Sweet, Huh?!

Someone’s gotta say it…. NASA scientists are doing their best to tell us where this plummeting six-ton satellite will fall later this week. Right now, it’s seems like they have NO IDEA!

For now, scientists predict the earliest it will hit is Thursday U.S. time, the latest Saturday. The strike zone covers most of Earth.

Not that citizens need to take cover. The satellite will break into pieces, and NASA put the chances that somebody somewhere will get hurt at just 1-in-3,200. Hey, if you had those odds on winning the lottery you’d most likely win. So this honestly doesn’t look good folks, no matter what NASA is saying.

They say falling space debris has never injured anyone, although maybe someone in the middle of no-where has been injured, but it’s never been reported in the western world. Nor has significant property damage been reported – again hear say. They say this because most of the planet is covered in water and there are vast regions of empty land.

If you do come across what you suspect is a satellite piece (haha) NASA doesn’t want you to pick it up. The space agency says there are no toxic chemicals present, but there could be sharp edges. Also, it’s government property. It’s against the law to keep it as a souvenir or sell it on eBay. NASA’s advice is to report it to the police.

The 20-year-old research satellite is expected to break into more than 100 pieces as it enters the atmosphere, most of it burning up. Twenty-six of the heaviest metal parts are expected to reach Earth, the biggest chunk weighing about 300 pounds (136 kilograms). The debris could be scattered over an area about 500 miles (800 kilometers) long. That doesn’t sound good right?

Apparently there’s stuff that falls out of the sky almost every year. This year two massive Russian rocket stages have taken the plunge.

All told, 1,200 pounds (544 kilograms) of wreckage is expected to smack down — the heaviest pieces made of titanium, stainless steel or beryllium. That represents just one-tenth the mass of the satellite, which stretches 35 feet (10.7 meters) long and 15 feet (4.6 meters) in diameter.

Russia’s old Mir station came down over the Pacific, in a controlled re-entry, in 2001. But one of its predecessors, Salyut 7, fell uncontrolled through the atmosphere in 1991. The most recent uncontrolled return of a large NASA satellite was in 2002.

The most sensational case of all was Skylab, the early U.S. space station whose impending demise three decades ago alarmed people around the world and touched off a guessing game as to where it might land. It plummeted harmlessly into the Indian Ocean and onto remote parts of Australia in July 1979.

Predicting where this satellite will strike is a little like predicting the weather several days out, says NASA orbital debris scientist Mark Matney.

Experts expect to have a good idea by Thursday of when and where UARS might fall, Matney says. They won’t be able to pinpoint the exact time, but they should be able to narrow it to a few hours.

Given the spacecraft’s orbital speed of 17,500 mph (28,162 kph), or 5 miles (8 kilometers) per second, a prediction that is off by just a few minutes could mean a 1,000-mile (1,609-kilometer) error. It probably won’t be clear where it fell until afterward. HaHa you guys are hilarious! You really have no idea. Does this mean anyone can now work for NASA?

Space junk in general is on the rise, much of it destroyed or broken satellites and chunks of used rockets. More than 20,000 manmade objects at least 4 inches (10.2 centimeters) in diameter are being tracked in orbit.

Very interesting news today. Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic will use its SpaceShipTwo-class reusable spaceplanes for a little more than just joyrides into zero-g, as NASA’s new contract with the independent space company is a milestone for the entire space business. Just shows that Richard Branson’s wackiest venture pay actually pay-off. Virgin notes, “this arrangement marks the first time that NASA has contracted with a commercial partner to provide flights into space on a suboribtal spacecraft.”

This is technically a further step in a program that’s already seen NASA technology flights on low-altitude rockets. You can see why NASA’s made the decision: Inside the 3.7 by 2.3 meter cabin of a SpaceShipTwo, plenty of scientific payloads can be hauled up Earth’s gravity well to gain a precious few moments in the zero gravity of space–and there’s room for flight specialists too, who can monitor and tweak the experiments in a way that wouldn’t be possible on an automated low-altitude rocket.

Since the flights only last a couple of hours it’s possible to fly an experiment, do the research, wait for the ship to land, tweak it or load in a modified payload, and fly it again. Which opens up whole new vistas of academic and engineering research.

Virgin Galactic, the press release notes, is often considered a “space tourism company,” and it’s collected some $55 million in deposits from future space tourists, but it’s taking its role as a scientific lab assistant pretty seriously and has garnered assistance from the Southwest Research Institute, NanoRacks (who are already expert in sending small-scale experiments to the ISS) and a number of other spaceflight and payload integration specialists.

NASA’s hands were really tied. In the new era of the space business, with its trademark Shuttle grounded forever and only limited access to the ISS via European, Russian and (in several years) commercial rockets, NASA has to look for other ways to access microgravity. And though other commercial space companies make a lot of noise about their future, Virgin Galactic is the only one with a space vehicle in advanced flight test phases.

Christian Schallert turns a complete dive into a compact cozy modern living space. He was inspired by the designs of Japanese homes plus hidden storage units.

His bed conveniently slides underneath the balcony. The dining room table folds up into the wall, and everything else fits behind cabinet doors. There is even a small room for the restroom and a glass cube shower.

Check this video out:

This image provided by the Clay Center Observatory/Virgin Galactic shows SpaceShipTwo in full feather wing mode on a rapid descent from its drop altitude of 51,500 feet over Mojave, Calif., Wednesday May 4, 2011. The craft descended in this configuration at a near vertical angle at a rate of 15,500 feet per minute. The craft was reconfigured to normal glide mode at 33,500 feet. This photograph was taken with high powered telescopes from the ground. (AP Photo/Virgin Galactic/Clay Center Observatory, Mark Greenberg)

Don’t have the $250,000 to secure a spot on one of Virgin Galactic‘s maiden joyrides into space next year? Here’s a look at what you’re missing. We flew in a regular Virgin Air plane over San Francisco right next to WhiteKnightTwo and SpaceShipTwo this week. After a short flight, we touched down next to the spacecraft–the first time that a spaceship has landed at a commercial airport. (SpaceShipTwo is sandwiched in between the WhiteKnightTwo takeoff vessel in the video.)

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NASA’s space shuttle Discovery is ready for its final mission @ 4:50 p.m. Eastern time, but you don’t need to race to the Space Coast to catch the action. Thanks to the magic of the internet (and taxpayer dollars), you can watch the final shuttle flights this year in high-definition, for free right here at ChillReport.com

Back in August NASA planned to solicit proposals for future air and space research. Now it’s amended plans for that program, called Aeronuatics 2010, with scope for further proposals on hypersonic travel.

Remember the late, lamented Concorde? Well that flew at Mach 2, twice the speed of sound and was fast enough for it to beat the sunset as it flew toward the U.S. from London and Paris. The impressive SR71 Blackbird spy plane flew at just over Mach 3, three times the speed of sound, fast enough to let it flit into and out of conflict zones or restricted airspace all over the globe without being caught.

Hypersonic aircraft would fly much faster than this: At above Mach 5, or five times the speed of sound. That’s fast enough for a hypersonic vehicle to get you from New York to Sydney in about two and a half hours.

Virgin Galactic’s first spaceship, named VSS Enterprise, and its carrier aircraft, the White Knight Two, were in New Mexico for the dedication of the runway at a commercial spaceport located north of Las Cruces that will become Virgin Galactic’s home base.

Virgin Galactic, an offshoot of billionaire Richard Branson’s London-based Virgin Group, expects to begin suborbital space flights in late 2011 or 2012.

The event drew about 600 people to the southern New Mexico desert, including about 30 of the more than 380 customers who already have paid or put down deposits for the $200,000 suborbital space rides.

Virgin Galactic plans to compete in the upcoming race to develop orbital space vehicles.

The US human space program has been thrown into turmoil by President Obama’s decision, on advice from an outside advisory panel, to end NASA’s follow-on moon program called Constellation, and embark on a more flexible approach to deep space exploration.

That plan, unveiled in February, will make the government a customer, rather than provider, for crew transportation services to the International Space Station following next year’s grounding of the aging US space shuttle fleet.

This company has created an item that will adapt with the changes your child goes through. Introducing the Babyoom.

The babybuggy will work up until the child turns three and it doubles as a car seat.  Once they’re a bit too big for the buggy it transforms into a tricycle, which the child will be able to enjoy for several years.  After they’ve grown tired of that it turns into a shopping cart. Boom Boom!

SpaceShipTwo staged a dress rehearsal for its glide flight and flew with a crew for the first time.

Word spread quickly that SpaceShipTwo, attached to its mother ship Eve, departed the Mojave Air and Space Port. Many were anxious to hear whether the first glide flight of the spacecraft also known as VSS Enterprise would happen, especially since we knew a chase plane followed SpaceShipTwo into the sky.

The flight test team at Scaled Composites has been busy preparing for the first glide flight. There have been four flights of WhiteKnightTwo in the past month where the crew has made practice approaches similar to what will be flown in the VSS Enterprise.

Virgin Galactic, the company behind the development of SpaceShipTwo and private space tourism, says yesterday’s flight marked the first time SpaceShipTwo flew with a crew on board.

Peter Siebold, test pilot and director of flight tests at Scaled, joined fellow test pilot Michael Alsbury aboard the VSS Enterprise as it remained mated with WhiteKnightTwo throughout the flight. It was the 3rd flight for the craft and the 33rd flight for the mother ship. The craft spent six hours and 12 minutes off the ground testing SpaceShipTwo’s systems.

No announcement has been made on a date for the first solo flight of SpaceShipTwo.

Photo: Virgin Galactic

500 revamped Coke Freestyle machines are to be shipped out across the U.S. this month, as the next stage in Coke’s experiment. It’s a slow roll-out, as Coke’s being careful to ensure there are trained technicians available nearby in case of problems–but ultimately the company is hoping to reinvent the market (which is huge–Coke alone has over half a million old-style drinks fountains in the U.S.). You may suspect that users wouldn’t embrace a machine that can deliver 104 different flavors and stick to the old traditional ones (with the benefit of fast, low-effort single-button delivery). The machines have 104 user-controlled flavors.