And that's a very good thing.

Over at RocketForge, we see:

Masten Space Systems started taking payload orders today! $199 CanSats at an introductory price of $99! Full 1kilogram custom payloads for $250! Sign up now!

I've briefly mentioned CanSat before here and here. There are a couple of good follow-on links there, and I really recommend visiting Pratt Hobbies, where you can find plenty of useful kits to get your inner-rocket scientist jump started.

On a related note, this weekend I'll be supervising several teams of students as they assemble high power rockets to loft CanSat payloads. Altitudes will be less than 4,500 feet vs. the several tens of thousands of feet that Mastens is working towards, but the concepts are the same. Rocket science is rocket science.

Posted by: Ted at 08:58 PM | category: Space Program
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Over at Pratt Hobbies blog, Doug has put up a picture of himself and his son Brian. Brian was my co-timer during the Team America finals.

Meanwhile, for the true tech-geek out there, check out this mashup of Google Maps that lets you track the orbital positions of satellites as well as letting you know when and where they'll appear in your sky over the next 48 hours. Tres cool! Kudos to Dick's Rocket Dungeon for the info and pointer.

Posted by: Ted at 09:14 AM | category: Space Program
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NASA creates some wicked cool animated mission videos, and the best I've seen was a version where someone added a background soundtrack of Lenny Kravitz' Fly Away.

This version is pretty good though, set to Nine Inch Nails Sunspots. Check out NIN to Mars.

Here's another, which leaves the original NASA audio intact. It's longer too, not edited down to fit a particular song.

Posted by: Ted at 07:52 AM | category: SciTech
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