Space is the new Gold Rush - or at least, Wild Frontier.
In the USA, congress just passed the 'US Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act', which gives carte blanche to any rocket - fuelled entrepeneur seeking to mine gold in asteroids and suchlike.
We already have Dragon / Space X, but now we can add Planetary Resources, Blue Origin, and many others to the list.
Add to this, NASA are recruiting, so if you fancy being an astronaut, now is the time.
Not so much the Final Frontier as The Next Franchise then - although the lack of regulation may lead to some issues.
There is a whole subgenre of sci-fi films in which alien life forms are inadvertently brought to earth.
Perhaps we should complain, just in case.
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| Hubble, 25 years anniversary |
In this age of online hyperbole and overused superlatives , these pretty pictures, mostly coming from Hubble, are genuinely mind - blowing .
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| Hercules A . Image revealed via two telescopes ©NASA |
The featured galaxy (the little white dot in the centre) is Hercules A, at the centre of which is a humungous black hole , with 2.5 billion times more mass than our sun.
Then of course, there is the distance through space in which the tails drift.
One and a half million light years, end to end.
Imagine the scene aboard a deep space craft -
"All that pinky reddishness - how much more ? "
"Oh...one and a bit million years if we maintain the current pace, travelling at 186 000 metres per second"
pause for mental calculation.
Resigned sigh.
"I'm done with pinky reddishness"
Infact, the colourful 'tail' was imaged from a radio telescope, so it is not in the normally visible spectrum for us mere mortals.
Plus, the above dialogue would never take place anyway, as Hercules A is one billion light years away,
Russia and NASA (not that NASA is a country, but really the alternative might be too shocking - yes, Russia and America, those old sparring partners of the Space Race, are to collaborate on a joint expedition to Venus - last explored by the Russian craft Venera 14* which was the first lander on another planet (for 57 minutes until it was simultaneously cooked and crushed at 865° F/ 90 x Earth Atmos ).
Fingers crossed for this bold venture.
Seems a little strange, though, particularly given that there are seemingly far more bounteous and hospitable worlds to be explored out there - but apparently they want to discover the whys and wherefores regarding Venus differing so much from Earth.
Being cynical and facetious, I hereby offer to save the billions of dollars the mission would cost by saying:
in my humble opinion, Venus differs wildly from Earth as it is much closer to an immense source of heat, and radiation .
There, puzzle solved - next?
Seriously though, it is believed in some circles that a cloud base could be created, floating above the Venusian surface, eradicating the unfortunate crushing pressure and heat (450 °C) at ground level.
Talking of probes to other worlds, here's a link to the actual descent of Huygens to Titan, one of Saturns moons. The Huygens landed in January 2005, and only lasted about an hour and a half (well, it was -179° C , and Huygens didn't have a warm jumper), but its parent - craft, Cassini, is still up there, gathering data on the Saturn system.
Some dedicated person has created this very fab solar system infographic,free to download, laminate, and hang on the wall - ideal for any budding planetary scientist.
I'm feeling a little blank at the moment, so...
For lovers of free stuff and pointless things to do online.
Here , you can follow some retro fun links
Pointless light interplay online!
Actually, with small adjustments, you could create your own ' Dark Side of the Moon' style image...then you might want some ambient sounds to compliment it...
Retro games from this arcade online !
IN other news, the Oxford English Dictionary has declared an emoji as word of the year. the emoji signifies ' Tears of Joy' which in my book is three words, anyway. But such is the dumbing down of language. Or a universal solution to language barriers. I'm conflicted.
* There were other craft, but venera 14 was the only lander
