News and Commentary on Space
The clouds and greenery (such as it is) distract from the impression here, but the geothermal taps at Krafla struck me as looking a lot like the infrastructure one might expect to see near a settlement on the Moon or Mars. The offworld resemblance wasn’t only in the incompletely-terraformed appearance of the landscape.
This sounds a lot more intriguing than it probably is:
US military’s top secret X-37B shuttle ‘disappears’ for two weeks, changes orbit
Since then, the X-37B been arguably the least-secret secret project on the planet, as fellow backyard astronomers joined in the scrutiny, aided by how-to video guides and apps such as the Simple Satellite Tracker.
That is, they did until July 29, when the shuttle disappeared, causing all kinds of consternation and conspiracy theories about its fate.
It took amateur skywatcher Greg Roberts of Cape Town, South Africa, who noticed that it failed to appear as scheduled above his base on August 14, another five days to find it.
When he did, he noticed it was some 30km higher and on a different trajectory, according to calculations from other colleagues in Rome and Oklahoma.
The X-37B’s new track means it takes six days to pass the same spot on Earth, as opposed to its original four-day track.
So it can maneuver, which is interesting but not unexpected. The hype, though, made me think of an old short story from Analog, Jerry Oltion’s “The Getaway Special”
A certified Mad Scientist invents a hyperdrive which can be built out of spare parts and can instantaneously teleport an arbitrary spherical volume of space and all it contains into a vacuum…
Because he’s immensely rich from having invented the perfect battery, he hires space on a Space Shuttle to test his drive – in a Getaway Special shuttle experiment canister – and tests it by taking the shuttle and crew on an unanticipated jaunt.
Heh. If only.
A slightly-marsified version of one of my Iceland pics, from the wastelands near Emstrur.
It was easy to see why NASA sent Apollo astronauts to train here.
Finally getting the time to post more of my Iceland pictures on Flickr. Aside from the clouds and the sparse moss, one could picture a vista like this on Mars:
As I upload the pictures, I’m also adding any especially un-Earth-like shots to a separate set which I will publish here later. The set will include some shots I got of various geothermal installations, which (like the landscapes) look an awful lot like what I would expect some of the industrial parts of a Mars settlement to look like.
I don’t know why, but I like this. If I were independently wealthy, I could see myself doing quirky things like this.
Looks like someone’s got both Orion and Dragon beat…
[via Gina]
If James Cameron is so passionate about restoring the 3D camera to MSL/Curiosity, then…instead of lobbying, and urging, and taking his concerns to the NASA administrator, why didn’t he just pay for it out of pocket?
I don’t know that he didn’t, or didn’t offer to do so (the article doesn’t say), but it seems like the obvious thing to do for a guy with a passion and a couple billion dollars in the bank. Indeed, a sponsorship arrangement with NASA would have been a coup for both. Trade Cameron the rights to market the resulting imagery in exchange for underwriting the camera, let him produce a theatrical 3D documentary using it, and both win: Cameron cleans up at the box office, and NASA gets a great PR and education/information outreach opportunity.
I’ve already got the camera – if only I had the time to do the rest.
Amazing pictures of Earth captured by one man, a balloon and his compact camera:
Space enthusiast Robert Harrison managed to send his home-made contraption 22 miles – or 116,160 feet – above the earth’s surface from his back garden.
He used GPS tracking technology similar to an in-car sat-nav to follow its progress – and an attached radio transmitter to find it when it parachutes back to earth.
The photos taken by his device were so spectacular that Nasa has been in touch to see how he achieved it.
Mr Harrison’s budget of £500 might also offer inspiration to the new UK Space Agency, which launches on April 1. Based in Swindon, with only one astronaut and a budget one 50th the size of Nasa’s, it will be looking for cut-price ways to reach for the sky.
Mr Harrison first got the idea to explore space after a failed attempt to take aerial pictures of his house using a remote control helicopter.
The pictures are pretty impressive. What’s really amazing about this, though, is that he didn’t get nailed by the aviation authorities for doing this. Or that the police didn’t arrest him under the 2004 Terrorist Act for “suspicious” or “antisocial” photography.
…if there’s something going on, geologically, with all these earthquakes lately. And now, a volcanic eruption in Iceland to add to the list:
Scientists are flying over southern Iceland to evaluate whether it’s safe for people to return to their homes after a volcanic eruption. Saturday night’s eruption of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano — which is located near a glacier of the same name — shot ash and molten lava into the air and forced nearly 500 people to evacuate their homes.
The Telegraph link above has a gallery with some great pictures of the volcano and surrounding area (be sure to check out the volcanic smoke ring in image #9). Oddly enough, I just made a reservation for a hike near that area in July, and decided against the two day extension that would have taken us over the mountain pass east of the glacier (and quite near the volcano, as I understand it). Lucky choice, as it turned out.
On the other hand, Iceland is rich in geological “Oh crap!” possibilities, and just about everything we plan to see there is in some manner susceptible to sudden volcanic or tectonic cataclysm. Which of course makes it all the more enticing.
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