Space & Astronomy
Exploring "Why" questions about Space & Astronomy
480 articles
Why can’t UN peacekeepers/soldiers fight if things start to escalate?
The UN only commands peacekeeping missions if both sides in the conflict consent. To get that consent the UN often accepted rules of engagement prohibiting peacekeepers from shooting except in self-de
Why could the fuel tank for the NASA shuttle launches not be reusable when the rest of it was?
The fuel tanks were comparatively very inexpensive, so there wasn't much reason to reuse them. Rockets and orbiters are high tech and big bucks, but the fuel tank was basically just a big can full of
Why a random people allowed to make and sell products on websites such as Etsy, eBay that are already real brands, e.g. Minecraft, Starwars?
They aren't. The issue isn't with them being "allowed" to infringe on trademarks and IP, but rather in companies asserting their rights and policing their IP. Think of etsy/ebay like youtube.
Why all the planets are turning in the same direction
They dont (referring to planet rotation). Venus, Uranus (and Pluto) rotate clockwise, the rest rotate counter-clockwise. When the solar system was first forming, it was nothing but a giant cloud of du
why do planets shine brighter than stars in the night sky?
Planets are much smaller than stars, but that is offset by their being a whole lot closer. They don't generate their own light, as stars do, but they are close enough that the sunlight they reflect to
Why aren’t the Joint Chiefs five star ranks?
Because the joint chiefs don't individually control everything. They each have control in their respective branches, but they still have to coordinate with each other. On the flip side, the president
Why do unplugging things and plugging them back in cause them to start working again?
Basically software can have small errors in it. Or hardware can occasionally error. One common problem is memory leaks.
Why do spacecraft need to travel to space using rockets instead of just using a jet engine to rise at a gradual incline like an airplane?
Jet engines, by design, requires air from the atmosphere to work. Rockets work by bringing oxygen in tanks, so it can burn in space. Having two types of engines, would add lots of additional weight, r
Why do we plan in colonising the Mars, but not the Moon?
Once you accept that any colonizing is within the realm of science fixing at this point: Mars has visiting much closer to earth's potentially. It has water (albeit frozen) a decent amount of gravity (
Why do computer games need to “restart to apply new settings” after changes are made by the user rather than applying them to the current session?
Those settings involve things generated during initialization, while the game is loading up for the first time. If they could simply be changed on the fly, they wouldn't need you to restart, but some