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An article from March 1, 2004 issue of Aviation Week & Space Technology about harnessing zero point energy for space transportation.
Posts: 2655 | Registered: Feb 2004
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Allen funding a SETI array is fantastic, isn't it?
I was just reading about China's lunar rover, which they intend to launch in 2012 to scout for a lunar base location. Very cool, but I'm a little puzzled. The article says that among other things, the rover would carry "seismological gear to register quake activity on the moon". I was under the impression that the mood was seismologically inactive--that its core was cool, and there was no movement of plates or anything of the kind. So...what would be generating the seismological activity they seem to be looking for? Are they just being cautious (never a bad idea), or is there something obvious I'm overlooking?
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I was about to say, "Hasn't mach 7 been done?" but it turns out that the X-15 only hit mach 6.7.
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In belated news, apparently some time in the past week all five naked-eye viewable planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn) were visible in the sky at the same time.
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If you've been wanting a fairly detailed list of current and upcoming space missions from the world's space agencies, you'll find this article from Wired useful.
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Nice article, but I get a little bit nervous when any articly uses the words Space, Probe and Booty in the same sentence. Sounds like a South Park Alien episode.
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It's about time. I was getting tired of hearing about the X-prize for years without anyone actually launching anything. Now we can look forward to some actually manned testing this summer *crosses fingers*
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Oh, it's definitely huge, and I'm very happy about it. I just don't have much to add on the subject at the moment.
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I'll wait until they actually get it up there. But still, this is a step in the right direction.
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quote:"A known threat that can potentially destroy millions of lives and can be predicted to occur ahead of time, and prevented, cannot responsibly go unaddressed," he said.
Thank goodness people are finally paying attention. I didn't realize all those astronauts and people read hatrack, did you? Posts: 2843 | Registered: A Long Time Ago!
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A general question... anyone know what the current estimate for the # of galaxies in the universe is? (And, a related question, what the average # of stars per galaxy is?)
I've heard some #s for how many galaxies there are... but I kinda get the impression that no one's too concerned about making estimates since they get outdated pretty fast...
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You read numbers that are all over the place, but I use 200,000,000,000 for the stars in the milky way. Does that count as a typical galaxy? It really depends on how small of a dwarf-galaxy you count as one galaxy. Do the magellenic clouds count as galaxies in their own right? Or are they just sattelite galaxies to our galaxy? Certainly there are enormous elliptical galaxies which are far bigger than ours, as well the dwarfs. So I guess it's reasonable to take the Milky Way as being of typical size.
As for galaxies in the universe, I don't have a number in my head for that, but I'm thinking it's in the same ballpark. On the order of hundreds of billions. It wouldn't surprise me if that was off by a factor of 1000 either way. Posts: 2843 | Registered: A Long Time Ago!
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And remember that what we in the U.S. call a billion (10^9), the Brits call a thousand million. I think when they say billion they mean what we call a trillion or 10^12. That adds some confusion, for sure. The Canadians and Australians probably use the British nomenclature, too. Anything by Stephen Hawking or Freeman Dyson will use that terminology, I assume. Of the others, I'm not entirely sure who is from the U.S. and who from Britain. Kip Thorn is American, isn't he?
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Is Earth doomed to become another Mars? Is part of the reason that Mars is now desolate because it cooled faster than us, due to it's smaller size, and lost it's shields? How fast is the Earth cooling? How long do we have to get offworld?? Ahhh!!! Posts: 4953 | Registered: Jan 2004
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Not wanting to waste an opportunity, I wanted to share the latest poop on a major problem in long-term space voyages.
Sewage you think of it. Personally, I'm flushed - this is excretely exciting! Pooped Out in Deep Space
quote:On a two-year trip to Mars, according to one estimate, a crew of six humans will generate more than six tons of solid organic waste--much of it feces. So what do you do with all that? Right now, astronaut waste gets shipped back to Earth. But for long-term exploration, you'd want to recycle it, because it holds resources that astronauts will need. It will provide pure drinking water. It will provide fertilizer. And, with the help of a recently discovered microbe, it will also provide electricity.
Like many bacteria, this one, a member of the Geobacteraceae family, feeds on, and can decompose, organic material. Geobacter microbes were first discovered in the muck of the Potomac River in 1987; they like to live in places where there's no oxygen and plenty of iron. They also have the unexpected ability to move electrons into metal. That means that under the right conditions, Geobacter microbes can both process waste and generate electricity.
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Derail: Jim-Me, I gotta ask. Did you attend the Air Force Academy, have friends that did, grow up in C. Springs, or something else?
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I attened Academy Prep School, Graduated in '87, enteredt the Academy as Class of '91, went stop out, returned as '92, resigned in lieu of disenrollment for Honor in January of 1992.
On Edodo, if you frequent the site, I post as "Wannabe".
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I don't yet, but I'll be posting a link as soon as I find one. I'm kind of camping out at space.com for the next little while.
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I'm so excited about Cassini! I was very scared of that maneuver of shooting through the ring plane while inserting itself into orbit. It seemed quite risky for several reasons, but thank goodness they've pulled it off!
Now we should get AMAZING pictures from Saturn for several years!!!!!!!!!!!
I can't describe how thrilled about that I am.
I was looking on the first page, going, "Where is the Cassini thread?" Then I saw this one and knew that Noemon had come through.
<Bows and does the special Knights of Noemon hand sign>
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