SPACE

[F-ZeroOne]

If you mean Al Beans pictures, IIRC from reading "Moondust", several thousand dollars at least each and increasing. If you count the cost of acquiring the dust, more money than you'll ever get your hands on unless you're the head of NASA.

[Orava]

Original, for sure, but why the best?

I do not know, but the man must have had some nerves.

Retrofire took place off the west coast of Africa, near Angola, about 8000 km from the desired landing place. The liquid-fueled retros fired for about 42 seconds. Due to weight constraints there was no backup retro engine. The spacecraft carried 10 days of provisions to allow for survival and natural decay of the orbit in the event the retros failed.

After retrofire, the Vostok equipment module unexpectedly remained attached to the reentry module by a bundle of wires. The two halves of the craft were supposed to separate ten seconds after retrofire, but this did not happen until 10 minutes had passed. The spacecraft went through wild gyrations before the wires burned through and the descent module settled into the proper reentry attitude.

...

Vostok 1 is still 7 km from the ground. The hatch is released and two seconds later Gagarin ejects from Vostok 1. At 2.5 km altitude, the main parachute is deployed from the Vostok spacecraft. Both he and the spacecraft land via parachute 26 km south west of Engels, in the Saratov region at 51° N 46° E, 1 hour and 48 minutes after liftoff. The Vostok 1 lands at 07:55 UTC. Gagarin, because his parachute opened at a much higher altitude than Vostok 1 (7 km vs. 2.5 km), lands at about 08:05 UTC. Two schoolgirls witness the Vostok landing and described the scene, "It was a huge ball, about two or three metres high. It fell, then it bounced and then it fell again. There was a huge hole where it hit the first time." A farmer and her daughter observed the strange scene of a figure in a bright orange suit with a large white helmet landing near them by parachute. Gagarin later recalled, "When they saw me in my space suit and the parachute dragging alongside as I walked, they started to back away in fear. I told them, don't be afraid, I am a Soviet like you, who has descended from space and I must find a telephone to call Moscow!".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vostok_1

[Flabio]

Now the iron curtain has lifted, there's all sorts of crazy stories about the Russian space program out there. One capsule landed well off target in a siberian forest. The crew had to stay up all night with their service revolvers ready as it was bear country, waiting for the rescue team.

[WiteWulf]

Didn't Gagarin eventually buy the farm after taking his plane out to do some aerobatics after a liquid lunch and parking it, nose-first, in a field?

[Wumpus4x4]

Stuff the heroics , the masses want "space" to provide broadband internets and more TV channels. This one is due away tonight, but I won't be staying up to watch 'cos it's a bit late. Still, night launch and mostly clear skies, so it should be worth watching the replays.

[F-ZeroOne]

Didn't Gagarin eventually buy the farm after taking his plane out to do some aerobatics after a liquid lunch and parking it, nose-first, in a field?

Depends who you believe. One of his fellow Cosmonauts is convinced that another plane passed Gargarins at supersonic speed, and the resulting shock wave flipped Gargains aircraft into an unrecoverable spin at low altitude. He believes that the the Soviet air force then covered up the incident (possibly even at a very local level - one can imagine what might have happened in communist Russia to the poor smuck responsible for killing Cosmo Soviet One...!).

Gargarin was flying a variant of a MiG-15, a jet whose handling characteristics have been described, perhaps with a touch of exaggeration, in alarming terms by Chuck Yeager.

[F-ZeroOne]

Not exactly an astronaut, but when it comes to having balls made out of depleted uranium, this guy is quite possibly at the top of the pyramid:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Kittinger

Parachuted from a balloon. From 103,000 feet up. Hit a top speed of 614mph.

'nuff said.

[WiteWulf]

Not exactly an astronaut, but when it comes to having balls made out of depleted uranium, this guy is quite possibly at the top of the pyramid:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Kittinger

Parachuted from a balloon. From 103,000 feet up. Hit a top speed of 614mph.

'nuff said.

I've seen the film of that, taken from the balloon, bloody amazing...

[WiteWulf]

Not exactly an astronaut, but when it comes to having balls made out of depleted uranium, this guy is quite possibly at the top of the pyramid:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Kittinger

Parachuted from a balloon. From 103,000 feet up. Hit a top speed of 614mph.

'nuff said.

I've seen the film of that, taken from the balloon, bloody amazing...

Found it!

Fast forward to the 2 minute mark and enjoy

http://www.archive.org/details/1960-08-18_u2_spy_trial

Not the best quality, I'm sure I've seen a much better version than that somewhere, but you get the idea...

[Darkflame]

I posted this in the thread for beautiful things, but it belongs here too;

Experiments done on a sphere of water in zero g;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3drcpE-0 ... ed&search=

Wonderfull stuff.
Especialy the last.

[WiteWulf]

Wow...the alkaseltzer one was best

[Wumpus4x4]

Wow...the alkaseltzer one was best

People who can explain this sort of thing accurately but without sounding almost fatally dull are in short supply. That guy isn't one of them.

Anyway, some good launch video from the STS-118 SRBs now linked from the NASA/Shuttle main page.

Video of Ariane V177 here

[Orava]

Video of Ariane V177 here

Very European space programme - there is a minute or two of video of the launches and more than 10 minutes of videos of speeches - a lot of it in French.

[F-ZeroOne]

How To Be An Astronaut in several years of very, very hard training:

http://damarisbsarria.blogspot.com/

[WiteWulf]

Voyager 2 was 30 yesterday, apparently:
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/0 ... _30th.html

Happy Birthday Voyager 2!