SpaceX

August 5th 2008 at 12:24 pm

This weekend I watched the live launch of SpaceX’s third attempt to shoot a rocket into space. It failed, sadly. New Scientist’s Henry Spencer has a run down of what may have caused it and what it means here. I did spot that another $20 million in funds had been scared up by SpaceX, so […]

The Arthur C. Clarke gamma ray burst?

March 21st 2008 at 1:00 pm

Jason Sanford points out that Larry Sessions is proposing honoring Arthur C. Clarke by naming the recent amazing gamma ray burst after him:
As Jason points out:
NASA said this explosion was “the most intrinsically bright object ever observed by humans in the universe.” I can think of no better tribute than to name this event for […]

SpaceShipTwo

January 28th 2008 at 11:49 pm

I really am psyched to see this mockup of the design for SpaceShip Two (the one that will be taking passengers up to the edge of space and back via Virgin Galactic) that was just released. Test flights are planned in June.
That’s like, a handful of months away!

$30 million X-Prize announced

September 13th 2007 at 3:39 pm

Google is backing the new $30 million X Prize for the first private team to put a robot on the moon.

Fart powered rockets?

May 9th 2007 at 12:52 pm

Fart powered rockets anyone?

Anyone?
Maybe it’s funnier just to me

Cool NASA return-to-moon trailer

April 25th 2007 at 12:51 pm

I like the idea of NASA-released cool trailers like this.
What would be even slicker is if they snagged some of their budget and aired this stuff on prime time. I imagine there are laws, but if politicians can figure out how to clutter my viewing time I don’t see why NASA shouldn’t.
Nonetheless, cool video. Check […]

Potential habitable planet found!

April 24th 2007 at 7:06 pm

A planet about 1.5 times the size of Earth, smack in the habitable zone, rocky, between 0 and 40 degrees.
The star is Gliese 581, only 20.5 light years away.
This is very, very cool.
Thoughts?

India’s little space capsule

January 24th 2007 at 1:03 pm

India recently launched a space capsule into orbit. Not human capacity, but still pretty sizeable, and not all that much smaller than some of the first US capsules. They orbited it for 12 days and recovered it in the Bay of Bengal.
If you compare the size of this experiment to a Mercury capsule, it doesn’t […]

Blue Origins test launch: Amazon.com’s Bezos’ personal spaceship

January 4th 2007 at 7:27 am

Amazon.com Jeff Bezos, like a bunch of other dot commers and rich dudes, is frustrated by how little reality matches SF, and is working very hard on a private space program.
The Blue Origins project has been crowded in secrecy, but yesterday night I spotted a story with links to some footage I hadn’t seen before […]

Carl Sagan

December 20th 2006 at 3:07 pm

Because I grew up in the Caribbean and didn’t have access to most broadcast TV, I never caught Carl Sagan on TV. My stepdad, however, had, and showed me one of the tapes of Carl Sagan explaining astronomy and physics. He was a remarkable communicator, and concepts that I had often struggled with came across […]