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[ChoklitReign]

Down apparently. I want it in JPEG form, the one on NatGeo sucks.

 

[DarkJediKnight]

50 years of space travel

Can you rehost this? Can't see pic.

 

[DarkJediKnight]

Star clusters among star clusters. The highlighted ones are the oldest stars visible by hubble, thousands of light years away.

 

[DarkJediKnight]

 

[smoothj]

 

[Bitmap Frogs]

Plasma Rocket Could Travel to Mars in 39 Days

http://www.physorg.com/news174031552.html.

I've recently being informed about the VASMIR plasma rocket. I'm really rooting for Ad Astra. If this Rocket is only half as good as hoped, it'll still be a huge help to long term manned space flight. Exciting times for private space companies

As with all space-related topics, there's a catch with this one as well.

The VASMIR requires huge amounts of electricity to perform these feats, AKA no 40-days-to-mars until we have developed a nuclear reactor for spaceships.

Until we have available such a device, cheapo tug work between earth and the moon and some ancillary work like keeping stations like the ISS in orbit is all that VASMIR will be doing.

 

[Lost Fragment]

Can you rehost this? Can't see pic.

Can't find a free file host that will take it that won't reduce the size automatically or delete it after like 5 people download it, so resorting to megaupload.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=DDK9VV80

 

[fallout]

Can't find a free file host that will take it that won't reduce the size automatically or delete it after like 5 people download it, so resorting to megaupload.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=DDK9VV80

Please don't abuse this:

http://forums.n-sider.com/brenden/50years.jpg

 

[Memphis Reigns]

Holy shit. HOLY SHIT. That has to be the best picture of space Hubble has ever taken. Right up there with the Hubble Deep Field picture. This is fucking AMAZING! I am looking at close up photograph of a star cluster with fucking GALAXIES in the background, 1 Billion light years away. That is life changing right there.

 

[feel]

Just now reading the last few pages, this thread is amazing! Why the hell had I never entered it before? :O
For some reason always thought this was about some niche scifi tv show or movie, with a hardcore following on GAF.
Now on to read the other 40 pages and have my mind blown, even more.

 

[bengraven]

Was this posted?

http://digg.com/d3171Vk

Map of every space mission in the universe.

 

[Schrade]

Was this posted?

http://digg.com/d3171Vk

Map of every space mission in the universe.

How about reading this page of the thread? Or even just 3 posts up?

 

[Windu]

The Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee is nearing the end of its role in spaceflight history. The committee, which is commonly referred to as the Augustine Commission after its leader Norman Augustine, concluded that even NASA's current plans to return to the Moon would require significantly more funds, some $3 billion more per year, bringing the agency's annual budget to more than $20 billion. One of the most talked-about aspects of the report is its so-called Flexible Option, which provides an increase in funding to NASA, without constructing an ironclad schedule or set of destinations. As the committee's work winds down, it's now up to NASA to consider the findings, and offer specific recommendations to the Obama administration. Some of the leading experts weighed in:

"I can build predications for or against almost anything in the report, unfortunately, but the flexible option offers a couple of major advantages. The most significant of which is that many of the other options basically say, Send me some billions of dollars, come back in 20 years, and you're going to see something neat. How many citizens can remain supportive, how many engineers can devote their lives, to that kind of promise? The flexible option says send me money, and I'll show you something great. Send me more in four years, and I'll show you something even better. There are significant milestones along the way. One of those milestones is circumnavigating the Moon. Yes, we did that 40 years ago. Another is to go to a Lagrange point. So what, you might say? The skeptics would discount some of these missions. But if we say that each mission is going to develop techniques to get to Mars, as opposed to an end in itself, people might be more willing to support them. And some destinations will be historic. A moon of Mars is an exciting one. Docking with an asteroid, standing on it, in some ways is almost more intriguing. These are things that don't show up very often. If one should be headed toward Earth, it might be nice to know more about them ahead of time.

"The science you can do with humans, you can do more of it, dollar for dollar, with robots. But the scientific community, by and large, are not great supporters of human spaceflight anyway. They think we oversold the scientific benefits. So I think the basic answer has to be an intangible one. In polls, a huge percent of the American people support the space program. It costs each of us around 7 cents a day. I think most people would be willing to pay that, to have a human space flight program. Human exploration tends to excite people more than robotic exploration. The latter does excite people, but nobody remembers the name of the first robot to land on moon. Everyone remembers the name of the first human. If someone had lobbed an instrument package to top of Mount Everest with some flags on it, it probably would not have generated the excitement that Hillary and Norgay did. And if we should manage to destroy our planet's environment, or discover that it's going to be impacted by a comet, it might be that you'd want humanity, some part of it, to live on another planet, to increase the odds of our survival."

"When we started work on the committee, there was this question, What do we do with ISS [International Space Station], do we go to the Moon, Mars, near-Earth objects, other interesting destinations in space? What do we do? Once you come to the realization that, in the long term, Mars is where you're trying to get, what do you do? There are people who think we're ready for the Hail Mary pass to Mars. I'm not one of them. There's a long list of technologies that need to matured and developed. Those missions are going to be very long. We'll be in deep space for a long time. It's been decades since the United States did manned plan exploration in space. Doing it again in an environment that's 20 light minutes away from Earth, where mission control is not looking over your shoulder, that will take time and practice.

"One of the findings we came to in the committee was that the ultimate rationale for why humans are indispensable in space activity, one of the driving reasons, is to learn to live there. We believe there will be future outposts of humans living elsewhere. You don't learn how to live and work in space by sending robots. I think Mars is a very obvious place for settlement to happen. It is the place we have that is closest to us and looks like the most prominent candidate for a self-sustained human presence. Why would anyone want to go there? I want to go! There are lots of people out there who want to go. Wind that question back 400 years. Why would anyone want to go this great howling wilderness in North America? When the pilgrims got here, they wrote about what inhospitable place it was, with no inns to refresh one's spirits, nothing but howling wilderness. The first three attempts to make a permanent place in the Los Angeles area ended in death. Even now, you have to pipe in water to survive. We had to master fire to get out of Africa, and agriculture to get to a lot of places. The American West had to be subjected to massive civil engineering works before more than a small community of pioneers could live there. What you consider to be habitable is a function of your level of technology."

"I've never really cared for arguments about manned versus robot exploration, for the sake of science. I don't really think the purpose of a space program is science. I think the base motive is to expand human civilization into space. It's about preparing way for where people are going to be in future. Science is a tertiary benefit. People weren't excited about landing on the Moon because learned about the early geology of Earth. They were excited because we landed on the damn moon.

"But the cost of these programs, if it's not sustainable, we're not going to move civilization into space. Things need to change. It's saddening looking at the amount going into NASA, $14 billion in a year, and the sense that it's poorly utilized. I'm a little fatalistic about NASA going off and delivering all the wonder things that we want to happen. They've shown than you can spend tons, and sometimes get it right the first time, but that's not the most efficient way to make progress. We want to see progress into getting into space, incrementally. One of our major goals was to set [Armadillo] up like doing computer software. You compile 20 times a day. You take a stab, debug what went wrong, and carry on.

"If people want to get people into space, don't vote for increasing NASA's budget. Support people actually building rockets. I'd bet that the next manned landing on the Moon is going to be a private venture. I won't be surprised if 30 years go by and NASA hasn't put another man on the Moon. I'll bet the next person is going to be part of a project of some billionaire that says, I want it done. And he makes it happen."

"The destination is Mars, without distractions, like exploratory landings on the Moon. I'm not talking about skipping [the Moon], but using our leadership to assist the internationals, like China and India, in their own manned landings, both before their missions, and once they've landed, with robots. We should establish an international lunar economic development authority. Our goal should be to develop the Moon, not explore it—we've already done that. We should conserve our resources.

"With its flexible option, the Augustine Commission is suggesting taking a position that doesn't strongly commit us, and leaves us open to revise things: Maybe we'll land on the Moon, maybe we won't land on Mars. That may be nice and noble, but it forgets the option that should be very attractive to a national leader, whose short-term advisers might be anxious about the costs, but they aren't going to go down in history anyway. If President Obama selects a monumental, historic commitment, to use these other missions as stepping stones toward the permanent settlement of Mars, that plan doesn't even become expensive until it's reaffirmed in 10 years, at the 50th anniversary of the Apollo landing. Hopefully the world financial situation will allow that to happen. We have to assume it will be better and chart the course. All he can do is set the whole thing in motion. This administration needs a clearly laid out plan, that does not cost lots of money, so they don't rush into something that excludes Mars. What is underway right now costs too much, and doesn't get us there."

"There are two related questions posed by human exploration. First, is there anything economically useful to do out there, that pays your way? And second, can you live off the land, and use local resources to survive, or will we always be tied to support from earth? If the answer to both is yes, then you get space colonies, self-sustainable life off-planet. If the answer to both is no, then space is like Mt. Everest. Tourists might go to Mt. Everest, sherpas might make a living off of it, but no one really lives there.

"If the answer is that you can live off the land, but it's not economically useful, it's like Antarctica. It was 40 years between the last time we were there, when Shackleton reached Antarctica, and when the U.S. Navy went back in 1912. There's a similar lapse between going to the Moon the first time and, hopefully, when we'll return. In that case, you can form an outpost and live there, but you're sustained by constant funding, since engineering doesn't pay for itself. If the answer is that there are economically useful things to do, such as mining Helium-3 on the Moon, but we're always reliant on Earth for basic necessities, then space becomes a North Sea oil platform. You can make money there, but it will always be a hostile environment.

These are four very radically different human futures. And they're all part of a larger question: Is there a human future beyond Earth? It's a question ranks up there with whether there's intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. We can search for life with probes and telescopes, but to determine the living range of humanity, we're going to have to send humans into space."

From Squyres' testimony to the Augustine Commission on August 5, 2009:
"Humans have an extraordinary ability to function in complex environments, to improvise, and to respond quickly to new discoveries. Robots, in contrast, do best when the environment is simple and well understood, and the scientific tasks are well defined in advance. There are also lessons to be learned from the missions of the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity. One is that rovers like these accomplish their tasks far more slowly than humans in the same environment would. What Spirit and Opportunity typically achieve in a day, a human explorer could do in less than a minute. The Opportunity rover has traversed about 17 km in its five and a half year lifetime; this is less than the distance covered by two astronauts in their Lunar Roving Vehicle in a single EVA on Apollo 17. "

"The particular case for sending people into space is getting weaker all the time, because of advances in robotics and miniaturization. I hope, as a human endeavor and human adventure, that people do one day go to Mars. It would be sad if manned spaceflight never reached that point. If I were an American, I'd be cautious about supporting a big, federal program to go there. The problem with a NASA-type program, is that because of political and public pressure, they have to be very risk averse. Look at the Shuttle program. There have been two major accidents, and each of those failures was a national trauma.

A manned mission [to Mars] has to be done in a mode that accepts risks. That's why the future of manned spaceflight lies in waiting till it can be done by private enterprise, or through private sponsorship. It will mean high risks, even one-way tickets. If it's done privatley, it will be like Everest. People are taking risks every day when they climb Everest, and the public accepts that. Over a two years ago, three people were killed by an abortive rocket launch in California. It didn't even make the first page in the American press. That's because it was a private space firm [Burt Ratan's Scaled Composites, makers of SpaceShipOne, which has since been fined]. If NASA killed three people, it would be headline news. Look at Steve Fosset. He died in an unspectacular way. But if he had died during a historic mission, we would have said, That's way he wanted to go. That could be true of of the first people who try to get to Mars. The point is, I can't see a NASA program adopting that mentality."

"If there is a useful thing for humans to do in space, I'd be happy to do it. What they're planning on doing is absolutely the wrong thing to do. They're talking about sending human beings to Mars, at a time when we're talking about finding life on Mars. If we get there, we'll have to stay there for 18 months before attempting a return flight. Do you realize the amount of feces produced by a single human being in a year and a half? All of that will be absolutely crawling with living organisms. There's no chance of keeping from contaminating mars in 18 months. We'll find Mars, but it'll be pretty familiar.

"The idea of being pioneers is kind of funny. Anyone who thinks they can survive on Mars without constant support from Earth is kidding themselves. So what are we practicing for, by going back to Moon? When we established colonies [on Earth], we did it for very specific reasons. To rape the resources and bring them home. There aren't any resources on Mars, not that we know of. There's nothing to go there to get. If there were diamonds a feet deep on Mars, it still wouldn't be worth the cost of sending people there. We're already doing a great job with unmanned explorers. My god, we're on Saturn, and Saturn's moons. We're doing a fantastic job on Mars. There's no reason to send humans. We're better off spending our time trying to protect the Earth. We need to be building more and better telescopes to track near-Earth objects that could be headed our way. The laws of celestial mechanics are sufficiently rigid that once we detect them, we can prepare for them. Our technology is advanced enough now to let us protect ourselves. And if that happens, we're not going to send up somebody to do it. That will be an unmanned mission, too."

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/air_space/4333599.html?page=1

 

[Windu]

At the Saturnian equinox, which takes place every 15 Earth years or so, the plane of Saturn's rings aligns with the sun, casting shadows that bring out subtle details in their structure. NASA's Cassini spacecraft was on hand in August to observe Saturn's latest equinox up close and captured this image showing how the planet's moons influence the rings.

The narrow outer band in this photograph, known as the F ring (Saturn's main rings are named A to G in the order they were discovered), features channels carved into the ring by Prometheus, the oblong moon visible just inside the F ring. These so-called streamers are formed when the elliptical orbit of Prometheus brings the moon into the F ring. The gravity of the moon pulls material out of the ring, carving out a new streamer on each 15-hour orbit.

A more subtle deformation is visible toward the outer portion of the A ring, the wider band in the center of the image. The A ring is nearly 15,000 kilometers across (for comparison, the F ring is just a few hundred kilometers broad at its widest point), but its thickness is measured in the tens of meters.

Within the A ring is a 40-kilometer span known as the Keeler Gap, in which the moon Daphnis orbits. This miniature moon has an inclined orbit, meaning its orbital path is tilted with respect to the rings. Due to Daphnis's inclination, its gravity pulls material out of the ring plane, creating waves on either side of the Keeler Gap (visible as a bump near the bottom of the photograph, toward the outer edge of the A ring). Due to Cassini's unique vantage point at Saturn's equinox, Daphnis's deformation of the A ring was set in stark relief by the low angle of the sun, casting shadows that revealed the waves to be approximately four kilometers high.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/gallery_directory.cfm?photo_id=4F52921C-C148-CFBD-1562442F8C2C7D98

 

[Windu]

Andromeda in Ultraviolet

In a break from its usual task of searching for distant cosmic explosions, NASA's Swift satellite acquired the highest-resolution view of a neighboring spiral galaxy ever attained in the ultraviolet. The galaxy, known as M31 in the constellation Andromeda, is the largest and closest spiral galaxy to our own. This mosaic of M31 merges 330 individual images taken by Swift's Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope. The image shows a region 200,000 light-years wide and 100,000 light-years high (100 arcminutes by 50 arcminutes).

Noctis Labyrinthus

Layers in the lower portion of two neighboring buttes within the Noctis Labyrinthus formation on Mars are visible in this image from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Black Holes Go 'Mano a Mano'

This image of NGC 6240 contains new X-ray data from Chandra (shown in red, orange, and yellow) that has been combined with an optical image from the Hubble Space Telescope originally released in 2008. In 2002, Chandra data led to the discovery of two merging black holes, which are a mere 3,000 light years apart. They are seen as the bright point-like sources in the middle of the image.

Scientists think these black holes are in such close proximity because they are in the midst of spiraling toward each other -- a process that began about 30 million years ago. It is estimated that they holes will eventually drift together and merge into a larger black hole some tens or hundreds of millions of years from now.

Finding and studying merging black holes has become a very active field of research in astrophysics. Since 2002, there has been intense interest in follow-up observations of NGC 6240, as well as a search for similar systems. Understanding what happens when these exotic objects interact with one another remains an intriguing question for scientists.

The formation of multiple systems of supermassive black holes should be common in the universe, since many galaxies undergo collisions and mergers with other galaxies, most of which contain supermassive black holes. It is thought that pairs of massive black holes can explain some of the unusual behavior seen by rapidly growing supermassive black holes, such as the distortion and bending seen in the powerful jets they produce. Also, pairs of massive black holes in the process of merging are expected to be the most powerful sources of gravitational waves in the Universe.

Gullies at the Edge of Hale Crater, Mars

This image from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows gullies near the edge of Hale crater on southern Mars.

Martian gullies carved into hill slopes and the walls of impact craters were discovered several years ago. On Earth, gullies usually form through the action of liquid water -- long thought to be absent on the Martian surface. Whether liquid water carves gullies under today's cold and dry conditions on Mars is a major question that planetary scientists are trying to answer.

Gullies at this site are especially interesting because scientists recently discovered actively changing examples at similar locations. Images separated by several years showed changes in the appearance of some of these gullies. Today, planetary scientists are using the HiRISE camera on MRO to examine gullies such as the one in this image for change that might provide a clue about whether liquid water occurs on the surface of Mars. The view covers an area about 1 kilometer, or 0.6 mile, across and was taken on Aug. 3, 2009.

The Heart of Darkness

Some of the coldest and darkest dust in space shines brightly in this infrared image from the Herschel Observatory, a European Space Agency mission with important participation from NASA. The image is a composite of light captured simultaneously by two of Herschel's three instruments -- the photodetector array camera and spectrometer with its spectral and photometric imaging receiver.

The image reveals a cold and turbulent region where material is just beginning to condense into new stars. It is located in the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy, 60 degrees from the center. Blue shows warmer material, red the coolest, while green represents intermediate temperatures. The red filaments are made up of the coldest material pictured here -- material that is slightly warmer than the coldest temperature theoretically attainable in the universe.

Pleiades and Stardust

Have you ever seen the Pleiades star cluster? Perhaps the most famous star cluster on the sky, the Pleiades can be seen without binoculars from even the depths of a light-polluted city. Also known as the Seven Sisters and M45, the Pleiades is one of the brightest and closest open clusters. Hurtling through a cosmic dust cloud a mere 400 light-years away, the Pleiades or Seven Sisters star cluster is well-known for its striking blue reflection nebulae. This remarkable wide-field (3 degree) image of the region shows the famous star cluster near the center, while highlighting lesser known dusty reflection nebulas nearby, across an area that would span over 20 light-years. In this case, the sister stars and cosmic dust clouds are not related, they just happen to be passing through the same region of space.

Giant Dust Ring Discovered Around Saturn

What has created a large dust ring around Saturn? At over 200 times the radius of Saturn and over 50 times the radius of Saturn's expansive E ring, the newly discovered dust ring is the largest planetary ring yet imaged. The ring was found in infrared light by the Earth-trailing Spitzer Space Telescope. A leading hypothesis for its origin is impact material ejected from Saturn's moon Phoebe, which orbits right through the dust ring's middle. An additional possibility is that the dust ring supplies the mysterious material that coats part of Saturn's moon Iapetus, which orbits near the dust ring's inner edge. Pictured above in the inset, part of the dust ring appears as false-color orange in front of numerous background stars.

Stars Over Easter Island

Why were the statues on Easter Island built? No one is sure. What is sure is that over 800 large stone statues exist there. The Easter Island statues, stand, on the average, over twice as tall as a person and have over 200 times as much mass. Few specifics are known about the history or meaning of the unusual statues, but many believe that they were created about 500 years ago in the images of local leaders of a lost civilization. Pictured above, a large stone statue appears to ponder the distant Large Magellanic Cloud before a cloudy sky that features the bright stars Canopus and Sirius.

Hubble Spies Energetic Galaxy Merger

NGC 2623, pictured in this Hubble Space Telescope image, is in the late stages of a galactic merger between two spiral galaxies. The forces of the collision have fueled star formation in both galactic tails. Credit: NASA, ESA and A. Evans (Stony Brook University, New York)

 

[Windu]

Fireball Meteor Over Groningen

The brilliant fireball meteor captured in this snapshot was a startling visitor to Tuesday evening's twilight skies over the city of Groningen. In fact, sightings of the meteor, as bright as the Full Moon, were widely reported throughout the Netherlands and Germany at approximately 17:00 UT. Accompanied by sonic booms and rumbling sounds, the meteor was seen to break up into bright fragments, eventually leaving a persistent smoke-like trail. Even though there are bright fireball meteors in planet Earth's atmosphere every day, sightings of them are relatively rare because they more often occur over oceans and uninhabited areas.

 

[speedpop]

8 Experts Weigh in on the Future of Human Spaceflight

That was a good read.

Carmack basically echoes my sentiments. I don't see Government-funded organisations pushing the way into space - it might look a little bleak but private companies are going to be the ones that pave the way.

 

[noah111]

Saw this, thought of this thread, posted.

I know i'm many pages late, but my jaw seriously dropped when I saw this. Mind fucking blown.

 

[C.Dark.DN]

That was a good read.

Carmack basically echoes my sentiments. I don't see Government-funded organisations pushing the way into space - it might look a little bleak but private companies are going to be the ones that pave the way.

Martin Rees adds on to that with some good points.


We already got private companies making comemrical craft.

 

[ana]

Earth and jupiter in same photograph captured from mars:

http://starryskies.com/The_sky/events/mars/earth_jupiter_100.jpg

 

[gamergirly]

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/air_space/4333599.html?page=1

Wow, most of them could have been in a real life Star Trek crew

 

[bengraven]

Earth and jupiter in same photograph captured from mars:

http://starryskies.com/The_sky/events/mars/earth_jupiter_100.jpg

Yeah, I saw this pic today. Awesome.

 

[noah111]

That's an awesome shot, don't think it's 100% genuine though since the orbits don't seem to make sense from what I can tell 9could be wrong), but still cool to see.

BTW, anyone have some nice space or earth wallpapers? I want real stuff not CG touched up garbage I find on google.

 

[XGoldenboyX]

Awsome. It almost feels like I'm piloting a Space Ship past it. I wish I was born 200 years from now.

Some are already doing that for a long time, it's called Black projects and Stargate technology.

 

[speedpop]

That's an awesome shot, don't think it's 100% genuine though since the orbits don't seem to make sense from what I can tell 9could be wrong), but still cool to see.

I'd say the problem with the picture is due to the crescent shapes Earth and the Moon portray, compared to the full shapes that Jupiter and its Galilean moons.

 

[Stantron]

Seems like a reasonable place to post this. QUANTUM TO COSMOS festival happening this weekend.

Canada’s Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics celebrates its 10th Anniversary with Quantum to Cosmos: Ideas for the Future. This innovative festival, October 15th to 25th, will take a global audience from the strange world of subatomic particles to the outer frontiers of the universe. You can enjoy a wide range of presentations in three ways - onsite in Waterloo, Ontario, on TV in Canada via TVO, and online over the world at Q2Cfestival.com.

On demand steams don't seem to be working for me at the moment, but there looks to be some very interesting talks.

 

[Escape Goat]

I love this picture. No borders or politics. No Americans or Chinese. No black or white. Just humanity and its home.

 

[numble]

I love this picture. No borders or politics. No Americans or Chinese. No black or white. Just humanity and its home.

 

[Escape Goat]

ok

 

[cjdunn]

http://removestringfromobject.files.wordpress.com/2007/03/moon.jpg

America, fuck yeah!

 

[cjdunn]

Regarding the Earth/Jupiter pic:

What does Earth look like when viewed from Mars? At 13:00 GMT on 8 May 2003, the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) had an opportunity to find out. In addition, a fortuitous alignment of Earth and Jupiter---the first planetary conjunction viewed from another planet---permitted the MOC to acquire an image of both of these bodies and their larger satellites. At the time, Mars and the orbiting camera were 139 million kilometers (86 million miles) from Earth and almost 1 billion kilometers (nearly 600 million miles) from Jupiter. The orbit diagram, above, shows the geometry at the time the images were obtained.

Because Jupiter is over 5 times farther from the Sun than Earth, two different exposures were needed to image the two planets. Mosaiced together, the images are shown above (top picture). The composite has been highly contrast-enhanced and "colorized" to show both planets and their satellites. The MGS MOC high resolution camera only takes grayscale (black-and-white) images; the color was derived from Mariner 10 and Cassini pictures of Earth/Moon and Jupiter, respectively, as described in the note below.

 

[C.Dark.DN]

I love this picture. No borders or politics. No Americans or Chinese. No black or white. Just humanity and its home.

Similar view on a mountain or airplane looking at the city you live in where you spend your life facing problems on foot.

 

[kkaabboomm]

Regarding the Earth/Jupiter pic:

thanks i was curious about this

 

[AndersTheSwede]

Why would anyone want to go there? I want to go! There are lots of people out there who want to go. Wind that question back 400 years. Why would anyone want to go this great howling wilderness in North America? When the pilgrims got here, they wrote about what inhospitable place it was, with no inns to refresh one's spirits, nothing but howling wilderness. The first three attempts to make a permanent place in the Los Angeles area ended in death. Even now, you have to pipe in water to survive. We had to master fire to get out of Africa, and agriculture to get to a lot of places. The American West had to be subjected to massive civil engineering works before more than a small community of pioneers could live there. What you consider to be habitable is a function of your level of technology."

Fucking brilliant.

 

[C.Dark.DN]

This is apparently every space mission on one map

http://www.flickr.com/photos/adamcrowe/4002050596/sizes/o/

 

[Escape Goat]

i wonder if we'll develop space travel fast enough so we can catch up with the probes we sent out into deep space.

 

[Walshicus]

This is apparently every space mission on one map

http://www.flickr.com/photos/adamcrowe/4002050596/sizes/o/
http://i33.tinypic.com/30bh5a9.jpg

Wonder why they're using the crappy old list of Planets. Not very modern.

Still awesome though.

 

[fallout]

Wonder why they're using the crappy old list of Planets. Not very modern.

Just because Pluto isn't classified as a planet doesn't mean we aren't going to send missions to it. Hell, we've sent missions to comets!

(I know you're joking around, but I just can't help myself.)

 

[noah111]

i wonder if we'll develop space travel fast enough so we can catch up with the probes we sent out into deep space.

Of course, eventually, we will.

 

[noah111]

Regarding the Earth/Jupiter pic:
http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2003/05/22/orbits_i.gif[IMG][/QUOTE]
Ok, NOW that shot makes a lot more sense.. I didn't know it was from May 2003, I was assuming it was 'recent' when viewing the angles in Celestia. :lol

Turns out (using the exact time/date) that it's 100% accurate, check it out;

[IMG]http://i38.tinypic.com/im1fsh.png

From the same location, I then did a super zoom FOV on Earth & Jupiter, and it's exactly as supposedly depicted;

Awesome shot, really.

 

[fallout]

I love how Earth would be such an amazing object to view through a telescope from a different planet in our solar system.

 

[cjdunn]

Ok, NOW that shot makes a lot more sense.. I didn't know it was from May 2003, I was assuming it was 'recent' when viewing the angles in Celestia. :lol

Turns out (using the exact time/date) that it's 100% accurate, check it out;

http://i38.tinypic.com/im1fsh.png

From the same location, I then did a super zoom FOV on Earth & Jupiter, and it's exactly as supposedly depicted;

http://i34.tinypic.com/2j12535.png

http://i33.tinypic.com/1rta8l.png

Awesome shot, really.

Nice, and it bolsters how awesome Celestia is.

 

[Lost Fragment]

Discontent with blasting purny orbital bodies, scientists are upping the ante and shooting a frickin' laser at the center of the galaxy. Andromeda don't want none of this.

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2009/10/image-of-the-day-laser-strike-at-milky-way-core.html

Star Wars -The Final Battle? Not quite! Astronomers at the Very Large Telescope (VLT) site in Chile have been shooting a laser at the center of the Milky Way in an attempt to measure the distortions of Earth's ever changing atmosphere. Constant imaging of high-altitude atoms excited by the laser -- which appear like an artificial star -- allow astronomers to instantly measure atmospheric blurring. In this case, a VLT was observing our Galaxy's center, and so Earth's atmospheric blurring in that direction was needed.

 

[Rindain]

Interview discussing possibility of planets in the Alpha Centauri system:

http://marketsaw.blogspot.com/2009/10/eyes-on-alpha-centauri-hunt-for-pandora.html

I'd love them to find something there soon. I would think that finding planets in the habitables zones of either Alpha Cen A or B would push NASA to develop some of that shelved nuclear propulsion tech.

You could get there in 40 years at 10% of the speed of light, which is a speed engineers think we could reach with current tech.

 

[Escape Goat]

do you think a crew would endure a 40 year trip? Obviously suspended animation would have to be used would it not? If not they'd be dead by time they got back assuming it was a return trip.

 

[Windu]

Engineers have found a way to communicate continuously with Mars in a research project to help manned space missions.

Communication with Mars had not been possible for several weeks at a time when the Sun obscured the Earth's view of the planet.

But the University of Strathclyde researchers found a way to allow continuous communication with just one spacecraft.

The breakthrough centres on Lagrange points, five areas in space where an object such as a satellite or observatory can stay fixed in the same location relative to the Earth and the Sun.

Dr Malcolm Macdonald, a member of the research team, said: "One of the key barriers to manned exploration of Mars is communication. When the Sun obscures the Earth's view of Mars, it also prevents any possibility of ground controllers making contact with astronauts.

"But by moving a spacecraft with a continuous thrusting propulsion system into Lagrange point one, we've calculated that it's possible to enable continuous communication from the Earth to the spacecraft, and from the spacecraft to the surface of Mars.

"We've also shown that, by using a similar technique, but with two spacecraft, we can further improve communications.

"Hovering directly above Mars limits communications to just one polar region. But by using two spacecraft, we can enable communication to a much wider area of the planet."

The research is based on the T6 Thruster technology being developed for the European Space Agency's BepiColombo mission to Mercury, due to set off in 2014.

The finding is being released this week at the 60th International Astronautical Congress, the world's biggest space conference, being held in Daejeon, South Korea.

The European Space Agency has funded the research to investigate how technology can be used to radically enhance space science, from improving telecommunications to monitoring the Arctic.

Dr Macdonald said: "Our research has shown that we have a whole catalogue of space science opportunities available in the next 10 to 15 years by using technologies that are already in the pipeline.

"This can include everything from new space missions to continually monitoring the effects of climate change on the Arctic.

"Our aim is to challenge conventional ideas and enable radical change in the near term."

The research team, which also includes Dr Robert Mackay, Professor Colin McInnes and Dr James Biggs, is based at the university's Advanced Space Concepts Laboratory.

Francois Bosquillon de Frescheville, at the European Space Agency, and Dr Massimiliano Vasile, at the University of Glasgow, were involved in the research.

 

[Rindain]

do you think a crew would endure a 40 year trip? Obviously suspended animation would have to be used would it not? If not they'd be dead by time they got back assuming it was a return trip.

Hopefully we'll figure out a way to extend lifespan dramatically.

But in the meantime we could send an unmanned probe and get pictures back in 44 years.

 

[speedpop]

Hopefully we'll figure out a way to extend lifespan dramatically.

But in the meantime we could send an unmanned probe and get pictures back in 44 years.

This would be amazing if it happened. The possibilities of what is there is seemingly endless - all you have to do is look at this picture of Sol from Alpha Centauri's viewpoint in Celestia:

Looks like any other insignificant yet bright star, however we know that a planet teeming with life orbits that star and we have limited knowledge of every other planet and their moons that orbit that star as well.

 

[DrForester]

Year long time lapse video of Ares Rocket Construction. First test flight is scheduled for October 31.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOee5gAHckI

In the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASAs Kennedy Space Center in Florida, a time lapse camera documented the buildup of the Ares I-X flight test rocket. The first video was on Nov. 3, 2008 and the final video was on Aug. 30, 2009.

It began with the arrival and integration of the upper stage, or second stage elements, in high bay 4. This was followed in high bay 3 by the stacking of the four solid rocket booster segments on the mobile launcher platform comprising the first stage. The primary elements of the second stage were each then hoisted high above high bay 4, moved across the transfer aisle into high bay 3 and lowered atop the first stage. It concluded as the service module simulator, crew module simulator and launch abort system simulator now integrated together were hoisted into place atop what then became the fully assembled Ares I-X flight test vehicle.

The Ares I-X is targeted to liftoff on Oct. 31 from Kennedys Launch Pad 39B.

 

[DrForester]

Say what you will. They did it with class. Among the various things left by Apollo 11 on the moon were two medals in honor of two fallen Cosmonauts who had died (including Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space).