Listening to: Trains to Brazil - Guillemots

Yahoo News has posted a story about the very real possibility of hydrocarbon lakes on Titan:

Scientists said Monday they have found the first widespread evidence of giant hydrocarbon lakes on the surface of Saturn’s planet-size moon Titan.

The cluster of lakes was spotted near Titan’s frigid north pole during a weekend flyby by the international Cassini spacecraft, which flew within 590 miles of the moon.

Researchers counted about a dozen lakes six to 62 miles wide. Some, which appeared as dark patches in radar images, were connected by channels, while others had tributaries flowing into them.

The magic little world keeps giving up treasures.

Listening to: Empire - Kasabian

Yahoo News has a few more snippets on the USS Bezos:

As many as 10 flight tests lasting as long as a minute and reaching an altitude of about 2,000 feet could occur this year at the site, north of Van Horn on the 165,000-acre Corn Ranch purchased by Bezos. Over the following three years, as many as 25 launches would be made annually, growing in altitude to 325,000 feet and in duration to more than 10 minutes.

Commercial flights, a goal of the project, could begin in 2010, according to the timetable in the document, with as many as 52 a year.

src: BoingBoing

Listening to: Storm In A Teacup - Red Hot Chili Peppers

Space.com has a couple of interesting articles about the recent Genesis-1 launch:

EXCLUSIVE: Bigelow Orbital Module Launched into Space
Check out this great shot of the payload being loaded into the SS-18 (surreal in that Pavda kind of way).

Bigelow Aerospace’s Genesis-1 Performing Well

Post-launch data of Genesis-1 has now been analyzed, showing that the module has 7 to 13 years of lifetime in orbit, said Eric Haakonstad, Genesis program manager. “We are optimistic that we’re going to have quite a long time to collect, not just initial performance data, but long-term data as well,” he told SPACE.com.

Listening to: Sweetness - Rhombus

The Bigelow launch was a success. News.com has a gallery of images… some artists renderings, but they also have a couple of photos of the launch and the craft.

Listening to: BBC Radio 1

From CNN:

A Russian rocket blasted off Wednesday carrying an experimental inflatable spacecraft for an American entrepreneur who dreams of some day building a commercial space station, officials said.

From BBC World:

The Genesis craft has been built by commercial company Bigelow Aerospace, set up by hotel tycoon Robert Bigelow.

The folded experimental module launched from Siberia on a converted Russian intercontinental ballistic missile.

Once the watermelon-shaped craft - based on a design discarded by Nasa - is safely established in orbit, it will be inflated to full size.

Listening to: Slow Cheetah - Red Hot Chili Peppers

NASA has released footage from a camera on one of the solid rocket boosters. The segment (mpg asx) shows the separation… just amazing:

Listening to: Casanova In Hell - Pet Shop Boys

I thought this snippet from last week was very amusing:

NASA’s rocket scientists have a new appreciation for the out-of-this-world power of bird droppings. The orbiting space shuttle Discovery sported some whitish splotches on its black right wing edge that NASA officials said appeared to be bird droppings.

Listening to: Storm Coming - Gnarls Barkley

A little while back I linked to an article about space flight being a solution looking for a problem.

Last week, in a moment of procrastination, I watched the interview with Aaron Russo. Russo’s latest project is a movie called America - Freedom to Fascism… a movie about the IRS and various topics that have sat on the fringes of the conspiracy culture. I honestly don’t know enough about the topics he’s talking about to really hold an educated opinion, but he represented a glimmer of a problem that might be the tractor app for space flight.

Russo brings to light a disturbing level of dissatisfaction amongst a group of people in society. Generally, dissatisfied groups go through a series of steps to try and address the problems they have identified. Over time they succeed or they don’t. Certain groups reach a point where they decide that remaining in the society is not worth the effort and that it is best that they start their own society. The real extremists realize that the best way for humans to conquer the unknown is by creating a “no return” scenario. The human race has a history of that sort of behavior.

In a world where sovereignty has been well established (i.e. there is no longer a place that you can truly carve out a new land) and it’s pretty much impossible to unhook yourself from society completely… the only real option is to pack your bags and head over the horizon. The next horizon sits at the top of the gravity well and Space, beyond a certain point, represents the best “no return” scenario.

It’s amusing to speculate about a leftist leader who provides launch facilities from his oil rich nation close to the equator. A group of wealthy “pioneers” create their own launch vehicles based on commercial vehicles built to meet the needs of an aging NASA and a sustaining tourism market and escape to live on the new frontier.

Listening to: Running - Evermore

Doogie Howser forwarded me this insightful article by Jeff Foust. Foust toys with the idea of the space industry being a solution looking for a problem:

The Segway and the space industry, in essence, share a common conundrum: they offer advanced technical solutions that fail to solve the problems of most of its potential customers, and their high prices suppress the casual experimentation that might stimulate the development of new markets.

Listening to: Plasticworld (Ft. Fats & TC) - Pendulum

MSNBC has interesting article on
the current drive to build space ports:

Aerospace designer Burt Rutan, who is building a commercial spaceship
fleet for British space tourism operator Virgin Galactic, recently expressed his amazement
at the flurry of proposals.

“It’s almost humorous
to watch the worldwide battle of the spaceports,” Rutan mused earlier this month at
the International Space Development Conference.

For
decades, spaceports have been used mostly by NASA and the Pentagon to rocket astronauts
and satellites into orbit.

Traditional launch ranges
are often spartan mixes of lonely launch pad towers, concrete runways and aircraft
hangars. Many are located in remote coastal areas — Florida’s Cape Canaveral
being the best known — so that debris won’t hit populated areas.

The
current spaceport boom promises futuristic complexes that evoke the Jetsons. But cashing
in requires a gamble.