spaceflight
esiegel | April 16, 2010I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth.
-John F. Kennedy, 1961
The entire human endeavor of spaceflight is -- without a doubt -- one of the greatest achievements in the history of humanity. Looking up into the heavens certainly provides some spectacular sights and a huge amount of insight into how space, stars, and galaxies work, among a myriad of other things. (And click the image below for an amazing high-resolution version.)
But my two biggest complaints about the…
esiegel | February 1, 2010I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore! -Howard Beale
Let me tell you a little story. Nine years ago, I was living in California, and I had a car accident. The damage to my car was pretty bad; the first estimate I got said that it would take about $3800 to fix it, more than the entire value of my (then) 11-year-old Volkswagen, and about one-and-a-half months' salary for me at the time.
What I decided to do was -- I hope -- what any reasonable person would do. I had just enough repair work done so that the car was drivable, and then I took it around to different shops. Why…
esiegel | January 28, 2010We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started... and know the place for the first time. -T.S. Eliot
Yesterday, President Obama delivered his first State of the Union Address, and talked about a number of things that ranged from inspiring to disappointing. But one thing that didn't make it into the address was the rumor that NASA's Constellation program (including the Ares Rocket designed to launch crews) will lose their government funding.
(Please note: what follows is my opinion, and I take responsibility for it.) If this actually…
esiegel | December 28, 2009Watch me as I gravitate (hahahahaha). -Gorillaz
Gravity -- unbelievably -- is the weakest force of all. But if you get enough mass together, gravity will overwhelm even the strongest outside influence. A simple case-in-point? You take a rock that's massive enough, and gravity will crush it into a spherical shape,
like it was nothing more than a drop of water.
And here we live on the surface of one of the smaller gravity balls in our Solar System. XKCD has a wonderful illustration of this today (and click for full-size).
The more massive and more compact your planet is, the harder it is to…
esiegel | November 16, 2009I thought I should consult you first before I went ahead with my plan to destroy the Moon. -Greg Angelone, via The Straight Dope
Last week, scientists from LCROSS announced that they had detected "a buttload" of water on the Moon. Let's go over what happened and what it means.
The Moon is very different from Earth. It has no atmosphere (literally, less than one atom thick), day-and-night lasts for two weeks apiece, and the temperature extremes are horrifically severe. But one of the biggest differences? Whereas the Earth is tilted at 23.5 degrees as it goes around the Sun, the Moon is tilted…
esiegel | November 2, 2009My heroes had the heart to lose their lives out on a limb,
And all I remember is thinking, "I want to be like them!" --Gnarls Barkley
And here's a new discovery (to me): the Violent Femmes version to help you through your post-Halloween Monday:
The Ares I-X rocket has been all over the news recently. I'm not sure that the news coverage sufficiently showcases how impressive this rocket actually is. Sure, you've all seen a picture of the rocket on the launchpad.
Yes, the rocket has a long history. Yes, it's nearly twice as high as the space shuttle (at a whopping 327 feet, or 99.7 meters).…