Daily science stuff

[putaro]

Space is big.

http://www.distancetomars.com/

[putaro]

Nicely detailed article on resurrecting the Saturn F-1 engine. Neat stuff. I used to do a lot of work with NASA back in the early 90's and I spent a lot of time at Marshall Space Flight Center, trying to get a filesystem up and running on their Cray and SGI supercomputers. Unfortunately, they weren't doing much engine test-firing at that time.

http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/04/ ... k-to-life/

[putaro]

Warp drive looking more feasible? That's gonna be a fugly ship, though.

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/49064028/ns/t ... Xk1qILrbK4

[Cogito]

Hmmm ... Vulcan ring ship, perhaps?

[putaro]

New ways to resuscitate people

Trip lives!

[Asso]

New ways to resuscitate people

Trip lives!

[Kevin Thomas Riley]

Tatooine-Like Alien Planets Could Host Life

[Distracted]

Hmmmm. Gives me an idea for the book I'm writing. The planets apparently have to orbit both suns as a unit for maximal habitability. Makes sense, otherwise you might end up with suns on both sides of the planet simultaneously, and a planet that has daylight 24/7.

Come to think of it, a planet like that would be interesting to hypothesize about. Especially if one assumed that humans were going to try to colonize the place. Anybody ever remember reading a story or a book about a planet with 2 suns that orbit in such a way as to never give the planet any darkness?

Wait... wasn't Nightfall by Isaac Asimov a story about a planet where there was never any night and what happened on the one night in thousands of years when there was a eclipse? Anybody remember whether that was a binary star system?

[Cogito]

I do remember the story you refer to but I don't remember the author. Didn't we first meet Riddick somewhere similar?

[Distracted]

I thought Riddick was on a planet where it was always dark?

[Kevin Thomas Riley]

Both Nightfall and the first Riddick movie had planets that were always in sunlight, except on very rare occasions. In Nightfall the civilization crumbled when all the stars came out, and in Pitch Black the light sensitive alien monsters came out when it got dark.

I don't recall the nature of the planetary orbits around the stars though...

[Distracted]

Ummm... so how exactly would light senstive monsters evolve on a planet where there was no darkness? Who writes this stuff?

[Cogito]

Ummm... so how exactly would light senstive monsters evolve on a planet where there was no darkness? Who writes this stuff?

Pffft. They evolved underground, of course. Surely that was obvious?

[Lt. Zoe Jebkanto]

Yeah, "Nightfall" was Asimov- very cool story, though I don't recall what caused the rarity of darkness.
Did anybody catch the "hiring" by NASA of a new group of astronauts? (Finally!) Only got the tail-end of the news item- half are women. Hooray... even if I'm not one of 'em. Knew I should've taken more science courses !

[Kevin Thomas Riley]

There's a new Riddick movie coming out, and it looks like he might be back on the original planet:

Vin Diesel kicks more merc and monster ass in new Riddick trailer