Voyager 2 Spacecraft

Voyager 2 Spacecraft

Why, How and When

Why, how and when did you choose to be an English language teacher? When this question came up recently during an online interview, I had to seriously reflect, non on what to answer, but on how much to exclude. My path into English teaching wasn’t exactly as direct as many of my other colleagues. For each of us, the story and path into the field of teaching English as a foreign or second language is a bit different. Sometimes it’s really a lot different. So briefly, here’s what happened Read the rest of this entry »

Voyager Ii Spacecraft

Voyager Ii Spacecraft

If you think you suffer from writer’s block don’t worry. There’s a simple remedy sanctioned by the International Psychiatric Association of Non-Thinkers. Sufferers have only to stop thinking and write. You see, you start out blank as a movie screen until your birth begins its life story. You didn’t have to think about your life. It just began its drama of comedy and tragedy. And since mind and heart are the infinite inkwells that ne’er run dry, how can you possibly believe that what comes from within you will produce a blank page, or a blank screen?

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Voyager Spacecraft

Voyager Spacecraft

Planets and satellites are “built-in”, and the program comes with some 7500 asteroids and comets. Planets with low eccentricities have more circular orbits, while planets with a high eccentricities have more elliptical orbits. Planets with the perfect blend of molecular constituents orbiting at just the right distance from the sun enjoy what astronomers call a “Goldilocks” orbit. Planets are found much more commonly around stars like our sun that ar rich in iron and other metals, hinting that such elements played an important role in satellite formation. Planets, as we noted, move relative to the Read the rest of this entry »

Voyager Spacecraft Images

Voyager Spacecraft Images

In 1977 the United States launched a spacecraft, Voyager 2, carrying a very special payload: a recording, on a gold disc, of greetings from earth in different languages, as well as sounds of nature and musical recordings (as I recall, even Chuck Berry’s “Roll Over Beethoven” is on there).

With the recording, there were pictorial instructions for constructing a gimmick capable of playing the disc. The idea was that if the disc were to be found by intelligent beings from other worlds, they might be able to figure out how to listen to the recording and Read the rest of this entry »

Voyager Spacecraft Pictures

Voyager Spacecraft Pictures

September 5, 2007 marks 30 years of space travel for our most distant spacecraft. Voyager 1 reached 9,648,812,870 miles from earth on the 30th anniversary of it’s September 5, 1977 launch from Cape Canaveral aboard a Titan-Centaur rocket.

There ar actually four man made objects hurrying out of our solar system and all launched in the 70′s at the height of the cold war. We were thinking about fallout shelters and how to survive WW III at the time. Following the space program was our most positive news. Pioneer 10 was launched on March 2, 1972, Read the rest of this entry »

Wind Spacecraft

Wind Spacecraft

Have you ever wondered what types of sports will survive in the future, sports which will be played on other planets in space colonies? How about in orbiting space hotels, or space stations? How about in long-range cargo ships traveling through space to other planets? It might take them 10 months to get to the next closest planet, Mars for instance or perhaps 10 years to get to a planet which is near the outside of our solar system. That’s a lot of time, and the crew will obviously be well compensated for their journey, but how will they Read the rest of this entry »

Wise Spacecraft

Wise Spacecraft

Mention “self-defense” and images of Dirty Harry or Bruce Lee may well come to mind instantly, but the reality is a lot more prosaic (perhaps helping to explicate to some degree why such movies are so entertaining). Indeed, for most of human history, self-defense was just another(a) fact of life, another chore in life, and something of an everyday affair, too. Speaking of movies, one of the most famous transitions in all cinematic history was in 2001: A Space Odyssey, near the beginning of the film when an ape-man throws up into the air a bone he’d just used Read the rest of this entry »

Voyager Spacecraft Location

Voyager Spacecraft Location

The NASA IBEX probe also known as the Interstellar Boundary Explorer, is a NASA satellite that will manufacture the first map of the boundary amid the Solar System. The operation is part of NASA’s Small Explorer program and the probe was launched on a Pegasus-XL rocket on October 19, 2008. The primary mission will last for approximately 2 years in which it will endeavour to map the complete solar system boundary.

The IBEX mission is being directed by the Southwest Research Institute, with Los Alamos National Laboratory and Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Centre serving as Co-Investigator Read the rest of this entry »

Zond Spacecraft

Zond Spacecraft

Apollo 1 – Scheduled for launch the crew died on the pad during a flight simulation when fire broke out in the spacecraft. Grissom, White and Chaffee were killed with rescue workers close by Unable to free the crew everything was over within 5 proceedings after the fire started.

Apollo 4 or Satun 501 would be the next Apollo mission. With 95 engines astatine liftoff everything could have gone wrong. It did not.

Apollo 5 tested the Lunar faculty and other important parts and controls

Apollo 6 came as the Read the rest of this entry »