A Pilot’s Blog
A blog about aviation, aviation news, and space.

I just watched the live simulcast feed of the second launch attempt for SpaceX’s Falcon 1 rocket. This rocket is the “world’s first privately-funded liquid fueled orbital launch vehicle”. The launch appeared to be going as normal until the first stage seemed to scrape against the second-stage bell during separation. Shortly thereafter the rocket began to experience progressively worse oscillations until the feed (and in all likely hood the entire rocket) was lost. Still, the company is calling it “a very good day”.

I think this is just completely amazing. If private companies like SpaceX begin to venture into the space payload launches, like Scaled Composites and Virgin Galactic are moving into the manned space launch/tourism market, we will see some very amazing advances in technology in the not so distant future. Great job SpaceX!

You can watch a video of the launch here and view a “live-blogged” recap of today’s events here.

Tonight was the first lunar eclipse to occur in over three years. It was best viewed over Europe and Africa, however, we here in North America were still treated to a beautiful show. As soon as the moon rose at just about 6:30pm local time, I was ready and waiting with my camera. I’m not too good at taking night shots, especially of the moon, but I took several at different settings and below is the best one I got. It could have been a bit sharper, but I think it came out pretty well.

This isn’t as much related to aviation as it is to space exploration, but I thought it was just too awesome to let pass by.

NASA announced Monday it will establish an international base camp on one of the moon’s poles, permanently staffing it by 2024, four years after astronauts return to the moon.

It is a sweeping departure from the Apollo moon missions of the 1960s and represents a new phase of space exploration after space shuttles are retired in 2010.

After consulting more than 1,000 experts from 14 different countries, NASA decided on what deputy NASA chief Shana Dale called a "fundamental lunar approach" that is sharply different from its previous moon missions in nearly everything but the shape of the ship going there.

I’m extremely excited about the possibility of seeing a moon landing (and even a base!) in my lifetime. I’ve seen all the old reels of the original moon landing in 1969, but I’m sure there is something to be said for seeing it live. Go NASA!

While it’s not really aviation-related, I’ve been playing around with this software a bit today and it’s just too cool not to mention. It’s called Stellarium and is a free and open source planetarium for your computer. The graphics are absolutely amazing. You can set your location anywhere in the world and have a real-time view of the sky at that point. As time moves along, so do the stars, planets. nebulas, etc. You can even move time forwards and backwards at accelerated rates and see how the stars line up and move around. Great fun if you have some time to kill, or a passion for astronomy.