Back to the future: NASA engineers today test fired a major component of a refurbished Saturn 5 engine.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon, any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
The seasons change on Mars.
With three years of data in hand the researchers report on the sequence and variety of changes that take place over the spring, including outbursts of gas carrying sand, polygonal cracking of the ice on the dunes, sandfalls down the slipface of the dunes, and dark fans of sand propelled out onto the ice. Gas escaping from under the seasonal layer of dry ice erodes channels in the dunes, reminiscent of the erosion that carves more permanent “spider” channels in the southern hemisphere polar region.
Now available in hardback and paperback as well as ebook!
From the press release: In this ground-breaking new history of early America, historian Robert Zimmerman not only exposes the lie behind The New York Times 1619 Project that falsely claims slavery is central to the history of the United States, he also provides profound lessons about the nature of human societies, lessons important for Americans today as well as for all future settlers on Mars and elsewhere in space.
“Zimmerman’s ground-breaking history provides every future generation the basic framework for establishing new societies on other worlds. We would be wise to heed what he says.” —Robert Zubrin, founder of the Mars Society.
All editions are available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and all book vendors, with the ebook priced at $5.99 before discount. All editions can also be purchased direct from the ebook publisher, ebookit, in which case you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
Autographed printed copies are also available at discount directly from the author (hardback $29.95; paperback $14.95; Shipping cost for either: $6.00). Just send an email to zimmerman @ nasw dot org.
Bad news: Polio virus from Pakistan has been found in Egypt.
The importation of the virus into Egypt is another setback for the global program, which has finally been making significant progress in the past 2 years, with polio cornered in just three endemic countries: Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Nigeria. (India has now gone 2 years without a single case of polio.) Of the three, Pakistan was doing especially well in knocking out the virus, but the program there has recently been disrupted by the targeted assassination of nine polio workers in December and early January. Those killings, widely condemned, have stoked fears the virus will regain strength in Pakistan and then reinfect polio-free countries. “This is proof positive of long-distance importation from Pakistan, and there may be more,” Aylward says.
But don’t worry: the Muslim Brotherhood have us covered! “Experts are worried, Bari says, because Egypt has scaled back its national polio vaccinations campaigns from twice to once a year during the turmoil of the revolution.” [emphasis mine]
A research plane has crashed in a remote area of Antarctica, stranding three.
Once the beacon had sounded, a U.S. LC-130 aircraft was sent to the crash site, but it was unable to establish radio contact with the Twin Otter, while a thick layer of low-lying clouds prevented those onboard from seeing the plane. Later, a DC-3 aircraft spent hours circling above the crash site, but it also came away empty-handed.
Leaving Earth: Space Stations, Rival Superpowers, and the Quest for Interplanetary Travel, can be purchased as an ebook everywhere for only $3.99 (before discount) at amazon, Barnes & Noble, all ebook vendors, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.
If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big oppressive tech companies and I get a bigger cut much sooner.
"Leaving Earth is one of the best and certainly the most comprehensive summary of our drive into space that I have ever read. It will be invaluable to future scholars because it will tell them how the next chapter of human history opened." -- Arthur C. Clarke
Engineers at Lockheed Martin are adding structural braces to fix the cracks found in the first Orion capsule.
Engineers have designed a “doubler” to place over the cracks to ensure the craft can sustain loads from pressure, launch and landing. Geyer said two of the structural aids, similar to devices regularly used on airplanes, could be added to the spacecraft. “We’ve come up with a great plan to basically bridge over those cracks to distribute the load so we don’t see any issues on orbit,” Geyer said.
How reassuring.
Happy 9th anniversary to the Opportunity rover on Mars!
Talk about getting your money’s worth: The rover was planned as a 90 day mission.
Push back: The boycott against the organizer of an outdoor trade show that tried to ban rifles has forced them to postpone the show.
Push back: Now a Mississippi sheriff has vowed not to enforce any federal gun control laws that violate the second amendment.
News flash! The entire NRA has converted to Islam to stymie the Obama administration’s effort to take their guns!
“This administration loves providing guns —big guns, and thousands of them— to Muslim fighters in Libya, Egypt, now Syria,” said [NRA CEO Wayne] LaPierre, bedecked in Wahhabi-style Muslim garb, at a press conference Wednesday. “Many of these rebel groups consist of radical jihadists who hate America just as much as the governments we’re helping them topple. If Obama is so pro-gun when it comes to radical Muslims, then damn it, we at the NRA are now radical Muslims, too!”
The response from the White House press secretary was not surprising.
“Admittedly, we’re perplexed at the (NRA’s) announcement of its conversion to Islam,” said a stunned-looking Carney. “And if more legal gun owners follow the NRA’s lead and convert to Islam, it will make it even harder for the administration to push for tighter gun laws, since we all know it’s middle-aged, rural, Christian white men with families who legally own guns who are the greatest threat in America today. Now we’ve lost much of that dangerous demographic to target. It’s a strategically cowardly move.”
The check is in the mail: NASA has now agreed to contribute equipment and researchers to a European dark energy mission.
And why should Europe have any expectation that NASA will follow through? Europe’s ExoMars project was screwed badly when NASA pulled out last year. Nor was that the first time the U.S. government reneged on a deal with Europe.
Considering the fragile nature of the U.S. federal budget, I wouldn’t depend on anything from NASA or any U.S. government agency for the foreseeable future. And this includes the various private space companies such as SpaceX and Orbital Sciences that are using NASA subsidies to build their spaceships. Get those things built, and quickly! The government money could disappear very soon.
Russia is now threatening to abandon its Baikonur launch site due to restrictions demanded by the Kazakhstan government.
The restrictions include a limitation in the number of Proton launches, which Russia claims will cost them half a million dollars in sales. The problem is that the new Russia launch site in Vostochny will not be ready until 2015. If Russia pulls out of Baikonur before then, there will be no way to launch humans to ISS for at least the next two years.
An update on the Chinese manned program.
The original script called for [the space station] Tiangong 1 to be followed by Tiangong 2, which would have been a module of the same basic design as Tiangong 1. Tiangong 2 was expected to have tested more advanced life-support systems than Tiangong 1, but there would be no major changes to the spacecraft. It was expected that two or three crews would be launched to this module.
Towards the end of the decade, China would then launch Tiangong 3, which was slated to be an entirely different class of spacecraft. It would be larger and more capable. Tiangong 3 was expected by some analysts to be a precursor to the types of modules to be used in China’s future space station, slated for launch around 2020.
According to Yang’s presentation, we can forget about Tiangong 2. Or at least, we can forget about Tiangong 2 as it was originally planned. China still plans to launch a mission with this name, but it would seem that the large laboratory module originally known as “Tiangong 3” has now been designated as the new Tiangong 2.
In other words, China is accelerating the admittedly slow pace of their manned program.
The competition heats up: Planetary Resources has released a video showing off the prototype of their Arkyd-100 space telescope.
As I noted when this company first appeared, for the foreseeable future they are going to be a manufacturer of space telescopes, not an asteroid mining company. At the same time, they, like Deep Space Industries, are going to drive satellite development towards lower cost and smarter design, which in the long run will make asteroid mining practical and profitable.
The Democratic Party leaders in New Mexico have announced that an agreement over spaceport liability has been reached with Virgin Galactic.
This might be good, but with no details released and all the statements coming from politicians of only one party it is reasonable to wonder how serious it is and whether this announcement is merely a bargaining ploy.
A Colorado county government, joining twelve other state governments and numerous local sheriffs, has become the first county to pass a resolution supporting the second amendment and pledging not to enforce any federal laws that violate it.
This specific resolution is not as interesting as the growing list of defiance, described in the article, to the gun control effort of the Democratic Party.
Push back: Major exhibitors are pulling out of a outdoor trade show because the organizer decided to ban some weapons and high capacity magazines.
Archeologists have now found the earliest evidence of chocolate in Utah, suggesting that trade with the tropics was going on as early as 800 AD.
Since there still are some uncertainties about the evidence, there are still doubts about the trade.
A dozen sheriffs, all in Missouri, have told the Obama administration that they will not enforce any regulations that violate the second amendment.
I like this quote from the letter of one sheriff:
It appears to me and many Americans that there is a genuine desire on the part of your administration to restrict the Second Amendment rights of law abiding American citizens in the interest of curbing gun violence in our nation. Any attempt to restrict these Second Amendment rights through executive order is unconstitutional and tantamount to an all-out assault on the United States Constitution.
Modern free speech: A nine-year-old in Scotland who forced changes in her school lunches with her blog has been silenced.
Read the entire post. The uproar has caused the local council to back off its ban, and the kid is posting again.
After a short delay due to software issues, the satellite servicing demo on ISS has begun.
The actual refueling is scheduled to take place late Thursday.
The plans and proposed launch schedule of the new asteroid mining company, Deep Space Industries.
They aim to do their work using cubesats, which will keep everything cheap and simple, with the first launches by 2015, and the first sample return missions by 2016. Their new manufacturing technology appears to be a variation of 3D printing, though the descriptions so far released remain vague on details.
We should have even more information later today, after their press conference, aired live on youtube here at 1 pm (eastern).
A NASA engineering team is restarting the agency’s 1960s research into nuclear powered engines for deep space missions.
If completed and put into use, these engines could easily revolutionize the exploration of the solar system. Forgive me, however, if I remain skeptical, not because I lack faith in the technology but because I lack faith in NASA’s ability to finish anything.
Crash! Boom! A new infrared image of Betelgeuse suggests the star and its winds will smash into the interstellar medium in only a few thousand years.
If the bar [of gas] is a completely separate object, then taking into account the motion of Betelgeuse and its arcs and the separation between them and the bar, the [star’s] outermost arc will collide with the bar in just 5000 years, with the red supergiant star itself hitting the bar roughly 12 500 years later.
The competition heats up: Orbital Sciences has published an updated schedule for its Antares rocket and Cygnus cargo capsule.
Key dates:
February: Hotfire test of the Antares first stage.
March: First test flight of Antares.
May/June: First test flight of Cygnus, on Antares, docking with ISS.
Third quarter 2013: First operational flight of Cygnus to ISS.
