Artist's depiction of
Phoenix landing
Image via Wikimedia CommonsThe Phoenix spacecraft landed on Mars. We watched.

My son said "this is my generation's moon landing..." That may have been hyperbolic on his part but it WAS exciting... and a bit freaky to realise that the "now" was actually "10 minutes ago" due to transmission delay.

That another spacecraft managed to get a picture of Phoenix's parachute during the descent is ragingly cool.

So why did we need a Canadian network to bring it to us? ... seems it was too uncool/geeky for US networks.

Well I'm just glad someone was carrying it.

Did you watch? What did you think?Artist's depiction of
Phoenix on Mars
Image via Wikimedia Common

Related articles

• Phoenix spacecraft lands successfully on Mars. [via Zemanta]
• How do you search for life on Mars? [via Zemanta]

SpaceX, making it easier to get the heck out of Dodge?

Falcon 1 at launch complex
Image via Wikimedia CommonsWhen I was growing up, I wanted to be an astronaut. I suspect I wasn't the only person who felt that way. Heck, I even wrote NASA for an application.

In a previous posting, I questioned the value of Constellation and wondered why NASA isn't just farming the job out to SpaceX. That reminded me that I haven't written about one of my favorite new companies yet.

SpaceX, one of several companies started by Elon Musk, of PayPal fame and fortune, is trying to make space travel cheaper. This is a non trivial task, and the first two launches did not achieve orbit, but the company insists they were successful in the sense that they learned and refined a lot.

They have a novel approach to PR, they seem to be willing to put a fair bit of stuff right out in public... in particular they had live feeds of their first two launches, which was pretty cool.

Dragon and Falcon 9
Image via WikipediaSpaceX has three different projects going... the Falcon 1, and the Falcon 9, two different sized mostly reusable launchers, and the Dragon vehicle, which is a crew and cargo vessel that can be launched atop a Falcon 9.

With the activity at Scaled Composites (including winning the X prize) going on, it really looked like the 2000s were going to be the decade where space travel really went commercial. But both Scaled and SpaceX have suffered some delays. Scaled Composites had a damaging accident and the first launch of the Falcon 9 has been pushed back. They've tried to put a good spin on it, but still.Image by jurvetson via Flickr
So I'm still hopeful, but maybe not quite as. Maybe it will take a bit longer. Maybe it can't be done at all and we're doomed to government space? I certainly hope not! Is the fact that SpaceX have won some NASA contracts a good sign? A bad one? What do you think?

Is Constellation just a rehash of Apollo?

Image via WikipediaNASA has proposed "Project Constellation", which aims to put men back on the moon by 2020. Part of the project are the "Orion" manned vehicle, launched by the "Ares" (in versions I and V) rocket, and using the "Altair" lunar lander.

Some have evaluated the program and see it as another big expensive project that will compete for funding with science, and also will compete with the Commercial off the shelf (COTS) initiative.

While I've been a big fan of space exploration all my life, I have my doubts about this whole thing.

Except for some semi reuse at the beginning, it sure seems like the entire thing is more or less "Apollo, but bigger and better" ... Aries I and V (which use Shuttle SRB derived first stages) launch a crew module and lander separately, a rendezvous in orbit mates those and the crew module stays in orbit around the moon while the lander lands. The descent stage is left on the moon, just like the LEM.

Why do this at all? We already know how to do this. Instead of developing new government rockets, (and make work projects) why not just pay for launch capacity from SpaceX or whoever? Or better yet, how about actually building some industrial capacity on the lunar surface? I want the transformative activity in near earth space that science fiction promised us. It's 2008, where's my lunar catapult?

What do you think? Rehash or value add?

Rooting around in old pictures

More on the topic of images... as I said in "bad pictures" a bad pic is better than none. (1)

I happened to be rooting around in my old Brickshelf (2) folders and I realised I have a bunch of pictures from 2001 and even earlier that I really need to go through and see if there is anything of value in them.

In particular, I was fortunate enough to get a "backstage" tour of NASA's Johnson Space Center in August 2001. Since this was before 9/11, it was a fair bit easier to wangle one's way in than nowadays. I was in Houston, trying to sell stuff to Enron (!!) (3) and a friend of a friend gave us a tour. Sure enough, I have a big folder full of stuff... related to the X-38, to moon rocks, and to shuttle and ISS simulation. Much of it is really bad, blurry and out of focus, but I think I found a few goodies to upload.

Tell me what you think... did I miss any good ones? Any I really shouldn't have bothered with? Got any good stories of neat images you managed to score?

----------------

1 - yes this is another one of these backdated posts, I have to get out of that habit!
2 - Brickshelf is a free resource for hosting (mostly) LEGO related images. The interface is mid 90s' to be sure, but back then we didn't have Flickr, et al.
3 - I still joke that if Enron had bought our stuff back then maybe they wouldn't have went bankrupt.