We might not have the space shuttle anymore, but there’s a lot to be psyched about in space. Here are a few, in case you haven’t heard about them.
Antimatter Orbiting the Earth? Sounds crazy, but it could be for real. Scientists working with the Pamela spacecraft (Payload for Antimatter Matter Exploration and Light-nuclei Astrophysics, in case you were wondering about the name) report that they have found antiprotons in orbit around the Earth, apparently gathered into bands similar to the Van Allen radiation belts. While not in large enough concentrations to cause passing spacecraft to go boom, the researchers note that they could be a source of fuel for future spacecraft.
Water Flowing on Mars? Could be. New studies of images from Mars orbit sure look a lot like seasonal flows of water. If it’s the real deal, this could mean liquid water close to the surface, and that could mean a greater likelihood of life on Mars. Now, not a million years ago.
Star Trek Theme Park in Jordan? Okay, this isn’t real space, but damn. King Abdullah II of Jordan is the main investor in a proposed Star Trek theme park, which has secured $1.5 billion in funding. Plans are to build it in Aqaba, Jordan. King Abdullah, you see, is a Trekfan, and even got himself a cameo appearance, back before he was king, in Star Trek: Voyager. You’ve gotta love it. But I haven’t even made it to Universal Studios yet!
By the way, one reason I haven’t posted in a while is that I’ve been really busy writing. I’ve also finished the proofing of text for the World Edition of Sunborn (crazy problems with Word losing styles, which I’ve finally gotten under control). Look for an announcement soon on that!
Here’s a video of a recent test flight of Spaceship Two, which by this time next year could be offering rides into space to the public. (Got $200,00 I could borrow? I’m good for it. I promise.) The amazing thing about this video isn’t the test flight per se; it’s the mode of reentry. Watch it, and you’ll see the spaceship raising its tail feathers and bobbing like a badminton shuttlecock—intentionally!
I’m going to try to tweak this so that it’ll fit on my page here. But if you want to read it with some explanation, view it here, again courtesy of the Bad Astronomy blog.
Treat yourself to a few minutes of gorgeous meditative video and watch this time-lapse sequence of the Milky Way from South Dakota, by Randy Halverson. You must pop this up to full-screen to get the full effect.
I almost missed seeing this in the Globe’s electronic edition, but Space.com clued me in. SpaceX successfully launched another Falcon 9 rocket, and this time it had a mockup of their Dragon spacecraft on top. The Dragon, which is slated to eventually transport cargo and possibly crew to the International Space Station, went into orbit for a couple of rounds and safely reentered for a Pacific Ocean splashdown. This made Paypal / SpaceX / Tesla Motors tycoon Elon Musk ecstatic. It made me pretty happy, too. With the space shuttle coming up on retirement, the sooner we have less expensive, privately operated spacecraft hitting the Up and Out, the better.
I also have to smile that the Falcon rocket series is named after the Millennium Falcon of Star Wars, and the Dragon capsule is named for Puff the Magic Dragon. Check out the great pix of the flight at http://www.collectspace.com/news/news-120810a.html.
According to NASA Science News, the sun has been stealing comets from other stars. Or rather, it did in its scofflaw youth, when it was part of a disintegrating star-forming nebula. This assertion is based on computer modeling of the Oort Cloud, the enormous cloud of comets that encircles the solar system at a distance of about a light-year. Mind you, the evidence of theft is based on measurements of a cloud that has never directly been observed, though there’s plenty of evidence for its existence. Apparently the cloud (which has never been seen directly) has way more comets than can be accounted for by honest procurement. And so, the evidence for the misappropriation.
Therefore, it’s possible that this weird-looking Comet Hartley 2, photographed last week by NASA’s robotic EPOXI spacecraft (no, it’s not made of glue), is actually not from our own system originally, but rather from an alien sun. Is that cool or what?
In a rare outbreak of forward-thinking in the federal government, John Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, has called for defensive planning against the possibility of an asteroid hitting the Earth. In letters to both the House and the Senate, the White House adviser has called for the development of plans for emergency response, and for coordination with other nations, in the event the need arises to deflect an incoming asteroid.
While hardly a new idea—science fiction, astronomy, and space technology types have been calling for this for years—what is new, I suspect, is the idea reaching the point of being taken seriously at the White House level.
(A tip of the hat to Mike Flynn, fellow member of Sigma SF, for pointing out this story.)
New Scientist magazine recently ran a long article called Cosmic Accidents: 10 Lucky Breaks for Humanity. It’s a timeline, starting with the Big Bang, of all the things that had to happen just so, for the universe to develop in a fashion that would allow us to be here.
(Image: NASA/ESA/ESO/Wolfram Freudling et al. (STECF))
It starts with getting the density of the universe just right, and the balance of matter and antimatter just right, and goes all the way up through the dinosaur-killing asteroid making room for us little mammals, and the conditions that may have led to the evolution of language. The whole thing is online here.
But wait—aren’t there supposed to be “no accidents”? Hmm. If questions like that, in the context of issues like this, cause you to twitch one way or another, maybe you should read Beyond God and Atheism: Why I am a ‘Possibilian’ in the same issue of New Scientist. Alas, you must be a subscriber to read the whole article, but the title and opening paragraphs give you a pretty good idea of the content.
Yes, it’s true! (If you forgive my slight poetic license.) High school students from Brookline, Massachusetts shot a terrific video of Japan’s Hayabusa spacecraft coming down through the atmosphere and breaking apart in a fiery cascade over the Australian outback. The lucky students were aboard a NASA DC-8 aircraft, monitoring the reentry, which landed a separate reentry vehicle (visible to the right of the breakup in the video), bringing back samples of an asteroid.
I can’t find a way to embed the video (dang!), which might be just as well, considering how my last embedding effort turned out. But watch it here. And read the full story about these high school students who got a surprise trip Downunder in a NASA jet.
I wrote recently about how Falcon 9, a new launcher from SpaceX, was awaiting its first test launch. Well, last Friday it went off beautifully. This is the rocket that’s scheduled to take over the job of carrying cargo (and perhaps eventually people) to the International Space Station after the retirement of the shuttle fleet. This flight carried a dummy Dragon capsule into orbit. The Falcon 9 builds on the model of the Saturn 5 moon rocket, using a cluster of nine engines, and having the ability to achieve orbit even it loses an engine. It’s in the size and power class of the Delta IV and Atlas V launchers that currently serve many launch needs. But the goal of the program is to bring down the cost of launch to orbit.
Here’s a video that pretty much shows the whole flight to orbit in realtime, mostly from an onboard camera. It’s pretty cool. Note that it starts at T minus one minute, so you might want to fast forward at the beginning.
I haven’t written yet about my reaction to the proposed change of course for the U.S. space program. To be honest, the Obama proposal threw me for a loop. In case you just got back from Antarctica and haven’t heard, President Obama’s budget proposal for NASA was a shocker: When the space shuttle is retired at the end of this year, the plan is to turn responsibility for manned launch-to-orbit over to the private sector. They’re working on it, they say they can do it—and cheaper—so let’s turn ’em loose to do it. Buy seats on the Russian Soyuz in the interim. And that multi-billion-dollar Constellation program to send astronauts back to the Moon? Cancel it. It’s over budget and troubled, and was never properly funded to begin with. So what’s NASA’s job, then? Plan for the future; invest in new technologies; go into deep space to visit an asteroid, then aim for Mars—say, by the mid 2030s. Total funding to increase, but get NASA out of the routine business of space transportation. For one good analysis, look at Bad Astronomy’s Phil Plait’s comments.
There’s a lot to like in the Obama proposal—though after watching Atlantis launch in person, I’m not sure there’s anything “routine” about launching humans into orbit. Putting that aside, though, what’s good about the plan? Well, long-range planning, with a genuine vision for exploration, is always good. While I believe we have unfinished business on the Moon, visiting an asteroid is also a terrific idea. We might have to move one of those suckers one of these days, to keep it from snuffing us like the dinosaurs; furthermore, we might find ourselves mining the asteroids for metals like nickel and iron, for future space construction. Time to start learning how.
What’s not to like? Well, laying off a highly skilled and experienced workforce, for one thing. Under the Obama proposal, a lot of those people who know how to put things into space will be out of jobs in a year or two—a frightening loss of human infrastructure. Some might find jobs in the private companies like SpaceX, who hope to step into the gap. But many won’t. And what about the astronaut corps? Have we trained them, only to turn them out? Are we abdicating our hard-earned leadership role in space, as Neil Armstrong and Gene Cernan think? It could happen. Our astronauts are split on the question. And what about this long-range thinking? That’s okay to talk about today, but what happens when the next administration comes in? Will they want to make their own mark, and change directions yet again? One space expert I talked to said that was his biggest concern. In fact, according to him, the whole reason we don’t already have a replacement for the shuttle is because we keep changing course every four years.
I picked some brains while I was at the Nebulas. One writer I talked to, someone who’s a big space booster, and definitely on the conservative side politically, said, “I don’t much like Obama. But I do think his proposal has a lot of merit.” That took me aback, as did another person on the inside, who said, maybe losing all that experience won’t be all bad. Maybe new blood will be willing to try new ideas.
So what do I think? I’m not sure I have enough information to carve out a position. I’d love to see the shuttle keep flying a little longer, while we design a replacement. But the spare parts lines have already been shut down; the business of retiring the thing is already well underway. To reverse that could cost billions. Am I ready to depend on other countries to supply the space station we’ve built at such a cost? I hate the thought. Can Elon Musk and SpaceX, and similar smaller companies, step into the breach? Maybe. We’ll have a better idea when the Falcon 9 test rocket launches later this year. But what’s Congress going to do? That’s as hard to predict as the weather. Stay tuned. It’s going to be interesting.
SpaceX Falcon 9 static fire on launch pad
“Where there is no vision, the people perish.” — Proverbs 29:18
