Boomer Musings: If You Can't Bring the Astronaut to the Asteroid, Bring the Asteroid to the Astronaut

Words to live by...

"How beautiful it is to do nothing, and to rest afterward."

[Spanish Proverb]

Ius luxuriae publice datum est

(The right to looseness has been officially given)

"Everyone carries a part of society on his shoulders," wrote Ludwig von Mises, "no one is relieved of his share of responsibility by others. And no one can find a safe way for himself if society is sweeping towards destruction. Therefore everyone, in his own interest, must thrust himself vigorously into the intellectual battle."

Apparently, the crossword puzzle that disappeared from the blog, came back.

Friday, January 4, 2013

If You Can't Bring the Astronaut to the Asteroid, Bring the Asteroid to the Astronaut

I wandered through the news yesterday and came across this headline:

NASA Wants to Give our Moon a Moon

The reason given is... interesting... to say the least. There were plans to send astronauts to a near-Earth asteroid but this is being mulled over as an alternative. After all, those asteroids are pretty small and awfully far away and having one nearby would certainly make it easier.

I was mostly fascinated by a couple of the comments:

Americans are so duplicitous...What they mean is (a)We want an Asteroid so we can smack it into countries, (b) we want an asteroid because we are moving the White House off World in keeping with our plan to be the first emperor of Earth, or (c) because no one can stop us...Mwhahahaha!

And...

"Well, the Obama administration has said it wants to send astronauts to a near-Earth asteroid."

Does he know something that we don't? Are we in real trouble and we need to study the pattern of asteroids so we can "catch" a bigger one when needed? Or, does the US just have a couple of billions of dollars to blow on some rocks?

This article is also interesting...

Young stars and Planets Grow Up Together

Maybe more so...

But something bothers me... "
"Astronomers using ALMA have been observing the formation of a young star and its planets around 450 million light years away."
Young? It's at least 450 Million years old. Well, I guess that is "young" relative to our own system.