“City in Space” and TAV art

 aircraft, art, history, Patreon, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Jun 172015
 

I have just uploaded 300 dpi-high-rez scans of two things to the APR Patreon “Extras” folder (2015-06 sub-folder):

1) An article from the May, 1956, issue of Popular Science, “Now They’re Planning A City In Space.” This article, illustrated with full-color paintings, describes the gigantic artificial gravity space station proposed by Darrell Romick of Goodyear Aircraft Company as part of the METEOR project. This space station is forward-thinking by today’s standards, and is challenged in scale only by the likes of the O’Neill space colonies.

2) A McDonnell-Douglas painting depicting a Trans Atmospheric Vehicle in orbit.

These items are available to all $4+ APR Patreon patrons, and were made possible by the support of APR patrons and customers. If you’d like to access these and many other extras, please check out the APR Patreon page.

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cityinspace McDonnell Douglas TAV in orbit art

 Posted by at 2:19 pm

The Sleeper Has Awakened

 news, science, spacecraft  3 Responses »
Jun 142015
 

Rosetta’s lander Philae wakes up from hibernation

Rosetta’s lander Philae is out of hibernation!

The signals were received at ESA’s European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt at 22:28 CEST on 13 June. More than 300 data packets have been analysed by the teams at the Lander Control Center at the German Aerospace Center (DLR).

“Philae is doing very well: It has an operating temperature of -35ºC and has 24 Watts available,” explains DLR Philae Project Manager Dr. Stephan Ulamec. “The lander is ready for operations.”

For 85 seconds Philae “spoke” with its team on ground, via Rosetta, in the first contact since going into hibernation in November.

When analysing the status data it became clear that Philae also must have been awake earlier: “We have also received historical data – so far, however, the lander had not been able to contact us earlier.”

Now the scientists are waiting for the next contact.  There are still more than 8000 data packets in Philae’s mass memory which will give the DLR team information on what happened to the lander in the past few days on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

 Posted by at 8:00 am

Buran: Well, this is freakin’ sad

 AARRRGH, Crazy, dumbassery, Gah., history, rockets, russian empire, spacecraft, ಠ_ಠ  34 Responses »
Jun 122015
 

I’ve never been a big fan of the Soviet Buran space shuttle. The Energia? Awesome heavy lifter. But the Buran itself… dumb, dumb, dumb. All it was was a terribly heavy, terribly expensive payload shroud. It would greatly reduce the payload potential of the Energia without adding anything meaningful. With the US Shuttle, at least you’re getting back the liquid rocket engines. With Buran? Meh.

Still, the Buran and its stablemates were an important part of space history. Thus, the way they have been allowed to rot is shocking.

Gentlemen… behold:

In the bedroom of the god

A sizable photo essay showing the status, as of a few days ago, of two Burans remaining in a Baikonur Cosmodrome hangar. Just… wow. And Gah.

 

 Posted by at 6:12 pm

Turn the volume down and just watch

 art, awesomeness, science, science fiction, spacecraft, youtube  3 Responses »
Jun 062015
 

This is a beautiful, sedate video showing the gradual terraforming of Mars. It is not aided in the slightest by the wholly incongruous music tacked onto it. With luck, someone good at such things will either produce new music to go with it, or find something that fits. If so… this could *almost* fit up there with Wanderers. Note: this is made possible due to the fact that the video was directed by Erik Wernquist… who also directed Wanderers.

 Posted by at 9:18 am

Space Based Weaponry banned by new law

 Crazy, dumbassery, I'm from the government, news, politics, spacecraft, ಠ_ಠ  7 Responses »
Jun 012015
 

Spacy Richmond resolution attracts far-out responses

In the Bay Area (the bay in question being San Francisco Bay, shockingly enough) town of Richmond, the city council recent passed a resolution against space-based weaponry. This was based on a 2001 anti-space-weaponry bill proposed by Dennis Kucinich (D: Insanity), and has resulted in the city being barraged with complaints by crackpots, loons and other generically silly people who seem to think that CIA mind control rays in low Earth orbit are trying to penetrate their aluminum foil hats.

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 Posted by at 5:25 pm

Blues for a Red Planet

 Hmm..., photography, science, spacecraft  7 Responses »
Jun 012015
 

From the ESA:

The effect of the winds of Mars

On the Red Planet, strong winds whip dust and sand from the surface into a frenzy, moving it across the planet at high speeds. These winds can hit 100 km/h, enough to create giant dust storms that settle across huge swathes of Mars, lasting for many days or even weeks.

As these winds travel they carve their surroundings, eroding and smoothing and gradually wearing away the planet’s surface features over millions of years.

Evidence of these processes can be seen in this image from ESA’s Mars Express orbiter. The image shows part of the Arabia Terra region, which is scattered with craters of varying sizes and ages. The craters in this image, caused by impacts in Mars’ past, all show different degrees of erosion. Some still have defined outer rims and clear features within them, while others are much smoother and featureless, almost seeming to run into one another or merge with their surroundings.

The largest crater in this image also has the steepest rim. With a diameter of some 70 km, this crater dominates the left, southern, side of the frame. At first glance, this image seems to show something amazing in this crater, and in one of its neighbours to the right: is this a hint of blue liquid water? No, it is an optical illusion caused by the image processing. The blue-hued patches lying within the ragged craters are actually dark sediments that have built up over time. Again, this is due to the winds, which carry dark, volcanic, basalt-rich deposits across the planet.

This colour image was taken by Mars Express’s High Resolution Stereo Camera on 19 November 2014, during orbit 13728. The image resolution is about 20 m per pixel.

The_effect_of_the_winds_of_Mars

 Posted by at 5:04 pm
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