People Who Are Mad At Jared For Sending The Cast Dead Pigs And Shit

Sounds like I'm already on the right track!

5 Myths About Becoming an Astronaut

Have you ever wondered if you have what it takes to become a NASA Astronaut? The term “astronaut” derives from the Greek word meaning “space sailor,” and refers to all who have been launched as crew members aboard NASA spacecraft bound for orbit and beyond.

We’re looking for a new class of astronauts to join the NASA team, and here are a few things to know.

Here are a few myths about becoming an astronaut:

MYTH: All astronauts have piloting experience.

FACT: You don’t need to be a pilot to be an astronaut. Flying experience is not a requirement, but could be beneficial to have.

MYTH: All astronauts have perfect vision.

FACT: It’s okay if you don’t have 20/20 vision. As of September 2007, corrective surgical procedures of the eye (PRK and LASIK), are now allowed, providing at least 1 year has passed since the date of the procedure with no permanent adverse after effects.

MYTH: All astronauts have advanced degrees like, a PhD.

FACT: While a Bachelor’s degree from an accredited university is necessary, an advanced degree is not required to become an astronaut.

MYTH: Astronauts are required to have military experience in order to be selected.

FACT: Military experience is not required to become an astronaut.

MYTH: You have to be a certain age in order to be an astronaut. 

FACT: There are no age restrictions. Astronaut candidates selected in the past have ranged between the ages of 26 and 46, with the average age being 34.

Okay, but What are the requirements?

Commander and Pilot Astronauts

Pilot astronauts serve as International Space Station commanders and pilots. During flight, the commander has onboard responsibility for the vehicle, crew, mission success and safety of flight. The pilot assists the commander in controlling and operating the vehicle.

Basic requirements for an Astronaut Pilot include the following:

Bachelor’s degree from an accredited institution in engineering, biological science, physical science or mathematics. An advanced degree is desirable. Quality of academic preparation is important.

At least 1,000 hours pilot-in-command  time in jet aircraft. Flight test experience is highly desirable.

Ability to pass a NASA space physical which is similar to a military or civilian flight physical and includes the following specific standards:

Distant visual acuity: 20/100 or better uncorrected, correctable to 20/20, each eye Blood pressure: 140/90 measured in a sitting position Height between 62 and 75 inches

Mission Specialist Astronauts

Mission specialist astronauts work with the commander and the pilot and have overall responsibility for coordinating operations in the following areas: systems, crew activity planning, consumables usage and experiment/payload operations.

Basic requirements for a Mission Specialist include the following:

Bachelor’s degree from an accredited institution in engineering, biological science, physical science or mathematics. Degree must be followed by at least three years of related, progressively responsible experience. An advanced degree is desirable and may be substituted for part or all of the experience requirement. Quality of academic preparation is important

Ability to pass a NASA space physical which is similar to a military or civilian flight physical and includes the following specific standards:

Distant visual acuity: 20/200 or better uncorrected, correctable to 20/20, each eye Blood pressure: 140/90 measured in a sitting position Height between 58.5 and 76 inches

Applications for our next astronaut class open on Dec. 14! Visit: http://www.nasa.gov/astronauts/

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com 

I couldn't help but laugh maniacally.

Kitty stair surfing. [video]

Largest Collection of Planets EVER Discovered!

Guess what!? Our Kepler mission has verified 1,284 new planets, which is the single largest finding of planets to date. This gives us hope that somewhere out there, around a star much like ours, we can possibly one day discover another Earth-like planet.

But what exactly does that mean? These planets were previously seen by our spacecraft, but have now been verified. Kepler’s candidates require verification to determine if they are actual planets, and not another object, such as a small star, mimicking a planet. This announcement more than doubles the number of verified planets from Kepler.

Since the discovery of the first planets outside our solar system more than two decades ago, researchers have resorted to a laborious, one-by-one process of verifying suspected planets. These follow-up observations are often time and resource intensive. This latest announcement, however, is based on a statistical analysis method that can be applied to many planet candidates simultaneously.

They employed a technique to assign each Kepler candidate a planet-hood probability percentage – the first such automated computation on this scale, as previous statistical techniques focused only on sub-groups within the greater list of planet candidates identified by Kepler. 

What that means in English: Planet candidates can be thought of like bread crumbs. If you drop a few large crumbs on the floor, you can pick them up one by one. But, if you spill a whole bag of tiny crumbs, you’re going to need a broom. This statistical analysis is our broom.

The Basics: Our Kepler space telescope measures the brightness of stars. The data will look like an EKG showing the heart beat. Whenever a planet passes in front of its parent star a viewed from the spacecraft, a tiny pulse or beat is produced. From the repeated beats, we can detect and verify the existence of Earth-size planets and learn about their orbits and sizes. This planet-hunting technique is also known as the Transit Method.

The number of planets by size for all known exoplanets, planets that orbit a sun-like star, can be seen in the above graph. The blue bars represent all previously verified exoplanets by size, while the orange bars represent Kepler’s 1,284 newly validated planets announced on May 10.

While our original Kepler mission has concluded, we have more than 4 years of science collected that produced a remarkable data set that will be used by scientists for decades. The spacecraft itself has been re-purposed for a new mission, called K2 – an extended version of the original Kepler mission to new parts of the sky and new fields of study.

The above visual shows all the missions we’re currently using, and plan to use, in order to continue searching for signs of life beyond Earth.

Following Kepler, we will be launching future missions to continue planet-hunting , such as the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), and the James Webb Space Telescope. We hope to continue searching for other worlds out there and maybe even signs of life-as-we-know-it beyond Earth.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

Overwatch & TF2 thign

SpaceX Update:

The Jason-3 launch was successful.

The landing attempt on the droneship, however, didn’t go perfectly. The rocket booster is “on target at droneship” but SpaceX has said that a landing leg was broken due to a hard landing. I don’t know exactly what this means for the booster quite yet. I’ll update when I find out.

Neat!

Traveling to Mars (safely AND quickly) with plasma rockets

There has been quite a bit of hype about getting people to Mars. But traveling 35 million miles to the red planet will require a new breed of rockets that are much more powerful and efficient than traditional chemical-fueled rockets.

It takes *A LOT* of fuel to get into space. The Saturn V, which launched spacecraft to the moon, required fuel tanks that were taller than the Statue of Liberty. Traveling to Mars, which is 200 times farther than the moon, means that we would need to build an even bigger rocket that can carry 200 times more fuel — a highly impractical quest. 

So NASA researchers are working on a new kind of rocket with electric thrusters that can travel at high speed using less fuel. These plasma rockets can get spacecraft to the moon with one-tenth the tank of fuel used by Saturn V, and are capable of cutting a risky trip to Mars down from two years to less than two months. 

Even though plasma rockets are ideal for long-term spaceflight, they do have some shortcomings.

To create plasma, a gas-like matter that’s as hot as the sun, radio waves are used to heat a gas propellant. The problem is that during the heating process, charged ion particles are expelled, causing damage to the thruster’s walls that could potentially lead to a catastrophe.

So what if there was a way that the wall could repair itself?

Gary Li, a UCLA aerospace engineering grad student, is figuring out a way to do just that. In the video below, he explains how his research could help humans travel safely and quickly to Mars:

im what the kids call

sleep deprived

It’s a Spooky Universe

Consider yourself warned!

- Our universe is almost certainly going to die a heat death in which energy in the universe shall be spread so thinly that everything will freeze, the stars will burn out and not shall be left but eternal darkness.

- We might live in a multiverse. If in fact, we do: basic statistics shows that we may in fact be more likely than not be a computer program, living in a sort of simulated universe. Yes, there’s actual scientific research being done to figure out if we’re a hologram and others trying to make progress into multiverse theory. 

Imagine the existential horror if we turned out to be the artificial intelligence of someone else’s universe!

- There are almost certainly a multitude of “rogue black holes”, secretly drifting through the Milky Way. If one were to drift into the solar system it could spell our end… that’s obvious though I’m sure.

- As many of you are aware, Earth’s been sending out signals for around a century now. The fact that these signals get exponentially weaker doesn’t mean they stop existing:

Who’s to say such signals can’t be detected by some advanced-and-none-too-benevolent extraterrestrial civilization?

After all, we astronomers regularly tout our exponential advancements in the search for extraterrestrial life. Maybe next time you see that light moving against a backdrop of stars it… never mind. It couldn’t possibly be…

- Certain galaxies, like M87, emit jets of matter at near the speed of light. The high amounts of energy speeding out of these galaxies could, in some cases, end life in any solar system it were to point at:

I hope all the stars above you still seem pleasant!  

I’m not necessarily advocating in favor of any of these events and don’t necessarily think any of them are likely but for each item above, there are astrophysicists who do…

(Image credit: Spooky Space Kook of Scooby Doo from © Hanna-Barbera, NASA/ESA, agsandrew/Shutterstock.com, NASA, NASA/ESA/Anderson/van der Marel and NASA and STScI/AURA respectively)

[source]

sorry for the length of this!! i thought of the idea earlier today and i knew i had to draw it