Category Archives: Space

Falcon 9’s water landing today

Not a splashdown, after delivering cargo to the space station, but a powered,upright landing on a floating platform in the Atlantic. You know, like in the old science fiction novels.

At least that’s today’s plan.

And if it doesn’t work, SpaceX will keep trying until it does. Because Elon Musk’s vision requires a reusable rocket-to-orbit-and-return to make its ultimate goal practicable: Mars!

UPDATE:  At 6:10 a.m. EST, Musk tweeted: “Need to investigate the upper stage Z actuator. Was behaving strangely. Next launch attempt on Friday at 5am.”

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Rule 5: Rocket Girl

RocketGirl

The Martian

Far and away the best self-published book I’ve read. The Martian by Andy Weir started out as a 99 cent indy ebook and didn’t get its current name brand publisher and hard- and softback editions until after it became an Amazon hit.

The story of an astronaut mistakenly left for dead on Mars and how he deals with it does a great job of puffing NASA, Weir obviously being a NASA fanboy. A private space consortium behind the protagonist would have been more logical than a bloated government bureaucracy. SpaceX or one of its progeny. But never mind.

I got a little tired of the technical stuff at several points but it seemed that whenever I did, the author took the narrative in a more interesting direction. Mercifully the story has almost no politics in it nor any of contemporary science fiction’s usual dystopian babble. It was also a pleasure to meet some unadulterated heroes in science fiction again. Hopefully that will become a trend.

It was amusing to see Weir pick CNN and NBC as NASA’s chief media conduits to the public. Perhaps he doesn’t know those two have been dead last in the audience ratings for more than a decade. No mention at all is made of Fox, which is number one, and whose audience is vastly larger than CNN’s or NBC’s combined.

Nevertheless, Weir’s story is an immensely enjoyable testament to the value of the individual. It’s optimistic about humanity in general and human space exploration in particular. Can we get back to it now, all these years after Apollo and the space shuttles endlessly going nowhere?

Rule 5: Wanderers

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Once more with… This is a recreation of a Martian landscape snapped by one of our robot explorers, turned to an imagined dirigible landing pad where human explorers await.

From the short film Wanderers that’s worth several viewings and reading the words from the forward of Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of The Human Future in Space. Click the pix to biggerize for more detail.

The Everlasting Itch

Never mind the stars. We have the solar system to explore.

A cool, short film by Erik Wernquist and Carl Sagan: Wanderers.

Via Instapundit

UPDATE:  More on the film from Popular Science.

Hitchhiking on a comet

67P 1

One of the many photos the European Space Agency robot spacecraft Rosetta has taken of Comet 67P, with which it rendezvoused last week.

It later dispatched a tiny lander to the surface, which unfortunately landed in a shadow preventing its solar panels from drawing enough ultraviolet to power its batteries for drilling samples and examining them. A good reason for stifling the green weenies and providing radioisotope power next time.

The whole encounter is a reminder of ScFi writer G. David Nordley’s good novella This Old Rock about a far-future family homesteading an asteroid to mine and sell its minerals.

Via Phase Line Birnam Wood

UPDATE:  Losing power from its shadowed solar collector the little lander is having trouble calling home. But Philae might revive itself next August when P67 nears the sun.

MORE: Stupidly, even NASA is backing off nuclear power for political reasons. But still fighting “global warming” like crazy for, wait for it, political reasons.

And more random thoughts

How different from the criminal AG Eric Holder could this Loretta Lynch (I almost wrote Lynn) person be? This “first black woman AG” (whoop-dee-do) has been on Holder’s Advisory Committee since 2010 and its chairman since 2013. Why else was she nominated and what else is she gonna do but play scandal goalie until Wormtongue retires?

After paying social security taxes for forty-six years, I’m taking my pittance of the bennies every month without any sense of guilt. I financed the retirement of the so-called “greatest generation,” and now it’s the whatever-you-call-the-latest-generation’s turn to pay for mine. The pols can fix this thing on somebody else’s back. I didn’t escape it and I see no reason why these young-uns should.

Officer Friendly certainly seems to be out of control. But it’s more likely his boss, the politician, who wants it this way. The politicos could stop all these police shootings immediately if they wanted to.

College women must be raping each other, considering there’s more of them in college than men every year.

The D.C. incompetents have been pushing this lo- or no-fat nonsense since the 1960s and pimping for pasta, potatoes and bread. In the 90s they even recommended we all eat more sugar. Of course they take no responsibility for the resulting epidemics of diabetes and obesity. Taking the blame is not their game. Instead, we always got the NYTimes quoting them that the science was settled.

I thought the proactive girl-gropers of Mexico City’s subways were bad until India’s gang rapes started blossoming. Time for the wymyn to admit how good they have it here.

FTL (faster-than-light) is fantasy. I’d settle for a working ramscoop or interplanetary beam rider and reliable cold sleep. Or a generation starship. So long as we go into the outer reaches of the solar system and, eventually, the stars.

Fart, Barf & Itch was corrupted long ago where their cross-dressing director was dressing in panties and bra. The Democrats have just upped the ante.

Prior to the Civil War, American pols routinely attacked each other in scurrilous fashion, just like they do today. Like the white-supremicist candidate whose opponents had three black children run at him in mid-sentence on the stump yelling “Father, Father!”

Wendy is such a hoot. And to think she started off being just another boring liberal trying to get elected to statewide office in libertarian Texas. Nobody expected her to become real entertainment. I hope the Dems pay her to run again and again and again. I’d even chip in a few dimes for the pleasure.