Dog Space Suits From The 50s + 60s

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Skydive From Space: Felix Did It!!

Over 8 million people watched Felix step off that capsule and hurtle through the sound barrier and into the record books.
His records:
Highest jump: 128,097ft or 24 miles (39 km)
Highest manned balloon flight: 24.261miles (39.045km)
Fastest freefall: 1342 km/h or 834mph (Mach 1.24)
He was in freefall for 4 minutes and 19 seconds, missing out on the record by 17 seconds still held by Joe Kittinger.

 

Check out all our previous posts that lead up to this epic event dating back to January 2010!
First Supersonic Freefall
Skydive From Space Update 
Skydive From Space Update 2 
Skydive From Space Update 3 - A sad day
Skydive From Space Update 4 - It's back on!
Skydive From Space Update 5
Skydive From Space Update 6 - First manned test flight!
Skydive From Space Update 7 - 2nd manned test flight!
Skydive From Space Update 8 - A teaser

 Image [VIA]
Video [VIA]

Skydive From Space: This Is IT!!!!

Felix Baumgartner is making his attempt at his 120,000ft skydive from space today, Right NOW in fact!! Check out the feed over at http://www.redbullstratos.com/live/ or at the YouTube feed below.
This is the moment I've been blogging about for nearly 3 years!! Do not miss it!!

Skydive From Space Update 8

If like me, you cannot wait to watch this epic event happen LIVE, perhaps this teaser from Felix Baumgartner's test jump will show you what's in store. (WARNING: You will watch this probably 5 times in a row!!) Enjoy!

Extreme Close-ups of Eyeballs

Photographer Suren Manvelyan captured these insane close-ups of human eyes. I could seriously stare at these for hours.

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Grounded - A Downright Gorgeous Short Film

Grounded, a short film by Kevin Margo follows the final moments of extrasolar astronauts. I don't fully understand it, but I can watch it over and over.

Skydive From Space Update 7: 2nd Manned Test Flight

Felix Baumgartner has completed his second test flight and plunged to Earth from an altitude of about 96,640 feet (25.9 kilometres). His top speed was an estimated 536mph (863km/h). He's aiming for a record-breaking jump from 125,000 feet, or 38 kilometres, in another month and hopes to go supersonic, breaking the speed of sound with just his body.

Videos from HERE and HERE
Image from HERE

View From The ISS At Night

An amazing video by Knate Myers made from still shots taken by astronauts on board the International Space Station. Make sure you watch in full screen!!

Skydive From Space Update 6: First Manned Test Flight!!

Skydive From Space Update 5

It's definitely on this year!! YES!
From the Red Bull Stratos website yesterday:
"The jump will happen sometime this year. I know you’re thinking, “how am I going to mark it on my calendar with a vague answer like that?” I can tell you the team has made really good progress in a matter of months, but they need to run more tests. We’re launching out of Roswell, NM so the weather will be another determining factor. Believe me, when it’s time to launch we’ll give a big shout out."

Images from HERE

Skydive From Space Update 4

YES!!! It's back on!!!

If you remember from our post back in October 2010 'Skydive From Space Update 3', the Red Bull Stratos project was halted due to a petty lawsuit.
Just today, I was checking to see if there had been any changes and I read this on the Red Bull Stratos website:

OFFICIAL STATEMENT ON CLOSING OF LEGAL CASE
June 30, 2011

The legal action filed by Daniel Hogan and PerDan, LLC in the Superior Court for the State of California for the Country of Los Angeles entitled Per Dan, LLC, et al. v. Red Bull GmbH, et al., Case No. BC 436456 has been mutually resolved by the parties out of court and the lawsuit has been dismissed.

Now get on and make history.....

Felix Baumgartner, the man attempting to set the new record, with Joe Kittinger, who has held the record for over 50 years.
Pic from HERE

Drink Your Own Pee - NASA Style

Remember the opening shot of Waterworld where Kevin Costner pees into a cup, puts it through a machine, and drinks it? Would it greatly surprise you to know that NASA is working on giving this technology to the astronauts?


The process uses forward osmosis, which is “the natural diffusion of water through a semi-permeable membrane from a solution of a lower concentration to a solution with a higher concentration”. This allows you to urinate into a bag, and then use the syringe attached to the receptacle bag to turn your liquid waste into a sugary electrolyte drink.


I’m not certain whether I want to be the first to drink this. Some of you are probably finding this entire subject matter to be “gross”, and I think that is a perfectly human response. I would imagine that someone has to go against their natural instincts and actually try to drink the filtered urine.

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Concept Spaceship Design

Great concept spaceship design from a variety of designers....

Frédéric Augis

Kemp Remillard

Pierre-Etienne Travers

Miguel Angel Martinez Monje

David Levy

Ömür Özgür

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Homemade Spacecraft

After the disappointing news that Red bull is stopping its Stratos project because of some dick, this video made me smile.
Seven-year-old Max Geissbuhler and his dad Luke Geissbuhler dreamed of visiting space. They formed The Brooklyn Space Program and armed with just a weather balloon, a video camera, and an iPhone, they basically did just that.

This isn't the first time someone has made a DIY spacecraft and captured the curvature of the earth and the blackness of space.
Check out our post of Robert Harrison's weather balloon spacecraft.

Skydive From Space Update 3

It is a sad sad day.

Red Bull GmbH and Red Bull North America Inc have decided to stop the Red Bull Stratos programme with immediate effect.

Felix Baumgartner had been scheduled to undertake a stratospheric balloon flight to 120,000ft (36.5km) and attempt a freefall jump that would, for the first time, reach supersonic speeds, as well as deliver valuable scientific data.

Despite the fact that many other people over the past 50 years have tried to break Colonel (Ret) Joe Kittinger's altitude record, and that other individuals have sought to work with Red Bull in an attempt to break his record, Daniel Hogan claims to own certain rights to the project and filed a multi-million-dollar lawsuit earlier this year in a Californian court.

That "Mr. Hogan" is apparently one Daniel Hogan, who reportedly pitched Red Bull on a similar skydiving idea in 2004.

Due to the lawsuit, they have decided to stop the project until this case has been resolved.

For a project that has been 3 years in development, this petty claim really pisses me off.
I've been waiting and waiting for this event.

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Felix meeting Neil Armstrong in August 2010

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Amazing Aurora Borealis Photograph

This photo was taken by Ole Christian Salomonsen over Tromsø, Norway, using long exposure. That's why you can see streaks from satellites and an airplane crossing the firmament.
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NASA Commons Flickr

Through a competitive process, NASA selected The Internet Archive to organize a comprehensive online compilation of NASA's vast collection of photographs, historic film and video on the NASA Images Web site under a non-exclusive Space Act agreement, signed in July 2007. Launched in 2008, NASA Images is already making hundreds of thousands of images and thousands of hours of video and audio content available to the public, and the collection is growing daily at no cost to taxpayers.....



Visit the NASA Flickr Account HERE.

Skydive From Space Update 2

4 people now have their eyes on this record.

Felix Baumgartner, who with the help of Joe Kittinger, the man who has held the record since 1960, is well on his way to complete this insane challenge. A photo of his gondola which wil take him up to 120,000 Feet is below.

The rivals are:
Steve Truglia, a British stuntman.
Cheryl Stearns, a pilot for US Airways who holds 30 skydiving records.
Michael Fournier from France, who has attempted the freefall record 3 times and has been his dream for 20 years. His last attempt was in May 2010, but was cancelled due to a technical fault.

My money's on Felix.

Check out our previous post on him and his spacesuit HERE.


1. Camera Systems
Three pressurized housings on aluminum arms will contain a total of three HD, three ultra-high-resolution video and two digital still cameras. Four more cameras record outside and three inside. "We basically built a flying television studio," says Jay Nemeth of FlightLine Films.

2. Outer Fairing
The Gemini shape of the capsule is "really a very elegant way of putting a lot of insulation around a lot of the systems," says chief engineer Bill Dodson. R-24 equivalent foam, covered by a fiberglass shell and fireproof paint, helps guard against temperatures as low as minus 100 F.

3. Liquid Oxygen
Redundant liquid-oxygen tanks with independent lines provide 10 hours of O2 for the 3-hour flight, plus pressurize Baumgartner's suit at altitude. N2 flowing from an oversize liquid-nitrogen tank will keep the cabin's oxygen level to below 30 percent, minimizing fire risk.

4. Pressure Sphere
A pressure sphere, molded from fiberglass and epoxy, sits in a chrome-moly steel load frame "like an egg in a bubble-wrap container," says project director Art Thompson. It will be pressurized to 8 psi—equal to 16,000 feet—but is designed to withstand 50. "It's definitely overbuilt."

[VIA]

A Simulated Trip To Mars

From 3 June, the Mars 500 project will send a "crew" of six on a simulated 520-day round trip to the Red Planet and back.
The cosmonauts - three Russians, a Chinese, a Frenchman and an Italian - will live and work as interplanetary travellers, spending eight hours a day working on maintenance and scientific experiments, eight hours at leisure and eight hours sleeping.

Organisers at the European Space Agency and Russia's Institute of Biomedical Problems hope that the project will offer an insight into how such a mission would function. But above all, the most significant assessment they will make will be how it affects the subjects psychologically.

Any communication between the crew and mission control will be subject to 20-minute delay to simulate the time it would take for signals to reach Earth. Meanwhile, cameras will monitor them 24 hours a day.
With no access to telephones, internet or natural light, breathing only recycled air and showering once every 10 days, the men are certain to have both their individual mental states and group dynamics tested to the limits in the 550-cubic-metre simulator.



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Skydive From Space - Update

An update on Felix Bumgartner's skydive from the edge of space.

Read the first article on Felix HERE

Read the article on his rival HERE