Notable Posts
Scenarios
"What Earth Would Look Like with Saturn's Rings" is a YouTube video that gives Earth its own ring system. It provides views of the planet and rings from space ... but then takes it a step further and shows what the rings would look like from the planet's surface (a thin edge rising through the sky on the equator, a wide band near the poles). Very, very cool.
According to CNN, thirty-two new planets have been discovered outside of our solar system, bringing the grand total to 400. I've got to say that as a science fiction geek and space enthusiast, I love that we live in a world in which we've confirmed the existence of so many exoplanets. I can't wait until we reach the next stage: identifying terrestrial planets with Earth-like atmospheres.
According to Reuters.com, NASA's Ares 1-X rocket -- the proposed successor to the space shuttle, and a scaled down version of the rocket that could return the U.S. to the moon -- is being rolled out to its launch pad. It's scheduled to be launched on October 27th and you can be sure I'll be near a computer to watch a live stream on that day. I can still remember Columbia's maiden launch, and if this rocket (and its descendants) really do return us to the Moon, the asteroids and Mars, then this launch could be every bit as monumental.
I should note that I'm not personally in favor of a renewed moon program; given the end game of reaching Mars, it seems to me that deep space missions to near-Earth asteroids are a better use of resources (especially given how asteroids and comets have a nasty history of actually hitting the Earth, where as the Moon is ever-so-slowly getting further away from us). Sinking trillions into a moon won't bring us any closer to Mars, and it certainly won't help with the deep space experience we need to actually get to Mars.
Regardless of its initial destination, I'm sure that the launch is going to be one hell of an impressive display ... and there's no way I'm missing it.
NASA is retiring the space shuttle fleet in 2010 and is actively looking for museums and other organizations interested in displaying one of the historic spacecraft, according to this CNN article. They don't come cheap -- NASA is looking for $42 million for mothballing and transporting one of the orbiters. Engines not included; you'll need to buy those separately.
No, I'm not talking about those Space Balls.
NASA will be landing the truck-sized Mars Research Laboratory on Mars in Fall 2009. If the Swedes have their way, the gigantic rover will be accompanied by a number of ball-shaped probes that will roll around the larger probe. The idea is that the balls can go places the rover can't, and that their round shape will prevent them from getting stuck.
It all reminds me of the probes that used to orbit seaQuest DSV (yes, I used to watch seaQuest). Sure, we're talking sand instead of water, but it's the same basic idea, and very cool either way.
Bulky space suits are so 20th Century. This is the 21st and those with enough cash can book suborbital tourist flights and round-trip visits to the International Space. So why hit the final frontier wearing yesterday's rags? This article on CNN discusses how the embryotic space tourism biz (which I'm sure will come out of hibernation just as soon as folks can afford its sky-high prices again) could inspire future fashions.
One of the exceedingly cool things about living in the time we live in is this: some of the really hardcore science fiction ideas of the past 50 years are becoming technically possible. Now they may not be practical, but I find it amazing that we can seriously contemplate building something like a space elevator.
This article on CNN talks about a world-wide conference being held in Japan this fall to discuss the feasibility of such a project. As the article states, the space elevator was first suggested by Arthur C. Clarke in his novel The Fountains of Paradise in 1979. It's shown up in other novesl since then; the most memorable one I can remember is Kim Stanley Robinson's martian space elevator in Red Mars (a technological feat made easier by the Red Planet's lower gravity; the elevator's fall from orbit during the Martian revolution is one of the book's most amazing scenes.
This is just so damn cool (and by cool, I mean insanely geeky). NASA and the U.S. Chess are sponsoring a match between, well, the world and the International Space Station. And the really cool part? The moves are being chosen in part by elementary school kids. Here's the deal. The chess team at Stevenson Elementary School in Bellevue, Wash. is facing off against the crew of the ISS. Each day the kids pick four possible moves to make, then the public votes on which one should be sent up to the space station. The crew replies, and the process starts all over again.
What blows me away is that the elementary school has a chess team. When I told Jordan about that last night, her eyes lit up, and then she said "I don't think my school has a chess team, or my teacher would have told me about it." To which I replied "Maybe they do, and they just don't know that there are kindergartners who play chess." I told her to ask her teacher about the club, but I think I'll have to follow-up on that one myself.
Google is launching a virtual stargazing program called Sky. It will allow users to explore millions of stars, and will support layers for things such as views from the Hubble Space Telescope. One has to wonder how long it will take the Trekkers to start mapping out Gene Roddenbury's universe in this thing...
Three people were killed after an explosion during an oxidizer test at Scaled Composites this week, two yesterday when the explosion happened, one today from complications afterwards. Scaled Composites is the company that won the X-Prize for the successful sub-orbital flight of its spacecraft, SpaceShipOne. The crew had been testing engine components for SpaceShipTwo, the private craft being built for Virgin Galactic, the suborbital spaceflight arm of Virgin Atlantic.