Amen, brother.

But I would like to see us physically explore this solar system to prep us for the stars.

I agree. There is still so much to learn nearby.

"A long long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...."

Oops wrong quote

"Space the final frontier..."

Hey Tony, maybe if they find the Higgs boson, they will figure out how to use it al a "Mass Effect" sure it might take a few decades to do so, if its possible, but still.

Explore where ye may, friends. Imagine a world where we buy starships instead of automobiles. A life in which we explore anywhere we choose from here to the edge of known space. So many people with their own ships, it would truly be even more spectacular than our wildest films and television shows. Folks will explore the vast reaches of space from the Moon to other star systems to other galaxies and on and out... They may even choose to return and tell the rest of us what they've seen. Assuming we can figure out a way around the light speed limit to space travel what I've just described wouldn't be hard to imagine. Now, where did I park my "Millenium-Bird-of-Thunder-Road"...

(extra points for anyone who can name the three sources from which I've pulled to create the name of my space ship.)

Funny how the largest planets appear to be the size of the smallest stars......

Star Wars, Star Trek....and if it were Glory Road I would have the last one too... Bruce Springsteen mebbe? lol

Soooo where can I buy some large sized posters with both the exoplanets and our solar system images on them??

@TReed said it well.

A few graphics come along that absolutely illustrate what is going on without a lot of words. This is one of those.

Mob, I have first dibs on bidding for the Millennium Falcon, or the Eagle 5 Winnebago. I would be happy with either.

Mob - I'm guessing Star Trek, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and the Boss.

Mob - as for me - I'm driving the "Spirits of Major Tom's Redemption" , however, I'm looking for some info. Which of these possible exos is the closest to us? I tried to get directions, but the chic on my OnStar just said, "Huh?"

Well, B Honest was the closest and Mnmule gets a point too... But TonyInDallas should get honorable mention for his appreciation for the spaceballs ride.

So, I will let everyone in on the answer now... It was Star Wars (Millenium Falcon), Star Trek (Bird of Prey), and [the one I knew no one would get] Thunder Road is the name of the tilt-o-whirl turned spaceship in the 1985 classic movie The Explorers starring Ethan Hawke, River Phoenix, and Jason Presson. Also, The Explorers celebrates a B-movie (within the movie) featuring a character named Starkiller. You may also know Starkiller by his real life name Robert Picardo (or maybe you know him as the ships holgraphic doctor on Star Trek Voyager).

And yes the name of the Thunder Road craft in the movie comes from the Bruce Springsteen song.

Thank you for playing. I wonder if anyone will read this.

Thanks Mob, and yes, I did follow up on this one, lol. I will admit, I never saw The Explorers, so I appreciate they synopsis on that. I DID enjoy your name for your craft tho, I would like a ride when ya get her built!

Well working with mercury and magnets has it's side effects... lol... Designing a stable form of grav/anti-grav levitation/hyper warp just isn't as easy as I thought it'd be. I've gone through twelve lawnmower engines and still have nothing to show for it. It all works on paper but I'm just not a great mechanical engineer. Also, I'm just afraid to try the lightspeed chamber I came up with.

lol

The Explorers is a good movie, it's kind of a kids movie but it's still fun to watch even now.

Actually, I didn't notice the note to find the three, or I would have had two of them.

>e-mail title "The Explorers" home<

What, Mob...are you admitting that you are Mad as a Hatter?? Who'd of thunk it, your writing is quite clear and legible, even if you are one of us...errrr...Them 'Science Nerds'....

Keep on posting your great stuff, I look for your posts on these subjects, you usually have something worthwhile and 'down to Earth' to say!

And BTW, apparently part of the secret to the anti-gravity thing is the condensers...try Campbells, I hear they have a great line of them condensed cans thingies.....hehehe

And is larger than the smallest stars in the lineup!

It may be a planet, or possibly a brown dwarf star. That one will probably require further observation to be sure.

It might be, like so many other things in nature, there's equilibrium. Meaning great big stars equals great big planets; little bitty stars equals itty bitty planets.

It's usually a tough one to figure out at such great distances. Jupiter, for example, radiates a good deal more heat than it receives from the Sun. However, it's not a brown dwarf star because the physicists are quite certain that no sustained fusion reactions are occurring in it's interior.

The James Webb Space Telescope will help us understand a great deal more about brown dwarf stars and Jupiter Plus sized planets, as it is an infrared telescope, although I'd still like to see a visible wavelength rgb CCD installed on it for some 'Super Hubble' Wow factor images for all of us to enjoy. They can't convince me that can't be added to it.

Wonder what the odds are its a companion star. Looks like a pretty big compared to our sun. Red (super)giant maybe?

ray, adding a manned crew to a space telescope adds nothing to their performance; it actually degrades performance, and adds unnecessarily (and exponentially) to the the cost.

Hubble, Chandra, XMM-Newton, Uhuru, Copernicus, COROT, Hipparcos, AKARI, Herschel, IRAS, COBE, WMAP, Planck, Spitzer, WISE, Swift, Compton, Fermi, HETE, BeppoSAX, Kepler, and on and on - all successful, unmanned space telescopes.

You are looking for something for astronauts to do; you are looking for a rationale for a mission. That's backwards. Look first at what the MISSION needs, not for a way to justify human spaceflight. If a human touch is the best way to get a job done - great! But don't add them to a mission where they would only be in the way.

(And that goes for sending a human spaceflight mission to an asteroid as well; I have not yet heard what astronauts could do on such a mission that robotic explorers could do FAR cheaper and FAR sooner.)

Cheers! ~Michael (AFM*Radio / Astronomy.FM)

yea, right you are, no one needs an astronaut doing jumping jacks while the main optical scope is being sighted in....still, I can find billions and billions of reasons why a manned space platform would provide astronauts something to do....maintenance being the most important...if the pixel condition of the webb REALLY detoriates once it is in orbit...how is Stoey going to get to it?....and if a NEO pops up quick enough to physically point a scope at but was missed by a robotic survery..(likely, eh?) well, a manned station could get on the horn and shout back "michael, down the rabbit hole in less than six minutes!!!"...ok, ad ridiculum...still, a manned platform could really add to an observations platform's usefulleness via configuration changes, adaptability, maintenance, ultra experimentation (off the cuff filters dreamed long after an instruments deployment)...and if we really got technical here...ok no mouth breathers, how about telepresence then??...surely my friend, you gotta help me here, congress ain't that smart, we had em at DEDICATED...MANNED... they are still trying to figure out what an exo planetary observation really platform is..in the meantime one of those power beamed from space lobbyists is thinking..."yea, any intelligent species woulda had a manned multipurpose "commercial"..blah, blah, blah...michael, he is light years ahead of ya already...thinking about residuals from the rent garnared from fee-ing direct tv to hang antennas off the side.....thanks mike.

I have to agree with Michael here. Sending humans to an asteroid only proves that we can send humans to an asteroid. If the mission is a sample-return mission then it should be done with robotics. Even most mining missions that I could think of can and should be done with machines. The best reason I can think of to send astronauts to an asteroid is so that the astronauts can get training for further deep space missions. But that is a pretty flimsy reason to send astronauts. The other reason to send our people to asteroids is just to say that we have accomplished that task, and while I'd be in favor of this it's not something most taxpayers are going to get behind.

Now, sending a manned mission to Phobos, which apparently the radar returns show cubical spaces and large open areas within, to the tune of nearly 1/3 of it's volume, is something that I could get behind, as long as it was part of an overall mission to land on Mars itself as well. It would seem silly to go all that distance and be right there and NOT actually do a landing on Mars, likewise, it would seem silly to do a manned mission to Mars without studying Phobos as well. There ARE reasons for manned missions, but I agree, just going to an asteroid and returning would seem to be a rather empty exercise to me as well.

Indeed any great mission to Mars will likely be a "super mission" with several mission goals. I would think setting up some kind of base on Phobos would be a worthwhile spot to launch subsequent surface missions to Mars from. It'll be very interesting to see how the next few decades of spaceflight unfold.

Honestly, I find little reason to go to Mars satellites. Several people have suggested setting up a base there, but these are glorified asteroids. More economical and probably easier to just set up a station in orbit. Visit the moons from there, if need be.

Hmmm. I hadn't thought of it that way. If the station were built in Earth orbit and then sent to Mars obrit it certainly seems like that would be the most efficient way of exploring the Martian system. We really need to get our space program going big time. I mean we really need to start building in space, the more we do the better at it we should get.

Heck, you could even do it by sending pieces and assembling. Send a group with a habitat, send another group with an addition, etc. Maybe people come home, maybe not. Or, send different groups at about the same time, meet up in orbit and assemble. If a catastrophe happens to one, the whole mission isn't lost. Make it modular enough so the loss of one doesn't jeopardize the station.

I'm surprised we have not sent a station up and spun it to see what the "gravity" feel would be.

I have seen proposals for such a flywheel rig to be put into testing on the space station. But I believe at this point they are just proposals. I'm really surprised it hasn't happened yet also. It's a fairly old idea.

ThaPyngwyn, last paragraph of the article

Nearly all of these candidates have yet to be confirmed as planets rather than binary-star companions or computer glitches

Aha, thank you. I shall read the article next time. >.<