Wednesday 29 September 2010

Manned Spaceflight

We were told we were supposed to be going back to the Moon. We were told we were meant to be landing on Mars. What happened? Is our advancement as a species that unimportant? It saddens me that commercial spaceflight is overtaking institutions with such a great host of shared brainpower.






I realise that we have important things to spend tax money on back on Earth. I absolutely support the idea that we should be trying to create a stable, educated and affluent society. However I also see the need to explore, to migrate and to conquer that the human race has displayed from it's inception. We need a reason to be, a great project to proudly build. It is with immense frustration that I write this blog. We absolutely have the technology to conquer space, it isn't science fiction.




I would gladly see my tax money going on manned spaceflight. I wouldn't even mind paying a little extra that would go exclusively towards the cause. It all adds up. 300 million people paying a few dollars extra every year? I'd pay it proudly. What do you think? I'd like to gauge the general consensus on this issue.

Tuesday 28 September 2010

Space Is Really, Really, Really Big

Sometimes we forget just how unfathomably huge space is and all the insane things that happen in it.


This is V838. It is a star that until 2002, wasn't that remarkable. Just another one in billions. That is, until it flared up to be 600,000 times brighter than our sun. Think about that for a second.



Those holes in the outer layers that get bigger? They're being physically ripped up by the radiation the star is giving off. That's how powerful it is.

This is the Herbig–Haro object HH47. A Herbig-Haro object is a patch of nebulosity associated with newborn stars. They are formed when gas ejected by young stars collides with clouds of gas and dust nearby at speeds of several hundred kilometres per second.



If you don't know how big what you're seeing is, this might help:


See that little line at the bottom? That line is 20 times the size of our solar system. Now look back at the other image.


I love space.

Senior Military Personnel Claim UFO Coverup


"It may sound like a Spielberg movie plot, but if senior U.S. airmen are to be believed, this scenario is not science fiction.
They claim that since 1948, aliens have been hovering over UK and U.S. nuclear missile sites and deactivating the weapons– once even landing in a British base.
Furthermore, they warn, our governments are hushing the activity up.
Captain Robert Salas, who, along with six others is to break his silence on the subject, said: ‘We’re talking about unidentified flying objects, as simple as that.
‘They’re often known as UFOs, you could call them that. 

‘The U.S. Air Force is lying about the national security implications of unidentified aerial objects at nuclear bases and we can prove it,’ he said. 
The former officer said he witnessed such an event first-hand on March 16, 1967, at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana.
‘I was on duty when an object came over and hovered directly over the site.
‘The missiles shut down – ten Minuteman [nuclear] missiles. And the same thing happened at another site a week later. There’s a strong interest in our missiles by these objects, wherever they come from. I personally think they’re not from planet Earth.’
Colonel Charles Halt claims to have seen a UFO at RAF Bentwaters, near Ipswich, one of the few bases in the UK to hold nuclear weapons.
The sighting is said to have taken place 30 years ago. First he saw the object firing beams of light into the base then heard on the military radio that aliens had landed inside the nuclear storage area, he said.

‘I believe that the security services of both the United States and the United Kingdom have attempted – both then and now – to subvert the significance of what occurred at RAF Bentwaters by the use of well-practised methods of disinformation.’
The six former U.S. Air Force officers and one former enlisted man, are to present declassified information which they claim backs up their findings. They have witness testimony from 120 former or retired military personnel which points to alien intervention at nuclear sites in the U.S. as recently as 2003.
They will urge the authorities to confirm that alien beings have long been visiting Earth.
A press conference today in Washington will also highlight testimony from retired U.S. Air Force Captain Bruce Fenstermacher, whose security team saw a cigar-shaped UFO hovering above FE Warren nuclear base in Wyoming in 1976. 
Researcher Robert Hastings, who has written on the subject, explained that so far the aliens appeared interested in ‘mere surveillance’ but warned they seemed to have gone further in some instances.
‘At long last, all of these witnesses are coming forward to say that, as unbelievable as it may seem to some, UFOs have long monitored and sometimes tampered with our nukes,’ he added."
Source: Daily Mail 


What are the implications of this? I doubt anybody still has trust in the governments of the US and UK, so let's take that for granted. I will be reserving judgement until a clearer picture emerges. Ex-Military personnel have come forward with this information before but I find it hard to recall a time where seven officers have. It displays a solidarity that could only be sustained through a carefully planned hoax, or genuineness.


Stay tuned.