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and let’s get BACK into space!

Purple glistening plasma, you say? Orion plummets back to Earth

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XKCD has a point, but NASA made a big dent in that ‘space deficit’ today – huge kudos!

NASA: ‘There’s your new spacecraft, America!”

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Cosmic first: European spacecraft lands on comet

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Buzz Aldrin’s FIST is smiling… 🙂

Another Great Way to Prove Moon Hoax Conspiracy Theorists Wrong

Proof We Landed on the Moon is in the Dust

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Privateers race to capture forgotten NASA space probe using crowdsourced cash

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I didn’t know about him until today, but sad to see another giant of the American Space Program pass away….RIP.

NASA: Engineer vital to moon landing success dies

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Saw Europa Report this evening – interesting movie. While the plot itself isn’t original – if you have read the book version of a certain sequel to a certain other VERY famous sci fi movie, you essentially know what happens here – but I will leave the clues to the reader.

The acting is good, the effects are well done and straightforward. The movie isn’t Gravity – and isn’t trying to be. Rather, I would put this on the level of Cloverfield or approaching District 9 (even sharing one of the main actors from District 9 as I discovered after reviewing the cast) – the effects serve the story, not the other way around (yeah michael bay and joseph kosinzki – I’m talking to YOU). I like the attention to detail and realism here too – you get the sense of how a real spaceship might look for a mission like this.

Like Gravity, there are some obvious visual influences too, but i’ll leave that to the reader/viewer to discover. And like all the movies I see, I’ve got some nits to pick – meaning spoilers, if you care about such things 🙂

1) No doctor on the ship? I realize Dr. McCoy was quite often just along for the ride until Kirk and Spock got themselves into trouble or hurt, but he served a purpose and barring a two-man spacecraft, I can’t see a mission of this size and ambition not having at least ONE person on the ship trained in medical stuff? They don’t mention it at all. Yet I think they spent a year in space minimum?

2) ‘decisions by committee’ – at one key plot point, the commander doesn’t get to make the final call, they in effect override him and vote. Maybe it’s 18th century of me to expect otherwise, but I think this aspect of movie plots is increasingly tiresome. I can’t remember an actual ship (military or otherwise, in space or on water) that allows ‘democratice decisionmaking’ when there’s a real crisis – that’s actually WHY they have a captain in the first place? That person is expected to make the decisions, and the others obey them?! Here, all of the crew are pretty young excepting the chief engineer, and the captain seems youngest of all but still, why have a ‘commander’ if you aren’t going to have him/her ‘command’? This is simply a mistake in the movie.

3) Spacewalk backup/contingency planning. In at least two situations, there are major problems (to me, anyway) with how they treat risk(s) inherent in spacewalks/EVA and then endure the consequences of same – there seems to be too much ‘cowboy’ and not enough ‘astronaut’ in how they do things. At least in 2001, you had a computer trying to kill people, and you had much more careful planning/control over the EVA than you see here – I think it was handled a bit slipshod. It’s not even clear that the rest of the crew CAN handle an EVA, although I guess it’s assumed.

4) The Prometheus problem. Nowhere near to the stupid degree seen in Prometheus, but the characters here display a somewhat disconcerting detachment when confronted with an apparent obvious danger, and allow themselves to keep moving forward instead of being conservative and SAFE by choosing a move obvious and safer route (like NASA would?).

All in all, I liked the movie, despite the nearly identical plot mentioned above (I really wonder whether the writers had read it or not?) and that it doesn’t overreach, despite the nits just mentioned. Well done!

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I would namecheck 2001, however instead of TRON… candybowl

ISS Startrails – TRONized from Christoph Malin on Vimeo.

very cool video and experiment idea!

What happens when you wring out a washcloth in space?

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