January 26, 2008

Look up in the sky it's...AIEEE!!

  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 ObamaAlso, 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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