SPACE

[F-ZeroOne]

I was thinking the worlds biggest Rocket Propelled Grenade - which in a way, it is!

[WiteWulf]

Cool thing on the NY Times page comparing all the Constellation craft in a Flash animation:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008 ... ATION.html

[axel000]

Very very cool - the new prototype pressurized lunar buggy to be used next decade on lunar missions will be part of the Presidential parade for Obama's inauguration. Nice bit of support there from Obama



MSNBC

NASA hasn't chosen a final rover design yet, but the one in the parade is the leading prototype at the moment, succeeding wildly on a three-day desert trek in Arizona in October. It is different from the Apollo era open top rovers. It is sealed like a car, allowing two astronauts to sit in it without wearing bulky spacesuits.

[Yak]

haha, that looks like a space VW hippy van, or something you might find on Red Dwarf .

[axel000]

Modelled after a blakes 7 vehicle made out of a milk carton and hairbrush.

[Orava]

Very very cool - the new prototype pressurized lunar buggy to be used next decade on lunar missions will be part of the Presidential parade for Obama's inauguration. Nice bit of support there from Obama



MSNBC

NASA hasn't chosen a final rover design yet, but the one in the parade is the leading prototype at the moment, succeeding wildly on a three-day desert trek in Arizona in October. It is different from the Apollo era open top rovers. It is sealed like a car, allowing two astronauts to sit in it without wearing bulky spacesuits.

That's never going to get to the moon. 2000kg? How many tens of millions to the lunar orbit?

[zip accident]

That's never going to get to the moon. 2000kg? How many tens of millions to the lunar orbit?

You could be correct, particularly if that hint about Obama's enthusiasm for space is accurate, but the expensive bit is Earth orbit.

Once in orbit, to the moon is just a matter of "how quickly?"

[axel000]

I'd wager that its launched in two pieces - chassis followed by pressurized compartment. These events are carefully planned (inauguration processions) so I would take it that this is a tacit approval of the lunar mission strategy.

[axel000]

Now things are getting interesting on the "are we alone" science front....the telescope with the best chance of waging the odds on this any time soon is about to be launched, this March.

BOULDER, Colo. - NASA's Kepler space telescope, a sharp-eyed spacecraft designed to hunt for Earth-like planets, is ready to ship out for an early March launch.

Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. - the Boulder, Colo.-based NASA contractor responsible for developing the Kepler flight system and supporting mission operations - recently completed the spacecraft's final pre-ship checkout and delivered the spacecraft to Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., for a March 5 liftoff on a Delta 2 booster.

....

Over its three and a half year mission, Kepler will attempt to detect planets 30 to 600 times smaller than Jupiter. Given that Earth-sized worlds do exist around stars like the sun, Kepler is expected to be the first to find them, and the first to measure their frequency. Locating rocky worlds like Earth, including those that lie in a star's habitable zone, could mean identifying planets where liquid water, and perhaps life, could exist.


....


"Kepler fits very timely into this growing field by giving us an opportunity for the first time to determine how frequently Earth-size planets form and orbit in a habitable zone around other stars," Fanson said. "We're focused on trying to find Earth analogs. So we've designed Kepler specifically to detect planets that are the size of the Earth and even slightly smaller."

Kepler will serve as a spotter scope, Fanson said, finding candidate planets that can then be targeted by Earth-based observations to rule out false-positive detections.

....

Borucki of NASA Ames said Kepler is a step forward, offering a spotter-scope capability that will support future decision-making about building more powerful spacecraft to home in on candidate worlds capable of sustaining life.

"We need to know if this is a wild goose chase or not," Borucki added. "We're at a bifurcation point and Kepler is just a step, one step in many steps as we explore the galaxy."

2009 could be a watershed year for our understanding of our place in the Universe...

[benedictw]

It will give a really good indication of the number of earthlike planets and such like out there. Its a shame that it uses the transit method - only a small proportion of stars will get any results - but at least it can do shedloads of them, all at once. Definitely a good one to watch.

[Darkflame]

Well, given that just a few decades back people were skeptical of any planets around other stars, and now we know of...what 250? 300?...I wouldnt be at all supprised to see earth-sized ones appearing in that list as soon as we have the means to detect them.

[Wumpus4x4]

Now things are getting interesting on the "are we alone" science front....the telescope with the best chance of waging the odds on this any time soon is about to be launched, this March.


2009 could be a watershed year for our understanding of our place in the Universe...

Its observations need to be confirmed by other means. There's already something up there with potential to spot Earth-like planets: COROT
"In addition COROT has detected a faint signal, which could be another exoplanet with a radius as small as 1.7 Earth's radius. The existence of this object, which could be a rocky exoplanet, has not been confirmed yet."

In any case, I think the most likely means of detection of extra-terrestrial life in 2009 will be reception of an non-natural RF signal from deep-space. Which is why quite a lot of attention is being paid to RF signals from deep-space.

[axel000]

Oh I know. I've been running Seti@home since the 90's, to no avail so far

[Darkflame]

Theres an awfull lot of IFs with Seti though.
(IF they have developed Radiotech and are still using it, IF their signals will reach as far as us, IF we can recognise their order from the random noise etc).
I mean, really, with the sample range of 1 inteligent species developing 1 "tech tree" of technology, we dont have a clue what sorts of stuff an truely independantly developed species will be using and on what scale.

Of course, I fully support Seti, and believe we should search whatever. But absence of evidence isnt evidence of absence and all that

Actually, personally, I expect aliens to appear any day now, slipping out of their quantum-wave-drive and causally asking for a few supplies before vanishing again into their superpositional ships.

[zip accident]

Of course, I fully support Seti, and believe we should search whatever. But absence of evidence isnt evidence of absence and all that

The evidence of absence is the duration that the Earth has existed life bearing and uncolonised. Would we ignore a planet whose highest life form was a Tyrannosaur if we wanted it? Maybe highly ethical beings would have allowed man to flourish unconquered, but for most of prehistory there was no-one here to conquer.

Actually, personally, I expect aliens to appear any day now, slipping out of their quantum-wave-drive and causally asking for a few supplies before vanishing again into their superpositional ships.

Why now, and not in the time of the Trilobites? Or were you joking?

There are no planet using aliens capable of intersellar travel anywhere near us. If there are interstellar travel capable aliens nearby, which I very much doubt, they are adapted to living in spaceships, or maybe in space itself (though that latter seems pretty unlikely), and they won't like planets, or any gravity wells.