Space Forum / Space History / February 2008

Do we have enough rockets and launch pads yet?
Now NASA wants to build two more :
http://news.google.com/news?tab=wn&hl=en&ned=us&q=nasa+commercial+launch+pads&bt
nG=Search+News
What the f.ck is wrong with these people?

I was looking  around over at "Modern Mechanix", and you _have_ to see
this spacesuit design.
This is what would have happened if Pablo Picasso had been hired as a
design consultant for NASA.

Combining 39 individual frames taken over 11 hours of exposure time,
NASA astronomers have created this ultraviolet mosaic of the nearby
"Triangulum Galaxy."
http://www.theanalystmagazine.com/pr/7010229.htm

In the April issue of Sky and Telescope, page 30, it mentions that there
is some unknown chemistry in some of Venus' clouds.  Particles of
something coated with sulfuric acid.  To say that there could be life on
such would be a really long shot bet, but a sample return mission ...

Here's an interesting table, showing the mass (in metric tonnes) and
habitable volume (in cubic metres) of various space stations, and hence
how many cubic metres of habitable volume you get for each kilogram of mass.
Now, IANARS, but I would have thought that in simple terms mass ...

It was inevitable that if there were found to be serious flaws in our
physics and in our understanding of gravity or such things as
'momentum' these would be quickly revealed beginning in the early
1970s, when human beings first began to explore space.

http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/PSP_006742_2050
Seriously, this is the place. MSL needs to plop right down into the
middle of this, otherwise it's just more of the same old new Mars.

While searching for information on the Tu-104LL I found this nifty
little video. It shows cosmonauts training in this flying laboratory
in a variety of test including Leonov's spacewalk, the Soyuz 4 - 5
transfer, and Orlan lunar suit moonwalking and soil collecting.

That we could tell anyway?  That we can do it is obvious, how we did it
would be classified.

I came across the museum site by Yahoo!. It has very good use of CSS
and colors.
It is very useful and informative as well.
Following is the URL:

Science Channel will be running a program on the Soviet Lunokhod Moon
rovers on Tuesday, February 12 at 10 PM EST:
http://science.discovery.com/tv-schedules/special.html?paid=48.10776.118966.0.0
Pat

Seems they hit it at about 10:30 PM EST.

Working from his Mt. Benson Street home in Nanaimo, astronaut Patrick
Michael Sullivan is pioneering space trials of a new vehicle that will land
on Venus and collect data for NASA.
Sullivan said this is similar to the Mars lander, that was part of the NASA

Make heads or tails of this news release...it's sending back
signals...but it's not their first satellite, which they will launch
this summer...but this thing is still up there, and it's sending back
signals:

I watched Nova's Astrospies last night and it was pretty good.  Lots of
interviews with MOL astronauts, many of who transferred to NASA when MOL was
cancelled.  There was some good video footage of MOL training, some flying
parabolas and some working underwater.  The neutral ...