Eye in the Sky

So I said to my coworker: "Hey, the ISS put cameras on the outside of it, so you can watch it live stream Earth."

"Is it boring?" she asked.

I thought about it. "On one hand, yes. On the other hand, you're watching EARTH from SPACE in real time. It's simultaneously amazing and boring, and that such a thing can be both at once is absolutely mind blowing." She thought about it as well, and concurred.

The link I provided is on the Johnson Space Center portion of the NASA web site. It's neat because it shows you what the International Space Station is streaming in one window, and then shows you where above Earth the ISS is as well; it shows you where on Earth is nighttime, what time it is, etc. There are four cameras it can swap between. The Johnson Space Center is in Houston, Texas, which is also (I believe) where Mission Control, Houston is. So "Houston, we've had a problem here" during the Apollo 13 mission? That's who those guys were talking to.

But call up the livestream, and look at it for a little while. Put your boredom away and let the wonderment creep in. You're not going to see baby animals, you (hopefully) won't see much happen at all. But at the same time? You are watching what is almost literally everything. You can see the real horizon, the glowing curve of the planet we all live on and have to come from. You can see the solar arrays of the ISS. And sometimes? You can see some lights down here, when it all grows dark.

The Ethics of Space Travel

You'd think somebody with as much nuclear paranoia as mine would have considered the amount of radiation a person would be exposed to on a trip to Mars. But I didn't. I think to some degree, I assumed ships were shielded and left it at that. It's how it works in the movies, right?

Picture of Space Shuttle Atlantis, from NASA web site

Wheels in the sky

Did you know that you can see all kinds of recent pictures of the moon, courtesy of the Lunar Reconnaisance Orbiter?  They in fact released a mosaic image of the north pole of the moon, something that blows my mind.

 

(artist rendering of LRO, from NASA page)

It got me thinking about other orbiters we have. Because we do have other orbiters.

Accuracy and Science in Space Sci Fi

So there's this Tumblr, Things that Cost More Than Space Exploration written (curated?) by somebody who takes Tumblr as a medium seriously, which is pretty cool in and of itself. The examples given are also pretty cool.

I found the Tumblr at the same time I located and perused this non fiction book, Scientific American: Inventions from Outer Space: Everyday Uses for NASA Technology, by David Aaron Baker. It includes things like actual UV protection glasses lenses (I guess there's a gel layer or something? I've only skimmed it so far) and water purifiers (both particularly useful things in space, one would assume).

Coronal Loops in the active region of the sun, from NASA website

And speaking of NASA, I watched the movie Europa Report the other day. Apparently NASA (or maybe just one NASA scientist? I'm a little unclear) had input in the movie's development, trying to make the space travel as realistic as possible. I dug it, for the most part, with only a few nitpicky problems (WHY WOULD YOU TRIM SOMEBODY'S HAIR ON A SPACE SHIP?!). My demand for accuracy notwithstanding, I'm able to suspend my disbelief fairly well in the watching of movies, only revisiting them later and realizing my dissatisfaction with certain points. I'd seems I'd heard NASA has an interest in being involved with peoples' scifi, to help with accuracy and such (And perhaps get more attention in the public eye, so maybe they can get some more funding again....), and there is a crapload of information on the NASA website, from fact sheets on research centers to pictures taken by our various picture taking devices (Hubble, etc.) There's even a NASA Kids Club!

 I happened upon Europa Report as a "You might like this if you watched Event Horizon", and so of course, I've fond subsequent titles for if I liked Europa Report (Apollo 18, Moon).  But anyway, flaws aside, Europa Report does use some real science, and I felt it was well acted (though they did this thing where two of the male main characters were of a certain build and coloring, so I was constantly going "Wait, is it a crew of six? Is it five? Is the thriller part of this movie that there's a GHOST CREW MEMBER? Oh no, there's the sixth guy. Okay."

So now I kind of want a movie or book with a ghost crew member. Which might also have to do with having watched the anime Another, in which a specific third-year high school class would frequently develop a ghost classmate.