Tag: space

Russia Adding $50 Billion To Space Effort

Russia Adding $50 Billion To Space Effort

Russian President Vladimir Putin unveiled today a new $50 billion effort to maintain and extend the country’s space capabilities. Part of this initiative is a new spaceport located in Russia, which will lead to the first manned launches from Russian soil in 2018. Manned launches currently originate from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

On one hand, it’s nice to see that they are at least pretending to pick the good causes.  On the other hand, it sad that history shows that very little of these money, if any at all, will make it to the space programs.  Most of it will disappear in the same way as before…

Chelyabinsk meteorite

By now, everyone has probably already heard about the meteorite that exploded over the Chelyabinsk city in Russia.  There are tonnes of videos on YouTube and photos all over the web.  I think this one, that meshes a few of them together, is pretty good.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMygG4F0hk8]

And as far as comments go, I think this Slashdot comment is the best:

Meteors are the universe’s way to ask hows your space program going.

And the last thing I want to add on the subject is that I’m really glad nobody is dead.  A lot of people were injured, and there is plenty of damage to buildings, but that all is repairable.  If that trajectory of that thing was slightly different, and it hit the ground before exploding, I imagine the damage would be way greater.

The tour of International Space Station

This is so cool!  We’ve all seen bits and pieces of space stuff in TV reports.  But this is something else – a complete and through tour of the whole thing.  Well, maybe not complete, as there might be a few places that a webcam is not allowed.  While watching this, I kept thinking of two things.

The first is that there is way more space up there on ISS than I ever thought there was.  There is a possibility that my perception was mostly shaped by videos from the Russian modules, which do seem to be a bit less spacious.

The second is that it’s amazing how the whole secrecy has changed with ISS.  The top of the top technologists and scientists from different countries work together, experiment together, and discover together.  Again, I’m pretty sure there are still plenty of secrets, but there has been a huge progress, I think.

And now that you are done with the video, just pause for the second and think of all the things, all the people, all the technology that had to come through for this even to happen.  Given that space stations don’t grow on trees naturally, but are a product of human genius, I can’t be anything but absolutely amazed by it.