Archive for April, 2009
All American Space Fleet
Posted by Danielle in Collectibles on April 30, 2009
These 1950s trading cards feature great retro-future space art on the front, and… helpful safety tips on the back? (Via Retro Thing.)
Machinery is Interesting But Watch it From a Safe Distance.
Never Close Yourself Up In A Closet— Trunk or Anything Else.
Don’t Run or Play Hard with Things in Your Mouth—They Might Go Down the Wrong Way.
Lovely traces
Retro-Futurism
Posted by Danielle in Art & Architecture on April 28, 2009
Check out this great post of retro-futurist artwork, mostly German. A lot of things I haven’t seen before!
Etherbrian, this one’s for you [points down]
Blastoff!
Posted by Danielle in Special Events on April 27, 2009
Watch Steve Eves rocket into the history books — a spectacularly successful launch of the world’s largest model rocket!
Friday Picspam, part 3
Posted by Danielle in Advertising & Media, Picspam on April 24, 2009
First, a neat 19-years-later feature @ Wired on Hubble’s magnificent accomplishments.
HubbleSite celebrated the 19th anniversary as well with an unusual trio of galaxies called Arp 194.
Yesterday’s APOD showed this large gas bubble, Sharpless 308, which is quite cool.
And finally, here’s a picture of space shuttle Endeavor rolling out from the VAB to stand by in case of trouble during the Hubble servicing mission, which launches next month.
Stargazing spot
Yesterday’s APOD showed a lovely view of the stars from a lake in Turkey.
One mother of a model rocket
Posted by Danielle in Crafts & Hobbies on April 21, 2009
This model rocket is the stuff dreams are made of, and sports engines so large that I didn’t think they’d gone that far down the alphabet yet (rocket motors are alphabetically-graded. Last time I checked into it, the largest was an O. This one is sporting a P, and an experimental Q sent a rocket to 100,000 feet.)
But the article above puts it best:
Placed together side by side in the aft end of the forty-inch wide rocket, the motor tubes that will house all of these rocket engines look small and insignificant. But these nine motors will provide more than 8,000 pounds of thrust—enough power to pick up a Volkswagen Beetle and throw it a half mile through the air.
Weather and equipment cooperating, this big bird will fly on Saturday, and if successful, Steve Eves will have flown the largest model rocket in history. Godspeed, Steve!
Article found via OhGizmo!.
Double Vision
Check out this rare sight: both shuttle launch pads at Kennedy Space Center, both occupied (in preparation for next month’s Hubble Space Telescope repair; Discovery will be launching, Endeavor standing by in case of emergency.) Click here for ENORMOVISION. Via NASA’s Twitter (a handy thing to follow!)
Friday Picspam, Part 2
Starting this week’s PICSPAM! off with something old: medieval astronomy lecture notes, from a manuscript written at Melk Abbey in 1490.
The gossip of the week at NASA has been over their ISS Node-3 naming contest, in which Stephen Colbert encouraged his viewers to saturate the poll with a write-in of “Colbert”… which they DID indeed do… which won by a landslide, to NASA’s chagrin. Fortunately, this lovely addition to the Space Station bears the name “Tranquility” — appropriate given the view:
Big Hand
A strange image from the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, taken during the 100 Hours of Astronomy.
A small, dense object only twelve miles in diameter is responsible for this beautiful X-ray nebula that spans 150 light years. At the center of this image made by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory is a very young and powerful pulsar, known as PSR B1509-58, or B1509 for short. The pulsar is a rapidly spinning neutron star which is spewing energy out into the space around it to create complex and intriguing structures, including one that resembles a large cosmic hand. In this image, the lowest energy X-rays that Chandra detects are colored red, the medium range is green, and the most energetic ones are blue. Astronomers think that B1509 is about 1700 years old as measured in Earth’s time-frame (referring to when events are observable at Earth) and is located about 17,000 light years away.
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About Silver Rockets
This blog celebrates space exploration, human spaceflight and the heavens, through lots and lots ofimages.
My name is Danielle Signor, and I am a space cadet. STS-133 NASA Tweetup Attendee!
This is a blog, NOT A SHOP. Click the images for their source or purchase link, if available.
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