Wednesday, October 27, 2004

October Skies One of the nice things about our condo is that it has a balcony that faces south with an unobstructed view of the sky. I'll be out there tonight watching the total lunar eclipse with my Meade ETX. An eclipse used to be viewed by some primitive cultures as a bad omen. If the Red Sox should lose tonight, does that mean that they'll go on to lose the next three after that? If that happens then there really is a curse. File under Space, The Final Frontier. 8:24:25 PM

	Wednesday, October 06, 2004

Godspeed Gordo File under Space, The Final Frontier. 1:50:50 AM

	Tuesday, July 20, 2004

One Small Step It feels like it was in another lifetime, not even mine but someone else’s. I can remember this kid with sandy blond hair that turned white in the summer sun. It was long before the drunken college parties, waking up in frat house that smelled of stale beer, urine and vomit. It was far removed from the miserable first marriage that should have driven him to drink but instead drove him to make and then lose a small fortune. It was long before the victories, defeats and compromises that he would call his life. He was a small kid sitting on the floor much too close to the TV. "That radiation will make you sterile if you’re not careful." The kid is home from school sick, though his mother knew better. He's transfixed by what he’s seeing and hearing. Walter Cronkite is talking and nervously rubbing his hands. An Atlas rocket sits on the launch pad its silver skin frosted over white from the super-cold liquid oxygen inside it waiting to mix with kerosene. The kid’s seen this thing go up in a ball of flames on the news. A lot of our rockets did that then. The countdown moves along and then come the holds. Is this going to be like the last time? Then it starts up again this time reaching zero. Bright flame appears at the base of the rocket as its three engines ignite. And then it moves. Frost and ice fall off of the rocket as the Atlas with a small Mercury spacecraft perched atop moves upward ever faster. Spacecraft not capsule. It wasn’t until years later that the kid would learn why test pilots detested the word capsule. All the kid knew was this was a spacecraft. It was going up there. Up into the place only visited in his imagination. And then the word came. John Glenn was in orbit traveling at a speed beyond the comprehension of the kid’s grandfather. Friendship 7 was in the realm which had only ever been populated by science fiction spacemen. And the Russians. Back then the world seemed so full of possibilities. Nuclear power would be the source of almost limitless energy. A giant wheeled space station would be the stepping off point to exploration of the Moon, Mars and beyond. It all seemed to be so close to his grasp. His generation would be a spacefaring generation. He’d seen his heroes risk death in launch after launch. He’d watched Werner Von Braun explain to Walt Disney the hardware we’d use to reach for the stars. The space stations, reusable space planes and powerful booster rockets that would make the Russian launchers look puny. He really believed that he would one day buy a ticket and walk on the Moon himself, looking back at that small blue orb a quarter million miles away.Now, like so much else, it feels like it was all just a cheat. Thirty-five years ago today men first walked on the Moon. One small step for man. Since then mankind’s footsteps have been in retreat. We’ve been stuck in low earth orbit like a slow moving car in the passing lane with its left turn signal forever blinking. Not really going anyplace and not doing anything. It will take about a billion dollars to get the three remaining space shuttles in shape to complete the construction of a space station that has been so scaled back from its original design that you have to wonder what it will do that we couldn’t do with Skylab 31 years ago. Now a new vision is proposed that will send men outward into the solar system. All of this is supposed to take place at the same time that Social Security and Medicare will be ready to implode under the sheer weight of his generation, the baby boomers. Costs will be underestimated, programs will be underfunded, and the scale of the endeavor will be cut back piece by piece until we’re again left with nothing but a handful of empty promises and questions about what we’re doing there in the first place. The kid, now middle aged, sits and wonders why 2001 wasn’t anything like 2001. But still, he has inside him that one singular shinning moment when he and all his generation stood and did look back, if only in spirit, on that little blue ball a quarter of a million miles away. File under Space, The Final Frontier. 10:44:55 PM

	Monday, May 24, 2004

Out Of The Woodwork Back in March I posted the reason why I decided to remove the Mars Rover Weblog from my blogroll. Basically, it was because of all of the crackpot comments which were being posted by all of these conspiracy theory fans who saw evidence of life, or of a prior civilization, in every photo. I wasn't the only amateur astronomer who did the same. So I was quite surprised when after some time had passed, that I received the following comment in response to my post: Very nice of you to diagnos us on the Mars Rover Forum with a mental illness. I Believe the person who wrote this is the poster who previously wentby the name They're Rocks and has done this purly for spite reasons. An extreamly insultive gentalman who is positive that no one elses opinion has merit except his own and demands it of you. I for one do not believe in a conspiracy within Nasa because they would not make available all of the photos if they were. IF any of you who read this want to find out for yourself please go to the JPL rover website and study Spirits photos for yourself and I invite you to be the judge. Richard • 5/23/04; 9:34:11 PM Can anybody out their tell me what point, if any, the above quoted classmate of Stephen Hawking is trying to make? Certainly nothing he had to say here did anything but convince me that I was right to stop wasting my time with the people wearing the tinfoil hats. All I can say is that they'd better keep them on. It's not the government that can read your thoughts. I can read your thoughts. Now I'll be warping out of orbit. /engage File under Space, The Final Frontier. 10:14:42 PM

	Thursday, May 20, 2004

In Memoriam I just got word via email that a friend and colleage from my time with the Enterprise Team just passed away unexpectedly. Peter Jarvis was one of our command pilots back in 1995 (I can't believe it's been that long). He was a cool customer and serious about his work, yet he had a remarkable sense of humor. Peter lived in Seattle, Washington and attended the Space Academy in Huntsville, Alabama 10 times since 1985. One trip was to Aviation Challenge with Enterprise Team founder, Rich Kolker. They took home the Top Gun award. Peter helped take several groups of kids to the Ames Research Center and once was invited to fly the Ames Vertical Motion Simulator for an hour doing practice Shuttle landings. Peter was a SCUBA diver and a private pilot with a Cessna 172. In the airplane hangar he also kept a 1964 Thunderbird convertible that he restored. Peter died of a heart attack. It was totally unexpected.  He was in good shape and there were no warnings. Peter was a great guy, a good friend, a forward thinker and we will all miss him terribly. It seems that so many people are leaving us these days. Let's all stop and think about that and appreciate them while they're still with us. Excelsior Peter. /LOS TDRS West File under Space, The Final Frontier.   8:20:07 AM

	Thursday, May 13, 2004

What's That Man Staring At? I watched the International Space Station pass overhead tonight. It went right past Jupiter and took less than five minutes to go from one end of the sky to the other. Cool. File under Space, The Final Frontier. 10:32:53 PM

	Wednesday, March 31, 2004

The Truth Is Out There? Apparently, the comments at the Mars Rover Blog have degenerated into the typical pseudo-science/conspiracy theory BS that seems to be much more popular than real science. Apparently, one reader of the blog has had enough, and I have to say that I agree with him: What you have here is a few people with paranoid personality disorder wrecking this forum. Unfortunately, the topic of possible life on Mars is exactly the sort of thing that attracts them. Read about Paranoid Personality Disorder on this site for starters... [link] The posters meet all the criteria... * They have secret information that only they can "see". They "see" fossils of impossible creatures or objects in every photo. * They feel that NASA is "hiding" something. If only the world would listen to them. NASA deliberately "avoids" taking the pictures that would prove "their" theories right. The rovers are steered away... the photos are taken at too low a resolution on purpose... * The other posters are "out to get them" and have "closed minds". Only they have the Secret Knowledge, and it is so clear to them. Even though they are only one person and they may not have any scientific background in this field at all, they know better than the worlds best experts and they are sure of it. If only the others would listen to Them. * They are easily offended, quick to argue, and irrational in their beliefs. They see slight in every response to their postings. This is very typical of this disorder. * Unfortunately, because of the nature of this disorder, people that have it don't generally seek the help that they need. Arguing with them will not help, and in cases like this it will just confirm their conspiracy theories. I'm moving to another forum that has moderation, this one isn't worth visiting any more. It only takes a few people to wreck it for everyone. As for myself, I've decided to remove the Mars Rover Blog from my blogroll. It's degenerated into just a waste of time. One story which will no doubt be of interest to the lunatic fringe is the discovery of traces of methane gas in the Martian atmosphere: Planetary scientists have discovered traces of methane gas in the atmosphere of Mars, but are guarded about whether this is evidence of life on the planet. Two separate surveys have detected traces of the gas in the atmosphere: one by European scientists using a spectrometer on the Mars Express spacecraft, and another by a NASA scientist using groundbased instruments. Because methane in the atmosphere is broken down by ultraviolet light over the span of just a few hundred years, the discovery implies that methane continues to be produced. One possible source of methane is emissions by microbes, possibly living beneath the Martian surface, but the methane could have a volcanic origin as well. Scientists said there is not enough information to determine which scenario is more likely to be correct. No doubt, this was all caused by Martian cow farts. File under Space, The Final Frontier. 1:52:55 AM