What a Week In Space Time!

A Battle of the Billionaires:

This week SpaceX’s Elon Musk proclaimed that after February’s successful launch of the Falcon Heavy rocket and the considerably less successful mission of putting “Starman” into a Mars orbit, SpaceX will begin flying missions to Mars in early 2019 in the hopes of making the operation routine, and building up his frequent flyer miles. Not two days later, the current Czar of Russia, Vladimir Putin, proclaimed that Russia, or himself, have aspirations of sending unmanned missions to Mars in 2019 as well. The Russians have some lofty goals right now to proceed in a joint mission to make a moon base and colonize Mars in the 2020’s



As I wrote in a previous article, Putin wants to find water on the poles of the Moon, making it a way station for weary settlers on there way to Mars. Not a bad idea, you know? The Moon could become the new Iceland with layovers as long as you want. Musk, on the other hand, says the Moon is old news; it’s Mars or bust. He’s taken to social media on several occasions to try and recruit Mars colonists saying, “ You’ll get to see Mars! And Die!”



One would think that SpaceX did not want to reveal they missed their target orbit in the February launch. A few colonists probably backed out after that. So whom do you have in this battle of the billionaires?



That Great Black Hole in the Sky:

Everyone’s favorite theoretical physicist, Stephen Hawking, passed away this week at the age of 76. The man overcame all odds living around 50 years longer than he was expected to from the incurable motor neuron disease, ALS.  The man who formally turned down the queen when he was supposed to be knighted expanded upon and wrote many books on Einstein’s general relativity theory and black holes. His book, “ A Brief History of Time”, changed the way the way many perceive the universe and his triumph over ALS inspired many more.



You could make a case that he became the most well known scientist since Albert Einstein.



GEMINI 8:

This mission was of the utmost importance on this date, March 16th 1966. The Gemini 8 spacecraft was launched into space with it’s crew of two, Neil Armstrong and David Scott, with the hopes of performing the first space docking maneuver. This would be a prerequisite if we were to visit moon. The crew must be able to dock in orbit around the Moon.



After a successful docking, a malfunctioning thruster made the craft and the dock pitch and roll endlessly. The problem only got worse when Armstrong detached the dock causing them to spin out of control. The astronauts nearly lost consciousness and the mission was terminated early.  Much to the dismay of Armstrong, the craft was to head back to earth without trouble shooting the problem and trying again. Gemini 8 made an impromptu emergency landing in the Pacific ocean.