h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Today in Gnomon's Guide:

Entry A87847375 Goldfinches

Very nice!

I'd put the Vivaldi numbers the other way round: Opus 10, No. 3.

Will do!

New today in Gnomon's Guide:

Entry A87847933 Bray Head Coastal Walk, Wicklow, Ireland

My 200th solo Entry in the Edited Guide is on the Front Page: Living on Jupiter, complete with a nifty NASA picture.

But I'm still cross with the management, so I'm going to continue publishing my own Guide. That way no sensitive people get upset by finding out I'm not entirely happy with their work, and I don't get given out to by the staff.

I've managed to write six fairly good entries from scratch in the last two weeks, as well as publishing stuff I'd already been working on.

You're doing a fine job

And yes, you're not the only one cross with the management. Let's hope change is afoot.

I've seen signs that change is indeed afoot, but I'll wait and see.

I just read "Living On Jupiter".

Themes you may want to expand on:

The four Galilean moons have orbits that conform to the Bode-Titius law, which can be re-interpreted under the approximately equal exchange energy rule; exchange energies between objects in orbits conforming to the Bode-Titius law of the same rank have approximately equal exchange energies for travel between them; for example a journey from Ganymede to Callisto has approximately the same energy cost as a journey from Earth to Mars, from Ganymede to Europa or Io respectively, the same as from Earth to Venus or Mercury.

This is something I first got onto in connection of Jupiter from a commentary by Arthur C. Clarke.

Corroborating info can be found in tabular form in the "CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics".

This is a generalized rule that apparently obtains irrespective of the size of the primary.

The moons of Jupiter can be categorized a number of ways.

Besides the Galielean moons, Amalthea, or Jupiter V, is in a class by itself, about the size of Astrea, the sixth largest of the asteroid belt asteroids, on a basis of its size it can be considered to be in the proto-planet class.

Its thought to have been formed as a consequence of an impact on Io similar to that thought to have created the Earth-Moon system by an object about of a size with Ceres or Saturn's moon Rhea.

The range in which it might have formed a stable orbit about Io against the gravitation of nearby Jupiter is so narrow that instead, it went into a free orbit about Jupiter.

Rather than having an orbit about Jupiter in octave relationship to the orbits of the Galilean moons of Jupiter, conforming to the Bode-Titius law, Amalthea has a different kind of harmonic relationship, in the 5th of the interval from Io to Jupiter.

Inside the orbit of Amalthea are a number of small moonlets thought to have mechanics similar to those of the shepherding moonlets of Saturn's rings and of course Jupiter has its tenuous ring system.

Jupiter has also a belt of asteroidal moons outside the orbit of Callisto, at least one pair of which, in exchange orbits, exchanging their orbits whenever they make their close approach to one another, are almost certainly captured objects, captured by means of the same mechanics that placed Phobos and Deimos in orbit around Mars, while some of the other asteroidal moons of Jupitermay have formed by accretion, substantially where they are.

Finally, the Trojan Asteroids, herded into Jupiter's L4 and L5 libration nodes by gravitational interaction with the Sun, include some of the largest asteroids in the solar system, some of which may be products of the accretion disk that produced Jupiter and its four major moons, some of which may have been captured from the asteroid belt or elsewhere.

There's certainly a lot to be said about the moons of Jupiter. But I don't report things unless I fully understand them myself. I'm still struggling to understand the 1:2:4 orbital resonance of three of the moons.

Given O'Neill type space colonies and Von Neuman machines, a space colonial effort in the Jovian system has possibly a better prospect of success than any where else in the solar system, though as a practical matter O'Neill type space colonies require a solid generation of high tempo work on the Moon, building up the industrial and civil engineering infrastructure required to undertake the L5 program on a cost effective basis.

Thankfully, the state of the robotics required is already up to the demands of a Lunar development program.

Another generation for the L5 program to mature, and the O'Neill type space colony becomes the basic population mover supporting interplanetary space colonization, with the advantage that once your O'Neill type space colony arrives at destination, one already has a working space colony in place and its only a matter of expanding operations.

The only interplanetary space colonization program I'd give a higher priority than opening the Jovian system is asteroid mining commenced concurrently with the L5 program, since raw materials required for the L5 program and continuing development of the Moon can be supplied more economically from the asteroids than from Earth.

Afterthought, in passing, I don't consider operations inside the orbital space of the Earth-Moon system interplanetary.

New today in Gnomon's Guide:

Entry A87849238 Sauron, the Dark Lord

I think I might have calmed down enough now to go back to writing entries for the Edited Guide.

I personally will be glad to see you back.

<BB<

Glad to hear you're feeling better Gnomon. I'll forgive them too, in time, but not while the people involved are still here and unapologetically doing the same things.

So I've thrown 11 new entries into Peer Review, on 26th Feb. Let's see how long they take to be published.

So....


I was hoping someone else would ask....


The Tolkien's Dwarves article currently on the front page.... A87838951


The illustration... is there some significance of that particular image?

I'm familiar with the pencil art of Tolkien and it's not his style....



It doesn't seem typical of the style of...


Shit!


How do I say it?



It stands out compared to most of the artwork here.



I really don't want to start another argument with the VOLUNTEER art staff!

But this looks like a teenage boy's doodle.

I apologise now!

To whoever I inevitably offend with my previous post.

But I do want to know why that image appeared on the front page.

I have to make certain compromises in order to publish entries on this site. One is that I have no control over the images put on my entries. If I do my own illustration or take a good photo, it is generally accepted. If not, experience has shown that I get some good ones and some bad ones.

This was done by Tavaron who is the Arts Editor and a Senior Volunteer.

At the moment h2g2 has 3 active artist volunteers. One of whom is me, and I'm colour blind, have no artistic ability and only originally joined as I wanted to be able to ensure that the photos I took ended up on the entries I'd written in the way I wanted. (The artist team doesn’t do the front page, by the way).
There are perhaps some pieces of artwork that some may consider to be of a higher standard than others, but I'm not going to criticise as I know I can't do better. Personally I felt Rosie's style really suited Gnomon's Elrond entry and it would have been nice for related entries to share a similar style of artwork, but sadly Rosie isn't an active artist any more. It is a shame if anyone feels disappointed by any particular image, but as far as I'm concerned anyone who feels they have talent and want to volunteer is welcome.

<BB<