Does anyone know of a decent online archive of Martian maps, including the highest resolution scans from the most recent orbiters, organized like Google maps?

I'm thinking specifically of a draggable, clickable, zoomable Martian atlas.

I've done some googling around, but haven't found anything like this yet.

Any leads would be much appreciated.

Posted by: JohnL at 11:10 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I read this and especially this part:

"Researchers continue to look for new ways to counteract the physical changes associated with long-term space flight whether through diet, exercise, medication or a combination of strategies."

What's missing from that list? How about, say, engineering? Why don't any of these studies ever look at testing a centrifugal/centripetal force method of creating quasi-gravity?

It's not like the concept is a new one. After all, Wernher von Braun had already dreamed of the "wheel" space station so poetically realized in 2001: A Space Odyssey as early as the 1950s.

I'm surprised there haven't been any tests of the concept yet. It seems like it would have been pretty simple to already have built a rat-scale ring that would have fit in a shuttle bay (or one of the station modules) to see how the forces would have affected the rats. Is there a certain minimum diameter needed to prevent disorienting coriolis effects?

Does anyone know of any tests along these lines? It seems a lot easier than trying to change human biology with medications.

Posted by: JohnL at 11:00 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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The headline of this article made me think of Milliway's.

You know. Restaurant at the End of the Universe... Bar at the Center of the Milky Way. I wonder if they serve Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters there.

Posted by: JohnL at 10:40 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Thankfully, it appears that today's repair mission was a complete success, and the potentially threatening gap fillers were removed with minimal effort and without causing any damage to the thermal tiles. Read about it here.

Unfortunately, it now appears that a second spacewalk may be necessary to repair a thermal quilt outside the cockpit that may have been damaged by launch debris.

I wonder how many of these kinds of issues have previously gone unnoticed or uncared-about. Since NASA added additional cameras for the return-to-flight mission, Discovery has to be the most closely-studied orbiter in the history of the program. Perhaps our earlier ignorance really was bliss. I'm just surprised that this level of scrutiny wasn't applied to the earlier shuttle missions.

It will be interesting to see whether the safety-first culture at NASA will abate any after a few successful missions. It will have to in order to ever succeed in implementing President Bush's exploration initiative. It seems that repair spacewalks should be something that every crew of every vessel in space should be prepared to do.

Posted by: JohnL at 11:59 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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