Asteroid Gault Grows a Tail

That's cool you caught that! That's pretty awesome.

Very cool!

So...what you're saying is that Gault is actually a giant monster with a big tail, a la Godzilla, and not an asteroid at all???

Dr. Musgrave is great about publishing astronomical alerts as soon as they happen. I've booked time on a telescope in Australia for tomorrow to try to observe this asteroid.

You the man

get pics please !

That's the plan.

Shocking! Electrically that is.

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Probably just a geese with a feathery tail that it likes to preen occasionally

Does this mean mutating asteroids?



Excellent find ... Please share pics when you get them!! scratch that ... I read further posts.

Last Edited by DDan> on 01/09/2019 11:03 AM

One of the key technologies for making the inner Solar System accessible is nuclear-thermal propulsion.

We tested a nuke-thermal engine back in 1971 that produced approx. 5 gigawatts of power. It was the size of a 55 gal. drum. I actually had dinner with some of the Los Alamos scientists who were involved including one guy who got hit with radioactive debris when the engine exploded. The dinner was in 1984, and he was quite healthy.

His colleagues thought the incident was quite funny.

The asteroids have enormous quantities of water which should be one of the easiest substances to extract. Using water as the propellant in nuke-thermal engines will provide specific impulse of about 460 sec. By separating and liquefying the hydrogen from the water, a nuke-thermal engine with H2 propellant can achieve about 900 sec. Isp.

900 sec. Isp means we have easy access to the Main Belt asteroids. You could land on Mars and take off again without refueling.

The colonization and industrialization of space is coming.

Ad astra

If it grows a head next, we screwed!

NTR's would really open doors for manned spaceflight. If my math is right, a 470s hydrolox ship in earth orbit would need a propellant fraction of about 60% to go to Mars (4.3 km/s delta-V), whereas a 900s NTR could do the same job with a propellant fraction of only 38%. That's a huge difference.

Who is Asteroid Gault?

From OP article:
"It has been suggested a collision or impact is reponsible for the tail. Ongoing observation of the phenomenon should be undertaken to understand its nature. "

Wonder if we shot at the Gault Asteroid with the "Gault" Gun?
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Instead of looking at the asteroid shouldn't you be looking at what it perturbed in the collision and what it's doing?

It is amazing that this SF novel was written in 1952. They were using nuke-thermal engines that utilized thorium reactors.

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However, equations don't lie. Just using the near Earth asteroids, we could extract enough H2O propellant to open up the entire inner solar system. Farther out in the Main Belt, there is

The Timberwind project back in the 1980s could have launched a single-stage-to-orbit vehicle using NTR.

BTW, that was the first SF novel I ever read. I was hooked and probably read at least 3000 SF books.

Anecdote: When I was a newly minted engineer at Rockwell's STS Division in 1983, Reagan made his "Star Wars" speech.

The VP of Advanced Engineering got 150 of us troops in an auditorium and plaintively asked, "Does anyone in this room know ANYTHING about space weapons?"

I raised my hand and said, "YO".

Less than one year later, we flew the first SDI laser experiment on the Shuttle (my idea) and had a contract. My early work led eventually to Boeing's SDI Integration contract (Rockwell Aerospace was acquired by Boeing).

I earned my paychecks.

Logic dictates that the industrialization/colonization will begin with mining, smelting, and manufacturing on Luna with extensive mining of near Earth asteroids. Then, we will move on to the Main Belt.

I predicted this decades ago. The main hurdle is financial. It will take trillions of private capital to accomplish, but then we have an entire solar system of resources at our disposal.

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Will it hit us?

Panic sex, quit job, return to alcoholism on the cards?

"30"" arc of tail length. How long is that at that distance and angle?

Last Edited by MarPep on 01/09/2019 10:06 PM

My nephew is 10. If he is interested in being a space mechanic, his words, what career path do you recommend

He should begin by taking the most advanced math and science courses available while rounding out his education with history, English, a foreign language or two, and athletics. BTW, that last is critical; if you are not in good physical shape, you will not be a candidate for space duty.

He can make contacts with the scientists and engineers who will make space industrialization a reality by attending space symposia. He should join the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (they have scholarships!) as well as the National Space Society. Attend conventions to meet the space entrepreneurs.

As for an academic specialty, I would recommend Nuclear Engineering. There are few young people studying it, and it will be critical as outlined earlier.

Above all, the Dream is what motivates people to learn and achieve.

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Here's the image the telescope took today. Unfortunately the weather deteriorated so I didn't get nearly as much time on the target as I intended, but at least I caught it and its tail.

[link to theskylive.com (secure)] here it is. We are actually headed towards it at 21 km a second.