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Mars
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3–4 minutes·
1 comment on MarsTonight I saw the planet Mars with my own eyes. We’ve all been hearing that Mars is as close as it will be to Earth for the next sixty thousand years. Unfortunately, since I live in the UK I haven’t really had the opportunity to look for Mars since our skies have been swathed in…
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Spirit and Opportunity
NASA’s two new Mars rovers have been named ‘Spirit’ and ‘Opportunity’. I’m just as much for getting schoolkids to name spacecraft as anyone else, but couldn’t they have picked anything more inspiring? It sounds as if the PC brigade had sucked all the life out of this competition well before it begun. They’re not terrible,…
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Red Mars
Never mind the Beagle 2, the Sci-Fi channel is producing a miniseries based on Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars novel for late 2004. They’d better not screw it up…
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A China Moon
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…
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Zetatalk
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…
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Merseyside in Space
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.
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Wishlist for Mars
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…
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Gravity Assist
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…
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Waltzing into Space
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…
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Two speeches
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…
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