Sci-Fi: Starship dimensions

If you like Science Fiction movies have a look at Jeff Russell’s Starship Dimensions pages. It provides pixel exact drawings of 218 starships and if you’re using IE you can compare the drawings directly on screen by dragging them around.

The in-scale drawings include starships from Sci-Fi movies such as Star Trek, Star Wars, Babylon 5, ID4, Macross/Robotech, Lexx, Freespace, and Battlestar Galactica. Zoom ranges include…

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Science: Water on Mars

No this is not a continuation of or “April’s Fools post”, Nasa today “officially released” information that they found water on Mars.

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Space: Gaja calling

f “Contact” with Jodie Foster was your kind of movie then you should have a look at the real-life version of sounds and noises recorded in space.

Watch the video for the sounds Gaja sends out into space that might be heard by other “aliens” on their planets…

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NASA: ISS 360 Virtual tours

If you always wanted to have a look around inside the International Space Station and your uncle is not the new president of a former communist country or a Billionaire - here’s your chance:

The NASA has put up a web site dedicated to the ISS with introduction videos, external and internal 360 tours and much more…

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Pictures of the evolution of space debris

With only 800 of the once launched 6000 satellites still being operational, the pile of space debris is becoming an ever-increasing amount of inactive space hardware orbiting around the Earth.

50% of the mess that besides old satellites also includes broken…

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Space travel: Virgin Galactic unveils SpaceShipTwo

Today Richard Branson’s space travel company “Virgin Galactic” has unveiled the design of its new space launch system.

Together with the new SpaceShipTwo the carrier aircraft called White Knight Two (WK2) was presented. Virgin Galactic says that WK2 is very close to completion and is expected to begin flight testing in the summer of 2008.

The carrier aircraft WK2 will get SpaceShipTwo up into the sky to about 60,000 feet (18,288 meters) where the two vessel then separate and SpaceShipTwo rockets into outer space.

For an expected ticket price of USD 200,000 six passengers and two crew members will then get about 4 1/2 minutes of zero-gravity time 68 miles (110 km) above us mere mortals before gliding back to Earth…

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NASA: Mars as Art

US Space agency NASA has put together a great gallery of images called “Mars as Art”. Over the last almost four decades spacecrafts have sent back images of the Mars surface that provided information of its history, climate and geology. The images in this gallery are actual images of Mars, taken from orbit and from the surface of the planet by spacecrafts from NASA and European Space Agency, but have been selected for their aesthetic rather than scientific value…

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Live on Camera: Space Debris breaks up in the Sky

Reporters from Live-TV station “Fox 31″ were quite surprised yesterday evening when one of their news choppers managed to capture the breaking up of space debris in the atmosphere. The “light show” that looked like meteorites - as NORAD has confirmed - was caused by the re-entry of a spent Russian science rocket. More information and a video at the…

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Put your message into orbit! Buy ad space on MIT satellite

A group of students at MIT and Georgia Tech are trying to raise money for their space mission by selling advertising on the spacecraft to companies and individuals. To allow sponsor to bid for advertising space on the satellite they have last week opened the YourNameIntoSpace.org web site.
The program is an initiative of the Massachusetts [...]

How NASA imagined space colonies in the 1970s

During the 1970s NASA Ames has conducted a series of space colony summer studies. Colonies housing for about 10,000 people were designed and a number of really amazing artistic renderings of the concepts created.
The Library with the full size images is accessible here
Thumbnails of some of the images are shown below.

images courtesy NASA Ames [...]