Alpha Fail
Jack Burkitt
A good day to kick this off. At lunchtime I watched the NASA simulator's realtime 3D model of New Horizons passing close to Pluto. At first, you could sweep the camera around the ship, the solar system was behind it, Pluto in front, with its moons. I went to make a cup of tea. Coming back, we were five minutes from closest point. Within ten minutes, you could angle the camera so that the spacecraft, Pluto and the entire of the rest of the solar system was on-screen at once. 30,000mph relativistic speed - the fastest spacecraft and therefore fastest anything ever made by mankind. Powered by, of all things, plutonium. Just now, at 2:10am we received the first telemetry back, that's how long it takes. Now follows 15 months of data, all systems nominal. A perfect mission. 3.3 billion miles. That's further into touch than Danny Fox can kick a cross to a striker.
Since the shuttle grounded and the commercial rockets began losing their shit a few miles up, it's felt a bit flat, space-wise, but we've had so many triumphs recently - the mars rover providing me with desktop wallpapers, Voyager finally leaving the solar system - mankind reaching out into interstellar space for the first time, Philae landing on the comet and waking up months later, and now this.
It's humbling and I love it. Puts our mediocre sports club's issues into perspective for one thing. Let's have this thread for all such scientific awesomeness.
Here's another one for you. Theoretical physics predicted pentaquarks in the 60s. Today we found them, thanks to the Large Hadron Collider. Considering we are stuck here and started off knowing nothing, we're doing alright.
Since the shuttle grounded and the commercial rockets began losing their shit a few miles up, it's felt a bit flat, space-wise, but we've had so many triumphs recently - the mars rover providing me with desktop wallpapers, Voyager finally leaving the solar system - mankind reaching out into interstellar space for the first time, Philae landing on the comet and waking up months later, and now this.
It's humbling and I love it. Puts our mediocre sports club's issues into perspective for one thing. Let's have this thread for all such scientific awesomeness.
Here's another one for you. Theoretical physics predicted pentaquarks in the 60s. Today we found them, thanks to the Large Hadron Collider. Considering we are stuck here and started off knowing nothing, we're doing alright.
Last edited:
