Posts Tagged A Fine Ship

Today in Star Wars: Comparing the ISS against a Star Destroyer

One can view the International Space Station ISS from the ground. It’s a fairly large piece of orbiting human engineering. But what of the interstaller ships of fiction. The ones so large they block out suns just before the fatal attack?

Recently, the Lounge of the Lab Lemming explored this very concept.

Science fiction generally depicts people walking around on the ground, or starships floating close above a planet, but with little connection between the two; The only time I can recall people on the ground seeing spacecraft above are when the Death Star explodes in Return of the Jedi, and when the remains of the Enterprise re-enter the atmosphere in Star Trek 3. But if you can see the ISS from here on Earth, then surely a larger science fiction (or alien) spacecraft would be brighter still.

Drop below the jump to see a comparison against the moon.
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Focus: 30 years of the Space Shuttle Program Celebrated, Infogragphed. To End.

That fancy patch you see above is to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Space Shuttle program and, sadly, its coming retirement.

On the morning of April 12, 1981, the shuttle Columbia, strapped to an enormous external fuel tank and a pair of solid rocket boosters, lifted off on its maiden voyage–and launched a new era in the Space Age. Never before had there been a spacecraft that could be used over and over again, that could land on Earth like an airplane–a glider, specifically.

That flight lasted 2 days, 6 hours, 20 minutes, and 53 seconds, in which time Columbia traveled 1.07 million miles, reaching an orbital altitude of 166 nautical miles. The two-man crew consisted of shuttle commander John Young and pilot Robert Crippen.

To date, the five spacecraft in the shuttle fleet have conducted more than 130 missions and traveled a cumulative half-billion miles–that’s a lot of commuting into Earth’s orbit and back.

Informative infographic below the cut.
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Today in Star Wars: The Firey Death of Garven Dreis.

MedicMike dropped this in our email with little explanation.

The unknown artist had this to say:

“Garven Dreis? Who is Garven Dreis?!?” – tcha, the name of this brave pilot, who gave his live in the battle of Yavin, is not very well known, but his callsign Red Leader is! This little diorama shows the very last scene with Red Leader in Star Wars – A New Hope… the plaque shows his last words (so to speak…)

As we were unsure if this was inventive or just plain lazy, we asked MedicMike. Of course he cleared up everything with the simple statement, “At best, it’s an inventive way to be lazy.”

Indeed.

One more view below the jump.

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A Fine Ship: Student Creates Human-Powered Ornithopter, Flies Like a Bird

13,000 years later, thopters will fly on Arrakis.

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Father-Son Launch HD Camera and iPhone Into Space Using Balloon, NASA Expected to Call Soon

Our inner Space Bastard will not stop smiling at this.

The team was headed by Luke Geissbuhler and his 7-year-old son Max, who found the camera about 30 miles from the launch site in upstate New York. At its peak, the balloon reached an altitude of about 100,000 feet and battled 100-m.p.h. winds before it burst, sending the camera and iPhone hurtling back to earth at rates of 150 m.p.h. A specially designed parachute attached to the capsule eventually slowed it to about 15 m.p.h.

If you want to learn how they did it so that you can do it yourself, they’re writing a book!

Please recall, faithful reader, this is not the first non-government funded pictures of space.

Official site:http://www.brooklynspaceprogram.org/

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A Fine Ship: Dassault Aviation’s Civillain Suborbital Spacecraft

Dassault Aviation wants to put civilians in space, too, and it plans to accomplish that with this air-launched reusable hypersonic vehicle. Based on NASA’s X-38 experimental plane, this one will launch off the wing of a commercial aircraft flying at about 25,000 feet, rocketing its six passengers at Mach 3.5 up to 62 miles high.

via dvice, dassault aviation

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A Fine Ship: Manned Cloud, “Explore the World without a Trace”

We’d gladly exchange a lowly domicile on the filthy earth with a gliding palace in the skies.

Manned Cloud …Jointly developed by Jean-Marie Massaud and French national aerospace research body ONERA.

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