It’s a self-eating watermelon of despair.
Adam Steltzner, leader of the entry, descent, and landing team for the Curiosity mission, describing the difficulties of scaling an airbag-based landing system.
Tag: NASA
Curiosity descending to the surface of Mars as photographed by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Hard to fathom this sort of thing. But: wow.
Note to self: do not release a mole of moles onto the surface of the Earth. Oh, and this is how introductory science, nay, introductory everything should be taught.
Amateur re-processes Voyager images of Jupiter to great effect:
The images I used were obtained on March 4, 1979 at a distance of about 1.85 million kilometers. The first image (C1635314.IMQ) was obtained at 07:08:36 and the last one (C1635400.IMQ) at 07:45:24. The resolution is roughly 18 km/pixel.
The detail present in the full-size version is amazing.
The government blows it again; Cassini mission extension lasts seven years (that’s seven years beyond the already extended six years of service, itself two years longer than anyone anticipated. In orbit around Saturn.)
The final “reference trajectory” calculates all the course corrections and various gravity-assisted adjustments, tracking through those seven years, all the while correlating scientific goals with manpower and funding availability. Out seven years. This path “includes 56 passes over Titan, 155 orbits of Saturn in different inclinations, 12 flybys of Enceladus, 5 flybys of other large moons.” Then the probe will fly into Saturn and be destroyed.
Is there nothing this government can do right?
The critique [that] Amtrak [loses money because it is required to retain unprofitable routes] is like slamming the Navy for hemorrhaging money when they could be hijacking ships.
Matt Yglesias making amazing sense. The Navy should be out there seizing workable boats right and left. We can’t afford not to. Wise to cc: NASA on this as well.
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Why does NASA want to blow up the Moon, when we already have so much to destroy here on Earth? At any rate, here’s hoping it’s a full moon so we can be sure they got it all.
Simple Solutions to Simple Problems
John Glenn, first American man to orbit the Earth, on the upcoming interregnum in America’s spacefaring capacity:
“I never thought I would see the day when the world’s richest, most powerful, most accomplished spacefaring nation would have to buy tickets from Russia to get up to our station,”
Umkay. I hear that India is in the Space Station market. Just give them the damned thing. That’ll leave them significantly less money for ongoing nuclear development…
I’m all for teh Space Science and all, but that thing is a free-fall to nowhere in particular and costs ~$1bn per shuttle launch (setting aside for the moment the 1 in 50 potential for the death of seven, count ‘em, SEVEN astronauts) to even get a refrigerator up there.
I say we go robotic and do all of our ant farms studies on the good Earth until the next ride arrives. We did the same throughout most of the 70s and the Republic is still here.
Lemkin 