Tag: nasa

Moon Landing: Imminent?

There is about to be an attempt to soft land a lunar lander onto the moon. 300 kilometers from the South pole. If it is successful it will be the first time a private company pulled it off, and it will also be the furthest South anything has landed. Given that there appears to be ice in a crater at the South pole, that’s pretty gigantic in its significance.

The lander was sent up by a company called Intuitive Machines and of course it will be timed to happen while I am stuck in traffic on this evening’s commute so I won’t be able to try and follow it live.

Here’s hoping that when I get home I will learn about the first USA based craft to soft land on the moon since the last Apollo mission back in 1972.

Fingers astronomically crossed.

Flashback to a Recurring Nightmare

I grew up during the cold war. I wasn’t concerned that nuclear war might happen, I was positive that it inevitably would. You remember how things were, right?

I had a recurring nightmare. It happened every so often. I would be outside with friends and family, just hanging out and doing stuff. We’d all look up in the sky and see a rocket heading in our general direction. I, and I assume all of us, knew exactly what it was. Our number was up. We’d watch in silence as the warhead at the top of the rocket drifted ballistically into our neighborhood and then vaporized all of us.

Last Monday, while we were at the after hours event at Magic Kingdom, a big chunk of that nightmare came true. Everything except the warhead vaporizing us part. We were all walking near the Merry Go Round when we saw something that looked exactly like the rocket in my nightmare climbing into the sky.

DSC_0706

It flew across the sky, broke into three pieces, and then the middle piece continued in the same direction while the two on the sides curled off in opposite directions. Given that I am here writing this you can assume that nuclear weapons did not destroy central Florida and that we survived the holocaust.

I figured it out quickly, but there was a fraction of a second there where I was 100% positive that my old 80’s cold war nightmare was finally coming true. Someone near us found the truth on Google. Space X had a launch scheduled for that night at about that time, and that’s absolutely what we saw.

DSC_0707

It was awesome. Absolutely awesome. Ignoring the douchey Elon Musk asshole connection, it was the second coolest thing I’ve seen in the sky above Florida.

The coolest thing I’ve seen in the sky above Florida was of course the Space Shuttle launch on May 31, 2008. That still takes the cake for three reasons.

  1. It was NASA, not Space X
  2. It was during the day
  3. It did not involve anything even remotely related to that putz Elon Musk.
May 31, 2008 - Chef Mickey's and the Space Shuttle Launch
That’s a Space Shuttle there, folks. A real live NASA Space Shuttle.

Where is Artemis 1 Right Now?

Yeah yeah yeah, I said I was going to stop using twitter, but sometimes I just want another app to format a link for me and CounterSocial isn’t working with WordPress.com yet so twitter it is.

Artemis Looks Back

Did you all wave when Artemis 1 took your picture?

Artemis 1

After a slew of delays NASA launched the Artemis 1 mission over night last night. It’s just a test, but it’s a step toward returning to the moon, folks! Let’s Freakin’ Gooooo!!!

Artemis I: Scrubbed

I’m pretty disappointed. NASA was supposed to launch it’s first Artemis mission today. It was going to test the Orion capsule and the SLS rocket (I think I have those titles correct, but I could be off somewhere) by launching it into lunar orbit and bringing it home. It is an unmanned mission, apart from a few mannequins, but it’s the first big test for the setup that should eventually put people back on the surface of the moon.

No dice though. No launch today. Hopefully they’ll have their issue (something to do with fueling, I think) sorted out soon and we’ll get our test. Fingers crossed, NASA.

Amazing View

NASA did a Live Stream event today (it might still be going on, not sure) to release the first official images taken by the Webb Telescope.

Spectacular is a massive understatement.

Yeah… color me dazzled. Thanks, Webb!

Monday Lunch Break

No spoilers here, but I think the one thing Marvel’s Hawkeye has taught us is that the universe needs a Kate/Yelena buddy cop show. There is supposed to be an Echo show coming and that could be a sort of Hawkeye spin off and if we don’t get a Kate/Yelena team up then we’re going to absolutely need a show of their own. Come on, Marvel/Disney+, let’s make that happen.

While we’re on the Marvel TV subject, let’s get going on Daredevil season 4, m’kay? Bring the whole gang back. They’ll have to tone down the blood for Disney+ viewers, but they can totally do it. Get it done.

While we’re on the Disney+ subject, The Book of Boba Fett launches in two days. I need this show to be amazing. I need it. I am not one of those Star Wars fans who think Boba Fett is the balls or anything. In three movies (from the point of view of the special editions) he’s on screen for a grand total of, what? 10 minutes? How many lines did he have? Was it more than two? There’s the “he’s worth a lot to me” line and the “put captain Solo in the cargo hold” and that’s all I can think of off the top of my head. He gets more in Attack of the Clones and in the The Clone Wars TV show (and Rebels too? I can’t remember, was he in Rebels? I don’t think so), but that’s him as a kid and not the ass kicking bounty hunter he’s supposed to be. He had a good showing in season two of The Mandalorian, but I need the new show to live up to the character’s hype and I don’t know if that is actually possible without bending the laws of physics.

What else is going on?

NASA gave us a gigantic Christmas Present with the launch of the James Webb telescope. I haven’t read up on any of the details yet, but I hear everything went well. I remember the launch of the Hubble though, and I remember those blurry photos. I won’t relax about Webb until we start seeing results. Hubble was in Earth orbit and we could send folks up to fix it. Webb will not be reachable by humans. It has to work on the first try. I’ll read up on the news when I get a chance, but I’m hoping we’ll keep getting good news.

The kids are still at their dad’s. They will come back here on Wednesday and then be here through the weekend, including New Years Eve and New Years Day. I cannot understate how happy that makes me.

Right then, it’s 2:00pm and I have to get back to work. Have a good afternoon, my readers and only friends.

From the Air

This morning I saw a tweet from someone who claimed that it was a fact that Mars does not have an atmosphere. A few minutes ago, while eating my PB&J lunch, I saw this:

Yes, Virginia, there is air on Mars. You will die if you breath it, and there isn’t a whole lot of it, but it’s there and there is enough to fly a drone.

Suck it, science deniers.