Sea Shepherd vs. Japan, round 3- now under way:
And looking up a bit, Burt Rutan & co. unveiled their second generation space ship yesterday. This one is supposed to carry actual paying passengers in the next couple of years:
Two videos and a picture from the week….
And here’s a pretty neat video of the space shuttle’s external fuel tank falling to earth. Unfortunately, jettisoning the tank and allowing it to burn up in re-entry shows off one of the problems with NASA- the tank may not be nearly as valuable or clever as the shuttle, but it’s a pretty substantial piece of construction. Lots of people make noise about how useful the tanks would be in orbit- empty tanks could serve as structural elements for habitats or even (so they say) smaller spacecraft that don’t have to enter the atmosphere. This sounds like a good idea, but I’m not really a rocket scientist. Even if it doesn’t work, however, the mentality of disposable resources should have gone out with the cold war space race.
Oh, another NASA problem is boring announcers.
(by way of NASA Watch)
And finally, this. You should click for the full-sized picture.
NASA still doesn’t have a director. I read a rumor somewhere that Obama was waiting for Bill Richardson to be cleared in whatever investigation he’s under, but that was unsourced and unverified. Meanwhile…
It’s always worth posting the NASA Watch entry instead of whatever article it links to:
“Apparently, the view of NASA’s acting Administrator is that the Moon is a box to be checked-off on the way to Mars. Hence, we don’t really need to establish an outpost because we’re just satisfying a political requirement in implementing policy, not conducting a technical experiment to use the Moon to prepare for journeys beyond.”
And today’s news:
This first story is a week old, but still totaly accurate:
NASA is facing a critical deadline on whether to retire the space shuttle fleet, however, it still lacks an agency chief to make the $230 billion decision.
According to one presidential expert, NASA is so far off the White House radar, it might as well be on Pluto.
“As each day goes by, the need for these decisions becomes greater and greater, and the absence of an administrator becomes more and more an issue,” said John Logsdon, a member of the NASA Advisory Council and former Obama campaign advisor.
And more problems ahead:
So let’s look at some of the decisions that are (or aren’t) being made in this climate:
“It is time to reconsider whether we want to go ahead with the Constellation program to place a base on the moon. Many of us in the space community would be eager to recreate the thrill of Apollo. However, from the public’s standpoint, going back to the moon in 2020 would not invoke the same sense of awe and inspiration it did 51 years earlier when it was a seemingly impossible task.”
The old men who run NASA are still stuck in the Apollo mentality. We’ve already gone to the moon out of hubris once, and after planting a flag and hitting a golf ball around, we couldn’t remember any good reason to stay there. Now they propose skipping the moon in favor of thrills and out-of-touch notions of inspiration.
Building a spacefaring civilization takes more than thrills and flag-planting. It takes the hard work of learning how to live and work in space. We’re not getting anywhere else for any useful purpose if we don’t use the moon as a stepping-stone.
Fortunately, we don’t have to rely on NASA alone.
Backdropped by the blackness of space and the thin line of Earth’s atmosphere, the International Space Station is seen from Space Shuttle Discovery as the two spacecraft begin their relative separation.
By way of NASA Watch, here’s the shuttle flying around the ISS:
Jane Poynter and husband Taber MacCallum, Paragon CEO, are well known experts in the closed biological systems communities, and were themselves experimental subjects within a sealed ecosystem as resident scientists in the famous Biosphere 2 project of the early 90’s. Spending two years living with six others in a 3.2 acre greenhouse type structure in Oracle, Arizona, the largest closed system ever built, they emerged as a couple with a newly created company.
Growing the first plant on another world has enormous symbolic importance as well as important scientific research value for creating self contained lunar outposts and eventual settlements. “Plants have been grown in essentially zero gravity and of course in Earth gravity, but never in fractions of gravity,” said Dr. Volker Kern, Paragon’s Director of NASA Human Spaceflight Programs who conducted plant growth experiments in space on the US Space Shuttle. “Scientifically it will be very interesting to understand the effects of the Moon and one sixth gravity on plant growth.”
No pictures for this one, and all the better, really:
Here’s a week’s worth of news from space:
Population in Space at Historic High: 13
Here’s the baker’s dozen breakdown of the three spaceships in orbit today [last Thursday, in fact- jfb]:
* Soyuz TMA-14: Three people aboard, including space tourist Charles Simonyi and the new Expedition 19 crew for the station which numbers two, a Russian and an American. Launched Thursday and will arrive at the station Saturday morning.
* Space Shuttle Discovery: Seven people aboard, returning from the space station after delivering the last pair of U.S. solar wings to the orbiting laboratory, boosting it to full power during their STS-119 mission. The shuttle is due to land Saturday in Florida to end a 13-day spaceflight.
* International Space Station: Currently home to three astronauts, one each from the United States, Russia and Japan. Two will return home April 7 with Simonyi to end their Expedition 18 mission.
Half an hour after Prometheus tore into this region of Saturn’s F ring, the Cassini spacecraft snapped this image just as the moon was creating a new streamer in the ring.The dark pattern shaped like an upside down check mark in the lower left of the image is Prometheus and its shadow. The potato shaped moon can just be seen coming back out of the ring.
This story hasn’t gotten much play. It may fizzle, it may explode, but it’s bound to be interesting either way. Maybe it’ll even work. It’s certainly going to be closely watched by many people, although not the American media:
Worried about the collapse of civilization? Concerned that Kyoto is too little, too late? Overwhelmed by feelings of doom and gloom? Here’s a new take on the standard story of humans consuming themselves to death:
“Societies don’t just go into a tailspin and self-destruct,” says Stevenson, an archaeologist at the Virginia Department of Historic Resources. “They can and do adapt, and they emerge in new ways. The key is to put more back into the system than is taken out.”
While evidence suggests the Rapa Nui people cut down 6,000,000 trees in 300 years, for example, they were also developing new technological and agricultural practices along the way—such as fertilization techniques to restore the health of the soil and rock gardens to protect the plants. As a result, every rock on Easter Island has probably been moved three or four times, Stevenson said.
What they don’t say is that it’s any fun to live through this sort of adjustment. I wouldn’t take it as an excuse to let things go to shit.
Here’s someone with some political courage. It’ll be interesting to see who attacks him for this:
How does all this stimulus money affect things I care about?
Tales of crime:
Things that fall from the sky:
And things that go up into the sky:
The movie hit cinemas in 1972, the same week Fonda made a controversial trip to Hanoi, North Vietnam, visiting opposition forces.
A week after its release, the film was removed from theatres, with director Francine Parker blaming pressure from the White House for making the movie “disappear”.
You heard about last week’s big satellite crash, yes?
It’s been a year since Kosovo gained an official semblance of independence. You can ask the (somewhat reduced) Republic of Georgia what that did for international relations.
It’s been a bad week for Obama, and so air bases in Kyrgyzstan may not seem like the most pressing matter. But this may be his most significant defeat:
We could very well end up using the base under some new arrangement, but this makes clear it will be an arrangement with Russia, not KZ. So this means that we have to accept Russia reclaiming its sphere of influence, if not its old borders, in Central Asia. It also threatens our supply lines to Afghanistan, which are already threatened from the other side as well:
It was not immediately clear whether supply convoys could reach Afghanistan through alternative, smaller routes in the region. Another official in the area, Fazal Mahmood, said repair work had begun on the bridge.
Up to 75 percent of the fuel and supplies destined for U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan travel through Pakistan after being unloaded at the port of Karachi. Most are driven along the Khyber Pass.
Meanwhile, the news from space…. Iran managed to launch a satellite this week, but it remains to be seen if it’s a big move or just a propaganda ploy:
“The rocket is not that sophisticated,” David Albright, the president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a Washington think tank, told The Washington Times. “That Sputnik technology, a little metal ball that goes ‘beep beep beep,’ is not the same as a nuclear warhead or a telecommunications satellite. It’s harder to send heavier objects and more sophisticated objects into space or across a continent.”
And assorted bumps along the way:
Back on Earth, the stimulus bill may turn into more life support for Detroit. A generation’s worth of debt to prop up a failing industry:
The word on the street is that after some small victories in the House ($3B added to capital funding for transit) there will be another fight in the Senate where various amendments are being proposed to strip transit funds and move them to highways, or to simply add $50B to highways.
This could be interesting- it’s a civil disobedience action that’s actually part of a larger strategy, well-targeted and hopefully well-organized. DC is famously a black hole for media events, but this one might cut through all the crap.
As Congress continues to sputter on solutions for the climate crisis, a national coalition of more than 40 environmental, public health, labor, social justice, faith-based and other advocacy groups have announced plans to engage in civil disobedience at the Capitol Power Plant in Washington D.C. on the afternoon of March 2, 2009.
The event, known as the Capitol Climate Action (CCA), will be the largest mass mobilization on global warming in the country’s history. The event reflects the growing public demand for bold action to address the climate and energy crises. It means no more waiting, no more excuses, and no more coal.
A couple more along those lines:
I’ve been saving up some Sea Shepherd stories for you. Soon come.
The arrival of a new year reminds us that life is a journey, one that takes us on many unexpected paths. NASA’s role is to pioneer journeys into the unknown for the benefit of humanity. Along the way, we sometimes experience tragedy instead of triumph.
Today, we pause to reflect on those moments in exploration when things did not go as expected and we lost brave pioneers. But what sets us apart as Americans is our willingness to get up again and push the frontiers even further with an even stronger commitment and sense of purpose.
On this Day of Remembrance, we remember the sacrifices of those who dared to dream and gave everything for the cause of exploration. We honor them with our ongoing commitment to excellence and an unwavering determination to continue the journey on the path to the future.
President Barack Obama
(Trevor will be pleased Obama found no need to mention god.)
This list courtesy of the director of the Johnson Space Center:
-Apollo 1 (January 27, 1967): Astronauts Roger B. Chaffee, Virgil “Gus” Grissom, and Edward H. White, Jr.
-Challenger (January 28, 1986): Astronauts Francis R. “Dick” Scobee, Michael J. Smith, Judith A. Resnik, Ronald E. McNair, Ellison S. Onizuka, Gregory B. Jarvis, and S. Christa McAuliffe.
-Columbia (February 1, 2003): Astronauts Rick D. Husband, William C. McCool, Michael P. Anderson, David M. Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Laurel B. Clark, and Ilan Ramon.
And let’s not forget the four cosmonauts acknowledged to have died in spaceflight (as well as an unknown number of other hypothetical cosmonaut deaths), training accidents, ground crew and bystander fatalities, and two search and rescue deaths in the aftermath of the Challenger explosion:
Fallen Astronaut and plaque
Paul Van Hoeydonck, 1971
aluminium, height 8.5 cm, 3 in
Hadley Rille, Moon