Apocolypse-Not-Quite-Now

In a few years from now, scientists will try to push an asteroid off its orbital path.
It's not a case of "because they CAN"…it's actually a practice run for

saving the world!
So the joint US-European AIDA (Asteroid Deflection and Assessment) mission will crash a probe into a small asteroid called 65803 Didymos. It's only 160m wide, but the test will show if in principle a much larger asteroid threatening to wipe out human civilisation can be deflected the same.
Two spacecraft, one kamikaze and the other to monitor the effect, will be launched in October 2020. They'll travel about 6million km and reach the target mid-2022.
Dr Patrick Michel, lead investigator for the European Space Agency: "To protect Earth from potentially hazardous impacts, we need to understand asteroids much better - what they are made of, their structure, origins and how they respond to collisions."
Planet Earth has had a couple of near misses in the last few years: an asteroid the size of an aircraft carrier wizzed by - closer than the Moon! - in late 2011.

And let's not forget that on 13 April 2029, an asteroid called 99942 Apophis will miss us by a mere 35,000km, a hair's breadth in astronomical terms. Apophis is the size of a football field, enough mass to cause widespread devastation should it ever collide with Earth. It too will be well within the orbit of the moon. That's damn close...so better to be safe than sorry.
After all, if/when the situation is for REAL, Bruce Willis will be too far into his dotage to save us!

H3: The Chinese Lunar Takeaway

The Chinese see things long-term.
And I mean REALLY looooooooooooong-term!
China used to be regarded as a source of laughable-quality novelty products made by impossibly-cheap labourers who worked 20 hours a day for a cup of rice. But then China embraced capitalism 30yrs ago...and never regretted it. Just check the items around you for their production source – the vast majority will say 'Made In China'. China has grabbed the West by the proverbials, and just about torn

'em completely off!
Westerners say "the sky's the limit", but China is looking BEYOND the sky. It's eyeing up the Moon! It landed its first vehicle on the Moon last month, and says it wants to carry out mining operations there!
Why, grasshopper? Because the Moon has H3, a helium isotope with two protons and one neutron. It's rare on Earth but common on the Moon and can produce LOTS of energy! One wheelbarrow of H3 will keep the whole US economy going for a week.
Mining on the Moon…a helluva challenge. Well, don't write off the rice-munching novelty-makers: if anyone can do it, these long-term visionaries can! And as the stuff's worth US$5 billion per ton, it's worth the challenge.
There's the slight stumbling block of the 1979 UN Moon Treaty, saying no state has Moon ownership or mining rights and all decisions concerning the Moon and other celestial bodies must be referred to the international community. But surprise, China hasn't signed it. Neither has US…or any of the other countries that've actually sent anything into space!

They're not bound by the treaty, so when it comes to mining the H3, it'll be first-in first-served. And let's face it, when the mining's going on nearly 390,000kms away on a desolate grey dusty rock, who'll be there to complain?
Pass the moon cakes please, Chang.

Space Elevator? Yea, Right!

Straight from the pages of Ripley's Believe It Or Not, a Japanese construction giant says it'll have a space elevator up and running by 2050....reaching 96,000km out into space.
Robotic cars powered by magnetic linear motors will carry people and cargo to a newly-built space station, at a fraction of the cost of

rockets. It will take seven days to get there.
The Obayashi company says this fantasy is within reach due to the development of carbon nanotechnology, the tensile strength of which is almost a hundred times stronger than steel cable.
Yoji Ishikawa, R+D manager: "Right now we can't make the cable long enough. We can only make 3cm-long nanotubes but by 2030 we'll be able to do it."
The boffins reckon the space elevator could signal the end of rockets which are hugely expensive - a space shuttle costs about $22,000 per kilogram to take cargo into space: the estimate for the space elevator is about $200!
The elevator would allow small rockets to be housed and launched from stations in space without needing huge amounts of fuel to break the Earth's gravitational pull.
It's also hoped the space elevator could help in solving the world's power problems, by delivering huge amounts of cheap solar power or storing nuclear waste.
And hey, why not idly speculate about space tourism! Obayashi is working on 30-man elevator cars, and believes it won't be too long before the Moon is the next must-see tourist destination.
Yea, right!!! Open the pod bay doors, Hal...

The Date Of The End Of The World!

We're all gonna DIE!
Planet Earth may be obliterated by an asteroid!!
And the boffins can even give us the YEAR this'll happen!!!
But don't worry: you and I will be long gone.
The coneheads reckon the Big One will happen on 16 March 2880. Riiiiiggghhhttt...
Of course, this is assuming we haven't poisoned, blown up or right royally fucked the planet over first!
However, good news is: scientists are also closer to working out how to stop this asteroid. Researchers at the University of Tennessee have found that blowing up the space rock, like in the movie Armageddon, could cause several collisions with the Earth...and that's not a good thing! So they feel the way to avoid calamity is to make changes to the surface of the asteroid in order to break it up in outer space.
The chances of Asteroid 1950 DA hitting Earth is 1-in-300, which the eggs reckon is small risk. But check out the stats:
This big rock has a diameter of 1km (3,280 feet) and is travelling at a speed of 14km (8.7 miles) per second. It'll hit Earth at around 61,000kmph (37,900 miles per hour).
The force of the collision would be like 44,800 megatons of TNT exploding and result in tsunamis and a huge change to Earth's climate.
OK, I'm rather glad I won't be here that day...

Sex In Space

At this very moment, a Russian satellite full of geckos (possibly having sex), is floating above us in space!

"Stop watching, ya Russian perverts!"

The Foton-M4 research satellite was launched on 19 July with five geckos on board. All the Ruskies wanted was to observe how the lizards would "do the wild thang" in zero-gravity. Several other earthly creatures, including plants and insects, were also placed on board for experiments.
But that was far too simple a destiny for the craft. Shortly after it's first few orbits, the satellite stopped responding to commands. The Russians're still receiving data from the satellite about how the lizards are doing, but for now, that's all they can do.
A spokesman for Russia's Institute of Biomedical Problems says experts are working to re-establish a connection to the satellite.
Meantime - above all the turmoil on Earth that Russia is embroiled in - it's bizarre Lizard Space Sex project continues as Mother Nature intended, for the rest of the 60-day mission.
Go, you randy lil' green things, you!

First Ad On The Moon?

It's set to be the first advert on the Moon.
It'll also be the first time a soft drink can has been abandoned on the lunar surface!
The Japanese makers of the Pocari Sweat drink are planning to send a specially-designed titanium can engraved with messages to the Big

Cheese next year.
The handwritten messages, from Japanese children and internet users, will be stored as data in 120 titanium plates packaged in the 1kg 'dream capsule'. The capsule's being specially developed to withstand temperatures from -170 to +110.
It will launch on a Falcon 9 (designed by Elon Musk's SpaceX to be a reusable means of space travel). The Falcon 9 has already made three successful supply runs to the International Space Station. However, this planned mission in October 2015 would be the first time one of its rockets has provided propulsion to the moon.
After the rocket has completed it's 4½ day journey, the branded canister will be deposited on the surface by private company Astrobotic Technology's Griffin lander.
Astrobotic is developing the lander to try and win Google's Lunar-X $20million prize, for the first company to land a device on the moon that can both travel 500m on the surface and transmit high-definition pictures back to Earth.
Oh, great! $20million...for leaving rubbish on the Moon!!!
Mind you, NASA has set a precedent...
What could be next: Pink Floyd on The Dark Side???

USA's Cold War Near-Miss

Recently declassified documents show that, in 1961, a hydrogen bomb nearly obliterated America's North Carolina! It would have caused a blast 260 times more powerful than the Hiroshima explosion!

Goldsboro USA: Hiroshima's revenge?

Parker F. Jones (supervisor of the nuclear weapons safety dept at Sandia national laboratories) says that just one simple, vulnerable switch prevented a nuclear catastrophe.
Two H-bombs were accidentally dropped over Goldsboro, North Carolina on Jan.24, 1961 after a B-52 bomber broke up in flight. One of the bombs acted like it had been armed and fired: its parachute opened and triggers engaged. Jones writes that the MK39 Mod 2 bomb had four safety mechanisms, one of which was designed to not work in the air. When the aircraft broke up, two others were rendered ineffective. So just one simple low voltage switch stood between the US and a major disaster!
Schlosser discovered the 1969 document through the Freedom of Information Act. And as if that one incident isn't frightening enough, he discovered at least 700 "significant" accidents and incidents involving 1,250 nuclear weapons between 1950 and 1968!!!
Mind you, though it would've been catastrophic on the immediate populous, should we really feel sorry for the USA's near-miss? After all, this was the country that detonated an H-bomb in space...just because it could! Yes, that's true too!

Amazon Confirms It IS Apollo

"Thunderbirds are GO!!!"

So now it's official!
You'll remember Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos financing the successful deep-sea search for the engines of the Saturn V rocket that sent astronauts to space during the Apollo era. And remember the speculation: wouldn't it be great if...
Now it's been confirmed. Conservators have found on the wreckage the serial numbers of the actual Apollo 11 rocket engines! Bezos has verified that these are engines from the first mission that took astronauts to the moon. And oh, what a coincidence: today marks the 44th anniversary of the 1969 moon landing.

"F.A.B., Mr.Tracey!"

Bezos: "44 years ago, Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon, and now we have recovered a critical technological marvel that made it all possible."
Each of the engines weighs nearly 9 tons, and they came in a cluster of five. They provided 32 million horsepower by burning 6,000 pounds of fuel every second, and together they lifted the largest rocket in history 38 miles above the Earth in less than three minutes. After separation, the rocket engines made their re-entry at 5,000 miles per hour, and then plummeted into the ocean. That's where they remained, undiscovered for decades, until Bezos' team found them last March, using sophisticated sonar.

Starting A Long-Term Relationship With Sofia

The Hubble space telescope's little sister has touched down in Christchurch.
The US$1-million-per-mission US/German flying telescope SOFIA landed for the first time in the city just after midday today.
SOFIA - the Stratospheric Observatory For Infrared Astronomy - is a refrigerated 2.5m-diameter telescope inside a 1977 Boeing 747SP, a shortened jumbo jet that had seen service with United Airlines and, earlier, PanAm.
SOFIA is the only airborne telescope in the world, and the programme is a joint venture between NASA and German space agency DLR. The plane was likely to be making winter flights in and out of Christchurch for the next 20 years. It will base itself here for about three weeks, but budget constraints meant that this year there would be no money for public open days and outreach programmes.
Christchurch was chosen as a southern hemisphere base because of its often cloud-free night skies and lack of atmospheric haze, its long airport runway and the relatively empty airspace around the South Island. The city also has a track record of supporting logistically difficult missions: Operation Deep Freeze and the US Antarctic Programme have been an important part of life at Christchurch Airport since the mid-1950s.
SOFIA's NZ$1.2m-per-mission price tag makes it as expensive to operate as the Hubble space telescope itself.
But how does it work?

Love: The Final Frontier

A love of all things Star Trek might not make you the captain of Starship OKCupid, but who cares what those lesser lifeforms think... now that StarTrekDating.com is here?
Yeup, that's right, and just in time for the next movie too!
Someone or some THING out there in the universe SOMEwhere is waiting to love you. The webpage headlines:
'Set Phasers to stunning... and if that doesnt work, set them to stun! Our matching system for online daters helps improve your chances of finding a relationship. If youre a Sci-fi fan and want to meet your Borg Queen or Captain Kirk, try it now!'

Intergalactic hottie?

"Star Trek fans are nerds," says Oliver Gough, owner of StarTrekDating.com. "They know what they're looking for." He reckons sites like Match.com are too broad for the kinds of hyperenthusiastic people who use his service. After all, these are people who "nine times out of 10 post pictures of themselves photoshopped on the Starship Enterprise!" And there's nothing wrong with that! I myself have a pic of me in Starship costume on the Enterprise bridge - but that was the REAL thing (well, a real replica), NO Photoshop. Truely! It WAS!
So beam aboard Trekkies, and Klingon for the ride of your lovelife - the next gen Love Boat is about to depart! You have the con, Mr Sulu!

Rocket Man

After lying on the ocean floor for more than 40yrs, two Apollo rocket engines have again seen the light of day.
A team organised by billionaire Jeff Bezos spent 3 weeks recovering the corroded F-1 engines, which sat more than 4km beneath the Atlantic. Bezos doesn't know precisely which Apollo mission the engines flew on as their original serial numbers are missing, but he hopes they're the Apollo 11 engines that took the first men to the moon.
Bezos (founder/CEO of Amazon.com) announced his intentions to pull the Space Age relics up from the depths almost a year ago. Little has been heard about the mission since...until success was announced this week. Bezos used private funds to raise the engines from their resting places 4,267m below the surface of the ocean, but he maintains they remain the property of NASA.
Each F-1 engine is nearly 6m tall, 4m wide and more than 8,000kg. They produced 7.7m pounds of thrust and lifted the gigantic Saturn V (the largest and most powerful rocket ever built in the US) to nearly 58km above the Earth to a speed of almost 10,000km/hr.

See ya later!

+ ...meanwhile, Voyager 1 may have left our solar system. Huge changes in radiation levels measured by the probe confirm it's travelled beyond our sun's influence.
V1 and sister probe V2 launched 35yrs ago on a tour of the outer planets: V2's now 9 billion miles from the sun. The faster V1 is now more than 11 billion miles away: it's signals take approx.17hrs to reach Earth.

Iran: Monkey Or President - Any Difference?

Soon after Iran said it'd sent a monkey into space at the end of January, observers started wondering if it'd been just monkeying

Spot the difference...

around.
Iran's official pre-launch photos showed a distinctive monkey with a mole above its right eye. But footage after it supposedly returned showed another monkey altogether - one without a mole, with darker fur, and with a changed facial structure and nose shape. Opps!
If Iran's going to blow its own trumpet after ' yet another great Iranian triumph', you'd think it would get it right in the propoganda pictures stakes! Duuuhhh!!! Iran now claims this was merely a mix-up in pix, but has declined to produce both animals at the same time...
However, another possibility: a conspiracy theory of multiple monkeys! Iran sends numerous monkeys into space and then (in another great Iranian triumph) surgically joins together a composite creature from the various limbs of countless monkey corpses strewn about the spacecraft after it lands. Is this "new monkey" one monkey? Is it every monkey? Is it all of us? At what point does this become more of an philosophical question and less of a biological one?

"Eez der clone ready...?"

Being able to put a live monkey into space would allow Iran to move one step closer to launching a human. That may be a golden opportunity for its dickhead president to put his money where his mouth is! Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says he's willing to be the first human to be sent into space by his country. It's unclear if he's serious, but some hopeful Iranians have set up a Facebook page: "In support of sending Ahmadinejad into space". One user posted: "We'll even pay for the shuttle's fuel costs!"
Prez Ahmadinejad's political star has been on the wane since he fell out with parliament and lost support of Iran's supreme leader. But could he soar again? Or would Iran produce a Ahmadinejad replica after landing? No, one of him is more than enough!

The Final Frontier For Free?

Beginning next year, the Space Expedition Corporation will offer daily commercial flights into space on its two-seater Lynx reusable spaceplane.
Customers will get to view the planet from over 100km up. For US$95K, the plane - which can operate from normal airports - offers people the chance to become astronauts. So far, 200 tickets have been sold.
However, if you feel the price is a little out of your budget, Lynx is launching a competition to give one lucky person an opportunity to go where few have gone before. The company is offering the chance to win an ultimate out-of-this-world experience: a trip to space. Astronaut Buzz Aldrin, the 2nd man ever to set foot on the moon, and deodorant brand Lynx, have launched a competition, with the first prize a once-in-a-lifetime chance to blast into orbit, on the Lynx SXC (Space Expedition Corporation) space shuttle's inaugural launch in 2014.
Top-voted candidates will qualify for the Lynx Space Academy challenge weekend, held this Northern summer, where they'll face physical and mental NASA-style tests. The four strongest candidates will then be flown to Orlando, Florida, to experience what it's really like to be an astronaut in the final series of challenges.
One lucky winner will secure their place to go to space in 2014!!! (Check out the promo below...)
Factoids:
The Lynx rocketplane is a suborbital horizontal-takeoff, horizontal-landing rocket-powered spaceplane developed by California-based XCOR to compete in the emerging suborbital space flight market. The Lynx will carry a pilot, a ticketed passenger (maybe you?), and/or a payload or small satellites above 100km altitude, on flights of 30-45min.duration. Those aboard will experience up to 3min.of weightlessness.

What A Mad Enterprise!

As USA teeters on the edge of its 'fiscal cliff', an American engineer is petitioning the White House to leap straight off it...and boldly go where no man has gone before!
This space nerd wants the good ol' USofA to look at building a real-life starship Enterprise (just like the one in tv's Star Trek)!

Revelation: Star Trek wasn't REAL!

This nutsville proposal was submitted through the White House's official "We the People" channel, which promises a response from Obama's boys to any petition gathering at least 25,000 signatures. They don't guarantee just what sort of response might be forthcoming... but hey, even a "You gotta be kidding me!" from Barak is a response, right? (Just last month, a petition to build a Death Star like the spherical spaceship in Star Wars hit the 25K mark, and so is currently awaiting its official response.)
Anyway, back to the future: the Enterprise proposal comes from a geek who goes by the name BTE Dan. This guy posted plans for constructing a life-size, flyable starship Enterprise on his website last year. He claims USA has within its technological reach the ability to build the 1st generation of the USS Enterprise inside the next 20 years. Support for his idea is currently running at around 5,000 signatures...
BTE Dan reckons this is no joke, but a practical step forward for space exploration: "This will be Earth's first gigawatt-class interplanetary spaceship with artificial gravity. It can serve as a spaceship, space station, and space port all in one. In total, one thousand crew members and visitors can be on board at once."
Some experts question certain aspects of the plan eg: no artificial gravity technology currently exists, and the largest number of people ever accommodated on any space vehicle until now has been 13.
But BTE Dan maintains its motivational benefits would match its scientific paybacks: "Few things could collectively inspire people on Earth more than seeing the Enterprise being built in space. And the ship could go on amazing missions, like taking the first humans to Mars while taking along a large load of base-building equipment for constructing the first permanent base there."
And those who authorise such expenditure, financially crippling their country and dragging the world economy down too, can then beam aboard, Scotty, and escape the global wrath...riiiiiiigghhtt!

Paintballs Save The Planet

An MIT graduate has devised a wacky plan to save the world from destruction by an inbound asteroid.
Sung Wook Paek of the Cambridge Massachsetts academy's Dept of Aeronautics and Astronautics won the 'Move An Asteroid' 2012 Competition sponsored by the UN Space Generation Advisory Council (SGAC).
His plan skips the asteroid-killing nukes a la Armageddon and Deep Impact, and relies instead on a far more quirky method: paint.
He proposes maneuvering a spacecraft close to an incoming earth destroyer, then firing two monstrous volleys of paint pellets - the first to cover one half of the asteroid in a light-coloured paint powder, and the second to do the same to the other side after it rotates into view. With the asteroid thus brightened (or, more properly, having its albedo increased) the sun's solar radiation would more forcefully push upon it, knocking it off-course.
If you've stood in the sun wearing dark clothing, you'll know dark surfaces absorb the sun's rays, while they bounce off light surfaces. And from your deep grasp of Newton's Third Law of Motion, you'll also know that when something bounces off something, the first something gives the second something a push. The asteroid would be slowly but steadily nudged away, saving our beloved planet. The paint pellets themselves would also have a kinetic effect on the asteroid's course when hitting it, adding to the trajectory-altering effect. Bonus!
Paek calculated what would be required to deflect the asteroid Apophis, scheduled to close-call in 2029 and again in 2036. This

Who needs Bruce Willis
to save the world,
when we've got
Paula The Paintball
Princess??!!

asteroid has 450m diameter and a 27 gigaton mass. Should Apophis hit us, the results wouldn't be pretty! According to Paek, a mere five tons of paint would be needed to coat Apophis with a five-micrometre layer of paint powder. It would then take up to 20 years for the force of solar radiation to push Apophis sufficiently off-course, saving mankind.
A quick look at the calendar shows we still have time to use this technique before the 2036 visit. As for the 2029 one? Worry not: that pass will merely be close enough to deflect Apophis sufficiently to give it a better shot at us in 2036 - although the odds of it actually doing so are quite poor.
As for the odds of Planet Earth using Paek's paint? Also quite poor!!

Nazi Buddhist Space Statue. Yea. Right.

To paraphrase slightly: if it sounds too good to be true, it probably wasn't actually discovered by Nazis.
Last month, researchers announced they had identified a "priceless," 1000yr.old swastika-emblazoned statue of buddha carved from a meteorite, and discovered by a Nazi ethnologist before WWII!
Now, according to The Guardian, Buddhism specialist Achim Bayer claims the 24cm statue features over a dozen "pseudo-Tibetan" characteristics that cast serious doubts on whether the figure was really sculpted in the pre-Buddhist Bon culture of the 11th Century...such as the statue's shoes, trousers and hand positioning, and that the buddha has a full beard rather than the thin facial hair usually given to a deity in Tibetan and Mongolian art. Bayer says he believes the statue's a European fake made sometime between 1910-1970.
An earlier expert had claimed the statue's previous owner told him it had been brought to Europe by Ernst Schäfer, a Nazi ethnologist. In the late 1930s, Schäfer led an SS expedition to Tibet in search of ze Aryan race's origins. But historian Isrun Engelhardt (an expert on zat expedition) is unconvinced: "There is an extremely precise list of the purchased objects, including date, place and value, but this statue is not on it." Achtung! Ze list has over 2,000 pieces but ze meteorite statue is not a piece purchased privately by Schäfer.

Vell, ve VOULD haf found it,
if it wasn't for zat meddling
Doctor Indiana Jones!

In fact, there seems to be only one piece of the statue's story that IS true: that it was in fact hewn from a piece of the famed Chinga iron meteorite, strewn across the border region between Russia and Mongolia 10-20,000 years ago.
Ach, at least it's still a statue from space, ja? Just don't mention ze vor!

Neil Who?

There are many Neils and many Armstrongs...so someone was bound to mess it up.
NBC News was the first to report that astronaut and first man on the moon Neil Armstrong had died, but its website initially called him Neil Young by accident!

So to clarify, rocker Neil Young is perfectly alive - although he often looks decidedly otherwise these days!
Neil Armstrong (August 5, 1930 – August 25, 2012) was the iconic astronaut who passed away last Saturday aged 82, after he suffered complications from heart surgery.
And then, in another error, it was written that Neil had stepped out of the space shuttle rather than the lunar module, until someone pointed out the error. In 1969, Armstrong commanded the Apollo 11 spacecraft, the first ever to reach the moon - conspiracy theorists will forever debate that fact.
The other great debate is over what Armstrong actually said: was his walk on the moon one small step for man, or 'a' man? His first words from the moon were heard all over Earth, thus:
"That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."
But Armstrong said immediately after the landing that he'd been misquoted. He said he actually said, "That's one small step for 'a' man." It's just that people didn't hear it. He acknowledged when he listened to a recording that he didn't hear himself say it either: "The 'a' was intended. I thought I said it. I can't hear it when I listen on the radio reception here on Earth, so I'll be happy if you just put it in parentheses."
Although no one in the world heard the 'a', research backs Armstrong. In 2006, a computer analysis found evidence that Armstrong said what he said he said. An Australian computer programmer ran a software analysis looking at sound waves and found a wave that would have been the missing 'a'. It lasted 35 milliseconds, much too quick to be heard...but it was there, just like Armstrong was back in July 1969.
Debate THAT.

Is There Life On Mars?

To answer David Bowie's long-sung question, yes: there may well be Life On Mars soon!
A Dutch company has plans to send humans there. But before you think about signing up for this Richard Branson-type adventure, be advised you won't be coming back! EVER! This ticket is strictly one-way only.

Home Sweet Home...Bowie-style

Mars One is the company behind this planned mission. Its founder, Dutch entrepreneur Bas Lansdorp, says money for the trip will come from a "global media spectacle"... hmmm.
The plan is to send a number of humans to live on Mars indefinitely by 2023. First it plans to send out a communications satellite in 2016, with a rover being dispatched in 2018 to find a suitable location for a settlement. Once the company finds a suitable site, it'll send out settlement units to Mars in 2020, which the existing rover will then set up. Once the cosy little hamlet is established, Mars One hopes to send a small crew that would leave Earth in December 2022, and arrive on the Red Planet in April 2023.
But first, willing participants need to be found. Mars One plans to hold a worldwide "lottery" to select 40 people to join this daring scheme. This chosen 40 will spend time at a specialist training facility, where they'll be whittled down to a crew of ten. This team will go to Mars and live there for "the rest of their lives".
If you're interested in helping establish the first permanent human settlement on Mars, you'll have wait until next year for the so-called global "lottery" to take place.
Doesn't this sound a LOT like 'reality TV in space'? And how will be those settlers survive? They sure won't be able to grow crops. Or does 'one-way trip' mean 'you're on your own'? Will Bas keep sending regular supplies once the media novelty has worn off? After all, one can only survive for a limited time on Mars Bars!

Drones For Google Maps?

Big Brother is watching you even closer now!
Google has small spyplanes taking hi-res pix above some major cities - the latest step in its plan to create a digital map of the world.
Google's using a fleet of planes owned and operated by contractors, flown exclusively for Google. Asked about potential privacy issues, it said it was like all aerial imagery, and that the type of pictures have been used for a long time. Google's used planes for photos in the past, but not systemically like this before.
For years Google's had camera-equipped cars roaming the globe, taking panoramic pictures for its mapping service Street View: this raised privacy concerns here in NZ as well as other countries. You may recall in 2010, Google admitted the cars had accidentally collected emails, passwords and other personal data from people's home wireless networks. The Street View cars have driven more than 8million km/5million miles photographing streets all over the world, for the one billion active users of its maps.
When asked if it had plans to use unmanned aerial drones to gather 3D photos, Google dodged the question, saying drones were still being evaluated by the Federal Aviation Administration: "That's a larger can of worms that we're not going to get into here." Yes or No would have been more reassuring.
So there's already global satellite imagery on-line, Google Earth, Street View with cutesy 3D buildings, coupled with publically-supplied photographs of locations via Panoramio, now what sounds like a highly-detailed flight simulator. With such a deluge of hi-detail imagery available, I have one simple question: WHY?
No-one spends this much money just to share pretty pictures...

The Truth Is...Down There

They were looking for shipwrecks. Instead they found...this.

A 200ft.wide unidentified object (as big as a jumbo jet) at the bottom of the Baltic Sea between Sweden and Finland.
Swedish researchers Peter Lindberg and Dennis Asberg return this week to the site of the Baltic Anomaly, a 'something' they spotted on sonar last northern summer. At the time, Lindberg described the object as "a large circle, about 60m in diameter. You see a lot of weird stuff in this job, but during my 18 years as a professional I've never seen anything like this. The shape is completely round." Adding to the mystery, he saw evidence of scars or marks disturbing the environment nearby, suggesting the object somehow moved across the ocean floor to where his team found it. The discovery was news worldwide, with many speculating it was a crashed UFO.

Peter and Dennis:
quite calm about it all really

Lindberg, captain of the Ocean Explorer: "We don't know if it's a natural phenomenon, or an object. It just turned up on the monitor." The Ocean Explorer crew includes 13 researchers and a Swedish TV crew to document the event. The hunters will use sonar to make 3D images of the bottom of the sea. They'll send down deep-sea divers and a camera robot, and take samples from the sea bed to measure for toxicities and radiation.
Lindberg's willing to speculate: it could be meteor debris, a naturally-occurring gas well, perhaps the remains of a Russian warship from the late C19th.: "But if it's not man-made, and was made by another form of intelligent life, it would be very lucky!"
That would be the understatement of the MILLENNIUM!

PS: 18 June 2012 - OK, so it's probably NOT a UFO...but what IS it?