I wonder what ever happened to when they used to take the shuttle up on the 747 and drop it and let the astronauts land it? I mean I am sure it cost a fortune to do, and probably was a big risk, but it was really neat. Anyway, here is a pretty neat video of the shuttle catching a ride back to Florida. Sadly they do not just light the rockets and set a speed record for sub-orbital-powered-flight (yeah, I made that up). Since I saw this on Giz I will post their story:

I’ve seen the shuttle pulling a Moonraker with NASA’s modified 747 mothership before—like in this spectacular zenithal shot of Endeavour—but it never ceases to amaze me to see the two of them taking off.

This is Atlantis returning home from California after mission STS-125—the riskiest ever—where astronauts played Katamari Damacy, fixed Hubble, and made astronomers and space aficionados everywhere smile again.

It just seems impossible that the 747 can lift that gigantic spacecraft. The trip from Edwards Air Force Base back to Florida will require several stopovers for refueling, taking at least two days of rain-free weather travel to reach its final destination.

(Via Gizmodo.)

First let me say that typing in ‘glass of pee’ in Google Images has some disturbing results. But no matter how disturbing seeing the pictures was, the thought of drinking piss is still worse. Sure I know it is filtered, but it is a mental thing. That is why I failed out of the NASA program.

The three crew members of the International Space Station raised plastic pouches in a toast of their first taste of urine that had been recycled into drinkable water. “The taste is great,” said Michael R. Barratt, left, a flight engineer. A recycling system, installed last fall, purifies the urine. Recycling is crucial, especially with the station crew expanding to six people this month, because of the cost of transporting water from Earth. At the station’s mission control room in Houston, people cheered and drank similarly recycled water. A distillation unit in the system initially proved balky, and a replacement was brought up and installed in March. After the system passed tests, the station’s two astronauts and one cosmonaut finally took a sip.

Do you think it is purified so much it takes out the asparagus smell even? Did I cross the line? Sorry. And if you don’t know what I am talking about, you need to eat asparagus.

(Via NY Times)

Slashdot has an excerpt from The Guardian revising their timeline for going to the moon.

“The Guardian is reporting that NASA is quietly revising its internal estimates of a 2018 launch for its Ares V rocket. Although publicly the date given for the launch was 2020, the internal launch date was set for 2018. The shift in dates seems to be linked to ‘growing budget woes,’ and ‘engineers say that means the public 2020 date to send humans back to the moon is in deepening trouble.’ NASA administrator Mike Griffin blamed the White House, and the previous Bush administration, saying funding for Ares V and other projects fell from $4bn through 2015 to just $500m. ‘This was to be allocated to early work on the Ares V heavy-lifter, and the Altair lunar lander. With only a half-billion dollars now available, this work cannot be done.’”

I think it is amazing how much this stuff costs when you have to figure out how to do something from scratch. And you will note this story is not called “returns to the moon.” Now that I think about it, why are we even going to the moon? If your going to go anywhere, at least make it Mars. It can at least support life, I saw a documentary all about it. You just melt the ice, and the best part, they have women with like three or four breasts!

I mean really is this a surprise to anyone?  This is the agency that forgot to convert meters to feet and smashed the first Mars lander right into the planet.  I will say that there are some really smart 13 year olds out there too, on behalf of NASA, now they just need to hire them.  So here is an AFP aritcle brought to us by Giz and /. about a 13 y/o that shows NASA how to do math, and turns out the chances of us getting killed by an asteroid are pretty decent.