Nov 1999
mornings
that you get after that amazing Sunday night party which you can't remember
much about. But at least it finished on a high note. The American X33 was
an unexpected casualty, its new, amazing, high-tech, carbon fibre fuel
tank split during testing. About the best thing that can be said is that
it didn't split in flight, but I suspect it gives us a taste of things
to come in this overly ambitious Space Shuttle replacement programme.
some
kind of a deal with the Russians for compensation and has banned launches
from the site once more. Hopefully the site will be able to launch the
next stage of the International Space Station in February. Yes, February,
all those shuttle delays last month with the faulty wires and some new
ones found in the self-destruct devices for the solid rocket boosters have
moved the timetable again.
and
recovered it safely from Inner Mongolia after 21 hours during which time
it completed 14 orbits. Not long now and we're going to be seeing "Taikonauts"
up there as well as astronauts and cosmonauts.
I say it's good because the possibility of China being strong in space will spur the US and Russia into some rapid development work. China has realized that the country that gains and exploits space first will become the most powerful industrialized country on Earth, and very much wants the prize. We can expect to see an effort on behalf of the Chinese government nearly or perhaps more than equal to that of the enthusiasm displayed in the race to the moon. You can be assured that once China reaches orbit, it will not stop. Many observers will mistakenly think that this is a show by the Chinese government to bring attention to itself as a world power rather than a serious attempt at a manned space industry because the Chinese rockets are built using relatively low-tech designs, but forget that these are aimed at being working technology, not some kind of technology showcase like NASA.
Toil
And HubbleThe service (now a rescue) mission will replace all six of the dodgy gyroscopes as well as beefing up the solar panels and replacing the cameras. The solar panels and cameras have been replaced before, but it makes sense to keep Hubble equipped with the latest observing technology.
The
Leonid meteor storm turned out to be more of a bit of drizzle for us Kiwis.
The best view was to be had when we were on the other side of the sky,
and every time I poked my bleary eyes out into the night I saw some most
excellent cloud formations. OK, I saw one meteor doing about 72 Km per
second
overhead, but that was it. Even last year's "dismal" showing was better
than that, although as the image (thanks ESA) shows, they had a better
show in Spain. The best view however was had from one of two specially
adapted USAF jets, which flew back and forth over the best bits of the
show. I wondered if they guys up there felt the teensiest bit nervous.
It's
A Bird! It's A Plane! It's ... A Planet?It's clear that the planet could not have formed where it is, but must have been captured and dragged in, say observers. But, recent evidence from the Gallileo probes dropped into Jupiter show that there are too many gasses on Jupiter for it to have formed so close to our sun. So is it possible perhaps that it is common for large planets to form far away and be attracted in by their sun? It's amazing the questions that can be brough on by watching a star flickering 51 lightyears away.