Paying Peter Back

Space: The Final Frontier

No truer words can ever be spoken.  The depths of the mind are indeed complex but not tangible.  Our oceans floors hold many secrets about life and the history of our planet.  Space is, for all intensive purposes, infinite.  This isn’t technically true, to our knowledge.  We estimate the true size of the Universe to be 93 Billion Light Years.   So vast, in fact, that light from one side will never reach the other.  This is why it is the pinnacle of exploration.

Eventually, one day, our destiny will lie somewhere in space.  Perhaps another planetary body in this solar system or even another star system.  That is, if we don’t blow ourselves up or suffer a cataclysmic set back.

The recent White House budget leaves me both concerned and yet I see an opportunity to be optimistic.  I’ve been reading forums to get people’s takes on this.  Mind you this is coming from people who work in the industry to plain people like myself.  It is inevitable that politics gets head-firsted into the mix.  I made that slang up.  Nice eh?  I guess there is no way around it but the degree of  “This was Bush’s fault!”; “This was Griffin’s fault”; “Obama sux!” is just a little much.

I try my damnedest to take a middle road approach.  I want science.  I want exploration.  I want a manned flight program (also termed HSF for Human Space Flight).  At the moment we have it with Shuttle.  In a few short months, it will be done and gone.  What happens after that?  We’re grounded, at least humans are.

Private companies are really getting into the mix of things which does excite me.  Thing is, they’re a ways off from manned flight.  It will happen, just not quite soon as we’d like.

Constellation is dead.  I’m sad and yet I can understand this move.  Some claim to have had the insight or ESP enough to know it was doomed from day one.  I think having a pessimistic attitude isn’t very healthy.  I don’t work in the industry, I follow it from a few rows back.  I can say that my interest is important, not as a single entity but gathered with the combined interest of persons just like myself.  Lack of public interest will kill a program deader than dead.  Apollo anyone?

So, I thought about the cancellation of that program and realized, ok, maybe this isn’t as bad as it seems.  I’m still icky feeling about not having the ability to put humans up but lets think this out.  The downfall of Constellation was reaching back to the past to sort of re-use older technologies or at least model from them.  What we need are newer technologies that are laced with our learnings of the past.

I think the biggest technological advance we need is in propulsion.  Chemical rockets are dandy at getting heavy vehicles off the ground and into space but once in space you need something else.  Something that’s less cumbersome, less prone to failure and has some oomph!  These technologies should be researched to make Moon and Mars missions faster.  Transit time to Mars is MONTHS.  With new propulsion you could get it down to weeks; or so I’ve heard.

So, new technologies and private companies.  I think I actually like the sound of that.  Will they deliver? The talk is there, the walk is yet to come.

More notes on the budget are promised robotics and planetary missions.  This is very exciting to me.  Rovers are great tools for science!  Just look at Spirit and Opportunity; they vastly outlived their planned mission time.  If we had a mission going up every other month, I’d be stoked.

A final note about canceling the Moon program.  Listen, we’ve been there before.  Yes, actual people walked on the actual Moon.  That program was initially a race; a race we would win.  After that, you had a group of giddy scientists drooling over the prospect of getting some precious samples back.  That came later and Apollo XVII was the final Moon-shot.  We never spent more than a couple of days there.  When we go back, we need to plan on STAYING for a length of time.  Weeks, not days.

China wants to go there.  Let them go, plant their flag and then come back.  It’s a great thing for a country.  I’d applaud them for it.  As the saying goes “been there, done that”.  It’s time we went a step ahead.  That way when countries are landing and planting their flags, we can wave at them from our cozy Moon habitats.  From that point we can build on and then eyeball Mars or even astreriods.

So, finally, it’s bittersweet for me.  I wanted to see Constellation work but ultimately I want to see anything work.  I’ll hold on the promise of some serious R&D and science missions.  I’ll hold on to private companies keeping us in orbit too.  It’s a big time shake up of things.  Perhaps it was needed.

Obama says we need to get young people into science and math.  I couldn’t agree more.  If he truly means this then he needs to deliver on this budget.  NASA has inspired generations of people.  Let’s keep it that way.

If this flops as a dud and our space program is left floundering for years, I’ll be one mad space cadet. >:o

IT’S FRIDAY…FRIIDDDDAAYYYYY

Anyone remember that song that played on Atlanta area stations not very many years ago? It was the 5 o’ clock whistle. It wasn’t a song as much as it was a hodgepodge of various songs that were written for one sole purpose: The Weekend.

Well the last station in Atlanta to play it, to my knowledge, was Z93. This was before it went to crap and turned into DaveFM. Sorry, I hate DaveFM. Naming a station after Dave Matthews… really? Seriously, they played Dave Matthews for 24 hours after the new station identity went live. I was sorely disappointed! More than that, the whistle was gone!

At one point I had downloaded it from the Z93 website and burned it to CD.  Over the years it got shoveled around and eventually I misplaced it.  Perhaps it is still somewhere, on a CD, or something.  Point is, I can’t find it.

All around us, the intersections of space and time are conjoined in the Cosmos

I thought a Google search would promptly alleviate this.  I was wrong.  I kept finding old songs and forums of people saying they remember the good ol’ days.  Screw that!  I want to download the flippin’ song.  Ok, it was free from Z93.  Someone else surely downloaded it and has it for download elsewhere.

Page after page after page of old song lyrics by Glenn Miller, I had given up.  That is, until recently.  I stumbled upon one page by chance that had a version of the song that was mostly in tact.  I downloaded it and even though the sound quality wasn’t super I was satisfied.  Also missing was the entire “Gimme some lovin’” by the Spencer Davis Group.  Shanty by Jonathan Edwards was also in poor condition.  The other songs would suffice.

I used a couple of Zune credits to buy those two songs in MP3 format and patched them in and recreated a masterpiece.  IT’S ALIVE!  Perhaps with more time I can patch in other songs but the voice of the angry, yet elated, fellow yelling “FRIDAY!” is irreplaceable.

So, from me to you, here is the Five o’ Clock Whistle in it’s, almost, original format (if you lived in Atlanta).  That is, this is the best I can remember it.  It might have ended with the guy yelling instead of the song.  Whatever, it works for me.  It’s free and sounds decent.  It makes me want to yell “I FOUND IT… I FOUUUNNDDD IT…I FFFFOUUNNNnnnDDDdd…. it!”

Five o’ clock whistle

How big is space?

Watch the video.  That is all.

I had a big write up on this but why bother?  The video is enough as it is!

LRO (Lunar Recon Orbiter) Strikes Back!

Yes, I was too lazy to type reconnaissance, my bad.  And ok, it’s not “striking back” really as much as it is just doing its job.  The point is LRO has been busy! One objective is to thoroughly map the surface of the Moon.  A nifty side item is to photos of certain areas of interest.  What could be more interesting than the old Apollo sites?  Not a whole lot!  This is important to people like myself who try to combat the small, yet persistently stupid, sect of the population who believe man never went there in the first place.

A few months ago some preliminary photos were released of some of the Apollo sites.  I’ll admit, the resolution was small but it was there.  Also, the Sun has a way of either hindering or helping in bringing out certain details.  In an Apollo XII photo you can see the descent stage and the trails made by Al Bean and Pete Conrad.

See the little squiggly lines emanating out from the descent stage.  Yes, those are trails from the footprints!

Well, the photos were amazing in their own right but what was more amazing is that the spacecraft was still in it’s elliptical (commissioning) orbit.  It wasn’t until the middle of September that the final orbit of 31 miles altitude was reached.  And so with that, the resolution of the pictures beamed back have increased.

Take a look at this pic below.  It’s from Google Earth/Moon.  It’s about as clear as mud.  You can kind of make out some blobs that are craters and it’s all grey and mushy.  Very uninteresting from a detail point of view.

Now, here is roughly the same area (ok it’s not spot on but it’s close enough, I was multitasking a few things).  Now, that is some fine detail.  The blobbiness is gone.  The grey mush gives way to a textured surface.  Right there in the middle is the Apollo XVII descent stage.  The resolution on this photos is about twice that of the previous Apollo sites.

Feast upon the fine detail below:

This is more important than trying to rub Hoax Believers (or HBs as they’re known) face in it.  It shows that the camera works, and works well.  I do have to admit though that it’s nice to see this stuff and take to a HB and ask them to explain it.  The typical response is that it was doctored.  I digress, for some, there is no changing their minds.

The more important thing is to keep the people that really believe it was faked from poisoning the minds of others who are genuinely just looking for answers to questions.

Ultimately, it shows that as a human race we can continue to do truly inspiring things when we put our minds to it.  There is a lot more to LRO/LCROSS than fancy photos.  To learn more about the mission, you can read up on it here: http://lunar.gsfc.nasa.gov

Ares I-X is history

The first flight of a new space flight system is in the books.  The first in nearly thirty years.  I say it’s history because no matter what, it is.

If this is the only Ares that ever flies, then it’s something to remember and cherish.  Every time we, as humans, attempt to push the outer limit, it’s something to remember.  A lot of hard dedicated work went into this machine.

If this does end up being the new flight system for our American Astronauts then we were there to witness the birth of a new era.

I read off color and idiotic comments left and right on the test flight.  It really makes me sad.  I can crack a joke as well as the next guy.  The thing looks like a giant toothpick or even a Qtip.  I can laugh at that, it’s comical.

I’m not really sure what people were expecting from a “test” of an “experimental” flight system but it seems that we expect too much.  The common person sees a two minute powered flight that costs him 400 million tax dollars.  Cry me a river.

The savvy person sees beyond that.  We, yes I’m savvy, see the future of mankind.  We see the hopes and dreams of our children.  Putting man into space almost defies definition.  It’s something that invokes a sense of wonder in some people.  Sure, I’m a little biased (ok a LOT).

We, as a culture, only seem to care when a rocket blows up and kills people.   We care little about the titanic effort that gets our men and women into space in the first place.

So, with Ares we will have to sit and wait.  The current White House Administration is going to play a large role in what happens.  I only hope that petty politics do not cloud anything.  Bush put forth the mandate to get to the Moon and retire the shuttle.  So, if something gets canceled out of spite, I’ll be one ill space cadet!

Let me end with a paraphrase from Carl Sagan.

The Earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean.  We’ve waded a ways out and the water seems inviting.

So what are we waiting for?

Bombing the Moon?

Are people serious?  I’ve been following LRO/LCROSS for nearly a year now.  Sadly, it seems people only know LCROSS as an attempt at bombing the Moon.  This is thanks to the media who presumably do a poor job at explaining what this particular mission entails.  My wife told me there were actual protests to LCROSS.  I really don’t understand the big deal.  So, in the next few paragraphs I’ll try to explain what LCROSS actually means.

I’m going to use lots of laymans terms.  First of all I’m not a scientist, but I have enough understanding to know that LCROSS is in no way a “bomb”.  There was no detonation.  There was nothing to detonate.  Having a detonation would have contradicted the mission objective.  I will explain.

LRO/LCROSS launched on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket on June 18, 2009.  I watched the launch, good stuff. LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) is notable here because it has taken some incredible imagery of the Moon.  LCROSS stands for Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite.  I don’t see anything referring to a bomb in that name.  Well, if it isn’t a bomb then what is it?  LCROSS is made up of two parts.  There is the shepharding spacecraft and then there is the impacter.

The shephard craft is what will take measurements of everything that the impacter kicks up.  It is actually the LCROSS part.  The other part is a spent rocket stage.  This is important!  The stage is spent.  It was filled with liquid propellant at one point, the majority of which is used in getting the vehicle into space.  The remaining propellants had to be gotten rid of.  How?  Simply by slowly spinning the space craft around it’s center of gravity.  This helped to push all remaining propellants to one end so that they could be purged.

So, no, it wasn’t a bomb.  There was actually a point where the vehicle WAS a bomb.  That’s when it was sitting on the pad, fully fueled.  By the time it reached the Moon, it was nothing more than a 4000 lb. hunk of metal.

Bombing the Moon is out of line and downright wrong.  A better analogy would be that we’re “shooting the moon”.  The spent stage was traveling a little over 5,000mph when it impacted.  That’s a little over 1 mile a second or somewhere around 6000ft/sec.  Now, with that said, 2 tons of metal traveling at that velocity is going to make quite a dent on the surface.  I can almost certainly say that there is nothing left of the Centaur stage.  At the velocity it impacted it’d almost certainly be vaporized!  The key difference is that we’re using energy used to reach orbit nearly 4 months ago – not a weapon or a detonation of any type.

The plume of debris kicked up by the impact is what LCROSS was designed to study.  Is there water in this debris?  That was the burning question.  I believe the data is still being looked over.  This is also why the stage had to be as clean as possible.  They didn’t want contaminants in the debris cloud.

So, to recap, again.  This was not a bomb.  It wasn’t a bomb.  No weapons were used.  No madmen could get their hands on this.  This isn’t a huge conspiracy to test out space warfare.  If you still believe that, then just go back to watching Scyfy, or whatever it’s called now.  If you wish to know why we want to smack the Moon in the first place, keep reading.

Water, water everywhere and wait, where again?  Water, is there.  But we need to know exactly.  Why? Money.

Lets just load up a bunch of Dasani and go! Launching rockets is not cheap.  Cost per pound is in the thousands of dollars.  Think about how much a gallon of water weighs.  Add a crew and how many gallons they need just for consumption.  Oh, now the “cha-ching” sound is starting to rack up.  Solution?  Use what is there.

Problem: you must know where it is.  If you land 30 miles from the nearest extractable water source, then you might as well have landed 1000 miles away.  Future space exploration depends on our ability to use resources available at the destinations we reach.

To conclude, I just want to say I watched this event live.  The impact was so uneventful that I was shocked.  When the impact was announced, I frantically scanned the television for any sign of anything.  There was nothing visible.  That’s the point.  This impact was nothing but a microscopic pin prick to test for water.  Look at the Moon as a whole.  It’s gotten the crap beat out of it.  Guess what?  We didn’t do that.  Space is dangerous!  It’s a shooting gallery.  What we did with LCROSS probably felt like more of a tiny tickle compared to what the Moon has endured.

I can understand people just not knowing what is going on.  I just get irritated with the people we look to for news get it wrong as well.  In their defense, if you see half of a news report, it’s easy to misread context and draw the wrong conclusions.  How unscientific!

Here is my final point.  Do the research yourself.  If you feared the Moon was in danger, you simply needed to Google LCROSS or lunar impacter and a torrent of information would have been available.  That information would (should) have put your fears to rest.  Still, some people just want to get their 15 minutes…

Oh hey I remember this place

Life.  In a word; busy.

So lets recap a bit:

Lots of dental work.
Kids are both a little older.
I’m a little older and feel it.
It’s fall now.

I think I’m ready to retire.  Bring me my black socks and sandals and a house on the beach.  I want to sit back and eat soft serve while I watch rockets lift off from Kennedy Space Center.

On a serious note.  HAHA, serious note? Here?  At any rate, it’s a wonder I found the time to even make this meager addition to my blog.  It went from a “get stuff done” blog to a “it’ll get done when it damn well gets done” kind of blog.  Not a great way to go through life, eh?  Well, each day sort of feels like going through a car wash, sans car.  Getting pummeled and hosed down and by the time you’re done you want a drink and a nap.

I feel bad for our six year old though.  He’s at school all day long and guess what he gets to do when he gets home?  Homework!  EVERY. SINGLE. NIGHT.  Ok, not Friday sometimes.  Seriously, I don’t remember this much homework from that age.  So I’m either losing my mind OR they’re pushing too much crap on kids these days.   Overload warning?  I think we should have him knit socks on top of that too, ya know, to really make him earn his keep.  Well, his day is coming.  Once he’s able to crank and push a lawnmower, yes, I’ll set up a lounge chair outside and sip lemonade while my minions work for me.  Then I’ll take credit, of course.  Not to worry, I’ll pay with candy and donuts!

Anyway, I’m at work now so I should work.  I just thought while BLOGS were on the brain I’d visit my own.  Nice to see it’s still in one piece.  Ok, back at it.

Chevy Volt – It’s Electric! It’s Expensive!

Just a few quick thoughts.  It’s a great idea but is riddled with potential problems.

First, I read that it has an MSRP of $40,000.  Wow.  Ok, but it gets 230mpg!  Well, you still have to plug it in.  That’s fine, if you have a garage or extension cord.  If you live in the city, this might not be a viable option.

I just can’t get past the price tag.  Not to mention how long do the batteries last?  I’m sure the price is hefty due in part to those puppies.  If one needs replacing, am I stick with the bill?

Great concept going forward but right now I don’t think it’s highly practical for most.  Give it a couple of generations (in automobiles, not human generations) and I think it’ll gain more of a following.

Just my opinion!

Twilight Invades Barbie Land

Really?

Sneak a peak here

Now, of course, this has them seeing $$$ but what I want to see is Eddie ‘glitter’ when you shine a bright light on him.  Then it might be worth buying.

I just had to post about that.

The problem with time travel

I posted this a couple of years ago on myspace and I’m going to migrate it over here.  I was reinspired to repost this since I started watching The Big Bang Theory.  So, the original post begins now:

January 2007

Back to the Future is a great movie.  Probably the greatest time travel movies ever made.  The Time Machine was, well, not Back to the Future.  The BTTF movies really made it interesting, fun and mind-bending occasionally.  The sad truth is that I don’t think it’s possible; particularly in a Delorean.  I’ll explain.

In science there are methods of gathering data, compiling data, analyzing data, running numbers, doing calculations, etc.  All this is done over and over to either prove something will work, won’t work, might work, etc.  Well I thought of a way to prove or disprove time travel!  It’s so simple that someone entrapped in complex mathematics or quantum theories could easily miss it.  It would take years, or, so you might think.

This is how it would work:

Today Wednesday, January 31st, 2007 a worldwide committee has announced their plans to disprove/prove time travel.  A special secure place is to be designated for the event to occur at.  In this case we’ll choose the Devil’s Tower in Wyoming.  At the base of this tower will be constructed a solid facility, meaning that it can endure even the mightiest of years worth of punishment from elements.  It will be a simple structure as well, no doors, windows, etc.  More or less it will be a landing pad for the time travelers.  Say what? More on that soon.

Now the documents.  Lots of them.   A whole hell of a lot of them.  A worldwide public relations extravaganza.  Why is this necessary?  Well if you tell 5 people in a super secret location the plan then it’s likely to be forgotten, lost, etc.  If the entire civilized world knows the plan then it’s not likely to get lost, barring a cataclysmic event like an asteroid.  Lets assume that won’t happen.  Now what will this documentation say?  Something like this:

==========

Mankind, on this day, January 31, 2007 an experiment was put forth that only you can take part in.  Your reading this means that you are of the future if only by days or weeks.  This is a request and nothing more.  The request is to know whether or not time travel is possible in our universe and dimension.  You are commissioned by all governments of the world and the people of this planet to return to the location of [Latitude and Longitude] once you have discovered a safe reliable way to traverse time.  You are to return to said location on July 1, 2007.  If you are unable to reach this location, a map is provided for various locations which can allow us to communicate and bring you to the site.

Showing up to the location, alone, is not nearly enough proof.  Additionally we request you bring a few items with you. [it's at this point you might request a CPU of the future, some drastic advance in medicine, a droid, anything that overwhelmingly exceeds what we're capable of now.  Currency can be faked, IDs can be faked, photos can be faked.  Solid hardcore evidence of an advanced future civilization requires more proof than saying 'we come in peace']

Godspeed you and the future of our race.

-  The World

==========

Ok so there you have it.  Now what happens on that day when the world is watching?  Will a gigantic time traveling ship materialize?  Will crickets continue to chirp?  Will cheese continue to age?!  Wrong state…

You get my drift.

How can this fail? There are a few ways:

• Man deems it too dangerous to expose our minds to the reality of the future and negates the effort.
• Man DOES invent time travel but instead it goes to an alternate past and we’re left waiting for nothing while an alternate reality does the obligatory “OMG WTF was THAT??” when the future persons appear over Devil’s Tower.
• Man is too incompetent to invent it.
• Man invents it but instead of materializing on earth at this exact time and location, they’re off by a few hundred billion miles and end up in the blackness of space.  Better make that time travel ship air-tight just in case!  Oh and don’t forget to put a reverse gear on it either.

I’m simply trying to entertain here and if nothing else, make you think about it and wonder ‘what if?’  I could be from the future, trapped in the past!  So could you.  Are the UFOs we see, us, from the future or other universes/dimensions?  Ever have something freaky happen that caused an avoidance of something very bad?  Did someone comeback to stop it?  Ever had something go dreadfully wrong?  Did someone come back to cause it?  I am convinced that someone has come back in time to follow me around at red lights and push a button that makes them turn red, non-stop.  Ok, well maybe not all the time, but too frequently…

So enjoy time as it is now and remember to stop and smell the roses.  Life moves quicker than eyes can ever see.  Now, I’m going to go and track down that s.o.b. that keeps turning the lights red for me!

——

Needless to say, on July 1st, 2007 – there was no time traveler appearing at Devils Tower.  Then again, I didn’t wage a worldwide campaign to promote it.  Money is an issue.  Maybe there is a gaping hole in my plan.  Nonetheless, it’s fun to think about.