Total lunar ecplise Saturday evening won’t hardly be visible at the rancho, beginning as it does in daylight and ending about dusk. But you folks on the east coast and in Europe will enjoy it. Directions and more here./Sky & Telescope photo by Richard Tresch Fienberg.
UPDATE The Brits liked it, anyway.
Comments Off on Lunacy
Posted in Science/Engineering, Space
Tagged 2007, March 3, total lunar eclipse
Back in the early 80s when the shuttle was new, and enthusiasm for the world’s first spaceship was at its highest, it occurred to me that, for all that, it should probably be named "the spaceship that can’t fly in the rain." Though it took more than twenty-six years, it has finally lived up to the name.
"The space shuttle Atlantis’s planned March launch has been delayed to late April so technicians can repair extensive damage to foam insulation on its fuel tank caused by golf-ball-sized hail."
It’s a good thing the shuttles are going to be scrapped. Let’s hope the new ship is hardier.
More good, if a few trifle far-fetched, reasons to return to the moon, by former moon astronaut Buzz Aldrin who recalls looking back from its surface in 1969 to "…the cloudy blue ball that should only be mankind’s starter home." The plan is to put the base at the moon’s south pole, where there is some evidence of water ice and more shelter from the sun, and rotate astronaut teams in and out every six months. Top of the far-fetched list, it seems to me, is beaming solar energy home, but the argument’s at least as interesting as the space elevator. /NASA
Via Instapundit
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Posted in Science/Engineering, Space
Tagged Buzz Aldrin, Moon base, NASA, solar energy, space elevator
Orion again. It is winter, after all. This is part of the nebula’s cloud complex, imaged by a telescope in Hawaii. It’s not visible without a big telescope but it’s to the left and just below the belt of three stars in the constellation. So when you look at the strider and his belt, think of this/ Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope.
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Posted in Space
Tagged Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, Orion Neubula cloud complex
NEOs, or Near-Earth Objects, are well known to astronomers who generally believe there is very little chance of them hitting the planet. Earth simply is too small and the solar system is too vast. Places like Meteor Crater in Arizona are notable for being so rare. But now scientists who study NEOs have a candidate for worry: Apophis, a 250-meter (750 feet) wide asteroid weighing an estimated twenty million tons might strike in 2036. Former moon astronaut Rusty Schweickart wants the hapless, corrupt and dictator-dominated UN to mount an effort to do something about it. Fat chance. At least there’s plenty of time to talk about it, a form of "action" for which the UN is famous. Some sort of talk might be a good thing. Even if Apophis isn’t the size of the object that is believed to have killed the dinosaurs, and even if the odds are it would fall in one of the oceans that form most of the planet, it could still do a lot of damage to coastal areas.
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Posted in Science/Engineering, Space
Tagged Apophis, asteroid, NEO, Rusty Schweickart
When the shuttles began flying in 1981, I thought it was the beginning of the real exploration of the solar system. Instead, most of the money went to support those low-orbit flights. Now that a return to the moon is the next plan–along with retirement of what remains of the expensive shuttle fleet–I have to wonder if there’ll ever be enough money for it. It would certainly be a better investment, as this NASA article explains:
"’We need to set up shop on the Moon for one clear and understandable reason,’ he concludes. ‘The Moon is a school for exploration.’"
The Helix Nebula in infrared, 700 light years away, in the constellation Aquarius./NASA
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