It brought Robert Scoble to tears… and I can see why. This is the sort of software Microsoft should be releasing. The seamless integration, very similar to what Google Earth did for looking around our little blue-green planet, makes it that much more accessible. I’ve tried downloading those huge images from Hubble and never had a computer with enough memory to open one. Making those high resolutions accessible opens up worlds (excuse the pun) to everyone from any walk of life… not just a handful of super computers around the world.

I can’t wait to give this thing a spin, and I only wish Carl Sagan or Douglas Adams were still around to narrate tours around the universe.

“Why should we continue to fund space exploration?  Why should we continue to fund NASA?”

Neil Tyson breaks it down pretty succinctly (and editorialized over at BA).  The ready response I’ve developed for myself parallels their arguments fairly well.  However, the answer I always want to use is…

“Why not?”

However that never seems to go over very well.  You can at least accurately shoot down anyone with a notion that the space program is “expensive” or is a “waste of our tax dollars.”  As a function of government spending, it is a minuscule amount and the benefits received (while never planned for) dwarf this in orders of magnitude.  I’m not about to defend the NASA bureaucracy, which has an incredibly woeful track record.

I’ve said before (I think) I would love to work on a project for NASA, like the new version of the Space Shuttle… However Lockheed is exclusively doing that work out of Texas (which makes sense in its proximity to Huston).

I keep wondering if space travel (not the Star Trek version, but at least a local version… the moon and Mars for example) will ever in my lifetime approach what air travel has done.  I think we’ll have a good measuring stick for that in 30 years… have we taken some positive steps forward or stagnated where we are now?

 Io Across Jupiter

 Saturn

Chandra X-Ray Observer

Mira – The Shooting Star 

When I was about 9 or so, my grandmother gave me an old hardback edition of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos. That was really the start of my interest in space in general and my love of theoretical literature from the likes of Graham Greene and Stephen Hawkins. Its pretty woefully out of date at this point, but there is an imagination that plays out that you don’t find too often in recent publications. PBS released a documentary based on the book, hosted and narrated by Sagan.

Below is a great video tribute to Carl Sagan based on his “Pale Blue Dot” narration. There really is something touching there that speaks to the higher levels of humanity and altruism.

The television production is three hours, so you might want to break it up rather than all three in one sitting.  Its a really exciting time for theoretical science, and its come to a point where its so abstract that laymen can no longer follow along — you have to remember Einstein was a virtually a celebrity during the hight of his contributions.

I hope in my lifetime I have a chance to see the Earth from a distance where it looks like an IMAX projection. I hope that I get to see the moon so that the surface from horizon to horizon spans what the eye can see.

Realistically, I think my grand children will get that chance. I know we can do a lot in 40 or 60 years, but I believe we will have other pressing issues on our hands such that space travel will be still be relegated to the Air Force elite. Personally, I can’t believe it’s coming up on 50 years and we still haven’t been back to the moon in person. The stuff the Mars landers have discovered just begs for a human mission.

And now at this point… I will turn in for the night =)

Dreaming big…

Some more images here from Cassini.

STS-121 — Shuttle Discovery (download video)

As disappointed as I am with what NASA has done (or more accurately, hasn’t done) since the 80′s, there is still something awe inspiring about moving men and women into space, that I don’t believe will ever get old.  I am someone that can still watch Apollo 13 over and over because of the triumph that it represents.

Unfortunately, the beaucracy at NASA and the lack of foresight and funding from Congress has religated the one great United States Space Program to an after thought…  A political liability… And probably many other things that don’t get revealed to the general public.  Since the termination of the Apollo program, the United States Space program has not gone beyone an LEO (basically).

As a kid, I can remember watching the Challenger disaster live on TV (on one of the few stations actually broadcasting the launch live).  The Columbia disaster unfolded at a band meeting at Duke.  We were in the Poly Sci building and were trying to find a classroom with TV and some sort of cable or broadcast feed.  I believe the tradegys could have been avoided.  There were/are too many levels to the NASA beaucracy (too many managers in the closet).  Challenger was literally the text book example of Group Think.  Columbia was believing that past successes translated into future successes and management stiffling engineering. 

At the same time I believe the media trivializes the risks involved in space flight.  Until something like the Space Elevator comes along or alternative technology that doesn’t involve strapping thousands of tons of liquid explosives to yourself, there is no way you can reduce the risk.  Its an amazing feat they acomplish now with as few tradegies as we’ve had.  While we stick with current technologies, space flight will never be equal to air travel.  Its a little dissapointing that we haven’t make it further in the 40 years since the Apollo program.

Thankfully the Discovery launch went off without a hitch and that is exactly what the program needed.  They are finishing a detailed inspection of the shuttle’s heat tiles, and while I haven’t heard the results, I hope they don’t find anything.  The kicker will be if they can land without any issue.  Godspeed.