What’ll kick start the Irish space program?

April 3, 2006 at 6:08 pm | | news

Answer: an alcohol cloud was recently found in space. Sorry about the Irish bit. I couldn’t think of another group worthy of the claim. Source

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  1. Don’t drink MeOH! It’ll make you go blind!

    Comment by sam — April 3, 2006 #

  2. And grow hair on palms, yada yada yada. I’ve heard it all before. Drink up, Irishconauts! Drink up.

    Comment by jordan — April 3, 2006 #

  3. All jokes aside, and perhaps surprisingly to some, they already have been and, currently, are wrapped up in a number of space exploration activities, such as a number of high-profile ESA Science missions, including the spectacular Giotto mission to Comet Halley 1985, the SOHO and Cluster missions launched in 1995 and 2000 respectively to monitor the sun and its effects on the Earth’s environment, and the Gamma Ray Astronomy mission Integral launched in 2002. Irish scientists have also participated in a number of international space science missions of American, Russian and Chinese Space Agencies, including the Long Duration Exposure Facility (USA), Phobos I and II missions to Mars (Russia) and the planned Double Star solar mission (China).

    The Irish scientific teams that build payload instruments encompass a number of institutions including NUI Dublin, NUI Maynooth and the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. In the next few years Irish scientists will have opportunities to play leading roles in a new batch of ESA science missions, for example ROSETTA to study and place a lander on a target comet, the James Webb Space Telescope and Mars Express to study from orbit and to place a lander on the red planet.

    Further in the future, exciting missions are planned to travel to the planet Mercury and to study some of the fundamental laws of physics, including a test of Einstein’s theory of general relativity. But as for a rocket actually taking off from Ireland piloted by Irish astronauts, I think we all know, is highly unlikely. Given that Ireland is (surprise, surprise) an Island, in the evident of an accident the risk posed by falling debris is far too great; for much the same reason why Britain’s aborted attempt was set to take off from Woomera in Australia. Though the prospect of seeing an Irish astronaut sooner rather than later is not that far fetched, as a number of Irish interns are already training at NASA as we speak and could very well be participating in a launch within the next couple of years. The first Irishman to venture into space, however, will probably be on board Virgin’s first ship, VSS Enterprise; he will be Tom Higgins, boss of Realm Communications Ltd., which runs the Irish Psychics Live telephone service.

    Comment by jesus 2 — July 26, 2007 #

  4. Hey jesus2,
    nice to see people have some respect of irish space research.. currently working in groningen netherlands as an irish phd student on the herschel telescope. while ireland is involved in some projects it could be more. if you were to listen to the government and this “technology economy”, we should be able to launch our own missions out of knock.. from my point of view, there seems to be no cohesion in ireland with regards to space research..

    Comment by jesus_is_my_homeboy — August 13, 2007 #

  5. Yes sam, you are an ass. “I couldn’t think of another group worthy of the claim” hmmm, how about one of the nations that drinks more alcohol than they irish, do some research..

    Comment by Sam is an ass — November 10, 2007 #

  6. i didn’t write this post. maybe you should do the research. anyway, it was just a silly joke. why do people get so worked up about little things?

    Comment by sam — November 10, 2007 #

  7. I would take it as a sign Luxembourg resents having its title to most EtOH / capita questioned.

    Comment by kendall — November 11, 2007 #

  8. Hay jokes aside I’m 16 I’m in 5th year and its the night of the supermoon you all know about and it has me thinking about becoming an astronaut but I would prefer to launch with an Irish space program does anybody actually know if I will be able to do this

    Comment by Mark - Dont - Like - You — March 19, 2011 #

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