Tag: NASA

That’s one small step for man, one giant unintelligble screech for droid-kind

This is definitely not the droid you’re looking for.

You thought NASA was done and over with? BAH! NASA is back, kids, and back with a fiery vengeance!*

It’s space season once again in merry ol’ Cape Canaveral, as NASA is prepping the space shuttle Discovery to launch from the hallowed and famous launch site before it’s shuttered. The destination? The space station. In spaaaaaaaace. Ahem. The shuttle will be carrying six astronauts, a big box of stuff and a robot, R2. The robot with a humanoid design (but nerves of steel) will be dropped off at the station, where it will show itself off to the other robots on the station by doing such revolutionary moves like opening a jar in zero gravity. We can then expect it to probably move onto taking over the space station before attempting to destroy the Earth in a nefarious scheme created with cold logic.

Don’t knock my cynicism. I’ve watched far too many sci-fi movies to not expect this.

*Fiery vengeance may vary, please check with your local listings and consult with your doctor before initiating any types of Pyrrhic revenge.

Pond scum … in … spaaaaaaaace

Dear Mister President Sir Obama: please do not exterminalate NASA yet. We may very well need them sooner than we think.

Reportedly, pond scum has been found on Mars. Pond scum, the building blocks of life (okay, not really), was discovered on a secret mission to the red planet. A secret mission. What does this mean?

ALIENS ARE ATTEMPTING TO TAKE OVER OUR WATER SUPPLY. Do not be surprised if we eventually hear an announcement stating “IM IN UR DAM KILLING ALL UR AMOEBAS.”

Now, obviously, since the origin of this is a tabloid, it’s advised to take this news with a heaping helping of salt. Just make sure to save some so that we can dry out the pond scum alienoids. It could be our only way to fight back.

That’s no moon

We’ve always assumed our sun was the only star in our solar system, but maybe not. We could be in a binary system, with a brown dwarf hiding in the Oort cloud. And it could be bombing us with comets. Or a green laser beam. Welcome to your tax dollars at work.

The star, referred to as Nemesis, or “The Death Star,” has been theorized for a while. But now NASA’s new satellite, WISE, could be able to prove its existence for the first time. The theory was developed to explain the waves of mass extinctions on Earth, every 26 million years for the past 250 million years.

Our solar system is surrounded by a vast collection of icy bodies called the Oort Cloud. If our Sun were part of a binary system in which two gravitationally-bound stars orbit a common center of mass, this interaction could disturb the Oort Cloud on a periodic basis, sending comets whizzing towards us.

An asteroid impact is famously responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, but large comet impacts may be equally deadly. A comet may have been the cause of the Tunguska event in Russia in 1908. That explosion had about a thousand times the power of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, and it flattened an estimated 80 million trees over an 830 square mile area.

So if we’re able to prove that Nemesis does exist, and its irregular orbit around our own sun is causing regular comet attacks, then the next thing will be for our greatest scientific minds to come up with a plan to neutralize it. Our only hope? A race of people that are only vaguely squid-like in name only.

Lava more efficient for building than water

A 168-mile-long channel near Mars’ Ascraeus Mons volcano wasn’t created by water as scientists have previously thought. New high-resolution images suggest that this trench was created by molten lava. DUM DUM DUMMMMMM!!!

What does this mean for the search for water on Mars? We’re hoping it means all the martians have been burned to death by now.

Thanks to improved imaging techniques, Mars researchers noticed volcanic vents near the Ascraeus Mons ridge. According to Jacob Bleacher of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center:

We started seeing that, instead of this [liquid] cutting into an existing surface, it was building a surface-it built a ridge up to 40 meters […] You see it all the time in volcanic settings. So that’s kind of our smoking gun.

Get it ? Smoking gun? Lava?

Yes, well … ahem. This doesn’t mean that water-formed valleys don’t exist on Mars, but it does mean that researchers will have to account for volcanism more when analyzing images of Martian topography.

To reiterate: we hope the martians have all been burned to death. Because they are crafty and green.

You Missed It: Muy triste edition

It’s Friday the 13th, you know what that means–it means tomorrow is Saturday the 14th! It is also the holiday season, and I know all of you are planning to get me something, please feel free to email me for gift ideas. If you were busy throwing five picks in a game, odds are you missed it.

Dobbs out
In a surprise move, CNN anchorperson Lou Dobbs announced on his show “Lou Dobbs Tonight” (what are the odds someone named Lou Dobbs would get a show named that, huh?) that he would be leaving CNN at the end of the broadcast Wednesday night. Dobbs was known for his economic views, his conservative stance on illegal immigration and his trademark signoff, “Adios, muchachos!”

Prepare to be Palinized
Remember Sarah Palin? She’s back with her new book, Going Rogue, which was leaked this week. In it, Palin gives her point of view on the feud with the McCain campaign and Katie Couric. The most shocking revelation of the book: her forbidden tryst with then Sen. Joe Biden.

Hey, it beats having a team in Phoenix
NASA announced that not only was the moon bombing successful, but it helped uncover lunar ice. This is an amazing scientific discovery, because, well, I have no idea. However, it increases hockey’s chance as the first sport to be played on the moon.

The McBournie Minute: ‘I see the moon, the moon sees me’

For the most part, space really hasn’t been that exciting in a long time. Sure, there has been some attention paid when a new rover lands on Mars, or there is a tragedy, or we send John Glenn up into orbit again. But really, we just don’t care about space the way we did in the 1950s and 1960s.

That is until recently.

NASA brought us into yet another interstellar war last Friday morning when it bombed the moon. They “claim” it was to see if the debris kicked up by the impact could prove that the moon was, in fact, made of cheese, but the Internet knows better. It always does. That is why we live in the Porn Information Age. The age of citizen journalism. The age when you don’t need any fancy pants “credibility” or “evidence” to support your claims. Bearing this in mind, here is what really happened to the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Continue reading The McBournie Minute: ‘I see the moon, the moon sees me’

You Missed It: Random award edition

A long time ago, a man named Columbus discovered the New World for Europeans. He explored the vast new land found in several voyages, and brought civilization (and smallpox) to the local native population. We celebrate that event by giving a handful of people a Monday off. If you are one of them, I hate you. If you were busy blowing up the moon, odds are you missed it.

It’s not special if everybody gets one
President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize this week, despite only being in office for 11 days before the nomination deadline. Obama is widely credited for his peaceful negotiations that convinced the Bush administration to vacate the White House. He joins Theodore Roosevelt (who won for letting the Japanese and Russians kill each other for a while) and Woodrow Wilson (who peacefully told Germany that the Great War was all their fault, solving the problem forever) as the only sitting presidents to win the prize.

The parks that booze built
Anheuser Busch InBev said this week that it would sell the theme parks it picked up when InBev bought Anheuser Busch. Say, Disney’s been buying up stuff lately. Maybe they’ll be interested. Then you could get tanked with Tinkerbell!

‘This is crazy, this is crazy, this is crazy’
Did you think you had seen the last of the Vacation movies? Man, you were wrong! We’re going to get ANOTHER damn movie, only this time, it’s going to be following Rusty and his family. Which Rusty we’ll be following remains to be seen.

You Missed It: No one cares what you’re doing edition

I’m back! I know you missed me. But then again, as was proven last week, just because I go on vacation to forget about you does not mean that YMI ceases to exist. It’s sort of like the news in that sense, isn’t it? In any case, I have returned and I am refreshed. Can you say the same? If you were busy making a cargo ship disappear, odds are you missed it.

Your pointless babble brings on the whale
A recent study of tweets on Twitter, the microblogging service, found that around 40 percent are “pointless babble.” This comes as a shock to many, who could have sworn the number was closer to 99.9999999999999999 percent. So what are the remaining 60 percent of tweets? About 35 percent are updates about what song or band a person is listening to right now, 20 percent are complaints about work, class, the weather and illness, while the remaining 5 percent are updates on bowel movements.

This AND Steven Tyler is in the hospital?
NASA said this week that unless it gets more federal funding it will not be able to meet its 2020 goal of tracking 90 percent of the asteroids that could hit the Earth and kill off life as we know it. But that’s OK, your federal dollars are going to more important things. As the ancient Sumerian saying goes, if you live long enough, everything turns into a Bruce Willis movie.

Just in time for the Woodstock anniversary
Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme was released from prison today after spending 34 years in jail for the attempted assasination of President Gerald Ford. Fromme was a member of the Manson family, which is connected with other crimes, such as a two-day killing spree in 1969. Has anyone told Ford about this yet? Oh, wait.

Lost in space

Photo taken by Neil Armstrong.Let’s say you’re a government agency–a famous one. About, oh, say, 40 years ago your agency had its crowning achievement. In fact, it was hailed as one of the most important events in the history of humanity. It’s a good thing you got the whole thing on tape, right? You’re damn right it is.

Then let’s say a few years ago you admitted you couldn’t find the tapes of the pinnacle of your agency-nay, of your country in the 20th century. You even checked behind the couch, because tapes sometimes get stuck back there. You search high and low, until you find out what happened to the recordings.

You figure it out one day. You erased them. You f&$%ing erased them. What the hell were you thinking about? This satellite launch mix tape you made sucks. The moon landing was a way better jam. You really, really suck, NASA.

And don’t think that restoring other tapes makes up for it, bean bags.

You Missed It: Unofficial beginning of summer edition

I know you’re not reading this. You, just like everyone else, have already left the office, packed up the ol’ station wagon and headed out for your Memorial Day Weekend adventure. You probably won’t even read this until we’re back on Tuesday. I don’t care. It’s my job to write these things, and I know you’re going to miss this all weekend. If you were busy chasing down historical artifacts that come to life at night, odds are you missed it.

When you think ‘hip’ you think of the Vatican
Pope Benedict XVI wants to be your friend. Well, not really, he’s got plenty already. They’re called followers, and not the Twitter kind. But the pope is trying to save your soul with a new Facebook app. Our cool pope even has an iPhone app with the latest pope-related news, a YouTube channel, and a Catholic wiki. Just in time for World Communications day, His Holiness launched a website Pope2you.com (where “Pope” is capitalized, but “you” aren’t). The Facebook app lets you keep in touch with the Holy See through the wonders of social networking. Now Pope Benedict can send you messages like “I know what site you’re planning on going to after this. See you in confession tomorrow.”

Helps make sure they still have the Right Stuff
Sure, Atlantis may have been grabbing the headlines last week, but the crew of the International Space Station is laying the headline smackdown this week. Fixing space telescopes? Please. These astronauts get to drink recycled water that came from their own pee. (Wait–what?!) Every six hours, an astronaut produces about a gallon of water from their urine. It gets recycled and purified and presto! Good to drink again. There was a time when I wanted to be an astronaut. Today, I am pleased that that dream never came true.

Also, Count Duckula’s new album drops next Tuesday
Danger Mouse (the DJ in Gnarles Barkley, not the eyepatch-sporting cartoon) has made a career out of doing strange things. First, he mashed up the Beatles with Jay-Z, then he produced that horrible Gorillaz album. Now, he’s dropping a new album. There’s just one thing, the album is not on the CD being sold. Sure, you get the case, insert, all that good stuff, but the CD is blank. In fact, it’s a CD-R. Danger Mouse wants you to buy his album, then illegally download it, burn it to the CD, then enjoy. Because, you know, that makes way more sense than just illegally downloading it and put it on your iPod.