Ongoing Strangeness in Space

Apologies for the long absence of Invisible Words...alongside a geographical move, I thought I'd take a sabbatical to escape the high strangeness of 2017, but apparently it just gets more and more bizarre.

The tail end of 2017 brought the appearance of interstellar interloper Oumuamua , which made me think of a galactic stone skimming the cosmos - and why didn't anyone photoshop the Silver Surfer onto it ?

Then I decided that no-one would 'get' the reference, and what had comics to do with actual space, anyway ?
So the post languished, unpublished, in blogging limbo...
Then, yesterday, reality imitated art again
Kudos to Elon Musk and Space X

Two boosters make perfect touchdown

The payload of this test- run for SpaceX Heavy was a Tesla Roadster car - manned by a dummy in Space X garb.
I wonder if inspiration was taken from the opening sequence of the 'Heavy Metal' movie from 1981,
featuring an astronaut in a Corvette, which he pilots to Earth from space.
There are slight differences, though - the film car is dropped from a Space Shuttle-
and it doesn't play 'Space Oddity' * - but let's not be pedantic
The fact is, there is a car in space, manned by a dummy in an astronaut suit, heading for the Kuiper Belt.

Heavy Metal movie 1981

I'm sure the debate will rage for decades as to whether a car in space is a good advert for humanity. Personally, I think it's a massive ego trip/ publicity boost for Elon Musk, but also a great memorial for the previously overlooked genius Nikolai Tesla...so I'm conflicted.
Despite any misgivings, though, the synchronous landing of the two booster jets was a hugely impressive feat of engineering / physics .
The future is definitely now.
I await the responses of other players in the new 'space race' with trepidation...
Let's just hope that it doesn't create a cosmic junkyard of adverts orbiting for eternity...
Final words to the late, great Carl Sagan - obviously photoshopped, but still relevant...

Response to previous attempted commercialisation ?

* 'Life on Mars', to be pedantic

Festive Musings, and why The Future is Now

I've been tweaking this post since Boxing Day, in the vain hope that I will suddenly become excited about something.
Gazing outside (there is a small window in this shed) , I notice how un-seasonal the landscape is .
It's really not conducive to the festive feeling.
The festive feeling manifests in many different ways -
One of my brothers, ensconced in a world of 24 / 7 sun and fun, sends photos of Santa hats and champagne on the beach , but whereas that normally conveys a sense of irony, this year, it is lost.
This year has no festive feeling.

There are no snowmen.
There is no frost on the ground.
It's not even proper bloody cold.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not overly attached to sub-zero temperatures and breath freezing in the air and scraping the ice from car windscreens.
But it makes a mockery of the seasonal cards with wrapped - up people scurrying through blizzards of snow , heading home, no doubt for a warming glass of festive punch .
I haven't even seen a robin, so normally associated with Xmas here in Blighty.

Robin pic from here     ©Andy Hay

With a sigh, I turn back to the pile of papers and printouts which litter my desk in the shed.
A piece about the new Star Wars film briefly catches my eye, as it is pinned by a dart to the noticeboard.
I shrug, doubting that my opinion would make a dent on the fannish slavering that surrounds the re-vamped franchise.
Best stick to what I usually do, then.
Perhaps if I wore a silly hat from a cracker, I'd feel more festive.


Seating myself before my trusty old Remington, I lean back, stretch, and crack my knuckles.
And so it begins...

As we head towards the end of 2015, fantastical research abounds all around us.
From a sci-fi app to predict future crimes  (shades of Philip K Dick) to the creation of matter from light ,we are spoiled for moments of wonder.
It's almost enough to melt my cynical heart.
Of course, there is no light without darkness, so this piece cautions against the Fitbit obsession.

We also have the ongoing Ceres and Comet 67p images arriving regularly and New Horizons still dutifully downloading images from the Pluto flyby in July 2015, some of which are being painstakingly fashioned into 3-d anaglyph images , courtesy of the dedicated people at planetary. org
I also hear rumblings of a projected meeting of quantum and relativity branches of physics.
As they are apparently in contradiction, hopefully any meeting will be on neutral territory.
Except, by dint of appearing in the area, it will no longer be neutral.
Oh well...

Space x returns !

On the practical level, I was pleasantly reminded that the future is now,  when I watched the footage of the first successful landing / return of a spacecraft  (okay, just a returning thruster, but even so - in one visual display, the commercial viability of re-usable rockets was displayed.)


Meanwhile back in the Inner Solar System...

On the auspicious date (well, Stateside ) July 4th 2016, the NASA  probe 'Juno' will enter orbit around Jupiter after a five year journey (New Horizons reminds us that it travelled for ten years before arriving at Pluto) - and butting in from somewhere out in inner space, the Japanese probe Akatsuki reminds us that it had to wait five years in limbo before it could retry its Venus insertion (pause for mildly offensive double entendre).

China continues to send data from Jade Rabbit, or Yutsu. still sampling lunar regolith  , from a new-ish crater in the area known as Mare imbrium (new-ish meaning 3 billion years old instead of 4).
The diversity of mineral content  tells us a tale of evolution beyond our own, apparently - ( the general assumption being that the moon was once part of Earth but separated when Earth was struck by a wandering planet about the size of Mars.)
It also tells us that large quantities of Titanium and Hydrogen 3 exist on the moon, so it has the potential for mining fuel for rockets.

Suddenly I am distracted by the sound of happy banter nearby, and I turn away from my musings on outer space.
It's not actually happy banter - it's more of a heated debate.
Specifically , it's the neighbours arguing about the sheer impracticality of hoovering up pine needles as opposed to the benefits of an artificial tree.
I sigh, and switch on the S.A.D. light.
'Tis the Season, after all...

The New Space Race , Venusian Landers and Old Arcade Games

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.

Hubble, 25 years anniversary

In this age of online hyperbole and overused superlatives , these pretty pictures, mostly coming from Hubble, are genuinely mind - blowing .

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