February 13, 2008
via...via...via
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February 03, 2008
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February 02, 2008
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January 26, 2008
Ai Tanabe or anyone in Debris Section...where ARE you?
Oh joy....
..... The satellite, which no longer can be controlled, could contain hazardous materials, and it is unknown where on the planet it might come down, they said. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the information is classified as secret. "Appropriate government agencies are monitoring the situation,"
Great....we can't control it...its chock full of secrets and might contain hazmats...like the Pueblo and Luv Canal...but from space. depending on how it comes down, the Luddites could have a field day with this....yeesh.
"Oh CHINA!? Have you any of those nasty ASATs lying about that we could ...ummm....borrow...for just a few minutes?"
What next?
Oh...Mutant Super Cockroaches from Space...thanks for that clarification...
Actually, aside from these B-Movie aberations, there is still a lot of non- scary space news right now....
Inspired by the recent pictures from the Messenger probe The Planetary Society does some back of the envelope calculations regards the need for sunglasses on Mercury and comes up with some surprising answers. As I am a geek, this inspired me to look up this silly article...which is nevertheless interesting in that it points out that humans might indeed oneday walk even in that inhospitable place. (the odds are better than for Venus anyway).
Out of the Cradle reviews a new book The Moon: Resources, Future Development, and Settlement and finds it quite worthy.
There should be no partisanship in a space post but as this is primary season and everything is hysterically political Rand Simberg dreams of what he wants to hear from a presidential candidate. Last Friday, Gulliani came closer to Rand's ideal than most (though he was even closer to Dr. Strangeglove...which, I suppose, is fitting). Over at The Nutroot Cafe' Ferris Valen continues with his excellent space related dairy, despite the dispiriting Space Policy outlined by Obama. Also, at the same Webnode, his fellow Kossak Bill White promises to explain what a "progressive" would do regards space...but instead makes some very good observations and suggestions...(I'm bad...I know...I'm sorry...)
Partisan snarking aside, both are good posts and Ferris's diary is generally a must read go there and scroll.
Of course the BIG news lately has been the unveiling of White Night 2 and Spaceship 2 designs.
More here, where one is directed to this Flight Global piece which points out that the system is fully capable of launching a one man capsule into orbit (and presumably satellites as well). While there is no indication that this is being pursued by Virgin galactic, Jon Goff recently had related (and detailed) thoughts along those lines here.
UPDATE: There is much more space linkage at the 37th and 38th installments of the Carnival of Space.
UPDATE2: Via Instapundit, comes this list of just about all the curent "Alt-Space" companies.
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December 29, 2007
More on the COTS story here , here, here and here.
Rocket Girls are actually the Rocket Girls.....no endorsement of this editorial opinion by Mook Animation should be inferred from this post.
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December 03, 2007
Over at Encyclopedia Astronautica, Mark Wade has compiled a story that has almost everything.
The US Coast Guard
Icebreaking
The Cold War
Space Capsuels
Garbage Bombing
...and Ramming Speed!
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November 05, 2007
Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes,
'Twas his intent.
To blow up the King and the Parliament.
Three score barrels of powder below.
Poor old England to overthrow.
By God's providence he was catch'd,
With a dark lantern and burning match
Holloa boys, Holloa boys, let the bells ring
Holloa boys, Holloa boys, God save the King!
Hip hip Hoorah !
Happy Guy Fawkes Day to any and all British Brickmuppeteers!
Art from Wikipedia (uncredited)
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October 07, 2007
There is certainly a sense that despite everything, we may finally be on the cusp of restarting the adventure that was so foolishly allowed to end after the above picture was taken by the Apollo 17 landing party.
We often hear about parallels between Space and the American Frontier, but we aren't the only pioneering culture with aspirations to space. This Aussie article looks at the similarities that may come out between the colonization of their continent and the settlement of the heavens. (HT: Clarke Lindsey)
Finally, the new Carnival of Space is up!
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October 03, 2007
An excellent overview of the events leading from WW2 to Sputnik1's launch can be found here in a recently added page at Encyclopedia Astronautica.
Also, is a good overview of several official PRE(!) Sputnik designs from the US and Germany, going back to 1947 which were quite technically feasible for the day and would have worked too if not for a lack of vion in the USAF...and interservice rivalry which inspired the USAF to kill a navy program they didn't want to do themselves.
feh...
Nor was their a cornucopia of foresight on the USSR's end, for despite official propaganda to the contrary, the Soviet leadership was very unenthusiastic about the whole endeavor. The only thing that caused it to happen was the persistence of several visionary engineers and the fact that they convinced the leadership that the size of the R4 launcher would enable them to throw a small satellite into orbit with no additional development cost....and right it off as an extreme range test. Almost as an afterthought a scientific satellite was designed but it was not completed in time (that was Sputnik 3) Indeed the Sputnik 1 itself contained no scientific instruments, it just beeped....(HT Lileks
But it beeped from space, where no manmade thing had ever been and it
caught the imagination of the world....and scared the Bejeezus out of the US, as the ability to reach orbit implied global reach...with atomic weapons. The US began a crash program to catch up to the Soviets....that program was Vanguard.
A bit later the US decided to embark on a program with rather less "crash" and Explorer 1 (which the Army could have launched in 1956 if not forbidden to) finally made a tardy appearance in orbit. It even managed to discover the Van Allen Belts (as it did more than beep).
The launch of the Sputniks incited a frenzied fit of federal meddling in education from which the US educational system has never recovered, but it also showed that the surly bonds of earth can be broken and opened the way to the stars. 12 years later, inspired in part by this 185 pound beep machine, Americans landed on the moon!
Woot!
Now 50 years on, we don't seem to have made as much progress as many of us would have hoped, indeed we've made negative progress since 1972, but the point of today is to remind us that space was conquered ...
50 freaking years ago!!
So it's not that hard.
The heavens still beckon. It's time to answer their invitation.
There's a great roundup of Sputnik Day posts at Rand Simberg's place.
Some additional perspective below the fold:
more...
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September 27, 2007
Hat Tip: A Babe in the Unuverse
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September 23, 2007
One of the Brickmuppet's crack team of science babestm reports on several posts from around the 'sphere regarding the development of the final frontier....Clarke Lindsay does a nice sum up of critical infrastructure technologies that are under development and seem likely to come to fruition to fruition in the short term.
The lists big missing technology bit of course, is any real push for space nuclear power. There is some work being done for the Prometheus Project but that is now a fairly low key program.
For what it's worth, I strongly agree with the sentiments of John Goff and others regarding the importance of developing orbital-propellant transfer technologies. This is absolutely vital to moving forward in space.
Via Colony Worlds comes this link to an article on NASA's current Moon buggy plans. It provides the below picture of a proposed NASA lunar buggy, which is really a mini mobile base.
The external mounted suits are interesting. They seem to be designed towards minimizing the astronauts exposure to lunar dust. This is a problem that has been getting some attention of late. The suits would "dock" with the habitat and the astronauts would enter and exit through a rear torso hatch minimizing dust entry.
In the long term given extensive infrastructure a vastly superior Bio-Suit might be worn under coveralls but this affords very good dust protection.
One idea for shielding early explorers from cosmic rays and solar flares is to put shelters in caves. NASA has now discovered some on Mars (or at least rrrreelly deep holes).
Regards safety, space ships need space lifeboats, but given that spacecraft
today are rather minimalist affairs, an escape system carried by them will tend to be more so....HERE is a selection of wacky, but possibly workable ideas from the '60s regarding how to get to Earth from space in a pinch...If any of the non capsule ideas work, I predict thrill junkies will be doing them voluntarily in 20 years
Regards current explorations, the Babe in the Universe posts on the recent flyby of Iapetus and links to Sir Arthur C. Clarke's video presentation commemorating it. Sir Arthur is one of the true greats of both science fiction and science fact.( I'm ashamed to say that I'd not realized until this that he'd been stricken with polio.)
Here is a .gif of film taken the little moon during the flyby.
Finally, the latest Carnival of the Space Geeks is up with lots more links to space related stuff.
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July 31, 2007
Cool!
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July 27, 2007
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One of the Brickmuppet's crack team of science babes reacts to a couple of nigh unbelievable news stories from NASA. First, a computer intended for the ISS was sabotaged, yes, sabotaged ! Note that it did was not a vital component but this is the first case in the history of the program and a damned shame. What sort of waste of skin does that?But that's not all at no extra charge, our intrepid researcher finds that it is alleged that NASA astronauts took off drunk, yes drunk, no they are really saying that the astronauts flew drunk!
Note that at least one of these incidents involved a NASA astronaut on a Soyuz flight. IIRC the Russians take a nip before their flights so this may have been "diplomacy" of a sort. At any rate an American on a Soyuz would be a passenger. Still not good at all and the report concerning the T-38 flight is terribly worrisome.
BUT WAIT THERES MORE!!
There is embezzlement too!
A former NASA employee is accused of stealing more than $150,000 from government coffers, according to a report released Thursday.
Elizabeth Ann Osborne, 52, who resigned in October after 31 years at the space agency, pleaded guilty to embezzling public money as part of an agreement made with the U.S. Attorney's Office on July 17, Local 6 News partner Florida Today reported.
Good grief!
And finally via NasaWatch comes this partial list of explanations for $94 million in missing stuff...
Explanations Provided for Equipment Loss in Which No One Was Held Accountable
Equipment description - Equipment value (dollars) - Explanation provided
Desktop computer and laser printer - 4,855 - My wife needed a computer at home to perform her work as a real estate broker so I checked one out from the surplus stock available. I turned the computer back in when she was done using it but never received a receipt.
Laptop computer - 4,265 - This computer, although assigned to me, was being used on board the International Space Station. I was informed that it was tossed overboard to be burned up in the atmosphere when it failed.
Various missing property, 65 items - 850,321- A thorough and reasonable search was conducted but we were unable to locate the missing property. In general, the missing items consist of older equipment that has been replaced or is no longer necessary for standard operations.
Source: GAO analysis of NASA's fiscal year 2006 equipment loss reports.
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July 25, 2007
control her glee as she reports from Costa Rica that scientists in San Jose have achieved an impressive breakthrough in VASIMR plasma engines.SAN JOSE, Costa Rica (Reuters) - Scientists in Costa Rica have run a plasma rocket engine continuously for a record of more than four hours, the latest achievement in a mission to cut costs and travel time for spacecraft.
More on Ad-Astra rockets, the company involved, here. A discussion of this story (which is actually from June) is going on at Nasa Spaceflight. VASIMR or VAriable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rockets are plasma thrusting engines of fuel efficiency comparable to ion engines, but they have the ability to be throttled and vastly increase thrust for short periods. While this is not enough thrust to launch a rocket from earth it gives certain advantages over ion engines in speed and keeps the long endurance, constant thrust advantage of the ion engines. More on these interesting rockets here, here and here.
The fact that the founders of Ad Astra Rockets had to leave NASA to pursue this is dismaying, but their perseverance does seem to have paid off!
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July 20, 2007
And we haven't been back in 35 years....
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July 17, 2007
Cool news on the spacesuit front. L.Riofrio reported back on the 4th about rather exciting developments in the area of true skinsuits.
Now Clark Lindsay has some additional links.
"A current prototype of the suit consistently exerts pressures of about 20 kilopascals on its wearer but newer models have reached pressures of up to 25 to 30 kilopascals, which is about one-third that of the Earth's atmosphere and the target for spaceworthy BioSuit, researchers said. A fully functional suit could be made ready for spaceflight in about 10 years, they added.
At the heart of the BioSuit is mechanical counter pressure, which uses tightly wrapped layers of material that are both flexible and protective to the astronaut inside. The suit's layers are wrapped in a meticulous fashion -- based on three-dimensional maps of the human body in motion -- to provide structural support while maintaining mobility, researchers said."
This could revolutionize EVAs and space travel in general.
(Giant space slugs and laser pistols still on drawing board)
Art is, of course, by the great Wally Wood from the cover of Weird Science Fantasy #11.
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June 24, 2007
Art by Glenn Andrian of Altiz Studios.
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June 17, 2007
...The Daily Kos!?
Its a great post and looks like it will be an ongoing feature there. It is so good and generally pro-manned space and entrepreneurship that one wonders why he's a diarist at Kos....
...Oh.".BTW, a warning if you want to respond to Mark Whittington in the comments section - he is firmly of the belief that liberals/progressives/Democrats who support manned spaceflight, space development, and space colonization are freaks of nature, despite plenty of other evidence."
Ah...that explains it...total denial of the lessons of history.... :-P
Sorry Ferris, Whittington is right...(another "end times moment")...you are a freak of nature. There is no evidence that liberals/progressives/Democrats (who BTW generally are none of the above) are good for space or tech progress in general. They are too interested in hurting the successful and funding their well intentioned but counterproductive Ponzi schemes.
The idea that "we must solve all problems on earth before we go into space" is very much a mainstream one in lefty circles, The Dems in general....with the single exception of Edwards...maybe...seem to really dislike manned spaceflight. This has been true since the Mondale wing of the party took over and began attacking Apollo. It applies doubly to nuclear power and irradiated and genetically modified food. The left is in no way the friend of technological progress. *
Nevertheless, Ferris Valen, you are a worthy and welcome aberration and I salute you!
Partisan snarking aside, this really is one of the better space linkfests I've seen. I even agree (shudder)with several of his editorial points, as such, this is heartening proof that people on the utter opposite sides of the political spectrum can actually find common ground about things more substantive than restaurants and TV shows.
That this is such a surprise is a sad commentary on our times. This is how a Republic is supposed to work.
(A Democracy....not so much...but that's a post for a different time.)
*NOTE: As this blog leans to the right, there will, of course, be absolutely no mention of Leon Kass and and company.
Update: Kirk Sorensen points to another sign of the end times...a pro nuke Kossack......The end times are surely upon us... I must organize my MRE's and duct tape.
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June 15, 2007
Go check it out!
Illo, is by the late, great Ed Emshwiller for Heinlein's Have Spacesuit Will Travel.
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