Looking At The Space Shuttle From Inside A NASA Building

There are a lot of unusual and interesting jobs at NASA. Some of these jobs have a lot of responsibility attached to them. For instance, how would you like to be the person that is responsible for tracking asteroids and making sure that they are not headed toward a collision with the Earth? I would say that this is a very responsible and nerve racking job, wouldn't you? When this guy was asked if there was any particular asteroid that we should be worried about he initially replied that there was one that was known as Apophis. Yes Apophis, the same name as the villain in the popular Stargate science fiction show and the same name as the Egyptian God known as the destroyer, who was the great enemy of the Sun god. Calculation has shown that there was a chance that this large object could hit the earth in 2029. Updated calculation have shown that this is not going to happen, I guess that is a load off of this person's mind and I guess ours also. The problem is that as you eliminate one or more object, other objects show up that seem to also have a chance of hitting us. I hope that this person is not a worrier. This particular program is not funded very well, having a total budget of only about four million dollars per year. I have been told that this is not enough to monitor the entire sky. Ouch.

NASA scientists have discovered something that is very strange and it concerns the Earth's magnetic field. It was thought that nothing much changes on the face of the Moon. So much so, that if one were to make an indentation in the lunar soil, it was thought that it might remain that way for millions of years. Well it turned out that this is a wrong assumption. A University of Maryland scientist stated, Earth's magnetic tail extends well beyond the orbit of the Moon and once a month, the Moon orbits through it. This can have consequences ranging from lunar 'dust storms' to electrostatic discharges." Who would have ever thought that there could be dust storms on the moon? I personally do not know of any cases where a dust storm has been seen on the Moon. It turns out that our Earth has what is known as a magnetic tail and when there is a full Moon, it is inside the magnetic tail. This lasts for six days. The magnetic tail is said to have trapped hot plasma particles in it and they hit the Moon, giving it a negative charge. This seems to have a much greater effect on the Moon's dark side, since the sun has an effect on these particles. This is the reason, that it is said that certain photos of the Moon show a glow on the horizon. It is also thought that this might cause Moon dust to gather and float and create a dust storm.

A book, Challenger Revealed: An Insider’s Account of How the Reagan Administration Caused the Greatest Tragedy of the Space Age, states that the explosion of the Challenger shuttle was cause by people working for the Reagan Administration. It also goes on to state that the shuttle is not only a civilian space shuttle, as we have been told, but also a platform that the military uses to test space based weapons. Many of us know the story about Challenger, that it exploded because it was too cold to launch since the O rings were too cold to act as a seal as they were designed to. Engineers from Morton Thiokol, the rocket designers, argued with NASA about the launch. They absolutely did not want the shuttle to go up and stated that it was too dangerous. The book claims that the administration ordered the launch because the shuttle was to carry out a military weapons experiment and then after the shuttle blew up, it made up a story that stated that higher ups at NASA were not informed about the O ring problem and the book states that this was absolutely not true. *I found this info very interesting and have sent an invitation to the author of this book, to be interviewed. He has accepted.

The word is that NASA is designing a Moon probe that will analyze Moon dust. They want to do this before the astronauts return there. This sort of makes me wonder what is going on. When the astronauts landed on the Moon, they became coated with dust and it got into the return vehicle and was everywhere. If this stuff would have been harmful, I think that we would have known, since it must have escaped from the Apollo capsule when the hatch was blown. Not only that, but many of us had been under the impression that the dust had already been analyzed because the astronauts brought back rocks that must have had dust on them. When I think about this, I have to think that something else is going on here. Could it be that there is something like an energy source in lunar dust? Wouldn't that be something. If it isn't that, what could it be? Maybe the dust experiment is not a dust experiment at all and it is something else? These are the kinds of things that just keep us guessing. Moon dust was a real nuisance for Apollo astronauts,” said NASA researcher Mian Abbas, whose team studies the interaction of lunar dust and solar wind at the National Space Science and Technology Center’s Dusty Plasma Lab in Huntsville, Ala., “It stuck to everything - spacesuits, equipment, instruments.”

According to an article in a Scottish Newspaper, astronauts that spend too much time in space are prone to cancer and also premature aging. Some scientists believe that this is due to the radiation in space, at least this is what the scientists at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington D.C. think. What effect is this going to have on the colonization of other planets and the Moon? I guess I have to say that it depends. If the exact source of this problem can be found, for instance if it is some type of radiation, then maybe we can shield ourselves from it. We would need special quarters built on our space ships that would shield the occupants and then we would need special suits. There would also be a special need for shielded buildings on these other worlds that have weak atmospheres or no atmospheres, since the radiation would probably penetrate to the surface.

NASA scientists claim that they have found the smallest black hole ever. While it is small by astronomical standards, it is still almost four times the mass of our sun. Black holes can not be viewed directly. They are detected by masses of material swirling around them. This is the material that is being sucked into the black hole. The smallest black hole that was found previously was about the mass of 6.3 suns. The sun has a mass of over one million Earths. Scientists think that about the smallest black hole that could form would be about 3 times the size of our sun. I find this particularly interesting since the scientists that are building the new accelerator state that it might produce miniature black holes that will last only for micro seconds and be much smaller than the tip of a pin. So who is right here? Hey do black holes even exist, or are we seeing something else and calling it a black hole? Until we actually see a black hole, perhaps from space, we just can't truly be sure. By the way, a black hole that is 3.8 times the mass of the sun, would only be about 15 miles in diameter.

Soon, we are going to launch the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter which is also known as the LRO. It will be headed for the Moon on a mission to prepare for the return of humans to that heavenly body. It is a robotic mission that is scheduled to explore the moon for landing sites, or so they say at NASA. Aboard this mission is a device that will impact into a crater near the south pole. This vehicle will be called the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite or LCROSS. It is said that the impact will be able to determine if there is water in the crater. NASA scientists believe that there may be hydrogen on the moon, which is a component of water and even water ice. The plan is that if water ice exists then water can be extracted from the soil.

*This article was written before the interview with Richard C. Cook from NASA on June 26, 2008