Space Station Sunday: Space Falls And Baseballs

Good evening, space fans!  Welcome to this week's observations on outstanding news from orbit.

Welcome home, Expedition 42!
(Image courtesy NASA/Bill Ingalls.)

Because Buzz! Master Moonman's New Space Race Game Debuts

Buzz Aldrin has had an amazing life:  West Point cadet, pilot, NASA astronaut, second man on the moon, and current Martian space initiative devotee.  Now, you can share some of his astro-adventures thanks to Aldrin's new iPad game, Space Program Manager - Road To The Moon...

Saddle up, rocket jockeys!
(Image courtesy store.steampowered.com.)

On With The Wind: Over A Third Of U.S. Power To Be Won From Wind By 2050

Abundant energy is there for the taking thanks to natural, sustainable sources, and now, the U.S. thinks that harnessing even more of it may (literally) be a breeze...

The powers-that-be are upping American wind power.
(Image courtesy cleanandgreenlaw.com.)

Thinking Green On The Red Planet: Dry Ice Engine Could Propel Spaceships To Mars

Mars has emerged as a major spacefaring destination for the coming decades, but ideas on how to get there are still up in the air (well, lack of air, technically.)  Now, a new idea that would utilize sustainable Martian resources for fuel has got scientists gassed to head to the red planet...

An image from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) shows abundant dry ice deposits.
Could this be the new rocket fuel?
(Image courtesy socialphy.com.)

 

PyGest: A Python Tkinter Tutorial, Part 1

This is part one in our tutorial series on building a simple Python GUI app with tkinter. You can find the introductory article to the series at the link. In this article, we'll get things up and running by filling out the basic structure for our Python script and the application itself. We'll add a top level comment, define the necessary imports, set up our main name space, define the main function, and then configure a logger to aid in sanity checking . . .

PyGest: A Python tkinter Tutorial, Introduction

In this tutorial series, we are going to build a simple file hashing application using the Python standard library's interface to the TK GUI toolkit: tkinter. One can find some resistance to using tkinter in the Python community. However, my interest in tkinter was recently rekindled after watching "Tinkering with Tkinter", a presentation by Russel Keith-Magee, in which the Django developer makes a strong case for revisiting this often overlooked and under-appreciated component of the Python standard library . . .

Solar More Than Solo: Community Energy Gardens Growing In Power

With the opportunities for sustainable energy sources growing more acceptable, abundant, and affordable every day, it behooves the users of such power to understand its possible new impact for entire communities at large.  After all, once the tides (and windmills, and solar panels) turn to making sustainable energy the main source of power for communities in the way that nuclear or gas have previously, large numbers of people will all be invested in the infrastructure together.  Now, that idea has sprouted a garden of its own...

No sunflowers, but lots of sun power getting harvested in a solar garden.
(Image courtesy joinmosaic.com.)