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March 25

Pediatric Anesthesia

Would a pre-school child undergoing a diagnostic lumbar puncture (spinal tap) procedure in a NYC hospital during the years 1954-6 typically have been given anesthesia for the procedure? If not, when did anesthesia start being routinely administered to children having such procedures? Did the medical community at that time acknowledge that pre-school children felt pain?```` — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2607:FCC8:9C4B:3500:8548:1AF5:FDDD:D935 (talk) 00:25, 25 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I think that the problem is not whether pre-school children feel pain or not but that any anesthesia has its own risks especially in children. Ruslik_Zero 09:01, 25 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

On the contrary, the existence of pain in babies has been a subject of much debate. As the article details, attitudes have changed a great deal. Based on our article, I think the answer for the OP's question is likely "No", though they have neglected to provide a specific jurisdiction. Matt Deres (talk) 02:10, 26 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Let's clarify that we're talking about local anaesthesia. The decision is whether to give one needle to numb the pain of the second needle, or to use one needle for the procedure on the theory that one can be quick enough to obviate the need for anaesthesia. Pre-verbal kids tend to respond just as poorly to a needle loaded with local anaesthetic as they do to the spinal needle. In general, you'd be using lidocaine, which only went on sale in 1948, so perhaps was not very widespread in use by 1954. It would be interesting to know when lidocaine began being added routinely to lumbar puncture kits. - Nunh-huh 16:08, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Newby Island

How much garbage in all (by weight) has been dumped in the Newby Island landfill? How much of it is estimated to have completely decomposed? 2601:646:8A00:A0B3:D957:1488:1878:1C03 (talk) 09:02, 25 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Consider using the search engine at the EPA's website. In just a few seconds, I found case studies, permits, site overviews, ... even a full-length book A Case Study of San Jose's Municipal Waste System (1973)...

Surely if you spend a little effort searching, you can find the exact data you seek. One item of caution: big, old sites like this have multiple (perhaps dozens or hundreds) of permits, so the records might be scattered across dozens of listings spanning decades. It may be a full-fledged archive research effort to distill all the history into one summary number.

Nimur (talk) 13:44, 25 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Why will the largest optical telescope stay 10 meters for over 3 decades then jump to 39?

In fact two 30-39m scopes and a 24.5m will open in 2024-27. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 14:19, 25 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Because no body built them yet? --Jayron 32 14:20, 25 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

To put it simply: it took a long time to find somebody to pay for a new telescope; and even after that, the cost is only one of many difficult obstacles that had to be resolved. You can read the long and storied saga of Thirty Meter Telescope in our article. These are expensive and unique instruments, and their technical parameters (including primary aperture) have to be very strongly justified.

Why build a 12-meter telescope if we already have a 10-meter telescope?
What do we plan to see with 30 meter apertures that we could not see with 10- or 20- meter apertures?
Will a very large ground-based telescope see better or worse than a smaller-sized orbital telescope?
Why should we use visible-spectrum light to study deep space in this century?

...These are the kinds of difficult scientific questions that actually have pretty good answers. You can download the TMT Press Kit, containing FAQs and response summaries, plus cool photos.

Nimur (talk) 15:55, 25 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

One problem is that a single large lens or mirror will tend to deform under it's own weight to a significant degree, meaning it's optics would change whenever it is moved into a different position (see Hubble_Space_Telescope#Flawed_mirror for an account of how a tiny deformation can cause image distortion). The new solution is to be "...segmented and consist of 492 smaller (1.4 m), individual hexagonal mirrors". Of course, all those mirrors will require electromechanical controls to adjust them, and presumable an AI program to figure out how to constantly re-aim each individual segment to optimize the image. These are not trivial advances. SinisterLefty (talk) 18:30, 25 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Keck I has 36 mirrors. Though maybe 9-15 times the area is more than proportionally more difficult, with 14-22 times the mirrors needing to be controlled 3-4 times more accurately and more than 3-4 cubed the materials being suggested by the square-cube law. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 20:39, 25 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I can think of several possible systems for adjusting the mirrors:

Set each mirror to a precise position based on detailed calcs and devices which measure the current position within nanometers. Don't use any visual feedback. These adjustments could be made during the day, perhaps with minor fixes needed to counter temperature changes at night.

Use visual feedback, say by aiming at a known target far enough away to qualify as an "infinite" focal point, and adjust each mirror until the image is closest to the target. This method could be complicated if adjusting one mirror means the other mirrors then need to be adjusted to match, requiring many iterations to perfect the image. Perhaps a target like a crater on the Moon might work, but the Moon is of course only visible part of the night, and presumably these adjustments couldn't be made during the day, even if the Moon was visible. And aiming the telescope at a new target may require more fine-tuning of the individual mirrors.

Same as above, but use the actual target for the night to calibrate the mirrors. Here the problem would be the lack of a reference describing what the image should look like. Some images, for example, may actually be blurry, due to a gravitational lens that isn't focused right on Earth, clouds of gas between us and the target, etc., and trying to make those images appear sharp could yield interesting results.

A combo of the 3 methods might actually be used, in the order above, to increase the image precision at each step. Dynamic changes in the atmosphere during the calibration would also make the focusing problem more complex. Adaptive optics may be of interest here. SinisterLefty (talk) 23:05, 25 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

They make an artificial star with a sodium laser maybe something else for infrared and tell the software to keep that laser dot sharp. There's a low density layer of sodium atoms or ions in the mesosphere from lucky sea salt molecules that got high enough to be split by UV. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 01:43, 26 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hubble is near 30 years old and has a 2.4-meter (7.9 ft) mirror. The James Webb Space Telescope has one of 6.5-meter (21 ft).

Its "only" for infrared tho but that offers to actually find allot more. Forget earth based telescopes. Pray for JWST. --Kharon (talk) 23:25, 25 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

If it ever happens it'll be one of the most useful scopes ever. Don't forget diffraction-limited sharpness per meter is better at smaller wavelength though. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 02:17, 26 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Infrared is nice if you want to study Kuiper belt objects, clouds of dust or high-redshift galaxies, but there's a lot of interesting stuff to see in visible and near-ultraviolet too. The main advantage of large telescopes is that you need a shorter integration time to gather sufficient light. If you're observing rather static dust clouds, that's nice as you can observe more of them in your allotted observing time (but it would have been easier to get four times the observing time on a telescope half the size). If you're observing binary white dwarfs it's a different matter. To see anything interesting, the integration time must be only a small fraction of the time scale on which their spectral features change, which is the timescale of their orbital period. And of course, these are blue. Short integration times are most important when observing fast phenomena, which tend to be most visible in short wavelengths.

The diffraction limit of a larger telescope could be interesting, but in contrast to radio telescopes, big optical telescopes are usually limited by seeing. Adaptive optics help, but are never perfect. PiusImpavidus (talk) 16:28, 26 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Using a mirror that can be adjusted to compensate for deformation under its own weight is called active optics. We've got an article on that. PiusImpavidus (talk) 16:28, 26 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Another method that might be considered is to use many smaller telescopes, digitally capture each photon, then combine them into an image with the combined light gathering power of all of them. This could have many advantages, such as being more fault tolerant (say by dropping images where clouds passed over), less expensive, averaging out atmospheric conditions if the telescopes are widely spaced, etc. Even amateur astronomers could contribute. SinisterLefty (talk) 00:01, 26 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

What you're re-inventing is called Astronomical optical interferometry. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.200.138.194 (talk) 00:42, 26 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Which is much easier in radio waves, they can see astounding detail with a virtual radio dish the size of the Earth. If tech ever advanced enough to do this with infrared and light in space the resolution would be stupifying. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 02:02, 26 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

In radio and submillimetre this interferometry with separate detectors is done, but it's important that you collect the light as an electromagnetic wave, not as photons (obviously, the light is both at the same time). If you collect the light as a bunch of separate photons, losing the phase information, you can no longer combine them to do interferometry. You can still stack them though, and that's often done, in particular by amateur astronomers, to get useful results from relatively cheap equipment and poor sites. PiusImpavidus (talk) 16:28, 26 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the "stacking" method is what I was talking about, since that method doesn't require precise measurement of the distances of each telescope from the others. Thus you could combine info from thousands of telescopes all over the world. SinisterLefty (talk) 10:08, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Ha! That sounds surprisingly similar to a NASA research proposal I once ...um, read. If only I could find some way to distribute and control a billion network-connected cameras to a billion different locations around this planet, ...

Competitive, creative computational astronomers: the applications are open for 2019... "How might we use data fusion and emerging super-resolution techniques...?"

Nimur (talk) 16:35, 29 March 2019 (UTC) [reply]

Because it didn't jump top 100 meters. Count Iblis (talk) 01:27, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

March 26

Could multi-primary displays be cheaper if only 3 primaries were used at once?

Could a multi-primary color display be made significantly more affordable than current models, if each pixel were allowed to use only three primaries at once? An example might be an LED pixel with two fixed-wavelength LEDs for red and blue, and a continuously-variable-wavelength "green" that could become yellow or cyan. Neon Merlin 22:54, 26 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

See Gamut for an explanation of how the colors a display can show are limited by its (usually three) primary source colors. MPC displays can promise only a small expansion of the gamut from a triangular to a quadrilateral area of the Chromaticity space at the expense of adding a fourth source color. There would be associated costs in exploiting any small advantage because existing color coding and transmission standards are based on, and optimized for tristimulus Color models. There does not appear to have been invented a single continuously-variable yellow-green-cyan LED so it's impossible to say how it could be economical in a display; that is unlikely because color-tunable LED products generally consist of multiple fixed-color sources. DroneB (talk) 23:58, 26 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Is there some evidence that adding a fourth primary is actually likely to significantly add to the cost anyway? I'm not aware of any. While I'm aware of techniques like PenTile matrix family to reduce cost, and I'm not saying the addition of a fourth primary is going to be completely free, I'm not convinced that a four primary display will actually cost significantly more than a three primary one if anyone actually bothered to properly research and produce them on the scale of current displays.

The problem is the "if". No one is likely to bother because our as DroneB says the entire ecosystem is built around 3 primaries. Sharp Quattron has shown it doesn't seem to offer any significant marketing advantage either. So there's no reason why someone will bother. It makes much more sense to concentrate on other things like the Wide colour gamut and high dynamic range in ITU-R Recommendation BT.2020, all of which are still based on the three primary model.

I mean it's possible someone will decide using more than 3 primaries will be a cheaper or easier way to offer WCG and/or HDR than other alternatives, but that's a complicated question [1]. And more importantly reflects both that as things stand everything is still based around 3 primary colour models and that adding a fourth probably isn't likely to be a big expense in the grand scheme of things.

P.S. To put things a different way, if you want a really cheap display with more than 3 primaries, this will probably involve 4 distinct primaries rather than some fancy tunable primary. And regardless, the 'cheap' part is going to come from some manufacturer producing and selling them in the same manner they do 3 primaries i.e. the same scale and not marketing them as some fancy "super" display. If that happens, I suspect the price difference will be minimal.

Nil Einne (talk) 03:54, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The article about Quattron touches on the probably the biggest reason: all sources typical consumers use supply only three-color data, because everything in the chain from the origin camera to the TV uses it. The display cannot show colors the video source doesn't know about. We'll either have to wait for wider-gamut data or come up with a reliable, realtime, automatic process of the sort of colorizing a black & white movie. 93.136.77.149 (talk) 04:03, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Isn't that mostly what both me and DroneB just said? (Except for the realtime/automatic bit.) Nil Einne (talk) 04:07, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

March 27

Electrical engineers, do you know what this is?

Just saw this on user:Smallbones' page, who seems to be as baffled as I am as to its purpose. SpinningSpark 19:14, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like a model of a Tesla coil, although the individual turns of the coil are too large and the sphere is too small. Furthermore, it should not have a sharp protrusion on top. — Joe Kress (talk) 19:24, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

It does have a power connection, so it clearly does something other than being a model, even if that something is just a fancy street lamp. SpinningSpark 19:33, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for pointing that out – I failed to inspect it magnified. But the wire is green which means a ground wire with no power, implying that it is protecting the structure from becoming accidentally electrified. This in turn implies that it could become electrified if lightning strikes it or it is internally electrically powered by a black (hot) and white (neutral) wire within a (hidden) conduit. It doesn't seem to be too large given the size of the ground wire. — Joe Kress (talk) 19:55, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The second possibility seems unlikely because a green ground wire is normally bundled with its associated current-carrying wires. Thus it does not appear to be electrically powered – the ground wire only conducts the remote possibility of lightning current safely to ground water. — Joe Kress (talk) 20:36, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Oh gosh. You know why it's green? It's powering a landscaping floodlight on top and those are often green to blend in!!!--TMCk (talk) 20:54, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Retraction: It does indeed have ~~a quad~~ two misaligned (amateur?) brown duplex power outlets at its base with a green power cable (not a ground wire) drawing power from one outlet for something atop the sphere. ~~Another green power cable without a visible plug is near the sphere.~~ Thus it could be fancy power outlet shaped like a Tesla coil. — Joe Kress (talk) 21:38, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

OK, the bottom has a standard weatherproof US electrical outlet. It gets power from somewhere, probably a buried line. Plugged into the outlet is a standard US extension cord or power cord that is colored green. It looks like the extension/power cord powers a small Edison-base flood-lamp on the top. It's pretty obvious that the outlet was done by a professional and the cord/lamp was added by an amateur. I doubt that the lamp will still be functional after a PA winter.

The big sphere looks older than the rest. I would guess that the sphere is painted metal and that the rest was added later. I am guessing that the ribs under the chicken wire are a large flexible hose -- maybe a dryer hose? The chicken wire is a mystery. Maybe someone is planning on adding stucco later? --Guy Macon (talk) 21:37, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Look at the highest resolution version and zoom in on the small brown disk right below the topmost black ring. You can see where the plastic of the ring is deformed. The problem is that it looks like that brown disk is a bolt and large washer that was added and painted after the plastic part, so there goes my theory about that part being added later. --Guy Macon (talk) 21:44, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

You're closing in. BTW, the black hose is a corrugated drain pipe. There are other uses than drainage for it like in concrete work and a local said that stonework supposed to be added at some point.--TMCk (talk) 21:53, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

It's really ugly. Is it incomplete? Some sort of brick or stone cladding still to come? Andy Dingley (talk) 22:37, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

As I said according to the local there "would be stonework built around it". See the image description on commons.--TMCk (talk) 23:00, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I'm still clueless on this. If anybody is really, really interested I could get all the way out there in a few months and take another photo and maybe ask around a bit more. Here's a wild guess that doesn't answer anything - it's a meeting point, just someplace to mark a notable place in a small former company town where almost every building looks alike. It will likely be stone clad by now - that will set it off from all other structures in town. And maybe the electrical outlets are to provide electricity for a small town picnic or somebody playing some music on the "boulevard park" where it's located (probably 1st St. and Terrace Boulevard, Google Street Maps photos are older than my pic). So in short, an ode to individuality in a town where everything is the same. In hindsight, that's what attracted me to it. Then again, it might just be a thingamajig. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 00:31, 28 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The soon-to-be covered corrugated pipe suggests some sort of function. Note the holes at the top (below the sphere) -- seems to be some sort of venting device -- dressed up to look funky. —2606:A000:1126:28D:8459:15B0:EDB2:9940 (talk) 03:31, 28 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

This seems plausible - the town is in anthracite country in Pennsylvania, and it is conceivable that someone could be mining the better part of a mile under the earth there. Wnt (talk) 05:03, 28 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I can't help with the answer, but if "at the top (below the sphere)" is referring to the holes in the conical part, they could also just be for screws that mount that part to the cylinder below. --76.69.46.228 (talk) 19:49, 28 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

What I'm intrigued by is the little, sort of horn-shaped, thing at the very top. There seems to be a whitish area above it in the image, but is it something emitting light or is it part of the nearest cloud? And there seems to be a tiny place in the rim where light looks like it's spilling over: presumably there's a little nick there. Is there a little light bulb in the horn shape or what? --76.69.46.228 (talk) 19:49, 28 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I decided to see if I could find the exact location of the picture using Google Street View imagery. It was an interesting challenge since we were only given the name of the town and, as noted, a lot of the houses look alike. But it's quite a small town and I did find the location, only I think it might be considered inappopriate if I posted the exact coordinates here. Let's just say it was near the middle of the northeast half of the town's built-up area.

Anyway, it turns out that the Street View imagery of the area is dated June 2012, and at that time there was also a thingumajig in the ground at or near the same location. But what it looked like in 2012 was a cubical box, about 1 foot (30 cm) wide, on a post maybe 2 feet high. The post looks like a rod or pipe driven vertically into the ground, with a white sheath around most of it, as if for insulation or for visibility. The box is a streakily discolored gray, either old wood or metal that was painted long ago; and there appears to be an opening along one bottom edge, with a wire connecting it to the post.

I like the suggestion that it has something to do with what's under the ground... my outright guess is that it's somehow for monitoring gases being released. --76.69.46.228 (talk) 20:21, 28 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting guess. Near my location (in Hampshire, England), a few similar corrugated pipes (without any top or electrical connections) appeared in the turfed-over area around some newly built houses on the edge of town, which I'm fairly sure were to vent any methane (etc?) gas generated in the vegetation and soil that had been ploughed up, flattened and covered over – for a couple of months I could smell the gas when I walked past. It seems reasonable that in a similar situation someone might want to actually measure the amount and or composition of the gas. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.200.138.194 (talk) 12:27, 29 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Turku

Maybe it's one of these? These are all over Turku in Finland, but not Helsinki. Never did find out what they are. Andy Dingley (talk) 21:17, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Most likely just a barrier to protect the corner of the building.--TMCk (talk) 21:22, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Nope, they're everywhere. Even some at the side of the road, amongst trees. Andy Dingley (talk) 21:48, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Got a picture of those among trees?--TMCk (talk) 21:56, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Ok. Now that (new pic) is weird and tumbling my mind.--TMCk (talk) 22:54, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like those poles will stay a mystery for us unless some smart Fin elaborates here.--TMCk (talk) 23:13, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Found the answer here by the person who designed them! These are apparently ventilation pipes maintained by the district heating system, made to look good. Abecedare (talk) 23:19, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, nice find! And if that's what they are, it's interesting that ones of different heights would be side by side, as per the first photo. --76.69.46.228 (talk) 04:21, 29 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

They are just crying out for googly eyes.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 11:52, 29 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I know what they are. Be afraid. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 20:10, 29 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, they are Daleks, but dormant in order to lull humanity into a sense of complacency. Once they have increased to sufficient numbers, they will awaken and destroy all unsuspecting humans. (They are near roads, since they move on wheels, and roads makes that far easier.) SinisterLefty (talk) 20:53, 29 March 2019 (UTC) [reply]

March 29

Pink lakes

This BBC article states that the pink color of the lake in Melbourne's Westgate Park is caused by Dunaliella algae; however, the WP article classifies it as green algae. What causes the bright pink pigmentation? And, are these lakes where Pepto-Bismol comes from? —2606:A000:1126:28D:84A8:1E5E:5535:59A2 (talk) 17:22, 29 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Beta carotene is also present in green algae. Since that's what makes flamingos pink, it seems likely to play a role. If the other pigments in the algae, chlorophyll a and chlorophyll b (both green) and xanthophylls (yellow) are somehow suppressed, then the color of the beta carotene could be expected to show, much as tree leaves change color when the chlorophyll disappears in autumn. I'm not sure what would cause this in the lakes, however. SinisterLefty (talk) 20:14, 29 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

This covers some of their biology. Note that they can survive in salt concentrations up to the point of saturation. (They can grow better at lower salinity, but other organisms outcompete them given the chance) They do have chlorophyll in addition to their pink pigments (beta carotene and canthaxanthin. It says in the Dead Sea "red beta-carotene rich types" of D. parva are never encountered. I am sure there is more to this story (strain and environment dependence of beta-carotene and other pigment production) that I don't know; but there are a lot of other papers about it. Wnt (talk) 23:43, 29 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

"Green algae" is a taxonomic classification. It doesn't mean that all such organisms are necessarily colored green. Land plants evolved from green algae, and if you want to be strictly monophyletic you could say that all land plants are a subgroup of green algae. Indeed, this grouping of the green algae and land plants together is one increasingly-accepted formal taxonomic definition of the Kingdom Plantae: this group may also be referred to as the "green plants" to be more explicit. --47.146.63.87 (talk) 00:18, 30 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

See Pink Lake (Western Australia)#The science behind pink lakes. Dolphin (t) 02:03, 30 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks y'all for the interesting info/links. —2606:A000:1126:28D:84A8:1E5E:5535:59A2 (talk) 06:03, 30 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

March 30

SETI jamming?

Have any studies been performed to determine whether ETIs' radio signals that SETI would otherwise detect are being jammed by other ETIs, as e.g. two warring alien species might do to prevent each other from allying with humans? Neon Merlin 20:25, 30 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Do you mean scientific studies? And would the answer be no? SpinningSpark 21:57, 30 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

How would one even study that? If someone is actively and successfully trying to block us from picking up a signal, then we won't have picked up a signal. --OuroborosCobra (talk) 23:28, 30 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

If they are fighting over something, it won't be about us as we're insignificant to ET. Count Iblis (talk) 00:51, 31 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

How far could the Space Shuttle go if?

you made it go as far as it can without ever reaching orbit velocity, the Karman line or whatever the exact Karman line for the Space Shuttle would be? (<100km since the wings are small to save weight?) How much more range could it get launching from the highest point on the equator instead of the equator at sea level? Would max-g forces or landing harshness be higher than usual? If there was an extremely long runway where it can't glide no more that is. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 22:02, 30 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The shuttle launched straight upwards and I'm pretty sure it would have been well past the Karman line by the time it reached max velocity. I don't know what the highest altitude on the equator is, but if you can find it, you can calculate the delta-vee straightforwardly (h=½gt²). As for issues of landing in case of not reaching orbit, see the novel Shuttle Down, which was scientifically accurate enough that NASA used it when working on contingency planning. 67.164.113.165 (talk) 23:19, 30 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I was thinking of using it as an airplane instead of a spacecraft. A pointless waste of fuel but what ferry range could you get? Would you want to level off at a cruising altitude of almost 100km and speed of almost orbital velocity and use only enough throttle to maintain speed then dump the tank and glide? I think they throttle down the engines when fuel loss lowers the mass:thrust ratio enough for full power to reach 3-5 G's, would max range require increasing this G force? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 01:20, 31 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

As for altitude limit I've heard the empty orbiter could reach geostationary transfer orbit but the service ceiling is ~960km for some reason. GTO might be too much radiation for its shielding but what's wrong with 1,000?Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 01:26, 31 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

It seems like the Shuttle ought to be able to follow a course that stops short of the Karman line and ends in as stable an orbit as can be accomplished at that height. Beyond that point, I think you could guesstimate how rapidly its orbit decays from that height (though a very advanced simulation would be need to determine the exact atmospheric drag) and how much extra fuel it could have on board (especially if no payload is needed) then figure out how long you can keep boosting the orbit? Not very useful to know, of course, unless the Earth has been taking over by giant bureacratic cockroaches from outer space and their police are shooting anybody flying over 100 km in self-defense. Wnt (talk) 03:18, 31 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

March 31