Category Archives: Space

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we must obey the blood moon’s auspices

There’s an awful lot of awful stuff going on the world today.  War, inflation, celebrities, forthcoming food shortages, pandemic, Tom Brady, and the fact that Vlad Putin has not accidently stumbled into a functioning wood chipper.

But last night’s Blood Moon is what we should all REALLY be paying attention to.  After all, seeking the auspices of such a rare occurrence is surely a sign from God / nature / gods / aliens / whatever.  We must obey.

What?  You want me to follow the teachings of SCIENCE?  The Blood Moon has a perfectly rational scientific explanation and it’s known to all.  Nonsense, I say!  Humanity has only been a keeper of that sweet sweet astronomical knowledge for say three or four centuries.  That leaves 4500 years of human history to be our REAL guide.

So what’s the Blood Moon telling us?  We have no idea, but here are some possibilities:

1) That we, humanity, are total losers and a failure.  We have no choice but to crack each other’s head’s open and feast on the goo inside.  [H/T Kent]

2) You need to buy a new pair of shoes.  Even if your current shoes are brand new.

3) We must all cast Tom Brady into a cenote, to please the gods.

4) Vlad Putin did not have cancer, but possibility the Blood Moon gave him cancer last night.  These are positive changes.

5) The Blood Moon commands us to tame inflation, with fire, as in, arson.  We should totally get started tonight.

6) We must appease the Blood Moon’s anger, please snare your local squirrel, rabbit, or HOA President and sacrificially open their body to determine the color of the liver.

7) In addition to baby formula, the Blood Moon states we will all soon run out of paper clips.  The absence of which, will significantly increase the overall risk of nuclear war.

8) Quit your job, immediately.  Don’t think, just do it.

9) Hug a total stranger on the street and tell them it’s all going to be okay.  Be prepared to run fast if they object to said hug to avoid arrest.

10) The Blood Moon is actually a Batman-like signaling device to a genocidal alien race.  The signal instructs them to come here and do us in, to put us out of our own misery.  As per usual, the aliens will be too bored, drunk, and/or believe us not worth the trouble and they’ll do nothing.

Yes, Lord Blood Moon, we will obey. Yes! Ohhh yeeesss!

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when are you actually in space?

A whole lot of very, very rich and famous people are going to be making their first trips into “space” in the next year or two.  There are essentially three private companies getting launches out the door:  Amazon, Tesla, and Galactic.  These aren’t their actual company names but you all know the three lunatic billionaires behind all this.  These genius businessmen / ten year old boys are going to send people up there for millions in coin per ticket.  Plus they’ll go up on their own.  Bezos is going first.

There’s also an effort to send people up to the ISS.  There are currently two competing movie companies sending Russian and American film teams up to the ISS to shoot C grade movies that’ll look like trash.  I think Tom Cruise is the American guy, because of course.  This is not a joke.  He’ll get space madness (his normal demeanor) and treat everybody around him like human garbage (also his normal demeanor) before the drunken Russian botanist puts him out the airlock.  Then Cruise will get what he always wanted, seven billion people always able to look at him for all eternity.  But seriously, Tom’s a talented fun actor.

But, what exactly is the barrier of space?  As in, when are you actually in space.  Though behind a play wall, The Economist gives a pretty good background for the accepted definition.  But apparently there really isn’t an accepted definition.  It’s between 80-100 kilometers up depending on who you ask.  BUT, this is not enough altitude to actually put you into orbit.  You get up there, see the black, feel some lack of gravity, but you end up coming straight back down to Earth like an artillery shell.

So if Bezos goes up there in his rocket, and only feels weightlessness for a few minutes, and then immediately comes back down on a parabolic trajectory is that actually space?  No.

We propose a new definition of space.  We’ll call it the Arcturus Space Definition Those Who Disagree Will Be Purged First (ASDTWDWBPF):  You have to reach orbit, and then complete a single orbit.  Then you’ve been to space.  Anything less than that, in terms of altitude or length of time in space, then you haven’t been to space.

Gagarin completed a single Earth orbit 70 years ago.  He went to space.  If you want in on the space club, you have to match Gagarin’s flight at minimum.  Otherwise, you’re a fraud and total loser.

Unrelated picture of a Bond villain who’s actually not going to get to space.  So Bond is unimpressed, ignores nonexistent space travel, takes the day off, gets blasted in a Moscow bar, toasts Gagarin, takes three Russian women back to his hotel room.

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soon, Mars will be your holiday destination

So the new Mars rover (there are so many now it’s hard to keep track of which is which) brought a helicopter with it. Or more accurately, a little drone that weighs four pounds and is probably so brittle your three year old could break it whilst holding a candy cane.

Mars’ atmosphere is so thin the two twin blade props on the thing had to spin at an insane rotation rate to attain the necessary lift. You can see the NASA video here:

NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Succeeds in Historic First Flight | NASA

Pretty cool. That’s no kidding a human creation in flight on another planet.

Essentially this is a test bed for future airborne drones which could be used to explore Mars far more effectively than a ground based rover crawling around at 1.73 kph.

But I’m insane, so all of this is minor scraps for me. What I REALLY want to know is:

1) When will the NASA airborne drones be armed with guided missiles and chain guns?

2) In keeping with Humanity’s desire to destroy everything including ourselves, when will these armed drones be used to exterminate all remaining life on Mars?

3) After extinction, when will Mars be available as your pristine holiday destination?

These are important things to consider. Too harsh? Wrong. After all, Mars started it. We’ll make sure Earth finishes it.

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Solo trashes Falcon (again)

In the third incident this year alone, dashing war hero General Han Solo crashed landed the Millennium Falcon into a bantha manure pile barn.  Witnesses say they observed a drunken Solo depart The Cantina only minutes before the increasing common aviation incident.

The episode mirrors other recent occurrences such as where Solo taxied his borrowed T-16 across an active landing pad.  Or when several years ago Solo flew the Falcon low over a transport carrying 110 civilian passengers.

In the latest event Solo was said to have been upset after he and General Leia ended their tumultuous but galaxy wide famed relationship for the fourth time in five years.  “I really don’t know why he tied one on like that,” said ace pilot and obsessive skirt chaser Wedge, “They’re just gonna get back together again in a few months.”

The Falcon is said to be down for several weeks of repairs.  But perhaps the more significant concern were the injuries sustained by famed Rebel warrior Chewbacca whose ultra long right leg suffered fractures in five places.  As a warlike race, when told he would require several surgeries and months of hoverchair time the wookie was said to have moaned, “Kill me.  Please, kill me,” repeatedly to a largely disinterested medical droid.

Critics, likely Imperial sympathizers, have suggested that were Solo anybody but General Solo he would have lost his pilot’s license years ago.  “Are you kidding me,” said Constable Red Shirt, “If I took his license the Rebel underground would have my throat slashed that very night.”

Others have wondered if a breathing device could be affixed to the Falcon’s cockpit to verify Solo was sober before powering up the engines but others are skeptical of the plan.  Said Wedge, “He’d just shoot it first.”

Harrison-Ford-696x442

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evil Bond villain unveils plans for Opticon One Moon base

It must be nice to be the world’s richest man (until the divorce paperwork clears) because you can come up with all kinds of harebrained schemes. Going to the Moon is awesome, I find it offensive to humanity that we haven’t been there in five decades, but do we really need to go there? Probably not. Maybe all of that money should be better spent curing malaria.

But Bezos (hereafter Scaramanga) has an ego the size of Saturn. It’s rumored he finds it personally offensive that SpaceX and notorious emo nutcase Elon Musk are considered the better bet for space travel. Scaramanga’s Blue Origin builds smaller rockets, has less clients, and in general was considered less ambitious in its goals. No longer. Now it’s the Moon baby!

Scaramanga seems to think he can meet the US government’s deadline to get back to the Moon by 2024. This is the NASA deadline favored mostly by Mike Pence and previously announced. It’s also a fantasy deadline because the plan relies on a rocket and space vehicle that do not exist and likely will never fly, ever. In other news, NASA is a joke.

SpaceX is focused on the more mundane (and actually profitable) business of launching satellites into space. This leaves plenty of room for Scaramanga to lose money on his vanity project. And so if Scaramanga is serious, and the technology is viable, he sure does have the cash to make this happen. It’s probably humanity’s best bet for getting back to the Moon.

Don’t get me wrong, I wish the best for this. Humanity needs something awesome to do other than the latest version of the iPhone. It’s just weird that the potential arm of humanity that will take us back to the Moon after all this time is Scaramanga, funded by a company that’s ruthlessly trying to take over every aspect of human life to the point they’ve even conned millions to put a live listening device in their own homes. Amazon is the Giant Octopus.

And so, here’s what Scaramanga really has planned for his Moon Base, code named Opticon One:

– Death ray (of course)

– Space based delivery drone concept that takes moon rocks and delivers them to your door (for a nominal fee)

– Shameless harem of the world’s most gorgeous women who wanted to go to space (don’t judge, the man is now single)

– Subterranean strip mine of Moon minerals worked by non-union slave labor (we’ll throw some poor cute kiddies in there too for good measure)

– Second death ray (you don’t build your own Moon base without being ridiculous)

– Amazon Web Services cloud servers capable of storing knowledge of all humanity (such knowledge is needed for Earth’s new citizens)

– Conveyer belt of spheres filled with weaponized nerve gas capable of wiping out all human life (and kitties too, one of them scratched Scaramanga when he was a child)

– One ordinary average employee who works in quality control (and happens to have steel teeth)

_106897704_blue-moon1

Bond: You’ll never get away with this, Scaramanga!

Scaramanga: [laughs] Oh no, you’ll see, you can’t stop me, Mr Bond. For you see, when I’m finished, humanity will … [dramatic music] purchase household cleaning goods online at 13% increased profit margins to my fulfillment centers! [uncontrollable raging laughter]

Bond: …

Scaramanga: …

[bond shoots Scaramanga in forehead; rescues kiddies and harem]

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NASA loses keys

Imagine you’re taking two dogs to the mountains for the weekend.  It might snow, and you want your dogs to have a jacket in case they duel a grizzly bear and need to keep warm.  Both your dogs need medium sized jackets.  Do you:

a) Make sure you have two medium jackets, and if not, buy one or two

b) Not bother to check at all and hope it somehow all works out

c) Panic

d) Ask your dogs for money

e) Skip your mountain trip and sit on your floor playing with your dogs as you drink beer

Most normal people would choose option (a).  But apparently not NASA, you know, those people who are geniuses and make things go into space.  Last week NASA announced that it would have it’s first all female spacewalk.  Because apparently these diversity things matter to NASA when it currently doesn’t have a functional space vehicle with which to get it’s astronauts into orbit so we rely on the Russians.

But as it turns out they cannot conduct this two female spacewalk because, wait for it, they don’t have two medium sized spacesuits.  This is not a joke.  This is legitimately happening.  Apparently NASA planned a complex dangerous spacewalk but didn’t bother to make sure they had two appropriate spacesuits.  I mean how hard is this?  One of the flight engineers could have asked her five year old to look at an inventory list and see the word ‘medium’ next to ‘spacesuit’ and make sure the number said at least two.

In related news, Boeing (that company that has problems lately), has now burned through north of $5B, yes billion, to produce a rocket that hasn’t flown once (and will probably never fly) and will take longer to produce than it took NASA to get to the Moon.

Man, this organization used to be the pinnacle of technology and awesome.  But that was five decades ago.  Now these folks probably lose their keys on their way to the parking lot.

Just disestablish NASA and give its entire budget to help fund STEM scholarships for poor kids.  Let the commercial sector have a go at space awesomeness.  They’ll do a cheaper, probably safer, and at least remember to look at an inventory list before planning a mission.

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Have fun!  Make sure you remember your airlock keys to get back into the station!

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we prepare to do battle with the Moon

Apparently this large thing in the sky is called a “Supermoon”. I don’t really understand why it has to be Super. Other than that in today’s culture everything has to be epic. For example, I now generally hear on the news several different ways to describe various weather phenomenon or patterns when we used to simply say, “It’s going to be cold tomorrow.”

But hell, I’ll go along with this. It’s a Supermoon. Got it. It’s harmless, right? Wrong. For you see, the Moon is not to be trusted. It has powers. Super powers. Why else would they call it a Supermoon?

This is the closest the Moon has been to Earth since 1948. The thing about astronomy is it has the power to cause you to briefly consider your own forthcoming bleached skeleton state. The Moon won’t be this close again until 2034. Think of all the things you could endure between now and then. Halley’s Comet won’t be back until 2061. Which means just about every person alive on this planet today has (at most) one more shot with Halley’s before their pending commute to Valhalla.

Last night said Supermoon was in the rise phase as I drove home at dusk. It certainly did look bigger. But according to the BBC, this is mostly an optical illusion:

“To observers, it will appear about 7% larger than normal and about 15% brighter – although the human eye is barely able to discern that difference.”

I tend to give us humans a little more credit than that. The Moon doesn’t just look bigger because folks are calling it a Supermoon. I think our brains and eyes can inherently detect that it’s 7% bigger and 15% brighter. We look at the Moon all the time. When it’s that different, our brains will tell us, even if it’s subtly.

I was thinking, that it looked so close and clear last night you could almost reach out there and touch the darn thing. That from my eyes to the Moon’s surface was one clear line, one straight shot. 221,524 miles is a long way, unless you can imagine that it’s not.

The Moon’s always been up there like that while we humans mess around down here. Some Roman Senator or Chinese Imperial bureaucrat pretty much saw the same thing. Some of us have actually been up there. When you really think about it, it’s quite special that a few of us have actually reached out there and touched it. We’ve made that journey. And it really does say something about how little we dream anymore or how much we’ve lowered optimism in our collective psyche that we haven’t been back in five decades.

Where’s our promised Moon colony or Bond villain Moon Base? I mean, technically I guess the Moon Base could have existed without us knowing it. And Bond already blew it up. But I’m betting that didn’t actually happen.

Anyways, either way, I’ll do battle with this Supermoon tonight. I’ll arm myself with a decent coat, a beer, and my camera. My dogs will wield a knife, handgun, or belly full of kibble, whichever they prefer. And we’ll get a shot (camera) at taking on this Supermoon. Moonrise is shortly after my return from work. So it’ll play out well.

If I survive, I’ll try and remember to post a picture on this degenerate blog. I might get distracted, because I have to do a ton of work for second job after I get home tonight. But I’ll try and make it happen. But if I don’t make it, make sure to take your revenge on the Supermoon for me. For you see, the Moon is not to be trusted. It has powers. Super powers.

Update: The Moon was obscured by clouds and light rain.  We couldn’t get a shot.  What does this Supermoon have to hide?  We’re on it.  We’re on the case to find out.  We’ll get right on it.  [cracks beer]  [sips]  [stares blankly at bare wall]

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apparently we need to clarify what an explosion is

Samsung has rightly gotten a bad rap lately for shipping countless smartphones to customers that otherwise should have been classified as controlled live ordnance.  And now there’s news this morning that Samsung washing machines are also apparently exploding.  Maybe this is the start of the apocalypse that lunatics (and my Guests) have been waiting for all these years.  It starts with exploding phones and appliances, and the next thing we know folks have to wield shotguns just to cross the zombie infested streets safely.

But hold on for a moment, what does an exploding Samsung phone actually look like?  Well, here’s an example:

fail phone.jpg

Eh, sorry folks, that’s not an explosion.  If the phone had actually exploded it’d be in a million pieces.  In fact, I do believe the phone rather “caught fire”.  Hey, words matter, kids, except on this degenerate blog, and the presidential campaign.

I know the media prefers to use the word explosion because it’s more dramatic and they get a bunch of clickbait.  I too was guilty of this.  When I was a young lad I broke my arm playing sports and I told people that my bone was “shattered” instead of “broken” because I thought it was more dramatic.  Nobody was impressed.  In fact, they were always quite confused.  I’m an idiot.

If you want to know what an actual explosion is, here’s a video of the recent Falcon 9 explosion on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral.  Video here.

Falcon-9_explosion_A-2016-09-01-879x485.jpg

Now we’re talking!

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Proxima Centauri awaits our divine rule

Great news! We’ve likely discovered the closest possible planet near our own star system that could potentially host life, even intelligent life. It’s a long shot due to Proxima being a red dwarf, and thus very different from our own yellow dwarf, but still worth getting excited about. The smart goons at The Economist lay out the details:

Proxima Centauri b, as it is known, probably weighs between 1.3 and three times as much as Earth and orbits its parent star once every 11 days. This puts its distance from Proxima Centauri itself at 7m kilometres, which is less than a twentieth of the distance between Earth and the sun. But because Proxima is a red dwarf, and thus much cooler than the sun, the newly discovered planet will experience a similar temperature to Earth’s. It is not the only Earth-sized extrasolar planet known to orbit in a star’s habitable zone. There are about a dozen others. But it is the closest to Earth—so close, at four light-years, that it is merely outrageous, not utterly absurd, to believe a spaceship (admittedly a tiny one) might actually be sent to visit it. Before this happens, though, it will be subjected to intense scrutiny from Earth itself.

So what’s going to happen over the new few decades is we’ll point various visual, radio, and spectrum telescopes at Proxima b to determine if this rock contains life as dumb as we are. But I say why wait? Why stop with just looking at Proxima b? Now that we have a known target, we can get around to the job of doing what Humanity of Earth does best: Destroying things!

You heard it here first, Proxima Centauri awaits our divine rule. They too need to experience the joys of democracy, freedom, Adele, endless religious wars, Coca-Cola, social media hatred, Netflix, genocide, The Zoo, electric guitars, and whatever else we can shove down their throats. What better way to unite humanity than by establishing the common goal of enslaving another? And we could take all their stuff too. They most assuredly have oil, rare metals, bluefin tuna, or other tasty stuff that we could take. We could strip mine the entire planet and nobody would care.

And at only four light years away, they’re well within conceivable range of starships we could build. Sure, this technological feat is a bit much seeing as how we haven’t been to the Moon in five decades, and we still have billions here in poverty, but we can still make it happen. Think of all the fun scenarios we could experience:

– We enter Proxima’s orbit bringing peace and love and yet somehow end up burning the planet using 438 fusion bombs within the first three years

– We show up bringing death and destruction and yet somehow end up getting our asses kicked by Proxima because they aren’t distracted by who said what on social media

– We land, and atop Proxima’s tallest mountain we find Jesus, King Arthur, and Dracula sitting around a campfire; and Jesus pulls on a cigarette and wryly states, “What took you so long?”

– We find a benevolent, wise race horrified by our planet’s thousands-of-years of death and mayhem, but who agree to at least “Give you stupid barbarian assholes a shot,” after we offer to teach them the art of brewing; and in an unrelated matter, they end up burning their planet using 438 fusion bombs within the first three years

– Having spent 37% of Earth’s GDP for two decades to get there, we find Proxima b is just a barren vacant rock

– The mission fails because 2/3 of our troop transports break halfway there because Lockheed Martin skimped on engine quality to increase quarterly profits in FY34 by 0.07%; and in an unrelated matter, Lockheed Martin’s CEO just bought his fifth boat

– Proxima actually holds a vicious Klingon like race that raids our ship’s computers to determine Earth’s location; but they abandon the conquest of Earth after three decades of grinding counterinsurgency, Earth being the quagmire that started the long decline of their Empire, and remarking, “What the fuck were we thinking?” as they meekly retreat to Proxima b

proxima centauri

Eh, maybe we stay on our side of the room, and they on theirs?