Books Permit Us To Voyage Through Time, To Tap The Wisdom Of Our Ancestors. The Library Connects Us With

NASA Completes Space Launch System Design Review:

Well, that’s it folks. The extensive and complicated review process NASA had to undergo is over and they’ll move into “cutting metal and fabricating”.

What does this mean? It means that NASA is going back to space and they’ll definitely be doing it on this rocket.

So what’s the big deal with this rocket exactly?

The Space Launch System is going to be the most powerful launch vehicle ever made and will be the first exploration class vehicle NASA’s made since the Apollo era.

The rocket will be the size of a small skyscraper: 320.9 feet in height.

Could we go to Mars on it?

Yes. In fact that’s the ultimate goal of the program.

It will also likely take astronauts back to the Moon, to asteroids, the moons of other planets etc.

The first launch will be in 2018, without astronauts, to complete final tests and make sure it’s ready to carry humans into space.

The new era of human exploration and discovery is finally before us.

(Image credit: NASA and MSFC)

Happy Birthday e!

The letter e as the base for natural logarithms was born 25 Nov 1731 in a letter from Euler to Goldbach. e was discovered (but not named) in 1683 by Jacob Bernoulli, as the limit of (1+1/n)^n as n tends to infinity. Prior to its discovery, the nameless constant e had been lurking around the embryo of the logarithm for many years.

Is it possible to have a spacesuit that is skin tight? My logic on this is that space wants to separate your bodies atoms but can the pressure be neutralized by having a tight enough skin suit? Am I even making sense?

Meet Dava Newman:

Now NASA’s Deputy Administrator (second-in-command). She’s spent years at MIT developing what’s known as the “BioSuit” - basically a skintight spacesuit that would use mechanical counter-pressure to apply about a third of an atmosphere on the body, enabling exploration with full range of motion, minimizing the energy spent fighting your own bubble-boy-of-a-suit.

There were a couple of problems remaining when she left to work for NASA:

The design so far still includes a pressurized helmet that has a seal issue with the rest of the suit. Also certain parts of the suit (the hands as you can see above) are difficult to get quite right.

The second problem is going to be returned to in a few years. The last I heard the research group was going to let material science develop carbon nanotubes and graphene a bit more and then try using those two materials somehow in the design.

It’s a super promising design and I hope they get it down pat! As is, it stands to benefit the medical community as well as to open astronaut qualifications to people shorter than 5′5″ (or somewhere around there) - below which apparently they can’t even apply to be an astronaut due to the spacesuits not being made small enough.

(Image credit: Professor Dava Newman: Inventor, Science Engineering; Guillermo Trotti, A.I.A., Trotti and Associates, Inc. (Cambridge, MA): Design; Dainese (Vincenca, Italy): Fabrication; Douglas Sonders: Photography)

(◡‿◡✿)

a concept: i am finally enough

We need people who don’t ask us to become different for their own acceptance and terms of approval. We need people, and we need to be the people who give others the permission to sit in their own skins and not be afraid. That’s the best gift you are ever going to give someone— the permission to feel safe in their own skin. To feel worthy. To feel like they are enough.

Hannah Brencher (via shammyb)

We have the privilege to be educated. Don’t waste that.

(via dontstop-study)

“What do you play?”

“The Clarinet, you?”

“I play the fucking HAMMER”