Who else is brimming with excitement about the awesome Falcon 9 rocket? Well, if you're not, you should be. However, it seems SpaceX progress has been beset by red tape and technical overruns, so we'll have to wait a little longer to see the nine Merlin 1C engines burst to life on the Cape Canaveral launch pad...
Charles Simonyi, billionaire and space tourist, recently chatted with me about his second upcoming flight to the space station. Right the launch is looking to be in October 2009.
Anyhow, Space Adventures sent me some images of Charles in training for the interview, and I knew we had a winner at first sight for this week's Space Fark.
Now's your chance to show off those mind-blowing Photoshop skills folks -- here's your link to the original hi-res version. And if you don't want to clip out a mask yourself, here's an image that's pre-masked. (Instructions for posting your pic? See the end of this entry.)
The original:
My masterpiece (translated caption: "Save yourself Charles!"):
Instructions:
Photo: Space Adventures
Behold! This week's video wrap-up of the biggest news in space, plus a short preview of what to expect on Discovery Space:
UPDATE:
If you're reading/watching from the main page of Space Disco, don't miss all of the goodies after the jump.
UPDATE: It's official -- this mystery man is Mike Joyce! Via Twitter, users Snibble, QuarkSpin, cariann and myself (Disco_Dave) put the pieces together a day before the official announcement. The "Mystery Team" is now known as "Next Giant Leap" and you can visit their site here.
The official Google Lunar X PRIZE blog, aka the Launch Pad, highlighted this mysterious video today:
Mysterious, indeed! (Personally, I enjoyed the part where GLXP asks "what is your name?" and the mystery man says "If I told you, I'd have to kill you." A required line in such a situation.)
Anywho, this is the first second visual, physical evidence for the "Mystery Team" competing for Google's $20-30 million to send a video camera-packed spacecraft to the moon on private money (see here for first piece).
I interviewed the leader recently -- click here for our chat -- and asked why the team has been maintaining anonymity. It's for several reasons, but mainly so they could build a crack team amid disbelief and bureaucracy. In other words, the mystery protects perfectly great scientists and engineers from being warded off by their colleagues before the "super team" is assembled.
Apparently the team is now fully assembled, however, and they're set to reveal themselves soon. Check out this chunk of a press release I just received:
Wednesday, Dec. 17th: The stealth team (AKA "The Mystery Team") whose members' identities have thus far remained a secret, will reveal their true identities in person, at NASA Ames.
I have a hunch. I think the person in the video is the same one I interviewed. I happen to know a thing or two about Photoshop, so let's work some magic on this bad boy...
Alright folks, your Discovery Space video wrap-up, preview and shenanigan-filled post is up and running!
Last week's big news is the Mars Science Laboratory delay, the Large Hadron Collider damage/fix-up and the discount of XCOR's Lynx tickets -- they're ONLY $95,000 a pop now!
...but it's also not a time to give up.
I'm still reeling from flying more than 30 hours to catch the total solar eclipse on Friday, but in case you haven't heard, private company SpaceX's third shot at a reusable Falcon 1 rocket system failed during launch late last night.
A serious (and expensive) bummer, and yet more proof that no matter how many smart people you put into a room, getting into space ain't easy.
Check out David Chandler's Next Generation blog for some details on the recent SpaceX failure.
I got this email forward by Elon Musk, co-founder of the company, in my inbox last night. You can also check it out on the SpaceX Web site, too (see here).
He first issued it to employees:
Plan Going Forward
It was obviously a big disappointment not to reach orbit on this flight [Falcon 1, Flight 3]. On the plus side, the flight of our first stage, with the new Merlin 1C engine that will be used in Falcon 9, was picture perfect. Unfortunately, a problem occurred with stage separation, causing the stages to be held together. This is under investigation and I will send out a note as soon as we understand exactly what happened.
The most important message I’d like to send right now is that SpaceX will not skip a beat in execution going forward. We have flight four of Falcon 1 almost ready for flight and flight five right behind that. I have also given the go ahead to begin fabrication of flight six. Falcon 9 development will also continue unabated, taking into account the lessons learned with Falcon 1. We have made great progress this past week with the successful nine engine firing.
As a precautionary measure to guard against the possibility of flight 3 not reaching orbit, SpaceX recently accepted a significant investment. Combined with our existing cash reserves, that ensures we will have more than sufficient funding on hand to continue launching Falcon 1 and develop Falcon 9 and Dragon. There should be absolutely zero question that SpaceX will prevail in reaching orbit and demonstrating reliable space transport. For my part, I will never give up and I mean never.
Thanks for your hard work and now on to flight four.
--Elon--
Glad to hear they're not giving up, and looking forward to their fourth -- and hopefully successful -- attempt.
NOTE: I just realized I posted the same email after Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy did, so to his credit here's a link to his post.
Dr Ian O'Neill produces Discovery Space for the Discovery Channel. He is a solar physicist, but loves to write about manned space exploration and exposing the myths behind bad science. He can also be found ranting about space on Astroengine.com.
Recent Comments