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Reminds me of Aliens. All the missing people were found in the oxygen manufacturing plant

but it is very cool, making oxygen. Does mean that if they can do it on a massive scale they have the ability to live on other planets

now they just need a Star Trek replicator for food
 
Ingenuity's third flight stretched things a bit more. 50m out and back at its fastest speed yet. All continues to work flawlessly. Some nice pics coming in, too. I am guessing a drone that can do actual work will be on the drawing board now.

amp.cnn.com

Mars helicopter achieves fastest, farthest flight yet

The Ingenuity helicopter has successfully flown for the third time on Mars in a week. During Sunday's flight, the helicopter went faster and farther than it did in the previous trials, according to NASA.
amp.cnn.com amp.cnn.com
 
While they don't get the attention that the US does, the Chinese have an absolutely spectacular year in space planned. The lack of attention is a mix of their own shyness about publicity (there's no Chinese Elon Musk cheerleading things on social media and we often find out exact launch dates and plans only after the launches have happened) and the current chill in relations between China and the US, which prevents them from cooperating in space.

Tianwen-1, the country's first mission to Mars, is in orbit and due to drop its lander, including a rover, in May. They will be only the second country with a rover on the Red Planet after the US.

Tianhe, the first module of their planned space station, launched yesterday and is now in orbit. Two more modules are supposed to launch in the fairly near future. An unmanned supply mission will rendezvous with Tianhe next month and the first crew is due to fly up in June in a Shenzhou spacecraft (China's workhorse passenger spacecraft, adapted from the Russian Soyuz).

Also in the past month, we have seen the first ground tests of the Shenzhou's successor, a 7 passenger vehicle similar to current US passenger spacecraft like SpaceX Crew Dragon and Boeing Starliner.

And they ended last year with the fifth Chang'e unmanned probe to the moon, this one becoming the first mission to return lunar samples to Earth since the seventies.

Scott Manley did a good piece on Tianhe and China's plans for Earth orbit.


Years ago, on of our trips to China, I watched an early Shenzhou launch (I think it was their first or second crewed mission) on CCTV in a restaurant or tea house with my wife. Forget where we were now. It was rather like watching an early Apollo launch or maybe the first space shuttle launch.

Frankly, I would prefer to see nations cooperating in space as we have seen with the ISS, but if China's program results in some advances in human exploration of space, I'll happily cheer them on. Hopefully someday the terrestrial politics preventing that cooperation will get sufficiently resolved to allow that cooperation to happen.

Space trivia: I love the names the Chinese give their missions. Tianhe means "Harmony of the Heavens". The space station program and China's first two stations were called Tiangong, "Heaven's Palace". Chang'e, used for all the Chinese moon landers, is the ancient Chinese moon goddess and the rovers taken to the moon by some of the Chang'e missions are called Yutu after the rabbit that is the goddess' companion. The image of a cute little bunny hoping around on the lunar surface is just irresistable for some reason.
 
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Mendalla said:
While they don't get the attention that the US does, the Chinese have an absolutely spectacular year in space planned. The lack of attention is a mix of their own shyness about publicity (there's no Chinese Elon Musk cheerleading things on social media and we often find out exact launch dates and plans only after the launches have happened) and the current chill in relations between China and the US, which prevents them from cooperating in space.

Tianwen-1, the country's first mission to Mars, is in orbit and due to drop its lander, including a rover, in May. They will be only the second country with a rover on the Red Planet after the US.

Tianhe, the first module of their planned space station, launched yesterday and is now in orbit. Two more modules are supposed to launch in the fairly near future. An unmanned supply mission will rendezvous with Tianhe next month and the first crew is due to fly up in June in a Shenzhou spacecraft (China's workhorse passenger spacecraft, adapted from the Russian Soyuz).

Also in the past month, we have seen the first ground tests of the Shenzhou's successor, a 7 passenger vehicle similar to current US passenger spacecraft like SpaceX Crew Dragon and Boeing Starliner.

And they ended last year with the fifth Chang'e unmanned probe to the moon, this one becoming the first mission to return lunar samples to Earth since the seventies.

Scott Manley did a good piece on Tianhe and China's plans for Earth orbit.


Space trivia: Tianhe means "Harmony of the Heavens". I love the names the Chinese give their missions. Chang'e, for instance, is the ancient Chinese moon goddess and the rovers taken to the moon by some of the Chang'e missions are called Yutu after the rabbit that is the goddess' companion.
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Did you say a manned crew are set to land on Mars in June?
 
Waterfall said:
Did you say a manned crew are set to land on Mars in June?
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No, it's an unmanned mission similar to the US Perseverence. We are still at least a decade away from anyone landing a crew on Mars. There aren't even any boosters currently in service powerful to orbit a lunar mission, let alone a Mars mission. SpaceX's Falcon Heavy and China's most recent Long March boosters (a Long March 5 launched Tianwen-1, Tianhe, and Chang'e 5) are steps in that direction, though.

The crewed mission is in June and is just taking three taikonauts to Tianhe.
 
We visited cape canaveral one year while on holiday in Florida Back in the 80’s. There were a couple of road blocks. A space shuttle was taking off that day. But oddly you could still access the beach. It was pretty spectacular to watch

cape Canarveral is well worth a day visit . And a short drive fro Cocoa beach on the Atlantic coast which is a big surfing area in florida You forget watching on tv just how massive these things are and how primitive the computers were at the time. And of course now the new buildings are there. I think space x had a rocket on the launch pad when we were there two years ago. Took our cousins from Europe and they were pretty impressed. Like all of us, they had pictures taken of their tv showing Armstrong on the moon
 
Lastpointe said:
We visited cape canaveral one year while on holiday in Florida Back in the 80’s. There were a couple of road blocks. A space shuttle was taking off that day. But oddly you could still access the beach. It was pretty spectacular to watch

cape Canarveral is well worth a day visit . And a short drive fro Cocoa beach on the Atlantic coast which is a big surfing area in florida You forget watching on tv just how massive these things are and how primitive the computers were at the time. And of course now the new buildings are there. I think space x had a rocket on the launch pad when we were there two years ago. Took our cousins from Europe and they were pretty impressed. Like all of us, they had pictures taken of their tv showing Armstrong on the moon
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My only visit to Canaveral was our family trip to Florida as a kid. That fell between the end of Apollo and the first shuttle launch so things were kind of in flux. The VAB was being reno'd to handle the shuttle instead of Saturns and that sort of thing.

When we took a cruise out of Port Canaveral a few years ago, I got a nice view of pad 39 and the VAB from the deck as we pulled out but the next launch (SpaceX, I think) was after we came home IIRC.
 
Lastpointe said:
On your next trip to Florida definitely go. It’s worth it
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I wanted to when we went to Orlando to visit Disney and Universal but we didn't have a car and my family aren't exactly space geeks like me so there wasn't really much interest beyond me.
 
Well, the bombs would be intentional. They would be dropped with a purpose. Big metal rockets thrown into space, then returning to earth with a devil-may-care attitude of 'Hope no one's standing under them when they fall' is something else again.
 
Is there any liability for the damage this might cause?
Really we've crapped all over our planet - I wish we'd leave 'space' alone
 
Scott Manley's piece on the Chinese rocket and the difficulty in predicting where it will come down.


He is tweeting about it this morning and it looks like it will come down soon.
 
I am hearing this morning that both China and US Space Command say it came down somewhere around the Maldives in the Indian Ocean.
 
This Chinese situation does point up one area where SpaceX has really been an important leader: Recovering and reusing boosters. NASA and others have kind of done this piecemeal in the past. The shuttle was, of course, fully reusable but the solid rocket boosters were not. Falcon Nine and Falcon Heavy (which basically uses two Falcon Nines strapped together) are recoverable and many of the Falcon Nines have now flown multiple missions (the one that launched yesterday with more Starlink satellites was on, I believe, its tenth flight). Their Dragon and Crew Dragon capsules are full resusable (in fact, Endeavour, the first Crew Dragon to carry humans to the station on the Demo-2 mission has now flown twice and is currently docked at the station on the Crew-2 mission). Starship, their new crewed craft, is similarly designed for multiple missions.

(NOTE: If you really want to worry about space debris, these damn satellite constellations like Starlink are the bigger problem. How long before one or more of those collide with each other or other pieces of equipment? I really wish the UN or someone had some control over Earth orbit.)
 
Some genius said that space was a free entity ... and that's why it is out of here! Only things found there are essences and Sam Clément's attire!

That latter item is stated to be biting ... naked veils? Devili*shat*nere? Crappy poesy I'm told but much nearer to virtue than what we've been conditioned to ... potent Lyon! Like The ME* syndrome ... hope it sleeps tonight!

*Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) is a serious, long-term illness that affects many body systems. People with ME/CFS are often not able to do their usual activities. At times, ME/CFS may confine them to bed. People with ME/CFS have severe fatigue and sleep problems.
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Many persona's related to power hungry type degrade people afflicted with ME ... and thus need for the vast escape like pragma type affection in Greek myth! It is a lasting thing ... said good to see ... like pragmatism as beneficial to all rather than those with vast self-love ... philautia an in turned thing hei's aid to by! Dark as the shadow of sol, or the soul of Midnight! It plods on ... it may hit you at 4 in the morning as a spark of nightmare at the worst time!

Imagine that domain that spreads between to proton and the electron ... quantumly buzzed as if by chance! That syncronicity of mind, sol and psyche at times ... while most of the time asynchronous ... like unrest!

Is there rest beneath the fundamental particles that are singularly entranced?
 
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