Nuking the moon, and 5 more insane space missions that never happened

Over the last 50 years, we’ve set foot on the moon, “roved” the Red Planet, and have even hurled a probe into interstellar space — but those are just the missions that succeeded. Through the decades, there have been plenty of strange projects proposed by spacefaring nations, and the vast majority of them never even reach the launch pad. To give you a taste of just how crazy some of these projects are, we’ve gathered up some of the most ridiculous of the bunch. So without further ado, here are six of the weirdest space missions ever considered.

A blimp on Titan

The Cassini probe gave mankind its fist look at the Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. It is the only moon in our solar system known to have an atmosphere and researchers believe it may even host life . To prepare for future missions to Titan, NASA proposed a series of conceptual designs including a a small, helium-filled dirigible, known as the Aerover Blimp.

The zeppelin would utilize three propellers to circumnavigate Titan every one or two weeks. Aerover would be about 33-feet in length and 8-feet in diameter, or — as JPL rather oddly specified — “roughly the length and height of a stretch limousine.” The design calls for a small inflatable wheel along the bottom to cushion the blimp when landing on an array of rocky terrains and allow the unit to float on oceans of liquid methane. According to JPL, the concept is still under consideration, so the notion of piloting a remote-controlled blimp somewhere in the cosmos is still in play. At least for now.

Nuking the moon

Some of most bizarre space missions were a result of the hysteria and seemingly bottomless military bankrolling during the Cold War. In 1957, the successful launch of Sputnik sent the top US military brass into panic mode. Seeing as communist world domination was the next logical step after the achievement, the US Air Force decided it needed to flex its own muscles to save face — and the best way to do this was obviously to nuke the moon. As the saying goes: If you can’t beat ’em, irrationally nuke something … anything.

This program, known as Project A119, remained a secret for more than 40 years until Leonard Reiffel, a physicist who worked on the project, made these mission details public, stating that at the time, the “Air Force wanted a mushroom cloud so large it would be visible on Earth.” Eventually, cooler heads prevailed and the Air Force put its nuclear toys away, thankfully setting its sights on more pragmatic ambitions — like putting humans on the moon.

An orbiting battle station

As noted previously, the world’s two superpowers were rather trigger-happy during the peak of the Cold War. Both sides were developing a myriad of clever ways to effectively vaporize us as a species. Needless to say, these tricked-out death machines weren’t limited to an all-out war here on earth. The Soviets were designing a space station with an on-board “cannon” just in case. And unlike many of these other concepts, this orbiting battle station actually made it to outer space.

The Solyut-3, an early Soviet space station, orbited the earth locked and loaded with a 37-pound rapid-fire cannon capable of shooting more than 5,000 shots per minute and hitting targets nearly two miles away. The overall design did have one rather awkward design flaw, though. To aim the gun, the astronaut had to maneuver the entire 20-ton space station.

Fortunately, the Cold War ended without any full-scale galactic gunslinging, but the Soviets did fire the cannon on at least one occasion. In 1975, just before the space station was set to de-orbit, the the Soviets remotely fired 20 shells — all of which were said to have burned up in the atmosphere.

Triple-planetary flybys

In the 1960s and ’70s, both the U.S. and the Soviet Union were interested in manned flyby missions of Mars and Venus. For the U.S., such flybys were possible using upgraded Apollo mission hardware. In 1966, a the NASA Joint Action Group (JAG) proposed a four-man Mars flyby that would leave Earth in September 1975, arrive at Mars in 1976, and then return to Earth in 1977.

The team also noted a “triple-fly” opportunity involving both Mars and Venus. This theoretical mission would leave Earth in May 1981, fly past Venus on December 28, 1981, boomerang around Mars on October 5, 1982, and again past Venus in the spring of 1983 before returning to Earth on July 25, 1983. Unfortunately, nearly four decades have passed since these rather lofty ambitions without manned flybys of either planet. Perhaps that will change in the near future. In Musk we Trust.

Massive “moon buggies”

To better maneuver the lunar landscape, NASA commissioned General Motors with the task of designing a series of manned lunar vehicles, and the Mobile Laboratory (MOLAB) was a 1965 prototype. At 20 feet in length and weighing more than four tons, the closed-cabin MOLAB was a beast of rover. The pressurized vehicle was designed to function as a geological laboratory, capable of sustaining two astronauts for up to two weeks. The rover had a top speed of 21 miles per hour and a a range of more than 60 miles.

The unit packed a modified Corvair engine under the hood and was so massive it would’ve taken a Saturn rocket to launch it to the moon. Ultimately, NASA eventually shelved plans for its lunar monster truck and instead went with the slightly slimmer, more practical moon buggy design. Nonetheless, at least a few individuals had the opportunity to test drive the bigger, badder version in the New Mexico desert before it was decomissioned. And we did recently get a peek at this badass Mars Rover concept.

Probes to distant stars

Alpha Centauri is about 4.37 light-years (or about 26 trillion miles) from Earth. Nonetheless, a mission known as Project Longshot involved sending a probe to our celestial neighbor. The vehicle itself was to be assembled at the space station and launched on site. The probe would use a fission reactor to then traverse the galaxy for more than a century before reaching its destination. As one could imagine, Project Longshot was a prospective longshot to begin with and never received funding. At the moment, Voyager 1 remains our best shot at reaching another star system. In roughly 40,000 years, the spacecraft will be closer to the star AC +79 3888 than our sun. Mark your calendars.

Best new songs to stream: Chance The Rapper, Twin Peaks, and more

Every week, there are thousands of new songs hitting the airwaves — and it’s just too much for your two ears to handle. With all those options, you can’t be wasting your time on tracks that deserve a thumbs-down click — you want the best new songs to stream now.

But don’t worry, we’re going to save you the hassle. We listen to some of the most-hyped and interesting songs each week, and tell you which are worthy of your precious listening time.

Here are our top five songs to stream this week. Also, don’t forget to subscribe to our Spotify page for a playlist of our weekly picks, which can also be found at the bottom of this post.

Chance The Rapper — Juke Jam (And More, Live at Tiny Desk)

Chicago-born musician Chance The Rapper recently performed a special surprise set at NPR’s offices in Washington D.C. The performance featured a toned-down, vocal-heavy version of his song Juke Jam, as well as a cover of Stevie Wonder’s They Won’t Go When I Go. If you haven’t already been taken by his humble, honest performances, this latest one offers a deeply intimate look at his heavy-hitting musicianship — the kind of ability that has helped him convert hip-hop haters for a few years now.

Twin Peaks — Under The Pines

Indie rock band Twin Peaks have been turning out classic rock-influenced songs of summer for a few years now, and its their latest single, Under The Pines, that we are most taken with this sunny season. A rollicking tune with passionate and upbeat vocals and a unison guitar and saxophone interlude, this one offers a glimpse at the band’s Rolling Stones side.

The Wild Reeds — Capable (Live at KEXP)

Los Angeles-based band The Wild Reeds first crossed our radar with an amazing Tiny Desk performance a couple years ago, and we’ve been happy to hear the band continue to work on excellent, lyric-driven music since. On this recently recorded KEXP performance of Capable, the band showcases its ability to layer beautiful tones. Featuring background vocals, keyboards, two guitars, punchy bass lines, and a simple and sparse drum part, it’s an elegant tapestry of sound that draws you in with various dynamic and rhythmic shifts throughout.

Broncho — Get In My Car

This week’s slice of perfectly executed pop comes from Oklahoma pop-rockers roncho, whose latest single, Get In My Car, sounds as though it is destined for an upbeat movie montage. From the clean krautrock drumbeat to the syncopated vocal lines, everything fits together like a jigsaw puzzle, with a hint of washed-out distortion and high-end shimmer in the layered guitar lines that evokes comparisons to early-2000s Strokes.

Jay Som — Strawberry Fields Forever

Bay Area songwriter Melina Duterte didn’t do much reinventing on her version of this classic Beatles song, instead letting her distinct musical style flow through a near note-for-note cover. Somehow, though, the whole thing feels like her own, with a beautiful wall of sound that mimics the original but manages to come off as an homage, rather than a cut-and-paste job.

That’s it for now, but tune in next week for more songs to stream, and check out the playlist loaded with our recent selections below:

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Stay cool and chat in this week’s comments thread!

Are you ready for Summer?

Now that we’re done with our various North American independence holidays, it’s time for the heat. Summertime heat, that is.

While we all love warm weather and spending some time out in the sun, sometimes you need to duck into somewhere cool and take a break. While you’re chilling at the coffee shop or on your couch, you can grab your phone and talk about stuff right here. We all share a lot of the same interests, and when we keep politics and religion to a minimum it’s always a good time.

Not much to talk about from the world of Android this week. The EU wants to teach Google a lesson, and OnePlus thinks you’re holding it wrong, but this time of year new products are few and far between. Motorola will probably end the “busy” season with the #hellomotoworld thingy in New York at the end of the month, then we relax until the fall when Galaxy Notes and Googlephones become a thing. We take this time to have a second look at the mountain of stuff that happened between CES and the summer lull and really dig into how things work and what you can do with them. It’s all good.

I’m recovering from a great vacation this week. It kicked off in a less than awesome way, where stupid Jerry swam right into a school of jellyfish with his eyes open. That’s a picture you don’t want to see, so I won’t post it here. I made the rest of the AC editorial staff look at it, and they’ll agree. (Ed: Yep, it’s super gross.) Surprisingly, it didn’t hurt as much as you would think and two days later everything was back to normal. I didn’t even get any jellyfish super powers. I know, because I’ve been trying stuff.

So I’m kicked back, playing with my HTC Vive and checking out how it all works this weekend. Inside, where it’s cool and refreshing. What are y’all up to?

Web gets built-in copy protection hooks with a few key flaws

Like it or not, the web is getting some built-in padlocks. The World Wide Web Consortium has decided to publish Encrypted Media Extensions, a standard for hooking copy protection into web-based streaming video, without making significant changes to a version agreed to in March. While it’s not perfect, the W3C argues (you still need to deal with a vendor’s content decryption module), it’s purportedly better than the make-it-yourself approach media providers have to deal with right now. There do appear to be some improvements to the status quo for digital rights management. However, there are more than a few detractors — there are concerns that the W3C simply ignored concerns in the name of expediency.

The format sets consistent expectations for privacy and security (a company can’t send unnecessary network traffic and must give you the option to clear long-lasting data). It’s theoretically better for competition, too, since streaming newcomers won’t need to make you install a plugin to start watching. EME may also help accessibility for the hearing- or vision-impaired by working at a level where it doesn’t interfere with playback or accessibility info, and it isn’t supposed to prevent use in open source software.

However, it’s evident that the Consortium is punting on some topics. For one thing, there’s no common interface between approaches to decrypting video — the organization would like to have one, but it didn’t want to hold back the initial spec. Likewise, the group didn’t think it was worthwhile to pursue a “covenant” promising that companies wouldn’t abuse the law to crack down on people bypassing EME for legitimate reasons, such as improving accessibility. And what if you want to archive material for posterity? The W3C sees this as a problem with both copyright law and the DRM itself, not the hooks used to integrate that DRM.

And it’s decisions like those that are leaving openness advocates fuming. Cory Doctorow, a digital rights activist who has long opposed virtual copy protection, has pointed out some key problems. Without that covenant, it could be difficult to verify whether or not a company is living up to those privacy and security practices. A company could take legal action against security researchers simply because they showed that you could bypass a given DRM scheme. On top of this, the need for a licensed decryption module may favor incumbents like Netflix or Amazon. Even if money isn’t an issue, the mess of patent licenses could be. They’ll also have to promise to prevent activities that are technically legal, such as watching a movie from one EU country while you’re living in another.

And while the technology doesn’t strictly hinder accessibility efforts, it doesn’t streamline them either. You can’t automatically flag sections of a show that might trigger epileptic seizures, for instance, since the DRM would prevent it.

There are hints that the W3C will improve the extensions in an eventual revision, and organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation hope to appeal the decision. Both of those processes could take a long time, however, so you could see streaming services implementing this first take on EME for a long while before there are any tweaks. While the format is unlikely to do much damage to the openness of the internet (it’s not as if most providers were streaming unprotected video before), it’s far from ideal.

Via: EFF

Source: W3C (1), (2)