Nomadicoder » Spaceflight

X-Prize to the Moon

Steven — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 20:40:58 +0000

From Engadget, there’s this posting about the next X-Prize to the Moon sponsored by Google. Send a Spacecraft to the moon and travel 2km across the surface and return a gig of images and video by 2012 and win $20M. This time, you can be number 2 and win $5M. There’s also a $5M bonus if you surpass the requirements. If you miss the deadline, the prize drops to $15M and expires in 2014. As with preceeding X-Prizes, no government money.

This is the way to do it. It encourages teams to continue on even after the first team arrives. It further encourages the subsequent teams to exceed the performance of the first team.

Technorati Tags: spaceflight

X-Prize to the Moon

Steven — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 20:40:58 +0000

This is the way to do it. It encourages teams to continue on even after the first team arrives. It further encourages the subsequent teams to exceed the performance of the first team.

Technorati Tags: spaceflight

“One, Two, Five…” “Three, sir!”

Steven — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 22:57:58 +0000

Just now on NASA TV: Mission control instructed space walking astronauts to give the solar panels they’ve been folding up a shake.

Mission Control: “You’re go for three shakes”
Astronaut: “Is that One, Two, Five?”

In mission control, there was much laughter.

Technorati Tags: spaceflight

Ansari In Space

Steven — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 03:10:18 +0000

Anousheh Ansari, of the same Ansari family of X-Prize fame is onboard the International Space Station. I like the X-Prize ball cap. Nice touch!

On a side note, I see the X-Prize Foundation uses the WordPress blogging service.

Technorati Tags: blogging, spaceflight

And NASA Thinks Its Ready to Fly?

Steven — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 05:35:30 +0000

The firing of Charlie Carmada and the no-go, but go ahead decision last week indicate the cultural problems with NASA continue. Carmada’s disagreement stems from the way NASA selects members of its management teams, “I cannot accept the methods I believe are being used by this Center to select future leaders. I have always based my decisions on facts, data and good solid analysis. I cannot be a party to rumor, inuendo, gossip and/or manipulation to make or break someone’s career and/or good name.” When he refused to step down, he was reassigned to the NASA Engineering and Safety Center. Sounds like a way of saying, we value what you have to contribute, would you mind contributing from Virginia?

Something one of the STS-121 crewmembers said when asked if he sensed a noticeable change in the culture around NASA. He said that he noticed more openness with more people speaking up, some more than they should. I think there was a knowing wink there, but still, that last part is left open to the interpretation, because one might say that at the time, those engineers who wanted imagery of damage to Columbia before it broke up on reentry spoke up more than they should have.

Citation: Collect Space and Space.com.

Technorati Tags: spaceflight

Space Cloaking Device

Steven — Fri, 26 May 2006 05:36:15 +0000

This can be the greatest achievement since the Enron’s creative accounting system. “Where did that $95 billion Space Station go?” “It’s cloaked. Take my word for it.”

Technorati Tags: Spaceflight

Don’t Bother with NASA

Steven — Thu, 25 May 2006 03:24:35 +0000

From NASA Watch: Celestron and Boy Scouts Venture Where NASA Can’t (Or Won’t). Again, private enterprise succeeds where government has no interest.

Technorati Tags: Education, Science, Spaceflight

NASA Podcasts

Steven — Sat, 03 Dec 2005 12:54:06 +0000

NASA recently started carrying a podcast of agency news. This week they posted a Mars Rover update with Steve Squyres, so it’s not just the week in review.

Technorati Tags: podcasts, spaceflight

Space Shuttle Sonic Boom

Steven — Sat, 13 Aug 2005 15:18:08 +0000

Here is a recording of last the Space Shuttle’s Sonic Boom recorded from Tehachapi.

I should have set up a camera, because shortly before the boom, a bright light appeared to the south west, got increasingly brighter and passed directly over head. It was the Space Station, catching up with and passing by Discovery making her final approach for landing.

The Spaceship Company

Steven — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 00:42:05 +0000

Burt Rutan and Richard Branson have announced they will form a The Spaceship Company to build and fly commercial suborbital spacecraft based on White Knight/Spaceship One. So far, it’s been reported here and here.

Space Shuttle Windows Support

Steven — Wed, 27 Jul 2005 17:21:40 +0000

I’ve been listening to STS-117 coverage on NASA TV while working, and it’s interesting that they’ve spent the last half hour working on windows support issues. During some of the work, one of the astronauts reported a BSoD. Wonder if they would rather be doing mission related rather than debugging system configurations and software.

STS 114 Launch Set

steven — Thu, 21 Jul 2005 01:57:39 +0000

Looks like NASA has found the problem with the fuel sensor and has set a new launch date for next Tuesday at 10:39AM EDT, within the original launch window. The problem was a faulty grounding in the wiring.

Space Shuttle Discovery Launch Scrubbed

Steven — Thu, 14 Jul 2005 02:33:01 +0000

NASA Scrubbed today’s launch of Space Shuttle Discovery because of a fuel sensor glitch. It has echos of the Delta IV Heavy partial failure last December, which was caused by an erroneous reading of the sensor which shut down the engines prematurely.

Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39

Steven — Mon, 18 Apr 2005 19:45:24 +0000

Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39

Originally uploaded by Nomadicoder.

Thanks to thedigitalphotographyweblog for this posting about AutoStitch. I installed it and assembled some panoramas I photographed a few years ago. I have this photo of Launch Complex 39 at the Kennedy Space Center from my trip in September 2000.

Minotaur Launch

Steven — Mon, 11 Apr 2005 13:52:01 +0000

I attempted to view the Minotaur Launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base. From Spaceflightnow has the best coverage.

B-52/X-43A Contrail Image

Steven — Tue, 16 Nov 2004 23:32:54 +0000

I shot this image a couple of minutes after the NASA B-52 dropped the X-43A on its successful Mach-10 flight this afternoon. The image was taken from the west side of the Palos Verdes Peninsula with an Olympus C-765.

This was also the last research flight for NASA’s B-52.

Infighting at Orbital — Near Mishap.

Steven — Tue, 09 Nov 2004 17:23:38 +0000

NASA almost blew another one of its science projects in this Spaceref.com article, A DART Near Miss: Infighting at Orbital – and Deceiving NASA. It has the echoes of a bad disaster movie.

SpaceShipOne Flight Audio

Steven — Mon, 01 Nov 2004 20:34:41 +0000

Here is a recording of the air-to-ground radio communications of the X2 flight of SpaceShipOne.

X-Prize Flight 2 Photos

Steven — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 22:35:10 +0000

Photos from this Scaled Composite’s Second X-Prize flight. Again, this is a quick upload. I’ll add clean up the images and write some text when I am able.

Continue to the photographs of the second X-Prize flight of SpaceShipOne

X-Prize Flight 1 Photos

Steven — Fri, 01 Oct 2004 14:08:11 +0000

Photos from this Scaled Composite’s First X-Prize flight. I’ve been pretty busy, but I wanted to get the photos up on my site when I found my first spare moment. I’ll update the posting in the near in a couple of weeks.

Continue to Photographs of the Flight of SpaceShipOne