Category Archives: Random Thought

Mars Anyone?

The European Space Agency is seeking volunteers to simulate a 17 month trip to Mars.  The whole plan, known as the Mars-500 Project, sounds a lot like the Bio Dome to me but I guess more or less you’d be stuck in a capsule of some sort for the better part of 17 months in Moscow.

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Now the Russians (as always) are hedging their bets and running a second test with Monkeys.  The test will measure how the monkey’s handle the pressure of interplanetary space travel.

Twelve monkeys have flown in Russian and Soviet spaceships on previous missions.

Krosh flew in space in 1992 and is still in rude health.

Abrek and Bion were the first into space, in December 1983. After a five-day flight they landed in Kazakhstan and after rehabilitation returned to the pack.

Two years later the monkeys Verny and Gordy spent seven days in space.

In 1987 Dryoma and Yerosha spent two weeks in orbit. After returning from space Dryoma was presented to Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

After that there were three two-week flights: in 1989, 1992 and 1996. Then the project stopped – Russia did not have enough money for the programme. Now experiments are conducted on Earth under conditions which simulate weightlessness.

Sixteen-year-old space veteran Krosh is a star of the institute.

“Old man Krosh is about 60 years old, if we translate his monkey age to a human life span. He is very active. He responds well to food and is aggressive with his female partners,” says Ms Shaginyan.

“After rehabilitation he produced offspring. And that’s proof that spaceflight did not harm his health,” she added.

Yes, proof indeed.  My money’s on the monkey’s.  Considering that monkey’s already control New Dehli we should all know this can only end one way:  Planet of the Apes.

This has to be an expensive hobby.

Apparently Horse Fighting is popular in the Philipines. I would have thought this wasn’t really economically sound. I’m not sure what a horse goes for but it can’t be cheap which leads me to believe the purse at a Horse Fighting Tournament must be enormous.

A couple of questions:

  1. How does one train a horse for fighting?
  2. Are there certain breeds of horses that are better at fighting?
  3. Can you ride a fighting horse?
  4. What constitutes the end of a horse fight?
  5. Who pays for the horses?

Well it’s good to know the Philipines are upholding ‘Cultural Traditions’.

Probably not a good idea.

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The Navy will attempt to shoot down a disabled 5,000-pound spy satellite in the next couple of days before it crashes to Earth.  I’m going to say this is probably not going to go well:

The operation will be carried out from a Navy ship that will fire a missile modified for the task, which resembles shooting down a ballistic missile warhead as it begins to re-enter the atmosphere.

President Bush ordered the military to try to pick off the satellite because “there was a possibility of death or injury to human beings beyond that associated with the fall of satellites and other space object normally, if we can use that word,” a deputy national security adviser, James Jeffrey, said.

The vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. James Cartwright, of the Marine Corps, said “a window of opportunity” to pick off the satellite before it enters Earth’s atmosphere will open in the next three or four days and last for seven or eight days. If the first shot misses, there should be time for a second attempt before the satellite enters the atmosphere, when it would be “next to impossible” to score a hit because of atmospheric disturbances, the general said.

If the satellite is not intercepted, it will tumble out of control into the atmosphere in early March, he said.

Considering our track record (see here and here) on shooting objects out of the air I’m going to guess it’s even harder to shoot an object out of space.  This isn’t the first time a man made object has fallen from the sky with the possibly of killing us, Skylab fell to Earth but there was still a little control of the vessel before reentry.  The seriousness of this situation is due to the toxic fuel on board and lack of navigational control of this satellite.

At least we know the Chinese were able to shoot one out of Space early last year.