Talk:2883: Astronaut Guests

Bot's down so i took the liberty of making the page myself someone, i guess^{(talk i guess|le edit list)} 03:12, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

The bot isn't actually down. I think you just saw the comic before it did! —theusaf (talk) 03:37, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

If that's the case i find it really weird that Randall posted at *checks time* 10:40 PM... uncharacteristically late upload from my experience, assumed bot was down someone, i guess^{(talk i guess|le edit list)} 03:47, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Dining room is 50 meters long? ----Bob thé Farmer----

I don't think that's how long they were over the dining room, but how long they were over the property. 172.69.247.56 16:35, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

It is quite curious that this comic was published exactly when an italian wannabe astronaut (twice discarded by ESA) finally managed to get into outer space by having the italian armed forces pay for his ticket, so now he's on ISS as a *guest*. Of course it's impossible that Randal was hinting at this, but it's an amazing coincidence. --172.71.114.175 17:26, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Noting in the Explanation that the length of the ISS solid angle 'area' is going to be a footprint slightly smaller than the stated size of the ISS (not by much, as it isn't really that far up, compared with how far the centre of the Earth is down, but it will be smaller. Also that (by my own from-first-principle calculations - please do check my stated working assumptions given in the relevent Edit Summary, or just do it yourself from scratch) slightly over a fifth of the Earth's surface never gets to experience the ISS being directly overhead. I was going to enumerate the sort of 'general chance that any given point at any given latitude might have the ISS above it', perhaps then to shove overflying speed (assuming zero eccentricity - which it pretty much is), compared with any given proportion of a surface latitude (assuming zero Earth oblateness - even though it is certainly a little bit, even at first approximation). But that seems overkill to actually Explain. Though I think it will make an interesting graph of +/-latitude vs overlfly 'timeshare' so I'll perhaps do that for my own entertainment momentarily. 172.70.86.67 20:34, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Alright, who's going to start trying to narrow down the specific places where this comic could be set, assuming a reasonable definition of "dinnertime" and "mid-August"? Not it. Reschultzed (talk) 16:49, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

If anyone is interested, his guests that day would have been ISS Expedition 32: Gennady Padalka, Sergei Revin, and Yuri Malenchenko of Russia, Joseph M. Acaba and Sunita Williams of the US, and Akihiko Hoshide of Japan.172.69.247.64 17:13, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

Someone needs to make a calculator for this. I need to use this statement but I also don't want to be flat out wrong. Like, enter in a GPS coordinate and you get sets of dates the ISS was overhead and who was in it. 172.69.140.184 18:14, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

I think both the energy measurements should be in either kilojoules or megajoules, but not both. I had to re-read that back and forth a few times to sort out the decimal shifting.RandalSchwartz (talk) 21:03, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

Interesting how these things evolve. The original comparison was with a baseball at 100 mph (fastball; 0.17 kilojoules), comparing object of somewhat similar size, and for which "kilojoules" seemed the most informative unit. That comparison was replaced with the truck/lorry on the freeway, objects of similar energy, for which megajoules is the most informative unit ... but the edit retained the original kilojoule figure for the bottle. It's all good. 162.158.91.47 05:03, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

I see I'm not the first person to think a program to calculate this might be cool. Jsnider3 (talk) 15:03, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

"...the station was apparently "over" for a ground distance of between 53.9 m and 55.7 m (177 to 183 feet). That would imply quite a large property..." That doesn't really imply anything about the size of the property, because property size, which implies an area measurement, depends on more than just a linear measurement. A rectangular property with an aspect ratio of 3:1 would be about 10000 sq ft, just under a quarter acre, a little more than 900 sq m. That's a very typical property size (and shape) for a single family home. Hardly "quite large". 172.70.110.68 16:19, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

A rectangular property with a 3:1 aspect ratio, which seems would be about 10000 sq ft, or under a quarter acre. This is not a particularly large property for