Category Archives: Space

Look, up in the sky

Posted on August 6, 2009 | Comments Off on Look, up in the sky

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As usual, astronomers are predicting more Perseid meteors than usual. Unusually, for a change, they may be right. According to Spaceweather.com: "A filament of…dust [from Comet Swift-Tuttle] has drifted across Earth’s path and when Earth passes through it, sometime between 0800 and 0900 UT (11 – 12 am CDT) on August 12th, the Perseid meteor rate could surge to twice its normal value…The [above] profile is based on…debris stream models…"

A useful reminder (for those of us who live under the urban halo) that we live on a planet, which is rotating about a thousand miles an hour (at the equator) while trucking five hundred forty million miles around Sol at about sixty-seven thousand miles an hour. And don’t forget that Sol is moving around the center of the Milky Way galaxy, while the galaxy itself is just one of many, widely-separated "islands" drifting through the black of intergalactic space.

Funny, I don’t notice any unusual motion. Do you?

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Space Elevator Games

Posted on August 5, 2009 | Comments Off on Space Elevator Games

The helicopter that was to hoist the one kilometer cable "beanstalk" for the entrant "crawlers" to climb has proved unable to hold the thing taut. So the games that were to have started today at Edwards AFB in California have been delayed "at least" a month. Pity. But it was an ambitious plan. It ain’t rocket science. It might be harder.

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Posted in Science/Engineering, Scribbles, Space

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Where are the space aliens?

Posted on August 2, 2009 | Comments Off on Where are the space aliens?

One of the favorite games of Mr. Boy’s cub scout den, especially in the woods on camping trips, is to each get a stick and go hunt for aliens. Not the illegal sort, but the outer-space variety.

Most of it, of course, is spurred by Star Wars and similar epics. But it’s not as if scientists haven’t given it some thought. In fact, a lot of thought. For instance, the SETI program.

Three good essays on the subject are here, here, and here. I think they’re out there but, like most of the humans and the aliens in Poul Anderson’s Starfarers, they may well have long since turned inward in favor of exploring themselves.

Via Instapundit.

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Posted in Library, Mr. Boy, Science/Engineering, Space

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Falcon 9 moving along

Posted on July 29, 2009 | Comments Off on Falcon 9 moving along

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McGregor, TX (July 29, 2009) – Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) announces the successful completion of qualification testing for the Falcon 9 launch vehicle first stage tank and interstage. Testing took place at SpaceX’s Texas Test Site, a 300 acre structural and propulsion testing facility, located just outside of Waco, Texas. [First stage is green; interstage is black; this is the bird that will service the International Space Station when the shuttles are retired.]

UPDATE: But I’m opposed to government handouts for these and other commercial ops. We can see how well that worked for NASA, whose proposed Ares 1–whose capsule spacecraft is a throwback to Apollo and doesn’t even have an airlock–already is seeking more tax billions.

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Posted in Science/Engineering, Space, Texana

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Falcon 9: It is Rocket Science

Posted on July 25, 2009 | Comments Off on Falcon 9: It is Rocket Science

The first launch of SpaceX’s heavy lift vehicle, Falcon 9, may be delayed until fall, but its Falcon 1’s orbiting of a Malaysian sat ten days ago was a plus. Fun to have their Merlin engine test facilities just up the road in McGregor, southwest of Waco.

Might not be if they were rattling our windows, but they don’t do tests very often. Since their founder Elon Musk is the co-founder of PayPal, I hope my use of that service helps SpaceX, too. Falcon 9 was designed from the start to fly a four-man crew and service the International Space Station once the shuttles are retired.

Good luck, guys. It might not be in your plans but I hope you can beat the Indians and Chinese to the moon.

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Horsehead Nebula

Posted on July 23, 2009 | Comments Off on Horsehead Nebula

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Interesting that this configuration has been out there since the late Nineteenth Century.

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Starfarers

Posted on July 20, 2009 | Comments Off on Starfarers

This was my first Poul Anderson epic novel and it’s a dandy. I see why he’s one of scifi’s revered masters. As previously mentioned about some other such books, the Amazon reader-critics are pretty harsh, for such reasons as it being hard to keep the saga’s many characters straight.

That’s inane. It’s easy to flip back a few pages to remind yourself, and the story is worth the effort. The tale’s overarching idea, that most of humanity eventually becomes bored with space travel and retreats to study itself, is a shocking thought. Then you remember how we landed on the moon on this very day and forty years later what do we do? Except for our robots (and their contribution, however limited, certainly is worthwhile) we’re not even exploring the solar system, let alone the stars.

UPDATE:  Indeed, fifty-one percent don’t even want to go to Mars. Sigh.

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