Giant Freakin Robot

If you’ve heard a politician or any of the old space establishment talk about America’s place in spaceflight, then you’ve probably heard threats of China taking away our space superiority. China still has a lot of work to do if they want to match America and Russia’s achievements, but it looks like human spaceflight isn’t the only area they’re putting effort into. Now China is serious about the business of finding Earth-like exoplanets, and they’re pretty confident that they’ll find what they’re looking for.

According to The Daily Galaxy, Chinese astronomers have recently set up shop in Antarctica in an effort to find the life-bearing jewels of the galaxy. They have set up the first of three Antarctic Survey Telescopes in a prime location at Dome Argus, the highest point on the whole continent. Director of the Chinese Center for Antarctic Astronomy, Wang Lifan, is extremely optimistic about their chances.

Antarctica has the best conditions on Earth for astronomical observation, as it has very flat ground, a transparent atmosphere and little turbulence. The ground-based telescopes here will bring us precious information from the universe. We will send people there to retrieve observation data next spring. I hope we can find some likely candidates. It’s hard to say precisely how many, but I hope there are no less than 10.

The Liftport Group is a company that has a pretty monumental task ahead of it. Grown out of a NASA study, Liftport has made its mission the development of a truly cheap and reusable way to bring humans and cargo to space, through elevators. While we haven’t gotten to a point technologically where Earth-bound space elevators would be feasible, Liftport says we are ready to do the next best thing, build one on the moon. Now through a Kickstarter campaign with the modest goal of $8,000, they are looking for your help to fund a company that could make a moon elevator a reality.

On July 21, 1969 a man named Neil Armstrong achieved something so big, so monumental, that more than forty years later humanity hasn’t come close to accomplishing anything which might eclipse it.

Yet even a man who has escaped the pull of Earth’s gravity can’t escape the inevitable doom of old age. This weekend on August 25th Neil Armstrong, the first human being to walk on the moon, died following complications from a heart bypass surgery he underwent on August 7th. He was 82 years old. His family released a statement announcing his passing and letting the rest of the world know that we’ve lost the most important man on Earth, or off it.

There have been other great achievements in the history of our species. Other men have been part of important firsts, made amazing discoveries. But it’s hard to think of any bigger than this one, an achievement so big it couldn’t even happen on our planet. It’s one thing to build a boat out of wood and sail to unknown lands, it’s another to launch yourself into the sky in an attempt to touch the lights above.

If you’ve ever had an interest in astronomy, then you’ve probably seen an artist’s interpretation of a red supergiant star before. The ancient stars are usually depicted as giant red orbs that may be shown in the act of baking an alien planet or even eating one. They may be an angry shade of red and have some fancy set dressing, but for the most part, depictions of red supergiants are pretty similar to the look of our own Sun. Now, a new perspective on the red supergiant star Betelgeuse makes it look every bit the part of a star ready to explode.