For the other Astronuts out there

Brave man. Rather him than me....

 

Personally, I would have chosen something a lot more epic to say on such an historic occasion. Something like...."Hey, I can see Russia from here!" or "Look, there's the parking lot....dude, someone's jacking my rims!" or even "Geeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeronimooooooooooooo!!!!" But that's just me, always thinking about my posterior. er....posterity.

According to a bunch of aviation types on ww2aircraft.net, there's various tables for the sound barrier, based on altitude, air pressure, and speed. With the constantly-changing vectors taken into account, he DID break the sound barrier. The atmosphere at that altitude is so thin, however, there wasn't going to be a cool F-16-donut-cloud type of visual, if anything it would have looked like a small puff, sorta like after a night of overeating at Taco Bell. But with less lethality. Cloud or no cloud, though, the math supports it, he broke the sound barrier. Would have been cool to nab the "longest free-fall" at the same time, but hey, 4 out of 5 world records for largest pure-titanium balls isn't too shabby at all!

 

"Researchers claim to have found fresh physical evidence the Moon was created when a body the size of Mars smashed into the early Earth in a cataclysmic collision.
Analysis of lunar rocks brought back by the Apollo missions shows they have heavier forms of zinc - a telltale sign of the impact billions of years ago.
Without the Moon there may have been no life on Earth because it once orbited much closer to us than it does now causing massive tides to ebb and flow every few hours.
These tides caused dramatic fluctuations in salinity around coastlines which are believed to have driven the evolution of primitive DNA-like biomolecules.
Planetary scientist Dr Frederic Moynier says the zinc enrichment probably arose because heavier atoms condensed out of the cloud of vaporized rock quicker than lighter onces.
His researchers analysed 20 samples of Moon rocks including ones from the Apollo 11, 12, 15 and 17 missions - all of which went to different locations - and one lunar meteorite.
Dr Moynier, of Washington University in St Louis, said: 'What we wanted were the basalts because they’re the ones that came from inside the Moon and would be more representative of the Moon’s composition.'"
Has the Lunar mystery been solved? Analysis of Apollo rocks finds telltale signs of massive impact when a body the size of Mars hit Earth | Mail Online

 

Verbotten stuff Mr. H.....Oh, and what happened to the planet that struck us? ..Interesting stuff...Means that big ol' planet is on some trajectory- since we collided- that might indicate it will be back?...And how fortuitous was it that the moon bits should form into the perfect size, and the perfect distance ( tides, its' locked orbit, etc )? The Moon  l  Phases, Orbit and distance from the Earth

 

Hope Mr H will suggest interesting info regarding planet X...It is exciting...Tech is supposed to grow exponentially. ...Trying to think of newest tech that is available today, that was unthinkable 5 years ago...Surely not the BB Torch lol- hate that ***** 1 year into a three year term....Thank Otto for Free Speech, Free Fire and the Stump....

 

Bonus for reading WW2F....Go to youtube, type in prometheus...Viola: full length video.

 

Bonus for reading WW2F....Go to youtube, type in prometheus...Viola: full length video.

And am somewhat perturbed that particular devil is me. Prometheus - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Could only find this for Planet X from a few months back-
The hunt for Planet X is back on: Noted astronomer calculates planet four times size of Earth must exist on fringe of solar system | Mail Online

 

What in the name of f....?
"The small Scottish community of Glenelg has held a ceremony to twin itself with its namesake on Mars.
Nasa's roving robotic laboratory, Curiosity, is headed for a geological feature on the Red Planet that has been called Glenelg.
Back on Earth, residents of Glenelg in the west Highlands held celebrations, which included the twinning ceremony and a ceilidh.
Guests included former Nasa astronaut Bonnie Dunbar.
Ms Dunbar flew on five space shuttle missions in the 1980s and 1990s on Challenger and Columbia.
In 1995, she flew in the first shuttle mission to dock with the Russian Space Station Mir. Three years later, she flew in the last mission to deliver a US astronaut to Mir.
Ms Dunbar's paternal grandparents came from Scotland. Her grandfather Charles Dunbar was born in Dundee and her grandmother Mary was born close to Gardenstown, near Banff."
BBC News - Glenelgs on Earth and Mars twinned

 

Nice:
"Nasa's Mars mission team has been using names taken from Canada's Northwest Territories to label the places the rover is visiting.

The Canadian north-west has some ancient rock formations thought to be of a similar age to those found in Gale Crater, Curiosity's landing site."

What will the first Mars pub be called?....Yer Scottish ain't yee Mr. H?

 

Droothy neeburs (thirsty mates)!

 

"Astronomers have managed spot traces of light from the universe's very first stars, which they believe to be almost as old as time itself.
The first stars were created shortly after the Big Bang 13.7billion years ago as the universe cooled enough for atoms to form and begin clumping together.
Ever since these suns began to burn their light has created a glow throughout space that each new generation of stars adds to.
Now astronomers using Nasa's Fermi space telescope have made the most accurate measurement of this background glow - known as the extragalactic background light (EBL) - and separated out light from later stars.
'The optical and ultraviolet light from stars continues to travel throughout the universe even after the stars cease to shine, and this creates a fossil radiation field we can explore using gamma rays from distant sources,' said lead researcher Marco Ajello.
Since Fermi's launch in 2008, its Large Area Telescope (LAT) observes the entire sky in high-energy gamma rays every three hours, creating the most detailed map of the universe ever known at these energies.
To gamma rays, the EBL functions as a kind of cosmic fog. Dr Ajello and his team investigated the EBL by studying gamma rays from 150 blazars, or galaxies powered by black holes, that were strongly detected at energies greater than 3 billion electron volts (GeV), or more than a billion times the energy of visible light."
Astronomers detect traces of light from the universe's very first stars - which may be nearly as old as time itself | Mail Online

 

Here is an almost spooky picture just released, and I do mean eye-catching.

Goto:

This Giant Stellar Bubble Looks Like A Dog's Head | Popular Science

 

"A fuzzy cluster of stars 13.3 billion light years away is believed to be the most distant object ever observed.
Light from the tiny embryonic galaxy began its journey to Earth just 420 million years after the Big Bang that created the universe.
Scientists think the object, code-named MACSO647-JD, could be one of the building blocks of the early cosmos. The galaxy dates back to when the universe was just 3% of its present age of 13.7 billion years.
It was imaged with the help of a natural "zoom lens" more powerful than any man-made telescope. Gravity from a huge cluster of galaxies between the Earth and MACSO647-JD bent light rays from the object in a way that massively magnified its image.
The "gravitational lensing" effect allowed astronomers to photograph the galaxy using the Hubble Space Telescope."
Hubble finds 'most distant' stars | World News | Express.co.uk - Home of the Daily and Sunday Express