Archive for February, 2007
“Hiking maps” for Mars
Today, the European Space Agency (ESA) announced that they had produced the first “hiking maps” of Mars — essentially, topographic maps….
Episode 0 — Welcome to the Podcast
Just a quick little audio welcome to the podcast — this serves both as an introduction to the podcast, as well as a guinea pig to test out my podcast work flow….
Encouraging progress for JWST
The BBC is reporting that the last mirror segment has been machined for the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled for launch in 2013. JWST is a huge infrared telescope — the mirror is so big (6.6m / 22ft in diameter) that it can’t fit in any launch vehicle, and so has to be built in segments and essentially unfolded once in space….
The ultimate science fair project — build your own volcano
I can still remember the fun I had as a kid, making a semi-functional model of a volcano for a science fair. The subject of today’s post, though, wasn’t a science fair project — it was a completely avoidable and very damaging accident. Back in May of 2006, a crew was drilling an exploratory natural gas well on the island of Java when they had a REALLY bad day….
How Not to Leave a Legacy
It’s kind of funny what happens when you go out of your way to NOT get bipartisan support for a marquis program — as soon as the “other guys” get into office, they turn around and gore your ox.
Back in January of 2004, President Bush proposed the Vision for Space Exploration, or VSE. The [...]
