The Moon, Europa

The Moon, Europa

Friday, August 19, 2011

Random Bears

I thought this 'mini-Jawa track looking vehicle' camera with Preditor'esque mirror camouflage was pretty awesome. It is similar in concept to the passive black-mirrored camouflage on the Venutian Witch in Europa ...The bears are just a bonus.

http://www.innovationnewsdaily.com/magi-cam-mirror-bears-2074/

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Europa Mission: Check.

I have tried not to hope.  I have been critical of NASA.  I have acted as though I really didn't care.  But srsly, I really did care.  I'm going to catch you up on the news but basically the bottom line is ... NASA can't take it back now.  Also, I think it's appropriate that they bring it along in case they find somewhere to put it.

Jupiter, as you can imagine, has been the news a lot lately.  Couple of things:  you can see Jupiter without a telescope?  Am I reading that right?  Well, that's great news!  Also, here's a couple of reasons why we're going, and for that matter, why you should look up once in awhile.

And this is just a really cool map, a compilation if you will, of where all the water is in the solar system.  You know, in case you've already built a space ship and you are interested in exploring.  Or in case we run out of water and it's really efficient to go get some from some of these places.  Or, better yet, we hit those places first as alternate living sites.  Logic.  What will they think of next?

It's a new era.  It's a jump-started old era.  Pota(y)to, pota(h)to.

Wouldn't you love to go to CU?  I know I would.

Later this week:  a review and some pics of the Chicago ComicCon.  I know San Diego is the bees-knees of cons but Chicago was the biggest one I've been to.  Wicked cool.

Thursday, August 4, 2011

Chicago Comic Con

Chicago Comic Con is next week and I will be there signing books! I still have some 'BeAMantaFan' t-shirts left and I decided to give one to everyone who buys a book...until they are gone. So drop by and say hi, hallo, hej, hola or ko ni chi wa!


http://www.wizardworld.com/chicago.html

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Trojan

Earth has a Trojan...asteroid that is. Trojans are asteroids that reside in the Lagrangian points of a planet's gravitational field. A Lagrange point is a point around a planet where the gravitational pull of the planet and the Sun allow an object to stay in a fixed position; a bit like geosynchronous orbit. There are six Lagrange points around a planet, L1-L6, and Earth's Trojan is located at the Lagrange point forward of her orbit known as the L4. I was very excited when I found this because I studied Trojans over a year ago and have been wondering ever since whether Earth had any. If you notice the illustration (on the link below) of the object's orbit it is obvious why it was difficult to spot the 1,000' wide object 50 million miles away...