Category Archives: Space

Adios, Voyager

Thirty-six years after it was launched, the Voyager 1 robot spacecraft has left the solar system and entered true interstellar space: the first known human-made object to do so.

“Voyager has boldly gone where no probe has gone before, marking one of the most significant technological achievements in the annals of the history of science, and adding a new chapter in human scientific dreams and endeavors,” said John Grunsfeld, NASA’s associate administrator for science in Washington.

Voyager: into the interstellar darkness, continuing an intrepid voyage of discovery that could last for billions of years.

What if Earth orbited Saturn?

At the same distance we are from Luna (our moon), that is, which is 384,000 kilometers away. A cool video animation, with disinterested drivers in the foreground, gives you an idea of what it would look like.

Of course, the drivers could not be blase about the earthquakes and tidal waves such a thing would cause every minute of every day. Stuff that would make the lying Gorebot (James Taranto: “The guy has more whoppers than a Burger King”) and his climatechange pals look reasonable by comparison.

Via Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub.

Bezos’s WaPo buy

All I can say is that the $250 million Amazon’s Jeff Bezos paid is pretty cheap for such a famous brand, which illustrates just how far the newspaper biz has fallen since Monster and Craig’s, and the Web in general took away their classifieds for job, car, real estate ads, etc.

Will it change WaPo content from super-Liberal Democrat to something more conservative? Probably not, since Bezos is said to be a big Democrat contributor, possibly even to Obongo himself with whom he has lunched. Probably just a lot more of the same, though we might expect more private space industry coverage, with less snark about it. For a little while.

Most likely Bezos, who knows nothing about the news biz, just wanted a tax write-off to protect some of his wealth and the WaPo will disappear in a year or so. I hope this isn’t bad news for the one or two folks I know who used to work there and still get their pensions from it, but it looks like it is. I’m going to file this under Obituaries because I’d bet that’s where it’s headed.

UPDATE:  Breitbart News reports the WaPo had lost 87 percent of its value in the past ten years. Not terribly surprising, given:

“Over the years, the fake fact checks, the apparent coordinating with the Obama campaign to destroy Romney, the phony smears leveled at Republicans, the non-stop pushing of leftist causes, the unforgivable stealth-corrections, the laughably biased polls…”

Maybe Bezos can use it as a straight press release factory for the White House.

Yipes: Fossil fuels are greening the planet

Hey, wait a minute. Aren’t fossil fuels and the Greens quite distinct? Isn’t the former the nemesis of the other? Isn’t the so-called runaway greenhouse effect and, uh, its attendant global warming, supposed to create deserts at least as far north as Minneapolis-St. Paul?

Hmm. Instead, it seems, vegetation up there (and even farther north) is growing like mad. More plants, more trees, more grass. Well, these things do take in CO2 in order to grow, and so, taking in the CO2, they are, indeed, growing. Duh.

UPDATE:  The Gorebot didn’t get the memo, or, more likely, he got it but didn’t want to read it as it conflicts with his plan to raise taxes. And, naturally, Obutthead is still leading with his behind. As what they’ve left of our economy dies, get ready for the new Ice Age.

Happy Berth Day

The Dragon robot spacecraft docked (or berthed) with the International Space Station since Sunday morning March 3rd, which owner Space X (which tests its rocket engines just up the road from the rancho) trumpeted in its news release as being “thrilled to bring this capability back to the United States.”

The Russians, of course, have doing automated resupply to the ISS for some years, though the Dragon supposedly will be able to return lots more stuff when it recapitulates the old ocean splashdown routine last seen in the Apollo days, March 25 off Baja, California.

Grasshopper’s latest leap

SpaceX seems determined to develop a vertical takeoff and landing space rocket system, just like the ones in the old science fiction stories and movies.

In its latest test, just up the road from the rancho (note the ubiquitous Texas water tower), their Grasshopper rose to 80 meters on a tail of chemical flame, hovered for about 30 seconds, and then made a safe controlled landing. The controlled landing is the important part.

Here’s their good video of the event, set to the tune of an old Johnny Cash favorite. Note the cowboy-hatted figure on the base of the rocket, before the launch and after the landing, meant to represent Cash. Fire-proof, no doubt. Faster, please.

Asteroid message: Colonize Space Or Die

“Asteroids,” tweeted astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, “are nature’s way of asking: ‘How’s that space program coming along?'”

We could start with the moon. That’s easy pickins’, comparatively. And a much smaller target.

Via Instapundit and his latest column at USA Today.