BSG Composer Creates Symphony For Last Shuttle Launch

Bear McCreary, composer of the television score for Battlestar Galactica, has created a special symphonic piece for the final shuttle launch of the NASA space shuttle program.  According to NASA, "The composition will be played first on Friday morning at the NASA launch TweetUp."  


As many of you know, I heart Battlestar Galactica.  BUT I'M STILL WATCHING THE SERIES SO FOR THE LOVE OF GOD/SPACE/TIME/CARL SAGAN DO NOT TELL ME HOW IT ENDS.


Anywho, there's a chance the shuttle launch may get bumped...again.  According to an article published in Computerworld earlier today, lightning and thunderstorms may put the kibosh on tomorrow's scheduled launch.  With only a 30% chance of fair skies and isolated thunderstorms expected throughout the late morning hours, we'll have to keep a weather eye open for any updates.

Adios, Atlantis

Sad times for us outer space junkies.  Next Friday marks the 135th NASA shuttle mission.  And, the last.  


NASA's space shuttle fleet first zoomed into outer space on April 12, 1981.  During those thirty years, 355 lucky folks have had the opportunity to escape our atmosphere and hangout in that chilly vacuum beyond.  The purpose of this final NASA shuttle mission is to deliver supplies to the International Space Station.  NASA is reportedly ending shuttle missions in order "to make way for future programs aimed at sending astronauts to visit an asteroid by 2025, then target missions to Mars."

The launch is currently set for 11:26 EDT, Friday, July 8th, at Kennedy Space Center.  If you want to watch this flight finale, check out http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html on the morning of the flight.

Vampire Stars - They vwant to suck your hydrogen.

"Space is disease and danger wrapped in darkness and silence." - Dr. McCoy.  Well folks, outer space just got a little scarier.  For stars, anyway.  


I was trolling through National Geographic's website yesterday when I stumbled across an article about "vampire stars."  These stars, also known as blue stragglers, "seem to lag in age next to the other stars with which they formed—appearing hotter, and thus younger and bluer.  Astronomers suspect blue stragglers look so youthful because they've stolen hydrogen fuel from other stars, perhaps after colliding into their victims."  


The stars found in the Milky Way's galactic bulge may be siphoning off hydrogen in a different manner.  "[T]he blue stragglers in the galactic bulge may have formed by ripping hydrogen off their companion stars. This possibly occurred either when one star fed off its partner in a two-star system, or perhaps after gravitational interactions in a triple-star system had caused two of its members to merge into one."


Well, I know a thing or two about vampires (having read more Anne Rice and Stephanie Meyer than I care to publicly admit), and I gotta say that ripping off a star's fuel source so you can be a hotter, sexier, star sounds pretty vampiric to me.  





(Image courtesy of the Hubble telescope: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap020220.html)