Astronomy Picture of the Day
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
2003 January 5 
Posted on 01/05/2003 2:44:26 AM PST by petuniasevan
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
2003 January 5
Explanation: Birds don't fly this high. Airplanes don't go this fast. The Statue of Liberty weighs less. No species other than human can even comprehend what is going on, nor could any human just a millennium ago. The launch of a rocket bound for space is an event that inspires awe and challenges description. Pictured above, the Space Shuttle Atlantis lifted off to visit the International Space Station during the early morning hours of July 12. From a standing start, the two million kilogram rocket ship left to circle the Earth where the outside air is too thin to breathe and where there is little noticeable onboard gravity. Rockets bound for space are now launched from somewhere on Earth about once a week.
Still, we're not doing enough in space. Where's our moon base - twenty years overdue? Do YOU want to watch on TV as the Chinese plant their red star flag on the moon? Believe me, they're planning to do just that, while we play around in Low Earth Orbit.
Interesting! Bump your comments.
I was walking on our front sidewalk early one evening, fixing to get in the car, when I saw a FAST moving bright object in the Southern sky. It took my brain about a millisecond to rule out an airplane, too fast moving, and I wondered if there had been a shuttle launch. I ran back in the house, turned on the tv and sure enough, it had just lifted off less than a minute before. It was thrilling to see it moving across the sky!
During the Leonid meteor shower, Sir SuziQ and I were able to see the Intl. Space Station move across the sky. He had heard it would be visible, and at about what time, so we looked for it.
What will the Chinese do differently on their mission to the moon? Will the cost to produce their flight a cheaper or better way? I read or heard somewhere that a manned flight to the moon by the US would take many years just to design and build new vehicles since we'd be going again from a standing start. Maybe the situation isn't that dire, but I know it would be no easy task.
Some of my favorite passages from 2010 involved a Chinese mission to Jupiter. The US team couldn't understand why the Chinese would need a special pump from a fire truck and available only in the West for a mission to Jupiter. They stopped on Io to refuel with water and needed the pump to draw it into their ship as quickly as possible! (Or whichever Jovian moon has water under a crust of ice.)
Hey, Pilgrim.
Seriously [sort of,] the space program is a modern Crusade for some. The energy that went into the original Crusades, whether brother Christian, brother Jewish, or brother Muslim is still there and might as well be tapped for our next evolutionary step off this planet.
We brothers ought to cease this mad modern internecine warfare and turn outward. It's a revolutionary idea and has to come from the people. Give the people the idea and link it to what they already know and believe. It always takes an individual with the right charisma to spearhead the popular movement, but who would that be?
Don't bother the others who share this planet. The Chinese, for example, have their own space revolution underway and don't seem to have an interest in joining the monotheists and trinitists. Let them go their own way and let us turn our own energies to placing settlements in space, where for a change, we won't be displacing someone who is already happily living there.
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