Did anyone else see the story about the guy who was trying to set the record for highest free fall? This dude was planning to jump out of a balloon at 40,000 feet and skydive his way back to Earth today. He failed not because of a lack of nerve or his parachute malfunctioning. No, what happened is while they were preparing everything the balloon floated away. That must have been the funniest thing ever. Months and years of preparation, the guy is putting on essentially a space suit to survive the jump and he looks up to see the balloon floating off into the distance. That is awesome beyond words.
Also, it is nice to know that the lone toilet on the space station is broken. Of all the things that you would want to have redundant systems for wouldn’t the bathroom be one of them? I believe that NASA has given the order for the astronauts to hold it in for the next three months until the replacement parts can be shipped. That has to be a rather lonely feeling being far away from any possible plumber.
Even as a space geek I really have a strong dislike for the space station for exactly this reason. The darn thing just doesn’t work right. It’s too expensive and doesn’t do anything useful. Yes, it technically provides some information on long term space flights but it does so at such a high cost that it makes the data meaningless. Plus we end up launching shuttles to transport parts, which is a further waste of time and money. No one gets excited by the space station, it doesn’t drum up public support and I know of no hard science that is coming out of it.
I’m much more impressed by the story of the new Mars lander. First off, you really need to understand how amazingly difficult pulling something like that off really is. Fire a rocket, send it to another planet, and have the lander touch down perfectly healthy right where you want it to go. Just think of the math and the planning that has to go into something like that where one mistake can destroy the entire project. Even better, the thing actually works. It lands and the camera works and it is ready to start taking samples. To me at least, that is exciting stuff.
(Not as exciting as Spirit and Opportunity, which are sadly being shut down due to budget cuts. They just happen to be the two greatest machines ever built. They’ve gone several miles across Mars for crying out loud and they still work. Why the funding is cut is beyond me.)
It pains me to say it but I would much rather see our future space exploration consist primarily of rovers and landers. I know the goal is to send humans to Mars and I would like to see that one day but right now the technology just isn’t there. I don’t even think it is worth the effort of planning such a trip right now. It’s too costly and too dangerous. But the robots are working well and can perform the tasks we need them to. Let’s focus on that, shall we?
2 comments:
while we are on the subject of lost cartoons and funding 'space' exploration...can someone explain to me where my jetson car, jetson 'milky way' ice cream shop,anti-gravity boots and the purely awesome automatic shower/auto dressing thing-a-machine-jig are at??
I know for a fact that people are going to live on the moon by 2050. We talked about this didn't we? I'll tell you later if we didn't.
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