PakledHostage

You weren't the only one having a little laugh at Orbital Sciences expense. Seems that someone had a little fun with the Orbital Sciences Wikipedia entry as well:

I just heard about this story on the evening news: Scientists Say Rosetta's Comet Stinks -- Literally Whether you regard the story as an odious attempt at keeping Cherry-Gerry in the news or as a legitimate science story, it is kind of fun.

Thank you for sharing your clearly learned opinion.

For what it is worth, this proud nerd didn't have a problem with the "realism" (such as it was) in Gravity. I had a problem with the story.

Well, I managed to get a lucky break about 1/2 hour ago. One of those through the clouds views that you can look at briefly with the naked eye. The camera was having a bit of a hard time focusing on it so none of my photos are much to write home about (I have a mirrorless camera that you struggle to focus manually using the LCD screen on the back when the autofocus sucks). Here's the best shot that I got: Edit: Here's another image, taken through a proper break in the clouds using an ND3.0 and an ND0.9 filter stacked together to avoid overwhelming the camera's sensor.

Looks like it is going to be cloudy for me during the partial solar eclipse tomorrow, but hopefully some of you here in North America will be able to see it. I'll bring my camera and ND filters to work just in case but I might have to watch it on Slooh...

One of my co-workers passed along a link to an article about how SpaceX is already helping NASA plan a Mars mission. The article includes a link to a cool video showing thermal imaging views of a Falcon 9 first stage's redirection and re-entry burns. The video was filmed from a NASA chase plane:

NASA issued a press release this morning stating that all three of their Mars orbiters remain healthy following the flyby of comet C/2013 A1 Siding Spring yesterday. I don't see any updates on the ESA's Mars Express mission page about the status of their orbiter and India doesn't seem to have posted any updates on MOM's mission page either. I trust that those two missions fared similarly well. With that behind us, I'm looking forward to seeing some images!

Slooh is currently back online with their followup live stream for anyone who's interested. http://live.slooh.com/stadium/live/comet-siding-spring-swings-by-on-a-close-approach-to-mars

Slooh just said that they're going off the air now but that they will be back in about 5 and a half hours from now for a follow up. They are hoping to have some data and/or images to show by then. The MAVEN project scientist that they interviewed (sorry, I missed his name) indicated that they already had data on the ground from MAVEN when he signed off a few minutes ago.

Slooh's audio is working again now. So is their stream. Edit: Ninja'd.

Might be the better bet. Slooh seems to be having audio problems...

Closest approach to Mars occurs in about 30 minutes from the time of this writing. Slooh is doing a live broadcast starting in about 15 minutes. Edit - The broadcast starts in about 7 minutes now. Here's the link: http://live.slooh.com/stadium/live/comet-siding-spring-swings-by-on-a-close-approach-to-mars

Back when I last played the game (around about v0.18), you could add a plugin's right-click menu options (such as the Figaro receiver's option to turn the receiver on and off) to action groups in the VAB. I'd be surprised if this is no longer the case but you could be right.

Somehow the music in that trailer reminds me of the music in the trailer for Prometheus... I wonder if it was intentional? I bet they had fun making it.

Yes. Please have a read through the FAQ section in the first post of this thread.

@Tommygun: I'm with you... Stupid clouds. It was clear up until about 2 hours before first contact with the Earth's penumbra but then the fog rolled in. I was able to get one photo with the moon partially in the penumbra and partially in the umbra but it doesn't look like much. It is obscured by fog and you can't see any of the red color. Maybe I'll post it later today. @SuperFastJellyfish: I plan on driving to Oregon or Idaho for that one too. Somewhere where it is likely to be clear. I had the good fortune to see a total solar eclipse about 15 years ago and it was such an amazing experience that I'd love to see another one. Everything went quiet during totality. The street lights came on, the birds stopped singing. It was kind of creepy actually. And I remember there being a lot of towering cu's around. Watching the edge of the moon's shadow approach at thousands of kilometers per hour from off in the distance at the end of totality (we could see it coming from the light reflected on the CB's in the distance) made me feel the smallest and most insignificant that I have ever felt.

That's precisely the problem. There weren't that many educated people 500 years ago so it isn't surprising that only 3% of people believed the world was spherical (if that statistic is even true). The more telling statistic would be what percentage of educated people believed the world was spherical at that time? If 97 dumb hicks believed the world is flat and 3 educated people believed (based on evidence) that the world is spherical, it is still spherical. The same goes for climate science. If 97% of climate scientist believe (based on evidence) that anthropogenic global warming is real and 100% of dumb hicks believe "it is arrogant to believe that man can change the earth's climate", the balance of probability still says that AGW is real.

Perhaps equally implausible, but what about the idea of bumping Oort cloud objects into Earth flyby trajectories? If carefully engineered, the gravitational interactions between the Earth and the comets could slowly adjust the Earth's orbit inward or outward over a period of millions of years. This is the principle behind the Nice model of solar system formation that posits that Uranus and Neptune may have swapped positions due to millions of years of interactions with trans-neptunian objects.

I realise that (and I think you realise that I realise that), but the problem is how it is presented. There's a clear bias. Just as there's a clear bias behind the "Pluto is a planet" agitators.

The same people who teach that "evolution is just a theory"?

You mean SNC's bid was 900 million lower than Boeing's?

That seems a bit alarmist to me. Seret? What do you think? You seem to know a thing or two about solar power generation? That eclipse is only going to be partial over Germany. Roughly magnitude 70%-80%.

While we're on the topic of the predictability of eclipses, here's a cool YouTube video about some guys who built a replica of the Antikythera Mechanism out of Lego. The Antikythera Mechanism dates from about 100 BCE and is believed to be a mechanical computer that was designed to predict eclipses.

For anyone who's interested, there are two eclipses coming up in October. The first is a total lunar eclipse and the other is a partial solar eclipse. Both are visible from much of North America. The total lunar eclipse occurs on October 8th, reaching greatest eclipse at 10:55 UT. The partial solar eclipse occurs 2 weeks later (+1 internet cookie if you can explain why) on October 23rd, reaching greatest eclipse at 21:45 UT.