tagged w/ Space Exploration
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http://wp.me/pWlqU-2V
Searching the google machine that is the Internet for "moon landing," you'll find a million pages of links.
Actually its closer to 6 million, but that is beside the point.
Nearly 1 million of those pages are about a "fake moon landing," and I'm here to add to that total.
Not that I'm some conspiracy nut (I am a nut but that isn't why ;-) )
I don't dwell on fake photos or flags blowing in the wind (I couldn't care less about those things), rather I question the big-picture.
The story goes like this:
In 1961, President Kennedy declared that the USA would put a man on the moon before the end of the decade. In 1969, men successfully landed on the moon. The 8 years in between are what I'd like to focus on.
My main skepticism comes from simply looking at the dates. I'm supposed to believe that in 8 years, using 1960s technology, NASA designed and developed, from scratch, the 3 most advanced devices of all time (Saturn V Rocket, Space Suit, Lunar Module), and successfully landed men on the moon 6 times in 3 years (that's an average of once every 6 months for those of you who are bad at math!) These men also took off from the moon and safely returned to Earth. That is pretty impressive considering we can't launch a Shuttle from Florida in 2011 if the weather isn't perfect!
Read that part again... 8 years... 1960s technology. That does not and will not ever sit right with me. Using basic logic, one would assume that in 8 years in the 70s, 80s, 90s and 2000s mankind would be developing things that far surpass what we made in the 60s... yet that isn't the case. In fact, it's far from it. Every other facet of life has improved since the 60s yet space travel seems to have regressed. Can you imagine if things like cars, airplanes, computers, & TVs were behind where they were in 1969?!
Additionally, no other developed nation has even come close to replicating these "feats" of the 60s. China, with their endless supply of money, hopes to have a man on the moon by 2030. Again, using basic logic, I wonder why, with the USA already setting the blueprint, and with 2011 technology at their hands, it would take China over 25 years to accomplish what the USA claims to have done in 8, over forty years ago.
Since 1972, no other nation has claimed to put a man past Low-Earth Orbit (160 km - 2000 km from Earth). You have heard of this before... it's where the ISS (International Space Station) resides, between 278 km - 460 km above Earth's surface. The moon, on the other hand, is between 356,000 km to 406,000 km away. Not quite the same, is it? For those of you who think that housing astronauts at 460 km is the same as 406,000 km, I'll tell you to save it, or to trade me your $406,000 for my $460 :-)
Furthermore, prior to 1961, the USA's space program was largely a complete failure. Fifteen consecutive U.S. unmanned lunar missions over a six-year period from 1958 to 1964 all failed their primary photographic missions. Yet just 5 years later, the USA claims to have successfully put men on the moon.
Most people do not realize that no other nation has claimed to put a man on the moon. A lot of people simply assume that Russia did. Those same people, and most others, don't even give a second thought to man landing on the moon. "Of course it happened" is a common reply I hear when talking about the subject.
Yet these people haven't given it serious thought since they learned about it in school, or in the case of the baby boomers, since they "witnessed" it happen! I simply ask for people to use their heads and to start thinking critically, instead of believing everything that is told to them because "it must have happened."
I believe that JFK had good intentions when he made his bold statement in 1961, however I think he bit off more than he could chew. After the early failures of the Apollo program, I believe that NASA had too much pride and too much financial incentive to scrap the program (they had already invested billions, and they would continue to receive funding so long as the program was showing progress.)
Again, the big picture is what makes me skeptical, however if you continue to research on your own, you'll find numerous other examples including cancelled Apollo missions, lost priceless, one-of-a-kind tapes, declarations of a manned Mars landing by 1984 and more.http://wp.me/pWlqU-2V
Searching the google machine that is the Internet for... more
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The first launch from SLC-6 took place on August 15, 1995, almost 30 years after it was built, when an Athena 1 rocket boosted off the pad. However, the rocket lost control shortly after launch and was destroyed in a controlled explosion when it deviated off course. The first successful launch finally took place in August of 1997.The first launch from SLC-6 took place on August 15, 1995, almost 30 years after it... more
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This is one of my Experimental music adventures. I hope you will enjoy.
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With dozens of spacecraft currently orbiting, roving or otherwise and traveling through our solar system, I thought it would be interesting to get a general snapshot in time, using images from NASA and ESA spacecraft near Mercury, Earth, the Moon, Mars, Saturn and a few in-transit to further destinations. Collected here are recent images gathered from around our solar system, at scales ranging from mere centimeters to millions of kilometers. (32 photos total)
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/09/around_the_solar_system.htmlWith dozens of spacecraft currently orbiting, roving or otherwise and traveling... more
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The Russian space agency, Roskosmos, is putting the finishing touches to the design of a spacecraft, which could carry the nation's cosmonauts into space in the coming decades.
Russian officials revealed details about the craft at the Farnborough Air Show.
The work is a culmination of a multi-year effort to define the architecture of a replacement to Russia's 40-year-old Soyuz spacecraft.
With the upcoming retirement of the US space shuttle, Russian ships could, for several years at least, be the only means of taking humans into space.
Nikolai Zelenshikov
RKK Energia
This would include any American and European astronauts travelling to the International Space Station (ISS).
According to officials at RKK Energia, Russia's chief contractor in manned spaceflight, the agency plans to make the final decision on all critical elements of the new ship's architecture at the beginning of August.
Continue reading the main story...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-10725093The Russian space agency, Roskosmos, is putting the finishing touches to the design of... more
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This is a the silliest video about the moon landing that you’ll see today. Okay, it’s dumb, but it made me smile (and yes, I do like Obama, at least some of the time).This is a the silliest video about the moon landing that you’ll see today. Okay,... more
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July 29, 2010 Delta Aquarids
The western sky after evening twilight has hosted a trio of planets for the past several weeks. But there’s room for one more! Mercury, the closest planet to the sun, has been moving away from the solar glare to accompany Venus, Mars, and Saturn. Horizon-hugging Mercury doesn’t stay visible long, however.
Brilliant Venus is the easiest to spot at daylight wanes. Look for Mercury soon after sunset as the brightest “star” between Venus and where the sun disappeared (where the sky is brightest). Observers at mid-northern latitudes shouldn’t wait too long, as the innermost planet soon nears the horizon and sets just an hour after the sun. Southern-hemisphere skywatchers can plan more leisurely. This planetary pileup appears more perpendicular to the horizon, affording more time to planet-gaze.
If Mercury has slipped too low in the sky, shift your view to the other side of Venus for the pairing of Mars and Saturn. Only 2 degrees apart, they’ll be easy to differentiate: Saturn is a bit brighter, and Mars has a ruddy hue. Although Mercury will leave the scene, watch how the remaining trio of planets shift with respect to each during evenings to come.
Written by Stuart Goldman
Also:
Planets:
The western sky after evening twilight has hosted a trio of planets for the past several weeks. But there’s room for one more! Mercury, the closest planet to the sun, has been moving away from the solar glare to accompany Venus, Mars, and Saturn. Horizon-hugging Mercury doesn’t stay visible long, however.
Brilliant Venus is the easiest to spot at daylight wanes. Look for Mercury soon after sunset as the brightest “star” between Venus and where the sun disappeared (where the sky is brightest). Observers at mid-northern latitudes shouldn’t wait too long, as the innermost planet soon nears the horizon and sets just an hour after the sun. Southern-hemisphere skywatchers can plan more leisurely. This planetary pileup appears more perpendicular to the horizon, affording more time to planet-gaze.
If Mercury has slipped too low in the sky, shift your view to the other side of Venus for the pairing of Mars and Saturn. Only 2 degrees apart, they’ll be easy to differentiate: Saturn is a bit brighter, and Mars has a ruddy hue. Although Mercury will leave the scene, watch how the remaining trio of planets shift with respect to each during evenings to come.
Written by Stuart Goldman
Jupiter
Right now Jupiter is in the eastern sky in late evening, rising around midnight. It’s rather high in your southern sky by daybreak. For the next several months Jupiter will appear to drift slowly westward among the faint stars of Pisces, the Fishes. Because of their true motions, Jupiter and the other outer planets normally drift slowly eastward against the background of the stars. However, during this time (which ends on November 19), Jupiter appears slightly farther to the west each night. You can’t tell this from night to night with just your eyes, but if you note Jupiter’s position relative to some nearby stars, you should be able to notice it over a period of a few weeks. On the up side, Jupiter is very easy to identify – just face east and look for he brightest object in the sky. On the down side, the King of the Planets is now passing through Pisces, which is one of the faintest of the major constellations. There are no bright stars near Jupiter. This makes it a little difficult to judge its motion.
On the other hand, the easily identified Square of Pegasus stays close Jupiter all year. It provides a convenient landmark (or “skymark”) against which to gauge Jupiter’s apparent motion.
If you start tonight (or sometime soon), and plot Jupiter’s apparent position every week or so through November, you should notice a distinct “retrograde loop.” The fact that it is a loop rather than a straight back and forth plot simply reflects the changing orientation of Jupiter’s slightly tilted orbit.
Written by Larry Sessions
http://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/earthskys-meteor-shower-guideJuly 29, 2010 Delta Aquarids
The western sky after evening twilight has hosted a trio... more
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For the last 12 years, Carter Emmart has been coordinating the efforts of scientists, artists and programmers to build a complete 3D visualization of our known universe. He demos this stunning tour and explains how it's being shared with facilities around the world.For the last 12 years, Carter Emmart has been coordinating the efforts of scientists,... more
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The Falcon 9, a privately-built, reusable, multi-stage rocket, is to launch on a test flight to Earth orbit Friday. The rocket is planned as the platform for carrying Dragon, a privately-operated freighter, on logistics missions to the International Space Station.The Falcon 9, a privately-built, reusable, multi-stage rocket, is to launch on a test... more
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This video is simply stunning and the photography is masterful. In this video, we are looking at time-lapse photographs by photographers Scott Andrews, Stan Jirman and Philip Scott Andrews, who decided to demonstrate the process of launching a shuttle in a new and innovative way. Using time-lapse photography, they turned the 6 week process of prepping a shuttle into this gorgeous four minute video called "Go for Launch!"This video is simply stunning and the photography is masterful. In this video, we are... more
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ScienceDaily (May 12, 2010) — An international team of astronomers from Germany and Japan has discovered the most distant cluster of galaxies known so far -- 9.6 billion light years away. The X-ray and infrared observations showed that the cluster hosts predominantly old, massive galaxies, demonstrating that the galaxies formed when the universe was still very young. These and similar observations therefore provide new information not only about early galaxy evolution but also about history of the universe as a whole.
Clusters of galaxies are the largest building blocks in the universe. Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is part of the Virgo cluster, comprising some 1000-2000 galaxies. By observing galaxies and clusters that are very distant from Earth, astronomers can look back in time, as their light was sent out a long time ago and took millions or billions of light-years to reach the astronomers' telescopes.
An international team of astronomers from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, the University of Tokyo and the Kyoto University has now discovered the most distant cluster of galaxies observed so far. X-ray observations in the Subaru XMM Deep Field helped to identify the candidates, and infrared observations using the Subaru telescope provided the distance information. A particularity of this discovery consists in using infrared wavelengths, invisible to the naked eye. This is dictated by the expansion of the universe, which forces distant galaxies to have large velocities, shifting their light away from visible to infrared wavelengths. The Multi-Object Infrared Camera and Spectrometer (MOIRCS) at the Subaru telescope works at near-infrared wavelengths, where the galaxies are most luminous.
"The MOIRCS instrument has an extremely powerful capability of measuring distances to galaxies. This is what made our challenging observation possible," says Masayuki Tanaka from the University of Tokyo. "Although we confirmed only several massive galaxies at that distance, there is convincing evidence that the cluster is a real, gravitationally bound cluster."
That the individual galaxies are indeed held together by gravity is confirmed by observations in a very different wavelength regime: The matter between the galaxies in clusters is heated to extreme temperatures and emits light at much shorter wavelengths than visible to the human eye. The team therefore used the XMM-Newton space observatory to look for this radiation in X-rays.
"Despite the difficulties in collecting X-ray photons with a small effective telescope size similar to the size of a backyard telescope, we detected a clear signature of hot gas in the cluster," explains Alexis Finoguenov from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics.
The combination of these different observations in (to the eye) invisible wavelengths therefore led to the pioneering discovery of the galaxy cluster at a distance of 9.6 billion light years -- some 400 million light years further into the past than the previously most distant cluster known.
An analysis of the data collected about the individual galaxies shows that the cluster contains already an abundance of evolved, massive galaxies that formed some two billion years earlier. As the dynamical processes for galaxy aging are slow, presence of these galaxies requires the cluster assembly through merger of massive galaxy groups, each nourishing its dominant galaxy. The cluster is therefore an ideal laboratory for studying the evolution of galaxies, when the universe was only about a third of its present age.
As distant galaxy clusters are also important tracers of the large scale structure and primordial density fluctuations in the universe, similar observations in the future will lead to important information for cosmologists. The results obtained so far demonstrate that current near infrared facilities are capable of providing a detailed analysis of distant galaxy populations and that the combination with X-ray data is a powerful new tool. The team therefore is continuing the search for more distant clusters.ScienceDaily (May 12, 2010) — An international team of astronomers from Germany... more
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X-37B OTV Spaceplane Launch to Militarize Space on Earth Day
April 22, 2010
by ahrcanum
The X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle also referred to as the Advanced Technology Demonstrator is set for launch tonight, April 22, 2010. It will be taken aloft by The Atlas V in the 501 vehicle configuration with a five-meter fairing, no solid rocket boosters and a single-engine Centaur upper stage from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station’s Launch Complex 41.
Top Secret US X-37B Orbital Spaceplane Starts “Star Wars” on Earth Day?…VIDEO
http://ctpatriot1970.wordpress.com/2010/04/22/top-secret-us-x-37b-orbital-spaceplane-starts-star-wars-on-earth-day-video/X-37B OTV Spaceplane Launch to Militarize Space on Earth Day
April 22, 2010
by... more
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NASA- A force of nature
http://www.wimp.com/tysonnasa/
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Here is an inspirational video trailer from BBC's television program, "Wonders of the Solar System", where series host, Dr Brian Cox, exclaims; "That's why I love physics, cuz physics is all about finding out what the **** is goin' on."Here is an inspirational video trailer from BBC's television program,... more
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NASA announced today that the LCROSS mission (perhaps better known as 'when NASA bombed the moon') did in fact find water - in the form of ice - on the moon.
The satellite, known as Lcross (pronounced L-cross), slammed into a crater near the Moon’s south pole a month ago. The impact carved out a hole 60- to 100-feet wide and kicked up at least 24 gallons of water.
“We got more than just whiff,” said Peter H. Schultz, a professor of geological sciences at Brown University and a co-investigator of the mission. “We practically tasted it with the impact.”
My compatriot Rich in the UK points out a similar announcement made in September after an Indian moon mission. The different between the two missions seems to be that while the Indian mission Chandrayaan-1 found evidence of water through electromagnetic analysis, the LCROSS mission actually made physical contact with the stuff, allowing NASA scientists to state that water exists unequivocally and in large amounts.
Does this mean we're going to the moon? Maybe! Water already up there could provide an invaluable resource for exploratory missions. The Obama administration has called for a review of spending on manned space programs with possible cuts looming. However, the 2010 budget did include "$630 million in additional near-term funding for development of follow-on rockets and spacecraft needed for the agency's post-shuttle moon program". Big cuts could be in the works after that, but finding water on the moon might pump a little more life and funding back into the program.
Should we go to the moon? Let us know what you think on Current News.
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- Is college worth the high cost? - The Real RecoveryNASA announced today that the LCROSS mission (perhaps better known as 'when NASA... more
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Humans and garbage .. after you watch these videos, you'll ask yourself if humans can do anything -- even go into space -- without creating a huge trail of garbage? This space garbage is extremely dangerous, too. For example, 10-gram piece of debris can generate a collision force in space equal to the crash of a car traveling at 100 km per hour. Because of our trashy ways, it won't be long until space vehicles cannot leave earth because of the thickening belt of garbage circling planet.Humans and garbage .. after you watch these videos, you'll ask yourself if humans... more
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