Stanford has competed in the DARPA grand challenge and won it in the past, now they are planning to race a car up Pikes Peak at race speeds.  The car will be controlled entirely by GPS therefore it is not quite as impressive as the integrated monitoring systems such as the roof mounted LIDAR that their “Stanley” car incorporated, but the speed of ascent is  Impressive in its own right.

Cool beans.

So, I can only assume everyone has noticed the big news, that President Obama has not funded the return to the moon program in his current proposed NASA budget.  What the new budget does is:

• Actually adds $5.9 billion to NASA's budget
• Extends the support of ISS through 2020
• Funds commercially developed launches to support ISS (ie Falcon 9)
• Does not leave enough money to support development of the Ares launch vehicle

In general, these are all good things, except the idea of giving up on returning to the moon, which is moronic.

In fact NASA has already spent more than $9 billion on the return to the moon program, which includes $3.5 billion on Ares I and $3.7 billion on Orion.  This shows what NASA is really good at - wasting money!

Of course I do not mean the space program is a waste of money, or returning to the moon would eb a waste of money.  What IS a waste of money is the actual programs NASA intends to use to accomplish this goal. 

Some engineers at NASA have proposed an alternative program, Direct 2.0.  Direct 2.0 is essentially a shutte without the orbiter/re-entry vehicle component.  Instead you bolt a shuttle main engine directly on the bottom of the external tank.  According to the engineers, this would overcome several of the cost and risk problems of Ares, would not require developing 2 new launch platforms, and would be a more capable vehicle.  Another alternative to Ares is to use existing heavy launch vehicles, like Delta or Atlas, which actually have a better safety record than the space shuttle, even though they are not officially "man rated" launch systems.  And of course the obvious other possibility is to use commercially developed transportation, which is exactly what Obama did fund.

So, why are NASA engineers working on this project essentially in their spare time, while the "official" plan is to pursue ARES, which has know technical issues, include significant vibration from the solid rocket booster stage and a tendency to drift into the gantry at launch?  Frankly, the aerospace companies that are profiting from this program wield enormous influence in the white house and in congress.  They don't care if we get to the moon or not, so long as we spend billions doing it.  And frankly the more money we spend, or waste, the better.

My personal opinion?  The commercial route is definitely better.  How long would it take for Armadillo aerospace to put pixel on the moon?  What if we gave Carmack $100 billion dollars to do it?  As for cancelling the moon program?  It seems like our current administration is serious about that, unfortunately.  But china definitely plans to go to the Moon.  I think when China starts putting astronauts on the moon, the movers and shakers in DC will get their panties all in a twist and decide, in fact, we need to go there too.  So, it's going to happen.  The only question is when and what will it cost. 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1244686/Amateur-star-gazer-captures-astonishing-images-Milky-Way-hole-roof-garden-shed.html

His photographs show a vivid variety of star clusters light years from Earth and have been compared favourably with the images taken from the £2.5billion Hubble telescope.

...and if you look down in the comments in the article his wife makes a comment.

Oh what a proud wife i am!!!!! and no your not getting a bigger telescope.
- LISA SHAH, POWYS, 21/1/2010 6:12

The mystery dot below passed just 80,000 miles from Earth earlier today.  If you’ve seen this object, please contact NASA.

No word yet on whether the slew of rod-like objects whizzing by posed any danger, but they do make the image look substantially more sinister.

The $250M system that recycles astronauts’ urine into drinking water is offline due to a clog related to unexpectedly high levels of calcium in the input stream.  While waiting for the plumber to arrive, scientists ponder whether this is a result of bone loss experienced by astronauts in microgravity environments.  Let’s hope there’s a contingency plan in place.  Article here.

As with most sensational images from Mars, this too is just an optical illusion (or so NASA’s PR department would have us believe :) )  Read the full write-up here.

Betelgeuse, a famous red giant star in the constelation Orion, has been imaged with unprecedented clarity by LESIA at the Paris Observatory.  This is the first time the surface features of another star have been resolved with such detail

No they are not launching their Falcon 9 rocket yet.  What they did do is the final test firing.  It was successful and now they are preparing to begin the final assembly at Cape Canaveral.  This will take from 1-3 months depending on how smooth the process goes.

So sometime from Mid February to late April we will see the Falcon 9 launch.  So for my money that means May or June in actuality.  (heh).

SpaceX blog: linky

Video of test: http://spacex.com/multimedia/videos.php?id=43

Check out this cool charting tool that let’s you set latitude and date and shows you the length of the day in hours.

http://astro.unl.ed....../daylighthoursexplorer.html

This is a very neat little tool to see how the inside of a simple computer circuit works.

Just click on the “1”s or “0”s at the top of the circuit to change the input and watch how it computes the decimal number.  Pretty cool.  Now imagine something a billion times more complex as that and you approach a modern CPU.

http://www.falstad.com/circuit/e-7segdecoder.html