Space

5.6k Saturn Cassini Photographic Animation from stephen v2 on Vimeo.

The Cassini flyby video is a magnificent look at one of the most beautiful planets in our solar system.

Government run space programs tend to waste money because that’s what bureaucracies do. And government will always find excuses to cut science programs in favor of some other badly run department that is wasting money even more. In fact, let’s be real, look at the state of the deficit and you’ll find the government is incapable of even running itself. It’s a disaster.

This is why commercial space programs are so important. They are needed, and because they are commercial, they have to work or they will fail on their own. It’s great to see some real progress in these areas. For many years the US government wouldn’t allow commercial space programs. It set us back by decades, thankfully, those days are behind us.

Here’s some amazing pictures from around the solar system. This one is of the Earth and Moon from some 114 million miles away taken this year. Yes, somewhere on that tiny dot you and I and everyone we know live.

It means we can build lunar cities there. We can create oxygen, have water to drink and grow plants in a hydroponic lab which would also serve to clean the air and provide food in a lunar city. A base on the moon would have a lot of scientific uses including a better place to put a Hubble type telescope.

Some awesome stuff from our most amazing telescope ever. Alas the recent mission to upgrade Hubble will be the last. It is scheduled to be retired. I guess they need more money for wasteful spending purposes.

I’ve shown those planet/sun comparison charts before. This one takes it even farther. Awesome.

Anytime you think you or anyone else is really important, look at this chart. If you think you have big problems, look at this chart.

Note: Click the image to enlarge it. Changed to a bigger image.

How big is the International Space Station vs SciFi movie spaceships?