Somebody check on the president of the Leonardo DiCaprio fan club, because we’ve got some bad news. E! reports that someone–it’s not clear who–has paid $1.5 million for a ticket to outer space sitting next to Mr. DiCaprio.
Can you imagine a better chance to finally make your move than a turbulent ride through the upper atmosphere, followed by at awe-inspiring gander at the curve of the Earth? Read More
All dressed up in your spacesuit, with nowhere to go? Perhaps it’s time to put your self-promotional skills to work. Space.com reports that Mars One, the Dutch group hoping to fund a permanent human colony on the red planet by turning the whole dog-and-pony show into reality TV, will begin accepting applications by July.
Fun fact: The U.S.S.R. put the first man into space on this day in 1961. And Russia doesn’t want you to forget it, either. Today, president and part-time action hero Vladimir Putin unveiled a $50 billion initiative to get the nation back into space, starting the construction of a shiny new cosmodrome in the far east.
Ready to leave this wasted planet behind and go build a shiny new libertarian society on Mars? Then you’ll love The Atlantic‘s Q&A with Eric Anderson, cofounder of the space tourism company Space Adventures and asteroid-mining startup Planetary Resources. Mr. Anderson is pretty sure that any time now, humanity is going to light out for the territories: Read More
A couple of weeks ago, the SETI Institute asked the Internet to help name two tiny moons of Pluto. Well, the voting has now closed, and while no one hijacked the polls in favor of “Alderaan,” it was a name near and dear to science fiction nerds that took the top spot: Vulcan (a write-in) pulled 174,062 votes out of 450,324 total. Read More
Fun fact: Pluto was named in 1930 by an 11-year-old girl. In the spirit of her christening skills, Wired reports, astronomers at the SETI Institute is asking the Internet to help name two tiny, newly discovered moons of Pluto. They’ve created a website dubbed “Pluto Rocks!” with a list of possibilities for which you can cast your ballot. Read More
From the continent that brought you IKEA comes the latest in lunar home fabrication. In the hopes of eventually landing some folks on Earth’s satellite, the European Space Agency has organized a consortium tasking with figuring out how to 3D print habitations on the moon’s surface using lunar soil. One of the members, London-based architectural firm Foster + Partners, announced yesterday they’ve drawn up a design for a four-person base.
It looks eerily like the dugout where Laura Ingalls Wilder and her family lived in On the Banks of Plum Creek. But hey, it’s not like the studio apartment you’re living in now is so spacious. Read More
Let’s face it: Most of us aren’t going to make NASA’s rather stringent cut for the space program. So how’s a girl supposed to fulfill her destiny to rule Mars as Red Queen, given that that the planet is, at best, 33.9 million miles away?
Well, here’s an idea! Mars One, an organization that hopes to create of a Martian settlement by turning the whole kit and kaboodle into a reality TV show, just posted its requirements for would-be settlers. And there is good news for those of us who flunked precalculus: Read More
Renowned physicist and biggest baller alive Neil deGrasse Tyson is one of the Internet’s favorite heroic figures; he is so beloved by science geeks and techies alike that at an event hosted by Gizmodo last summer, attendees broke into spontaneous applause at the mere mention of his name.
Mr. Tyson is the director at New York’s popular Hayden Planetarium at the Rose Center for Earth and Space uptown. The Planetarium, as wondrous as it is, has a bit of a branding problem: namely, it boasts the same name as actress Hayden Panittiere, star of the new series Nashville, which we keep hearing is actually good but like, really? Is it?
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