I am quite excited, perhaps not quite so much as the astronauts aboard the international space station, but excited none-the-less. The windows on the cupola, attached to the tranquility node have been opened for the first time, providing some breathtaking views of earth. It is a good thing I am too tall to be an astronaut. I would have wasted all my time staring out the window. I am sure NASA needs a blogger to write about the earth turning below him right? It would be great PR and I am only a little bit too tall. I could hunch.
Anyway the ISS just went from dang cool to full blown awesome. I am off to look for images have a good one.
Showing posts with label tranquility. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tranquility. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Friday, February 12, 2010
New room and hardware delivered
Tranquility is officially attached to the International space station! I stayed up last night watching Canada Arm2 slowly arc from the Endeavor's payload bay to the common berthing mechanism on Node 1. Beautiful stuff.
In other wondrous news. SpaceX has now moved all the necessary pieces of the Falcon 9 puzzle to the cape launch complex 40. Let the assembly begin. The inaugural launch should be showing up on a monitor near you (and hopefully me) sometime in the next 1 to 4 months. I wish they could be a little more specific. Actually they are. They report launch 1 - 3 months after hardware integration is complete, but they completely neglect to project how long that integration might take.
In the mean time head over to Russel Blink's Photo stream on flickr an see if you can figure out just what Armadillo Aerospace is up to with it's trusty pixel craft. From the looks of it, they have modified the craft from an alcohol / lox rocket to a methane / lox configuration. The give-away is the new application of insulation on all four propellant tanks. Methane is cryogenic. Alcohol is not. They also added more robust landing gear. My assumption is that Armadillo is under contract with NASA to demonstrate a methane powered lander and is looking to pixel to fulfill that requirement while they use their modular vehicles for in-house differential throttling and multi-engine work.
In other wondrous news. SpaceX has now moved all the necessary pieces of the Falcon 9 puzzle to the cape launch complex 40. Let the assembly begin. The inaugural launch should be showing up on a monitor near you (and hopefully me) sometime in the next 1 to 4 months. I wish they could be a little more specific. Actually they are. They report launch 1 - 3 months after hardware integration is complete, but they completely neglect to project how long that integration might take.
In the mean time head over to Russel Blink's Photo stream on flickr an see if you can figure out just what Armadillo Aerospace is up to with it's trusty pixel craft. From the looks of it, they have modified the craft from an alcohol / lox rocket to a methane / lox configuration. The give-away is the new application of insulation on all four propellant tanks. Methane is cryogenic. Alcohol is not. They also added more robust landing gear. My assumption is that Armadillo is under contract with NASA to demonstrate a methane powered lander and is looking to pixel to fulfill that requirement while they use their modular vehicles for in-house differential throttling and multi-engine work.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Looking forward
With the current silliness at NASA, I need to look forward to some of the excitement that is going on in space to keep me sane. I have already informed my senators and congressmen of my displeasure and need to move on.
This month the space shuttle is scheduled to take the last of the American sections to the international space station. Node three (tranquility) will house some terrific life support equipment that will set the standard for long term spacecraft for years to come. It will at the very least let us know where we have to improve. Another exciting piece of equipment heading space-ward is the Cupola. It will be a seven window observation deck and should provide astronauts and cosmonauts an unprecedented view of the cosmos, though I suspect that they will spend most of their time looking at earth. It is about time. If you have an office on the 70,000th floor you had better have a good window.
This month the space shuttle is scheduled to take the last of the American sections to the international space station. Node three (tranquility) will house some terrific life support equipment that will set the standard for long term spacecraft for years to come. It will at the very least let us know where we have to improve. Another exciting piece of equipment heading space-ward is the Cupola. It will be a seven window observation deck and should provide astronauts and cosmonauts an unprecedented view of the cosmos, though I suspect that they will spend most of their time looking at earth. It is about time. If you have an office on the 70,000th floor you had better have a good window.
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