nOt jUst debRis

willing to lose $20million dollars for a space adventure? wait..wait.. wait.. SPACE ADVENTURE?!#$%^&*(#@@%$ 20million dollar? huwwaahh! walay ma-lost kay wala ta ana! wala gni ta dinhi maski 20dollar(4get the "million")!hikhikhik…btw, kidding aside, sounds impossible, aight? really sounds like a sci-fic film.. but heck, no! not anymore.. since 2001, there were already several trips to the International Space Station made by the wickedly wealthy. With Dennis Tito as the first one, he was aboard the antari X-prize winner, spaceship one(virgin galactic’s entry) last 2004. Lance ????(that lance from N’Sync) could have been the 3rd space tourist but he failed to shell out the amount of money needed for the 1-week visit to ISS. really luxurious… can’t imagine where they get the money. anyway, most of these people are businessmen. so, i should forget the wondering!hehhe… =)

I could imagine, 20 years from now, people will be travelling earth to mars, or maybe earth to the moon.. well, these are the probable space tourist destinations, not only the ISS. more feasibly, the moon would have the most frequent visits. i heard that there’s this research or sumthing that oxygen can be extracted from the moon’s ’soil’.. amazingly amazing people! there’ll be solar system cruise, other space destinations will rise, orbital cities will be built, and there’ll be spaceports around, spacewalk would be a popular sport and maybe some zero-G sports will replace football.hehehe… It’s been reported that Hilton Hotels have interests in this space tourism, and whoohooo! there’ll be space hotels! There’ll be space-passports, then fashion accessories would include oxygen tanks, and space googles. There’s even this planned space elevator, with a cable as its heart. just imagine, a cable from earth runs to somewhere in space..???!@# [pips, try reading that article from SPECTRUM magazine, august 2005 edition, available at the eng'g library sa school... you'll be more than amazed!] then one would say! "oh, i left my purse on earth" wild na kaau! hehheehehe.. =)  hope i could go too.. nah! in my dreams.. but who knows? i’ll get the chance… hehhe… if certain brand ads states "…get the chance to win a trip to Disneyland Hongkong".  "…get the chance to win a trip to space city" isn’t that close, but isn’t impossible either.waaaa.. wala man gni diay ko kadaog og trip to disneyland, to space pa! waaaa… bad! bad! bad!hehehe… here i go again. but let’s just wait and see how this space travel commercialization will go..

Comets are the snow-birds of the solar system; living most of their lives in the dark outer reaches then taking a notion, due to a variety of gravitational influences, to visit the warmer climes near the Sun, which they also eccentrically orbit. In the process of drawing near the inner solar system, they let their hair down to blow in the solar wind (the word comet means "hairy star" in many languishes) like many pleasure-seeking tourists. In the past, they were regarded as harbingers of misfortune and, in fact, our word "disaster" comes from the ancient belief in the calamitous influence of evil ("dis") stars ("astra"). Until slightly more than one hundred years ago, mankind lit their nights by burning wax, oils and gases so that the sky was very black after sunset except, as today, in large cities. Therefore, comets that suddenly erupted in the heavens appeared much more dazzling than they do now - beautiful, mysterious and, to some, terrifying!

More than 10 years ago, Comet 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 unexpectedly split apart into 3 separate pieces. Now these cometary fragments are going to fly past the Earth, and astronomers will get a closer view than they’ve had in 20 years - back when the fragments were a single object. The fragments will get relatively close, passing within 10 million km (6 million miles), but they won’t get very bright, unfortunately. It’ll take dark skies and binoculars to see much more than a blurry smudge in the sky. Recently, the comet had ejected a new fragment just a few days ago, and now this fragment has broken into multiple pieces too. Astronomers aren’t sure just how many pieces the comet will eventually break into.

UNIVERSE TODAY