Link Dump: Space!

Time is short, so just a few space themed links for you:

  • Space Station Movie Night: A while back, NASA released the International Space Station’s daily logs. Most of the entries are rather dry and technical, but the astronauts sometimes logged what movies they were watching, and Scott David Herman decided to collect all of them in a post. Some highlights:

    24 NOV 2000: Watched disk 1 of “Apocalypse Now”. Shep tried to explain why Robert Duvall is always wearing the black cavalry hat, but being a Navy guy, he’s not sure he understands it either.

    29 DEC 2000: Let the real “Space Odyssey 2001” proceed.

    5 JAN 2001: Finished the 2nd disk of “2010”. Something strange about watching a movie about a space expedition when you’re actually on a space expedition.

    26 JAN 2001: We eat dinner and watch “GI Jane”. Lots of SEAL questions, and Shep explains why this is not exactly like the real SEAL training.

    6 FEB 2001: We ate some dinner and watched the last part of “City of Angels”. Shep did his best to explain to Yuri and Sergei what the phrase “chick flick” means.

    Interestingly, they seem to be watching movies on CDs and dont get a DVD player until 2001 or so. Anyway, lots more there. Interesting stuff.

  • Amazing Photos of the NASA Space Shuttle: A series of photos showing how the Space Shuttle and its rocket boosters are assembled in preparation for a launch.
  • Cities at Night: The View from Space: Amazing photos of cities taken from the ISS on the dark side of the planet. You get an interesting view of each city, and the overall density of human development by looking at these photos. I remember seeing something like this world map a while back, and there are many telling observations you could make about human development (observe the difference between North and South Korea, for instance), but you don’t get much detail from that. These photos are great. See also this video detailing how the shots were taken and taking a tour around the world…
  • The Earth and the Moon as seen from Mars: An interesting perspective. Ever notice in TV shows or movies that whenever you see a planet, you’re almost always seeing the full planet in direct view of the sun (i.e. the “light side” of the planet, with none of the dark side visible). [via Kottke]

That’s all for now…