Apollo 11 Lunar Landing - PDI to Touchdown 46 years ago

I still find it incredible that man landed on the moon

You are not the centre of the universe

You are not the centre of the universe.


One of those mindbending videos about space...

Rocket power

The launch of NASA's Orion Spacecraft has had idiots saying how this was launched by the most powerful ever rocket. 

Hmmmm.......

This Delta IV is configured with three massive liquid-fuel rocket engines in a row.  Each of the three rocket engines produces 702,000 pounds of thrust, which means this vehicle has 51 million horsepower to get the craft into space.

The first stage of the Saturn 5 that powered the Apollo Spacecraft had five bell-shaped F-1 engines which each weighed over nine tons and generated 1.5 million pounds of thrust.

So each Delta IV engine produces less than half the power of each Saturn 5 engine. Also there are just three engines per Delta IV, but there were five engines per Saturn 5.

I make that a total of just over 2.1 million pounds of thrust from a Delta IV but around 7.5 million pounds of thrust from a Saturn 5.

Space related news

Scott Carpenter, one of the original seven NASA astronauts and the second American to orbit Earth, has died, according to NASA. He was 88.


If you want to see a good basic programme about the history of space flight, particularly strong on events leading to Apollo 11 moon landing, then the BBC's Horizon programme presented by Dr. Brian Cox was rather good last night.

Photos of home

The above image was taken by the Cassini probe orbiting Saturn. The Earth is the blue dot below the last of Saturn's visible rings.


The following image is even more humbling...

This image was taken by Voyager 1 in 1996 and shows the Earth as a tiny blue dot in the right most band of colour.

NASA explains:

'This narrow-angle color image of the Earth, dubbed 'Pale Blue Dot', is a part of the first ever 'portrait' of the solar system taken by Voyager 1. The spacecraft acquired a total of 60 frames for a mosaic of the solar system from a distance of more than 4 billion miles from Earth and about 32 degrees above the ecliptic. From Voyager's great distance Earth is a mere point of light, less than the size of a picture element even in the narrow-angle camera. Earth was a crescent only 0.12 pixel in size. Coincidentally, Earth lies right in the center of one of the scattered light rays resulting from taking the image so close to the sun. This blown-up image of the Earth was taken through three color filters -- violet, blue and green -- and recombined to produce the color image. The background features in the image are artifacts resulting from the magnification.'

Looks like the asteroid missed

Asteroid 2012 DA14 has safely passed by Earth, according to NASA. The closest approach was 17,500 miles above Indonesia.

"It has passed closest approach and this asteroid is going away," said Paul Chodus of the Near Earth Object team.

The asteroid is estimated to be about 150 feet (45 meters) across with an estimated mass of 130,000 metric tons. Its flyby was the closest ever for an object this large, according to NASA.

Looks like I was wrong...

IF asteroid 2012 DA14 was going to hit the Earth would they tell us?

Asteroid 2012 DA14 is going to pass very close to the Earth, coming within the Moon's orbit indeed.

We are assured that there is no chance of asteroid 2012 DA14 hitting either the Earth or the Moon, its track has been calculated very accurately.

This is almost certainly true, but ask yourself this: if asteroid 2012 DA14 was going to hit the Earth would they tell us?

Imagine the panic, the rioting, the destruction. Would world governments accept that or would world leaders just disappear into their nuclear war bunkers and sit and wait it out?

If you are worried about the veracity of the assurances we are being given, then just keep an eye on where world leaders are from around 19:00 GMT today...

The Obama Diary shows Barack Obama on Central Time (six hours behind GMT) with free time during the asteroid's near miss:

1:10: Arrives Chicago

2:45: Delivers remarks at Hyde Park Academy

Anybody know where the nearest nuclear bunker to Chicago is?

Interesting; and maybe worrying?

The first song played in space - a day late for the 46th anniversary

16 December 1965:

'On December 16, 1965, while in orbit above planet Earth, the crew of Gemini 6 added another milestone to their already historic mission.

Astronauts Wally Schirra and Thomas Stafford reported sighting an object, a satellite, in a "polar orbit...traveling North to South."


"Stand by, he's trying to signal something," reported Schirra.

The next thing heard at Mission Control was a rendition of Jingle Bells performed by the astronauts using instruments which they had smuggled onboard.

The story is well known. The harmonica and string of bells are now housed at The Smithsonian, and the incident is believed to be the first time human beings ever played music in outer space.

But no recording of the song has ever been made available. Until now.

I've been looking all over the Internet for this recording for more than a year with no success. So I started asking for help.

KUOW reporter Phyllis Fletcher pointed me toward NASA's Media Resource Center in Houston Texas.

After digging around their Web site and calling the phone tree at Johnson Space Center, I eventually reached Librarian Jody Russell. Her contacts in the Audio Department pointed me to the online archive for the entire Gemini 6 and 7 joint mission.

They narrowed it down to 8 audio files for me, which covered about 33 hours of the mission. They also provided me with links to mission transcripts that I could use as reference to find the song.

The message from NASA ended with "...it's in there somewhere."

And it was.

Enjoy!'

Where is the last ever Space Shuttle now?

Here...

A truly sad week for manned space flight as the USA exits the field. Somehow I think they will come to regret relying on the Russians to act as paid taxi drivers.

The history of flight

I couldn't have put it better myself; is the retirement of the Space Shuttle really the end of American manned space flight?

Thanks to Abstruse Goose for the cartoon.

Into space 50 years ago today

50 years ago today Ham the chimpanzee was the first  animal to be launched into outer space by the Americans.

You can see some more excellently evocative photos at Life Magazine and of course Wikipedia has a good article.

Is there 'life on Mars'?

The Mail reports that NASA believes they found organic life on Mars 34 years ago but misidentified it...

A very worrying image, is there a Death Star nearby?

This Photoblog entry claims that this is a photo taken by Belgian astrophotographer Thierry Legault of Tuesday's partial solar eclipse and that it also shows the International Space Station passing over the sun's disk.

Is he and MSNBC sure that that is The International Space Station? It looks very much like a Tie Fighter to me! Is Darth Vader and his Imperial Death Star nearby?

I am in space related geek heaven

I have found Spacelog's Apollo 13 transcripts and I am in space geek heaven. I may be a while on this site and then watch Ron Howard's 'Apollo 13' to spot the many errors; great film though!

What happens to a Space Shuttle booster rocket when it detaches from the Space Shuttle

An incredible piece of NASA film. The booster separates at 1:50, you can see the other booster as well, the fall to earth, the parachute deployment and landing in the ocean... what a ride!


Thanks to Boing Boing for the spot.

The International Space Station

That's the Japanese Kibo complex of the International Space Station pictured.

For more take a read of The Mail or NASA.

Cockpit view of a Space Shuttle landing

Thanks to Theo Spark for the spot.

Apollo 11 the landing

From 40,00 feet to landing. Don't forget that the LEM landed with less than a minute of fuel left, running on vapours...

Apollo 11 launch video

Apollo 11 launched 40 years ago so here's some video footage to remind you of the sheer power of the Saturn 5 rocket.


Nine minutes of interesting pre and post launch video for the geeks.



Launch with altitude and velocity data, very interesting indeed.



Some rather special NASA footage



High speed camera footage of the launch

More Chinese fakery

Following on from the fakery at the Beijing Olympics, the Chinese government have now been caught out faking news reporting. Oddly it is the Murdoch owned, and therefore normally incredibly pro the Chinese regime, Times that reports :

"With a burst of flame and smoke, a Chinese rocket blasted off into orbit yesterday. But it was the state news agency that moved faster than the speed of light, publishing the transcript of an “in-space” conversation between the astronauts before they had even left Earth.

The Xinhua news agency posted an article on its website breathlessly describing the Shenzhou VII spacecraft in orbit and quoting exchanges between the crew, possibly during the most important part of the mission: China’s first spacewalk. The only problem was that the crew were still on terra firma.

The story had disappeared by the end of the day and its appearance was described as a technical error. The gaffe highlighted China’s readiness to resort to sleight of hand — if not outright fakery — to present a perfect public image, such as the little girl who lip-synched at the Olympics opening ceremony because the child who did the actual singing was not deemed pretty enough."

I would rather the world's media ignored the fakery and instead concentrated on the systematic imprisonment and murder of citizens opposed to the regime in China and on the use of slave labour both in China and abroad to support China's "economic miracle".