Happiness, I watched NASA launch Ares I-X via the net on the BBC site.  It was magical, the Tallest rocket ever built. I remeber seing the inards of this might vehicle on a TV program about future NASA projects. This is a new type of rocket and its believed that it might be instrumental in Future Moon missions or even the Trip to Mars which does appear to be the target.

Although the launch was successful, this test flight could well be its last flight. But , I am optimistic. People will find a way , God willing, to continue the adventure into space. Ares I-X might be a footnote, but what a glorious one she is. Bravo

So Guy Laliberte is back on Earth after visiting the International Space Station(ISS) Via the Russian Soyuz TMA-14 space craft.

He was in Space for about 11 days and its thought that the trip cost him a considerable amount of money. Happily for him, the overall financial cost to him probably hasn't serious dented his Billion Dollar Fortune.

When the first Space tourist went up, There was quite a lot of commentary in the Newspapers about how in appropriate it was to allow visitors at the ISS.  How things have changed, with all the problems the USA has launching Shuttles, the ISS survival probably now depends heavily on the Russian Soyez flights.  Soyuz probably benefits a lot from the money paid over by the space tourists.

NASA deliberately crashed a space vehicle into the Moon a few hours ago and did not get what they where expecting. It was a space craft called LCROSS. Apparently, crashing the craft into the moon at 5600 mph should have raised a massive plume of dust which should have remained visible for a long time in the moons airless low gravity environment. In theory, the scientists back at NASA would then have been able to analyse the plume for its content and search for signs of water. It did not work out, there is no visible dust cloud,  the early readings don't support a dust cloud either. But they're still checking.

Anyway, I have a wild theory for anyone who's interested. Perhaps the Crater they targeted did contain water, a lot more than they imagined, and that this water has turn ed Crater surface into a gelatinous bog They the ejecta from the crash would have been heavier than expected and settled back down rapidly, ego , no dust cloud.

So Saturn has a previously unknown ring of debris circling it at a distanse of About  eight million miles from the Planet.  However, its very thin and some believe that all the material in this ring would just fill in a Crate on the Moon Phoebe.

For me, One of the things this really illustrates is the number of Navigational hazards in our Solar System. A saterllite or a manned Space craft travelling unknowingly into  this ring of dust could suffer heavy damage thanks to the relative velocities of the space craft and the debris.

I've just found out about the Space elevator 2010 . I am assuming that people interested in Space travel remember the Ansari X-prize. That was a fantastic competition for many years and it was won in brilliant fashion by a team led by one of the Great Engineers of our time, Burt Rutan. I refer off course to Space ship one.

The Space elevator essentially involves stretching a cable from The Earth into Space. Then sending vehicles into Space by causing them to climb the Cable till they attain what I would call an orbital height.

To be candid, before the current official interest, science fiction has been using Space elevators as a concept,  A useful example can be found in Alastair Reynolds novel  Chasm City.  After I read the novel , I started thinking in detail about the practicalities of actually building a Space elevator. There where many issues.

Bearing in Mind that My technical education an training is restricted to a degree in Mechanical Engineering and have had no access to modern Astronautics information, here are some of the things I considered.

FACTOR 1

Current Launch vehicles are focused on Driving their payload to massive velocity and great distance from the surface within a very short time for good reason. They need the velocity to fall around the Earth Successfully without falling into the Earth. The Height above Earth counts towards the velocity required to maintain orbit, and the Higher the vehicle , the lee the atmospheric resistance til it becomes almost non existent. The Sky elevator either has to impart the required velocity to the payload or the Payload has to have engines to do this itself, in which case what would be the point.

part 2 follows

Well, it looks like the Hubble telescopes new bits are working well as the latest pictures stream out of the fabulous device. Now the folk in charge of controlling the space bourne telescope are busy bring all the systems back on line. So far the new pictures are stunning.

Hubble telescope official site

Stargate atlantis is a spin off of the Stargate film and the Stargate: SG1 series. In the opinion of this writer, it is superior to both its predecessors. Read a review of stargate atlantis season one.

In this  preview we wish to avoid spoilers as much as possible and simply give an opinion of the seasons content. The season is 20 episodes long. Now to give an over view of the season.

A very brief background of Stargate Atlantis is that there is a human out post in the Pegasus Galaxy connected to Earth By a wormhole device. They battle against an Alien Race known As the Wraith. The Wraith Eat Human beings. Do read the Stargate season one preview.

Season two starts with the City known as atlantis under intense siege from their primary enemy known as the wraith.  The wraith had previously defeated the race know as the ancients by force of arms. Human forces where never going to have the force to defeat them at this time. Essentially, the writers use a device of human deceit to resolve the situation.

The season then evolves with the humans on atlantis getting to know more about the Pegasus galaxy and its inhabitants, such as the Genii who actually capture Atlantis at a point. Naturally, the situation is resolved.

 continuing weakness of almost every science fiction series I have seen is the Capture , escape or recovery or rescue scenario which appears to be a staple of science fiction writers everywhere, with the notable exception off BattleStar Galactica, which is the Apex of Scifi Film today.

Atlantis continues to battle Gingerly withe the wraith, and continues to be a far more epic creation than SGI. There is plenty of decent character development of a much larger cast than SG1. There continues to be a decent focus on team development and every episode was a joy to watch.

A high light is an attempt to convert the Half human half insect wraith into full human persons by stripping out the insect element of the wraith, and what follows is a truly fascinating exploration of the possibilities of such an event.

Well, the 20 videos come to a close and the season ends on a real cliff hanger with a wraith Battle group coming to Earth to Eat us all  

We once worked out that if we could obtain an engine/vehicle combo that could thrust at 1 gravity for 4 years, we could do a round trip to Proxima Centauri and back in about 8 years. Okay , maybe this involved a lot of bad science , wishful thinking, incomplete appreciation of the Laws of Relativity, yet it was a beguiling exercise. We our improved understanding of the science and mechanics of such matters, we hope to repeat the exercise and publish the exercise here.

The current power drives for most space vehicles are either chemical rockets or the newer ion drives. Rocket motors have always fascinated us. From the gun powder powered firework rockets through to the massive boosters that power the modern day Shuttles, NASA, ESA and Russia space vehicles being launched today.

By and large , the chemical rockets have to carry a large amount of reaction mass and thereby expend a lot of their energies lifting their own mass. Plus the fuel of the main lifting engines is usually exhausted in one burn lasting a few minutes. In this few minutes, the rocket has to shove its payload into orbit. Bye the time most vehicles have attained orbit, they usually have very little fuel left, and what fuel they've got left will only be used for critical maneuvering. Reading the mission profile of the first moon landing is very revealing and entrancing reading. It involved accelerating the mission vehicles to a massive escape velocity after which the main boosters where exhausted.  The mission vehicles then glided powerless to their rendevous with the moon, a bit like a bullet from a gun fired with super accurate deflection shooting technique. Marvellous stuff real, really risky too.

The ion engines are a lot more complicated and we will write more about them once we know more. We shall also be revisiting rocket technology .

We recently found out about the Kepler Mission which launched at 0349GMT which is 2249EST on 7 March, from Cape Canaveral.  The really exciting  thing about this mission is that its looking for Rocky planets orbiting their star within what is known as the habitable zone of their Star. In short, these are planets that might be inhabitable.

Hundreds of planets have already been discovered outside the solar system, but they have been very un earth like. They have been Gas giants or Ice giants sometimes whizzing around their star at massive velocities. Its unlikely that life as we know it could easily exist on such planets. Then again who knows. However, when devoting immense resources to finding livable planets or extra terrestrial life, the searchers must concentrate their search on the avenues that offer them the highest probability of success. In essense they must look for planets that are as similar to Earth as possible.

For more definitive information about Kepler , visit  The kepler mission homepage .