Acetio | Blogma

NASA has a server called arc.nasa.gov (password-protected) with a subdomain at settlement.arc.nasa.gov which contains a number of odd things, including an archive of artists' renderings of proposed earthling settlements in space. The proposals are basically for big round greenhouses, rotating to simulate gravity via centrifugal force - not so different than what has been proposed in a lot of science fiction in movies and on TV.

Somehow I'm comforted that there are people making plans for this kind of thing, even though it's discouraging to see how so much of the optimism of the 60s and 70s (regarding space travel as well as almost everything else) never went anywhere.

The word "Astronaut" comes from the Greek for "Star Sailor" and was coined by author Neil Jones in 1930. It is used for space-faring people in the U.S. or on American missions.

The word "Cosmonaut" is used to refer to Russian astronauts and comes from the Greek for "Universe (Cosmos) Sailor"

While the Chinese government uses the words "astronaut" and "cosmonaut" many English-language media use the word "Taikonaut", from the Chinese word for "Space" ("taikong") along with the Greek for "Sailor" ("naut").

It seems the rule is that any nation that sends people into space needs their own word for what to call its space-pilots. Now that India is in the game (first flight scheduled for 2015), they need a word as well.

The Sanskrit for "Space" (or "Sky") is "Vyoma" and so their word is "Vyomanaut" (vee-OHM-uh-naut) according to the Indian Space Research Organisation.

The Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona in Tucson has an impact effect calculator that gives estimates of what would happen if a extraterrestrial body were to strike the earth. You need to know lots of information in order to use the calculator, such as the size, velocity, and density of the object, but the results are quite specific, such as how likely it would be that trees within 1,000 miles of the impact would ignite.