The Japanese government said Friday the nation should do everything it can to send a robot to the moon by 2020 followed by a human astronaut 10 years later in order to explore the moon’s natural resources. Japan, a country famously poor in natural resources, has a space development strategy task force in place that’s ready to execute the plans and is headed by the Prime Minister. → Read More
Some strange science news for you now. You know how you can “buy” stars, even though such purchases aren’t recognized by any legitimate scientific organization? Well, Chelsea Football Club owner Roman Abromovich—he’s a tremendously wealthy Russian, for those of who don’t know who he is—just did one better. He bought [Spanish] his girlfriend 100 acres of land on the moon. Yes, the Russian billionaire “bought” the land, which is located between 20-24°S latitude and 30-34°W longitude up there, in order to make it up to his soon-to-be wife, Daria Zhukova. Apparently their crazy wedding had o be toned done because of the credit crisis, which has affected Abramovich’s fortune. The land, in case you’re looking to symbolically buy some moon property, was purchased from The Lunar Embassy. → Read More
Some good ol’ fashioned science news for you this dreary morning. Congrats are due to India, which launched its first moon mission a few hours ago. It’s an unmanned flight, so don’t expect to see video of Indian astronauts playing golf or cricket up there or anything. There will, however, be an Indian flag placed up there by the unmanned rover-dealie. The Chandrayaan-1 (literally, lunar-craft 1), which launched from the country’s southeast, will be tooling about for two years, primarily modeling the surface of the moon. Maybe India can sell the data to Google, giving us Google Moon? There’s speculation as to why India even bothered with the launch. One thing I’ve read on numerous sites is that, finally, India wants to flex some muscle, both of the scientific variety and of the regular “we’re an important country, respect us” sense. It’s a neat video, if nothing else. Now we wait for Pakistan to freak out. → Read More
I’m all in favor of far-reaching, ambitious projects like the colonization of Mars and stuff, but covering the Moon with mirrors to increase the chances of aliens seeing us? I’m more than a little skeptical. Aside from the very idea being totally insane, it’s a ridiculous notion that it would help aliens find us. Any alien race that has the power to contact or visit us almost certainly has the power to find us without us flashing prime numbers at them via the Moon. The secondary benefit of collecting solar energy and beaming it back to Earth is kind of weak too. First, the amount of energy created would be relatively small. Second, have you seen how much dust there is on the moon? And how many meteoroids hit the sucker? The solar array would be down before you could charge up your cell phone. On the Moon, readers, scientists like this have their pants pulled down and they are spanked with moon rocks. → Read More
Funerals are expensive. To my family and friends; I’d rather my funeral have an open bar, a band, and a gigantic velvet painting of me than an open casket and a bunch of people crying. I’d also consider the possibility of you sending my ashes to the moon in a bullet-like canister (see above photo). Granted it wouldn’t be all my ashes, just a small quantity of my ashes. Maybe like my hand or something. Then freeze my head and send the rest of my body to the organ donor place and conveniently disappear when they try to give you my corpse back after they harvest my organs. Then they can worry about disposing of everything. → Read More
[photopress:jedimoon.jpg,full,center] Flickr’d A bunch of Welsh Jedi—no comment—have bought a plot of land on the moon for the purpose of training new members of their Galactic Church. The land, purchased from “an official moon real estate seller” (me, actually) has already been incorporated into a micronation, sorta like Sealand, which ThePirateBay tried to buy a while ago. The state already has a constitution, government and royal family. I guess, then, we can assume it’ll be a constitutional monarchy, not unlike the UK. Why do we care? First of all, I don’t, but I do recognize that the Star Wars and tech-savvy universes cross paths more often than not. No matter, I just saw Fernando Torres score his 20th BPL goal of the season, which will be the highlight of the day, Jedi or no Jedi. Welsh Jedis set up space colony [The Inquirer] → Read More
Ten teams have been announced as contenders to a chunk of Google’s coveted $30 million Lunar X PRIZE. The stipulations of the competition include, most importantly, that a team’s robotic craft must be privately funded and able to land on the moon and travel at least 500 meters while sending video, images, and data back to Earth. Bonus points for any team that makes it to the dark side of the moon to grab some footage of the alien bases there. Woot! The first ten teams include members from Romania, the US, the UK, and Italy. The prize money will be divvied up into a $20 million grand prize, a $5 million second place prize, and another $5 million in bonus prizes. The $20 million grand prize is good until December 31st, 2012. After that, it drops to $15 million until December 31st, 2014. If nobody’s claimed the prize by then, the contest is over and everyone mopes for a while. The X PRIZE Foundation Announces Official Contenders in Private Moon Race [X PRIZE Foundation] → Read More
Came across this unique watch on BoingBoing. Only 99 of these watches were made and are named after 17th century astronomer Johannes Kepler. He’s the dude who came up with the formulas for the Laws of Planetary Motion. Big stuff. Johannes’ timepiece doesn’t come cheap though. It’s more than $100,000 per watch, but the design is magnificent. Check out how the watch works: A flexible spring bends from the Tropic of Cancer to the Tropic of Capricorn to reveal the part of the Earth lit by the Sun and to indicate the time and place of sunrise and sunset. The moon rotates around the Earth. The dragon hand indicates the eclipses of the sun and the moon. The perpetual calendar completes one turn each year. Kepler $100k wristwatch [BoingBoing] → Read More
If your apartment is anything like our apartment, meaning small, cramped, and with token “windows,” then you might benefit from this “Healing Moon” by Brando. We’re not sure if it actually heals anything, but it does make a half-way decent artificial moon, if that’s your thing, mimicking the 12-phases on cue via an IR remote. The real point of this thing is lost on us, but we do think it’d be a great Xmas gag-gift for any of your friends who happen to be werewolves or moon flowers, like our writer Raj (we’ll let you guess which one he is). Healing Moon [Product Page, via Shiny Shiny] → Read More
