Blogs / Discoblog

Instead of spending time and money planning a manned mission to Mars, why not send an army of robots into space to do all the work? A fleet of robots could be deployed to explore far-away planets, according to researchers at Caltech’s Visual and Autonomous Exploration Systems Research Laboratory.

From the Telegraph:

Robotic airships and satellites will fly above the surface of the distant world, commanding squadrons of wheeled rovers and floating robot boats…The systems will transform planetary exploration, says [Wolfgang] Fink, who envisages the cybernetic adventurers mapping the land and seascapes of Saturn’s moon, Titan—believed to have lakes of standing liquid—as well as closer planetary neighbors like Mars.

Researchers say the robots could command themselves and other robots with little input from ground control. All of which seems like a great idea, since the human space flight program isn’t likely to take off anytime soon.

Related Content:
Discoblog: Billionaire to Throw a “Tickle Party” in Space
Discoblog: How to Find Aliens? Look for Pollution on Other Planets
Discoblog: Japan’s First Lady Claims She Went to Venus, Consorted With Aliens

Image: NASA

• Hit the red-light district on the cheap: Berlin brothels are offering discounts to “green” customers that arrive on bike.

• New robotic prosthetic hand lets users regain their sense of touch.

• Do space flights make people crazy? The European Space Agency is looking for a few volunteers to spend 520 days in total isolation to study space travel’s psychological effects.

• Going green? Not if you own a pet. A new book argues that owning a dog has the same carbon footprint as driving 6,000 miles a year in a Land Rover.

• Mix & match brains: Scientists try to create a bird chimera to study the evolution of birdsong.

Astronauts can’t be all business all the time; sometimes you just have to cut loose. Well that’s exactly what billionaire red-nosed clown Guy Laliberte intends to help the astronauts do when they blast into space tomorrow.

From the AP:

The man who hopes to be the first clown in space, Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte, said Tuesday he would tickle fellow astronauts as they sleep aboard the International Space Station.

The crew must be ecstatic to have him aboard. Laliberte might want to stick to handing out red noses and let the astronauts rest up so they can, um, fly a space shuttle.

MSNBC.com compiled a slideshow of their top nine space antics, a list that will surely include Laliberte’s ticklefest in the future. But for now it seems that astronauts’ favorite pastimes involve playing space golf, eating space fast-food, and dumping space trash.

Related content:
Discoblog: Bad Breath? Body Odor? Don’t Bother Applying to China’s Space Program
Discoblog: Scientists Examine Underwear Astronaut Wore for a Month
Discoblog: Today’s Conservation Gimmick: Drink Your Shower Water!

Image: NASA

• Bizarre condition of the day: phantosmia, where you smell something and can’t stop smelling it, sometimes for months.

• Thank goodness we’re doing something productive in space: A satellite is tracking and improving French wine harvests.

• The Romantics managed to mesh science and poetry. Any hope for the rest of us?

• Technology can be sexist; news at 11.

• Is the double-secret hangover cure really…asparagus?

It seems hygiene in space is all the rage. First, it was the odor-resistant underwear that one astronaut wore for a month. Now, China’s space program has come up with 100 rules for potential ‘nauts—and anyone with bad breath, dental cavities, body odor, or a family history of serious disease within the past three generations need not apply (apparently the program is looking only for “super human beings”).

The BBC reports:

Shi Bing Bing, a doctor at the 454th Air Force Hospital in Nanjing, eastern China, said the new rules will help China send the best of the best into space.

“Bad body odour will affect fellow colleagues in the narrow confines of a space shuttle,” he said. “These astronauts could be regarded as super human beings.”

Mr Shi’s hospital has now carried out a first screening of candidates to weed out those who fell foul of the 100 rules. A further two screenings will whittle hopefuls down to the small band who will follow in the footsteps of China’s space pioneers, chosen in 1997.

We hate to say it, but sometimes discrimination stinks.

Related Content:
Discoblog: Scientists Examine Underwear Astronaut Wore for a Month
Discoblog: Cooking in Space: Slow, Mediocre, and Dangerous
Discoblog: What Happens to Your Underwear in Space?

Image: flickr / Valerie Everett

Humans have sent plenty of things into space—monkeys, other humans, and those cute little invertebrate tardigrades, just to name a few.

Then came the hope that we could add solid cheese to that list. A group of British cheesemakers attempted to send the dairy product 18.6 miles into the atmosphere using a weather balloon with a GPS tracking device, and digital camera attached.

Once the 300-gram chunk of cheddar cheese reached its destination, the cheesemakers hoped, it would float peacefully back to Earth, thanks to a parachute that deployed once the balloon hit space. But to the chagrin of cheese-lovers everywhere, the mission met with disaster, and the cheese is now MIA, according to the Daily Mail:

Within ten minutes of taking off the tracking system failed. “We think it’s somewhere in the East of England—possibly in Essex or Hertfordshire,” said Dom Lane, of the West Country Farmhouse Cheesemakers’ Group. “We wanted to take a photograph of a piece of cheddar floating majestically in the firmament with the curve of the Earth below it.”

Let’s hope the cheese doesn’t fall from the sky onto some unfortunate fellow’s head.

Want to see more? Check out this cheesy video, courtesy of BBC News.

Related Content:
Discoblog: Caution: Your Cheese Grater May Be Radioactive, Study Finds
Discoblog: Dear Aliens: Would You Like Some Processed Chips?
Discoblog: Children’s “Teddy-nauts” Shot Into Space
Discoblog: Bugs that Can Travel in Space…Naked

Image: flickr / Joi

Most of us have experienced this frustrating situation: Nature is calling, so you rush to the nearest restroom, only to find that it’s sporting an “Out of Order” sign. Annoying, right?

Well, at least you weren’t hurtling through space at the time, hundreds of miles from the nearest plumber. Apparently, the toilet on the International Space Station has broken down, leaving the 13 crew members onboard with just a backup loo, and the crew of the shuttle Endeavour using the W.C. on that spacecraft.

According to BBC:

Mission Control told the crew to hang an “out of service” sign until the toilet can be fixed….

If repairs fail, Apollo-era urine collection bags are on hand, Nasa said. “We don’t yet know the extent of the problem,” flight director Brian Smith told reporters, adding that the toilet troubles were “not going to be an issue” for now.

The main toilet, a multi-million-dollar Russian-built unit, was flown up and installed on the US side of the space station last year. It had broken down once before, requiring a rush delivery of a replacement pump by the shuttle Discovery in 2008.

Another toilet-related problem arose earlier this year. That one was due to regulations that hold that Russian crew members on the ISS cannot use the American toilet.

In any case, let’s hope NASA gets the W.C. situation figured out soon. After all, it’s pretty hard to pull over for a pit stop 220 miles from Earth.

Related Content:
Discoblog: Not Subtle, But It Works: Peepoo Bag Converts Human Waste Into Fertilizer
Discoblog: LOLScienz: Toilit
Discoblog: The Miracle Liquid that Cleans Toilets, Treats Burns, and Kills Anthrax

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Former U.S. Pres. Richard Nixon may or may not have been a crook, but one thing’s for sure: He had a backup plan in case the astronauts of the first manned mission to the moon never returned to Earth. Nixon had a speech and a plan of action prepared in the event of a spacebound disaster, according to The Smoking Gun:

After making condolence calls to the “widows-to-be,” Nixon would have said, “Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace.” We’ve also included a second memo–prepared by NASA for the president and vice president–suggesting statements in the event of Apollo “crew fatalities.” The presidential lamentation ended by noting that the dead men “have followed a star, in night of space, and we for whom they went will not forget.” 

He even had a statement to the families of the space explorers of Apollo XI, complete with blanks to fill in with the astronauts’ names.

Luckily, as we’re all aware, the mission went smoothly. But this just-in-case plan (you can read the actual memo here) gives us the creepy feeling of reading the obituary of someone who is still alive.

Addendum: This memo was first published on The Smoking Gun in August of 2005.

Related Content:
Discoblog: Warning, Astronauts: You Might Return from Space Bloated and Bald
Discoblog: Where No Film Has Gone Before: <em>Star Trek</em> Screened in Space
Discoblog: Cooking in Space: Slow, Mediocre, and Dangerous

Image: flickr / karismafilms

Former man-on-the-moon Buzz Aldrin apparently has taken one giant leap for rapkind: He has recorded a rap song called “Rocket Experience.”

Aldrin teamed up with Snoop Dogg, Quincy Jones, and Soulja Boy to produce the rap. Check out the video spoof of Dogg, Jones, and Aldrin recording, Spinal Tap style. Aldrin hopes the song will foster an interest in space in today’s young people. He told USA Today:

“I’m not too good at carrying a tune, but I do have rhythm,” says Aldrin, who got the idea from a family member who felt the genre would have a broad reach. Aldrin’s ShareSpace Foundation, which promotes science and exploration, is one of three beneficiaries of the song’s iTunes sales. “I want kids interested in space. It’s their future”….[Aldrin] says rapping with Snoop Dogg proved almost as daunting as space. “Snoop had this great hand language going as he sang, which was hard for me,” Aldrin says. “But when it comes to getting people’s attention, comedy goes a long way.”

Related Content:
Discoblog: “Air Guitar Hero” Helps Amputees Test Out New Arms
Discoblog: Candy Wrapper Sends French Woman on a Space Flight
Discoblog: Blasting Lasers into the Sky To Make Lightning

Image: flickr / insidetwit

In reality Chris Pine’s character in Star Trek might well have looked more like Seinfeld’s George Costanza—that is, if the makers of the sci-fi flick had considered the fact that long-term space travel is likely to make a person look fat and ugly.

Besides food and water, humans need gravity in order to look normal—without it, our muscles would wither away, our bones wouldn’t develop properly, and our faces would become bloated. According to astrobiologist Lewis Dartnell at the University College London, when a person is in space for an extended amount of time, fluids that are normally kept in the lower limbs start to accumulate in the head, causing it to swell up. The hair would fall out, because hair is no longer needed to help keep the bodywarm. To top it all off, astronauts could expect the onset of space-obesity, the result of a lack of exercise in microgravity.
(more…)