Category: Space

Ramen In Space

I remember seeing the famous Israeli milk ad that was filmed on board of the MIR space station when I was at an airport in Japan. Talk about surreal! A little while ago I posted an article about the instant noodles that were made especially for the Japanese astronaut on board the space shuttle Discovery. Now there looks like there will be yet another out of this world noodle dish avaliable for us Earthbound consumers.

Starting next month, Nissin Food Products will shoot a promotional spot on the International Space Station for Cup Noodle, featuring a sales pitch by a hungry Russian cosmonaut.
The commercial will air in Japan in November as part of Nissin’s “Cup Noodle No Border” campaign,.
Space Films will send a high-def camera to the space station aboard a Russian rocket launch Oct. 1 and direct the filming from Russia’s Mission Control Center outside Moscow.
If you’re looking for extraterrestrial publicity, the agency will be leaving the camera at the space station in the hope of shooting more advertisements.

Ramen noodles shoots ad in space

And Away They Go!

Oh cool! LiftPort Group Inc., of Bremerton, Wa. tested a robot that climbed 1,000 feet of ribbon suspended by a balloon. This is the fist step towards building an actual space elevator. A full sized elevator would reduce the cost of spaceflight to the point that a trip into orbit would cost as much as a regular international air flight.

Space elevator robot passes 1,000-foot mark – Space.com – MSNBC.com

Marines in Spaaaaaace!

Sounds cool, Marines thundering out of the sky in their drop ships on any point on the planet in two hours, ready to fight for cross and country. However, if you think about it for a while you will realize that this sort of thing is like highly refined political pork. The high test stuff that senators dream about. Anyway, unless there are major advancements in areospace in the next few years this will not make it off the drawing board.

Defense Tech: Marines in Spaaaaaace!

High Power Rocketry in the Black Rock Desert

Whoosh!

Few things beat seeing a rocket scream up into the heavens. Seeing them day and night is an even better thing! There was a recent event in Black Rock Desert (same area here Burning Man is held) where dozens of high powered rockets were flown during over the course of two days. I have to go visit one of these launchings some day, it must be simpley awesome to see one of these monters take flight in person.

[via Boing Boing]
XPRS Photo Set on Flickr

Space Travel via Gravity Tunnel

SmallTug

This is great news, if the fuel cost of going between points in our solar system can be reduced there should be a greater incentive to commercialize it.

ANDREWS SPACE OF SEATTLE has awarded SpaceDev a contract to design a small spacecraft to travel through a gravity tunnel – part of the InterPlanetary Superhighway or IPS, a route that eats up less fuel than normal trajectories – to the moon, for the very first time ever.

Small spaceship to fly through gravity tunnel

The SpaceDev web site also has a lunar lander program that you can try out if your running Windows. Looks ok, think of the classic lunar lander game but with 3D graphics.