Wow. Watch in HD if you have the iron for it.
Earth | Time Lapse View from Space, Fly Over | NASA, ISS from Michael König on Vimeo.
November 14, 2011
September 30, 2011
September 22, 2011
The Fable of the Shoes
Such a bias toward the status quo similarly infects our thinking and debate on space policy. The highest achievement in the minds of many was landing a man on the moon, and such a feat is viewed as the epitome of a human spaceflight program, and the only model to follow. Ignoring the issue of the pork, such thinking resulted in the Constellation plan (“Apollo on Steroids”) and now it’s giving us the disastrous Senate Launch System (as I discussed over at Pajamas Media yesterday). It’s what I have called the Apollo Cargo Cult — in too many minds, if we don’t have a really big rocket developed and operated by NASA, we don’t have a Real Space Program.
The problem is that, while (fortunately) the government hasn’t always supplied shoes, in the minds of too many, it has always supplied human spaceflight, and when you propose to do it in any other way, no matter how much more cost effective, the same cries arise: “Are you crazy?! Why do you hate space exploration?! Spaceflight is hard! Only NASA knows how to put people into space! Who is going to do it if not NASA? These people are just hobbyists in garages! What if all of the commercial companies fail and go out of business?! (Yes, people really ask that.) What if they can’t hit their cost targets? What material will they use? What if we can’t store propellant in orbit?”
Like people who can’t imagine life without a government post office, or air traffic control (it’s private in Switzerland), or other things with which they have no experience, they can’t conceive of space activities that don’t consist of a few government employees on top of a really big rocket, with lots more government employees at desks in control rooms directing the show.
Read the whole thing. I’m in favor of a robust and competitive commercial space flight industry with NASA and other governmental organizations acting as customers and buyers for the best system from the best company. Doing these monolithic, governments sponsored space boondoggles where billions are spent with nothing to show doesn’t seem like the most efficient way to run a railroad.
September 6, 2011
August 23, 2011
James May Goes to the Moon
I’ve seen hundreds of hours of documentaries on the moon program. I’ve read dozens of books, built the models, and collected the mission patches. I can tell you the difference between a PLSS, an MMU, and TLI.
But I’ve never seen such a wonderful documentary as the one that Top Gear’s James May and the BBC put on. If you have an hour I would highly recommend that you take the time to watch it. James May and the BBC crew have the technical abilities perfectly married to well polished storytelling chops. I dare you to watch it with dry eyes. You won’t be disappointed.
Thanks to friend Josh for pointing it out.
July 22, 2011
July 20, 2011
July 9, 2011
July 8, 2011
June 14, 2011
Picture This
Erin has a piano student who’s family is good friends with Mike Fincke, one of the astronauts who just went up on Endeavor last month.
Erin went to Mike’s Facebook page last night and discovered that he now has the single best profile pictures in the world.
Or out of it.
You win, Mike, completely and totally.
June 12, 2011
May 31, 2011
SpaceX
Now this is how you run a railroad (or a space program).
Key quote:
“The average price of a full-up NASA Dragon cargo mission to the International Space Station is $133 million including inflation, or roughly $115m in today’s dollars, and we have a firm, fixed price contract with NASA for 12 missions. This price includes the costs of the Falcon 9 launch, the Dragon spacecraft, all operations, maintenance and overhead, and all of the work required to integrate with the Space Station. If there are cost overruns, SpaceX will cover the difference. (This concept may be foreign to some traditional government space contractors that seem to believe that cost overruns should be the responsibility of the taxpayer.)”
Open market FTW.
May 26, 2011
Skylon
The ESA approved Skylon Singe Stage to Orbit is moving forward this summer. Exciting stuff, even if the tech is mind-blowingly complex.
The Sabre engines are essentially just rockets, burning hydrogen and oxygen to produce thrust. What’s unique, though, is that at lower altitudes, the engines scavenge oxygen directly out of the air instead of having to carry it. For this to work, the incoming oxygen has to be cooled down to about 200 degrees below zero, even when the Skylon is traveling at such high speeds that the air entering the engine comes in at 2,000 degrees. And it has to happen in 1/100th of a second. The solution has been to feed the air through a complex system of tiny little heat exchanging tubes, which doesn’t seem like it would work, but the ESA says it does. And in any case, the next step is for a prototype Sabre engine to be built, which will show off both the rocket and air-breathing engine modes and the transition between them. If all goes well, it should happen this summer.
May 25, 2011
May 19, 2011
May 18, 2011
May 1, 2011
April 25, 2011
Forget the Moon, Alice…
Private US company SpaceX hopes to put an astronaut on Mars within 10 to 20 years, the head of the firm said.
“We’ll probably put a first man in space in about three years,” Elon Musk told the Wall Street Journal Saturday. “We’re going all the way to Mars, I think… best case 10 years, worst case 15 to 20 years…“Our goal is to facilitate the transfer of people and cargo to other planets, and then it will be up to people if they want to go,” said Musk, who also runs the Tesla company which develops electric cars.
“
I’m saving up. full story.
April 24, 2011
Frontier
Great TEDTalk by a real live Rocket Man
. He says some really good things about the state of frontiers and why they are important to us as a species.