Private Space Travel – Jupiter Broadcasting https://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com Open Source Entertainment, on Demand. Mon, 22 Feb 2016 02:44:22 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.5.3 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/cropped-favicon-32x32.png Private Space Travel – Jupiter Broadcasting https://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com 32 32 Happy Science of 2013 | SciByte 114 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/49107/happy-science-of-2013-scibyte-114/ Tue, 07 Jan 2014 21:16:58 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=49107 We take a look at my top science stories and events of 2013, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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We take a look at my top science stories and events of 2013, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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MP3 Audio | OGG Audio | Video | Torrent | YouTube

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— Book Pic: —

Curiosity | Evidence of Ancient Habitable Water Locations

— NEWS BYTE —

Voyager 1 | “Interstellar Space” Announcement

Exoplanets

International and Private Space Travel

  • India’s Mars Orbiter Mission
  • India’s first ever Mars probe ‘MOM’ successfully fired its main engine on Dec. 1 to begin its nearly yearlong momentous voyage to Mars
  • ISRO’s engineers devised a procedure to get the spacecraft to Mars on the least amount of fuel via six “Midnight Maneuver” engine burns over several weeks – and at an extremely low cost
  • This maneuver increases the ship’s velocity and gradually widens the ellipse eventually raising the apogee of the six resulting elliptical orbits around Earth that eventually injects MOM onto the Trans-Mars trajectory
  • SciByte 111| Memories & International Spacecraft (December 3, 2013)
  • SciByte 109 | ‘Earth-Like’ Planets & Sharks (November 12, 2013)
  • SciByte 107 | Dinosaurs & Satellites (October 29, 2013)
  • Chinese Lunar Lander
  • China had a successful touchdown of the Chang’e-3 probe with the ‘Yutu’ rover on the surface of the Moon on Dec. 14
  • They landed on the lava filled plains of the Bay of Rainbows occurred at about 8:11 am EST or 9:11 p.m. Beijing local time
  • Barely seven hours after the Chang’e-3 mothership touched down on Sunday, Dec. 15, the six wheeled ‘Yutu’, or Jade Rabbit, rover drove straight off a pair of ramps at 4:35 a.m. Beijing local time
  • SciByte 113 | Freshwater Aquifers & Brain Plasticity (December 17, 2013)
  • Bigelow Aerospace’s | Genesis, Inflatable Space Station Modules
  • On Jan 11 NASA announced they have awarded a $17.8 million contract to Bigelow to provide a new inflatable module for the ISS, making it the first privately built module to be added to the space station
  • The outer shell of their module is soft, as opposed to the rigid outer shell of current modules at the ISS, Bigelow’s inflatable modules are more resistant to micrometeoroid or orbital debris strikes it uses multiple layers of Vectran, a material which is twice as strong as Kevlar
  • The company wants to launch and link up several of its larger expandable modules to create private space stations, which could be used by a variety of clients.
  • SciByte 77 | Breath Analysis & Large Structures (January 15, 2013)
  • SpaceX | Geostationary Orbit
  • The Dec 3 liftoff at 5:41 p.m. EST (2241 GMT) marked SpaceX\’s first entry into the large commercial satellite market and its first launch into a geostationary transfer orbit needed for such a mission.
  • Being able to launch into this new orbit will let SpaceX compete against Europe and Russia to haul large telecommunications satellites into orbit.
  • This launch also marks the second of three certification flights needed to certify the Falcon 9 to fly missions for the U.S. Air Force under the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) program
  • When Falcon 9 is certified, SpaceX will be eligible to compete for all National Security Space (NSS) missions

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Science Events of 2013

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

  • Jan 11, 1954 : 59 years ago : First UK TV Weather Broadcast : The first in-vision weather forecaster broadcast on BBC television. George Cowling of the Meteorological Office presented from the BBC\’s Lime Grove studios with two hand-drawn weather charts pinned to an easel.

Looking up this week

The post Happy Science of 2013 | SciByte 114 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

]]> Exoplanets & Universal Translator | SciByte 68 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/26421/exoplanets-universal-translator-scibyte-68/ Tue, 23 Oct 2012 21:09:00 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=26421 We take a look at exoplanets, games, sleep, private space travel, the possible start of a universal translator, and so much more!

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We take a look at exoplanets, games, sleep, private space travel, the possible start of a universal translator, a climbing wheelchair Curiosity updates and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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Show Notes:

Earth’s nearest extra-solar neighbor

  • Stats
  • 4.4 light years away
  • 25 times closer than the Earth is to the sun 
  • A ‘year’ lasts just 3.236 days
  • Surface temperature of around 1,200 degrees Celsius
  • Significance
  • The fact that a rocky planet was found so close to Alpha Centauri B suggests there could be more planets in the same system
  • There’s also a good chance that Alpha Centauri A — the bigger, binary partner of Alpha Centauri B — also hosts planets
  • However, because Alpha Centauri A is bigger, brighter and more rambunctious, any small planets orbiting it would be harder to find.
  • Previous observations indicate that there are no planets more massive than Neptune hovering around any of Alpha Centauri’s three stars
  • Of Note
  • There is 10–15% chance that the planet passes between Alpha Centauri B and Earth. If so, astronomers could watch for dips in starlight
  • However Kepler isn’t pointed anywhere near Alpha Centauri
  • Canada’s MOST microsatellite, might be able to detect the planet’s dark fingerprint and determine its radius, allowing scientists to calculate its density and probable ingredients
  • Travel to?
  • A space probe accelerated to 10 percent the speed of light [~67 million mph / 107 million kph] would be in transit for 40 years.
  • The probe would also have to be capable of managing extreme temperature variations, remaining functional for decades, communicating with Earth from light-years away and orbiting a small planet close to its sun without becoming a stellar snack
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube Earth-Size Planet Orbiting Nearest Star Discovered | VideoFromSpace
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • The alien next door | Atom & Cosmos | Science News

— NEWS BYTE —

‘Citizen Scientists’ and new Exoplanets

  • Last time on SciByte
  • Talking Robots & Voyager 1 | SciByte 51 – Eye spy an exoplanet [June 19, 2012]
  • The planet PH1
  • PH1 orbits its host stars every 137 days, and is thought to be a gas giant a bit larger than Neptune [~6x Earth]
  • The mass of the planet itself is not currently known but there is a limit of no more than half that of Jupiter, so this is definitely a planet.
  • The binary star systems
  • The binary star system it orbits has stars that are 1.5 and 0.41 times the mass of the Sun and orbit each other just over 20 days
  • Beyond the planet’s orbit at about 1000 AU (roughly 1000 times the distance between Earth and the Sun) is a second pair of stars orbiting the planetary system.
  • Although it may seem far, it is actually much closer than the nearest stars are to the Sun, so anyone viewing the sky from PH1 would have a spectacular view of all four stars
  • Of Note
  • Only six planets are known to orbit two stars
  • PlanetHunters has announced discoveries before, but this is the first that have been confirmed with further data from radial velocity measurements
  • Because they were able to detect the gravitational effect of the planet on the star it can be ‘officially’ labeled as a planet not simply a candidate
  • The PlanetHunters team has also ‘discovered’ a planet orbiting around both of a pair of binary stars, it didn’t make the news at that time because the Kepler team has already discovered it
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • PlanetHunters.org
  • Planet Hunters Candidates | planethunters.org
  • NASA – Citizen Scientists Discover Four-Star Planet with NASA Kepler | NASA.gov
  • Armchair astronomers find planet in quadruple star system | phys.org
  • PH1 : A planet in a four-star system « Planet Hunters | blog.planethunters.org
  • [[1210.3612] Planet Hunters: A Transiting Circumbinary Planet in a Quadruple Star System | arxiv.org](https://arxiv.org/abs/1210.3612)

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Games and Sleep

  • The low down
  • Research in a Sleep Laboratory found that prolonged video gaming immediately before bed caused significant sleep disruptions
  • 17 participants played either 50 or 150 minutes on two different nights
  • 27-minute loss in total sleep time after 150 minutes of gaming based on the polysomnography tests
  • There was a 39-minute delay in sleep onset according to the participants’ sleep diaries
  • In addition REM sleep was reduced by 12 minutes among the teens who played for over two hours
  • Winding down at night with a video game might not be the best idea
  • Significance
  • Teens who played for 50 minutes had almost no trouble falling or staying asleep
  • Sleep onset delay almost doubled to 39 minutes when they played for two and a half hours
  • While the study did not compare the effects of violent versus nonviolent video games past research showed little difference in teens who watched 50 minutes of the March of the Penguins documentary or played 50 minutes of Call of Duty 4, a violent videogame, before bed
  • Of Note
  • At the moment, one hour of gaming does not seem to affect sleep
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Gaming before bed negatively impacts teens’ sleep, research finds | MedicalXpress

Private Space Travel

  • The low down
  • The three different companies have been chosen by NASA to develop private space taxis
  • They are all making substantial progress toward launching people into orbit within the next few years
  • SpaceX
  • Work on the Dragon is now focused on outfitting the capsule to carry up to seven people by adding a launch abort capability and life support system, as well as designing spacesuits and the crew cabin layout.
  • SpaceX could make its first crewed test flights in mid–2015
  • Boeing
  • Is working on its CST–100 vehicle that will fly atop United Launch Alliance’s Atlas 5 rocket
  • The Atlas 5 has a proven track record launching unmanned satellites
  • The CST–100 is designed to carry up to seven people, and return to touch down on land via parachutes and airbags.
  • The company just recently completed a preliminary design milestone called integrated systems review, and plans to set the vehicle’s final design plans with a critical design review in April 2014
  • Boeing could be ready for the first people to fly on CST–100 in 2016
  • Sierra Nevada’s
  • The Dream Chaser, differs from the Dragon and CST–100 cone-shaped capsules in its winged space plane design.
  • Even and launch on the Atlas 5, and is targeting a first manned launch in 2016 or 2017
  • Of Note
  • While all three companies are initially developing their spacecraft to serve NASA, they intend eventually to carry a wide range of passengers, including space tourists, scientists and astronauts from countries without their own launch vehicles
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Private Space Taxis on Track to Launch Astronauts | ISPCS | Space.com

‘Somewhat ‘ Universal Translating Phone

  • Japan’s biggest mobile operator, NTT DoCoMo, said Monday it will launch a translation service that lets people chat over the telephone in several different languages.
  • The low down
  • The free application for subscribers will give two-way voice and text readouts of conversations between Japanese speakers and those talking in English, Chinese or Korean with a several-second delay
  • It will be available for use on smartphones and tablet computers with the Android operating system
  • Customers will also be able to call landlines using the service
  • Of Note
  • Voice-to-text readouts will soon be available in French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Thai
  • The service does not offer perfect translations and has trouble deciphering some dialects
  • There is a separate service that lets users translate menus and signage using the smartphone camera
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube NTT DoCoMo real-time translation hands-on | Engadgets
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Japan firm launches real-time telephone translation | phys.org

Climbing Wheelchairs

– CURIOSITY UPDATE –

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

  • Oct 28, 1971 | 41 years ago | British satellite | Britain became the sixth nation with its satellite launched into orbit by a Black Arrow rocket from Woomera, Australia. The Prospero, a Black Knight 1 satellite, had 86-kg mass at launch, 4-m diam. and transmitted on 137.56 MHz (still heard in 2000, although the onboard tape recorder failed after 730 replays on 24 May 1973). Its mission was to test solar cells and other technology experiments. Prospero is the only satellite launched by a British rocket. The Black Arrow was a 3-stage rocket only 13 m high. The Royal Aircraft Establishment developed the space launcher Black Arrow from 1964 until the project was cancelled by the British government in July 1971. The USSR’s Sputnik was the first satellite

You May Have Seen

  • A spectacular meteor lit up the sky over California Wednesday, Oct. 17
  • It streaked across the sky at 7:44 p.m. PDT (0244 GMT),
  • The subsequent fireball and sonic boom triggered a flood of reports by witnesses to local news stations and authorities
  • Accounts coming in from across San Francisco and the Bay Area
  • The biggest question at the moment is whether this ended over land or ocean.
  • Spectacular Meteor Sparks Fireball Over California | Space.com

Looking up this week

The post Exoplanets & Universal Translator | SciByte 68 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

]]> SpaceX & Easter Island | SciByte 47 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/19826/spacex-easter-island-scibyte-47/ Tue, 22 May 2012 22:21:50 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=19826 We take a look at the spaceward journey of SpaceX, ancient arthritic reptiles, Easter Island statues, bouncy exploration probes, and more!

The post SpaceX & Easter Island | SciByte 47 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

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We take a look at the spaceward journey of SpaceX, ancient arthritic reptiles, Easter Island statues, bouncy exploration probes, mousetrap IV dispenser, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

Direct Download:

MP3 Download | Ogg Download | HD Video | Mobile Video | YouTube

RSS Feeds:

MP3 Feed | Ogg Feed | iTunes Feed | HD Feed | Mobile Feed

Support the Show:

   

Show Notes:

SpaceX – Dragon shipment to ISS



NASAKennedy Channel: | Credit: SpaceX

— NEWS BYTE —

Dispensing IV fluid with a mouse trap



Credit: YouTube Channel – RiceUniversity | Credit: Jeff Fitlow/Rice University

  • The low down
  • In severely underdeveloped parts of the world, conditions can be pretty primitive and may not even have electricity
  • In understaffed medical settings, monitoring IV-fluid delivery to patients can be a challenge
  • Physicians would like a tool that can better moderate IV-fluid delivery to children, who are often connected to adult IV-bags
  • Now a team of Rice University freshmen have taken a mousetrap and built a better way to treat dehydration among children in the developing world.
  • Significance
  • The goal of the project was to regulate the amount of fluid delivered to children so we could prevent overhydration and under-hydration
  • The device can be mounted on a wall or attached with clamps to a portable hospital IV pole
  • Mechanical, durable, autonomous and simple-to-operate volume regulator that uses a lever arm with a movable counterweight similar to a physician’s scale to incrementally dispense IV fluid.
  • The system uses the change in torque as an IV bag is drained of fluid to set off a mousetrap-like spring that clamps the IV tube and cuts off the flow of saline solution or other prescribed fluids
  • The most time-consuming part of assembling the device was calibrating the counterweight and determining the precise spacing of the notches the counterweight falls into and holds as the fluid drains
  • Tests have shown the device dispenses fluid within 12 milliliters of the desired volume in increments of 50 milliliters.
  • When the desired amount of fluids have been dispensed the clamp goes off and it folds the tubing in a V-shape, the way you would crimp a garden hose to make the water stop coming out
  • Of Note
  • Device designed by the IV DRIP team is inexpensive; it costs about $20 to manufacture
  • This summer four of prototypes will be sent to Malawi and Lesotho, to test them under practical field conditions
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube : Turning a mouse trap into an IV drip volume regulator at Rice University | Rice University
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • This ‘mousetrap’ may save lives: Students create mechanism to regulate IV fluids for children | phys.org
  • This ‘mousetrap’ may save lives | news.rice.edu

Arthritic Ancient sea reptile



Credit: Simon Powell

  • The low down
  • Scientists at the University of Bristol has found signs of a degenerative condition similar to human arthritis in the jaw of a pliosaur, an ancient sea reptile that lived 150 million years ago
  • This type of disease has never been described before in fossilized Jurassic reptiles.
  • This specimen is a 8 metre long pliosaur with a crocodile-like head, a short neck, whale-like body and four powerful flippers with huge jaws and 20 cm long teeth
  • Significance
  • This particular individual had an arthritis-like disease that had eroded its left jaw joint, displacing the lower jaw to one side
  • The creature probably lived with a crooked jaw for many years, because there are marks on the bone of the lower jaw where the teeth from the upper jaw impacted on the bone during feeding
  • The skeleton suggests that the animal could have been an old female who had developed the condition as part of the aging process, although was still able to hunt in spite of its unfortunate condition.
  • Of Note
  • Unhealed fracture on the jaw indicates that at some time the jaw weakened and eventually broke
  • They were at the top of their food chains, so there would not have been any predators to take advantage of an aging, disabled pliosaur
  • With a broken jaw, the pliosaur would not have been able to feed
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Ancient sea reptile with gammy jaw suggests dinosaurs got arthritis too| Phys.org

More than meets the eye of the Easter Island statues

  • The low down
  • Scientists generally accept that the statues on Easter Island were made sometime between 1250 and 1500 AD
  • When most people think of the Easter Island statues, moai, they think of the eerie heads popping out of the ground
  • Explorers have long known there was more to the 887 statues on Easter Island than just the statue heads made famous in photographs.
  • New images of the bodies of the statues now being circulated were from the October 2011, Easter Island Statue Project Season V expedition
  • The Easter Island Statue Project is the the longest collaborative and evolving artifact inventory ever conducted within the context of the Easter Island archaeological survey
  • Significance
  • Full-bodied statues have been known to exist on Easter Island for hundreds of years
  • A new archaeological survey shows that the statues go much deeper underground that had been anticipated
  • Some of the statues being uncovered tower more than 30 feet in height, from base to top, and weigh more than 80 tons.
  • Many of the statues now being uncovered have petroglyphs that have been preserved by the surrounding soil
  • The newly uncovered statues join one other statue, out of over 1,000 documented have multiple petroglyphs carved as a composition on their backs
  • Some of the new petroglyph writings on the recently excavated statues appear fairly unique, many with individual petroglyphs
  • Found near the statues
  • Some evidence of human burials
  • Tuna vertebrae near the bottom of a recent excavation
  • Evidence of ceremonies and very large quantities of paint
  • Over 500 stone carving tools, from large picks, to finer basalts, obsidian for finishing details
  • Evidence of post holes, some large enough for a tree trunk, and rope guides carved into some of the statues
  • Multimedia
  • Image Gallery : Easter Island statues have bodies, too | Yahoo.com
  • Image Gallery : Archaeologists excavate Easter Island’s statues | FoxNews
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Easter Island Statue Project
  • Easter Island archaeology project digs up island’s secrets | FoxNews
  • Easter island heads have bodies!?? | The ThinkBox.ca
  • Easter Island statues have full bodies and contain ancient petroglyphs | yahoo.com

—TWO-BYTE NEWS—

A swarm of exploring rover/spacecraft



Credit: Marco Pavone

  • The low down
  • As an alternative to the traditional rover/spacecraft exploration one researcher from Stanford University is suggesting we unleash a swarm of rover/spacecraft hybrids that can explore en masse.
  • Significance
  • The project has been developing a concept under NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Program that would see small spherical robots deployed to small worlds, such as Mars’ moons Phobos and Deimos, where they would take advantage of low gravity to explore, literally, in leaps and bounds.
  • Similar to what NASA has done in the past with the Mars rovers, except multiplied in the number of spacecraft and reduced in cost
  • Of Note
  • They could also be used to evaluate the resource potential of small bodies in view of future human missions beyond Earth.
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Robotic spacecraft / rover hybrids for space exploration | phys.org
  • Space Exploration By Robot Swarm | universetoday.com

The return of COSMOS?

—SPACECRAFT UPDATE—

  • Curiosity, T minus 75 days to Curiosity Rover touchdown

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

  • May 29, 1919 : 93 years ago : Einstein’s relativity theory proved : A solar eclipse permitted observation of the bending of starlight passing through the sun’s gravitational field, as predicted by Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity. Separate expeditions of the Royal Astronomical Society travelled to Brazil and off the west coast of Africa. Both made measurements of the position of stars visible close to the sun during a solar eclipse. These observations showed that, indeed, the light of stars was bent as it passed through the gravitational field of the sun. This was a key prediction of Albert Einstein’s theory that gravity affected energy as in addition to the familiar effect on matter. The verification of predictions of Einstein’s theory, proved during the solar eclipse was a dramatic landmark scientific event.
  • May 25 1961 : 51 years ago : Moon landing announced : The formal announcement of an American lunar landing was made by President John F. Kennedy speaking to the Congress: “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth. No single space program in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important in the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.” YouTube : JFK Moon Speech
  • May 25, 2012 : 1 year ago : SciByte 1 Posted : The first SciByte was posted on Jupiter Broadcasting. The episode covered gravity, everything from quantum mechanics and black holes to gyroscopes

Looking up this week, you may have seen : Annular Solar Eclipse



Credit: Imelda Joson and Edwin Aguirre

Looking up this week

The post SpaceX & Easter Island | SciByte 47 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

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