Boeing rolls out Starliner passenger spacecraft to launch site ahead of December flight
Link: https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/21/20975710/boeing-cst-100-starliner-roll-out-atlas-v-uncrewed-test-flight
Boeing rolled its new passenger spacecraft, the CST-100 Starliner, out to the Florida launch site the vehicle is set to take off from next month. It’s the first time that a spaceflight-ready version of the capsule has exited the hangar.
Now the capsule will be mated on top of the rocket that will take it to space — an Atlas V manufactured by the United Launch Alliance. On December 17th, the rocket and capsule are slated to take off from Cape Canaveral, Florida — without any crew members on board — and then dock with the International Space Station. If successful, this demonstration mission could pave the way for NASA astronauts to fly on the Starliner sometime next year.
Boeing is one of two providers for the Commercial Crew program, along with rival SpaceX, which has been developing its own passenger spacecraft called the Crew Dragon. The two have been in an unspoken competition with one another to fly humans first, though Boeing has seemed to lag behind SpaceX in development. SpaceX already launched its Crew Dragon once in March, on an uncrewed flight test to the International Space Station. The flight demonstrated the Crew Dragon’s capability to dock with the ISS and then return home safely.
Boeing’s big milestone today comes just a week after a damning report was released by NASA’s Office of Inspector General, claiming that rides on Boeing’s Starliner will incredibly expensive. The report argued that one seat on Starliner will cost $90 million — more than a seat on the Soyuz and much more than the $55 million a seat on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon will cost. The audit also revealed that Boeing had received an extra $287 million to the company’s supposedly fixed-price contract to prevent delays to the Commercial Crew program,!
It’s Still Not Aliens: ‘Mars Bug’ Claim Could Damage the Search for Life
Link: https://www.space.com/mars-bug-claim-not-aliens-search-for-life.html
An Ohio scientist claims to have found photographic proof of “insect and reptile-like” life on Mars. But, as always, it’s not aliens, other researchers say.
William Romoser, a professor emeritus who specializes in arbovirology (the study of viruses transmitted by arthropods) and entomology at Ohio University, has compiled photographs from NASA Mars rovers that he says are evidence of life on Mars. “There has been and still is life on Mars,” Romoser said in a statement.
David Maddison, a professor in the integrative biology department at Oregon State University, this “proof” is likely just an example of pareidolia, a phenomenon in which people see patterns in random data.
“I, personally, have pareidolia with respect to insects, beetles in particular,” Maddison told Space.com in an email. “I’ve worked on beetles for decades; I have collected many thousands of beetles around the world. Through the years I have built into my brain a pattern-recognition system for picking out beetles.”
“I do not think there are insects on Mars. The photographs that are in that press release you sent are entirely unconvincing, as they fall within the range expected in zillions of non-insect objects photographed in lowish resolution on a Marscape,” Maddison said. “It is vastly more parsimonious to presume the blobs are simply rocks. As has been said, ‘extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence’; those pictures are far, far less than extraordinary.”
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