Gravity in spaceOctober 19, 2009
You know how most sci-fi programs have people walking around in their space ship, gravity and all? Sort of silly isn't it.
I've seen designs for circular structures that rotate around an axis, creating an artificial gravity... that's pretty smart.
Something that I thought of today, with all of this talk about ion engines making possible a 39 day trip to Mars, is that if you could some day create an engine powerful enough to do 1G of acceleration, you'd simultaneously have a stinking fast spaceship, and all the gravity you need.
So let's say you're going on a 3 month voyage somewhere, like sailors from centuries past. You have 1.5 months to accelerate, and 1.5 months to decelerate.
What would your top speed be? Wow: 13% the speed of light! Not bad!
And how far could you get in that time? 100 billion kilometres.
How far is that?Good grief, you could make it to Pluto and back 41 times.
Max Launch Abort SystemJuly 10, 2009
VideoI love the crowd's reaction to the succession of successes in this test of the Max Launch Abort System. Very cool!
Two shuttlesSeptember 21, 2008
I never thought I'd call the Shuttle "sweet", as in cutesy wootesy, but seeing two of these adorable creatures side by side is just that!
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