Korea aborted the rocket launch seven minutes before lift-off, but officials wouldn't say why. The rocket was supposed to place a Russia satellite in orbit, and comes four months after North Korea's own rocket launch. North Korea had been harshly critical of the South Korean initiative.

Photos by AP/Yonhap

In this Monday Aug. 17, 2009 file photo, South Korea's first space rocket sits on its launch pad at the Naro Space Center in Goheung, South Korea. The Korea Space Launch Vehicle-1 was planned to blast off from a launch pad Wednesday, Aug. 19, 2009, officials said, in a landmark launch that could boost the country's ambition to become a regional space power but would trigger angry response from North Korea. (AP Photo/Yonhap, Bae Jae-man, File)

A South Korean flag at half-mast hangs near the Korea Space Launch Vehicle-1, South Korea's first space rocket at the Naro Space Center in Goheung, south of Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2009. Kim Dae-jung, who survived assassination attempts and a death sentence during his years as a dissident to become president of South Korea, and whose unflagging efforts to reconcile with communist North Korea earned him the Nobel Peace Prize _ died Tuesday, hospital officials said. (AP Photo/ Yonhap, Han Sang-kun)

In this photo released by Korea Aerospace Research Institute, the control center of the Korea Space Launch Vehicle-1, South Korea's first space rocket is seen at the Naro Space Center in Goheung, south of Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2009

The Korea Space Launch Vehicle-1, South Korea's first space rocket, sits on its launch pad at the Naro Space Center in Goheung, South Korea, Wednesday, Aug. 19, 2009. Space officials aborted South Korea's first rocket launch just minutes before liftoff Wednesday.

To be fair, Burt Rutan - whose Scaled Composites firm is designing Virgin's spacecraft - isn't entirely relying on glue; he also thinks that a rethink of spacecraft design is necessary, and his redesign was just patented in the US. The idea, he argues, is to attach the craft's fuel tanks inside the spacecraft in order to reduce the ship's weight, and therefore use less fuel in order to lift the ship into orbit.

It's thought that Rutan's redesign will be used in his revision of the Ansari X prize-winning SpaceShipOne rocket, although critics of Rutan's theory point out that his idea places the fuel tanks next to the combustion chamber, meaning that any failure of the adhesive — or fuel leak — could result in disaster far more easily.

How to glue together a lighter spacecraft [NewScientist]

These suits and the exterior tiny space capsule drive home just how uncomfortable and claustrophobic the whole enterprise must have been — and those close-ups of the spacesuit crotch look worse than a Stormtrooper costume. And yet, the whole thing is so bathed in the lambency of heroism that our greatest space-faring achievement still feels only a day old.

Learn more via Popular Science.

Images by AP.

Lefroy Brooks has an entire line of sexy rocket faucets, with a hint of retro flair. The designs are available in Chromium Plate, Antique Gold, Silver Nickel, and Satin Nickel.

I believe prices vary, but one regular tap costs about $200.00 so I'm assuming these rare babies aren't cheap. Still, totally worth it.

The rocket lifted off from Tanegashima Space Center on Tanegashima Island. Below is a gorgeous image of it.

SOURCE:
Japan Launches Rocket with Greenhouse Gas Probe via AP

Image via STR/AFP/Getty Images

Collier’s editor Cornelius Ryan detailed von Braun’s plans for manned spaceflight across several issues of the magazine. Articles featured topics on manned lunar and Martian exploration, the potential for a space station, property and passage rights, and, of course, the ships themselves. The ships illustrated throughout the series were based on von Braun’s earlier designs, but he worked with the series’ artists to sketch out sleeker, sexier designs that would pop on the magazine’s pages.

New York auction agency Bonham’s will auction off von Braun’s Collier’s documents on Wednesday, which have a total estimated value of $15,000-25,000. You can see a sampling of the lot below, including a few of his vehicle designs and a letter from von Braun to “Connie” Ryan.

Von Braun Sketches to Be Auctioned [Space.com]
Space Expectations Slide Show [Scientific American]

Penicillin - Alexander Fleming was studying bacteria in his own messy way, with no intention of discovering the 20th century's most vital antibiotic. Indeed, his lab sounds like something out of a sci-fi/horror movie, with bacteria and random fungus growing everywhere. Some of the accidental fungus had been tossed away, but looking more closely, Fleming noticed that bacteria wouldn't grow near some of the stuff. It took the work of others to refine and mass produce the extracted antibiotic substance, but if Fleming kept a neater shop, we may never have found it to begin with.

The Aether Wind - In the 19th century, physicists were stumped by the nature of light. It seemed to behave like a wave, so there had to be some substance in space for it to move through. They dubbed this hypothetical intergalactic substance "aether." It was theorized that the motion of the Earth through space, relative to the motionless aether, would subtly alter the speed of light depending on where in its orbit Earth was and what direction you were facing. This was called the "aether wind" effect. Polish-American scientist Albert Michelson (Polska represent!) designed an interferometer that could precisely measure the speed of light and thus detect this wind effect. After several tries and refinements to make his device incredibly accurate, no change in the speed of light was detected. Michelson, along with pretty much every other physicist at the time, was stunned. No aether? WTF?

Rocketry - No scientific failure is perhaps as spectacular as that of a rocket exploding on the launch pad, like the Vanguard rocket expiring in the 1957 photo above. The rockets that have died in the name of science number perhaps in the thousands, yet they did not die in vain. NASA and other government space agencies can put people and payloads into space with astonishing consistency (private rocketry is still catching up), giving companies the confidence to send aloft hugely expensive satellites and ambitious scientific equipment. Our world would be very different if we hadn't learned so much from all those shattered rockets.

Biosphere 2 - We built a big dome and let a bunch of people live in it (none of them were Pauly Shore) to see if they could sustain themselves solely on the air, water and food produced by the plants inside. They couldn't. The overriding element of the Biosphere 2 experience for most participants was "hunger." But when we build a colony on the moon or Mars or somewhere even more interesting, we will build on the lessons learned via Biosphere 2's rampant pizza cravings.

Nuclear Fusion - Is it a pipe dream or a holy grail? Either way, each failed experiment brings us one step closer to deciding that fusion is not worth pursuing any longer/going to provide us with so much energy we'll be giving it away. There have been lots of failed fusion experiments, but one of the coolest happened in 2002, when scientists sent incredibly strong sound waves through acetone. This created bubbles that expanded, then imploded at very high temperatures. It was hoped that the temperatures and pressures would be high enough to foster a fusion-friendly environment, but they fell a few million degrees short. Still, it hasn't dampened our enthusiasm one bit.

Honorable mention goes to Chernobyl. It was an ill-advised emergency shut-down experiment that caused that catastrophic meltdown and explosion there. Image by: NASA.

Imagine riding in that sucker down to Earth at like a zillion miles per hour.

There's something so poignant about this rocket's blistered skin. It's like this machine loved its human companions so much that it came back down to Earth just for them, even though it died in the process.

Soyuz Reentry Pictures [via Dark Roasted Blend]

Inside the rocket, living quarters are situated in the rim of a pressurized wheel-like cabin which revolves to provide artificial gravity. Radio and radar antennae revolve with it. Tubular hydroponic “gardens” on either side of the rim grow algae to produce oxygen and high protein food.

If that wasn’t enough, the Atomic Pulse Rocket “could transport payload to the Moon at $6.74 per pound, less than one quarter the prevailing air freight charges over equivalent distance.” Or so said this ad for American Bosch Arma Corporation—the folks who brought you the “inertial guidance system for the ATLAS ICBM” missile.

Allen added that the pieces are supposed to look like they might have lightning powering them, and that the yellow globes inside the rocket on the right are seeds that the ship is taking to spread life among the stars.

Rik Allen [Traver Gallery] (Thanks, Nick C!)

Columbus photo by AP Photo/EADS. Soyuz photo by STR/AFP/Getty Images.

Here's the boat that launched the interceptor SM-3. Very groovy and World War II.
And here's the missile going up into space.
AP Photo/Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force, HO.

In May, China launched a satellite for Nigeria, the first time another country paid the Chinese to put a commercial satellite in orbit. And in late October, China launched the Chang'e lunar orbiter, named after a Chinese goddess who flew to the moon. The Chang'e will orbit the moon for a year, sending back images and data on the Moon's surface. China's seeking more private investment in its space program. And India isn't far behind.

Maybe the competition will force the U.S. to improve its science education, hopes Washington state business leader Don Brunell:

Americans may need a national emergency, like the launch of Sputnik, to wake us up. Perhaps the Asian space programs will be the catalyst.

An engineer hitches a ride on the lunar rail, hoping to visit his family on Earth. But the rail malfunctions and falls 1,000 KPH short of the 8,500 KPH speed needed to escape lunar gravity. He winds up in a decaying lunar orbit, and only a risky spacewalk (or a jump, really) can save him. NASA scientists are helping with this digital short, which director Jeroen Lapré hopes to show in schools as "a teaching tool in the colonisation of space." Given that Lapré works at ILM and is using ILM resources on his own time, you can expect the final special effects to look way better. The acting and costumes won't ever improve, alas. But maybe Maestrom II can inspire more cool DIY films that use real science.