NASA has officially launched Third Rock: America’s Space Station. It’s also happy to report that they’re only slightly over their $400,000 budget to play a Kings of Leon rock block in the three o’ clock hour.

The second part isn’t true.

But the first is.

Third Rock is on the air, bringing you “a mission of New Rock discovery”. While listening we heard songs by Bloc Party, Arcade Fire and Codeine Velvet Club. So it’s obviously titled toward a hipster sensibility.

And it might not actually be the worst idea in the world. First, it’s ad supported, SpaceX, who is in the process of taking of the heavy lifting rocket-wise for NASA is among the first sponsors. Second, rock radio is dying, for example from where I am writing the last local rock station was killed last week.

The station will also pump information about NASA projects between the songs.

Is hipster love for NASA enough to tune into a pre-programmed radio station… with a DJ… that doesn’t allow you to skip songs? Even if it’s a horrifying failure it’ll cost way less than pretty much everything else that NASA has ever done.

[Third Rock]

As of now NASA’s historic Hangar One will be destroyed. Victim of a budget cut. One of the largest free standing structures in the world and historic landmark in the aviation history of this country will be completely demolished and lost to the sands of times.

Unless Google’s Larry Paige, Sergy Brin and Eric Schmitt are allowed to foot the full bill for refurbishment, roughly $33 million. In exchange they ask for rights to house their private jet fleet, eight in total. The government will retain the ability to lease out the rest of Hangar One for whatever they please.

As of now, NASA’s response is: maybe.

Bob Jacobs, a NASA spokesman, said in an email Saturday that “it would be premature to discuss the merits of the proposal until we have had time to review the details.

“It has not yet been completely vetted,” he added. “We understand the interest and historic nature of the facility and we have to weigh that against the reality of constrained resources and use. We are giving all options thoughtful consideration as we prepare our funding proposal for the Fiscal Year 2013 budget.”

Hangar One was built in 1933 and occupies roughly six football fields worth of land spanning eight acres. The Navy is currently in the process of removing contaminated skin from the structure, which means reapplication would have to take place in 2012.

Page, Brin and Schmidt first submitted their proposal in September.

Below, check out a more recent use of Hangar One. The Mythbusters attempt to fold a football field sized piece of paper more than seven times. SAVE OUR BASIC CABLE HISTORY!

[Mercury News]

Inspired by the Ansari X Prize for private space travel, NASA decided to put $1.35 million on the table to push forward the progress of election aviation. Their challenge? Fly 200 miles at a speed of at least 100 mph with four passengers using only slightly less than a gallon of gas per passenger.

It was a task that even optimistic researchers initially thought was science fiction. Until two teams beat those benchmarks this weekend.

Team Pipistrel-USA.com took home the big money with their Taurus G4 aircraft which used less than a half gallon of gas per passenger. Team E-Genius also completed the trial and was awarded $12,000.

Check out this awesome Flickr set from the event and hear all about the specs of the winner in the video below.

[Cosmic Log]

“There’s not a lot of argument that this is going to screw us if we don’t do something,” said NASA engineer Creon Levit. “Right now it’s at the tipping point… and it just keeps getting worse.”

[WIRED]

*probably not

But still, they did release this totally ominous press advisory:

NASA Sets News Conference on Astrobiology Discovery; Science Journal Has Embargoed Details Until 2 p.m. EST On Dec. 2

WASHINGTON — NASA will hold a news conference at 2 p.m. EST on Thursday, Dec. 2, to discuss an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life. Astrobiology is the study of the origin, evolution, distribution and future of life in the universe.

I, for one, welcome our new overlords!

In this amazing photograph offered up by NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day you can see the edge of the NGC 4452 galaxy. It was taken by the revered Hubble telescope and gives we land-dwellers a rare glimpse into the long view of the cosmos.

[APOD]

Launching gigantic shuttles into orbit (although awesome) is costly. So what if we just threw that bad boy as hard as we could like a paper airplane and then fitted it with some super sweet rockets to blast that sucker into the cosmos?

An early proposal calls for a wedge-shaped aircraft with scramjets to be launched horizontally on an electrified (magnetic levitation) track or gas-powered sled. The aircraft would fly up to Mach 10, using the scramjets and wings to lift it to the upper reaches of the atmosphere, where a small payload canister or capsule similar to a rocket’s second stage would fire off the back of the aircraft and into orbit.

Engineers also contend the system, with its advanced technologies, will benefit the nation’s high-tech industry by perfecting technologies that would make more efficient commuter rail systems, better batteries for cars and trucks, and numerous other spinoffs.

So we get a reusable solution for shuttle launches and the latest monorail technology? Well that’s good enough for me to link this song!

[Kurzweil]

Before he boards the international space station in November, NASA’s latest robotic creation Robonaut 2 is spending his time mastering social networking. Using the Twitter handle @AstroRobonaut, the robot is answering questions from the public about his upcoming trip from more than 14,000 Twitter followers.

Robonaut 2 was designed to mimic basic human task and serve as a futuristic helper monkey on the Space Station. Many famous Twitterers have taken notice of the newest Twitter phenom, with even Conan O’Brian chiming in:

The NASA robot doing chores on the space station has its own Twitter account. I’m glad to see NASA is still shooting for the stars.

Robonaut 2 was a bit snarky in his reply:

@ConanOBrien Astronauts are excited to have me @ station because they’ve programmed me to always laugh at their jokes. Jealous?

No word on if the tweets will continue from the Space Station.

[Space.com]

Enjoy this stunning HD video of the Apollo 11 rocket taking off… in HD! No clue how they kept the camera from melting, but their innovation makes for a great video.

In an update to our story from last week (Asteroid Heading For Earth (in 2182)!), NASA is considering sending a probe to the ominous asteroid 1999 RQ36 to collect rock samples so they can more accurately when and if it will collide with earth. The project is being proposed as part of the New Frontiers program, and is competing with a trip to Venus for funding.

Basically, we are choosing between finding out when Earth will be destroyed or finding somewhere else to go before it is. Considering Bruce Willis will most likely not be around when the time comes I think we can safely write off the ‘Armageddon Option.’

[Telegraph.co.uk]

The Apollo 11 moon landing happened 40 years ago toady, or as 6% of the country believe according to a new survey, one of the greatest hoaxes ever perpetrated hoodwinked the world at large.

Here are five videos that help document the intervening four decades dotted with controversy, analysis, British people and Buzz Aldrin’s devastating right cross.

5- The Original Footage

Just so we’re all on the same page, here are some of the pictures and video footage that captivated a nation’s attention and imagination.

4- Conspiracy Cliff’s Notes

In case you’d like to reacquaint yourself with the claims of the moon hoax supporters here is a snippet from a UK documentary claiming to show definitive evidence that many of the iconic photos were staged. It also deals a blistering setback to many UK denizens who’d made progress against the Sneering, Pompous British Jerk stereotype that has plagued the nation.

3- Joe Rogan vs. Phil Plait

Many of the moon hoax arguments have been repeated ad hominem by all manner of people, so it’s refreshing to hear two well-spoken (dare I say, hilarious) figureheads debate their points in these Penn Radio clips featuring Bad Astronomer Phil Plait and comedian Joe Rogan. The back and forth was spread over two days and takes about an hour to listen through all of it. Enjoy!

2- Buzz Aldrin Sees A UFO! Or Not.

The British strike again! This time with a documentary that edited a Buzz Aldrin interview to make it sound like he had to see a UFO during the Apollo 11 flight. As the man himself explains in this Larry King Live clip, that was simply not the case.

This is a notable conspiracy in that it concedes the Apollo 11 mission was in fact en route to the moon, so they might as well have peeped an alien on the way.

1- The Eagle Has Landed

Our crown jewel of Apollo 11 conspiracy videos. Filmmaker Bart Sibrel has made two films building a case for the moon landing conspiracy, in September of 2002 he staged an interview with Aldrin under the false pretense that he and his crew were with a Japanese program. After the Q&A dissolved, Sibel confronted Aldrin with his claims and Aldrin responded by landing a vicious right cross square on the cheek of the larger man.

Saturn’s North Pole (Cassini-Huygens, 2007 and 2008)

In November 1980, planetary scientists eagerly examined transmissions received from the Voyager 1 spacecraft as it sped past Saturn. And with good reason! Amid those transmissions was the first image of Saturn’s North Pole – a region that’s virtually impossible to see from Earth, and, depending on the degree by which Saturn is tilted, can be cloaked in darkness for up to 15 years at a time (and you thought your last winter was never going to end).

What those scientists saw, and later missions confirmed, was a decidedly bizarre feature in the gas giant’s atmosphere directly above the North Pole: a 15,000-mile-wide hexagon.

At this point, before we lose all but Weird Thing’s distinguished geometry geek readership (you know who you are, you magnificent bastards), it’s worth pointing out that hexagons naturally occur all over the place: basalt columns; beehive honeycombs; snowflakes; and even molecules offer some examples. Unfortunately the processes responsible for these formations by no means explain the feature on Saturn.  In fact, the planet’s thick atmosphere is one of the last places experts were prepared to find such a geometric oddity – even its South Pole has a reassuringly circular, terrifyingly enormous hurricane churning up the clouds.

A Comparison of Saturn’s Poles (Cassini-Huygens, 2008)

So why is it there? Besides dropping Jodie Foster – or, ideally, Matthew McConaughey – into the middle of the 60-mile-deep hexagon and seeing where she goes, a slightly less exciting experiment conducted by the Niels Bohr Institute in Denmark provided some intriguing results. And by slightly less exciting, we mean they stirred a bucket of water. What they found was that at certain speeds the water flow would interact with the edges of the cylindrical container to create rotating polygons with up to 6 corners.

As you may have already guessed, the experiment has a long way to go before it explains Saturn’s hexagon. For one thing, a colossal bucket isn’t sitting at the North Pole to provide distinct boundaries for the planet’s many complex layers of clouds to interact. Scientists have yet to figure out precisely how Saturn is creating a similar result with its multifaceted toolkit of jet streams and waves. Perhaps a more relevant explanation may be found in satellite observations of Hurricane Isabel (PDF) from 2003, wherein the storm’s eyewall alternated between pentagonal and hexagonal formations through unique combinations of smaller rotational features called mesovortices; showing us that even home grown storms can test and inevitably improve our equations of motion.

Satellite Observations of Hurricane Isabel in 2003 (PDF)

We’ll probably have plenty of time to figure out Saturn’s hexagon though. One of the most profound mysteries surrounding the formation (second only to its existence in the first place) is that it has stuck around as a stable feature in the 29 years or so since Voyager first observed it. As Saturn is currently in the unhurried process of tilting its North Pole towards the sun, scientists can soon point the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft’s superior optical instruments at the newly illuminated region to assist the relentless effort to discover answers (or more questions). Until then, we hope you’ll join us in simply appreciating this hexagon as one of the many weird things that makes our universe even more fascinating.

A five-part series that tries to explain how to make the science of Star Trek real…

Probably the most fascinating idea that Star Trek popularized was the idea of a warp drive. This was a concept from golden age sci-fi that went mainstream via Trek as space-age audiences became sophisticated enough to realize that NASA’s fastest rockets wouldn’t take you very far in a human lifetime. Even going the speed of light wouldn’t work for a show that tried to visit more than one star system in it’s 3 season run (due to time dilation your characters could visit those places, but their friends back on earth would be long dead). What was needed was a (plot) device that allowed you to visit distant planets in the time it takes to drive to the next state.

Since Star Trek, warp drive has become a part of public consciousness. It’s a theoretical form of technology that some feel is as inevitable as AI and teleportation.

There’s one big catch; while AI (or something that acts like it) seems to be a problem solved at some point on a graph projecting the development of intelligent systems and teleportation seems to be more of an energy problem, there’s not a viable theory for how a warp drive could work (exotic matter, worm holes, Alcubierre drives etc.) that doesn’t violate the laws of physics (as we know them) or result in some equation balancing phenomenon like a “quantum scream” (an obscure term used in an equally obscure paper on the subject).

But despair not. There could be a much simpler solution to getting to faraway planets quickly in a short amount of time. It might have to do with the fact that when we look at distant galaxies or study the acceleration of space probes beyond our solar system we see some strange stuff that falls outside our theoretical framework. Galaxies are moving faster than they should. Our space probes seem to be accelerating faster than they should (although this one might be just a measuring problem). There’s a variety of theories to explain this. None of them dominate.

If space itself is dimpled like a golf ball, traveling in a straight line is usually not the best option to get from one point to another. The fastest path is the one that avoids going into the valleys created by the dimples – but not too far out of the way.

Every particle in the universe makes a dimple in space. This dimple effects matter and light. Light from our second closest star is slowed down ever so slightly by the dimples caused by the various particles between it and us. Even a total vacuum suffers quantum fluctuations that cause these dimples.

Depending upon how significant the effect this dimpling has and how much it occurs on a galactic scale, we might have to rethink how we measure distance between stars. A star five light years away might be reachable in less time going less than the speed of light if there was a way to take a route that avoided most of the dimpling. This might be a route only a subatomic particle could take and it might only shave .0000000000000001 milliseconds off the total trip time, but it’s a start. And if it turns out that those dimples have dimples, then there might be an even bigger time savings.

While that’s not a whole lot to hope for right now and nowhere near as sexy to think about as a magical warp engine, it’s a helpful frame of reference for understanding how faster than light travel may not mean going faster than the speed of light.

Finding a way to get to distant star systems might not come from waiting for our existing theories to be overturned to satisfy our wishes. It might just come from studying the phenomenon at hand and better understanding how it all works together.

Check out the rest of the series on making the science of Star Trek possible

Something is amiss on Mars once again. The people over at paranormalnews.com spotted what appears to be shoddy airbrushing in a NASA photo taken of Hale’s Crater, and they’re shouting conspiracy. The nifty graphic above is supposed to expose poor photoshopping done by a NASA technician who apparently couldn’t be bothered to do a bang up job protecting government secrets from public view.

Take a look. Is it an alien landing pad cover up or is there a less sinister explanation? Maybe NASA just got so frustrated with hoaxes, like the face on mars, that they spotted a conspicuously shaped rock formation in Hale’s Crater and figured they’d spare humanity the trouble this time around.