77,500 years. Voyager 1 is one of the fastest man-made objects in existence and it would take far longer than the entire history of civilization to arrive.

      Space is big.

    • icelimit@lemmy.ml
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      3 months ago

      Only if you weight by mass. Or orbit. Or volume.

      Welp I guess on average we’re all deep fried.

  • Pearl@lemmy.ml
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    3 months ago

    And then Kerbal Space Program too had to go be a cash grab.

    At least we have kitty space program

      • MBech@feddit.dk
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        3 months ago

        I love KSP 1,but it has gotten a bit stale with the years and playtime. I was 3 days from buying KSP2 when they shut down, lucky me.

  • Lemminary@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    I thought they meant movie stars and meant you could only get near them by becoming an engineer. I’m… not that smart at certain hours of the day.

  • JillyB@beehaw.org
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    3 months ago

    I interpreted this to mean that you need to learn a lot of math in order to have a career in astronomy. I don’t think OP thought it was possible to actually go to the star and math was the limiting factor.

  • Optional@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    That’s because math is fundamentally flawed.

    Shhhhh. Don’t tell anyone, they get all upset about it.

      • nednobbins@lemmy.zip
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        3 months ago

        Kurt Gödel wrote a whole paper on it.

        He used math to show that all statements, in any language, can be expressed as math statements. He then proved that it’s impossible to create any consistent set of math statements that completely describes everything.

        • rooroo@feddit.org
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          3 months ago

          That doesn’t make it fundamentally flawed. I also can’t completely describe all muscle movement involved and yet I can walk.

          Gödel’s incompleteness theorem has to be the most overhyped thing since a certain cat. For logicians, it mainly means that “is it probable” is a valid question for prepositions that are otherwise vastly esoteric in nature.

          • technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            3 months ago

            euclidean geometry is famously complete

            Nah, euclidean geometry was not complete. Tarski didn’t come up with a complete version until the 20th century. I’m not sure how famous Tarski geometry is, but it doesn’t seem very famous in USA outside of math depts.

            this doesn’t mean that “it’s impossible to create any consistent set of math statements that completely describes everything,”

            It says far less than that: “It’s impossible for a mathematical system containing the natural numbers to be both complete and consistent.”

            In itself it has very little to do with physical reality. I think it’s more about how we think about math and then its applications.

            reality itself could be a complete system, understandable from both the outside and inside if only viewed at the right angle…

            This has been largely debunked.

            hilbert’s dream is not dead yet,

            I dunno what his dream was, but Hilbert’s program is very much dead.

        • technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          3 months ago

          That’s not a flaw. It’s one of the greatest mathematical revelations of the 20th century.

          It’s only a “flaw” for people who want to believe in some imaginary positivism. This is a popular grift under capitalism. See also the entire field of economics.

      • Optional@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        It has to do with creating measuring devices out of what we can empirically derive, and building successive generations off of those. It’s fine for our local system but by the time you get intergalactic (or quantum) with it, flaws start to propagate themselves bigly.

        I can’t reveal more at this time or Big Math will get suspicious.

    • chiliedogg@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Municipal development guy here.

      You’d be amazed how many contractors and architects have issues with stair math.