Category Archive for ‘Space’ at ProductionNinja.com

Archive for the 'Space' Category

Good news everyone!

Published

on October 9, 2008

. 1 Comment

Stephen Hawking says that if we can make it through the next hundred years, we’ll be on easy street:

CAMBRIDGE, England (CNN) — Professor Stephen Hawking, one of the world’s great scientists, is looking to the stars to save the human race — but pessimism is overriding his natural optimism.

Stephen Hawking, here delivering a lecture in May, spoke recently to CNN about his vision of the future. Hawking, in an exclusive CNN interview, said that if humans can survive the next 200 years and learn to live in space, then our future will be bright.

Flashes of Capricorn One?

Published

Keith

on September 25, 2008

in Space

. 1 Comment

It would appear that the Chinese space program is borrowing more than just the design from the Russians, either they are waiting until the flight is already successful to tell anyone about it, or could they be faking it altogether? Or I suppose it could have been an innocent mistake…

China space mission article hits Web before launch:

BEIJING - A news story describing a successful launch of China’s long-awaited space mission and including detailed dialogue between astronauts launched on the Internet Thursday, hours before the rocket had even left the ground.

The country’s official news agency Xinhua posted the article on its Web site Thursday, and remained there for much of the day before it was taken down.

A staffer from the Xinhuanet.com Web site who answered the phone Thursday said the posting of the article was a “technical error” by a technician. The staffer refused to give his name as is common among Chinese officials.

Since it’s China and this mission is a pretty high profile event, I’m sure this “staffer” will never be seen or heard from again.

Coolest picture of the day

Published

Keith

on September 22, 2008

in Space

. 0 Comments

This is certainly the last time you’ll ever see this. It’s only the second time in history that they’ve had shuttles on both launch pads at the same time.

This time it happened because NASA is launching it’s final mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope. The Hubble is at such a high altitude that it isn’t possible for a shuttle to carry enough fuel to get to both Hubble and the ISS, so if there is a problem they have to have a second shuttle on the launch pad ready to go rescue the crew… something they’ve never done before.

h/t to Kevin

NASA’s Greatest Hits

Published

Keith

on September 18, 2008

in Space

. 0 Comments

Space.com has a top ten list of NASA’s most memorable missions

There aren’t a whole lot of surprises there, with things like Explorer I, the Mars rovers, and Apollo 11.

They also mention Apollo 8 and 13 together, since both missions involved Jim Lovell and both were pretty triumphant in their own way.

One peculiarity is the fact that they list the Challenger explosion, but not the first shuttle flight. NASA made things look so easy for so long (usually to their own detriment) that it’s very easy to overlook the fact that Columbia’s maiden voyage was the first flight where we put astronauts on a completely untested spacecraft. None of the shuttle components had ever been used in flight conditions… it took a lot of guts to strap yourself in when the pocket-protector clad rocket scientists hadn’t tested the spacecraft.

In the same vein, the most interesting thing to me is the fact that they list the Hubble Space Telescope as one of NASA’s greatest missions… while it certainly deserves a place on the list, I think that it is more interesting to look at Hubble through the lens of the upcoming service mission. This is a flight that is in fact so dangerous that NASA won’t even let it fly unless there is a rescue shuttle sitting on the launch pad ready to fly. That too takes a lot of guts, especially since all of the crew members of STS 125 have basically said “Meh, it’s part of the job.”

Space and Rocket Center

Published

Keith

on September 15, 2008

in Space

. 0 Comments

Over the weekend I was in Huntsville visiting the family, and went to the Space and Rocket Center with my Dad. The new Davidson Center for Space Exploration has a lot more to see these days… back when I saw it after it first opened there wasn’t much to see other than the Saturn V (which is obviously impressive enough on it’s own). Pictures are available in my snazzy new gallery.

Hoax-busters

Published

Keith

on August 26, 2008

in Science! and Space

. 1 Comment

The Mythbusters ‘NASA Moon Landing Hoax’ episode debuts tomorrow, August 27 at 9:00 p.m. ET on the Discovery Channel.

collectSPACE has a pretty good preview of the special. Jamie and the rest of the Mythbusters have low expectations when it comes to putting a rest to hoax speculation once and for all:

Conspiracy theories are not really a special category — maybe you can call them myths, but I look at them as an obsession that people want to maintain, like being abducted by aliens, Bigfoot and so on. You can’t really expect that reasonable evidence will change anyone’s mind if they are determined,” observed Hyneman. “Do we really think that the same government that screwed up so badly during the Watergate scandal could have perpetrated the moon hoax? Come on!”

That’s very true, and you could also look at it another way. Do we really think that the Nixon administration could have perpetrated such a huge coverup, and people would have actually kept it a secret? It seems like if there was any possibility that there was a Moon landing hoax, journalists all over the world would have been climbing out of the woodwork to prove that Neil Armstrong just took the most expensive back lot tour in history.

In space, no one can hear you flip-flop

Published

Keith

on August 18, 2008

in Politics and Space

. 0 Comments

Less than a year ago, not only was space exploration not a priority for Barack Obama (who believe it or not was already running for President at the time), but he wanted to take all of NASA’s exploration budget away and “pause” manned spaceflight. What a difference a year makes…

Human spaceflight is important to America’s political, economic, technological, and scientific leadership. Barack Obama will support renewed human exploration beyond low earth orbit. He endorses the goal of sending human missions to the Moon by 2020, as a precursor in an orderly progression to missions to more distant destinations, including Mars.

So Obama now supports going back to the Moon. He also supports extending the Space Shuttle… which incidentally would be a bad idea, there’s a reason it’s being retired and keeping it around is just a distraction. A better idea would just be giving NASA the funding they would need to just start it’s replacement more rapidly (Just for the record, that’s what McCain’s space policy calls for)… as well as involving international partners and private industry.

I’ll give Obama credit, his new space policy would actually make space exploration the priority it should be, given what Russia, China and even Europe have on the table for the future… that is, if you believe it.

Here’s my problem. There’s a big difference between a change in policy and a dreaded “flip-flop.” Let’s compare Obama’s change on space to McCain’s change on off-shore oil drilling. McCain’s position had been that he was against off-shore drilling, but circumstances changed making it more neccesary. So he changed his position.

Obama’s “new” space policy is very different. It would be one thing if he said “When I first started campaigning for President, I didn’t believe space exploration was a priority, but it’s obvious that given the way things are going in the world, it’s something we need to do”…….. but he didn’t. Instead Obama is completely ignoring his previous policy.

So who is to say he won’t do that again and decide to ignore this one?