Ares 1 Roller Coster

NASA has consulted with some of the world's finest Roller Coaster designers to come up with its new, as they put it "departure system" for its famous launch complex 39b. Apparently right now they have cables and a basket, but it is kind of hard sticking the wounded and incapacitated into the basket, with the new system just strap you and the wounded into the coaster cars and off you go, will get you to the bunker 380 feet below in just 4 minutes? wait that is like about 2 ft a second, that's not a roller coaster, more like a slower coaster, get it, slower, roller, rhymes, slower because of the slow speed........ never mind. I crawl faster than that, not that I crawl at all, but if I did it would be faster then 2 ft a second. You've just had a catastrophic event and you have wounded, you have deadly fumes and flames, by the way probably travelling faster then 2 feet a second towards you, my plan stick the wounded into the slower coaster car, and climb down the coaster framework, my calculations get me to the bunker and safety in about 1 minute.

The above image is my first ever attempt at Mars. You can just make out the northern polar ice cap and some of the Syrtis Major region on it's surface. Geez people I'm loosing a lot of detail on my deep sky and planet images. The original TIFs are like 2 megs, when I go to photo shop to change to the jpeg format to download them to blogger I end up with 28k. On my original Mars in the TIFF format you can actually see the alien guys doing re-construction on the nose part of the Face Of Mars, that is before the NSA confiscated them, something about national security.

Mars , the 4th planet from our Sun is about half the size of Earth. Its orange hue is a result of iron oxide or as we know it "rust" making up a lot of the martian surface, which by the way has a very fine consistency, almost like talcum powder. Takes about 2 years to orbit the Sun and has seasons similar to Earth's. Temps vary from -140c in the winter to 20c in the summer. It's gravity is a little more than a third of Earth's, you weigh 150 lbs here, you'll weigh 56 lbs there.
Mars has 2 moons, Phobes and Deimos, which by the way cause Mar's tilt for its seasons.

Scientists with the help of Rovers Opportunity and Spirit are continuing their quest for water on Mars, because where there is water there is life. I have this real cool book, "Astronomy for Amateurs" published back in 1903 that gives a snapshot into what we held as true back then about life on Mars, I have actually blogged about this book in my post Martians And Venusians And Lunarians Oh My. The stuff in this book is wild, in reference to life on Mars, and I quote, "differing from our's, this world may well be a more congenial habitation. It's more ancient than the Earth, smaller, less massive. It has run more quickly through it's phases of its evolution. It's astral life is more advanced and it's humanity should be superior to our own, just as our successors a million years hence, for example, will be less coarse and barbarous than we are at present. There is no need to despair of entering someday into communication with these unknown beings". Little did we know back then that in 100 years the aliens would still be living in Caves.