Category Archives: Space

Just another day at the office

Posted on December 10, 2018 | Leave a comment

The 16th dragon ship to rendezvous with the International Space Station has delivered Xmas goodies and “a team of space-going mice” which I’m sure will outrage PETA if they don’t make it back alive.

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Posted in Science/Engineering, Space

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November cold so far

Posted on November 17, 2018 | Comments Off on November cold so far

It usually waits in Central Texas to get cold, cold in December and then only for short periods with quick warmups. January is our winter and by mid-February it’s warming up for good.

Not this year. Freezing nights have already been here and more are expected.

No big surprise, says Martin Mlynczak of Nasa’s Langley Research Center:

Very few sunspots on the sun this year means “it could be about to get very cold very quickly…If current trends continue, it could set a new Space Age record for cold…It could happen in a matter of months.”

Oh, joy.

Via Metro

UPDATE:  We’ve been spared the snow so far. We rarely get snow.

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Posted in Science/Engineering, Space, Weather/Climate

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One Giant Flop for Moviekind

Posted on October 21, 2018 | 2 comments

“Forget The Right Stuff. This is The Neurotic Stuff. First Man drains the triumph, the exhilaration, the excitement, and the meaning from Neil Armstrong’s exemplary life in favor of a jittery, anxious, tragedy-soaked account deliberately designed to deny its audience any sense of transcendence.”

Then, the other day, the Brit actress who plays Armstrong’s suffering wife takes a liberal shot at President Trump. Thank you, dear, for saving me the price of your movie. From the bottom of my wallet.

Via The Weekly Standard

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Posted in Flickers, History, Obituaries, Space

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Space Elevator Redux

Posted on October 5, 2018 | 2 comments

The space elevator “games” of yore seem to have petered out, but here’s a new Japanese experiment that may lead to something more permanent.

“The ISS experiment, dubbed Space Tethered Autonomous Robotic Satellite–Mini elevator, or STARS-Me, was devised by physicists from Japan’s Shizuoka University. It will simulate on a small scale the conditions that the components of such a system would encounter. Cameras will examine the movement of a pair of tiny “cubesats” along a 10-meter tether in a weightless environment.”

Environmentalists probably would kill any American attempt to build one, but some other country (like Japan) might get it done.

Via Instapundit

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Posted in Blogosphere, Obsessions, Science/Engineering, Space

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Moon landing without the flag

Posted on September 2, 2018 | 1 comment

Saint McCain had a cute line about Woodstock: “I was tied up at the time” referring to his POW days in North Viet Nam.

Likewise on the first moon landing I was too busy patrolling in South Viet Nam to notice much about it. But Hollyweird’s excising of the planting of the American flag from its new movie about the event is pathetic.

As Twitter user Stephen Miller said we should be grateful they didn’t have Neil Armstrong take a knee.

Via Twitter

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Posted in Mediacrats, Space, Twitter

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Mars landing too risky

Posted on August 1, 2018 | Comments Off on Mars landing too risky

“In “Not Close Enough,“ a team consisting of NASA and international astronauts sits in orbit around Mars but doesn’t get to go to the surface.  NASA has decided it’s too risky.”

The story is from a good new book Blue Collar Space by Martin Shoemaker. Wherein NASA’s fear of losing astronaut lives is explored. That fear has crippled our space program, space lawyer Laura Montgomery argues. And it makes sense. Such that our only hope to ever land on Mars or do anything else except at great expense is with commercial space, and blowhards like Elon Musk.

Via Ground Based Space Matters

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Posted in Blogosphere, Bureaucracy, Obsessions, Science/Engineering, Space

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That first moon landing…

Posted on July 21, 2018 | Comments Off on That first moon landing…

…was actually today, Greenwich Mean Time, though to Americans it will always be July 20th. Me, I was patrolling in Viet Nam during the landing and so was too preoccupied to notice until the the next day.

Revulsion over the war and Watergate killed lunar exploration before its time. We keep hearing presidential promises to go back at some later date but we never have.

Via Instapundit

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Posted in Blogosphere, History, Science/Engineering, Space

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