MarsBlog.net

Looks like India’s Chandrayaan I lunar probe has died, after a pretty good run.

India’s space agency ended an $82 million mission to map the surface of the moon after failing to restore contact with its unmanned Chandrayaan I craft.

Contact was lost with the probe two days ago and scientists at the Indian Space Research Organisation were unable to restore communications, said S.K. Shivkumar, the director of the ISRO’s Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network. The craft began orbiting the moon last November…

“We survived for 315 days which is a good record. Many such experiments have burnt within a month in the past,” state- run broadcaster Doordarshan cited ISRO chief Madhavan Nair as saying yesterday.

315 days.  Darned good for newcomers.

Posted on August 31st, 2009 under Indian Space, Space Science. Tags: chandrayaan, india, lunar, moon, probe, space. Comments Off

John Scalzi takes on the bad science/design of the Star Trek franchise.

I actually used to like ST:TNG when it was first broadcast. Nowadays, I find any manifestation of the franchise insufferable. Bad acting, lazy writing, trite speechifying, cross-episode amnesia re:new discoveries/innovations, Patrick Stewart, etc.

That said, I caught a bit of Star Wars: Episode I in the hotel on Monday evening. I thought it was pretty weak when I saw it in the theater, but seeing it again made me cringe over how godawful it really was. The “Ewan MacGregor Jinx” was strong with that one.

Posted on August 29th, 2009 under Entertainment, Space Technology. Tags: Entertainment, movies, Science Fiction, star trek, star wars, television. Comments Off

I’ve only had time this week to put together two comparison shots between my grandparents’ 1965 slides from KSC and my own from last week, but here they are. Unfortunately, I’m going to be too busy this coming week to do the rest any time soon – suffice to say there’s a couple more interesting ones, like LC-34 and LC-14 (with the Mercury monument).

The VAB, as seen from halfway through the turn onto the street leading into the complex. As I was driving, I had to make do with a shot somewhat further back rather than risking it during the turn with other cars present. The low office building on the right is used by the Shuttle program.

The crawlerway between the VAB and OPFs 1 and 2.  In the “today” picture, the highbay on the left is used for storage and staging of ETs and SRBs (and contained components of Ares-1x when I visited last week), and the one on the right is the “safe haven”.

Posted on August 13th, 2009 under Miscellaneous, Space Technology. Tags: KSC, photo. Comments Off

Thanks to Jon Caldara and Independence Institute’s latest video on health reform, I have now created probably the last blog post title I would have ever expected to use.

Posted on August 10th, 2009 under Economics, PPC. Tags: health reform, humor, independence institute, obamacare, oregon, rationing. Comments Off