Gadgetopia

The space shuttle had to land at Edwards AFB in California last week due to weather, so they had to get it back to Florida via the piggy-back method. I watched it on CNN, and was struck by how cool it was. I’ve seen it before, of course, but you kind of take it for granted.

However, I found myself wondering if the 747 gets any extra lift from the wings on the shuttle. I know the drag and weight are a problem, but you do have two extra wing surfaces now, so do those help at all? With the shuttle on top, it’s like the world’s most expensive bi-plane.

The Wikipedia page for the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft had some interesting information:

Flying with the drag of the Orbiter imposes fuel and altitude penalties - the range is reduced to just over 1000 nautical miles (1900 km) compared to an unladen range of 5500 nautical miles (10,000 km), requiring a SCA to stop several times to refuel on a transcontinental flight

Wow, an 80% reduction in range and they can’t refuel in flight.

It takes a crew of about 170 a week to prepare the shuttle and SCA for flight, and each transcontinental trip costs about $1.7 million.

Yikes.

Still, I have no information on whether or not the wings of the shuttle provide the entire, two-vehicle apparatus with any net increase in lift. Opinions, anyone?

NASA rethinking death in mission to Mars: There are some very sad questions you have to answer when you’re sending someone to Mars.

How do you get rid of the body of a dead astronaut on a three-year mission to Mars and back?

When should the plug be pulled on a critically ill astronaut who is using up precious oxygen and endangering the rest of the crew? Should NASA employ DNA testing to weed out astronauts who might get a disease on a long flight?

With NASA planning to land on Mars 30 years from now, and with the recent discovery of the most “Earth-like” planet ever seen outside the solar system, the space agency has begun to ponder some of the thorny practical and ethical questions posed by deep space exploration.

This reminds me of the “Lost in Space Scenarios” that The Smoking Gun posted a while back. They were scripts that the Nixon Administration was going to use if they couldn’t get an astronaut back from the moon. They went like this:

Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace.

These brave men […] know that there is no hope for their recovery. But they also know there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice.

Sound far-fetched? Conspiracy theorists say that the Soviet Union actually abandoned some astronauts in space back in 1962:

The Torre Bert tower in Italy allegedly picked up a frantic set of messages relayed by the three occupants. “Conditions growing worse why don’t you answer? … we are going slower… the world will never know about us…”

Congress cool to new nuclear warhead: Read this quote carefully:

The Energy Department has asked for $89 million for next fiscal year to look into the design and to develop cost estimates for producing the warhead […]

It costs $89 million to “look into” something and “develop cost estimates”? From that alone I can tell you how much it’s going to cost: too damn much.

Speech software finds missing ‘a’ in astronaut Armstrong’s famous quote: Some guy digitally analyzed the statement Neil Armstrong when he stepped on the moon. He concludes that Armstrong didn’t hose the most important quote of his life.

Some historians and critics have dogged Armstrong for not saying the more dramatic and grammatically correct, “One small step for a man …” in the version he transmitted to NASA’s Mission Control. Without the missing “a,” Armstrong essentially said, “One small step for mankind, one giant leap for mankind.”

The famous astronaut has maintained he intended to say it properly and believes he did. Thanks to some high-tech sound-editing software, computer programmer Peter Shann Ford might have proved Armstrong right.

Ford said he downloaded the audio recording of Armstrong’s words from a NASA website and analyzed the statement with software that allows disabled people to communicate through computers using their nerve impulses.

In a graphical representation of the famous phrase, Ford said he found evidence that the missing “a” was spoken and transmitted to NASA.

The Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) is the largest single optical telescope in the southern hemisphere, with a hexagonal mirror array 11 metres across. Although very similar to the Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET) in Texas, SALT has a redesigned optical system using more of the mirror array. It will be able to record distant stars, galaxies and quasars a billion times too faint to be seen with the unaided eye - as faint as a candle flame at the distance of the moon.

What are some of the questions they hope to answer with SALT?

How did giant planets like Jupiter form? What is their relationship to the ‘failed stars’ we call ‘brown dwarfs’? Why are the assemblies of billions of suns we call galaxies organised in ‘bubbles’, ‘walls’ and ‘superclusters’? On the largest of scales, how did the universe begin, and what will it become? What is the nature of the most violent events in the Universe, namely Gamma Ray Bursters? What is the Dark Matter content of galaxies? How do accreting objects ‘cannibalise’ material?

Some of the pictures are pretty incredible. Also, I have no idea what these specifications mean, but here they are.

I want one.

Here’s a funny video from a space shuttle flight that features a Macintosh. I can’t tell from the video or the hosting site what mission it’s from, but the machine is a Mac Portable, which was introduced in mid-1989.

We’ve talked before about Macs in Space; one thing I didn’t realize is that Macs were trailblazers in extra-terrestrial computer use. The first ever e-mail from space was sent from a Mac Portable using AppleLink. There must’ve been much weeping and gnashing of teeth in Redmond, WA, that day.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is sending an unmanned spacecraft — the ion-propelled Dawn — to the asteroid belt, and is giving you — yes you — the chance to send your name along for the ride.

Send your name to the asteroid belt on the Dawn spacecraft. Your name will be recorded onto a microchip that will be placed aboard the spacecraft accompanying it on its mission to the asteroid belt.

Just click this link and enter your name to include it on the chip. After you click submit you’ll be presented with a certificate page, suitable for framing, once you print it out, that is. This might be just the thing for that nerdy nephew that you need to buy a Christmas gift for.

The mission’s goal is to check out two of the larger asteroids in the belt — Ceres and Vesta — and see if they yield any answers as to the origin of the universe; hence the name “Dawn”.

No mention of what is to become of Dawn at the end of the mission in 2016. They’ll probably ram it into another heavenly body to see what happens. Then get sued for it.

Firm fights to sell moon real estate: Provided they got the transportation part figured out, I bet mineral rights on the moon would be quite valuable.

A Chinese company is fighting for the right to pitch plots of land on the moon for sale after authorities shut the scheme down on charges of profiteering and lunacy.

[…] Just under 300 yuan ($37) was all it cost to buy a deed promising rights to one acre of dusty lunar soil and any minerals up to two miles underground until the company was accused of illegal speculation and profiteering.

Virgin Galactic has stated that if it’s current planned craft, SpaceShipTwo, is successful, they’ll try to build an orbital vehicle, SpaceShipThree.

Orbital vehicle SpaceShipThree (SS3) will be developed by space tourism company Virgin Galactic and Mojave-based SpaceShipTwo (SS2)-developer Scaled Composites, if the planned SS2 suborbital service is successful, says Virgin Galactic president Will Whitehorn.

SpaceShipThree is planned for Scaled’s tier 2 manned space programme, while the nine-person SpaceShipTwo is part of the current tier 1b programme.

The suborbital three-crew SpaceShipOne (SS1), which won the $10 million Ansari X Prize last October, was developed within Scaled Composites’ tier 1 programme.

Hopefully, for my retirement, my grandkids will buy me a week’s vacation at SpaceStationFive, or MoonBaseTwentyThreeAndAHalf, or whatever they will be calling it.

In a related note, Burt Rutan is The Man, and I should grow mutton chops in his honor.

Via SlashDot.

A Rocket To Nowhere: This is a brutal but facinating essay on the shuttle program. The author makes a compelling case that the program is less than worthless and should be abandoned — along with the ISS — as soon as possible.

While half the NASA budget gets eaten by the manned space program, the other half is quietly spent on true aerospace work and a variety of robotic probes of immense scientific value. All of the actual exploration taking place at NASA is being done by unmanned vehicles. And when some of those unmanned craft fail, no one is killed, and the unmanned program is not halted for three years. […]

NASA is convinced that stopping the Shuttle program would mean an indefinite end to American manned space flight, and so it will go to almost any length to make sure there is a continuous manned presence in space. […] But this attitude is actually doing damage to the prospects of real manned space exploration. Sinking half the NASA budget into the Shuttle and ISS precludes the possibility of doing truly groundbreaking work on space flight.

It’s long, but worth reading. Via Kottke

I just watched the shuttle Discovery clear the tower on its way back to space — 9:39 a.m. Central time. Our prayers go with the crew. Godspeed, ladies and gentlemen.

NASA is reportedly being sued by a Russian astrologist because the Deep Impact probe “deformed her horoscope.”

Marina Bai has sued the U.S. space agency, claiming the Deep Impact probe that punched a crater into the comet Tempel 1 late Sunday “ruins the natural balance of forces in the universe.”

Now why didn’t I think of that?

NASA’s Deep Impact spacecraft hit its target early this morning. Unfortunately, I went to bed early and missed the thing as it happened. Shoot. I won’t bother putting any images up; you’ll find lots of them on the Deep Impact website, and elsewhere as well.

My boys are as excited as can be about shooting off fireworks to celebrate the Fourth of July today, and it occurred to me that these guys at NASA are excited about pretty much the same thing — blowing things up. Only these guys got to spend millions of dollars doing it millions of miles away by remote control, making a crater the size of a football field. I think I need to work for NASA.

A while back I posted something about NASA’s Deep Impact spacecraft, and its hoped-for rendezvous with Comet Tempel 1; well, it looks like everything is a go — so far anyway — and that rendezvous will happen early tomorrow morning.

Thus far the images that NASA’s put up on the Deep Impact mission page aren’t much to write home about, but the best is definitely to come. NASA and others have put up some interesting content about the Deep Impact mission — like this Flash presentation from JPL and this Java orbital display from the University of Maryland — that are definitely worth a look.

I’ll definitely keep tabs on this tonight & tomorrow, and will post updates as necessary.

Hubble spies lord of the stellar rings: The picture with this news article is eerie. (There’s a scientific discovery buried in there somewhere as well, but that’s not nearly as interesting the Eye of Sauron….)

A recent image captured with the Hubble Space Telescope — which makes the system look uncannily like the Great Eye of Sauron from the blockbusting Lord of the Rings trilogy — confirms that Fomalhaut’s ring is curiously offset with respect to the star.

I was also going to note that this may be the last hurrah for the Hubble Space Telescope, but this news article indicates that there may be hope yet.

Thanks to Carter for this one.

It’s the newest extreme sport: Expensive Hardware Lobbing.

The object: Get your multi-million dollar space probe to explore another planet without crapping out before it can do the job.

The players: Earth’s space-faring nations, and all other planets in the solar system.

The rules: There are only four major ones. The first three are Newton’s laws of motion. The fourth is Murphy’s Law.

Welcome Space Sports fans! As you are well aware, Earth is currently the underdog in the solar system division in the Expensive Hardware Lob (overseen by the Planetary Satellite League). For every piece of hardware that returns useful information from the Lobbee’s planet, the Lobber scores a point. For every piece of hardware sucessfully thwarted by the Lobbee […], they score a point.

[…]

Venera 3 “landed” on Venus on 1966 March 1 making it the first probe to “land” on the surface of another planet. It carried a radio communication system, scientific instruments, electrical power sources, and medallions bearing the coat of arms of the U.S.S.R. None of these things do you much good when you “land” on another planet.

Reading this I was amazed by how many space probes Russia blew up before they even managed to leave orbit. They apparently had a “grind ‘em till you find ‘em” approach to space exploration.

Sea Launch Home Page: We talked about Sea Launch one year ago today, and apparently the concept is thriving. They’re had about a dozen launches, it looks like.

Sea Launch is a rocket plaform floating in the ocean. The platform takes rockets out to sea, near the equator where the laws of physics are more favorable, then launches them.

Their Web site has expanded quite a bit, and includes neat videos like this one. I want a job there — they need a an intranet administrator out in Long Beach.

Sweden mines space for tourist dollars: Ten thousand dollars gets you on Sweden’s version of the Vomit Comet, starting this summer.

Late this summer, a company called Xero AB begins offering the first zero-gravity flights from Kiruna, 200 kilometers (124 miles) north of the Arctic Circle.

[…] Xero AB, founded in 2002 by Walter Allvin, will offer a series of four flights, scheduled two or three times a year, with 12 passengers on each flight.

The title of this post is a lame attempt to translate “Vomit Comet” into Swedish. Did you know that Swedish has seven different words for the English word “vomit”? Why so many words? Hmmmm.

Space venture has West Texas county abuzz: Has Jeff Bezos jumped the shark? I never picked him for something like this, I guess. It even makes Branson look level-headed.

Over the next 30 to 40 minutes, Simpson said Bezos told him the goal of his venture — known as Blue Origin — was to send a spaceship into orbit that launches and lands vertically, like a rocket.

“He told me their first spacecraft is going to carry three people up to the edge of space and back,” Simpson said. “But ultimately, his thing is space colonization.”

Hans Nyberg of panoramas.dk has taken some of the recently released high-resolution Apollo mission photographs and stitched them into Quicktime panoramas.

During these missions thousands of images were taken, most of them with… a special version of the Hasselblad 500 EL.

Less known is that during all the missions they made image sequences which with todays computer technics can be stitched together into 360 degree interactive panoramas giving you the possibillity to view the moon almost as you were there.

These panoramas are great. panoramas.dk also has a few of the high-res photos — like this one of the Apollo 11 lunar module — available for viewing. Taking a close look at that thing makes you better realize how bleeding-edge these missions were; fit & finish weren’t terribly high on the priority list.

It’s also a blast browsing through the Apollo Archive. Some of the photos there are truly spectacular.

via BoingBoing.