The Universe Today is Unbanned from Digg.com!

Does Digg love the Universe Today again?
Does Digg love the Universe Today again?

Great news! It would appear that after only day one of the campaign to have the Universe Today un-banned from Digg.com, somebody in the admin staff was obviously paying attention (unless they are an avid reader of the Universe Today website too), and realised their mistake. Digg.com is now allowing articles from the Universe Today to be re-listed and dugg!.

I’d like to think that this was all down to blogging power — after all, this little space blogger was blamed for the whole NASA-Phoenix-Perchlorate saga! — but I’m just really happy that the guys at Digg have redeemed themselves a little.

This whole episode does however highlight an ongoing problem with banned sites, I hope it will help to refine Digg’s policy in the future.

Have a look at the first article to be Dugg after a long absence: “More Ares I Development Problems: Is it Really That Bad?” (one of mine!)

Universe Today Banned from Digg.com

Universe Today has been banned from Digg
Universe Today? Banned??

The Universe Today website has been banned from the social bookmarking site Digg.com. This might come as a surprise to many as the Universe Today is a great source of space, astronomy, science and educational news. Why would such a great resource be banned from a site that is based on community participation?

UT has been captained for many years by its founder and publisher Fraser Cain – I remember first signing up to the UT newsletter in 2001 – and the whole aim of the site is to reach out to Internet users, distributing the best space-based news a website can bring. Surely this is the type of site Digg would want to be promoting? Apparently not.
Continue reading “Universe Today Banned from Digg.com”

Digg Effect Destroys Astroengine (But Healing Now)

Wow, what a stressful day! On writing One-Way Mission to Mars: Top 5 Items to Pack last night, I had no idea about the consequences. This morning the article exploded onto the front page of Digg.com, sending a flood of traffic into Astroengine.com. Although my bandwidth is more than capable of dealing with the situation, the server was quite literally paralysed, causing the technicians at GoDaddy.com to pull the plug (can’t blame them, apparently all the other sites on the shared server were knocked out).

I’ll post a more detailed post soon, but should anyone want to know the best course of action when dealing with an uncontrollable flood of traffic, here’s what I had to do:

The first measure was to stem the flow of traffic from the referrer causing the server outage. Once the relentless barrage of Digg users were blocked, the GoDaddy admin staff were reassured the problem wouldn’t reoccur if they put Astroengine.com back online. The second measure is a longer-term solution until I migrate the site to a better server. WP Super Cache creates html versions of Astroengine’s php pages, thus bypassing the execution of php scripts every time someone visits the site (vastly reducing the load on the server).

Thanks to Fraser (my publisher at Universe Today) for helping me out and giving these tips when dealing with a Digg explosion.

So, now I am going shopping. It’s fantastic to have these bursts of visitors, but the time is coming when I’ll need to upgrade. I’m either going to go the route of buying virtual-dedicated or a dedicated server. Any suggestions for which hosting providers have the best service/price? I’m most likely going to stay with GoDaddy, but I’m open to suggestions.

Apologies for dropping offline today, hopefully this will be the last interruption to service!

Cheers, Ian

One-Way Mission to Mars: Top 5 Items to Pack

No return trip for Mars colonists. Image credit: NASA, Design: Ian O’Neill

Imagine: You have been selected as one of the first six people to go to Mars and your sole mission is to set up a manned outpost on the Red Planet. Forget the science, forget the long-term goal to spread humanity amongst the planets, your one and only task is to survive. If you live long enough to put your boot print in the Martian regolith, or long enough to eat your first meal, sleep to see your second sol or celebrate your proto-colony’s first home cooked meal, it’s a bonus. You have to survive long enough to give mankind a foothold to begin living on Mars.

A long trek on Mars deserves some refreshments… (NASA)

Assuming you and your five crew have set up camp. You’ve landed next to all the basic supplies you’ll need for the next few years, plus the equipment to build a sustainable settlement. The pressure of making it through the first day is off. You have a routine, and everyone appears to be doing well. How will you fill your time? No doubt simply living will fill all your waking hours, but humans being humans, you’ll want to make your experience unique, you’ll want to have some fun. Whether it’s taking some time to think about Earth and your family, or it’s taking a hike up the nearest mesa to claim the early Mars World Record of “climbing the highest, ever.”

If you could take 5 things to Mars with you (ignoring the essentials like water, food, toothbrush, socks, iPod), what would they be? Assuming cost and weight isn’t an obstacle (I’ll be a billionaire and I’ve chartered a SpaceX Falcon 9 Heavy just to transport “personal items”) here’s my top five luxury items I’d take to Mars with me…
Continue reading “One-Way Mission to Mars: Top 5 Items to Pack”

Star Trek Inspired: Space Shuttle Enterprise

The cast of Star Trek stand next to Space Shuttle Enterprise in 1976 (NASA)
The cast of Star Trek stand next to Space Shuttle Enterprise in 1976 (NASA)

Space Shuttle Enterprise was the first ever shuttle to be constructed. It never made it into space, it was used purely for atmospheric test flights, but Enterprise was a significant craft. Originally NASA planned to designate the shuttle Constitution, but after a a sustained write-in campaign, NASA changed its name in honour of the Starship Enterprise from the original series of Star Trek. In 1976, the USS Enterprise (NCC-1701) was being captained by Captain Kirk (played by William Shatner), and some of the original series actors were at the roll-out ceremony in Palmdale manufacturing facility in California.

Enterprise in Free Flight after separation from 747 in 1977 (NASA)
Enterprise in Free Flight after separation from 747 in 1977 (NASA)

In the picture above, from left to right: Dr. James D. Fletcher, NASA Administrator, DeForest Kelley (Dr. “Bones” McCoy), George Takei (Mr. Sulu), James Doohan (Chief Engineer Montgomery “Scotty” Scott), Nichelle Nichols (Lt. Uhura), Leonard Nimoy (Mr. Spock), Gene Roddenberry (producer and creator of Star Trek), and Walter Koenig (Ensign Pavel Chekov).

A wonderful scene capturing the beginning of 32 years of shuttle operations. This is an especially poignant image as Star Trek creator Gene Rodenberry and two of the original Star Trek cast, DeForest Kelley and James Doohan have since passed away.

Source: NASA

Is the Armadillo Vertical-Lift Spaceship a Viable Tourist Route?

The Armadillo Aerospace Spacebubble concept... mmm, no wings then? (Armadillo Aerospace)
The Armadillo Aerospace Spacebubble concept... mmm, no wings then? (Armadillo Aerospace)

This reminds me of a hilarious Billy Connolly stand-up routine commenting on the perceived safety of passenger aircraft:

Connolly imitates the safety presentation before take-off:
“In the highly unlikely event of loss of power in all four engines, then in all probability, we’ll go into the ground like a f***ing dart.

We’d be obliged if you’d wear your life jacket on the way down, this will do you no good at all, but when archiologists find you in 200 years, they’ll think there was a river here!”

– Billy Connolly on flying (1990) – video not for minors, Billy is known for his “colourful” language!

So with that in mind, let’s consider the Armadillo Aerospace space tourism concept (pictured above). Call me old fashioned, but I’m a little worried about spaceships without wings. Yes, I know we are always sending rockets into space, delivering crew and cargo to the space station. The Soyuz vehicle doesn’t have wings and the cone-like re-entry capsule so many other space vehicles are based on are reliable modes of transport. But there’s something about the “controlled ascent” Armadillo design that makes me a little uneasy (give me a “ballistic ascent” any day!).
Continue reading “Is the Armadillo Vertical-Lift Spaceship a Viable Tourist Route?”

Rare Meteor Fireball Captured by Seven Canadian Cameras (Videos)

The slow-moving fireball lights up Canadian skies (SOMN)
The slow-moving fireball lights up Canadian skies (SOMN)

A stunning series of videos from seven all-sky cameras in the The University of Western’s Southern Ontario Meteor Network (SOMN) captured the same fireball generated by a meteor entering the atmosphere pre-dawn on the morning of September 15th. Whilst meteors aren’t uncommon (if you hang around outside for long enough you might see one or two “shooting stars” yourself), this fireball was very bright and had a surprisingly slow velocity. What’s more, astronomers think that the extraterrestrial object came from a typical Earth-crossing orbit, possibly indicating this was another small near-Earth asteroid. In fact, meteorite hunters believe that it may have slowed significantly when passing through the atmosphere, dropping fragments to the ground. A great catch by the Canadian team, let’s get searching!
Continue reading “Rare Meteor Fireball Captured by Seven Canadian Cameras (Videos)”

GOCE is Suffering Major Delays, But Should be Dominating Space by February

No, it isn't sci-fi. It's the Porche of orbital engineering (GOCE/ESA)
No, it isn't sci-fi. It's the Porche of orbital engineering (GOCE/ESA)

The European Space Agency’s Gravity field and state-steady Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) should be in space by now. In fact it should have been launched back on September 10th, but it wasn’t to be. After the spacecraft (which has a striking resemblance to something a little more sci-fi… like a star destroyer) had been sealed into the payload bay of the Rockot launch vehicle at Plesetsk cosmodrome 800 km from Moscow, I assumed that was it, we wouldn’t be seeing GOCE ever again. But there was a glitch in the guidance and navigation subsystem of the Breeze KM third stage, thus postponing GOCE’s big day. GOCE was cracked open from its rocket powered cocoon to await a Rockot oil change.

Now it seems the delays are mounting up for this amazing experiment and a launch doesn’t seem possible until February at the earliest…
Continue reading “GOCE is Suffering Major Delays, But Should be Dominating Space by February”

Asteroids (1) : Earth (2) – Welcome to the Interplanetary Shooting Gallery

Rocks are being thrown at us, but we haven’t noticed

Artist impression of an asteroid impact - don't worry, this doesn't happen very often... (Getty Images)
Artist impression of an asteroid impact - don't worry, this doesn't happen very often... (Getty Images)

On October 7th, a small asteroid called 2008 TC3 exploded in the skies above Sudan. On October 9th, a metre-wide asteroid named 2008 TS26 buzzed Earth’s atmosphere by only 7000 km. Then on the 21st (Tuesday) a slightly bigger piece of rock called 2008 US missed us by 25,000 km. It sounds like it’s getting dangerous out there, especially when considering the last recorded object (2004 FU162) to come screaming past the Earth (at 6500 km) happened in 2004.

But don’t be concerned. Small asteroids are being thrown at us all the time; asteroid hunters are just getting better at spotting them…
Continue reading “Asteroids (1) : Earth (2) – Welcome to the Interplanetary Shooting Gallery”

Will the Real Walter Wagner Please Stand Up (and Put the Geiger Counter Down)

Wagner discovers tiles of uranium-filled death (MSNBC)
Wagner discovers tiles of uranium-filled death (MSNBC)

After chatting with Walter Wagner (the guy who filed the LHC “Doomsday Suit” in an Hawaiian court… only for it to be thrown out last month) on Paranormal Radio in July, I was left a little unsatisfied.

By the July 28th radio show, I’d only written about the LHC lawsuit a couple of times and had little time to prepare for the discussion. However, after only a few minutes of digging for some background information Wagner I’d unearthed a couple of things. For one he had previously attempted to sue the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory in 2000. This attempt had failed on the basis that Wagner’s “evidence” that the RHIC could create strangelets (that will spawn the end of the world) and black holes (spawning… well… the end of the world) was too flimsy to warrant any serious investigation. Then I uncovered something a little unsettling: Wagner had a rather unhealthy scrape with the law. At the time I didn’t want to follow this up, as I was going on air in 30 minutes, the RHIC lawsuit was enough for the time being.

Today, another piece has been added to the puzzle of what drives Walter Wagner. Over at the hilariously named “The Physics Anti-Crackpot Blog” there’s a link to an article chronicling Wagner’s Geiger counter crusade against radioactive tiles (oh yes!). I’ll leave it for you to read, it is both entertaining and unsettling.

Wagner believes he is a public safety crusader, and I doubt we’ll hear the last of him (besides superheroes love the attention, whether it is good or bad).

Why does Mr. Wagner hate the LHC? Well, the short and simple answer — ironically, this is the short and simple answer — is that Mr. Wagner and a lot of other people who like physics but don’t really understand it as well as they think they do have latched onto the notion that the LHC will spontaneously generate black holes, which will destroy the Earth. – Excerpt from Return of the Radiation Man (Standing on the Shoulders of Giant Midgets)

Source: The Physics Anti-Crackpot Blog