Ares Boldly Goes

Ethan at Starts With a Bang has a great post up about just how spectacular NASA's first new rocket in over 30 years is. Videos of the test launch, which took place on 28 October 2009, has been circulating on Youtube:



But why spend all this money on sending humans into space, it is dangerous, and relatively pointless, and robots can do so well without us there. Well firstly there is at present a limit to what robots can do either on there own or with our help, problems such as they are generally designed with a specific purpose, where as a human in the same situation is much more versatile.

But the most important reason is that on this pale blue dot of ours there is a limited amount of resources and indeed time. At some point or another in the next 4 or so billion years that it has remaining, the Earth will no longer be able to support us and we will need to be somewhere else if our species is to survive. To that end we need to now begin the efforts of seeding the stars with populations of Humans (and for that matter cattle and grains etc. you know things that we will need to survive).

So by all means use the robots to find out where we can go and how we can get there and what we will find when we get there, but remember that the Earth is the cradle of humanity and one cannot stay in the cradle forever.

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A funny thing happened on the way back from the Moon

40 years ago tomorrow Micheal Collins in the Command Module Columbia snapped this pic of the ascent stage of the Lunar Module Eagle as they returned from the surface of the moon.

And in the couple of years following this 10 more men walked on the surface of our planet's orbital buddy, following in the historic footsteps of Armstrong and Aldrin (40 years ago today- so I will wish Tranquility Base happy 40th birthday).

Unfortunately to this day some people do not believe, for various reasons, that we never set foot on the moon (for example see here).

But one of the results of this walking/driving on our natural satelite is that we left an awful mess behind us. Descent stages of the lunar landers, flags, rovers, scientific equipment, footprints, the list goes on. One of the denier arguments goes along the lines of well if this stuff is there why can't we see it. The answer to which is that it is too small.

That is until now. Recent photos taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), which entered orbit around the moon in the last few weeks has a camera with enough resolution to quite clearly see that which we left behind. Many more details can be found here on the NASA site. These photos are awesome, I mean just look at this:
You can even make out the path the astronauts took to set up the scientific experiments that they left behind. And the good news is that these photos were not taken at the final mapping orbit of the satellite and hence are not at the fullest resolution that the onboard camera will be able to see. So keep a look out there will be more and better photos of these sites as the LRO mission continues.

Thanks to Starts With A Bang and Astronomy Picture of the Day for the links

Update: oops got my dates wrong again - for some reason the 19th always sticks in my head but the lunar landing happened on the 20th.

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Today in history

There is an interesting conjunction of events in history today.  Three of the most important events have all happened today.

1. It is Cosmonauts Day (none of this lame Yuri's night stuff).  1961 saw the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin, a Russian cosmonaut orbited the Earth once, propelling himself into history and ratcheting up the Cold War's space race.
2. 1981 the Shuttle Columbia made its maiden flight, the first reusable space craft.  And this lovely little truck, and its cohorts, have  served space flight quite well in the intervening 28 years (although not with out mishaps).
3. AND most importantly, with out a doubt the biggest event to happen today in history.  I was born, (lol what else would I have been talking about) 29 years ago today, yep that is right and yes I do feel old but perhaps not as old as I will feel next year.

Hope that everyone has a fantastic weekend, and enjoys the chocolate.

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Out the airlock

Thanks to the Bad Astronomer for this interesting link, and note that I outlast him (though it is probably only because I am a young whipper snapper lol).

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Google is in on the Conspiracy

Google seems to be in on the Apollo conspiracy as you can see in this video from youtube

It is funny, alas if only there weren't people out there who took it seriously.

Thanks to the Bad Astronomer for pointing this out

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More bad news for Pluto

The Bad Astronomer has a post up about new measurements on the size of Eris. Remember Eris it is the one that started out as Xena and caused the demotion of Pluto. Any way it turns out that Eris is a bit bigger than Pluto so there is no way we can ever have 9 planets again.

Call it a planet if you want. It doesn’t matter that much to me — and less to Pluto itself — but you’ll be doing the object, and yourself, a disservice. And Eris is bigger anyway. Nyah nyah.

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OV-102, may she rest in peace

And from the I can't believe I nearly forgot to post about it files comes some thing that is very dear to me.

February 1 2003 (Thursday was the 4th aniversary) the space shuttle Columbia broke up on re-entry killing all seven astronauts aboard.

I have always felt a special bond with the space race and Columbia in particular since my birthday falls on Cosmonaut's Day (April 12), which is the anniversary of the first manned space mission Vostok 1 (1961) in which Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space. And what does that have to do with Columbia, on the 2oth aniversary of Vostok 1, STS-1 the first orbital test flight of the space shuttle was launched. So Columbia (OV-102) with two people on board was launched on my first birthday (1981). Of course I was only one and didn't really register such things, but looking back on it well I thought it was cool and special (ok I really am a nerd aren't I - but is that really such a bad thing) and that Columbia was my shuttle.

Also the STS107 mission was a science mission and one of the experiments was using the Isreali Dust storms Experiment camera to try to take picture of Red Sprites (to put it simply a form of upwards lightning) and to help orient themselves on the storms the made use of the World Wide Lightning Location Network (WWLLN - pronounced "woollen" as in made of wool) which was started by a now retired member of my research group and is a project that we are still much involved in. So I hade multiple connections to this tragedy

So like I mentioned February 1 she broke up on re-entry, killing all seven of the crew, so if we could take a moment to remember Brown, Husband, Clark, Chawla, Anderson, McCool, Ramon. And please give me a moment to mourn my shuttle.

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