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Wednesday, 28 February 2007
Ares Schedule
collectSPACE has a proposed schedule for Ares I, Ares V and Orion launches. Obviously, this is very much subject to change, but it's still kind of neat.
Used tags: ares, collectspace, constellation, launch_schedule, nasa, orion, space
STS-117 Update
Atlantis should begin rollback on Sunday morning."This constitutes, in our evaluation, the worst damage that we have ever seen from hail on the external tank foam," shuttle Program Manager Wayne Hale told reporters today.Shuttle officials believe the damage to the tank can be repaired at KSC.
The next shuttle window will open around April 21.
Tuesday, 27 February 2007
STS-117 Update
KSC officials are currently investigating the the extent of damage to the shuttle caused by a hail storm yesterday afternoon. Cameras at pad 339A show signs of hail damage to Atlantis' external tank. Depending on the extent of the damage, Atlantis may have to roll back to the VAB, in which case the NET March 15 launch date would slip to late April at the earliest.
Another Trek XI Update
OK, I give this report absolutely no credence at all, but I'm posting here for potential discussion purposes:Confirming rumors that have been making the rounds for some months now, IGN has learned that Oscar winner Matt Damon is indeed in talks with Paramount about playing the role of Jim Kirk ...
Damon brings star power and an acting pedigree to the role that should convince audiences that this is a serious reboot of the beloved franchise.
For the part of Kirk's Vulcan first officer Mr. Spock, IGN has been told that none other than Oscar winner Adrien Brody (King Kong, The Pianist) is in talks with Paramount to play the role. If cast, Brody would succeed Leonard Nimoy in a role that forever marked Nimoy's career. But with a Best Actor award already under his belt and an eclectic mix of films on his resume, Brody wouldn't have as much to lose by taking on the iconic role as Nimoy had.
IGN has also been told that Oscar nominee Gary Sinise -- currently seen on the small screen in CSI: NY -- is in talks for the role of Dr. McCoy, the ornery and politically incorrect ship's physician aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise. McCoy's prickly relationship with Spock was the basis of much of the humor and humanity of the original 1960s series. ...
Golden Globe and Emmy winner Sinise is no stranger to films about space flight, having previously appeared in Apollo 13 and Mission to Mars.
Those are the three actors that our studio insider advised us were the closest to being cast, with Damon's talks said to be further along than the rest. We have also heard of an actor being eyed for the role of Enterprise helmsman Lt. Sulu: Daniel Dae Kim ("Jin Kwon" on Lost). ... We should stress, however, that Kim's possible casting is at a far earlier stage than that of the aforementioned three.
Lost, of course, was created and is executive produced by J.J. Abrams, who has just signed on to direct and produce Star Trek XI.
Sources also advised IGN that Scottish thesp James McAvoy may indeed be in the mix to play chief engineer Montgomery "Scotty" Scott in the film.
Delayed Viewing Update
Not only was the Apple TV not out for my Spamalot trip that included the Memphis Apple store or my anniversary trip that included the Nashville Apple store, it now reportedly won't be out until the middle of next month.Oh well, more time for me decide if I want one, I guess.
Sacrifice
OK, here's the sacrifice I'm willing to make for the Vision for Space Exploration.The Vision, you see, is requiring a lot of reprioritizing, with so much funding being tied up in retiring the shuttle, completing the station, readying Ares and Orion and carrying out robotic precursor missions to the moon and Mars (more or less in that order).
While all of that is going on, other things are having to be put on the backburner. So here's the sacrifice I'm willing to make -- as cool as I think it would be to send a mission to Europa, I'm willling to wait until the shuttle's retired.
For The Fans
For the Garrison Starr fans in the audience, G* has a new "live" (in the studio) acoustic greatest hits album, featuring songs as selected by fans on MySpace, including yours truly, who sent in way-overly-lengthy comments about what I wanted (three of which, I think, are on there -- apparently I'm not the typical G* fan).
Monday, 26 February 2007
Trek XI Update
Reportedly, it's official -- Abrams will direct Trek XI.
Regular Richie Feature
Recent search strings on Alltheseworlds.net:Used tags: blog, monkeys, regular_richie_feature
Hello
Apparently the Oscars are the new Super Bowl, at least where Apple's concerned -- The company debuted a new iPhone commercial during the awards last night, to inspire people to want to rush out and get one, in a few months when they can.Still, it's nice seeing Apple say "hello" again. (Not to be confused with saying "hello (again)" again.
Seven Years
Happy anniversary, Nicole!
Astronaut Farmer
We did, indeed, watch Astronaut Farmer this weekend. Nicole liked it a lot. I, who of course could have nitpicked it ad nauseum, nevertheless found it rather enjoyable. I was disappointed to see it debuted rather poorly this weekend, though.
Saturday, 24 February 2007
Hello!
Greetings from the Apple store at Green Hills Mall.Eh, it's Apple store-y, but kinda small. I'm less impressed with it than some of the others I've been to, to be honest. Of course, that may be colored by my disappointment at the fact that the Apple TVs still aren't here. Alas.
Friday, 23 February 2007
"Astronaut" Launches
"Astronaut Farmer" is in theaters today. I was curious to see how wide a release it would get -- if it was really something that was of mass interest, or only to me personally. Anyway, it's pretty much everywhere, and you can read a review at collectSPACE.
Used tags: collectspace, movies, space
iQuestion
OK, question for those who use some sort of digital jukebox software or hardware (i.e. iTunes, iPod, Zune, etc.):When you rip music from CDs into your digital collections, what do you do with duplicate tracks? For example, if you were ripping a greatest hits compilation that includes songs that you've already ripped from the original CD, would you include both, or just one version?
Dropping Hotels On The Moon
It's no secret to ATW readers that I find Bigelow Aerospace to be one of the most fascinating of the current New Space endeavours. Their ideas could seem pretty out there, but they have three factors going for them that combine to make them really interesting to me. They have interesting ideas; those ideas are rooted in achievable technology; and they're actually working on them. There are companies that have interesting ideas that are utterly unrealistic; there are companies that are pursuing ideas that, while practical, are less cool; and there are companies that have realistic ideas that are waiting for somebody else to pay for them. So when someone does all three, it's worthy of notice.Anyway, here's a fascinating Cosmic Log article on the latest Bigelow plans:
Even as Bigelow Aerospace gears up for launching its second prototype space station into orbit, the company has set its sights on something much, much bigger: a project to assemble full-blown space villages at a work site between Earth and the moon, then drop them to the lunar surface, ready for immediate move-in.
In an exclusive interview this week, Las Vegas billionaire Robert Bigelow confirmed that his company has been talking about the concept with NASA – and that the first earthly tests of the techniques involved would take place later this year. The scenario he sketched out would essentially make Bigelow a general contractor for the final frontier.
You're Welcome
When an asteroid comes hurling toward Earth, and the planet doesn't get blown back to the stone age, you can thank the good folks here in Huntsville:It sounds like science fiction, but Fork, who has a doctorate from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and more than 40 years of experience working with lasers, said someday it could be possible to locate a laser in space or on the moon to look at the properties of asteroids and perhaps alter their trajectories away from Earth.That's right, folks -- Huntsville's gonna save your collective planetary butts with our space lasers. Check it.
Editorial Note
For those not familar with it, Alexa is a Web-site-ranking site. Together with Google PageRank, it's probably one of the two most common tools for determining how "important" a Web site is.Unlike PageRank, which uses Google's information based on, theoretically, the entire Web for its rankings, Alexa's rankings are a bit more selective. Like the Neilsen ratings, Alexa rankings are based on a supposedly representative sample. Unlike the Neilsen's, however, the Alexa sample is self-selecting. The rankings are based on information from people who install the Alexa toolbar.
A little while back, after noticing a sudden drop in its Alexa ranking, collectSPACE asked its readers to start using the Alexa toolbar. It made a difference -- collectSPACE's three-month average put it in the top 100,000 sites on the Web, and rankings more recently have been substantially higher than that.
Here's the interesting (to me, at least) thing -- collectSPACE is one of ATW's biggest referrer sources. So when cS readers started using the Alexa toolbar, ATW's Alexa ranking shot up, as well. In fact, it went up a couple of million places, from ATW being ranked somewhere below four million other sites, to currently having a three-month average of being in the top million. (The current one-week average, though, is a bit lower than that.)
While I find all of this somewhat cool, to be honest, it's just an interesting bit of trivia. ATW is what it is, and I have no delusions that it's ever going to be a major Web site. I also have no intentions to ever try to make money with it, so it's not like a higher Alexa ranking would give me more leverage there.
HOWEVER -- while ATW's Alexa ranking is just amusing to me; I would like to see the Hatbag comic site do a bit better. Currently, Alexa has no data for that site. To be honest, I'm still smarting a bit from the whole "non-notable" thing a while back, so I would like to see Alexa at least acknowledge it exists.
So, point being, any ATW and/or Hatbag readers who would be willing to install the Alexa toolbar would be much appreciated. The catch is, there are only versions for PC IE and Firefox (on any platform). So I'm certainly not going to be hurt if people can't do it, but, if anyone does, that would be great.
Used tags: blog, collectspace
Thursday, 22 February 2007
iFight Over
In case you missed it, an agreement has been reached between Apple and Cisco over use of the iPhone trademark. Basically, Apple makes the concession that Apple can do whatever Apple wants, and Cisco agrees not to waste any more money paying lawyers to fight Steve Jobs.
On The Shoulders Of Atlas
It's one of the ironies of space tourism that the technology for an orbital destination has apparently been further ahead than the means to get there.With the inflatable Genesis spacecraft, Bigelow Aerospace has demonstrated that it is well on the way toward being able to create an inhabitable module, which could serve, among other things, as a sort of space hotel. The only catch was, despite all the work being done by Virgin Galactic and others on developing suborbital private spacecraft, the only existing or in-development orbital vehicle that could be used is the Russian Soyuz.
Bigelow has been working with ULA on human-rating one of its boosters, but that still leaves the issue of needing a place on top of it for people to sit.
Apparently, now, ULA is not only proposing use of the Atlas V for commerical human spaceflight, but has ideas for the capsule to sit on top of it. Granted, the ideas aren't all that new, but this time they're pitching to a different market, and in a changed industry.
Out Of Action
I forgot to post a link to the new Hatbag last week, and now this week's is online. FWIW.And, since apparently a bunch of ATW readers don't follow the weekly Hatbag link, I thought a brief explanation might be in order -- Hatbag is a weekly webcomic Lain and I create; following two old college buddies as they adjust to sort-of grown-up life. If you read ATW, take a few extra seconds to go read Hatbag. Please? Please?
Wednesday, 21 February 2007
Liking Virgin
Per NASA:NASA officials signed a memorandum of understanding Tuesday with a U.S. company, Virgin Galactic, LLC, to explore the potential for collaborations on the development of space suits, heat shields for spaceships, hybrid rocket motors and hypersonic vehicles capable of traveling five or more times the speed of sound.
Under the terms of the memorandum, NASA Ames Research Center, located in California’s Silicon Valley, and Virgin Galactic LLC, a U.S.-based subsidiary of Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Group, will explore possible collaborations in several technical areas employing capabilities and facilities of NASA’s Ames Research Center.
“As we constantly seek to build upon the advances made by explorers who have come before us, we now embark upon an exciting time in space exploration history that realizes the unlimited opportunities presented by a commercial space economy,” said Shana Dale, NASA’s deputy administrator. “By encouraging such potential collaborations, NASA supports the development of greater commercial collaboration and applications that will serve to strengthen and enhance the future benefits of space exploration for all of mankind.”
Who woulda thunk? Apparently, albeit unsurprisingly, Branson is more open-minded than his SpaceShipTwo development partner Burt Rutan.
Wiki-D
So Lain pointed out to me that there is now a Wikipedia entry on The Daily Mississippian. I initially noticed the omissions that he pointed out to me, but, upon further reading, discovered myriad content and style errors. I've made no secret of my personal feud with Wikipedia, nor of my general distrust of the entire idea. That said, there's temptation here to go in and fix some of it, but I know myself once I make my first Wikipedia edit, it won't be my last. I'm torn between hating to see incorrect information online, and wanting Wikipedia to have incorrect information, because the more errors that more people see, the more the site's shortcomings will be apparent. If a person is reading an entry about something they don't know anything about, they won't know that the information they are reading is wrong. But the more errors there are, the more likely people will come across ones that will tip them off to just how manifest they are in the site.But I turn the question over to you, the ATW audience: Should I make the edits, or not? (And why?)
Yes (10 votes)
No (0 votes)
Tuesday, 20 February 2007
Shuttle Retirement Home
From The Huntsville Times:Could Space Camp be the retirement home for an aging orbiter?
NASA is working to retire its space shuttles by 2010, and the U.S. Space & Rocket Center is working to get one of them parked here.
CEO Larry Capps said Monday that there is already a lot of competition for the three remaining orbiters that have flown missions - Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour. The Smithsonian Institution and the states of Florida, Texas, Ohio and California have already begun lobbying, but Huntsville has something they don't:
A space shuttle garage.
In the late 1980s, a pre-fab building was designed by Sprung Instant Structures in Marietta, Ga., that could, within a matter of hours, be flown to and erected over a shuttle to protect it and shield it from prying eyes if it was ever forced to land outside the U.S. while carrying classified cargo. The Orbiter Protective Enclosure was never used, and there is only one in existence.
...
But having the one-of-a-kind garage open would give the Space Center more than just a unique piece of the shuttle program's history. It would make Huntsville the only place vying for one of the retired orbiters that already has a place to put it.
There is room for the OPE east of the Marriott hotel near the center's Aviation Challenge area, Capps said. But he would prefer to see it in the Rocket Park near the new visitors center and exhibition hall for the refurbished Saturn V rocket, set to open this fall.
The Space Center already has a near-actual-size space shuttle model, Pathfinder, that was built in 1977 to test cranes and other shuttle-handling equipment and procedures. But having one of the ships that has actually been in orbit would be the perfect addition to a museum that already includes "flown" capsules and artifacts from Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Skylab - all the manned U.S. space programs.
"It would kind of complete the continuum ?to have a real orbiter that has flown in space," Capps said.
It'll be interesting to see where the three orbiters end up, but, to me, since the Smithsonian already has Enterprise, the logical thing would be to give the three remaining orbiters to the museums at Marshall, Kennedy and Johnson.
Monday, 12 February 2007
Missing iTrek
Per Apple Gazette:The Star Trek Television Shows (both the original Star Trek and the newly added Star Trek: Enterprise) have apparently been removed from the iTunes store.
There is no word, currently, as to why the programs have been removed from the store, or when (or if) they will be back.
Update from Star Trek.com:
“Due to technical reasons, Star Trek and Star Trek: Enterprise are temporarily unavailable from the iTunes Store. We will announce any developments as they happen.”
It is important to mention that not ALL Star Trek content has been removed. The entire movie library is available for download. It seems strange to me that these shows would be removed, but they are most definitely gone.
I was going to say I hope this has something to do with changes related to the remastering of TOS (ideally, clearly marking which ones have been remastered, and, better yet for all involved, offering both versions), but that wouldn't explain why Enterprise was gone also.
Delayed Viewing
Mac geek that I am, since it seemed unlikly the Apple TV would be released before I could visit the Apple store in Memphis this coming weekend while I'm here for Spamalot, I had been seriously considering centering our anniversary the following weekend around a trip to blow our tax refund to buy one. According to MacRumors, though, it may not happen. Alas.
Movies On iTunes Update
Six months after the studio announced it was going to happen, "Apple today announced that movies from Lionsgate Entertainment will be available for purchase and download from the iTunes Store starting today," per MacNN. Wonder what took so long?
STS-117 Update
Atlantis has been mated with the ET and SRBs, in preparation for roll-out to Launch Pad 39A on Wednesday. Launch is now within 31 days away.
Tracks On Mars
Opportunity has reached another milestone in its mission -- the Mars rover's odometer has reached 10 kilometers. For a bit of perspective, the original 90-day mission goal was for the rover to travel 600 meters, and the rover's design requirement was to be able to travel 1 kilometer. After three years on Mars, the rover's still going the distance.I feel obligated, though, to note that while this is an incredible achievement for the robotic explorer, it's also a testament to the value of human exploration. In over three years on the Red Planet, Opportunity has traveled about 6.2 miles. In a total of 22 hours of EVAs on the lunar surface, the Apollo 17 crew put about 18 miles on their rover. Opportunity and Spirit have sent back an incredible amount of information from Mars, but when we finally have humans getting red dirt on their boots, results like that will be all in a day's work.
Sunday, 11 February 2007
Lisa Nowak Post
Jason's comment the other day was not the first time someone's asked me why I haven't posted about Lisa Nowak's problems.First off, in answer to the request for "just one link to a story about the NASA love triangle, please," here's your one link. If you're still having trouble finding enough stories about the incident, you may want to try here.
Obviously, my professional affiliations have discouraged me from posting about it; ATW is important to me, but my day job, and some of my other "hobbies," come first.
Second, I really don't have much to say about it. It's obviously a very tragic incident for all involved. I've never met Lisa; she was part of a crew appearance I attended after the flight, but that's it.
As NASA has acknowledged, the incident raises some questions as to whether there was anything the agency could have done differently to help prevent something like this from happening. However, there's not really anything to say about that until more is known about what exactly happened and why.
I'm not going to speculate as to what may have led Lisa Nowak to reach that point in her life, but certainly there has been speculation that the stresses involved in her her job may have contributed. If, in fact, it turns out that this stems, even to the tiniest degree, from her service to her country, then she deserves better, in my opinion, than to be mocked by the public for whom she has sacrificed.
Thursday, 8 February 2007
Is It Just Me?
So watching the Windows Vista "Wow" ad for the second time last night, I noticed that, apparently, Vista will amaze people in much the same way that white people are amazed by natural beauty and major world events or black people are amazed by athletics. Just a little glimpse into how the good folks in Redmond see the world.
Lost Time
So my favorite things about the flashbacks in Lost is not that they apparently happen in real time, since we see characters return to the main plot after a flashback sometimes and time has obviously passed, and not that the characters apparently actually have the flashbacks in installments, remembering the beginning of a story for a little while and then not thinking about it again until later, but the fact that flashbacks are apparently such an established fact of life for the characters that they will actually politely pause to allow other characters time to have a flashback. Like in last night's episode, when Jack asks what the guy said, and then paused to give the person time to have a flashback, and then, when it was clear she was done, asked again. Even though he clearly really wanted to know, it was nice to let her get her flashback quota out of the way.
STS-117 Update
As shocking as it may be to the media, the work of human spaceflight continues. Atlantis rolled over to the VAB yesterday for stacking with the ET and the SRBs. Roll-out to the pad is scheduled for next Wednesday, and will be the first time a shuttle has sat on 39A in four years. (And will mark another step in the transitioning of Pad 39B to the Ares program.)
Psychotic Episode
Joe will be happy to know that we've taken a break from the shark-jumping in Hatbag this week, and are instead bringing to you a special cornucopia of alternate Hatbags for your amusement!And, since apparently a bunch of ATW readers don't follow the weekly Hatbag link, I thought a brief explanation might be in order -- Hatbag is a weekly webcomic Lain and I create; following two old college buddies as they adjust to sort-of grown-up life. If you read ATW, take a few extra seconds to go read Hatbag. Please? Please?
Tuesday, 6 February 2007
Lighting The Fire
To be honest, because Nicole got called out to her second job in the middle of the night last night, I'm too tired to read this behemoth of an article about NASA's problems in attempting to engage the public in spaceflight, but in a cursory read-through of the first section, it looks like there's some really interesting stuff in there.
Monday, 5 February 2007
Apple Versus Apple -- Final Update
Per Apple:Apple® Inc. and The Beatles’ company Apple Corps Ltd. are pleased to announce the parties have entered into a new agreement concerning the use of the name “Apple” and apple logos which replaces their 1991 Agreement. Under this new agreement, Apple Inc. will own all of the trademarks related to “Apple” and will license certain of those trademarks back to Apple Corps for their continued use. In addition, the ongoing trademark lawsuit between the companies will end, with each party bearing its own legal costs, and Apple Inc. will continue using its name and logos on iTunes®. The terms of settlement are confidential.
Commenting on the settlement, Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO said, “We love the Beatles, and it has been painful being at odds with them over these trademarks. It feels great to resolve this in a positive manner, and in a way that should remove the potential of further disagreements in the future.”
Commenting on the settlement on behalf of the shareholders of Apple Corps, Neil Aspinall, manager of Apple Corps said, “It is great to put this dispute behind us and move on. The years ahead are going to be very exciting times for us. We wish Apple Inc. every success and look forward to many years of peaceful co-operation with them.”
Uh, wow. I'm sure there was some behind-the-scenes stuff that's not being reported, and hopefully some aspects that will become apparent soon, but that sounds like quite a victory for Jobs.
Thursday, 1 February 2007
New Hatbag Day
It's Thursday, so there's a new strip over at the Hatbag site (That's not it above, that's just a classic one that I felt like running today).
Wednesday, 28 February 2007
Ares Schedule
cS lists current manifest of Ares and Orion launches. (Read Entry)
STS-117 Update
(Read Entry)Tuesday, 27 February 2007
STS-117 Update
(Read Entry)
Another Trek XI Update
(Read Entry)
Delayed Viewing Update
(Read Entry)
Sacrifice
(Read Entry)
For The Fans
(Read Entry)Monday, 26 February 2007
Trek XI Update
(Read Entry)
Regular Richie Feature
Recent search strings in February 2007. (Read Entry)
Hello
(Read Entry)
Seven Years
(Read Entry)
Astronaut Farmer
(Read Entry)Saturday, 24 February 2007
Hello!
(Read Entry)Friday, 23 February 2007
"Astronaut" Launches
New space-themed movie in theaters today. (Read Entry)
iQuestion
(Read Entry)
Dropping Hotels On The Moon
(Read Entry)
You're Welcome
(Read Entry)
Editorial Note
Help ATW by installing Alexa. (Read Entry)Thursday, 22 February 2007
iFight Over
(Read Entry)
On The Shoulders Of Atlas
(Read Entry)
Out Of Action
(Read Entry)Wednesday, 21 February 2007
Liking Virgin
(Read Entry)
Wiki-D
(Read Entry)Tuesday, 20 February 2007
Shuttle Retirement Home
(Read Entry)Monday, 12 February 2007
Missing iTrek
(Read Entry)
Delayed Viewing
(Read Entry)
Movies On iTunes Update
(Read Entry)
STS-117 Update
(Read Entry)
Tracks On Mars
(Read Entry)Sunday, 11 February 2007
Lisa Nowak Post
(Read Entry)Thursday, 8 February 2007
Is It Just Me?
(Read Entry)
Lost Time
(Read Entry)
STS-117 Update
(Read Entry)
Psychotic Episode
(Read Entry)Tuesday, 6 February 2007
Lighting The Fire
(Read Entry)Monday, 5 February 2007
Apple Versus Apple -- Final Update
(Read Entry)Thursday, 1 February 2007