Paying Peter Back

Comics and randomness

Believe it or not, years and YEARS ago I used to draw.   A lot.  It’s like a muscle though.  If you don’t work it and practice at it, you get rusty.  Well, I did at least.  I still like to doodle but mostly I like to think of funny little stories or scenarios.  Something like SNL skits or anything along those lines.  I’ve doodled them before but never really did much with them.  I have TONS of comics I drew when I was in middle/high school.  Mind you, these are simple three panel comics – not X-men or Spiderman comics.  I wasn’t quite of that caliber.

I like to think of myself as more of  someone who’d write or help write the story.  So I’ve decided to take my zany ‘one liner’ thoughts and turn them into comic strips here and there.  They are crude stick figures but that means nothing.  The guy over at XKCD has some of the funniest (and cool) stuff I’ve ever seen and it’s predominantly stick figures.  Yes, I’m copying that style in that I’m not an exquisite artist.  I also don’t have time for that.  So little lumpy sticks will express my humor.

Well, today on the way to work we were talking about ‘s-exting’ and a funny thought popped into my head.  Here is that thought in ‘doodle’ form:

The Scale of the Universe

This is a very clever little bit of flash put together by someone whom I have no idea who they are.   All I know is that the site was blocked at work.  I went in and nabbed the SWF file and I’m going to place it on my blog.  You still have to endure the Newgrounds logo to see the animation.

Use the keyboard to move left or right for a smoother experience.  The largest things in the Universe are mind boggling.  The really fascinating stuff is all of the tiny things that go into making the world around us.  You can see how small a neutrino is for instance; and why it passes unhindered through just about everything  (including entire planets!).

The music is very pleasant too.

NASA Gets a Quarter from Every Dollar

First thing’s first: NASA does NOT get a quarter from every dollar. A quarter would be 25% of the entire Federal Budget.  Math isn’t hard.

That does get attention though doesn’t it?  Seems there is a misconception on how much money NASA actually gets.  I’m sure that if anyone reads this they have the intellect enough to google “NASA federal budget” and find out how much NASA really gets.  The answer just might shock most people.

I’ve known for years how much money NASA gets and it’s paltry.  Bad Astronomy has inspired me to blog about it myself.  Sure he gets more readers but in the name of science, every voice must be heard!  Also, I’m going to mooch some of the content of his blog.  Why invent the wheel twice?

This article talks about the perception of NASA and what it does, among other things.  The stunning part was where respondents were asked how much money NASA got.  24% was the number.  That would be 3% more than Defense.  This was in 2007.

So how much money does NASA get?  In 2007, 0.58% of the Federal Budget.  A little more than half a penny per dollar.  That’s pretty sad, eh?  We’re talking about an organization that put men on the Moon.  They put up a telescope that was a dud and then fixed it: in space.  They’ve done most of the heavy lifting in construction of the International Space Station.  They’ve sent probes all over the Solar System to study the planets.  Two rovers are still on Mars performing science well beyond their planned mission time.

I haven’t even scratched the surface.  That’s the stuff we hear about somewhat regularly but let it go, in passing.

Given that they can do so much with so little, I would be amazed to see what they could do if given a little more.  Keep in mind that at NASA there is still wasteful spending.  It’s a government organization, duh.  Even with that, they’re able to do such amazing things.  Not bad for being so low on the totem pole.

If you ever wonder why we haven’t done more or gone further in space, then wonder no more.  Shun the non-believers, shuuuuuunnnnnnn.

I Cannot Drive a Vacuum Cleaner to Work

Preface

Ok, this adventure is just too good to pass up.  I’m actually thinking about writing a comedic novel about door to door salesmen who are vampires.  I want to say this: The product was good; the method of selling it was not.  On top of that, we weren’t going to buy it to begin with.  I’ve gotten way ahead of myself.  Let me back up.  Sit back and enjoy.

Shave and A Haircut

We had gotten home around 6pm and there was nothing unusual about this.  The drive-by mail check; the neighbors kids playing outside; all things nominal.

We headed inside to begin our ritual of changing into comfy clothes and begin dinner.  Not five minutes into our routine, there is a knock on the door.  It’s suspiciously ‘friendly’.  It was the ever so infamous ‘shave and a haircut, two bits’ knock.  The neighbors don’t knock like that.  Family doesn’t knock like that either.  She and I looked at each other as if to ask “who wants to look behind the door?”  What horrors awaited us?  There was only one way to find out.

Upon opening the door, there was a slightly bewildered looking gentleman holding a can of Febreeze.  The first thing he asks is if was a bad time.  I said “Yes, actually it is.” Thinking that was the end of the transaction.  Oh no, it wasn’t.  He said they were in the community offering free carpet cleanings and giving out free gifts; This would explain the Febreeze.  I was hesitant and thought to myself “OK, they’re a cleaning service; I’ll get his card and he’ll be gone.”  So I agreed to let him ‘have a look’ at the carpet.  He then responds “OK, I’ll get my stuff.”  That can’t be good.

She has this look of “NOOOO” on her face as if she just found out her dad was Darth Vader.  I’m already dreading seeing this guys ‘stuff’.  A moment later there’s another knock on the door.  And now, let me explain what stuff is.  Stuff is usually inanimate,  yes?  Stuff is blocks, dirt, clothes, etc.  Well this guy had some special stuff because his stuff had legs and could walk.  Oh wait, right, it was another dude.  What?!

So now these two guys barge into our house and I see it right off the bat: a box that reads KIRBY.

You’re Fired!

So here we are, in our messy house, in our messy clothes and these two salesmen have infiltrated.  Like vampires, we’ve let them into the house.  Problem is we can’t kill salesmen trying to make a buck, damn.  So the first guy, we’ll call him Guy, says “OK, Bob here is going to clean this floor for you and  I’ll be back to pick him up.” Wait, what? Guy says that Bob will help us pick up the floor and clean it because “that’s his job”.  They promised only 15-20 minutes.  Yeah, right.

OK, five minutes ago we’re relaxed and about to cook dinner.  Now we have two strangers hocking their damn vacuum cleaner on us.

Well, Bob gets started into the routine.  We know how it works.  They spend several minutes assembling the damn thing.  Whilst assembling the damn thing they ask questions like ‘How does dirt get into the carpet?’ and ‘Why do you buy a vacuum cleaner?’  What kind of dumb ass questions are those?

Look, hey, Bob, I know your vacuum is five or even ten times better than mine but mine is ten times cheaper.  See how that works?  Math, Bob, math!

So we give the standard ‘dur hur’ answers of: it comes from the outside; to clean our carpet.  What are we supposed to say;  The magical dirty fairy visits us every night and we use the vacuum cleaner to fight him off?

While assembling he also noticed some smudges on the unit.  He then proceeds to flaunt his managerial status and say “I’m going to find out who did this and let him know he is fired”.  Good job, ass.  You’re in our house, at dinner time, complaining about how a guy left smudges on your damn vacuum? Rich!  Granted we let him in but they lied to get in!

The Amazing Technicolor Cheese Wedge!

They put these little white filters into the machine and repeatedly show you how much dirt is in your carpet.  What is funny is that he ran the thing, not kidding, over thirty times in one spot.  It was still getting dirt up.  Now, correct me if I’m wrong but if this thing is so great, why is it still getting dirt up after that many passes? Is our carpet just a cesspool of disgust? (ok possibly) Or does this beg the larger question: Is it even possible to completely, 100%, clean your carpet to look brand new?  I’m going with the latter and my answer is: NO!  Just not possible.  Very clean? Yes.  Perfectly clean? No.  Worth $2500+? Possible, if it isn’t a couple of jerks pitching the sale.

Well we’re getting rather irritated at this pointed but we’re courteous and nice people.  That’s not always a good thing as we tend to be door mats but that’s fine.  Why? Because we take a certain glee in knowing his efforts will be entirely in vain.  Sure, demonstrate all you want.  Ride the damn thing to the Moon! We won’t buy it.  Ok, to the Moon, maybe.

The kids are also providing much in the way of being absolutely zany and curious.

After some thirty minutes of this, we catch a break and my phone rings.  It was a friend asking about attending an event sometime in March.  I leave the room and I’m chatting as I hear the guy say something like “OK, I understand, I’ll give Guy a call…”  What’s this?  He’s leaving?  Score!

Turns out the kids were acting nutty and she said we had to fix dinner or they’d turn into gremlins or something.

Awkward…

So now we have to wait for Guy to come back and pick Bob up.  What kind of crap deal is this?  “OK, I’ll drop you off at a random house and go to IHOP for a short stack, see ya!”

I’d begun to prepare dinner and further extend the message of GO AWAY.  He’s just sitting around chatting it up with us.  This is weird.  We just totally canned the deal and now we have to be nice.  I’m sure he was irritated.  Well what the hell do you expect, Bob?  We’re trying to have a nice evening with the fam and you try to get us to finance something we don’t need.  Yes, we’re not happy either.

Some ten minutes later Guy shows up and off Bob goes.

So, here is what it comes down to:  We’re buying or making or burning or acid etching a sign into some part of our property that says “NO SOLICITING”.  If we want something, we go buy it.  It’s a simple concept!  From now on, anyone knocking on our door will get the picture a lot quicker.

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…