The options at the moment for getting into orbit (or even sub-orbit) as a private citizen are somewhat limited. You can spend a week on the ISS (for $25 million), buy a seat on Virgin Galactic (for $200,000 pretty soon), or get there on a technicality in a MiG 31 (for about $27,500). Copenhagen Suborbitals is looking to break into this questionable market with their Hybrid Exo Atmospheric Transporter, which is a single person space capsule that sits on top of a ballistic missile.
This concept is about as awesomely old-school as it gets. Don’t believe me? They did it in Star Trek: First Contact. There’s no room for a seat; the passenger is stuffed into the nose of the missile in a standing position. This is done partly to save space and weight (the diameter of the launch vehicle can be reduced), and partly to mitigate g-forces (they pulled the same trick in the Apollo lunar modules): oriented vertically, the human spine and legs make great shock absorbers. You do get a plexiglass window above you to look out of, and I imagine the takeoff experience would be pretty spectacular. You also get a pressure suit, some modified SCUBA gear to keep you breathing, and an emergency parachute. And vomit bags. The restraint system won’t let you move at all, though, except for maybe slight sideways turns of the head. Obviously, this is not for the claustrophobic.
The booster underneath is going to be a custom made hybrid rocket, firing for 60 seconds with about 3 gravities of thrust, which is significantly less than many roller coasters, albeit for a longer period of time. Most healthy people should be fine, though. The booster has no guidance system at all; it’s got a guide rail on the launch tower and after that, nothing but static fins to keep it on course. After a one minute burn, the booster is jettisoned. The capsule continues upward to over 100 km of altitude, and then descends, using two sets of parachutes to make it safely back to the earth.
The cost for all this is unspecified, since the rocket is still in the development stage. It seems to be moving along nicely, though… After the jump, watch a test video of Copenhagen Suborbitals’ rocket engine. Read the rest of this entry »
What do you do with a used spaceship? Stuff it full of crap (both literally and figuratively, I imagine) and send it off to a fiery death in the upper atmosphere. The European Space Agency’s Jules Verne Automated Transfer Vehicle delivered six tons of cargo and an orbital boost to the International Space Station last March, and has been taking up space ever since. The ESA decided to cast it loose over the pacific ocean, where a NASA DC-8 observation plane was waiting to watch the show. Video after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »
This picture of the milky way galaxy was taken by amateur astrophotographer Wally Pacholka in Canyonlands National Park in Utah. It’s a panorama of 4 individual pictures stitched together, each one a 25 second exposure on a Canon 5D at 1600 ISO with a 24mm lens. The lighting inside the cave comes from flashlights bouncing soft light off rocks, but the rest of the lightning comes from nothing but a crescent moon and the stars. It took him five 1600 mile trips out to Utah, plus a 2 mile hike in the dark (and he got lost every time) to get this one image. Worth it? Yeah, obviously. You can buy 11 x 14 prints of this picture starting at $55.
SpaceX’s Falcon 1 rocket successfully entered low Earth orbit yesterday, making it the first privately funded liquid fuel rocket to reach orbit with a payload. The Falcon 1 is a two stage rocket powered by liquid oxygen and liquid kerosene capable of lifting about 450 kg into low orbit at a cost of about $7 million. Since it’s not designed or owned or operated by the government, it’s supposed to be much more efficient in getting stuff up into space. I’d like to say it’s more reliable, too, but that remains to be seen… Although after today’s brilliant performance, I wouldn’t hesitate to send my humidifiers and USB hubs and lamps back where they belong.
It’s pretty dusty up there on the moon. So dusty, in fact, that in an effort to prepare the lunar surface for human habitation, a company called W.I.S.E. Retail Solutions is now stuffing Apollo 11 commemorative pens with it and selling them to earthlings to help make the place a bit tidier. The pens have a little chamber for the dust, as well as “a handcrafted, individually hand painted miniature Apollo 11 astronaut figurine” at the top.
Of course, it’s not real moon dust. Of course. The dust in the pens is actually a simulant called JSC-1A, which is made in Texas with volcanic ash from Arizona. It’s just about as close to the real thing as you’re likely to get, though… NASA uses JSC-1A to test out equipment destined for the lunar surface. Real moon dust is electrostatically charged (making it stick to everything) and highly abrasive; not something you really want getting into either sensitive equipment or your lungs. With that in mind, NASA goes through literally tons of it trying to moon-proof spacesuits and the like.
If you’re interested in the real moon bits, you can find pieces of the moon for sale from meteorite dealers (how else do you s’pose it gets to Earth?) online. The moon is not cheap, though… Expect to pay anywhere from $1,000 to $5,000 per gram. If you’re thinking you might rather have the pen instead, it’ll only cost you $25, and a portion of the proceeds will go to the Manned Space Flight Education Foundation.
Oh, and just a warning: their website is atrocious.
If you’re a professional astronomer working with a large installed telescope, you probably already have plenty of equipment to let you know when it’s the ideal conditions to stargaze. But for hobbyists who have to drag their telescopes into the backyard in order to peep the heavens, this watch should provide all the data they need.
The LCD display on the watchface features 96 separate sections arranged in a ray pattern. Each slice represents 15 minutes of time, which adds up to a full 24 hour day. Once you choose your specific location from a list of 583 pre-programmed cities, the sections are selectively shaded to depict the hours of sunlight and darkness throughout the day. A second circular LCD display around the edge shows the times of moonrise and moonset. There’s a single 24 hour hand that moves around a 12-hour bezel for telling the time, but the watch also features a standard digital time display on the top half.
I’m particularly fond of watches with a busy face, but the Astrodea collection from Citizen is kind of pushing the limits. The watch face has a 35° view of the heavens (as seen from the Northern Hemisphere) that rotates in real time and shows 1,109 stars and 169 cluster galaxies. It also includes other measurements like equinox indications, constellation markers, location of the sun, solar position, sunrise and sunset times and the daily duration of sunshine.
The watch comes in either a blue or gold face version, has a stainless steel case and band and uses non-reflective sapphire glass. And because the face itself is so detailed the watch even includes a 10x magnifier for close-up viewing. Both versions are available from Japan Trend Shop for $585.
Somewhat unusually, there are a couple things going on up in the sky this Wednesday night, at least for those of us who don’t live in Asia or Australia (sorry chaps). The first thing to look forward to is a total lunar eclipse, which should be visible in its entirety from the central and eastern US and Canada as well as western Europe. Eastern Europe and most of Africa will be able to see the eclipse beginning as the moon sets, and the western US will catch it in progress as of moonrise. The moon will be completely within the shadow of the Earth as of 10pm EST, and won’t start to come out again until 10:50pm. During that time it’ll turn a lovely reddish-orange, thanks to the sunrises and sunsets refracting light past the limbs of the Earth. If you live in North America, your next chance to see something like this will be December 21, 2010, so get your butt out there and take a look.
The other big thing that’s going on Wednesday night (in the middle of the eclipse, in fact) is that the United States is going to try to shoot down a dysfunctional spy satellite over Hawaii with a sea launched interceptor missile. If you live in Hawaii, fear not, the debris cloud is headed for central Canada, and as far as I know, nobody actually lives in Canada. Not that they’d have any toxic hydrazine propellant to worry about. Oh wait, there’s 1000 pounds of it on board. That, in fact, is the US government’s rationale for shooting the thing down: they don’t want it to crash into a populated area. Sounds reasonable, but it’s actually total bunk, according to Danger Room. In fact, it’s far more likely to be a response to the Chinese anti-satellite missile test of a year ago, despite the heavy criticism of that test from the United States. More on why the US Government thinks we need to shoot this thing down, and why none of their reasons make much sense, after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »
C’mon, admit it… At some point in life, you went through a stage where you wanted to be an astronaut. Me? I’m still in that stage, and I’d absolutely love to have a bed like this Space Shuttle Bunk Bed, from MyMoondrops. It comes with all the trimmings, including stubby little wings, doors, a reinforced carbon-carbon nose (maybe it’s just black paint), and a cockpit with two chairs and a control panel. The upper portion can either be a second twin bed or a play loft, and there’s even an optional attached launch tower. The eternal love of your child will cost you anywhere from $2250 to $7500+ depending on accessories and options.
This concept is about as awesomely old-school as it gets. Don’t believe me? They did it in Star Trek: First Contact. There’s no room for a seat; the passenger is stuffed into the nose of the missile in a standing position. This is done partly to save space and weight (the diameter of the launch vehicle can be reduced), and partly to mitigate g-forces (they pulled the same trick in the Apollo lunar modules): oriented vertically, the human spine and legs make great shock absorbers. You do get a plexiglass window above you to look out of, and I imagine the takeoff experience would be pretty spectacular. You also get a pressure suit, some modified SCUBA gear to keep you breathing, and an emergency parachute. And vomit bags. The restraint system won’t let you move at all, though, except for maybe slight sideways turns of the head. Obviously, this is not for the claustrophobic.
Related Tags: Space
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By Andrew Liszewski
The other big thing that’s going on Wednesday night (in the middle of the eclipse, in fact) is that the United States is going to try to shoot down a dysfunctional spy satellite over Hawaii with a sea launched interceptor missile. If you live in Hawaii, fear not, the debris cloud is headed for central Canada, and as far as I know, nobody actually lives in Canada. Not that they’d have any toxic 
