January 28, 2008
3 more names to add to the roll of honor.
Gagarin was not the first cosmonaut
The Soviet Union collapsed because, well, when you get really good at keeping secrets, you eventually start to make decisions based of bad information. The fact that the whole world knows the names of every American who died trying to reach space meant that eventually America would prevail.
Nonetheless: humanity-- all of humanity-- owes a debt to those who gave their lives attempting to push back the borders of ignorance, to enlarge the principality of human knowledge. Ledovskikh, Shaborin and Mitkov. Remember them.
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May 18, 2006
Even nasa likes my cat
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March 12, 2006
Squee!
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January 25, 2006
Another new planet found
New planet discovered in Milky Way | CNET News.com
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January 16, 2006
Still STL... for now!
ESA And ANU Make Space Propulsion Breakthrough
Ion Engines? That’s what TIE fighters use. Those suck. One thing at a time, I guess....
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August 04, 2005
To infinity and beyond!
Should I be studying? Yes. Should I be, if not studying, responding to Email from dear friends and family? Yes. Instead I though I’d take a bit of time to mention Mars again...
A week or so ago the GF and I caught a PBS special on the Mars Rovers. Those guys were fantastic! I mean, they had to debug their software with around a 10 minute communications lag. Fortunately there weren’t any bug-eyed monsters there, or else the lag-frag would suck.* Additionally, many of their problems stemmed from simply being unable to see what was going on; the cameras not being a quite high enough resolution. It occurred to me that the biggest problem was that there were no astronauts on Mars. How do we fix that?
First we need a presence in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). Keep the station we’ve got up there, and build a couple more. A robust enough presence would allow for tourists to book passage and even stay up there a few days. I don’t know how much you’d be willing to pay for a night in space, but I bet if the price could be brought down to US$1,500/ night (Earth/LEO round trip not included) there would be enough takers for it to be a self-sustaining industry...
After that, we’d need to build the ships themselves. While light from earth takes at least 4 minutes, I think we would need about 9 months or a year to get humans there. Bringing them back home would take another 9 months or so. Not to mention the month or two there that would be required to actually justify such a trip. So, we’d need our ships to be need self-sustaining habitats before we sent them off. Not too self-sustaining, though. Every woman in the crew would have to be put on birth control.. Men too, if we can figure out how to do it reliably...
Out of all this, humanity would get (at least!) some knowledge of new forms of propulsion, new understanding of environmental concerns. New, light-weight but strong materials would almost certainly have to be invented. And, of course, this would all be a first step towards opening up a whole fricking new planet for human exploitation...
Something else to keep in mind: the asteroid belt is chock-full of the sorts of metals and ores which are running out here on Earth. Mars would be a convenient place to base an asteroid mining operation out of...
Of course, this all presumes the willingness of some government somewhere to foot the bill. The potential benefit to such a country would be enormous. Remember: Portugal decided not to pay for Columbus’ speculative venture, Spain decided to. Spain went from a 3rd rate power to a great empire almost instantly—and stayed there for several hundred years. Which would we rather be?
*this is a video game joke...
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August 03, 2005
A planet is born!
Er, Minor Planets are Named...
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July 30, 2005
New in-solar planet found!
No, not an insular planet, and certainly not an islandar planet; we don’t yet know what it’s made of. But, yes, there are 10 planets
orbiting our sun, Sol...
This planet is way out in the back of beyond, further out even than Pluto, and any remaining hippies. No word yet on when we have any plans to go visit it, or even what we’ll be calling it...
(Hat tip: Dean Esmay
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July 26, 2005
Up up and away!
Discovery is in orbit. About frickin’ time...
The space shuttle is old, and needs replacing. However, for the moment they are what we have. And space is important...
Here is a question for all you fine folks: How much would you pay in extra taxes each year to send a mission to Mars?
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