Content Tagged “space”

• Don’t Touch the Space Balls!

  The Queensland Fire Department in Australia is warning beachgoers not to touch mysterious metal balls that have washed up at Forrest Beach. Forrest Beach is about 200 km south of Cairns, facing the Palm Islands in North Queensland.

  Specialist QFR Scientific teams have safely secured a number of the items throughout the weekend and remain on scene continuing their work. A 50-metre exclusion zone is still in place. The nature and origin of the debris are still being investigated.

  A “space ball” on Forrest Beach near Cairns (Photo: Queensland Fire Department)

  It looks like these objects are hydrazine monopropellant tanks from the upper stage of a rocket or from a de-orbited satellite. On social media, they have been dubbed “space balls” in reference to the 1987 Mel Brooks film Spaceballs that actually has an upcoming sequel set for next year.

  Apparently, the “space balls” have appeared before, at least once, in 2011 in a remote area of Namibia.

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• Kerbal Boom

  As it turns out, the Artemis II mission has caused a major influx of players to Kerbal Space Program. It’s hit its all-time highest number of players in April of this year. Mind you, this is a game that came out almost exactly 15 years ago! The April peak made KSP almost exceed the Day One player count of Kerbal Space Program 2, which completely underdelivered and has now been completely abandoned by its developers and players alike (even though it is somehow still being sold on Steam).

  Data from SteamDB

  With the Artemis hype, KSP has finally recovered the players it has lost to its own pretend-sequel and seems to have gained a new life with folks going back to it. There are 6000 people playing it as I write this! I feel like it’s time for me to go back to my own space program.

  

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• More from Artemis II

  I am continuing to watch the Artemis II stream and being fascinated by it. As a kid, when I was just beginning to read, I grew up with these popular science books here in Germany called Was ist was¹. They were aimed at young school kids and had lots of great pictures and diagrams. Most other kids were all about the dinosaur books, and while those fascinated me too, I quickly latched on to a number of books about space, especially one that was about the Apollo moon missions. Ever since, I have waited for people to go back to the moon. I must say that I've been very disappointed to wait over 30 years for this, which I had not expected when reading those books as a kid, but now that we’re going back, I am very excited about the whole thing.

  And the amazing pictures we are getting back almost make up for the long wait. Some of these would make excellent desktop wallpaper, I feel.

  

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• Artemis II Photos

  So, I’ve been laid out with a major manflu of some kind for a couple of days now. So I’m just vegetating away in front of my computer, playing some Stellaris and I’ve got NASA’s Artemis II stream open on the side. And, holy shit, these photos they are downlinking to Earth are fucking amazing!

  

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• A Tidbit about the AARO Logo

  Now this is really funny. Apparently, the original director of AARO, Sean M. Kirkpatrick, used Reddit to come up with the organisation's motto “vita nostra est quod cogitationes nostra facere est”.

  Can someone translate this quote to latin for me please?

  The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it.

  

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• “Kerbal Space Program 2” Stream

  I’ve put the whole recording of my first Kerbal Space Program 2 stream on Youtube.

  After heavy initial problems getting this game to not kill the performance of my computer and being able to stream it, and hours of problems in game getting into orbit and actually decoupling the satellite, I finally achieved success at the end of the stream. It made me so proud!

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