Stray Hawkeye

Did you know that NASA makes movie style poster for its missions?  They do, and they’re awesome.  I think the one for Expedition 13 (really big pdf of it) is my favorite:

Neo... In... Space!!

And before anyone starts bitching about “my tax dollars at work”, remember:

1. If you know what you’re doing it doesn’t take that long to do this sort of thing, especially when they already make the informative versions for press / schools.
2. Seeing a government agency embracing a bit of remix / pop culture is sort of a refreshing surprise.  Especially with the continuous corporate push towards more DRM and more strict intellectual property laws that would limit this sort of format.
3. These people when to god-damn space and are in basically the most hazardous profession that exists.  They deserve to be doted on a little bit, especially now when shuttle launches and space walks barely even get a 5 second mention on the evening news unless they’re the last one of something, or something goes terribly wrong (see most hazardous profession that exists comment).  I mean really, without looking at the poster above, name me one astronaut in the last 5 years.  Now name me one reality show star.  That’s what I thought.  Our real heroes need some more press.
4. They’re awesome.

Via Kottke.

A good bit of perspective:

Here’s how we do it.  We need to convince the oil companies that there is oil on Mars.  Stay with me here. The oil companies will then fund manned space flight to Mars so they can drill for the oil. If they eventually find it, it will prove there was once life there, which will cause the religious fundamentalists’ heads to all explode in unison (side benefit there).  Then, because using the oil on Mars would be way cheaper than shipping it to Earth (not to mention supply and demand), we could then send all of the SUVs and sports cars (and their drivers, another side benefit) to Mars.  This would also have the side benefit of decreasing congestion here. Then, all the green house gases from the SUVs and sports cars will cause global warming on Mars (Marsal warming?), which will then teraform Mars to be habitable. We can then grow food on Mars and solve world hunger, on two planets no less. The end.

Granted, the religious fundies would just deny that we had ever been to Mars, or claim the oil was put there by god 5,000 years ago to test their faith. And there would have to be oil on Mars in the first place. And we’d have to figure out how to make SUVs run at several hundred degrees below zero with double the gravity. And I have no clue how fertile Martian soil is. But I can dream, right?

Or maybe we could just reproduce less.

• How much of the universe can’t we see because things are in the way (ignoring gravitational lensing)? For instance, what is the volume of space that’s on the far side of Andromeda, that we can’t see because Andromeda is in the way? Or Dwingeloo 1 for that matter?
• What percentage of single word search terms return a Wikipedia page as their first hit in a Google search?
• Are there any single family homes (not towers, duplexes, or commercial buildings) on the island of Manhattan?

Is it just me, or does Saturn’s moon Mimas look a lot like the Death Star?

Tangentially related (at least in my mind) – Nemesis, a hypothetical dwarf star that causes mass extinctions on Earth.

There’s a galaxy called “Dwingeloo 1“.  That’s the actual, official name, of a whole galaxy.  I’m not sure if that’s the coolest name ever, or one that will cause poor little Dwingeloo to endure countless wedgies when it get’s to Local Group Junior High.  I would guess the Great Andromeda Galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud, and of course M33 (too tough for a real name) will be gunning for him, though Pegasus Dwarf Irregular and Sextans Dwarf Spheroidal will probably be the real whipping boys of the group.

So, maybe everyone else in the world already knows about this, and I’m just uninformed because I wasn’t around for the space race, but I thought this was fascinating.  Apparently, before announcing successful missions into space, the Soviet Union made several secret, failed attempts.  Even better, some amateur radio operators tracked some of these missions.  There’s a great article about it here.  It’s really, really worth the read.  (Fair warning, I have no idea why, but you can only look at the article once per day.  If you close the window and go to it again the same day, it asks you to register, if you come back the next day, it’s fine again.  Weird.)

There’s also an article about the brothers from an April 1965 Reader’s Digest here.  It’s a little dry, and covers a lot of the same things, but sort of interesting to see a piece from when it was happening.