[VIDEO] The four astronaut crew of Artemis II aboard their Orion capsule Integrity will break the distance record set by Apollo 13. They will be the furthest distance from Earth any human beings have been, a record set by the ill-fated crew of Apollo 13 that suffered a castrophic failure that cancelled an attempt to land on the moon.
Hope you enjoy, even if you only watch the replay. At the time I wrote this the crew was about 27 minutes before they reach the far side of the moon, where they will lose contact with the Earth for about 40 minutes.
Now I want to pop Apollo 13 the movie into the old VCR....err get with the times I can stream it now!
He's about to make history as being the first Black American to orbit the moon. Of course he was quoted as saying it shouldn't be about his race, to go to the Moon as we had during the 1960s with the Apollo missions is a human achievement.
Artemis II launched Wednesday sending four people which also includes the first Canadian and woman to orbit the moon. The design is like an Apollo Command capsule, although there is a much differently designed service module that will propel them around the moon and return them to the earth.
Glover before becoming an astronaut served as a pilot in the US Navy and according to this NY Post article was formerly a two-sport athlete in football and wrestling in his college years.
NASA is live streaming coverage of the Artemis II mission here. [VIDEO]
I know politics have been the focus of this blog as of late, however, sometimes it's OK to delve into science. Lately space or the universe has been a topic of interest for me.
Somehow I missed the pivot from going to Mars to them talking about Black Holes.
Black Holes seem terrifying if you get caught in one, especially when you reach a point where escape isn't possible then you get the spaghettification effect. You get stretched out, I imagine that as painful, however, we're not going to find out about that anytime soon.
Though of course if Dr. Tyson tells it we might be fine at a certain distance it's not like it'll just suck everything in. And it's interesting how he talks about Black Holes - one can be created if a star wants to explode, however, gravity keeps that from happening.
And also Mars. Elon Musk wants to go to Mars, he's talked about it. Of course what's the economic incentive? Trillions of dollars to make this a reality?
And how did we wind up on the moon by 1969, well more of a geopolitical incentive. Certainly the United States of America had to show the technical superiority to our superpower rivals the Soviet Union. The U.S. has rivals of course in the current world, but there's no Soviet Union - Russia still hasn't matched the power and influence of the superpower it ultimately replaced.
However as the title postulates, "We'll never go to Mars", I hope we do in my lifetime. Besides I just missed the Apollo missions of the late 1960s to earlyer 70s that did land on the moon.
Voyager 1 was launched on Sept 5, 1977 and is currently still sending data back to Earth even in what is called interstellar space. It is the further man-made object away from Earth.
Voyager 1 is further away from Earth than its sister probe Voyager 2 (launched August 20, 1977) and also Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 (currently derelict in space though also far away from Earth).
Both of the Voyager probes have golden records which I have linked to on this blog in the past. They were designed to be found by any extraterrestrial species that may run across these probes. The records are like time capsules and who knows they may well outlast human civilizations.
Of course here's the deal. While Voyager 1 at least has left the heliopause which is the boundary between the solar wind of our Sun and the plasma of other stars in our galaxy. So whatever instruments the probes still have and certainly whatever energy it has remaining has been used to collect data outside of our solar system.
Beyond the heliopause is a region known as the Oort cloud and Voyager 1 is expected to reach that area of space in about 300 years. Of course a lot can happen in that time, to Earth especially. And as a huge science fiction fan, I would expect that humanity could beat Voyager 1 to the Oort cloud well before that.
And it would take about 30,000 years to for the probe to pass through it. Again, it's possible that we may beat that probe through that area of space. That is unless "warp drive" - a future faster than light propulsion system actually being studied by physicists - becomes a reality and bridges the vast distances within our galaxy.
As far as any extraterrestrial visitors. Who knows? Perhaps the idea of a UFO - and thus alien visitors - are a reality. And it's also possible that any other advanced lifeforms like ourselves - humanity - might not have yet figured out how to bridge the vast distances in our galaxy as of yet. Who knows if as long as the Voyagers remain out there if they will encounter any other life forms.
[VIDEO] The real title of this video is how was the moon created?
While the science isn't exactly settled on this question, what this video argues is that the moon was created after a collision between Earth and an hypothetical ancient planet known as Theia. Really fascinating to know what we found out about the composition of the moon once we collected samples of moon rocks from the Apollo missions.
[VIDEO] I enjoy PBS Eons on YouTube. They really take a look at the natural and evolutionary history of Earth. How did the many species of life we know - and of course humanity itself - evolve on this third rock from the sun?
In this most recent edition now we look at the fourth rock from the sun. The red planet we know as Mars which is our next door neighbor. The next great voyage of mankind will be to make the long trek to Mars.
I know in history astronomers observed bodies of water, rivers, channels, etc and now that we're able to send space probes to take a look at one of our next door neighbors we find out that there is no bodies of water on Mars. We see polar icecaps at the poles, see a desolate planet.
We wonder if there was ever life on Mars? We wonder why did Mars become such a desolate planet when there is evidence that there were bodies of water on that planet as exists on Earth. This is a fascinating look at the ongoing research and data collection on the fourth planet.
[VIDEO] The space shuttle program ended in 2011 and once upon a time I did dream of taking a spaceflight aboard this vessel. It was a radical change from the Apollo program where basically you were in a capsule and you splashed down in an ocean upon re-entry.
With the space shuttle when you re-entered the atmosphere you glide back onto the planet. The shuttle was designed to be reusuable unlike an Apollo capsule where once it re-entered the atmosphere it wasn't possible to reuse and that's due to heatshield technology on space craft.
These days you can take a tour of the Space Shuttle at the Smithsonian as Paul Stewart does in this video.
[VIDEO] Late last year I shared a video about the Voyager project that sent two space probes out of the solar system with a virtually indestructible phonograph record which is a bit of an archive of humanity as recorded for that time. A number of pictures of our planet and various pictures of people and various pictures of life on our planet in addition to the various sounds such as music our languages or even direct messages from some of planet's leaders were placed on those records.
Canadian YouTuber McCullough explores various attempts made my NASA to reach any potential extra-terrestrial species about our planet and the inhabitants. His final shot it was never about the aliens, this was about the human need to communicate about ourselves and perhaps even a hint of immortality.
WHo knows if the Voyager probes will ever be seen by alien life. Who knows if the message transmitted by the Arecibo observatory will ever be received by any alien species as it takes about 25,000 to reach the M-13/Messier 13 cluster.
[VIDEO] The Voyager program consisted of two probes who in the last decade have finally reached interstellar space. The probe Voyager 2 was launched on August 20, 1977 which was 16 days before Voyager 1 on September 5, 1977. Both probes contain a golden record which you see analyzed in the above video.
It's amazing what the team that created this time capsule of our planet and civilization. It's designed to last at least a billion years and contains data such as audio and 116 pictures. The audio are sounds of our world of human voices, animals, weather, and samples of human music. Also contains a message from then President Jimmy Carter - he was POTUS when these probes were launched from Earth in 1977. There is also a message from then United Nations Secretary General Kurt Waldheim.
As one member of the team that created this golden record Jon Lomberg stated this project was about dreaming big. That they did and what they did with the technology they had at the time - unless you're into vinyl records you won't find those in many homes today. They used phonograph technology to hold this amount of data for any extraterrestrials (or aliens).
It's very interesting how they use the forces of movement of the Earth and the Moon and then of course the propulsion of a rocket engine to help get the spacecraft to where it needs to go. To get that spacecraft onto the surface of Earth's nearest neighbor or if you want satellite.
Michael Collins remained in the Apollo 11 Command Module as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin made history as the first men or humans to actually walk on Earth's celestial neighbor/satellite the moon in July 1969. He died on the 28th according to the statement you see below posted to IG after a battle with cancer. Neil Armstrong the first man to walk on the moon died in 2012 and Buzz Aldrin is the only surviving member of that historic flight crew for that historic NASA mission.
[VIDEO] Owing to becoming a Star Trek fan one aspiration I had was being an astronaut. One early goal that I had before life took over was to fly on the space shuttle. Perhaps there's a child out there who aspires to fly in space themselves and hopefully they want to fly with a company such as Space X.
So this is why today's Daily Dose of Internet. How many of you wondered how does an astronaut use the bathroom in space? The first portion you see today in this video is exactly that. How does a person use the bathroom in weightlessness?
As always I hope that you learned something new in this video or it made your day just a bit better. Thats what you hear at the end of the video anyway after you've been thoroughly entertained.
[VIDEO] I wanted to share this Armstrong Air & Space Museum in Wapokoneta, Ohio. It basically is a museum to Neil Armstrong and his military, NASA, and aerospace career. Of course you'll see a lot of exhibits related to his time as a NASA astronaut.
Before becoming the first man on the moon Armstrong had been a civilian test pilot and before that he had been a US Navy fighter pilot. One exhibit YouTuber YouTuuba notes was when Armstrong was younger he was able to build a generator.
See the beauty of this internet thing which didn't exist when I was in school is people can take you to places you never know about. What museums exist out there that we have no idea about?
Also note last year the nation celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission where men landed on the moon - our nearest celestial body - for the first time. Something that should be the main exhibit at a museum named for a great figure in the history of space.
[VIDEO] I just thought this belongs here as once upon a time when I was a child this used to fascinate me. As a Star Trek fan, I liked that we had people going into space on their own "star trek".
The live stream you see above will begin at 4:15 PM Chicago time. You will see the spacecraft Endeavor depart the International Space Station and return to earth.
In this case the trek here is two astronauts coming home aboard Space X's spacecraft. This flight Crew Dragon Demo-2 is said to be the first US space flight operated by a commercial provider. The space shuttle program which ended during the Obama administration in 2011. STS-135 was the last space shuttle mission.
Who in this audience has someone inspired to be a NASA astronaut in the future?
EDITED Sept 3, 2019 - Sorry I missed that the title had the wrong month as I marked the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission. Sorry for this oversight!
Today is the day that the Apollo 11 mission that put men on the moon returned to the earth. Mission commander the late Neil Armstrong, lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin, and command module pilot Michael Collins were launched on their lunar mission on July 16, 1969. On July 20, 1969, Armstrong & Aldrin landed on the moon with their lunar module named Eagle.
This past spring I saw a documentary titled Apollo 11 which used footage shot 50 years ago of the events leading up the the launch of Apollo 11, then the mission itself, and then the final stages of this mission. That documentary was given a limited release in the nation during that time.
I really became fascinated with space by the time I got to high school - GO FALCONS - and had the ambition to become an astronaut. It was always fascinating that years before my birth astronauts were already going where no one has gone before in this case the moon. We didn't yet need one of those fancy spacecraft with warp drive just the tech and engineering available to go to our closest celestial neighbor.
50 years later we celebrate the accomplishments of the mission that landed men on the moon's surface. Unfortunately I see an ig post that shows that most young people in America are more interested in becoming professional YouTubers (a laudable goal) as opposed to becoming astronauts. What could stir our young people's interest (especially minorities) to take on careers in aerospace?
I wanted to offer this final tidbit although it appears he wasn't directly involved with this effort. I'm sure Chris Kraft who was NASA's very first flight director in the 1960s was indirectly involved in the national effort to send a man to the moon and then return him to the earth. Mr. Kraft died two days after the 50th anniversary of the lunar landing at 95. It's still fascinating to learn the roles played by various people over 50 years ago in America's space program.
