Showing posts with label Space. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Space. Show all posts
Skydive From Space Update 3
It is a sad sad day.Red Bull GmbH and Red Bull North America Inc have decided to stop the Red Bull Stratos programme with immediate effect.
Felix Baumgartner had been scheduled to undertake a stratospheric balloon flight to 120,000ft (36.5km) and attempt a freefall jump that would, for the first time, reach supersonic speeds, as well as deliver valuable scientific data.
Despite the fact that many other people over the past 50 years have tried to break Colonel (Ret) Joe Kittinger's altitude record, and that other individuals have sought to work with Red Bull in an attempt to break his record, Daniel Hogan claims to own certain rights to the project and filed a multi-million-dollar lawsuit earlier this year in a Californian court.
That "Mr. Hogan" is apparently one Daniel Hogan, who reportedly pitched Red Bull on a similar skydiving idea in 2004.
Due to the lawsuit, they have decided to stop the project until this case has been resolved.
For a project that has been 3 years in development, this petty claim really pisses me off.
I've been waiting and waiting for this event.
[VIA]
Felix meeting Neil Armstrong in August 2010[VIA]
Amazing Aurora Borealis Photograph
This photo was taken by Ole Christian Salomonsen over Tromsø, Norway, using long exposure. That's why you can see streaks from satellites and an airplane crossing the firmament.[VIA]
NASA Commons Flickr
Through a competitive process, NASA selected The Internet Archive to organize a comprehensive online compilation of NASA's vast collection of photographs, historic film and video on the NASA Images Web site under a non-exclusive Space Act agreement, signed in July 2007. Launched in 2008, NASA Images is already making hundreds of thousands of images and thousands of hours of video and audio content available to the public, and the collection is growing daily at no cost to taxpayers.....
Visit the NASA Flickr Account HERE.
Visit the NASA Flickr Account HERE.Skydive From Space Update 2
4 people now have their eyes on this record.
Felix Baumgartner, who with the help of Joe Kittinger, the man who has held the record since 1960, is well on his way to complete this insane challenge. A photo of his gondola which wil take him up to 120,000 Feet is below.
The rivals are:
Steve Truglia, a British stuntman.
Cheryl Stearns, a pilot for US Airways who holds 30 skydiving records.
Michael Fournier from France, who has attempted the freefall record 3 times and has been his dream for 20 years. His last attempt was in May 2010, but was cancelled due to a technical fault.
Felix Baumgartner, who with the help of Joe Kittinger, the man who has held the record since 1960, is well on his way to complete this insane challenge. A photo of his gondola which wil take him up to 120,000 Feet is below.
The rivals are:
Steve Truglia, a British stuntman.
Cheryl Stearns, a pilot for US Airways who holds 30 skydiving records.
Michael Fournier from France, who has attempted the freefall record 3 times and has been his dream for 20 years. His last attempt was in May 2010, but was cancelled due to a technical fault.
My money's on Felix.
Check out our previous post on him and his spacesuit HERE.
1. Camera Systems
Three pressurized housings on aluminum arms will contain a total of three HD, three ultra-high-resolution video and two digital still cameras. Four more cameras record outside and three inside. "We basically built a flying television studio," says Jay Nemeth of FlightLine Films.
2. Outer Fairing
The Gemini shape of the capsule is "really a very elegant way of putting a lot of insulation around a lot of the systems," says chief engineer Bill Dodson. R-24 equivalent foam, covered by a fiberglass shell and fireproof paint, helps guard against temperatures as low as minus 100 F.
3. Liquid Oxygen
Redundant liquid-oxygen tanks with independent lines provide 10 hours of O2 for the 3-hour flight, plus pressurize Baumgartner's suit at altitude. N2 flowing from an oversize liquid-nitrogen tank will keep the cabin's oxygen level to below 30 percent, minimizing fire risk.
4. Pressure Sphere
A pressure sphere, molded from fiberglass and epoxy, sits in a chrome-moly steel load frame "like an egg in a bubble-wrap container," says project director Art Thompson. It will be pressurized to 8 psi—equal to 16,000 feet—but is designed to withstand 50. "It's definitely overbuilt."
[VIA]
DIY Pictures Of Earth From Space
A digital camera, a GPS device, some duct tape and a balloon were all that was needed to take some breathtaking pictures of Earth.
Robert Harrison, 38, used a collection of cheap parts costing £500 to create a balloon-mounted camera that can travel up to 21.7 miles (35km) above the surface of the Earth. The result is a series of pictures taken from a height that only a rocket or weather balloon can reach.
The contraption comprises an ordinary Canon camera mounted on a weather balloon. Using free software downloaded from the internet, Mr Harrison reprogrammed the camera to wake up every five minutes and take eight photographs and a video before switching off for a rest.A GPS tracker enabled him to follow the balloon’s progress to an accuracy of 10 metres (33ft) and to retrieve it upon its return to Earth. Both the camera and the GPS device are wrapped in loft insulation, which traps the heat given off by the devices and allows them to function in -60C (-76F) temperatures high in the Earth’s atmosphere.
At ground level the helium balloon has a diameter of one metre. As it rises, the air pressure drops and the balloon expands to a diameter of up to 20 metres. Eventually, it pops and the camera carried back down to earth by a small parachute.
[VIA]Virgin Galactic Takes First Test Flight
Richard Branson was overjoyed yesterday to announce that his passenger-carrying suborbital "SpaceShipTwo" rocket thrillride craft has left the ground for the first time. However it remained attached to its jet-powered "mothership" for the entire flight; independent operations aren't expected for some time.
[VIA]
[VIA]
Invasion Of The Giant Pliers
On Street View, something weird is going down at the corner of Compton Rd and Whitehall Rd in West Bromwich, UK.
Giant pliers from space are invading earth!!
Giant pliers from space are invading earth!!
[VIA]
Londoner Rivals Space Jumper
Coming just days after Felix Baumgartner announced the news that he will be looking to break the highest freefall record, Steve Truglia has announced he will be going for the record too. Aiming to do it this summer, he hopes to beat Felix to it.
Read our article on Felix's jump HERE.
Travelling Days Are Over For Spirit
[VIA]After six years of roaming the Red Planet, travelling days for the Mars rover Spirits are over.
Spirit has been stuck in a patch of soft, sandy soil since April 2009. After months of testing escape manoeuvres with two mock rovers on Earth, NASA began attempts to rescue Spirit in November 2009.
The rover's three left wheels are almost entirely buried and have little traction, and two of its right wheels are broken and must be dragged or pushed.
If it survives the upcoming Martian winter, it could be used as a stationary research lab to help study the planet's interior.
Some of Spirits' more amusing discoveries.
Bigfoot!First Supersonic Freefall
Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner has announced he will will try to smash the nearly 50-year-old record for the highest jump this year, becoming the first person to go supersonic in freefall.On 16 August 1960, US Air Force Captain Joe Kittinger made history by jumping out of a balloon at an altitude of some 31,333 metres. Felix aims to jump from 36,575 metres. Check out the chart below for some perspective.
The jump height is above a threshold at 19,000 metres called the Armstrong line, where the atmospheric pressure is so low that fluids start to boil. If he opens up his face mask or the suit, all the gases in his body will go out of suspension, so literally turning him into a giant fizzy soda, oozing fluid from his eyes and mouth.
Read the full article HERE.
The Guitar Pulsar
Discovered in 1992, this pulsar is flying through a gas cloud and producing a shock wave that looks, at a closer inspection, like a guitar. Scientists have now deduced that the pulsar's path indicates that 800,000 years ago it was fired from a cluster of massive stars that now lies about 6500 light years away from Earth.[VIA]
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![[VIA]](http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://www.magic99.ca/files/u4/Bigfoot_on_Mars.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.magic99.ca/tags/bigfoot&usg=__omBKkP8qoX6zSaJ07M8jZUybg-A=&h=208&w=400&sz=69&hl=en&start=9&um=1&tbnid=s7oLP7iW2szb3M:&tbnh=64&tbnw=124&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dspirit%2Brover%2Bmars%2Bbigfoot%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26safe%3Doff%26rlz%3D1G1GGLQ_ENUK300%26sa%3DG%26um%3D1){kind=link}