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All works by Marco Frissen are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Netherlands License.
LRO/LCROSS .. whatever, let's just go already!
NASA launched LRO/LCROSS yesterday. Great, so those will (again) scan the moon and create beautiful maps. And LCROSS will crash into the moon, and very maybe find a drop of frozen water.
Hey guys, let me tell you a little secret: the Moon is dust, rocks, craters and hills. Been there, done that, even got the t-shirt! Let's just team up 4 astronauts and frigging go already! There really is no real added value to have LRO/LCROSS check out the moon for the zillionth time, with the same result as always: rocky, dusty cold place and oh, very maybe, but definately not sure, because, well, there was so little data available (we need another mission to investigate more!), frozen water.
Print a map of the moon, throw 3 darts at it and voila, you got your landing areas!
Ah yes, there's that little issue that NASA (or any other space agency) doesn't have a rocket powerful enough to send people to the Moon. Bummer. Spending money on a fluke Ares-1X won't do that any good. Bummer again.
What we and NASA need is focus. Let's just focus for 10 years to get people there. Just like "the good old days". No distractions of more Mars missions (leave those to ESA), ISS missions (leave that to Soyuz .. ESA as well) no other budget eating missions. Focus. Then, by 2020 (according to NASA we'll be there by 2018.. I am really doubting that plan will work with all the budget issues and delays currently going on), we'll be on the Moon for sure. If they could do it in the primitive 60s, we certainly can do it in the high tech 21st century!
Of course, NASA is working hard to make it. I really hope they will. So far, everything looks pretty good on the Ares-I front and Orion capsule. But I believe there isn't even a design for the AresV yet.
HD movie of Moon surface
Pretty nice, floating just about 11km above the Moon surface.
STS-125 Space Shuttle launch reports and streams
into space. Space Shuttle mission STS-125 will be the final mission to
update the HST. It will also be the final mission where planned non-ISS
EVAs are undertaken. The Orion Crew Vehicle isn't suited for EVAs like
this, so we'll probably never see these repair missions again.
Here are a few resources that cover the launch and preparations LIVE:
Nasa's own NASATV: http://www.nasa.gov/ntv but that isn't of very good
quality video-wise.
A much better alternative is http://www.spacevidcast.com/ which offers
720p quality live streaming. Great about this one is that with the
ustream.tv iPhone app you can actually watch this on your iPhone too,
and also participate in the chat!
On regular TV there's Discovery Channel that will broadcast the launch
and preps live from 19.30 CEST on!
Another #ISS pass
@luclodder and me decided to go out and watch the International Space Station pass overhead.
Also, check out the extremely exciting closeups that Ralf Vandenbergh made!
Mysterious roar from faraway space detected
Astronaut loses tools in space
Well, shit happens:
It's been blogged to death of course. Source
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