I am, despite a certain lack of athleticism, a member of the mile high club. I am distressed not to be a member of the sex in space club yet. On this date in 1961, dashingly handsome Russian Yuri Gargarin became the first man in space. Google is flying cool decorations to commemorate this 50th anniversary of a great achievement in space flight. Alas, Yuri Gargarin died young and would have left an extremely good-looking corpse, except he died in the crash of a supposedly routine jet flight. A KGB investigation indicated human error on the part of the air traffic control people as the cause. Whether one believes the conspiracy theories about the demise of this popular figure, he continues to be a great hero of the Russian space program today. The Russians had better do a good job moving space travel forward. If we hit space fifty years ago, we really ought to be farther along at this point, and the Americans are obviously not trying hard enough. I salute Google for honoring this great (and really sexy) astronaut.
On this date in 1999, NASA intentionally crashed the Lunar Prospector spacecraft into the Moon, thus ending its mission to detect frozen water on the moon’s surface. (via Wikipedia)
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On this date in 2005, astronomers announced their discovery of a possible 10th planet. Now what should they call it? I vote for a female deity from ancient long-dead civilizations, instead of a male one, for a change. (via Wikipedia)
I have heard that you don’t count as rich until you own your own jet. Well real estate tycoon Robert Bigelow is raising the bar. He has committed five hundred million dollars towards attempting to make my dream of zero gee sex come true. Technically, the owner of the Budget Suites hotel chain has so far only funded the launch of a space-faring Russky balloon, but it is a scientifically important balloon in the journey towards creating the first commercial space station, which is the ultimate goal of Bigelow Aerospace. (via AP on Yahoo)
This week, The Independent published an article, by their Washington Correspondent Rupert Cornwell, which asked whether human space exploration is really such a good idea. Arguments against manned space exploration were that it was more expensive and unwieldy than robotics and that there would be an inevitable loss of life from time to time. Arguments in favor of using humans, rather than machines, were that people can sometimes do better research and make proper repairs in ways machines can’t. Also, “The drama of watching men and women explore new worlds appeals to something basic in human nature.” They left out “Molly Case has always wanted to have sex in zero gee in front of a window on the stars.”
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