Apparently encouraged by the German high court’s decision to reject an opposition party’s call to stop Germany’s deployment of Tornado spy aircraft in Afghanistan (other countries use these aircraft as fighters), the Berlin government has hurried to launch its second SAR-Lupe spy satellite on a Russian rocket from a Russian launch site located somewhere on […]

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At roughly 9:50 PM eastern time, the Earth’s moon will rise low on the horizon, making it appear larger and closer than usual. Of course the moon in no larger, but according to Space.com senior science writer, Robert Roy Britt the eye is fooled because of the moon’s proximity to the horizon.
Britt’s report also includes […]

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Stargazers across the globe caught glimpses of the International Space Station and the Space Shuttle Atlantis racing through the sky early this week.
Atlantis (Mission STS-117) undocked from the ISS on Tuesday evening, and still remains close to the station. Space agencies reported that viewers should be able to see the two spacecraft traveling through the […]

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For years a certain loveable radio talk show host (whose talent is on loan from God) has said that it’s arrogant and presumptuous to think humanity has had any impact on the Earth’s temperature. It looks like he was right.
The argument that proponents of the man-based global warming theories present is so seductively simple that […]

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Well I am sure that some folks at NASA were beginning to think so yesterday,  when the main navigation computer system aboard the ISS crashed! Apparently it did the NASA version of a Blue Screen Of Death (BSOD).
So concerned were NASA about the situation they actually shut down some non essential equipment and put the […]

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2007 is the 200th Anniversary year of the discovery of the asteroid Vesta.
During the last couple of days of May and early in June, Vesta will “shine” at 5.4 magnitude in the night sky and will be visible to the human eye, using only binoculars. Its surface material is very bright and highly reflective (of the sun’s […]

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Dang. I may live to see commercial space flight after all.
An article by Spencer Reiss at Wired bangs the drum for the commercial space flight efforts of Burt Rutan and Richard Branson.
The major roadblock isn’t engineering — Rutan and his engineering company, Scaled Composites, are proven innovators. I would bet my youngest child that SpaceShipTwo […]

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The Galileo project, Europe’s five billion dollar satellite navigation system which isn’t quite working just yet but we’re almost there so halt die Klappe (shut up) and be patient already, finds itself “on a dead-end street,” says German Transport Minister Wolfgang Tiefensee. Speaking on behalf of the EU, he also sees little hope left that […]

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Reports are coming in that today in the NASA Johnson Space Center (where Houston Mission Control is located), in Nassau Bay, Texas a gunman fatally shot a hostage and then shot himself in the head at approximately 5:00 p.m. today (April 20) more than three hours after barricading himself on the second floor of Building […]

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News Item:
Ballot initiative for private rocket complex passes
A little over a week ago, we made mention here of all the privateers looking toward outer space, in One Step Closer to Star Wars [linked below].  New Mexico voters are taking this space thing very seriously, having just approved a new tax to raise funds for a […]

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It’s 28° out there.Three days ago, we were running around up here in shorts and tank tops. Today (Wednesday, that is), it was snowing. Snowing. In fact, I just looked outside and it’s snowing as I type this. Lightly, probably won’t accumulate, but still.
When’s the “heating up” part of this global […]

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“While Friday’s vote was specific to the application for a .XXX domain name space, the Board Members’ vote signals their position as to whether they are comfortable with ICANN expanding its mission to become a regulator of online human behavior. By voting to turn down the .XXX application for public policy reasons, the Board indicated it will go beyond its technical mission of DNS coordination and seek to decide what ideas are allowed to be given a voice in the new domain name space. Unfortunately, it looks like it will be impossible for any idea that is politically or culturally controversial to be permitted a new domain name space by ICANN. ICANN is setting itself up as …”

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“While Friday’s vote was specific to the application for a .XXX domain name space, the Board Members’ vote signals their position as to whether they are comfortable with ICANN expanding its mission to become a regulator of online human behavior. By voting to turn down the .XXX application for public policy reasons, the Board indicated it will go beyond its technical mission of DNS coordination and seek to decide what ideas are allowed to be given a voice in the new domain name space. Unfortunately, it looks like it will be impossible for any idea that is politically or culturally controversial to be permitted a new domain name space by ICANN. ICANN is setting itself up as …”

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Attention - Due To Allegations of Plagiarism, This Article Is Highly Suspect 
India has begun assembling the spacecraft for Chandrayan-I, its first unmanned mission to the moon scheduled for 2008, a top space agency said on Wednesday.
“We have begun the integration process for the spacecraft structure and are putting in place the antennae required for tracking […]

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News Item:
Budget rocket reaches space
Han Solo [Harrison Ford’s character in the Star Wars movies] didn’t work for any government, national or planetary.  He was a privateer.  He kept his old hulk of a ship going by scavaging parts just about anywhere he could find them.  Science fiction, once again, became the harbinger of science fact […]

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Many in the technical community attribute the rapid growth and spread of the Internet to innovation that took place at the “edge” of the network, while its “core” was left largely application neutral to provide a universal and predictable building block for innovation. It is this core neutrality that provides a basis for the security and stability of the Internet
as a whole. And it is this same core neutrality that is critical to the continued spread of the Internet across the Digital Divide. Unfortunately, when the politics of censorship rather than solely technical concerns drive the coordination of these “core” Internet resources, it threatens the future security and stability of the Internet. This paper proposes a paradigm upon which all the governments of the world have equal access to these core Internet resources to empower them and their citizens with the rights acknowledged in the WSIS Declaration of Principles.

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Cleary miffed at seeing how everyone in Germany has forgotten how much better they had it under his leadership, and sick and tired of having to clean up around the house after wife Doris all day long, ex-Chancellor Gerhard S. has volunteered to slam US plans to build a high-tech missile shield in Poland and […]

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Sometimes one reads news that brings a smile to one’s face. A few months back, the International Astronomical Union declared that Pluto essentially does not fit the definition of a planet, and hence should no longer be called a planet.
Now, apparently the state of New Mexico in the United States feels that there are not […]

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The Moon will blush red as it passes through Earth’s shadow in a total lunar eclipse on Saturday. From most locations on Earth, at least part of the 6-hour eclipse will be visible if skies are clear.
The Earth’s shadow will completely cover the Moon during the most dramatic phase, which will last a little more […]

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Already fed up with the moaning of thousands of noch (still) employed Airbus employees at production facilities all across Europe, the head of the German Space Program (DLR), Walter Doellinger, has confirmed that his country may be prepared to bail out of the costly airplane building business and fly to the friggin’ moon instead.

According to […]

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 Attention - Due To Allegations of Plagiarism, This Article Is Highly Suspect 
India on Sunday successfully tested a surface-to-surface version of the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile, which it has developed jointly with Russia, official sources said.
The missile was fired from a mobile launcher from the Integrated Test Range at Chandipur-on-sea — 200 kilometres (125 miles) northeast […]

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The Canadian government is helping to fund a 300 meter (1000 foot) banana-shaped airship set to be released in Mexico next year.  The bamboo and synthetic paper structure filled with helium should drift about 20 to 30 kilometers (12.5 to nearly 17 miles) above Texas for about a month before it disintegrates.
 
Asked why he was […]

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 Attention - Due To Allegations of Plagiarism, This Article Is Highly Suspect
India successfully launched into space today a rocket carrying a capsule recovery experiment to prepare for future manned missions, a spokesman for the Indian Space Research Organisation said.The launch took place from Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh state, ISRO spokesman S.Krishnamurthy said. The other payloads […]

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When a flying saucer briefly checked out Chicago’s O’Hare International last November one air traffic controller said he thought “it’s a shame something flew seven-million miles only to turn around because it was not assigned a gate.”
Witty, perhaps, but then the controller had a couple of months to think of it.  At the time, the […]

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 Attention - Due To Allegations of Plagiarism, This Article Is Highly Suspect
The Indian space agency ISRO is reportedly putting together a proposal that could result a manned spacecraft launch by early next decade and potentially a manned mission to the Moon by the end of the next decade. Indian publications reported this week that ISRO […]

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Attention - Due To Allegations of Plagiarism, This Article Is Highly Suspect 
India’s top radio observatory, the Giant Metre Wave Telescope (GMRT), is facing a severe shortage of engineers making it impossible to utilise its full potential, a top radio astronomer said.
The telescope, installed near Pune in Maharashtra by the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics, is […]

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Jeff Bezos not content with becoming obscenely rich by founding Amazon.com has entered the space race. The Blue Origin project is a privately funded attempt at opening up space travel to the man in the street (although I suspect that a cruise in the Med will be cheaper).
The Blue Origin project is not the first […]

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Not only do 82 percent of all Germans believe that their politicians aren’t concerned about the interests of the general population, 40 percent of all Germans believe in the existence of aliens (I know, sorry, numbers everywhere you look these days). No, not the ones that sneak across the border at night (they’re not that […]

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In my previous article I outlined a challenge facing NASA, apathy from the younger generation. Being a keen newshound for BNN I decided to do some investigative journalism, to discover if NASA is ‘Hot or Not’.
A few minutes of Googling confirmed my theory. NASA is hot! If NASA was female she would be a ten. I found […]

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Those familiar words were first spoken by John Swigert, Jr while on the ill fated Apollo 13 mission. Unfortunately it seems that they are still alive and well within the NASA. organization.
NASA has announced long term plans of establishing a permanent outpost on the Moon and manned missions to Mars. The costs associated with these endeavors […]

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