China Launches First Willing Manned Mission Into Space

This is hilarious. China now includes food and helmets for their astronauts! What a crack up!


China Launches First Willing Manned Mission Into Space

Chinese Astronauts Space Walk

The New York Times reports that Chinese astronauts space walked for 18 minutes on Saturday afternoon. This bold step, somewhat reminiscent of NASA's early days with the Gemini program, carried China closer to their ambitions to build a space station and visit the moon.

I've been impressed with China's rapid progress. According to the article, they're first long-term goal is to build a space station by 2020 and then land on the moon, although no specific date has been given for that apparently. With the missions they've done so far, they've shown rapid progress and some boldness that seems to be lacking in America's space program. Who knows, maybe they'll beat us back to the moon.

Chinese Fake Space Mission

OK that's just a joke-a play on the people who think the moon landings were faked. Today China launched three former fighter pilots on a first ever space mission for the country that will involve a space walk. The Chinese space program seems to be retracing the steps of NASA during the 1960's. I wonder if they will beat us back to the moon.

Read the story here

Moon Landing Hoax

I'm sorry, but if you believe the moon landings were a hoax your head has to be as far up your ass as it can go. I'm not sure if believing something that stupid is worse than worrying about the world ending in 2012 or not, or that black holes produced in the Large Hadron Collider will swallow the earth, but I imagine there is a lot of cross over among the various groups of wackos.

Here is a video I found on You Tube. Supposedly, someones granddaddy worked at NASA and they found this TOP SECRET video among his things after he passed on. The wackos elegantly point out that the official NASA clip has no static and better video quality. WOW what an observation. Now, supposedly there is a mysterious figure in black intruding onto the scene (a stagehand????). NASA apparently tried to crop this guy out but didn't entirely succeed.

Its amazing that NASA would declare a video TOP SECRET and let granddaddy take it home. Oh, I guess he snuck it out at great risk to his own life. Now tell me something, why should anyone believe some wacko who posts a video on You Tube? Wake up people. Only a moron would doubt the moon landings were real.

Creatures Survive Outerspace

For those wondering if life can exist in the vacuum of space, the New York Times reports that at least one form of life from earth can. Tardigrades are little segmented animals that live in water. Very small, adults only reach a size of about 1.5 mm in length. They're small but successful, they can be found virtually anywhere on earth-from the ocean to the polar regions. According to the article they are commonly called "water bears" but I've never heard of them until now. The European Space Agency sent some of these things up in a spacecraft. Going into low earth orbit (160 miles up) the creatures were divided into two groups. One group was exposed to the vacuum of space but protected from UV rays, while the other was exposed to the vacuum and the UV rays.

The group that was exposed to the vacuum survived, and even some members of the other group survived as well. This makes me think of panspermia, the idea that bacteria could be transported from one planet to another by natural processes spreading life. This research brings to life the possibility that multicellular organisms could be transported as well. Granted only a few survived the harsh radiation environment, but evolution would take care of that and produce some hardy souls that would survive just fine.

NASA to extend Space Shuttle life?

The space shuttle started out as a novel concept-a reusable spacecraft-but ended up being relatively unsafe and basically a waste of money in a dead end space program that lacks any vision.

In recent years, the Bush administration, in one of the few good things its done-put the brakes on the space shuttle with the announcement of the "constellation" program. In addition to setting a goal of returning humans to the moon, constellation aims to replace the space shuttle. I say great idea. The space shuttle is too complicated, its out of date, and its a huge waste of money. I used to hear stupid arguments from people I knew that worked at NASA that we MUST keep the space shuttle going to keep humans in space. I don't think that follows. Being against the shuttle doesn't mean you're against humans flying in space. It means your against wasting huge amounts of money to fly people around and around and around in orbit.

I once heard that each shuttle mission costs in the neighborhood of $600 million. Are you kidding me? What if we had taken all that money starting say 10 years ago and put it into a moon program. If we had, instead of insisting on continuing to develop the "international space station", a tin can in the sky, we would be well along the way to sending humans back to the moon.

Well one thing about government programs is they never go as planned, at least in the United States. It looks like NASA's planned retirement of the space shuttle in 2010 may be put on the shelf. One concern is deteriorating relations with Russia. There seems to be some concern that reliance on the Russians for space flights to the international space station could be risky business. A group of senators, including Presidential hopeful John McCain, urged NASA to hold off on a final decision about retiring the shuttle for at least another year. Further complicating matters, the Orion space ship, which looks quite a bit like Apollo in drawings I've seen, won't be ready until 2015. Well that is the projection. Since the US government is involved, I would say 2018 is a more realistic date. Or maybe they'll wait until say 2014, after billions have been spent on it, and cancel the program. Remember the superconducting super collider? Instead of letting the U.S. hold onto the lead in particle physics congress spent billions shutting down the program after billions had already been spent starting to construct it. Government has already set a precedence in willingness to do stupid stuff like that, so why not cancel Orion at the last minute?

I for one say good riddance to the space shuttle and the space station. I'm not against space exploration, in fact I'm all for it. But lets be real about it. Set real concrete goals that get people and missions out in space instead of doing endless studies on weightlessness in a tin can.

Regardless of your point of view, you can read the article on BBC news here.

Going to the Moon and Beyond

From time to time I've thought about what a waste of money the international space station was. I've always thought the space shuttle and space station were both wastes of money, but the dramatic way that the space station was scaled back made it even more so.

Back in the day when we were actively taking trips to the moon, a lunar base was not out of the question. Maybe the time to revive this idea is now.

Think about it. The moon itself can serve as a "space station". Its only 3 days transit time, and being a ball of solid rock with a surface area about equivalent to the land mass of Africa, it provides a ready-made foundation on which to build space stations, space telescopes, radio telescopes, and other wished for goodies. A space station is a temporary structure, the moon will be up there for a very long time.

Scrub the Hubble telescope and build a telescope on the moon. Hubble is already what, twenty years old? We could build a telescope to replace it on the moon with updated technology that could be accessed readily once it was built, because it would be ground based (albeit on the moon). Radio telescopes could be constructed that would have an unprecedented radio "view" of the universe for general research and also to search for any radio signals of alien life.

I'm sure lots of other uses for the moon could be cooked up, scientific and practical. The main point would be to establish a permanent human presence in space. You might think its expensive, but isn't the war in Iraq expensive? If we can spend $1 billion per week invading another country, why can't we lay out some serious money for space exploration?

Also consider that the Apollo missions, grand as they were, took place during the cold war. Today the world is very different. We could invite Russia, China, India, and Europe on board as direct participants. This would encourage international cooperation, build a sense of shared purpose and enable us to split and share costs.

Carl Sagan once likened the Apollo missions to life coming onto land from the seas for the first time. Going to the moon would be like the first tentative steps of a lung fish leaving the security of the ocean to pursue a life on land. Life ever expanding outward, is now ready to take those first tentative steps off the earth out into the universe beyond.

Its not going to happen unless we start the ball rolling now. Lets go back to the moon, but not the way we did back in the days of Apollo. Instead lets go out there with the purpose of establishing the first permanent presence of life in space that we know of.