Tag: space

Earthly/Geo/Astro · Public Space · Social/Politics · Technology · Videos

A Visual History of Satellites: The ‘extended urbanization’ of space.

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Right now, there about 1,100 satellites whizzing above our heads performing various functions like observation, communication, and spying. There are roughly another 2,600 doing nothing, as they died or were turned off a long time ago.

How did each of these satellites get up there? And what nations are responsible for sending up the bulk of them?

The answers come in the form of this bewitching visualization of satellite launches from 1957 – the year Russia debuted Sputnik 1 – to the present day. (The animation starts at 2:10; be sure to watch in HD.) Launch sites pop up as yellow circles as the years roll by, sending rockets, represented as individual lines, flying into space with one or more satellites aboard.

Read Full article at CityLab

Architectonic · Art/Aesthetics · Book-Text-Read-Zines · Design · Philosophy

Toward an Architecture of Enjoyment

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The relationship between bodily pleasure, space, and architecture—from one of the twentieth century’s most important urban theorists

Toward an Architecture of Enjoyment, the first publication of Henri Lefebvre’s only book devoted to architecture, redefines architecture as a mode of imagination rather than a specialized process or a collection of monuments. Lefebvre calls for an architecture of jouissance—of pleasure or enjoyment—centered on the body and its rhythms and based on the possibilities of the senses.

Lukasz Stanek’s work has already taken scholarship on Henri Lefebvre’s concept of space to an unprecedented level of philosophical sophistication. With the discovery of the new text, Toward an Architecture of Enjoyment, Stanek escorts Lefebvre to the center of architecture theory since 1968. Lefebvre’s conceptual text and Stanek’s exquisite introduction together enable the possibility of thinking not about architecture, but thinking architecturally about how we inhabit our world. Toward an Architecture of Enjoyment takes us toward a concept of the architectural imagination that is a powerful mediator between thought and action.

—K. Michael Hays, Harvard Graduate School of Design

Text and Image via UPRESS

Earthly/Geo/Astro · Human-ities · Science

Is our universe fine-tuned for the existence of life – or does it just look that way from where we’re sitting?

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It can be unsettling to contemplate the unlikely nature of your own existence, to work backward causally and discover the chain of blind luck that landed you in front of your computer screen, or your mobile, or wherever it is that you are reading these words. For you to exist at all, your parents had to meet, and that alone involved quite a lot of chance and coincidence. If your mother hadn’t decided to take that calculus class, or if her parents had decided to live in another town, then perhaps your parents never would have encountered one another. But that is only the tiniest tip of the iceberg. Even if your parents made a deliberate decision to have a child, the odds of your particular sperm finding your particular egg are one in several billion. The same goes for both your parents, who had to exist in order for you to exist, and so already, after just two generations, we are up to one chance in 1027. Carrying on in this way, your chance of existing, given the general state of the universe even a few centuries ago, was almost infinitesimally small. You and I and every other human being are the products of chance, and came into existence against very long odds.

Excerpt from an article writen by Tim Maudlin at Aeon. Continue THERE

Design · Earthly/Geo/Astro · Performativity · Projects · Technology · Videos

Copenhagen Suborbitals: DIY Space Exploration

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Copenhagen Suborbitals is a suborbital space endeavor, based entirely on private donators, sponsors and part time specialists

According to them: “Our mission is to launch human beings into space on privately build rockets and spacecrafts. The project is both open source and non-profit in order to inspire as many people as possible, and to involve relevant partners and their expertise. We aim to show the world that human space flight can be different from the usual expensive and government controlled project. We are working full time to develop a series of suborbital space vehicles – designed to pave the way for manned space flight on a micro size spacecraft. The mission has a 100% peaceful purpose and is not in any way involved in carrying explosive, nuclear, biological and chemical payloads. We intend to share all our technical information as much as possible, within the laws of EU-export control.

They work in a 300 sqm storage building, called Horizontal Assembly Building (HAB), placed on an abandoned but yet historic shipyard in Copenhagen, Denmark.

The areas around HAB provides them with enough space to test their own rocket engines, and being situated close to the harbour of Copenhagen makes it easy for them to go into sea for our sea launch operation.

They have no administration or technical boards to approve our work, so they move very fast from idea to construction. Everything they build is tested until they believe it will do. Then they (attempt to) fly it!

Some of their main design drivers are:

– Keep as much work in-house as possible
– Choose mechanical solutions over electrical
– Use “ordinary” materials for cheaper and faster production
– Cut away (anything), instead of adding

Images and Text via Copenhagen Suborbitals

Earthly/Geo/Astro · Social/Politics · Technology

Space Ownership and the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 by NASA

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The Outer Space Treaty of 1967

Treaty on principles governing the activities of states in the exploration and use of outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies.

Opened for signature at Moscow, London, and Washington on 27 January, 1967

THE STATES PARTIES. TO THIS TREATY,

INSPIRED by the great prospects opening up before mankind as a result of man’s entry into outer space,

RECOGNIZING the common interest of all mankind in the progress of the exploration and use of outer space for peaceful purposes,

BELIEVING that the exploration and use of outer space should be carried on for the benefit of all peoples irrespective of the degree of their economic or scientific development,

DESIRING to contribute to broad international co-operation in the scientific as well as the legal aspects of the exploration and use of outer space for peaceful purposes,

BELIEVING that such co-operation will contribute to the development of mutual understanding and to the strengthening of friendly relations between States and peoples,

RECALLING resolution 1962 (XVIII), entitled “Declaration of Legal Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space”, which was adopted unanimously by the United Nations General Assembly on 13 December 1963,

RECALLING resolution 1884 (XVIII), calling upon States to refrain from placing in orbit around the earth any objects carrying nuclear weapons or any other kinds of weapons of mass destruction or from installing such weapons on celestial bodies, which was adopted unanimously by the United Nations General Assembly on 17 October 1963,

TAKING account of United Nations General Assembly resolution 110 (II) of 3 November 1947, which condemned propaganda designed or likely to provoke or encourage any threat to the peace, breach of the peace or act of aggression, and considering that the aforementioned resolution isapplicable to outer space,

CONVINCED that a Treaty on Principles Governing the Activitiesof States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies, will further the Purposes and Principles ofthe Charter of the United Nations,

HAVE AGREED ON THE FOLLOWING:

Earthly/Geo/Astro · Human-ities · Science · Technology

Iron in Egyptian relics came from space: Meteorite impacts thousands of years ago may have helped to inspire ancient religion.

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The 5,000-year-old iron bead might not look like much, but it hides a spectacular past: researchers have found that an ancient Egyptian trinket is made from a meteorite.

The result, published on 20 May in Meteoritics & Planetary Science, explains how ancient Egyptians obtained iron millennia before the earliest evidence of iron smelting in the region, solving an enduring mystery. It also hints that they regarded meteorites highly as they began to develop their religion.

“The sky was very important to the ancient Egyptians,” says Joyce Tyldesley, an Egyptologist at the University of Manchester, UK, and a co-author of the paper. “Something that falls from the sky is going to be considered as a gift from the gods.”

The tube-shaped bead is one of nine found in 1911 in a cemetery at Gerzeh, around 70 kilometres south of Cairo. The cache dates from about 3,300 bc, making the beads the oldest known iron artefacts from Egypt.

Text and Image via Nature. Continue reading HERE

Ancient Egyptians accessorized with meteorites. Via The Open University.

Earthly/Geo/Astro · Science · Technology

78,000 apply to leave Earth forever to live on Mars

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Huge numbers of people on Earth are keen to leave the planet forever and seek a new life homesteading on Mars. About 78,000 people have applied to become Red Planet colonists with the nonprofit organization Mars One since its application process opened on April 22, officials announced Tuesday. Mars One aims to land four people on the Red Planet in 2023 as the vanguard of a permanent colony, with more astronauts arriving every two years thereafter.

“With 78,000 applications in two weeks, this is turning out to be the most desired job in history,” Mars One Chief Executive Officer and co-founder Bas Lansdorp said in a statement. “These numbers put us right on track for our goal of half a million applicants.”

Mars One estimates that landing four settlers on Mars in 2023 will cost about $6 billion. The Netherlands-based organization plans to pay most of the bills by staging a global reality-TV event, with cameras documenting all phases of the mission from astronaut selection to the colonists’ first years on the Red Planet. The application process extends until Aug. 31. Anyone at least 18 years of age can apply by submitting to the Mars One website a 1-minute video explaining his or her motivation to become a Red Planet settler.

Text by Mike Wall. Continue THERE

Design · Earthly/Geo/Astro · Fashion

The Space History SALE

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Space History auctions focus on space exploration from the early days of Project Mercury and Vostok through the Gemini missions, the historic Apollo moon landings, Soyuz, Skylab, ASTP, and beyond.

The auctions feature photographs, flight plan sheets, Robbins medallions, models, patches, emblems, flags, lunar surface equipment and other hardware, much of it flown and often signed and inscribed by astronauts and cosmonauts such as Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Yuri Gagarin.

The sales take place annually in New York, and highlights have included Armstrong’s “One Small Step for a Man” signed quotation ($150,000), the Apollo 11 lunar surface star chart ($218,000) and Leonov’s 1975 ASTP space suit ($240,000). Bonhams is a market leader in this rapidly growing field. Go to Bonhams for more info.

Sold for US$ 9,375 inc. premium: SOVIET SURFACE-TO-AIR MISSILE ENGINE. Liquid propellant sustainer powerplant, designed by the bureau of celebrated rocket engine designer Alexei M. Isayev. 39 x 14 x 14 inches, approximately 140lb when crated. Constructed of various alloys, one duct with cloth tape insulation and paper label reading “20[Cyrillic D]6510-30/3,” various inspection marks mostly in red. Apparently unfired.

Sold for US$ 8,125 inc. premium: Flown packet of dehydrated Potato Soup, 7 x 8 inches. An attached identification label reads: “POTATO SOUP, 5 oz. hot water, 5 – 15 minutes, 058” with an inspection stamp. On the reverse side an additional tag reads: “SERIAL NO. FAU 473.” Included is a Typed Letter Signed by FRED HAISE. Potato Soup carried on the Apollo 13 flight but not consumed.

Art/Aesthetics · Earthly/Geo/Astro · Human-ities · Photographics · Technology

OVERVIEW: On earth-gazing, awe and the aesthetic experience

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On the 40th anniversary of the famous ‘Blue Marble’ photograph taken of Earth from space, Planetary Collective presents a short film documenting astronauts’ life-changing stories of seeing the Earth from the outside – a perspective-altering experience often described as the Overview Effect.

The Overview Effect, first described by author Frank White in 1987, is an experience that transforms astronauts’ perspective of the planet and mankind’s place upon it. Common features of the experience are a feeling of awe for the planet, a profound understanding of the interconnection of all life, and a renewed sense of responsibility for taking care of the environment.

“When we look down at the Earth from space we see this amazing, indescribably beautiful planet – it looks like a living, breathing organism. But it also, at the same time, looks extremely fragile.”

– Ron Garan (quote from the film)

‘Overview’ is a short film that explores this phenomenon through interviews with five astronauts who have experienced the Overview Effect. The film also features insights from commentators and thinkers on the wider implications and importance of this understanding for society, and our relationship to the environment.

All text via overviewthemovie.com/

CAST
• EDGAR MITCHELL – Apollo 14 astronaut and founder of the Institute of Noetic Sciences
• RON GARAN – ISS astronaut and founder of humanitarian organization Fragile Oasis
• NICOLE STOTT – Shuttle and ISS astronaut and member of Fragile Oasis
• JEFF HOFFMAN – Shuttle astronaut and senior lecturer at MIT
• SHANE KIMBROUGH – Shuttle/ISS astronaut and Lieutenant Colonel in the US Army
• FRANK WHITE – space theorist and author of the book ‘The Overview Effect’
• DAVID LOY- philosopher and author
• DAVID BEAVER – philosopher and co-founder of The Overview Institute

Architectonic · Digital Media · Performativity · Sculpt/Install · Shows · Technology

QR Code Rooms: Venice Biennale 2012: i-city / Russia Pavilion

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The first national pavilion that we visited was the Russia pavilion, curated by Sergei Tchoban. The exhibit, designed by SPEECH Techoban / Kuznetsov (Sergei Tchoban, Sergey Kuznetsov, Marina Kuznetskaya, Agniya Sterligova), showcases the Strolkovo Innovation Center, a new development that aims to concentrate intellectual capital around five clusters (IT, Biomed, Energy, Space, Nuclear Tech), with projects by David Chipperfield, SANAA, OMA, Herzog & de Meuron, Stefano Boeri, SPEECH, and Mohsen Mostafavi among others.

An interesting project, presented in detail with tons of information, yet invisible inside the space of the pavilion. A series of QR Codes wrap the inside of the Russia pavilion spaces, and all you can sense at first is light and space. At the entrance you are provided with a tablet, and you walk around the pavilion scanning these codes to obtain the information about Strolkovo.

Text and Images via archdaily. Continue HERE

Architectonic · Sculpt/Install

Le Cercle Fermé

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“Anybody interested in the work of Martine Feipel & Jean Beachmeil soon realizes that the notion of space is central to it. This is also the case in the artwork presented for the 2011 Venice Biennale. The observer is presented with a single idea: the obvious necessity of finding a new type of space.
At the root of their work is an awareness that sensorial perception has physiological limits – and that our conception of space is historically dated. Henceforth, in the wake of the philosophy of Jacques Derrida, it is a case of trying to go beyond the limit of a place to find a new one. This comes down to thinking about the meaning of the limit and the meaning of space which is mainly the result of tradition. The important thing is not to overstep or transgress the law by crossing the limit but to ‘‘open’’ a space at the very heart of the former space. This opening does not create new space to occupy, but rather a sort of pocket hidden inside the old meaning of the limit. It is about an opening in space according to the principle of slippage. This internal slippage and the recreation of space always implies the destruction of an institution. The meaning of the word “space” is profoundly destabilized. In this, our two artists are very topical because the management of space is in crisis. This space we think of as living space is simultaneously a space of action, orientation and communication. The development of science and technology, the erosion of particular visions of the world and traditional value systems, the structural crisis of the economy and the exacerbation of the issue of logic question a traditional conception of space and management that only thinks in terms of fields of competence and is obsessed with the constraints of growth and valorization. We live in a period of mutation in which past models of orientation and action no longer work.
Certainly, the situation still seems open, but we lack concepts of action capable of responding to the ecological crisis and the crisis of civilization we are currently experiencing without endangering democracy, human rights and the physical necessities of life. Today, there is no doubt that it is more urgent than ever to consider any reflection on the question of space as a work of civilization, as a remodeling of civilization. Modifying the everyday completely remodels our world, and that is what this is all about.
The artwork can be understood on various different levels that touch as much on philosophy as on art history or society.”

Text by René Kockelkorn, curator. Le Cercle Fermé

Earthly/Geo/Astro · Performativity · Technology

The “Energies and Skills” Trilogy / Tom Sachs’ Space Program: MARS

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Directed by Van Neistat, 2012. Produced on the occasion of Tom Sachs’ Space Program: MARS

Artist Tom Sachs takes his SPACE PROGRAM to the next level with a four week mission to Mars that recasts the 55,000 square foot Wade Thompson Drill Hall as an immersive space odyssey with an installation of dynamic and meticulously crafted sculptures. Using his signature bricolage technique and simple materials that comprise the daily surrounds of his New York studio, Sachs engineers the component parts of the mission—exploratory vehicles, mission control, launch platforms, suiting stations, special effects, recreational amenities, and Mars landscape—exposing as much the process of their making as the complexities of the culture they reference.

SPACE PROGRAM: MARS is a demonstration of all that is necessary for survival, scientific exploration, and colonization in extraterrestrial environs: from food delivery systems and entertainment to agriculture and human waste disposal. Sachs and his studio team of thirteen will man the installation, regularly demonstrating the myriad procedures, rituals, and tasks of their mission. The team will also “lift off” to Mars several times throughout their residency at the Armory, with real-time demonstrations playing out various narratives from take-off to landing, including planetary excursions, their first walk on the surface of Mars, collecting scientific samples, and photographing the surrounding landscape.

Text via SPACE PROGRAM: MARS

Color and 10 Bullets by Tom Sachs

Digital Media · Earthly/Geo/Astro · Technology

OWW: Orbit Wide Web (Interplanetary Internet)

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HAVING helped spread the internet’s tentacles across the globe, boffins are now thinking of extending them further. Assorted space agencies believe it would be rather nifty if the world wide web encompassed more of the world than just one planet. Those at the European Space Agency (ESA) are therefore designing an interplanetary network, which might help space stations, planetary rovers, astronauts and ground stations communicate more effectively.

In October they are planning to test just such a network by getting an astronaut in the International Space Station (ISS) to control a rover on Earth. This will be a test of the technology for use on future Mars missions. They are also exploring the possibility of creating a universal information-exchange system, allowing many of the different space agencies to share data quickly.

Nestor Peccia, who heads ground-software development at the ESA, says that the main challenges are more political than technological. An interplanetary web’s assets, like Earth ground stations, relay satellites, rovers, moon stations, etc, will probably belong to national space agencies. Government agencies may be reluctant to share them with others and it may be a while before enough space entrepreneurs like Elon Musk stump up the amounts of money need in to mimic Earth-bound internet’s decentralised charm in orbit.

These would be considerable. It tends to cost around $50m just to launch a single satellite, not counting design and construction, though Mr Musk’s company, SpaceX, may yet bring that down. And a fully fledged interplanetary web would need a sizeable flotilla.

For now, orbital internet is limited to the ISS. Since January 2010 its astronauts have had access to so-called Crew Support LAN, which uses satellites to provide a brisk, reliable internet connection. Before, going online in orbit was a hassle. E-mails, tweets and other online exchanges had to be relayed through a colleague on Earth, hardly ideal, especially for intimate communications. The current system has undoubtedly improved the quality of life in the ISS, helping to ease the sense of isolation. It is a far cry from interplanetary social networking. But it is a start.

Text and Image via The Economist

Animalia · Design · Earthly/Geo/Astro · Performativity

THE MOON GOOSE ANALOGUE: Lunar Migration Bird Facility by Agnes Meyer Brandis

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Agnes Meyer Brandis’ poetic-scientific investigations weave fact, imagination, storytelling and myth, past, present and future. In “THE MOON GOOSE ANALOGUE: Lunar Migration Bird Facility (MGA)” the artist develops a narrative based on Godwin’s The Man in the Moone, in which the protagonist flies to the Moon in a chariot towed by ‘moon geese’. Meyer-Brandis has actualized this concept by raising eleven moon geese with astronauts’ names and imprinting them on herself as goose-mother. They live in a remote Moon analogue operated from a control room within the gallery.

This is the documentation of the project and installation:

THE MOON GOOSE ANALOGUE :
Lunar Migration Bird Facility

The project consists of 3 main elements:

1. The Moon Goose Colony (MGC)
Raising and imprinting eleven moon geese in Italy, ongoing

2. The Moon Analogue
a living space for geese, not-public installation in Italy

3. The Control Room
an installation in a public exhibition space

For further information please have a look at: ffur.de/mga

THE MOON GOOSE ANALOGUE: Lunar Migration Bird Facility
was commissioned by The Arts Catalyst and FACT Liverpool.
In partnership with: Pollinaria

Text and Images via Agnes Meyer Brandis’ website.

Architectonic · Performativity · Projects · Social/Politics

Stay Home

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http://www.stayhomesakoku.com/

Earthly/Geo/Astro · Performativity · Technology · Videos

Lego Space Shuttle Boldly Goes Where No Tiny Plastic Ship Has Gone Before

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Raul Oaida (from Romania) and his LEGO tribute to the end of the space shuttle era. Proving that although retired, this machine can still fly, albeit in toy form.

The launch took place from central Germany (easy flight clearance) and reached a max altitude of 35000m. A 1600g meteo balloon filled with helium was used alongside a GoPro Hero, Spot GPS and of course Lego Space Shuttle model 3367.

Read Full Story HERE. Via Explore

Grassroots Cartography with Balloons and Kites

Digital Media · Games/Play · Motion Graphics · Performativity · Philosophy · Science · Technology

Why Mass Effect is the Most Important Science Fiction Universe of Our Generation

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Kyle Munkittrick: Mass Effect is epic. It’s the product of the best parts of Star Trek, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica and more with a protagonist who could be the love-child of Picard, Skywalker, and Starbuck. It’s one of the most important pieces of science fiction narrative of our generation. Mass Effect goes so far beyond other fictional universes in ways that you may not have yet realized. It is cosmic in scope and scale.

Sci-fi nerds have long debated over which fictional universe is the best. The Star Trek vs Star Wars contest is infamous into banality, with lesser skirmishes among fans of shows and books like Battlestar Galactica, Enders Game, Xenogenesis, Farscape, Dune, Firefly, Stargate, and others fleshing out the field. Don’t mistake this piece as another pointless kerfuffle among obsessive basement dwellers. Mass Effect matters because of its ability to reflect on our society as a whole.

Science fiction is one of the best forms of social satire and critique. Want to sneak in some absolutely scandalous social more, like, say, oh, I don’t know, a black woman into a position of power in the ‘60s? Put her on a starship command deck.

Most science fiction, even the epic universes in Star Wars and Star Trek, pick only two or three issues to investigate in depth. Sure, an episode here or a character there might nod to other concepts worthy of investigation, but the scope of the series often prevents the narrative from mining the idea for what it’s worth.

Mass Effect can and does take ideas to a new plane of existence. Think of the Big Issues in your favorite series. Whether it is realistic science explaining humanoid life throughout the galaxy, or dealing with FTL travel, or the ethical ambiguity of progress, or even the very purpose of the human race in our universe, Mass Effect has got it. By virtue of three simple traits – its medium, its message, and its philosophy – Mass Effect eclipses and engulfs all of science fiction’s greatest universes. Let me show you how.

Read Full Article at PopBioethics

Earthly/Geo/Astro · Science · Technology

Project Icarus: Laying the Plans for Interstellar Travel.

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“Why do we pay this obsessive attention to backing up a document, which we can reproduce, when we pay no attention to backing up our civilization?” — Andreas Tziolas.

Ross Andersen: Project Icarus, which will focus on the mission’s technological challenges, is a theoretical engineering study that was launched in 2009 by the British Interplanetary Society with the purpose of designing an interstellar spacecraft. It brings together an international group of volunteer aerospace engineers from government space agencies, universities and the private sector with the purpose of generating technical reports on the engineering layout, functionality, physics, operation, and mission profile of an interstellar probe. You can think of it as a kind of repository for bleeding-edge thinking about interstellar travel.

Project Icarus takes its inspiration from Project Daedalus, a five-year study launched by the British Interplanetary Society in 1973 to determine whether interstellar travel was feasible at all. Project Daedalus ultimately concluded that interstellar was possible, but acknowledged that the technical challenges were significant. Icarus aims to pick up where Daedalus left off, by trying to chip away at some of those technical challenges. Andreas Tziolas, a former research fellow at NASA who holds a Ph.D. in Gravitation and Cosmology, is the Project Leader for Project Icarus. Yesterday I spoke to Tziolas about how and, more interestingly, why we might someday send a mission to the stars.

Click HERE to read the full article and for an interview with Andreas Tziolas who is drafting a blueprint for a mission to a nearby star. Via The Atlantic

Art/Aesthetics · Book-Text-Read-Zines · Human-ities · Social/Politics

Art in Our Lives: Native Women Artists in Dialogue

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In 2007 the School for Advanced Research (SAR) received funding from the Anne Ray Charitable Trust Foundation in order to bring together a group of Native women artists from all walks of life to confer on three topics considered to be the central dogma of their lives. These seminars were originally titled Art, Gender, and Ceremony; however, after much debate, they were renamed Art, Gender and Community due to the conflicting view of the word “ceremony” and how it may look to the public. In a series of non-fiction essays written by the women of these SAR summits Art, Gender, and Community, Art In Our Lives Native Women Artists In Dialogue was compiled to address gender, home/crossing, and art as healing/art as struggle. These pieces are ordered thematically as each woman voices her struggles and successes in the three realms discussed at the seminars.

Chapter One (essay I) “Introduction: The Art, Gender, and Community Seminars” Cynthia Chavez Lamar

Chapter Two (essay II) “Art as Healing, Art as Struggle” Gloria J. Emerson

Chapter Three (essay III) “‘This Fierce Love:’ Gender, Women, and Art Making.” Sherry Farrell Racette

Chapter Four (essay IV) “Space, Memory, Landscape: Women in native Art History.” Elysia Poon

Chapter Five (essay V) “Crossing the Boundaries of Home and Art.” Lara Evans

Chapter Six (essay VI) “The Artists of the Art, Gender, and Community Seminars.”

Text via Native Wiki

Film/Video/New Media · Performativity · Social/Politics

Iron Sky: Nazis on the Moon

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“Nazis on the moon” sounds like a punchline. But it’s actually the premise of the most talked-about feature at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival. The plot of Finnish entry “Iron Sky” revolves around “a group of Nazis who escape to the moon at the end of World War II to plan a new assault,” according to BBC News. “Added to the farce is a US President with more than a passing resemblance to former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, and a navy cruiser called the USS George W Bush.”

The most expensive film in Finnish history, “Iron Sky” has, according to BBCNews, “been hailed by some members of the international press as a sign that Germans are now at peace with their Nazi past.” But some Germans felt less comfortable. “Although I heard that audiences were laughing out loud, in my screening… it wasn’t like that,” Kerstin Sopke of the Associated Press told the BBC.

The film’s director, Timo Vuorensola, doesn’t see it that way either. “No, I absolutely think that’s not what’s it about,” he told The Arty Semite in an email.

I think that Germans have as a people moved away from the times, and have learned perhaps more than any other people in the world the horrors fascism brings, and know that history needs to be respected, but that the Germans living now (other than some very special cases) are not the ones who did the horrors. So they haven’t gotten ‘a peace with Nazi past,’ as BBC strangely words it, but they’ve understood that the current German youth did not do the bad things, thus making it possible to approach the subject with other emotions than the well-known ‘German guilt’. It’s time now to make sure it will never happen again.

Written by Michael Kaminer, The Jewish Daily Forward. Continue HERE

Earthly/Geo/Astro · Film/Video/New Media · Science · Technology

New Telescope To Make 10-Year Time Lapse Of Sky

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The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, seen in this artist’s rendering, will be built on the peak of the Cerro Pachon mountain in Chile and will survey every patch of the night sky. The data the telescope will collect will allow researchers to “answer fundamentally different questions about the universe,” says one astronomer. Image: Todd Mason/LSST Corp.

Every 10 years, about two dozen of this country’s top astronomers and astrophysicists get together under the auspices of the National Research Council and make a wish list. The list has on it the new telescopes these astronomers would most like to see built. At the last gathering, they said, in essence, “We most want the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope.”

Here’s why. A synoptic survey is a comprehensive map of every square inch of the night sky. The Large Synoptic Survey — LSST — will do that multiple times.

“We want to scan the entire sky over and over again for 10 years,” says Sidney Wolff, president of the LSST Corp., who is in charge of building the new telescope. “And we will get over 800 images of every patch of the sky.”

Why would you want 800 pictures of the sky over 10 years? Well, it’s like taking a time lapse picture of the sky. Anything that moves or changes will be easy to see. “So one of the things we can do is, if there are any potentially hazardous asteroids out there that might impact the Earth and do significant damage, we will find them,” she says.

The telescope’s unique, compact design allows it to swivel very quickly to different parts of the sky. This gives astronomers the ability to capture images quickly. LSST Corporation.

Written by Joe Palca, NPR. Continue HERE