Too cool: NASA has released a bunch of computer images of various vehicles being built to go back to the Moon. Check out the cutaway view of the Orion Service module:
Cooooooool. I hope they get a chance to actually, y’know, build it. With the way the budget’s going for NASA, and they way they’re cutting back on robotic lunar exploration… well. We’ll see.
Oh, I have to add this. Looking through the images, this one popped up:
I only glanced at it, and I thought, "NASA is building the Flying Spaghetti Monster!"
Special note:
Hey! Have you donated to the Shannon Malloy Fund?
Update (Sept 15 2007): Donation button removed.
May 18th, 2007 at 2:56 pm
All Hail the FSM!
May 18th, 2007 at 2:58 pm
Wow, that is very cool. I love the Spidernaut, they should send two up and do Robot Wars.
May 18th, 2007 at 3:45 pm
This reminds me of concept cars because you build up all of this excitement to see these innovative ideas actually hit the production line, but in the end, you’re letdown because they never see the light of day.
Like you said, hopefully we’ll be able to see these space vehicles blastoff one day, but until then, I’ll believe it when I see it.
Brandon Watts
Criteo Evangelist
May 18th, 2007 at 4:33 pm
The Pastafarians will go crazy.
May 18th, 2007 at 5:46 pm
Not to belittle the work, past and current, of NASA’s spaceflight devisions, or the drive and vision of the current director, but I fervently hope that private endevour will eclipse these by the time they actualy fly.
But all hail Mike Griffin for replacing the shuttle!!!!
May 18th, 2007 at 5:51 pm
Interestingly when I was checking the spelling of ‘Griffin’, the third hit on google was the story:
‘At NASA, Wikipedia = Porn | NASA Watch’
apparently wikipedia is blocked on their servers as a porn site
May 18th, 2007 at 6:06 pm
I feel like an ass, but I can’t stand your “special note”. I’ll start reading again in a few weeks, once you’ve started concentrating on science again.
May 18th, 2007 at 6:18 pm
I gotta say, I’m a little tired of the Donate To Shannon Malloy ad you’ve placed in every entry. Don’t you think you’ve taken this a little far? You insulted the woman, she complained. You apologised. How long are you going to spend licking her Christian boots? Not that I don’t sympathise with the woman, but she had no cause to be upset in the first place. She won’t get over herself until we get over her. And seriously, I’m so over her.
May 18th, 2007 at 7:26 pm
I do know Democrats are drooling over a chance to cut up the manned space program (well it’s my gut feeling). Well the pendulum swings back and forth I guess. I guess we need a moon program that can launch from any of the 435 congressional districts.
May 18th, 2007 at 8:37 pm
Waste of money. Sorry, but it is. It’s another Shuttle in the making.
Or maybe I’m just in a sucky mood. Or both.
May 18th, 2007 at 8:47 pm
Oh OK, those aren’t actual noodly appendages, they’re actually very tiny Nasa engineers. I’ve no idea how they managed to shrink the engineers down to that size, but a lot of modern science escapes me.
May 19th, 2007 at 1:36 am
No, I haven’t donated to the fund & have no intention of doing so. We donate money to The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, Save the Tiger, The Gorilla Foundation, Save the Rhino etc., etc. plus we operate an animal shelter here in Melbourne, Oz. If you’re human, look after yourself or get your church to help!
If my attitude offends some people, tough. Because the attitude of a lot of people towards the other species on this planet offends me.
You were right the first time Phil, stick to your guns.
May 19th, 2007 at 6:39 am
Gee, I guess it’s true, sectarian problems, such as overpopulation, teen pregnancy,eco-collapse, etc are best handled in a non-sectarian, rationalist approach. If you want generosity and a hand held out to the less fortunate, ask a religionist,,,
This from a study of how much money will be given to a pan handler by strangers. The religionists give more,,,
I only sent her $20.00, and I feel so CHEAP,,,
Oh well, back to the drawing board,,,
GAry 7
May 19th, 2007 at 11:51 am
Not to further this hijack, but it does make sense to move the button to the sidebar, so it’s there now. I will still add a note to some entries, but not all.
For those of you who are tired of seeing it, that’s fine, but to actually complain about it is, to me, a little baffling. I also run ads, have all sorts of stuff in the sidebar, and so on. After a while, in general, if something doesn’t pertain to the reason you’re here, you tend to be blinded to it (advertisers are well aware of this phenomenon). Also, it’s only one line out of a blog entry! So I suspect it isn’t the donation button itself as it is the topic that may be irking some people. I am throwing this out there as an attempt for an honest discussion. Is it the button itself, or the topic, that irritates you?
Oh, and Paul– Shannon has said she is not Christian, and I don’t think I licked her boots. Cripes, I still have not backed down, nor will I, over the topic of that post, just my demeanor. I was and still am right about the usage of words, and our tendency to ascribe things to fate/superstition/a higher power instead of to random chance.
May 19th, 2007 at 1:25 pm
OK, I’ll explain why I clicked on Comments planning on complaining. For me, it’s not the button, it’s the words with it.
“Hey! Have you donated to the Shannon Malloy Fund?”.
Don’t you think that’s just a LITTLE bit pushy? If someone came up to me in the street and said that I’d probably reply using language I won’t use here.
As others have pointed out there are many worthy causes out there and, well, what’s so special about this woman other than that you posted a snarky blog entry about her and then felt guilty about it? How is that our problem? Fine, have a button, but please consider seriously rephrasing the comment with it.
May 19th, 2007 at 5:29 pm
To me it’s the issue. BAB is a science blog. She is not related to science. In fact, she’s kind of UNscience.
May 19th, 2007 at 5:36 pm
Some people are doing a lot of whinging given that they’re complaining about the prominence of a donation button.
Last time I checked, there are a lot of other sites on the WWW. Also, I seem to recall that there’s such a thing as compassion for a victim of an accident even if she doesn’t hold exactly the same views as you.
May 20th, 2007 at 1:28 am
I gave at the office. Heavily. AMT heavily.
Wasn’t the topic trips to the moon or something?
May 20th, 2007 at 6:06 am
I (and many others) read your site via an RSS reader. Seeing your pushy panhandling request, no doubt an attempt to assuage your guilt, bothers me greatly. It’s fine to stick it on your site, when we can tune it out (like banner blindness) but if it keeps showing up in the posts themselves, I’m going to unsubscribe.
I know that sounds like a kid threatening to take his toys and go home. After all, since I read your blog via RSS, I don’t see your ads, and I don’t improve your bottom line. I do, however, appreciate and respect each and every post you write (overcompensating guilt-ridden plugs notwithstanding), and routinely forward them to my other atheist and amateur astronomer friends. And there’s a rule about “customer complaints”. For every customer willing to speak up and tell you what’s wrong with your service, there are dozens more who don’t bother to let you know what was wrong. They just leave.
It seems to me that you’ve turned a science blog, one that had teeth and vitriol and passion, into a mewling, sobbing, “please, Shannon, may I have my testicles back” whinefest. I don’t like this side of you, it doesn’t seem like you at all. Did she have her lawyers threaten you? It’s just not right, and it’s not you.
Stick the donation button on the site, but don’t put it in the stories where it shows up in every RSS reader out there. It’s awful, what happened to Shannon, and I hope she is able to fully recover, but are you going to set up funds for everyone who has some kind of freak accident and believes in god? ‘Cuz I have to say, that’d be a lot of donation buttons being added, every single day.
May 20th, 2007 at 6:51 am
Gee, Dustin, you’re so twitty, as in bird b,,,,,,
Splashing vitriol around is very counter productive, as I hope you see from the above statement. Feel the burn,,,
The donation request is an attempt to encourage compassion for a fellow human being, NOT an attempt at redemption. Compassion is a high level, evolutionary construct. Societies which encourage it are more likely to survive. We cannot change the world with a bludgeon, we change it one person at a time.
I applaud Phil for being proactive, both in his efforts to encourage critical thinking AND compassion.
Go Phil!
Gary 7
May 20th, 2007 at 9:43 am
Speaking of the original topic…
…I’ve been absolutely unable to access the www.nasa.gov website for at least a couple of days. All I get is “Server not found”, every single time. Anyone else having this problem?
May 20th, 2007 at 11:21 am
Gary, asking people to give money does not encourage compassion. People who do give do not automatically develop compassion. Heck, do you even know what the word means? It’s not feeling good about yourself because you handed over some cash.
Mark, www.nasa.gov is working fine for me.
May 20th, 2007 at 12:50 pm
Seems to me quite a few assumptions about the BA’s motives are being made. It is assumed that he is feeling guilt but I don’t see any indication of that. He has repeatedly said that he has not changed his stance on the original post.
He has made personal contact with Shannon and that seems to be what brought this about. They connected. And he runs a popular blog and so he can use that to contribute for her. That is all. That is not guilt.
The BA has also said repeatedly, in many posts, that the blog is primarily science, particularly astronomy, but can also cover a wide range of his interests.
Shannon has also said that she is not religious and does not think her survival was a “divine” miracle. And for many people, helping her out financially, psychologically or in any other way would not be conditional on that anyway.
I don’t see any evidence that Shannon initiated anything about the contribution requests either. I assume it was the BA’s idea. Again, not from guilt, but because he made a personal connection with her and he wanted to do something for her.
I have also made some assumptions here about the BA and his motives. I may be wrong. But I gave him the benefit of the doubt. And it also seems to fit the profile I have of him based on his blog. The BA can refute anything I have said here and I couldn’t argue it.
Sorry about the continued hijack.
eewolf
May 20th, 2007 at 6:45 pm
Yes Ruth. I do have a pretty good idea what compassion means,,,
From Wikipedia:
Compassion is an emotion that is a sense of shared suffering, most often combined with a desire to alleviate or reduce the suffering of another; to show special kindness to those who suffer. Compassion essentially arises through empathy, and is often characterized through actions, wherein a person acting with compassion will seek to aid those they feel compassionate for.
Compassionate acts are generally considered those which take into account the suffering of others and attempt to alleviate that suffering as if it were one’s own. In this sense, the various forms of the Golden Rule are clearly based on the concept of compassion.
Compassion differs from other forms of helpful or humane behavior in that its focus is primarily on the alleviation of suffering. Acts of kindness which seek primarily to confer benefit rather than relieve existing suffering are better classified as acts of altruism, although, in this sense, compassion itself can be seen as a subset of altruism, it being defined as the type of behavior which seeks to benefit others by reducing their suffering.
Anyway, back to the original posting: I just tried the NASA link and it worked fine. MAybe it was just overloaded(maybe because of Phils Link? You are SO read, dude,,,). I’m wondering how far over budget and delivery time THIS project will be. Ah well, maybe Launch Point Technologies can get their magnetic launcher up and running and provide raw materials to NASA for orbital use and in space construction. Then they can just use the Orion for launching fragile payloads, like people and com. sats.,,,
Gary 7
May 20th, 2007 at 9:04 pm
eewolf, you’re pretty much much dead on target there. People do seem to be ascribing motivations to me that aren’t there, or at least making assumptions that are unwarranted from the available evidence.
May 21st, 2007 at 4:11 am
I’d like to point out that it would have been just as great to help Shannon out if she were a creationist Biblical literalist.
There should be no religious test for compassion. Shannon’s religious beliefs or lack thereof are of no importance whatsoever to her medical needs and should be of no concern to us.
May 21st, 2007 at 8:31 am
NASA built it, now Doctor Octopus has to re-program it to hunt down that pesky Spider-Man!
May 21st, 2007 at 12:35 pm
[…] Phil Plait’s Bad Astronomy Blog […]
May 22nd, 2007 at 9:43 pm
Hmm… If I remember correctly, a lot of the snarkieness of the original S.M. post wasn’t actually BA’s, but that of various other contributors jumping to false conclusions based on little or no evidence. Such as she probably wasn’t wearing a seatbelt, or alcohol or drugs or speeding may have been a factor or other such innuendo (turned out she was a passenger, not the driver.)
Now a bunch of people (the same ones?) are jumping to conclusions about BA’s motivations for the SM fund. How about applying a proper degree of skepticism and actually look at the evidence before drawing a conclusion? Isn’t that what this blog is all about?
To try to draw this whole diversion a little bit back towards the topic at hand, what about a decent health care system that covers people like Shannon so she doesn’t have to worry about funding her own surgery and rehab after surviving such a traumatic accident? How many hospitals could the Constellation program fund? And how many flights to the Moon or Mars could the war in Iraq fund? (I personally feel that if we got our priorities straight, we could easily fund both health care and space exploration.)
May 23rd, 2007 at 12:04 pm
[…] Last week I linked to some new NASA images of the Exploration vehicles, and commented how one looks like the Flying Spaghetti Monster… and now that post is linked from the FSM main page! […]
May 24th, 2007 at 4:53 am
Although a Pastafarian I do fear for our national icon, the New Zealand Kiwi (Apteryx), after reading the FSM Gospel. I hope NASA don’t try the Kiwi Motivation Test….
Save the Kiwi (Apteryx) from the Flying Spaghetti Monster Kiwi Motivation Test
http://rcd.typepad.com/personal/2007/05/save_the_kiwi_a.html