My blog “at home”

Welcome to The Babylon Lurker. See my blog hosted at  www.babylonlurker.net/blog/

More space comms

Today the Soyuz TMA 13 was launched from Baikonur. At the first two orbits signals were heard here in The Netherlands and in Germany on their downlink frequency 121.750 MHz. signals were quite strong for a while.

I did not understand much of it since the comms were in Russian. One word I did recognize the Russian word for “good” (or OK) was used frequently.

The communications can only be heard for about 5 minutes, because the spacecraft need to be “visible” for both my position and the ground station in Russia.

Nils in Germany made two mp3 recordings , with his permission I have uploaded them :

file1 and
file2

The Chinese Launch of Shenzhou 7 with a Crew of 3.

The Chinese space agency has launced their 3rd manned spacecraft with 3 astronauts (“Taikonauts”) on board. see the article from SPACE.com

The plan is to have a Space Walk of about 40 minutes in order to test a newly made Chinese space suit, collect some scientific experiments from the outside of the craft and launch a small satellite sending images back to Earth. The Space Walk should happen on Friday or Saturday.

Exciting to see the Chinese emerge as a manned space faring nation. along with the US and Russia.

There are still not many nations/organisations capable of launching space craft into orbit. I count

- US
- Russia
- Europe (ESA)
- Japan
- India

did I forget anyone ?

I am curious to see when and if the Chinese will join the ISS. I think they belong there along with the others.

Doctor Who and Steven Moffat score a hattrick.

The winner of this years Hugo Award for best dramatic presentation, short form is the Doctor Who episode “Blink”, written by Steven Moffat.

I am not aware of any show winning the Hugo award in three consecutive years, it is in any case very unusual. What is even more unusual is the fact that the writer of the winners was the same.

I know very well that the final show is a joint effort of a lot of people, and the Doctor Who team has certainly done a very good job of reviving the series. Kudos to the BBC and the team.

So we have the last three year’s winners :

2006 : “The Empty Child”/”The Doctor Dances”

2007 : “The Girl in the Fireplace”

2008 : “Blink”

All three among my favourites of the three seasons.

It will be interesting to see if Moffat’s new episodes “Silence in the Library”/”Forest of the Dead” will repeat the feat. The episodes were without any doubt among the best of the latest season. but I hope next year’s winner will be something else.

It is interesting to note that Steven Moffat is taking over from Russell T. Davies as the showrunner for Doctor Who in the 2010 season, and has hinted that there will be fewer “old enemies” coming back, and some change in the tone of the show. I am looking forward to it in any case.

Update :

After a check it turns out that “The Twilight Zone” has done this in 1960/61/62 for best dramatic presentation – at the time there was no distinction between short and long form. I have no information whether the same writer was responsible for the episodes.

Doctor Who Basics

By Jennifer :
Doctor Who is a science fiction series from 1963. It follows The Doctor, a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey, on his journeys through time and space in his TARDIS (Time And Relative Dimensions In Space) a spaceship that looks like a blue police phonebox (it only looks like that because the “chameleon circuit” is broken, it would normally be able to look like practically anything). He normally has a companion, most often a female, whom he shows the wonders in space and time. The show had a pause, but restarted in 2005 with Christoffer Eccleston as the Doctor (he has now been replaced by David Tennant, the current and 10th Doctor) and Billie Piper as his companion, the human Rose Tyler (she left the show in 2006).

The Doctor himself: The Doctor is, as mentioned earlier, a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey. Sadly, he had to destroy his home planet, and with it all of his own race friends as well as family, during a great Time War (the last of these), because this was the only way to save the universe from the greatest enemy of the universe, The Daleks. A cold hearted race of robot like creatures, they have no feelings except hatred and live for the goal to rid the universe from anything that isn’t “of Dalek design”. So now the 900 year old Doctor wanders the universe and on more than one occasion saves the Earth along with other planets.

Some Thoughts on Solar Energy

In the light of the previous post : “Breakthrough in Solar Energy ?” I would like to express some thought about generating and using energy.

I have, for some time, been thinking of how we could make better, more efficient use of the energy we have, one point being that distribution of energy over large distances is rather inefficient, and the energy should be harnessed more locally. For example, combine the energy generation for every house with regionally a generated reserve.

First of all, building the infrastructure, power lines, gas pipes, is expensive and energy consuming in itself.

Further, reliability. Local energy generation would make society less vulnerable to failures of the energy infrastructure (for any reason whatsoever).

Personally I would like to be at least partly self-sufficient when it comes to generating energy. and solar is the only viable energy form in that respect.

OK, we have to look into the energy efficiency of using solar cells, since the production of those use up a lot of energy.

I would think that a combination of solar cells and wind turbines would be the best for local energy generation.

More about this later ….

Breakthrough in Solar Energy ?

It looks like we have come one step closer to harnessing solar energy more efficiently. The article :

‘Major discovery’ from MIT primed to unleash solar revolution

caught my attention today. It concerns a new catalytic material making the electrolysis of water into hydrogen and oxygen in a very efficient way, storing the solar energy collected during the day, for use at night.

The process mimics photosynthesis, the way plants store energy from the sunlight.

According to the article the technology is so simple that it could be implemented within 10 years, imagine every house generating solar electric power during the day and using the stored surplus energy duing the night.

Blog now up

My blog is now up and running on my own website. I got my posts from Blogger/LiveJournal imported.

The Livejournal will be continued – I participate in some community activities there :

Now for a little experimentation with the interface/themes, so expect that it may look a little different from time to time.

From time to time, posts from some friends will appear.

Thoughts on "The 4400" TV series.

I have been watching 4th and final season og “The 4400″ – here are a few thoughts on the series.

The concept of the series :

Over a period of about 60 years 4400 people have mysteriously disappeared. Suddenly, all reappear brought back in a giant ball of light.

The scene does, to a certain extent, remind me of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”, but “The 4400″ continues where, “Close encounters” end with a lot of people coming back.

As some of the returnees show unusual abilities, fear and suspicion arises.

What I particularly like in this series is a continued story through the series, each season always ending with a completely new – and often surprising – situation.

Characters are believable, most episodes feel well written, produced and acted.

Some people seem to complain about short (in this case 13 episode) seasons, but I think a lot of series may benefit from the shorter seasons, giving writers – and the whole team – the possibility of giving their best without running out of steam.

Doctor Who

I was just watching the last but one episode of Doctor Who for this season, and …. OMG … I have to wait another week for the conclusion …. *what* a *cliffhanger* !!