http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/space/ en-us Sat, 2 Jan 2010 01:39:51 GMT Focus Forum 15 http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2419280/posts A variety of vehicles, launch sites on both U.S. coasts, shifting dates and times... the NASA Launch Schedule is easy to decipher by checking out our Launch Schedule 101 that explains how it all works! NASA http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2419280/posts#comment Sat, 2 Jan 2010 01:39:51 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2419273/posts Several stories stick in my mind as we approach the New Year, presented here in no particular order, but merely as material for musing. The detection (by the MEarth Project) of a transiting ’super-Earth’ this past month opens up interesting areas for speculation. Gliese 1214b is roughly 6.5 times as massive as Earth, orbiting an M-dwarf some forty light years from our Solar System. You’ll recall we discussed this one in terms of possible study of its atmosphere. Centauri Dreams http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2419273/posts#comment Sat, 2 Jan 2010 01:29:33 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2419265/posts Building a home near a moon crater or a lunar sea may sound nice, but moon colonists might have a much better chance of survival if they just lived in a hole. That's the message sent by an international team of scientists who say they've discovered a protected lunar "lava tube" -- a deep, giant hole -- that might be well suited for a moon colony or a lunar base. CNN http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2419265/posts#comment Sat, 2 Jan 2010 01:07:36 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2418868/posts Ongoing problems with the Minotaur 4 rocket will delay by 14 months the launch of the U.S. Air Force’s Space Based Space Surveillance (SBSS) satellite, government documents show. The Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center planned to launch SBSS in October 2009 with what would have been the first launch of the new Minotaur 4 rocket, built by Orbital Sciences Corp. of Dulles, Va. The service announced that month the launch would be indefinitely delayed with technical problems, though no further explanation was given. The Minotaur 4 relies on retired U.S. Peacekeeper missile motors for its first three stages... Space News http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2418868/posts#comment Fri, 1 Jan 2010 10:02:32 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2417900/posts Space scientists in Russia are preparing to boldly go where no man has gone before, except for the actor Bruce Willis. The head of the Russian space agency said today that it was considering a Hollywood-style mission to send a spacecraft to bump a large asteroid from a possible collision course with Earth. Anatoly Perminov told the Russian radio station Golos Rossii: "People's lives are at stake. We should pay several hundred million dollars and build a system that would allow us to prevent a collision, rather than sit and wait for it to happen and kill hundreds of thousands... http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2417900/posts#comment Wed, 30 Dec 2009 21:34:00 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2416691/posts Paul Titze, who somehow finds time to write the excellent Captain InterStellar blog when not preoccupied with his maritime duties in Sydney, passed along a 2009 paper on warp drives yesterday that I want to be sure to consider before the year is over. Warp drives as in Miguel Alcubierre’s notion of a method of reaching speeds that are faster than light. The Star Trek echo in the choice of names was playful and intentional on Alcubierre’s part, and the physicist kicked off a cottage industry in exotic spacetimes and their geometries when he used it in a 1994 paper... Centauri Dreams http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2416691/posts#comment Tue, 29 Dec 2009 02:40:01 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2416681/posts The new science fiction blockbuster "Avatar" is set on habitable and inhabited moon Pandora, which orbits the fictional gas giant Polyphemus in the real Alpha Centauri system. Although life-bearing moons like Pandora or the Star Wars forest moon of Endor are staples of science fiction, astronomers have yet to discover any moons beyond our solar system. However, they could be science fact, and researchers might soon not only be able to spot them, but also scan their atmospheres for key signs of life as we know it, such as oxygen and water. space.com http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2416681/posts#comment Tue, 29 Dec 2009 02:17:50 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2416663/posts Good things come to those who wait, and wait, ... and wait. This may someday be the opening sentence at a press conference at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California to announce mankind's first evidence of intelligent life off the Earth. We've listened for transmissions from alien civilizations for 50 years without any luck. And there isn't the slightest clue when real data -– if ever -– may come. This bores some scientists who scornfully look at SETI as lost purely in "hypothetical-space." Detractors say (1) nobody's out there, (2) we're listening on the wrong medium, (3) it's a... Discovery News http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2416663/posts#comment Tue, 29 Dec 2009 01:52:20 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2416656/posts Monday, December 28, 2009 Indications are the Obama administration is not only looking at 2010 with more promise, they’re also looking up — and that could mean things also are looking up for SpaceX, including its rocket-testing facility near McGregor. According to The Wall Street Journal, President Barack Obama is likely to weigh in for diversifying space funding, partly as a way of hedging bets on NASA, which has suffered frequent budget shortfalls and unrealistic schedules. The Augustine Commission, a 10-member committee charged with reviewing manned space flights, is urging Obama to consider going beyond NASA and the usual big-name... Waco Tribune http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2416656/posts#comment Tue, 29 Dec 2009 01:44:23 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2416646/posts PARIS — Mobile satellite communications startup OverHorizon of Sweden has selected Thales Alenia Space of France and Italy, and Orbital Sciences of Dulles, Va., to build its first satellite, to be launched in early 2012 under a contract announced by the manufacturers Dec. 23. Space News http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2416646/posts#comment Tue, 29 Dec 2009 01:31:21 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2416642/posts Examine that famous picture very closely, and you may see it: a tiny speck, floating amid the vast, empty nothingness of a bleak and hostile universe. Viewed from six billion kilometres away, it is home. It is Planet Earth. Telegraph Journal http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2416642/posts#comment Tue, 29 Dec 2009 01:20:34 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2414278/posts December 23, 2009: The solar system is passing through an interstellar cloud that physics says should not exist. In the Dec. 24th issue of Nature, a team of scientists reveal how NASA's Voyager spacecraft have solved the mystery. "Using data from Voyager, we have discovered a strong magnetic field just outside the solar system," explains lead author Merav Opher, a NASA Heliophysics Guest Investigator from George Mason University. "This magnetic field holds the interstellar cloud together and solves the long-standing puzzle of how it can exist at all." The discovery has implications for the future when the solar system will... Science@NASA http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2414278/posts#comment Thu, 24 Dec 2009 04:42:00 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2414289/posts Butte-Silver Bow County will erect a permanent building in its TIFID for the testing of rocket engines. Kristen Rosa, administrator of the Tax Increment Finance Industrial District, said that the steel-sided structure could be in operation by next spring. "It will help them be able to test bigger and bigger rocket engines," Rosa said. (cut) Space Propulsion Group Inc., a Stanford University-affiliated company, visited Butte a number of times last year to test fuels used in hybrid rockets. The approximately eight-second tests were done on the smaller 11-inch models, but thanks to the new building companies will be able to... Montana Standard http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2414289/posts#comment Thu, 24 Dec 2009 05:13:19 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2414127/posts Yesterday, Dec. 22nd at approximately 0455 UT, magnetic fields around sunspot 1036 erupted, producing a C7-class solar flare. NASA's STEREO-A spacecraft was almost directly above the sunspot at the time of the blast and recorded this extreme ultraviolet movie: The shadowy wave racing away from the blast site is a "solar tsunami"--a swell of hot, magnetized plasma about 100,000 km high packing as much energy as a million megatons of TNT. The tsunami petered out before it went more than halfway around the sun, but another manifestation of the blast is still going. The eruption hurled a faint coronal mass... Spaceweather.com http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2414127/posts#comment Thu, 24 Dec 2009 00:05:28 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2413589/posts NASA’s managers have settled on a fix they say will protect astronauts from potentially dangerous levels of vibrations that could otherwise reach the planned Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle during its climb to orbit atop the Ares 1 rocket, according to information posted on a NASA Web site. NASA Constellation program officials decided Dec. 17 to update the Ares 1 vehicle design to include upper-plane C-spring isolators and an upper-stage liquid oxygen (LOX) damper intended to keep vibrations originating in the Ares 1 main stage from reaching Orion and its crew. The Constellation program is a 5-year-old effort to replace the... Space News http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2413589/posts#comment Wed, 23 Dec 2009 07:50:59 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2413457/posts HAT CREEK, CALIF. -- The wide dishes, 20 feet across and raised high on their pedestals, creaked and groaned as the winds from an approaching snowstorm pushed into this highland valley. Forty-two in all, the radio telescopes laid out in view of some of California's tallest mountains look otherworldly, and now their sounds conjured up visions of deep-space denizens as well. Washington Post http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2413457/posts#comment Wed, 23 Dec 2009 01:51:26 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2413447/posts Next year could be a milestone for space exploration. The world's major spacefaring nations should be fleshing out plans for a new era of collaborative missions to the Moon, Mars and beyond. And, finally, the UK - that ancient island of world explorers and landmark scientists - looks set to join them. Flightglobal http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2413447/posts#comment Wed, 23 Dec 2009 01:41:50 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2413420/posts There was a lot of excitement last week about the discovery of a “waterworld” planet called GJ 1214b, as reported on Discovery News by my colleague Ian O’Neill. This world belongs to an emerging class of planets dubbed “super-Earths.” It is 6.5 times Earth’s mass and nearly three times our diameter. Its mass, diameter and density suggest the planet is largely a ball of water with and icy/rocky core. Discovery News http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2413420/posts#comment Wed, 23 Dec 2009 01:07:46 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2413413/posts NASA’s Centennial Challenges prize program, FAA’s Spaceports Infrastructure Grants initiative, and the new NASA Commercial Reusable Suborbital Research program (CRuSR) gained momentum after receiving funding in the NASA and FAA appropriations bills for Fiscal Year 2010, passed by Congress and signed by the President last week. The Commercial Spaceflight Federation conducted advocacy efforts for these NASA and FAA programs as part of the CSF’s legislative agenda for this year. Commercial Spaceflight Federation http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2413413/posts#comment Wed, 23 Dec 2009 00:57:51 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2412677/posts What a welcome event the release of James Cameron’s new film Avatar must be for scientists working on the question of exomoons — satellites orbiting extrasolar planets. Imagine being a Lisa Kaltenegger (CfA) or David Kipping (University College London), hard at work exploring exomoon detection and possible habitability when a blockbuster film is released that posits a habitable moon around a gas giant. The film’s exomoon, called Pandora, fits a scenario that exomoon hunters tell us could exist, orbiting a giant planet in the habitable zone of its star, and it draws public attention as never before to exoplanet and... Centauri Dreams http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2412677/posts#comment Tue, 22 Dec 2009 02:02:15 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2412642/posts WASHINGTON — Fearful that the White House might scale back manned space exploration, a bipartisan group of lawmakers slipped a provision into a massive government spending package last week that would force President Barack Obama to seek congressional approval for any changes to the ambitious Bush-era, back-to-the-moon program. Houston Chronicle http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2412642/posts#comment Tue, 22 Dec 2009 01:06:58 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2412636/posts IN Silicon Valley we have a saying: launch early, launch often. It’s an acknowledgment that successful, innovative companies are the ones that rapidly try new ideas, see what works, improve their products and repeat. Businesses that launch frequently are also able to take advantage of economies of scale to make launchings faster and easier. In many ways, the key to innovation is speed of execution. New York Times http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2412636/posts#comment Tue, 22 Dec 2009 00:54:56 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2412634/posts The Obama administration appears set to chart a new course for U.S. space exploration by promoting the use of private companies to ferry astronauts into orbit, according to people familiar with the matter. Wall Street Journal http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2412634/posts#comment Tue, 22 Dec 2009 00:50:23 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2412628/posts Why should humans go to Mars? Many reasons for and against have been cited over the years, and many still struggle to see the relevance of this priority. It seems so far out, so detached from life on Earth, and in many ways it is. Mars is physically hundreds of millions of kilometers away. It is colder than the coldest environment on Earth and it has an atmosphere—or lack thereof—that would kill you within thirty seconds or do in a most unpleasant fashion. Compared to terrestrial destinations it loses hands down. However, we need to look at Mars in a... Frank Stratford http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2412628/posts#comment Tue, 22 Dec 2009 00:41:59 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2412625/posts Although the Augustine Commission did not offer up “recommendations” – it is clear they want NASA to focus on moving beyond low earth orbit – creating some space – if you will – for entrepreneurs to boldly go where only the government has gone before. True / Slant http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2412625/posts#comment Tue, 22 Dec 2009 00:38:03 GMT