China's Tiangong 1 Comming Down Early

(China's go at a permanent space presence) may come down earlier than originally thought. 

As it stands now, Tiangong 1, China’s first space laboratory, will come to a fiery end in late 2017. however  during a Sept. 14 news conference Chinese officials came close to admitting that they had lost control of the station, and as such have no control as to when the lab will enter Earth's Atmosphere or even impact the surface. (though in truth have not formally admitted the failure and in the opinion of satellite tracker Thomas Dorman, China will wait until the last minute to let the world know it has a problem with their space station.

more here

China Has A What?!!

Yep, my little motorcycle dude hit me with another today.  Check this out....China has a space station.
Yeah you read that right - on June 13th just two days after launch, a Chinese Shenzhou 10 space capsule carrying a crew of three docked with the nation's orbiting Tiangong 1 space module .

According to the Space.com article the crew consisted of :

•  Nie Haisheng, Zhang Xiaoguang and Wang Yaping — the second female Chinese astronaut to fly in space 
  

Now for more DAMN I DIDN'T KNOW THAT! stuff..... This was China's fifth manned mission (oh come on!)  This is the last of three missions to test space based docking procedures.   The Tiangong 1 has been orbiting Earth since Sept. 2011. Its schedule calls for it to remain operational for another three months.  This crew is the second to dock with the module.  

China plans to take what they learn here and apply it to a larger station in 2020 which eventually have 3 interconnected modules.

Here is the link to the complete space.com article

May 14th - Skylab Anniversary

May 14  of this year 2013 marks the 40th anniversary of America's first space station.  massing 169,950 pounds, Skylab was launched atop a modified Saturn V rocket. 

Skylab orbited the Earth from 1973 to 1979.  Due to a constantly descending orbit, Skylab entered the atmosphere and crashed over parts of Australia.  

The space station almost didn't make it.  During launch, a micro-meteor shield detached and  damaged one of the large solar arrays.  The shield also helped maintain temps inside the lab and without most of its power systems  could not maintain comfortable living conditions or electrical systems for life support and to run experiments.  

Skylab hosted three crewed missions during it's active career. 

The first manned mission was Skylab 2 SL-2 (SLM-1). The crew arrived on station at 5/25/73. This mission lasted 28 days. On board were Pete Conrad,  Paul Weitz and Joseph Kerwin.    

The second mission was Skylab 3 SL-3.  The crew was aboard 7/28/73 and the mission ran for  59 days.  Skylab mission 3's crew was  Alan Bean,  Jack Lousma and  Owen Garriott.  

The final manned mission was Skylab 4 on 11/16/73.  This was the longest running mission lasting     84 days.  4's crew was Gerald Carr, William Pogue and  Edward Gibson.  

Plans were to continue manned mission to Skylab, using the new Shuttle to move the crippled station to a higher orbit and repair the launch damage.  However due to delays, the Shuttle was not available at the needed time and Skylab entered the atmosphere, crashing many parts on Australia.     

Could We Build a Dyson Sphere in the Near Future?

I really like the IO9 blog - when they are not coming up with something totally weird, there is always an interesting and thought provoking article. Case in point, Is it reasonable to consider that we could, within the next fifty or so years, develop and put into play the construction and have it completed a couple of decades after that.

I am not going to get deep into what a Dyson is, I suspect that we all have a working concept of one. But to summarize, Freeman Dyson envisioned a sphere of orbiting solar satellites that would harvest most if not all of the output of the sun, making for unlimited power. Over the years since the concept has morphed into rings and complete spheres, the most common being a solid sphere made up of material from the outer planets brought into Earth orbit to complete a sphere at Earth orbital distances, capturing 100% of all of the sun's output. At anytime in the foreseeable future, it is clear that Dyson's like that described as a solid sphere would be completely outside our technological capabilities, however a ring of habitats and solar satellites may very well be possible.

Read the IO9 article here and see what you think