Mssv

Some people believe that China is really serious about human spaceflight. Really serious, as in, intends to establish a permanent human present on the Moon in the near future. At least one Japanese politician thinks it could happen within four years.
To be honest, it doesn’t really matter exactly when it happens; if China decides to [...]

On Zetatalk - a cult religion has predicted that ‘Planet X’ will be passing by earth next month. As you might expect, some of the cult members are getting a bit nervous right now; ‘Shouldn’t it be visible in our skies now?’ they ask. Luckily, the daring astronomical community has it all under control (via [...]

International Space Centre for Merseyside - bit of a bizarre idea, putting it in Wallasey, and I’m not sure how many visitors it’ll get, but on the whole I think that more space centres are always a good thing.

The Speaker Wishlist for the Mars Society 2003 Convention - Chris Isaak? ‘Any of the cast of Survivor’? Arnold Schwarzennager? (sic) Any female astronauts? I hate to think of who made this list, and how they did it. And in any case, isn’t it a bit late to be signing up speakers for a date [...]

Finally, I understand how gravity assists for spacecraft work now! (scroll to bottom of linked page)
Imagine a ball rolling down a hill. It gains speed rolling downhill, but then loses speed as it rolls up the next upslope. It’s hard to see how speed can be permanently gained this way. But now imagine that the [...]

A couple of nights ago, I was happily showing a friends - a fellow space buff - my favourite moment in cinematic history. It was the heartbreakingly beautiful docking sequence set to the Blue Danube in 2001. An elegent spaceplane languidly waltzes towards a spinning Space Station which is still to this day the most [...]

Two speeches for two Space Shuttle disasters:
1986: President Reagan on the Challenger disaster.
2003: President Bush on the Columbia disaster.
That’s two Space Shuttles out of a fleet of five. Something has to be done. And here’s an interesting thought - the next person to be launched into space may very well not be American, but Chinese. [...]

The Space Shuttle Columbia was destroyed today; one of the worst disasters in spaceflight history. See this Metafilter thread for more information and commentary.

Dragon Space - a dedicated web portal for all China-related space news. Pretty nifty, and it has all the latest happenings with their Shenzhou craft, the fourth of which is expected to take off within the next few days.

Seen on Usenet, about spacecraft yachts for the rich: “Larry Ellison would probably go for it — but even he isn’t rich enough. Here’s an idea, though: An orbital timeshare. Ellison can use it six months of the year; Bill Gates gets it the rest of the time.”