The Space Thread!

Cobol74 said:
Not to mention being hit by solar energy and micro meteorites. ...

The earth is doomed, as it the solar system, and indeed even the universe! It is just going to take a very, very, very long time - well it will see me out.
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Not me. I plan to be around when all that remains are jerk ass photons and an Alfa Romeo Spider*.

*The Universe will keep one around in perfect running order to spite humanity.
 
The Large Magellanic Cloud orbits the Milky Way, so it's still pretty close for another galaxy.
 
BBC News - Alma telescope begins study of cosmic dawn

BBC News said:
One of the 21st Century's grand scientific undertakings has begun its quest to view the "Cosmic Dawn".

The Atacama large milllimetre/submillimetre array (Alma) in Chile is the largest, most complex telescope ever built.

Alma's purpose is to study processes occurring a few hundred million years after the formation of the Universe when the first stars began to shine.

Its work should help explain why the cosmos looks the way it does today.

more via link
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This made the main News tonight, a bit of PR from the ALMA project.
ALMA was also featured on a recent BBC Horizon program, which I posted up a few weeks back and hope a few of you got to see.

:)

(Phyrefile storage system is offline at preset, so sorry no cool pic.)
 
I have only seen two rocket ships in my life the first was when I was a puppy when we took a tour of Cape Kennedy that had just assembled a Command and Service Module together the ship was for Apollo 13. The next was in San Antonio Texas the Challenger was being piggy backed on a 747 back to the Cape.
 
alaskarat said:
I have only seen two rocket ships in my life the first was when I was a puppy when we took a tour of Cape Kennedy that had just assembled a Command and Service Module together the ship was for Apollo 13. The next was in San Antonio Texas the Challenger was being piggy backed on a 747 back to the Cape.
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So we can coclude that you seeing the thing makes bad luck. :p
 
Seems that the Dooms Day Comet is all broke up over all of the bad press. Or maybe all of the solar storms. :p

Debris of 'Doomsday' Comet Elenin to Pass by Earth Sunday


The moment long feared by conspiracy theorists is nearly upon us: The "doomsday comet" Elenin will make its closest approach to Earth Sunday (Oct. 16). Or what's left of it will, anyway.

Comet Elenin started breaking up in August after being blasted by a huge solar storm, and a close pass by the sun on Sept. 10 apparently finished it off, astronomers say. So what will cruise within 22 million miles (35.4 million kilometers) of our planet Sunday is likely to be a stream of debris rather than a completely intact comet.

And the leftovers of Elenin won't return for 12,000 years, astronomers say.

"Folks are having trouble finding it, so I think it's probably dead and gone," said astronomer Don Yeomans of the Near-Earth Object Program Office at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. [Gallery: Comet Elenin in Pictures]

That means it probably won't present much of a skywatching show Sunday, scientists have said.

The doomsday comet

Elenin's apparent demise may come as a relief to some folks, since apocalyptic rumors circulating on the Internet portrayed the comet as a major threat to Earth.

One theory claimed Elenin would set off havoc on Earth after aligning with other heavenly bodies, spurring massive earthquakes and tsunamis. Another held that Elenin was not a comet at all, but in fact a rogue planet called Nibiru that would bring about the end times on Earth. After all, the comet's name could be taken as a spooky acronym: "Extinction-Level Event: Nibiru Is Nigh."

Those ideas were pure nonsense, Yeomans said.

"Elenin was a second-rate, wimpy little comet that never should have been noted for anything, really," he told SPACE.com. "It was not even a bright one."

Elenin's remains will not be the only objects about to make their closest pass of Earth. One day after the Elenin flyby, the small asteroid 2009 TM8 will zip close by. Like Elenin, it poses no risk of striking our home planet.

Asteroid 2009 TM8 is about 21 feet (6.4 meters) wide and the size of a schoolbus. It will come within 212,000 miles of Earth ? just inside the orbit of the moon ? when it zips by on Monday morning (Oct. 17).

Say goodbye to Elenin

Elenin was named after its discoverer, Russian amateur astronomer Leonid Elenin, who spotted it in December 2010. Before the icy wanderer broke up, its nucleus was likely 2 to 3 miles (3 to 5 km) in diameter, scientists say.

Elenin never posed any threat to life on Earth, Yeomans said. It was far too small to exert any appreciable influence on our planet unless it managed to hit us.

"Just driving to work every day in my subcompact car is going to have far more of a gravitational effect on Earth than this comet ever will," Yeomans said.

Elenin's supposed connection to earthquakes was just a correlation, and a weak one at that, he added. Relatively strong earthquakes occur every day somewhere on Earth, so it's easy ? but not statistically valid ? to blame some of them on the comet's changing position.

Yeomans views the frenzy over Elenin as a product of the Internet age, which allows loud and often uninformed voices to drown out the rather more prosaic results that scientists publish in peer-reviewed journals.

"It's a snowball effect on the Web," Yeomans said. "You get one or two folks who make an outrageous claim, and a bunch of others pile on. Some folks are actually making a living this way."

Elenin's crumbs will soon leave Earth in the rear-view mirror, speeding out on a long journey to the outer solar system. But Yeomans doesn't think the departure will keep the conspiracy theorists down for long.

"It's time to move on to the next armageddon," he said.
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Well that's the end of that volatile stupidity. Now we sit and wait for the next one.
 
Branson opens the new Space Port.

[video=youtube;-aOr2qwTl_4]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=-aOr2qwTl_4[/video]
 
597189main_2084_946-710.jpg


someone should strap one to the back of a car, and show those turbined ones what real thrust is :D

All six Pratt Whitney Rocketdyne space shuttle main engines from Endeavour's STS-134 and Atlantis' STS-135 missions sit in test cells inside the Engine Shop at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. For the first time, all 15 shuttle main engines are in the shop at the same time, being prepped for shipment to NASA's Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, where they are being repurposed for use on NASA's next generation heavy lift rocket, the Space Launch System.
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http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_2084.html
 
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After you...............
 
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