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We have some cool bits of Space Music to roundup this week. First, we’ve already covered NASA’s first and last artist in residence (AIR), but what about SETI? The ET-seeking non-profit just signed on multimedia artist Charles Lindsay for a three year stint as its first AIR, during which he’ll grow the program and “encourage cross disciplinary artistic expression in order to explore and illuminate the origin, nature and prevalence of life in the universe.”
What has 27 rocket engines and can lift more than 100,000 pounds (53 metric tons) into orbit? The Falcon Heavy rocket as featured here: The video points out the the rocket can survive multiple engine failures and still make it to orbit: “Propellant cross-feed and multi-engine out capability for extreme reliability.” See also: SpaceX.com Falcon [...]
For decades, space travel has been the province of nations. A nation like the United States would select a handful of people, train them extensively, anoint them as astronauts and send them into space at very great cost. That model changed slightly in 2001. A businessman named Dennis Tito spent $20 million to become the [...]
Most people are convinced that NASA’s astronauts landed on the Moon. Full disclosure: I’m one of them. But thousands of people around the world think the landing was staged. Why? Here’s a short video that covers the basics of this conspiracy theory:
Remember NASA’s “Space Rock” contest? Well, 2.4 million people cast their online ballots to vote for some orbital wake-up music. Sadly, they were limited to a list of 40 previously played wake-up songs that included such tracks as “Kryptonite” by 3 Doors Down. Hey, I guess the sight of an orbital sunrise can make just about anything sound good.
Early this morning, NASA’s Glory satellite was supposed to launch and get itself into orbit. Had it done so, here is the kind of stuff it would have been doing: Total Solar Irradiance = The sun’s brightness. Formerly known as the Solar Constant. Glory’s TIM – Total Irradiance Monitor – would have given a much [...]
NASA’s new manned deep space spacecraft – the Nautilus-X MMSEV
by Marshall Brain | February 17, 2011
Ever since the movie “2001: a Space Odyssey” came out (back in 1968, before humans had landed on the moon), people have been ready to head out into interplanetary space: Now NASA has drawn up a realistic ship to do this sort of interplanetary travel in real life. It’s called the Nautilus-X MMSEV (Multi-Mission Space [...]
I’m sure by now you’ve heard the latest Toyota news: A little less than a week ago, it was announced that “NASA found no evidence that a malfunction in electronics caused large unintended accelerations.” That’s according to Michael Kirsch, the principal engineer and team lead of the study from the NASA Engineering and Safety Center (NESC) at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va.
And if you recall, reports of unintended acceleration were being blamed on three possible factors: sticking accelerator pedals, a design flaw that enabled accelerator pedals to become trapped by floor mats and electromagnetic interference and/or software…
This is one of those videos where you watch it and think, “wow, that’s really cool, I had no idea human beings were doing that.” The project costs about $500 million as described here: Since eruptions on the sun can knock out communications and power grids, one big goal of the STEREO project is better [...]
It took rocket scientists to think up (and create) this problem. Apparently we are about to hit a “tipping point” where there is so much space junk that it could cause a chain reaction. If a piece of space junk were to hit a satellite, it explodes, which would create a lot more space junk, [...]
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