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Politics : Evolution -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Giordano Bruno who wrote (18209)	12/5/2011 11:13:01 AM
From: average joe	Respond to of 69300

The Zambian Space Programme of 1962 December 4, 2011 *This post is dedicated to Ricardo and Invisible* One of the problems of looking for the bizarre in history is that, after a while, you’ve read everything before: mermaid funerals in the Hebrides, tick; bats used in bombs against Japan, tick; Roman legionaries in China, tick… But then every so often something comes along that is fresh and that has completely escaped your notice and suddenly life feels worth living again. That, anyway, was the emotion that Beachcombing had when he read last week about Zambia’s attempt in the early 1960s to enter the space race. Beach writes ‘Zambia’ that would be wild enough, but actually this was Edward Makuka Nkoloso, a Zambian high school science teacher who became head of the National Academy of Science, Space Research and Philosophy, an organisation that naturally EMN founded. His ten Zambian astronauts and a seventeen-year-old African girl are poised for the countdown. [EMN] said: ‘I’ll have my first Zambian astronaut on the moon by 1965. My spacemen are ready, but we’re having a few difficulties…we are using my own firing system, derived from the catapult.’ Mr. Nkoloso continued: ‘To really get going we need about seven hundred million pounds. It sounds a lot of money, but imagine the prestige value it would earn for Zambia. But I’ve had trouble with my space-men and space-women. They won’t concentrate on space-flight; there’s too much love-making when they should be studying the moon. Matha Mwamba, the seventeen-year-old girl who had been chosen to be the first coloured woman on Mars, has also to feed her ten cats, who will be her companions on the long space flight… I’m getting [the astronauts] acclimatised to space-travel by placing them in my space-capsule every day. It’s a 40-gallon oil drum in which they sit, and I then roll them down a hill. This gives them the feeling of rushing through space. I also make them swing from the end of a long rope. When they reach the highest point, I cut the rope – this produces a feeling of free fall.’ Nkoloso was, in short, one of those wonderful eccentrics who usually only appear after three or four generations of middle class parliamentary democracy, preferably with what Beachcombing likes to think of, with apologies to Weber, as the Protestant Mad Ethic somewhere in the background. And yet here in Africa, in that wonderful glow of colonial freedom, before everything went to hell in the 1970s and the 1980s, was the kind of genius that would not have gone amiss riding through the English shires in the 1700s in a turquoise stage coach, raving about Atlantis and Romish spies. Nkoloso revealed, for example, that he had been watching Mars from his ‘secret headquarters’ and had discovered that the planet was peopled by a strange race of primitive savages. He guaranteed, however, that he would not force their conversion, which was gracious of him. Perhaps memories of cack-handed Anglican missionaries in his part of Africa? Enjoy this contemporary video that ends with the unnecessarily cruel words: ‘to most Zambians these people are just a bunch of crackpots and from what I’ve seen today I’m inclined to agree’. What happened to Nkoloso? Beachcombing has been unable to find out. Edward, if you (or any of your astronauts) are still out there, Beach would love to hear from you: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com. And if you are not he would gladly contribute to a plaque somewhere prominent on the other side of the equator. Africa, of course, has since entered the space race: Nigeria has several satellites in orbit. However, there are still, it seems, amateur African attempts. The most recent has appeared in Uganda and has recently been celebrated by the Daily Mail. ‘[Chris NSamba] firmly believes it will launch in the next ‘four to six years’. But given the condition of his project at the moment, he might be advised to buy a gigantic rubber band to help it on its way.’ Etc etc. Beach cannot find his old file on amateur space launches though he has happy memories of a video of the disastrous launch of Starchaser 3 in 1998 on Dartmoor. Does anyone know where to find this? Invisible has also recently put him onto catastrophic attempts to combine rocket science and the postal service in Scotland in the 1930s: ‘Some letters singed from the blasts were salvaged – to be posted in the normal way or coveted by collectors (which they are to this day). But little could be salvaged of Zucker’s life. Having been found ‘a threat to the income of the post office and the security of the country’, he was deported – and immediately arrested by the Germans on suspicion of collaboration with Britain. He was forbidden to make further rocket experiments after release and became a furniture dealer. But before dying in 1985, he managed to dabble again in rocketry – briefly and fatally, for three people who got in the way of his launcher‘. Happy times… strangehistory.net

To: Giordano Bruno who wrote (18209)	12/5/2011 8:46:00 PM
From: average joe	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 69300

Second Earth Found? Location Is Promising Published December 05, 2011 NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech This artist's conception illustrates Kepler-22b, a planet known to comfortably circle in the habitable zone of a sun-like star. It is the first planet that NASA's Kepler mission has confirmed to orbit in a star's "habitable zone" -- the region around a star where liquid water, a requirement for life on Earth, could persist. NASA announced a major milestone in the quest for life in the universe Monday: The discovery of another planet close enough to the sun it orbits to potentially support life. Called Kepler-22b, the planet is about 2.4 times the radius of Earth and about 600 light-years away. And it orbits in the "habitable zone," the region of space just far enough from a star that liquid water could exist on the planet's surface -- a discovery could have profound implications in the quest for alien life, said Alan Boss, an astrophysicist with Carnegie Melon University. SpaceShots: The Best New Photos of Our Universe The best space images on the web, putting you in touch with the most distant parts of the heavens. “This discovery supports the growing belief that we live in a universe crowded with life,” Boss said. “Kepler is on the verge of determining the actual abundance of habitable, Earth-like planets in our galaxy." The host star lies about 600 light-years away from us (1 light year is about 6 trillion miles) toward the constellations of Lyra and Cygnus, the researchers said, and is about 25 percent less luminous than the Sun. Kepler-22b orbits the star every 290 days, as compared with 365 days for the Earth, at a distance about 15 percent closer to its star than the Earth from the Sun -- close enough to suggest a pleasing, balmy temperature on the surface. Such a temperature means liquid water could exist on the surface of the planet, something necessary for life as we know it -- and this new planet might well be not only habitable but perhaps even inhabited. "This is a major milestone on the road to finding Earth's twin," said Douglas Hudgins, Kepler program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "Kepler's results continue to demonstrate the importance of NASA's science missions, which aim to answer some of the biggest questions about our place in the universe." Interestingly, Kepler-22b was not photograph so much as implied. The discovery team, led by William Borucki of the NASA Ames Research Center, pored over photometric data from the NASA Kepler space telescope. They watched for tiny dimmings of star light -- dimmings that can only be measured by a highly specialized space telescope like Kepler -- which indicate that an Earth-size planet is transiting between us and a star. Kepler requires at least three transits to verify a signal as a planet. "Fortune smiled upon us with the detection of this planet," explained William Borucki, Kepler principal investigator at NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif., who led the team that discovered Kepler-22b." Of the 54 habitable zone planet candidates reported in February 2011, Kepler-22b is the first to be confirmed. The milestone will be published in an upcoming article in The Astrophysical Journal. foxnews.com