Close Call for NASA's Fermi Gamm-ray Space Telescope!!

NASA's $690 million Fermi Space Telescope was nearly lost last year (4/3/2012) when a defunct one

and a half ton Soviet era reconnaissance satellite (cosmos 1805) missed the space telescope by only 700 feet. 

A much worse scenario was avoided when engineers instructed Fermi to perform a maneuver that took the satellite barely out of harms way.  

To get an idea of just how close this was to total destruction of the Fermi Telescope, at the speeds that both  objects were travelling, 700 feet equates to a difference of 30 milliseconds between one spacecraft entering and leaving the collision point, before the next craft enters the very same space.  Due to their size, this meant that a sizable portion of each craft would still be in the collision zone. 

As luck would have it, Fermi had onboard thrusters that were specifically designed to move the satellite out of  way of potential threats.   A one second burn of all thrusters changed Fermi's attitude enough that when April 3 2012 arrived, it missed the defunct satellite by 6 miles.  

This occurrence  only goes to heighten awareness of the growing threat to manned and unmanned spacecraft in orbit of colliding with a piece of space junk.  NASA now tracks 17,000 object larger than 4 inches across with only 7% being active satellites.  

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/05/02/russian-space-junk-almost-destroys-nasa-telescope/#ixzz2SB7Vp1YM

Thanks to Xnewsman for the heads up!

A Boy And His Atom: The World's Smallest Movie

Hey kiddies, here is something that will and should blow your mind. It is a short film made by IBM researchers working in the field of atomic memory. Here, IBM researchers used a scanning tunneling microscope to move thousands of carbon monoxide molecules, to make a movie so small it can be seen only when you magnify it 100 million times. This film, rightfully so, holds the Guinness World Records™ record for the World's Smallest Stop-Motion Film.

And below is a short description of the ripples that are constantly being created on the small screen. I was wondering...now I know!

Review: Redline an Anime Movie

Redline is a 2010 anime film, running 102 minutes.  Released by the studio Madhouse in Japanese

with English subtitles.

Redline is an auto racing movie.  In the far distant future our main character JP qualifies for the REDLINE underground (against the law) auto race.  

As you can expect, the Redline race is a "no rules" competition with plenty of crashes, fires and other forms of constant mayhem.  The graphic are all over the top, almost suggestion an altered state while putting the frames together.  Psychedelic  colors and characters alike make for a surreal feel. 

It might take you a couple of tries but you can get through the movie and may even like it at the end. 

I had trouble getting started for the simple reason there is very little reality to grab a hold of and for me, that is a turn off.  Others have enjoyed just this aspect.  

The DVD has plenty of extras though so there is a plus for those that like deleted scenes or a director's commentary.   

I appreciate the effort that went into this film, but in the end I felt as though I needed a Bleach movie to clean my anime palette.   Rate 5 for the movie and 7 for the extras for an overall 6.  

Google "Glass" Video

By now I would hope that most have already heard about Google's head mounted (glasses type of device / format) computer called - Google Glass. Glass is a wearable computer with a head-mounted display that is being developed by Google in the Project Glass research and development project, with the mission of producing a mass-market ubiquitous computer. By ubiquitous they are striving for a system that does not interfere with every day life, by being small and as thin as possible.

 Here is a short video showing the Glass system in operation. They look really small and modern. Not likely to see them for sale any time soon, but looking at the early models, this may just be something to look forward to. One can only wonder at the price of such innovation.

Check out the video below.

 

Guess what 424 Million will Get Ya....

What WILL $424 million get you if you are NASA?  Well this pretty chunk of change will get you, according to a recent AP article: 

• training and transporting of six astronauts to and from the ISS in 2016 and the first half of 2017 in Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

hummm something tells me that the Russians are not as desperate for Uncle Sam script as they once might have once been.....

Oh and look, I know NASA would have a MUCH larger bill if a country came to us and said hey we would like to send six of our spacemen to the ISS aboard the Shuttle....what is the charges?   But really I am going to do a NETWORK here and I encourage others to do the same! 

 

Now I could turn this into a big rant....but I won't, but if this is not a case of just not looking ahead and planning for the future.....mumble mumble mumble

I am pulling my punches here a bit but NASA chief Charles Bolden is pointing a finger right at congress, blaming our present dilemma on Congress' failure to support the President's call for a program that would have more co-operation between the government and private industry calling the initiative the "Commercial Crew Program"  which may in fact allowed the US' lifting program to flourish instead of forcing NASA to extend its' contract with Russia. 

There is more that I think you will find interesting in this recent AFP article