Blade Runner goodness mashed with space footage. Quite beautiful.
Space
November 17, 2009
September 28, 2009
January 09, 2009
November 18, 2008
ISS: 10 Years In Space... WAKE UP!
Slashdot reports the anniversary of the International Space Station. First put in to orbit in 1998, the ISS is proof that we can all live together in space and float above Earth watching everyone kill each other in peace. They really could use an artist on board though specifically an interior designer. Put all that science shit behind pressure sensitive panels and whatnot. You know, 2001 it up a bit.
In any case the ISS has taken some seriously amazing pictures of the Earth... you know the ball of water we live on. No seriously, look at all this water. And L.A. looks so bright you would think nobody would get stabbed. And if your looking to get a clear picture of the moon, it's best to be out of all our pollution and, um.... atmosphere.
All in all I would guess the ISS is responsible for more scientific advancements and findings that the masses are aware of and that the immense knowledge gained by this project will be almost immeasurable it's not the most exciting thing NASA ever had a hand in. I would hire Interference Inc. to run a public fund raining campaign, partnering with Virgin Galactic to provide trips to the station and an eventual guest quarters that can be designed to be cool as well as functional. Imagine the views. Float to your vacuum shower. Make love to your partner in your a zero gravity containment bed. Watch the world spin below you while you sip coffee and orange juice. Meditate to the silence of space.
You could hold all kinds of live web events to spark interest. How about "how long till It freezes?" where different hot objects are placed out in the vacuum of space and participants bet on how long until it freezes. (a bathtub of boiling water would take less than a second!! -454 F!!) Or you could have "what the hell is floating at me?" where you have to describe the disgusting matter floating toward your face before it hits you. I am merely brainstorming people! Congrats ISS and many more years of nerd-ism to you!
November 11, 2008
Goodbye And Thanks For All The Hope: Mars Phoenix Mission Ends.
On May 25th, 2008 a tiny 18 foot lander from Earth did just that on the surface of Mars. Drowned out by the popularity of the Mars rovers the Phoenix project soon swept the world of science by discovering frozen water ice just below the surface of the red planet. This will not seem like a huge deal to people who don't dig science and technology maybe but even those who do most likely don't appreciate the findings of this little robot from the blue planet.
I have written about the Phoenix before and it really is a marvel of human engineering and creativity. Check these facts. 1. The Phoenix lander approached Mars at 74,000 miles per hour. 2. The robot has traveled over 423 million miles in it's lifetime. 3. The Euro dudes orbiting Mars satellite, the Mars Express (yes the wankers really called it Mars Express) took this really cool photo of Phoenix landing. Imagine the math involved in catching that event? My brain hurts.
In any event today the Phoenix Lander stopped sending signals. This is mainly due to the loss of power to it's batteries which was anticipated and scheduled. To say this was a success would be an understatement. For 200 million dollars, chump change in space bucks, we found water on another planet. For many in the scientific community that is the same as finding life all over the galaxy. The distances are so great that we may never meet them but the fact that water was present in the near past on another planet right in our neighborhood.... well that is just too many variables to be luck. Phoenix has opened the doors to serious thought, and serious debate, about where we should go next. Certainly they are out there. Maybe waiting, maybe searching, hoping that they too are not alone.
October 17, 2008
Latest Moon Pics.
So now I have the same camera but I am using a newer (by 20 years) pair of binoculars. (10X 50mm zoom) I don't think they are that much more powerful I think the lenses are better quality. Still nothing too exciting but I figure with a good tripod and some more patience I can get some pretty cool pictures. These took quite some time to line up and found that zooming the camera almost all the way but keeping the lens a small distance away from the binocular eyepiece resulted in the best images. Below are the 3 I liked best. Enjoy.
September 19, 2008
Moon Again; Try # II.
Yet another beautiful night in Manhattan and although I am cooped up in my apartment working I am 15 floors in the air and apart from a gigantic monstrosity of a building directly in front of my view the other 35% of space is quite nice to look at. The only direct sun I get is when it's high in the sky for about an hour and the moon rises right behind my work chair. It is easy to procrastinate at home so I decided to try the old shooting through binoculars again to see if I couldn't get better results and with a little tinkering with settings I got a couple of decent shots. I turned the flash off and took half in sport mode (for a quick shutter) and half in landscape, which tends to not focus on infinity... a nice feature when shooting into space. Here are the rest of em, enjoy!
Oh yeah and be sure to place a vote for today's challenge on XversusY.com.
September 17, 2008
I Give You The Moon, Which Is Unlike Mooning You.
Couple of days ago the moon was out over my apartment (can't speak for the apartments next to me or across the way, I did not test it out from there) I had to stop what I was doing (playing Spore) and attempt to take a picture through some binoculars. I have tried that many times in the past with limited if any success. I think I did okay this time, considering the binoculars were my grandfathers birdwatching binoculars and the camera is a point and shoot. I f'd with the focus a little but there is only so much you can do on those things. I think they came out pretty cool so below are the ones that made the cut. Just got back from another session in the chair but I will not spoil it with pictures just yet but rather present some kind of montage at the end. Enjoy the mooning.
September 11, 2008
NASA's New Toys.
Well it appears now that the Mars splinter groups have been so successful (with less resources and less money) NASA is finally back to a one goal mission plan; to get us back to the moon. To any science fiction fan it is obvious why I mean how the hell can you build a huge spaceship within Earth gravity? Oh, wait, sorry Star Trek teaser.... anyway the point is it will be a necessary step in the evolution of Human space travel. Hell we could even mine the rock and create the metals and plastics we will need right there on the lunar surface. I got dibs on the first bar.... great drinks, no atmosphere! (killing you softly). NASA executive types have been quoted as saying they are impressed with how involved every corner of the organization is with this mission and it is quite a mission with 4 new vehicles being developed which admittedly look more like Apollo than Virgin Galactic.
First things first. As pictured above and here, the new capsule responsible for housing the astronauts on their journeys will be the Orion. Personally I feel like NASA has used the name Orion on too many projects and are just being lazy but that's probably just me. All the multimedia NASA has come out with regarding the Orion seem to reiterate how different it is than Apollo, how it is bigger and more sophisticated. Well damn, I would hope so, the Apollo missions were more than 35 years ago. My Commodore 64 was more sophisticated than the computers on board that shit, if were sending people up in the same things now then screw that, I will buy a few X-Boxes and some Lego's and build my own. So of course it is all modern and made of space age stuff but at least it is a machine that warrants ingredients with such titles.
Next things next. This here is the Altair which is NASA's new lunar lander. No, not THAT lunar lander but a fancy new one that apparently does the same thing as the old one but better. Why it's gotta be all about porn I don't know, but it is built to mate up with the above Orion (and it's huge freakin engine) to get over to the moon, then this part will do the actual landing on the surface, so in essence, this is the van, man. Pack that shit up real stuff this time for an extended stay, like a BBQ and some brews.... or frozen drinks would be pretty easy I imagine. Whatever they bring I vote they paint a dragon on the side and put a spoiler on it. Who's with me?
All these vehicles are all fine and dandy but you still have to get them off the planet which involves more force than you or I could ever muster with roman candles so NASA built the Ares family of rockets. This is the Ares 1 which will be the people launcher taking the Orion, people filled capsule to orbit where it will have sex w- er, mate with the Lunar thing and then they do that other thing... look, it's old school thinking, yes, but it works. It's a gigantic version of the current shuttles rocket boosters. You light it up and it can not be stopped until it's all gone. Old school effective for the prime directive.
This is the grand daddy of all rockets. The Ares 5 is for getting the big stuff into space. It's a rocket with two booster rockets on board, that's how bad ass it is. This will launch stuff like the engine to get everyone to the moon, all the construction equipment and things like hookers and beer, essentials for mankind's long term moon habitation. Seriously though this will be the work horse and we will probably get to see many of these launched as work continues on the moon. I imagine witnessing this taking off would be 10 times crazier than witnessing the Space Shuttle. This thing is a monster. I bet all the alligators move out of the keys.
So there you have it. NASA's new toys. If all goes well they plan on using the moon as a starting point for Mars exploration, among other planets I assume. Probably not advancing toward getting me or you up there, we will have to rely on Virgin Galactic for that, but NASA still does amazing work and going back to the moon will show the world that we mean business when we talk about the future of mankind, despite our current administrations lack of foreign relations. To me, NASA is working on updating the term "foreign" to not include anyone form Earth. That says a lot to me. Here is the site for NASA's constellation mission, which is the name for the first moon mission. Here is a cool movie about it and below is another.
