From Huffington Post: Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster Marks 26th Anniversary
On January, 28, 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after lifting off from launch pad 39B at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
The shocking accident - broadcast live on television - claimed the lives of all seven crew members, including Christa McAuliffe, a Concord, N.H. school teacher who had been selected to inaugurate NASA's highly publicized Teacher In Space Project
Later that day, President Reagan returned to the airwaves to console a grieving nation. He reserved a few words specifically for the schoolchildren who had been watching.
"I know it is hard to understand, but sometimes painful things like this happen," he said. "It's all part of the process of exploration and discovery. It's all part of taking a chance and expanding man's horizons. The future doesn't belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave. The Challenger crew was pulling us into the future, and we'll continue to follow them."
The shuttle program was grounded for almost three years following the accident. During that time investigators worked to pinpoint and correct the causes of the explosion - notably a failed "O-ring" gasket in the shuttle's booster rockets that allowed superheated gases to ignite fuel inside an external tank.
Twenty-six years have passed since Challenger disintegrated over the Atlantic Ocean, and the shuttle program itself is now history. But those who watched the disaster can never forget seeing the shuttle's elegant arc abruptly give way to twisted white contrails and falling debris. And even now few events loom as large in the nation's space lore.
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Friday, January 27, 2012
Lego man in space moves the Web
From YahooNews: Lego man in space moves the Web
Two teens from Toronto successfully launched a Lego figure into near space -- and launched a storm of interest on the Web.
Mathew Ho and Asad Muhammad, 17-year-old classmates at Agincourt Collegiate Institute, took four months, many Saturdays, and $400 to carry a Lego figurine and four cameras miles above the earth, a project that the two did for fun, not for class.
"We didn't really believe we could do it until we did," Ho told the Toronto Star.
You can see the video they made, using the stunning photos of the Lego man 78,000 feet off the ground, here.
The clip of the Lego man in near space has gone viral, with 570,000 views and counting. Searches on Yahoo! for "lego man in space" have soared 325% in just one day.
The high school students, both seniors, were inspired by a video of a similar project undertaken by students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The DIY contraption included a GPS locator so the students could track the weather balloon (a professional-grade one they purchased online) once it landed. Using a website that calculates a weather balloon's landing position based on coordinates and variables like wind speed, the two waited to launch the object until the timing was right for a Canadian landing.
The video shows the two-inch high LEGO man holding a Canadian flag flying high above Earth and the clouds, until the tilt of the earth's axis can be seen. And then the balloon pops, sending the Lego guy back to the ground in a mere 32 minutes.
Ho and Muhammad may still be walking on air with all the accolades they've received for their successful project. The teens have been offered cameras from Canon and asked to speak at an engineering competitions, and they've been given funds to cover the cost of the project. Even Lego sent its congratulations.
Not bad for two kids who haven't even found out yet where they're going to college.
Two teens from Toronto successfully launched a Lego figure into near space -- and launched a storm of interest on the Web.
Mathew Ho and Asad Muhammad, 17-year-old classmates at Agincourt Collegiate Institute, took four months, many Saturdays, and $400 to carry a Lego figurine and four cameras miles above the earth, a project that the two did for fun, not for class.
"We didn't really believe we could do it until we did," Ho told the Toronto Star.
You can see the video they made, using the stunning photos of the Lego man 78,000 feet off the ground, here.
The clip of the Lego man in near space has gone viral, with 570,000 views and counting. Searches on Yahoo! for "lego man in space" have soared 325% in just one day.
The high school students, both seniors, were inspired by a video of a similar project undertaken by students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The DIY contraption included a GPS locator so the students could track the weather balloon (a professional-grade one they purchased online) once it landed. Using a website that calculates a weather balloon's landing position based on coordinates and variables like wind speed, the two waited to launch the object until the timing was right for a Canadian landing.
The video shows the two-inch high LEGO man holding a Canadian flag flying high above Earth and the clouds, until the tilt of the earth's axis can be seen. And then the balloon pops, sending the Lego guy back to the ground in a mere 32 minutes.
Ho and Muhammad may still be walking on air with all the accolades they've received for their successful project. The teens have been offered cameras from Canon and asked to speak at an engineering competitions, and they've been given funds to cover the cost of the project. Even Lego sent its congratulations.
Not bad for two kids who haven't even found out yet where they're going to college.
GOP candidates clash over US space exploration future
Fox News: GOP candidates clash over US space exploration future
Newt Gingrich defended his ambitious spaceflight goals against attacks from the other three contenders for the Republican presidential nomination during Thursday night's debate in Florida.
Gingrich said his plan to establish a manned moon base by 2020 would help reassert American dominance in space, spur the growth of a vibrant commercial spaceflight sector and encourage kids to study science, engineering and math.
However, the other three candidates onstage with Gingrich in Jacksonville — former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, Texas congressman Ron Paul and former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum — generally dismissed the onetime Speaker of the House's bold space proposals as too expensive and too impractical.
NASA's current space exploration plan under President Barack Obama is focused on sending astronauts to an asteroid by 2025 and toward a Mars landing in the 2030s. This deep space exploration plan follows NASA's space shuttle program, which retired in 2011 after 30 years of spaceflight. NASA plans to rely on private American spacecraft to ferry astronauts and cargo to and from low-Earth orbit while focusing on its deep space missions.
The four GOP presidential hopefuls discussed NASA, human spaceflight and America's space policy for nearly 12 minutes during the heated debate, the last one before Floridians vote in the Republican primary on Tuesday (Jan. 31). Here's a sampling of what the candidates said.
Romney (asked by debate moderator Wolf Blitzer if Gingrich's moon colony goal is too expensive): That's an enormous expense, and right now I want to be spending money here. Of course, the Space Coast has been badly hurt, and I believe in a very vibrant and strong space program.
To define the mission for our space program, I'd like to bring in the top professors that relate to space areas, of physics, top people from industry, because I want to make sure what we're doing in space translates into commercial products. I want to bring in our top military experts on space needs, and finally, of course, people from the administration, if I have an administration.
I'd like to come together and talk about different options, and the cost … I believe in a manned space program; I'd like to see whether they believe in the same thing. I'm not looking for a colony on the moon. I think the cost of that would be in the hundreds of billions, if not trillions. I'd rather be rebuilding housing here in the U.S.
Gingrich: (on how he'd achieve his moon colony goal while keeping taxes low): You start with a question: Do you really believe NASA in its current form is the most effective way of leveraging investment in space? We now have a bureaucracy sitting there which has managed to mismanage the program so well that, in fact, we have no lift vehicle …
I believe by the use of prizes, by the use of incentives, by opening up the spaceport so that it's available on a ready basis for commercial flight, by using common sense — for example, the Atlas 5 could easily be fixed into a man-capable vehicle so you didn't have to rely on a Russian launch or a Chinese launch —there are many things you can do to leverage accelerating the development of space.
Lindbergh flew to Paris for a $25,000 prize. If we had a handful of serious prizes, you'd see an extraordinary number of people out there trying to get to the moon first in order to build that. And I'd like to have an American on the moon before the Chinese get there. [Photos of NASA's Apollo Moon Missions]
Santorum: One of the big problems we have in our country today is that young people are not getting involved in math and science and not dreaming big dreams. And so NASA, or the space program, or space, is important. NASA is one component of that. Our space defense is another area, I think both of which are very, very important.
I agree that we need to bring good minds in the private sector much more involved in NASA than the government bureaucracy we have. But let's just be honest. We're on a $1.2 trillion deficit right now. We're borrowing 40 cents of every dollar. And to go out there and promise new programs and big ideas, that's a great thing to maybe get votes. But it's not a responsible thing when you have to go out and say that we have to start cutting programs, not talking about how to grow them…
Those are things that sound good and maybe make big promises to people, but we've got to be responsible in the way we allocate our resources.
Paul: I don't think we should go to the moon. I think we maybe should send some politicians up there…
The amount of money we spend on space, the only part that I would vote for is for national defense purposes. Not to explore the moon and go to Mars — I think that's fantastic, I love those ideas, but I also don't like the idea of building government-business partnerships.
If we had a healthy economy and had more Bill Gateses and more Warren Buffetts, the money would be there. It should be privatized. And the people who work in the industry, if you had that — there would be jobs in aerospace.
I just think that we don't need a bigger, newer program… I mean, health care or something else deserves a lot more priority than going to the moon. So I would be very reluctant. But space technology should be followed up to some degree for national defense purposes, but not just for the fun of it, and, you know, for scientific purposes. [Top 10 Space Weapons]
Gingrich: It is really important to go back and look at what John F. Kennedy said in May of 1961. When he said we will go to the moon in this decade, no American had orbited the Earth. The technology didn't exist. And a generation of young people went into science and engineering and technology, and they were tremendously excited, and they had a future.
I actually agree with Dr. Paul. The program I envision would probably end up being 90 percent private sector. But it would be based on a desire to change the government rules and change the government regulations to get NASA out of the business of trying to run rockets, and to create a system where it's easy for private-sector people to be engaged.
I want to see us move from one launch occasionally to six or seven launches a day… I do not want to be the country that, having gotten to the moon first, turned around and said, "It doesn't really matter. Let the Chinese dominate space. What do we care?" I think that is a path of national decline, and I am for America being a great country, not a country in decline.
Romney: I spent 25 years in business. If I had a business executive come to me and say they wanted to spend a few hundred billion dollars to put a colony on the moon, I'd say, "You're fired."
The idea that corporate America wants to go off to the moon and build a colony there — it may be a big idea, but it's not a good idea.
Look, this idea of going state to state and promising what people want to hear — promising billions, hundreds of billions of dollars to make people happy — that's what got us into the trouble we're in now. We've got to say no to this kind of spending.
Newt Gingrich defended his ambitious spaceflight goals against attacks from the other three contenders for the Republican presidential nomination during Thursday night's debate in Florida.
Gingrich said his plan to establish a manned moon base by 2020 would help reassert American dominance in space, spur the growth of a vibrant commercial spaceflight sector and encourage kids to study science, engineering and math.
However, the other three candidates onstage with Gingrich in Jacksonville — former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, Texas congressman Ron Paul and former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum — generally dismissed the onetime Speaker of the House's bold space proposals as too expensive and too impractical.
NASA's current space exploration plan under President Barack Obama is focused on sending astronauts to an asteroid by 2025 and toward a Mars landing in the 2030s. This deep space exploration plan follows NASA's space shuttle program, which retired in 2011 after 30 years of spaceflight. NASA plans to rely on private American spacecraft to ferry astronauts and cargo to and from low-Earth orbit while focusing on its deep space missions.
The four GOP presidential hopefuls discussed NASA, human spaceflight and America's space policy for nearly 12 minutes during the heated debate, the last one before Floridians vote in the Republican primary on Tuesday (Jan. 31). Here's a sampling of what the candidates said.
Romney (asked by debate moderator Wolf Blitzer if Gingrich's moon colony goal is too expensive): That's an enormous expense, and right now I want to be spending money here. Of course, the Space Coast has been badly hurt, and I believe in a very vibrant and strong space program.
To define the mission for our space program, I'd like to bring in the top professors that relate to space areas, of physics, top people from industry, because I want to make sure what we're doing in space translates into commercial products. I want to bring in our top military experts on space needs, and finally, of course, people from the administration, if I have an administration.
I'd like to come together and talk about different options, and the cost … I believe in a manned space program; I'd like to see whether they believe in the same thing. I'm not looking for a colony on the moon. I think the cost of that would be in the hundreds of billions, if not trillions. I'd rather be rebuilding housing here in the U.S.
Gingrich: (on how he'd achieve his moon colony goal while keeping taxes low): You start with a question: Do you really believe NASA in its current form is the most effective way of leveraging investment in space? We now have a bureaucracy sitting there which has managed to mismanage the program so well that, in fact, we have no lift vehicle …
I believe by the use of prizes, by the use of incentives, by opening up the spaceport so that it's available on a ready basis for commercial flight, by using common sense — for example, the Atlas 5 could easily be fixed into a man-capable vehicle so you didn't have to rely on a Russian launch or a Chinese launch —there are many things you can do to leverage accelerating the development of space.
Lindbergh flew to Paris for a $25,000 prize. If we had a handful of serious prizes, you'd see an extraordinary number of people out there trying to get to the moon first in order to build that. And I'd like to have an American on the moon before the Chinese get there. [Photos of NASA's Apollo Moon Missions]
Santorum: One of the big problems we have in our country today is that young people are not getting involved in math and science and not dreaming big dreams. And so NASA, or the space program, or space, is important. NASA is one component of that. Our space defense is another area, I think both of which are very, very important.
I agree that we need to bring good minds in the private sector much more involved in NASA than the government bureaucracy we have. But let's just be honest. We're on a $1.2 trillion deficit right now. We're borrowing 40 cents of every dollar. And to go out there and promise new programs and big ideas, that's a great thing to maybe get votes. But it's not a responsible thing when you have to go out and say that we have to start cutting programs, not talking about how to grow them…
Those are things that sound good and maybe make big promises to people, but we've got to be responsible in the way we allocate our resources.
Paul: I don't think we should go to the moon. I think we maybe should send some politicians up there…
The amount of money we spend on space, the only part that I would vote for is for national defense purposes. Not to explore the moon and go to Mars — I think that's fantastic, I love those ideas, but I also don't like the idea of building government-business partnerships.
If we had a healthy economy and had more Bill Gateses and more Warren Buffetts, the money would be there. It should be privatized. And the people who work in the industry, if you had that — there would be jobs in aerospace.
I just think that we don't need a bigger, newer program… I mean, health care or something else deserves a lot more priority than going to the moon. So I would be very reluctant. But space technology should be followed up to some degree for national defense purposes, but not just for the fun of it, and, you know, for scientific purposes. [Top 10 Space Weapons]
Gingrich: It is really important to go back and look at what John F. Kennedy said in May of 1961. When he said we will go to the moon in this decade, no American had orbited the Earth. The technology didn't exist. And a generation of young people went into science and engineering and technology, and they were tremendously excited, and they had a future.
I actually agree with Dr. Paul. The program I envision would probably end up being 90 percent private sector. But it would be based on a desire to change the government rules and change the government regulations to get NASA out of the business of trying to run rockets, and to create a system where it's easy for private-sector people to be engaged.
I want to see us move from one launch occasionally to six or seven launches a day… I do not want to be the country that, having gotten to the moon first, turned around and said, "It doesn't really matter. Let the Chinese dominate space. What do we care?" I think that is a path of national decline, and I am for America being a great country, not a country in decline.
Romney: I spent 25 years in business. If I had a business executive come to me and say they wanted to spend a few hundred billion dollars to put a colony on the moon, I'd say, "You're fired."
The idea that corporate America wants to go off to the moon and build a colony there — it may be a big idea, but it's not a good idea.
Look, this idea of going state to state and promising what people want to hear — promising billions, hundreds of billions of dollars to make people happy — that's what got us into the trouble we're in now. We've got to say no to this kind of spending.
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Science-Fiction Authors Agree: Newt's Moon Idea Isn't So Crazy
From the Atlantic: Science-Fiction Authors Agree: Newt's Moon Idea Isn't So Crazy
Yesterday, Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich turned heads when he announced his plan to establish a permanent moon base by the year 2020. Gingrich's critics were swift to attack the practicality of his plan, as well as point out that he was pandering to America's wounded sense of virility stemming from the faltering of our own space program. And yet Newt might not be completely crazy. In fact, a number of science-fiction writers would likely agree that there are more benefits of lunar colonization than just positive polling numbers among Star Trek fans.
Perhaps the most complete and detailed portrait of lunar society can be found in Robert Heinlein's 1966 novel, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. The premise: In 2075, the moon, once a prison colony and depository for political dissidents, has become a thriving frontier society with roughly several million inhabitants living in "pressures" beneath the surface. According to the book, the moon's many attractive assets include:
1. Water and agriculture
In The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, the moon's primary commercial activity revolves around water harvested from ice buried deep beneath the surface. That same water is used in massive underground farms whose products is shipped back down to Earth (It's worth noting that shipping things back to Earth is far easier than shipping things from Earth, since escape velocity is only 2.38 km/s compared to Earth's 11.186 km/s). However, it's this very practice that leads to lunar revolt after the colonists decide they want a cut of the profits and an end to the draining of their natural resources. Best to draw up a contract first.
2. The fountain of youth
According to Heinlein, the moon's comparatively low gravity could help extend life indefinitely by alleviating stress on the heart, bones, and organs. Many of Luna City's residents are well over 100 = but are mistaken for 30-somethings by visiting tourists. The only downside is that once your heart gets used pumping blood at low gravity, returning to earth becomes a dangerous proposition.
3. Open marriage
Perhaps what really caught Newt's eye are lunar society's marriage practices (he did once speculate about what it would be like to have sex in space). Because of its origins as a prison colony, the male/female ratio is generously skewed towards men roughly 2:1. As a result, lunar women are given the reigns to take multiple husbands and form complex group marriages, though Newt may not be comfortable being just one in a stable of husbands.
At the very least it's a more worthwhile enterprise than building an electrified fence across the border with Mexico.
Yesterday, Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich turned heads when he announced his plan to establish a permanent moon base by the year 2020. Gingrich's critics were swift to attack the practicality of his plan, as well as point out that he was pandering to America's wounded sense of virility stemming from the faltering of our own space program. And yet Newt might not be completely crazy. In fact, a number of science-fiction writers would likely agree that there are more benefits of lunar colonization than just positive polling numbers among Star Trek fans.
Perhaps the most complete and detailed portrait of lunar society can be found in Robert Heinlein's 1966 novel, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. The premise: In 2075, the moon, once a prison colony and depository for political dissidents, has become a thriving frontier society with roughly several million inhabitants living in "pressures" beneath the surface. According to the book, the moon's many attractive assets include:
1. Water and agriculture
In The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, the moon's primary commercial activity revolves around water harvested from ice buried deep beneath the surface. That same water is used in massive underground farms whose products is shipped back down to Earth (It's worth noting that shipping things back to Earth is far easier than shipping things from Earth, since escape velocity is only 2.38 km/s compared to Earth's 11.186 km/s). However, it's this very practice that leads to lunar revolt after the colonists decide they want a cut of the profits and an end to the draining of their natural resources. Best to draw up a contract first.
2. The fountain of youth
According to Heinlein, the moon's comparatively low gravity could help extend life indefinitely by alleviating stress on the heart, bones, and organs. Many of Luna City's residents are well over 100 = but are mistaken for 30-somethings by visiting tourists. The only downside is that once your heart gets used pumping blood at low gravity, returning to earth becomes a dangerous proposition.
3. Open marriage
Perhaps what really caught Newt's eye are lunar society's marriage practices (he did once speculate about what it would be like to have sex in space). Because of its origins as a prison colony, the male/female ratio is generously skewed towards men roughly 2:1. As a result, lunar women are given the reigns to take multiple husbands and form complex group marriages, though Newt may not be comfortable being just one in a stable of husbands.
At the very least it's a more worthwhile enterprise than building an electrified fence across the border with Mexico.
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Coalition for Space Exploration Introduces New Leadership for 2012
From Space Ref: Coalition for Space Exploration Introduces New Leadership for 2012
Northrop Grumman's Lon Rains and Ball Aerospace's Mary Engola to guide the Coalition's 2012 endeavors
WASHINGTON, D.C. -The Coalition for Space Exploration (Coalition) today announced veteran aerospace communicators Lon Rains of Northrop Grumman and Mary Engola of Ball Aerospace will lead the Coalition in 2012. Rains and Engola will serve as the new chair and deputy chair, respectively. Each will serve a one-year term, effective January through December 2012.
The Coalition for Space Exploration is a group of space industry businesses and organizations collaborating to ensure that the United States remains the leader in space, science and technology. By reinforcing the value and benefits of space exploration with the nation's leaders, the Coalition intends to build lasting support for a long-term, sustainable, strategic direction for space exploration. Through marketing, communications and outreach efforts, the Coalition highlights the benefits of a robust American space program.
Rains will chair the Coalition this year after serving as deputy chair in 2011. Rains works as the sector director of strategic communications for Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems in Manhattan Beach, Calif. He was a member of the founding staff of Space News and served as that publication's editor for 15 years. He is a recognized space expert and has made appearances on noted television shows, including CNN Prime News, ABC World News Tonight, NBC Nightly News and C-SPAN's Washington Journal. He was the 2009 recipient of the National Space Club's Media Award.
"Now more than ever, the Coalition's mission is fundamentally important to our nation," said Rains. "Our space exploration program is at a critical stage right now. As a Coalition, we intend to advance the dialogue surrounding the importance of space exploration to our country and to our ability to compete and lead on a global level."
Engola, Coalition 2012 deputy chair, has been an active member since the Coalition's inception in 2004. She served as the Coalition's 2008 chair and in 2009 she led the Multimedia & Grassroots subcommittee. She is currently the manager of customer and industry relations at Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp.
"I am honored to serve in the Coalition leadership, because I believe in the Coalition's mission to broaden support for space exploration," said Engola. "As the country reevaluates its economic priorities, the Coalition will strive to ensure space exploration remains a national imperative."
Through effective outreach, the Coalition fosters a national conversation about space exploration among the leadership of member organizations, with other space-related organizations, NASA, legislators and the general public.
About the Coalition for Space Exploration
The Coalition for Space Exploration is a group of space industry businesses and advocacy groups that collaborates to ensure that the United States remains the leader in space, science and technology by reinforcing the value and benefits of space exploration with the public and our nation's leaders, and building lasting support for a long-term, sustainable strategic direction for space exploration.
Northrop Grumman's Lon Rains and Ball Aerospace's Mary Engola to guide the Coalition's 2012 endeavors
WASHINGTON, D.C. -The Coalition for Space Exploration (Coalition) today announced veteran aerospace communicators Lon Rains of Northrop Grumman and Mary Engola of Ball Aerospace will lead the Coalition in 2012. Rains and Engola will serve as the new chair and deputy chair, respectively. Each will serve a one-year term, effective January through December 2012.
The Coalition for Space Exploration is a group of space industry businesses and organizations collaborating to ensure that the United States remains the leader in space, science and technology. By reinforcing the value and benefits of space exploration with the nation's leaders, the Coalition intends to build lasting support for a long-term, sustainable, strategic direction for space exploration. Through marketing, communications and outreach efforts, the Coalition highlights the benefits of a robust American space program.
Rains will chair the Coalition this year after serving as deputy chair in 2011. Rains works as the sector director of strategic communications for Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems in Manhattan Beach, Calif. He was a member of the founding staff of Space News and served as that publication's editor for 15 years. He is a recognized space expert and has made appearances on noted television shows, including CNN Prime News, ABC World News Tonight, NBC Nightly News and C-SPAN's Washington Journal. He was the 2009 recipient of the National Space Club's Media Award.
"Now more than ever, the Coalition's mission is fundamentally important to our nation," said Rains. "Our space exploration program is at a critical stage right now. As a Coalition, we intend to advance the dialogue surrounding the importance of space exploration to our country and to our ability to compete and lead on a global level."
Engola, Coalition 2012 deputy chair, has been an active member since the Coalition's inception in 2004. She served as the Coalition's 2008 chair and in 2009 she led the Multimedia & Grassroots subcommittee. She is currently the manager of customer and industry relations at Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp.
"I am honored to serve in the Coalition leadership, because I believe in the Coalition's mission to broaden support for space exploration," said Engola. "As the country reevaluates its economic priorities, the Coalition will strive to ensure space exploration remains a national imperative."
Through effective outreach, the Coalition fosters a national conversation about space exploration among the leadership of member organizations, with other space-related organizations, NASA, legislators and the general public.
About the Coalition for Space Exploration
The Coalition for Space Exploration is a group of space industry businesses and advocacy groups that collaborates to ensure that the United States remains the leader in space, science and technology by reinforcing the value and benefits of space exploration with the public and our nation's leaders, and building lasting support for a long-term, sustainable strategic direction for space exploration.
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
GOP contenders want private sector to rescue space program
From the Washington Post: GOP contenders want private sector to rescue space program
TAMPA, Fla. — Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich want to revive Florida’s space coast.
But the Republican presidential contenders, eager to address a key local concern in Monday’s debate, say they don’t want the federal government to spend too much in the effort.
Romney says the space exploration should be a priority. He’s calling on NASA to partner with the military and private business interests and educational institutions to help pay for it.
Gingrich wants to offer the private sector special prizes. He says that such incentives, as opposed to a government spending, would help Americans go back to the moon, explore Mars, and develop extraterrestrial space exploration.
Gingrich says the prizes could create a romantic and exciting future for the space program.
TAMPA, Fla. — Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich want to revive Florida’s space coast.
But the Republican presidential contenders, eager to address a key local concern in Monday’s debate, say they don’t want the federal government to spend too much in the effort.
Romney says the space exploration should be a priority. He’s calling on NASA to partner with the military and private business interests and educational institutions to help pay for it.
Gingrich wants to offer the private sector special prizes. He says that such incentives, as opposed to a government spending, would help Americans go back to the moon, explore Mars, and develop extraterrestrial space exploration.
Gingrich says the prizes could create a romantic and exciting future for the space program.
Monday, January 23, 2012
Challenger Learning Center Missions Ready For Launch
The Intelligencer Wheeling-News: Challenger Learning Center Missions Ready For Launch
WHEELING - Many institutions of higher learning have a mission, but the Challenger Learning Center at Wheeling Jesuit University has 15.
The center started the new academic year last fall by adding four new programs. Of its 15 "missions" that simulate space exploration for students of all ages, four of the programs are on site and 11 are available off site via the Internet as e-missions.
Micronauts, the lone new on-site program, is a space science adventure for students in kindergarten through third grade. It is the first program developed specifically for younger students. The "Discovery Mission" is a one-hour, hands-on simulation that takes place in the new Micronauts spacecraft designed specifically for the younger "astronaut." During the mission, students conduct a series of innovative, standards-based activities and experiments.
"It's a very cool mission," said Jackie Shia, director of the Challenger Learning Center. "It's just one of our new programs."
The purpose is to challenge and enlighten the young students to learn principles of science, math and engineering as well as cooperation and problem solving while in a fun environment. Shia said it is a unique encounter with science and space technology.
In the Discovery Mission, students pretend to become part of a team of scientists, engineers, and mathematicians on board the International Space Station. They participate in experiments and activities like examining objects under a digital microscope, exploring and identifying planets and investigating color, sounds, rocks, magnetism, and more.
Each activity is aimed to help students learn more about the environment and planet Earth. The activities also help develop critical thinking skills and discovery of basic science, math and literacy concepts. Each of the new missions has been under development for more than a year.
"By placing participants into the roles of astronauts and scientists trying to solve a real-life problem, they are hooked," Shia said. "This fascination with space science exploration permeates the hearts and minds of young people."
"The goal of the missions is to improve students' problem-solving skills and enhance their creative and critical thinking ability. It also teaches the importance of teamwork while fostering a long-term interest in science and math."
"The missions are based on the latest developments in cognitive science research, which have proven to increase students' achievements and attitudes toward science, math and technology," she added.
E-missions are similar programs designed for older students at various levels. They are simulated, problem-based learning adventures delivered into classrooms via distance-learning technology. They involve using the Internet and video conferencing and are done live with a "flight director" at the Challenger Learning Center on the WJU campus.
Two of the new programs are for middle school students and the third for high school students and older. The first is called WV Storm and is an intense, all-inclusive, simulation mission during which students become part of a fictional, extreme weather response unit. It takes between 60 and 90 minutes to complete.
During the mission, students work with federal governmental agencies and travel throughout the country to help local emergency management personnel deal with possible emergency situations that may be caused by extreme weather conditions. Students, in contact with a "chief meteorologist" on the WJU campus, interact to complete given tasks.
Students are shown video clips and images to show weather conditions in West Virginia areas they monitor to give an authentic feel. At the conclusion, they are updated on the aftermath of the storm and the outcome of their problem-solving and decision-making skills.
The second new e-mission is called "Hurricane Alert" and is similar to WV Storm in how it is conducted. It involves putting to use critical thinking skills and scientific knowledge to track hurricanes and predict locations of hurricane landfall. It enhances student knowledge of meteorology and hurricane forecasting.
In all missions teachers are offered free training and curriculum packages are provided. In addition, a test is conducted prior to the actual program to assure computer, and video conference compatibility.
The last new mission, for older students, is called CyberSurgeons. It is also an intense experience, according to officials, during which students are required to quickly diagnose and treat unusual medical cases. Teams of students use their critical thinking skills and scientific knowledge to solve emergency medical problems.
They become part of an emergency medical team on a "mercy ship" traveling up the Amazon River. The ship is equipped with high-tech hospital equipment and medical research capabilities. It also takes between 60 and 90 minutes to complete. Students are provided with pre-mission lesson plans to help them prepare.
The Challenger Learning Center has been honored nine years for having served the most children of all 48 worldwide centers offering similar programs. Last year it made more than 1,000 video connections. Shia also noted she is looking for part-time mission directors.
For additional information about Challenger missions, call the Challenger Learning Center at 304-243-8740.
WHEELING - Many institutions of higher learning have a mission, but the Challenger Learning Center at Wheeling Jesuit University has 15.
The center started the new academic year last fall by adding four new programs. Of its 15 "missions" that simulate space exploration for students of all ages, four of the programs are on site and 11 are available off site via the Internet as e-missions.
Micronauts, the lone new on-site program, is a space science adventure for students in kindergarten through third grade. It is the first program developed specifically for younger students. The "Discovery Mission" is a one-hour, hands-on simulation that takes place in the new Micronauts spacecraft designed specifically for the younger "astronaut." During the mission, students conduct a series of innovative, standards-based activities and experiments.
"It's a very cool mission," said Jackie Shia, director of the Challenger Learning Center. "It's just one of our new programs."
The purpose is to challenge and enlighten the young students to learn principles of science, math and engineering as well as cooperation and problem solving while in a fun environment. Shia said it is a unique encounter with science and space technology.
In the Discovery Mission, students pretend to become part of a team of scientists, engineers, and mathematicians on board the International Space Station. They participate in experiments and activities like examining objects under a digital microscope, exploring and identifying planets and investigating color, sounds, rocks, magnetism, and more.
Each activity is aimed to help students learn more about the environment and planet Earth. The activities also help develop critical thinking skills and discovery of basic science, math and literacy concepts. Each of the new missions has been under development for more than a year.
"By placing participants into the roles of astronauts and scientists trying to solve a real-life problem, they are hooked," Shia said. "This fascination with space science exploration permeates the hearts and minds of young people."
"The goal of the missions is to improve students' problem-solving skills and enhance their creative and critical thinking ability. It also teaches the importance of teamwork while fostering a long-term interest in science and math."
"The missions are based on the latest developments in cognitive science research, which have proven to increase students' achievements and attitudes toward science, math and technology," she added.
E-missions are similar programs designed for older students at various levels. They are simulated, problem-based learning adventures delivered into classrooms via distance-learning technology. They involve using the Internet and video conferencing and are done live with a "flight director" at the Challenger Learning Center on the WJU campus.
Two of the new programs are for middle school students and the third for high school students and older. The first is called WV Storm and is an intense, all-inclusive, simulation mission during which students become part of a fictional, extreme weather response unit. It takes between 60 and 90 minutes to complete.
During the mission, students work with federal governmental agencies and travel throughout the country to help local emergency management personnel deal with possible emergency situations that may be caused by extreme weather conditions. Students, in contact with a "chief meteorologist" on the WJU campus, interact to complete given tasks.
Students are shown video clips and images to show weather conditions in West Virginia areas they monitor to give an authentic feel. At the conclusion, they are updated on the aftermath of the storm and the outcome of their problem-solving and decision-making skills.
The second new e-mission is called "Hurricane Alert" and is similar to WV Storm in how it is conducted. It involves putting to use critical thinking skills and scientific knowledge to track hurricanes and predict locations of hurricane landfall. It enhances student knowledge of meteorology and hurricane forecasting.
In all missions teachers are offered free training and curriculum packages are provided. In addition, a test is conducted prior to the actual program to assure computer, and video conference compatibility.
The last new mission, for older students, is called CyberSurgeons. It is also an intense experience, according to officials, during which students are required to quickly diagnose and treat unusual medical cases. Teams of students use their critical thinking skills and scientific knowledge to solve emergency medical problems.
They become part of an emergency medical team on a "mercy ship" traveling up the Amazon River. The ship is equipped with high-tech hospital equipment and medical research capabilities. It also takes between 60 and 90 minutes to complete. Students are provided with pre-mission lesson plans to help them prepare.
The Challenger Learning Center has been honored nine years for having served the most children of all 48 worldwide centers offering similar programs. Last year it made more than 1,000 video connections. Shia also noted she is looking for part-time mission directors.
For additional information about Challenger missions, call the Challenger Learning Center at 304-243-8740.
Thursday, January 19, 2012
O’ROURKE: NASA is still a go
Yale Daily News: O’ROURKE: NASA is still a go
My friends and family keep throwing cold water on my passion for space exploration. They believe news reports that President Obama cancelled the human spaceflight program, dooming NASA to slowly wither and die, and they try to nudge me away from denial. Fortunately, their narrative is wildly inaccurate; space exploration is poised for an exciting future.
The national media confuses the deserved cancellation of the space shuttle program with the death of space exploration. In reality, commercial companies will soon replace the outdated space shuttle to launch cargo and crew into orbit around Earth. NASA will no longer focus on providing taxi service to the International Space Station. Rather, a quest to explore the uncharted cosmos with both robots and humans will exploit the imaginative possibility of space.
In short, NASA is recapturing the excitement of the Space Race — without the fear of the Cold War.
When the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1957, Americans panicked because the shiny, beeping satellite represented an existential crisis. People evolved with a basic urge to explore the unknown, and their ability was threatened. Desperate to preserve American preeminence, NASA executed the spectacular Apollo Program, culminating in the 1969-’72 series of moon landings.
Most scientists never lost the drive to push the envelope in space, making the last four decades a golden age of exploration. Spacecrafts have visited every planet in our solar system; the Hubble telescope collected breathtaking images of distant galaxies and nebulae. Planetary scientists have explicitly prioritized frequent small- to medium-scale missions over occasional flagship efforts, ensuring the steady return of engaging science. With the ongoing detection of shockingly diverse planets orbiting distant stars, the possibilities for discovery are virtually limitless.
In contrast, the human spaceflight program lost luster in 1975 after American and Soviet spacecraft docked above the Earth, ending the Space Race. Lacking either an obvious threat from a foreign superpower or an ambitious new goal, public interest in human spaceflight quickly waned, prompting advocates of space exploration to hype engineering advances in lieu of novel excursions.
But technology development is only exciting if conducted in pursuit of an accessible, exciting goal. The space shuttle was the most complex machine ever built, yet launches soon seemed routine and even boring. The International Space Station is closer to Earth than Los Angeles is to San Francisco. So a new emotional focus for the space program would be cause for celebration, not despair.
Although the national media enjoys blaming President Obama for killing the shuttle program, credit actually belongs to President George W. Bush, who scheduled its cancellation for 2011 to liberate funding for the Constellation Program to return astronauts to the moon.
President Obama took decisive action in 2010 after an independent review panel concluded that the Constellation Program was hopelessly over budget and behind schedule. Instead of killing NASA, he committed to increasing overall funding by $6 billion over five years. The International Space Station will be operated as a national laboratory for science research through 2020 and NASA will continue designing a powerful rocket capable of reaching destinations beyond Earth’s orbit, such as asteroids and Mars.
Most importantly, President Obama strongly supports contracting with commercial companies to transport crew and cargo to orbit around Earth. Private entities are demonstrating impressive capabilities. For example, SpaceX, one of many commercial spaceflight corporations, launched its Dragon spacecraft into orbit around Earth and recovered it safely in 2010. Cargo delivery to the International Space Station should occur this year and the first crewed Dragon flight is planned for 2015. Space tourism and trips beyond the earth/moon system will follow.
Of course, you will not cheer the continuation of a vigorous space program unless you consider it a worthwhile endeavor.
After all, reasonable people have criticized the space program since its birth as a tremendous waste of money. According to several studies, however, the average American overestimates the percentage of the federal budget allocated to NASA (roughly 0.6 percent) by at least a factor of 10. Compared to expenditures like wars and bank bailouts, NASA appropriations might as well be a rounding error.
Eliminating funding for space exploration would not increase spending on other worthy causes, despite rhetorical attempts to pit NASA’s funding against domestic programs. In the current political climate, the money would likely be thrown into the pit of deficit reduction and tax cuts.
Conventional defenses of space exploration are pragmatic: Dollars are spent on Earth, not in space, to employ skilled workers. Commercial spinoffs from NASA technology — everything from life rafts to clean energy technology — improve lives every day. Without satellites, our ability to navigate, communicate and predict weather would vanish. But none of these reasons ignited the Space Race.
Ultimately, to support space exploration is simply to be human. Footprints on the moon and the tracks of Mars rovers both provide an unadulterated, natural thrill. People and robots in space are uniquely capable of expanding our imagination, inspiring life-changing technology, motivating science and engineering education. Thanks to President Obama, the stage is set for decades of adventure.
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Former space shuttle launch director joins ULA
From Spaceflight Now: Former space shuttle launch director joins ULA
As another sign of the changing landscape in the U.S. space program, NASA's long-time space shuttle launch director has joined United Launch Alliance to lead the commercial firm's human spaceflight operations.
Mike Leinbach presided over the final space shuttle missions as the launch director from his perch on the top row of Firing Room 4 in the Complex 39 launch control center, giving astronaut crews his signature sendoff of "good luck, Godspeed and have a little fun up there."
But once the winged spaceships finished flying last summer, the future of human space missions by the U.S. have been stalled while waiting for development of commercial replacements.
United Launch Alliance, which was formed in December 2006 to blend Lockheed Martin's Atlas 5 and Boeing's Delta 4 rocket programs into a collaborative organization for the Air Force's Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle program, is vying to be the rocket-maker of choice for carrying future piloted craft.
The Atlas 5 has been picked by Boeing's CST-100 capsule, Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser mini-spaceplane and Blue Origin's vehicle, which represent three of the three competitors in NASA's commercial crew launch program. SpaceX plans to use its own Falcon 9 booster for the Dragon capsule.
"With ULA having been selected as the launch vehicle of choice for three of the four Commercial Crew Development companies, Mike's expertise in human launch systems provides a strong synergy in bringing together two world-class launch cultures," said Jerry Jamison, ULA's vice president of launch operations.
In addition to the commercial efforts using Atlas 5, Lockheed Martin's work to develop the Orion deep-space capsule to take humans beyond low-Earth-orbit will undergo an initial flight test atop ULA's Delta 4-Heavy rocket in 2014.
"We are fortunate to have Mike with his wealth of human spaceflight experience join the ULA team," said George Sowers, ULA's vice president of Business Development. "His background in leading overall space shuttle launch activities for more than a decade, executing 37 space shuttle launches, will be invaluable as we develop human spaceflight capabilities for our Atlas and Delta systems."
A native of Reading, Pa., Leinbach graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Architecture in 1976 and a Master of Engineering in Civil Engineering with emphasis in structural dynamics in 1981 from the University of Virginia, Charlottesville.
He began his NASA career in 1984 as a structural engineer in the design engineering directorate and served as a lead design engineer for a variety of launch pad systems including the orbiter weather protection and emergency egress slide wire systems.
He advanced to the role of NASA test director in 1988 to direct daily operations at Launch Complex 39. In 1991, he was named shuttle test director, conducting the terminal countdown and launch of 17 missions.
A stint in the late 1990s then saw him serve the deputy director of the space station hardware integration office to oversee processing at KSC and integrated testing of the station elements before assembly in orbit.
Then came the role that Leinbach is most remembered for, becoming the space shuttle launch director in August 2000 as the person to give the final "go" for liftoff at T-minus 9 minutes.
Leinbach and his wife Charlotte reside in Scottsmoor, Fla.
After the final shuttle landed in July, Leinbach told reporters: "There are four phases of change, right? And it doesn't matter what the change is, any major change in one's life you go through these four stages -- it's denial, anger, exploration and acceptance," he said. "We've all been through that now in the shuttle program and we've accepted the fact that it's over. This is the end of the program, and people will move on and do well. ... It's important, but it's not the end of the world. The sun will rise again tomorrow."
Monday, January 16, 2012
Russian Mars moon probe crashes down
From Nature: Russian Mars moon probe crashes down
The Phobos-Grunt spacecraft, which was meant to travel to a moon of Mars and back, has crashed back to Earth. The ambitious but doomed probe almost certainly splashed into the southern Pacific Ocean on 15 January, between 16:59 and 17:47 gmt.
The exact time and location of the re-entry is still unclear: the craft was travelling on an unknown trajectory at around 29,000 kilometres per hour, and the most advanced tracking equipment belongs to top-secret US military satellites that are not accessible to astronomers.
Current estimates are based on predictions of the trajectory, and it will take time to verify them. “This truly is rocket science, not something that is fairly easy to do. It is not like on TV,” says Marco Langbroek, an archaeologist and amateur satellite tracker at the Free University of Amsterdam. “The southern Pacific is not a good spot to keep track of objects. It is too large and empty,” he adds.
The probe is expected to have broken up, and only about 200 kilograms of fragments would have made it through Earth’s atmosphere, says Heiner Klinkrad, head of the Space Debris Office of the European Space Agency (ESA) in Darmstadt, Germany, which coordinated international efforts to track the re-entry. The fragments are probably scattered across an area of thousands of square kilometres of ocean, he says.
Phobos-Grunt would still have had 11 tonnes of unused, toxic fuel on board, but this would not have made the journey back to Earth. “Analyses point to a breaking up of the aluminium tanks at over 100 kilometres altitude,” explains Klinkrad.
Doomed mission
The probe launched on 8 November last year. It was heading for Mars’s moon Phobos, to scoop up a soil sample and return it to Earth; the craft's name is Russian for Phobos-Soil. Along the way, it was to deliver a small Chinese satellite into orbit around Mars.
But something went wrong. The boosters that should have sent the rocket out of Earth's orbit didn’t fire, leaving the craft to tumble back to Earth. The reasons for the mishap may never be known. Roald Sagdeev, former head of the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IKI) in Moscow, and now a physicist at the University of Maryland in College Park, says that there are two possibilities: either the on-board computer didn’t give the command correctly, which suggests a mistake in the software; or the engine didn’t work properly. Both of these mistakes could be the result of routine errors, says Sagdeev.
He hopes that the reputation of the Russian space-science programme will not be damaged. The mistakes were not scientific, but the fault of the space industry, he says. Furthermore, the project, which began in 1999, suffered because many of its original workers have retired, and, says Sagdeev, the younger replacements weren’t properly trained.
But Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, says that the entire project aimed too high. “We already know the main reason why the mission failed: it wasn’t managed properly,” he says. “It was hugely overambitious given the resources available.”
In 1996, a previous Russian mission to the red planet — dubbed Mars 96 — also failed just after launch. “They need to do a few small projects to get themselves some practice,” suggests McDowell.
The failure of Phobos-Grunt could lead to major changes in Russia’s space industry, says Sagdeev. He would like a return to the tight military-level technical control of Soviet times. “I remember it was very tough,” he says.
The scientific yearning to reach Phobos remains. “The crash of the spacecraft is a very big tragedy for the whole science community,” says Alexander Zakharov, Phobos-Grunt’s project scientist at the IKI. Zakharov is hopeful that Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, will agree to another mission to the Martian moon. “With samples from this moon we can get information about the origin of the Solar System,” says Zakharov.
In the meantime, Russian space scientists are in discussions with ESA and NASA to join the ExoMars project, which hopes to send missions to Mars in 2016 and 2018.
The Phobos-Grunt spacecraft, which was meant to travel to a moon of Mars and back, has crashed back to Earth. The ambitious but doomed probe almost certainly splashed into the southern Pacific Ocean on 15 January, between 16:59 and 17:47 gmt.
The exact time and location of the re-entry is still unclear: the craft was travelling on an unknown trajectory at around 29,000 kilometres per hour, and the most advanced tracking equipment belongs to top-secret US military satellites that are not accessible to astronomers.
Current estimates are based on predictions of the trajectory, and it will take time to verify them. “This truly is rocket science, not something that is fairly easy to do. It is not like on TV,” says Marco Langbroek, an archaeologist and amateur satellite tracker at the Free University of Amsterdam. “The southern Pacific is not a good spot to keep track of objects. It is too large and empty,” he adds.
The probe is expected to have broken up, and only about 200 kilograms of fragments would have made it through Earth’s atmosphere, says Heiner Klinkrad, head of the Space Debris Office of the European Space Agency (ESA) in Darmstadt, Germany, which coordinated international efforts to track the re-entry. The fragments are probably scattered across an area of thousands of square kilometres of ocean, he says.
Phobos-Grunt would still have had 11 tonnes of unused, toxic fuel on board, but this would not have made the journey back to Earth. “Analyses point to a breaking up of the aluminium tanks at over 100 kilometres altitude,” explains Klinkrad.
Doomed mission
The probe launched on 8 November last year. It was heading for Mars’s moon Phobos, to scoop up a soil sample and return it to Earth; the craft's name is Russian for Phobos-Soil. Along the way, it was to deliver a small Chinese satellite into orbit around Mars.
But something went wrong. The boosters that should have sent the rocket out of Earth's orbit didn’t fire, leaving the craft to tumble back to Earth. The reasons for the mishap may never be known. Roald Sagdeev, former head of the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IKI) in Moscow, and now a physicist at the University of Maryland in College Park, says that there are two possibilities: either the on-board computer didn’t give the command correctly, which suggests a mistake in the software; or the engine didn’t work properly. Both of these mistakes could be the result of routine errors, says Sagdeev.
He hopes that the reputation of the Russian space-science programme will not be damaged. The mistakes were not scientific, but the fault of the space industry, he says. Furthermore, the project, which began in 1999, suffered because many of its original workers have retired, and, says Sagdeev, the younger replacements weren’t properly trained.
But Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, says that the entire project aimed too high. “We already know the main reason why the mission failed: it wasn’t managed properly,” he says. “It was hugely overambitious given the resources available.”
In 1996, a previous Russian mission to the red planet — dubbed Mars 96 — also failed just after launch. “They need to do a few small projects to get themselves some practice,” suggests McDowell.
The failure of Phobos-Grunt could lead to major changes in Russia’s space industry, says Sagdeev. He would like a return to the tight military-level technical control of Soviet times. “I remember it was very tough,” he says.
The scientific yearning to reach Phobos remains. “The crash of the spacecraft is a very big tragedy for the whole science community,” says Alexander Zakharov, Phobos-Grunt’s project scientist at the IKI. Zakharov is hopeful that Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, will agree to another mission to the Martian moon. “With samples from this moon we can get information about the origin of the Solar System,” says Zakharov.
In the meantime, Russian space scientists are in discussions with ESA and NASA to join the ExoMars project, which hopes to send missions to Mars in 2016 and 2018.
Friday, January 13, 2012
The High Cost of Government Waste
From The American: The High Cost of Government Waste
Many promising space exploration proposals have been abandoned over the years in the name of more pressing social priorities.
When presidential candidate Mitt Romney ridiculed former House Speaker Newt Gingrich for favoring a mining colony on the moon during a recent presidential debate, he undoubtedly thought he was scoring political points. But anyone watching who had ever thrilled to Stanley Kubrick’s thoughtful depiction of interplanetary travel in 2001: A Space Odyssey likely admired the Speaker’s spirited defense of his off-world agenda.
There are many ways to measure the cost of wasteful spending in the decades since the Apollo moon landings—the size of the current national budget deficit, surveys showing Americans’ growing mistrust of government, or the number of duplicative and inefficient federal programs.
Yet perhaps the most disheartening metric is the number of promising space exploration proposals that have been abandoned in the name of “more pressing social priorities.”
Only now, as the nation finally comes to terms with the very overspending that was supposedly being avoided, does the price of undisciplined domestic spending, combined with a failure of technological nerve, begin to become painfully clear. Polls by CBS News, America Online, Newsweek, and others have documented the public’s increasing disappointment and even anger over their country’s lack of progress in space, feelings that in retrospect are clearly justified.
Gingrich was so taken with Zubrin’s idea that he suggested an entrepreneurial twist of his own: offer a $20 billion award to the first private organization to land a crew on Mars.
Go back to 1989 when, in response to a call by the first President Bush for a plan to continue manned exploration beyond the moon landings, a team representing both NASA scientists and major aerospace contractors spent three months designing the “Report of the 90 Day Study on Human Exploration of the Moon and Mars.”
The team’s recommendations included an orbiting facility three times as large as the current International Space Station, additional orbiting hangers and space docks, a moon base, a fleet of trans-lunar shuttles, and the construction of a new class of space ship for voyages to Mars and beyond.
The report never included an official budget, but a generally accepted estimate of $450 billion was leaked to the press and immediately derided as impossibly extravagant.
Proponents countered that the cost of the project was to be spread over 30 years, making for an average annual expenditure of $15 billion. But, perhaps because of political sensitivities, they stopped short of making their most persuasive argument: the price could probably have been covered, not with tax increases, but by trimming waste, fraud, and abuse elsewhere in the budget.
Indeed, it was just four years later when the first annual assessment of federal overspending by the Washington policy group Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) documented just how true this was. By cutting just 10 percent of the estimated $170.4 billion in needless or redundant spending, President Bush’s visionary proposal could have been fully funded. As it was, the “Report of the 90 Day Study” died within months of its publication, ironically a victim of budget-cutting rhetoric.
To the credit of space advocates, the “Report of the 90 Day Study” was followed over the years by a series of more modest efforts, each attempting in its own way to chart an efficient course off the planet.
Government accomplishment in complex engineering stands in stark contrast to most everything else it attempts.
In 1994, for example, NASA agreed to take over management of the already constructed DC-X rocket, dubbed the “Delta Clipper,” from the Department of Defense’s Strategic Defense Initiative. Mimicking technology suggested by 1950s science fiction films, the DC-X had been built by McDonnell Douglas to both take off and land vertically, a feat that could eventually facilitate missions to lower gravity destinations, such as the moon and Mars.
During his first term, the second President Bush received initial congressional funding for another comprehensive space proposal, the Constellation program. Designed to create an extended human presence on the moon and to develop technologies for economically processing rocket fuel and breathable air from lunar soil, it called for construction of a 4-to-6 person reusable crew capsule, rockets built to optimize delivery of payloads to Earth orbit, and a lunar shuttle.
When announced to the public in 2004, NASA projected an expenditure of $230 billion over 20 years, or an average of $11.5 billion per year, to realize the program. To put this request in perspective, CAGW was now estimating the amount of waste in the federal budget at $217 billion for that one year alone—almost the entire two-decade cost of the project.
Bold but cost-effective ideas were also percolating outside NASA. In the early 1990s, Dr. Robert Zubrin, a former senior engineer at Lockheed Martin, had begun to develop a streamlined plan to colonize Mars that would involve carrying small payloads with existing technology, extracting methane fuel for return trips from Martian soil, and using other indigenous elements on the red planet to produce oxygen and construct settlements.
Calculating Zubrin’s project in today’s dollars, it would run $3 billion a year over ten years—or just over 1 percent of what the outgoing administrator of the national Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, Dr. Donald M. Berwick, says Washington wastes annually on healthcare. Back in 1994, then-congressman Gingrich was so taken with Zubrin’s idea that he suggested an entrepreneurial twist of his own: have the federal government sponsor the plan indirectly by offering a $20 billion award to the first private organization to land a crew on Mars.
What could an ambitious space exploration program have done to help reverse the current decline in the quality of public education?
Sadly, none of these proposals were ever funded much beyond the start-up stage. In the end, targeting even the most promising and economically designed space missions became too convenient a way for many otherwise big-spending politicians to pose as budget cutters.
The DC-X flew twelve times before it was destroyed in a landing accident; and the Clinton administration, which saw it as a legacy of Republican administrations, was perhaps too quick to replace it with a project it could call its own, the X-33/VentureStar. Designed as the prototype for a reusable rocket able to reach orbit and return without the aid of external fuel tanks or boosters, it gambled too heavily on untested technologies and eventually had to be cancelled.
Continued funding for George W. Bush’s Constellation program was excluded from President Obama’s near-trillion dollar stimulus; and the program was abruptly terminated in 2010 without any proposed substitute, thus depriving the United States of the heavy lift boosters and crew capsules it needs to ever again travel beyond Earth’s orbit.
It is interesting to speculate on what life might be like today had earlier politicians actually possessed the economic foresight they claimed when striking down ambitious space initiatives.
We know, for example, that the moon’s crust contains helium3, a rare element here on Earth that can produce abundant energy without also producing radioactive waste. Could the problem of reducing hydrocarbon pollution of the atmosphere already have been solved by now, and for a fraction of expensive “cap and trade” proposals?
The price could probably have been covered, not with tax increases, but by trimming waste, fraud, and abuse elsewhere in the budget.
We also know that many other valuable minerals, including high quality nickel, cobalt, and platinum, exist in large quantities in asteroids and moons throughout the solar system—an incentive that undoubtedly contributed to the recent formation of SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, Orbital Sciences, Blue Origin (owned by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos), and other fledgling space transportation companies. How much could we already have benefited from the deployment of a technology for retrieving such commodities?
And finally, we know that the Apollo effort to land the first men on the moon in the 1960s inspired a whole generation of young people to study astronomy, physics, engineering, and other scientifically related subjects. What could an ambitious space exploration program have done to help reverse the current decline in the quality of public education?
Now, some might naturally ask, “If Washington is so incompetent as to waste $391.9 billion in the current fiscal year (again according to CAGW), did NASA ever have the ability to realize any of the abandoned space proposals?” An understandable reservation; yet history shows that, if government is capable of achieving anything, it is a difficult, well-defined technical goal requiring the coordination of top-flight scientific talent.
From the days of the Erie Canal down through the Hoover Dam, the Manhattan Project, and the Apollo moon program itself, government accomplishment in complex engineering stands in stark contrast to most everything else it attempts. Even the Soviet Union managed to build a credible space program—so successfully, in fact, that we now rely on Russian rockets to supply the International Space Station.
Whatever mistakes NASA might have made on its way to the stars, we certainly would have ended up with a far more interesting space program than the one we have today, which is to say practically no program at all.
Many other valuable minerals, including high quality nickel, cobalt, and platinum, exist in large quantities in asteroids and moons throughout the solar system.
The Office of Management and the Budget has zeroed funding for future Mars probes. After the recently launched Mars science lab Curiosity and the MAVEN orbiter, set for departure in 2013, America’s half-century of planetary exploration, which began with the Mariner probes, will come to an abrupt end.
America’s astronomy program is also in jeopardy. The orbiting Kepler space observatory is scheduled for shutdown before it can complete its search for Earth-like planets; and plans for the Terrestrial Planet Finder, a successor powerful enough to find and study worlds 100 light years away, have been abandoned. NASA still hopes to orbit the James Webb Space Telescope, a replacement for the Hubble, in 2018, but the budget does not allow for a retractable shade to make viewing distant planets possible.
And while it is to be hoped that rockets built by private companies like SpaceX will be able to supply the International Space Station, President Obama’s cancellation of the Constellation program means that the American government has effectively terminated its once admired manned space program.
Unfortunately, it is hard to imagine any scenario—save perhaps China making unexpected progress in its own desire to mine helium3—under which the current administration might reverse course. Certainly, there will be no assist from President Obama’s science advisor, John Holdren, who once called the United States an “overdeveloped country” badly in need of de-industrialization.
Small wonder Americans feel their country is in decline. If a wistful appreciation for the once-promising space future that never materialized teaches us anything, it is the folly of trusting big-spending politicians to tell us what is affordable—and what is not.
Lewis M. Andrews is the senior policy analyst at the Yankee Institute in Hartford, Connecticut.
Many promising space exploration proposals have been abandoned over the years in the name of more pressing social priorities.
When presidential candidate Mitt Romney ridiculed former House Speaker Newt Gingrich for favoring a mining colony on the moon during a recent presidential debate, he undoubtedly thought he was scoring political points. But anyone watching who had ever thrilled to Stanley Kubrick’s thoughtful depiction of interplanetary travel in 2001: A Space Odyssey likely admired the Speaker’s spirited defense of his off-world agenda.
There are many ways to measure the cost of wasteful spending in the decades since the Apollo moon landings—the size of the current national budget deficit, surveys showing Americans’ growing mistrust of government, or the number of duplicative and inefficient federal programs.
Yet perhaps the most disheartening metric is the number of promising space exploration proposals that have been abandoned in the name of “more pressing social priorities.”
Only now, as the nation finally comes to terms with the very overspending that was supposedly being avoided, does the price of undisciplined domestic spending, combined with a failure of technological nerve, begin to become painfully clear. Polls by CBS News, America Online, Newsweek, and others have documented the public’s increasing disappointment and even anger over their country’s lack of progress in space, feelings that in retrospect are clearly justified.
Gingrich was so taken with Zubrin’s idea that he suggested an entrepreneurial twist of his own: offer a $20 billion award to the first private organization to land a crew on Mars.
Go back to 1989 when, in response to a call by the first President Bush for a plan to continue manned exploration beyond the moon landings, a team representing both NASA scientists and major aerospace contractors spent three months designing the “Report of the 90 Day Study on Human Exploration of the Moon and Mars.”
The team’s recommendations included an orbiting facility three times as large as the current International Space Station, additional orbiting hangers and space docks, a moon base, a fleet of trans-lunar shuttles, and the construction of a new class of space ship for voyages to Mars and beyond.
The report never included an official budget, but a generally accepted estimate of $450 billion was leaked to the press and immediately derided as impossibly extravagant.
Proponents countered that the cost of the project was to be spread over 30 years, making for an average annual expenditure of $15 billion. But, perhaps because of political sensitivities, they stopped short of making their most persuasive argument: the price could probably have been covered, not with tax increases, but by trimming waste, fraud, and abuse elsewhere in the budget.
Indeed, it was just four years later when the first annual assessment of federal overspending by the Washington policy group Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) documented just how true this was. By cutting just 10 percent of the estimated $170.4 billion in needless or redundant spending, President Bush’s visionary proposal could have been fully funded. As it was, the “Report of the 90 Day Study” died within months of its publication, ironically a victim of budget-cutting rhetoric.
To the credit of space advocates, the “Report of the 90 Day Study” was followed over the years by a series of more modest efforts, each attempting in its own way to chart an efficient course off the planet.
Government accomplishment in complex engineering stands in stark contrast to most everything else it attempts.
In 1994, for example, NASA agreed to take over management of the already constructed DC-X rocket, dubbed the “Delta Clipper,” from the Department of Defense’s Strategic Defense Initiative. Mimicking technology suggested by 1950s science fiction films, the DC-X had been built by McDonnell Douglas to both take off and land vertically, a feat that could eventually facilitate missions to lower gravity destinations, such as the moon and Mars.
During his first term, the second President Bush received initial congressional funding for another comprehensive space proposal, the Constellation program. Designed to create an extended human presence on the moon and to develop technologies for economically processing rocket fuel and breathable air from lunar soil, it called for construction of a 4-to-6 person reusable crew capsule, rockets built to optimize delivery of payloads to Earth orbit, and a lunar shuttle.
When announced to the public in 2004, NASA projected an expenditure of $230 billion over 20 years, or an average of $11.5 billion per year, to realize the program. To put this request in perspective, CAGW was now estimating the amount of waste in the federal budget at $217 billion for that one year alone—almost the entire two-decade cost of the project.
Bold but cost-effective ideas were also percolating outside NASA. In the early 1990s, Dr. Robert Zubrin, a former senior engineer at Lockheed Martin, had begun to develop a streamlined plan to colonize Mars that would involve carrying small payloads with existing technology, extracting methane fuel for return trips from Martian soil, and using other indigenous elements on the red planet to produce oxygen and construct settlements.
Calculating Zubrin’s project in today’s dollars, it would run $3 billion a year over ten years—or just over 1 percent of what the outgoing administrator of the national Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, Dr. Donald M. Berwick, says Washington wastes annually on healthcare. Back in 1994, then-congressman Gingrich was so taken with Zubrin’s idea that he suggested an entrepreneurial twist of his own: have the federal government sponsor the plan indirectly by offering a $20 billion award to the first private organization to land a crew on Mars.
What could an ambitious space exploration program have done to help reverse the current decline in the quality of public education?
Sadly, none of these proposals were ever funded much beyond the start-up stage. In the end, targeting even the most promising and economically designed space missions became too convenient a way for many otherwise big-spending politicians to pose as budget cutters.
The DC-X flew twelve times before it was destroyed in a landing accident; and the Clinton administration, which saw it as a legacy of Republican administrations, was perhaps too quick to replace it with a project it could call its own, the X-33/VentureStar. Designed as the prototype for a reusable rocket able to reach orbit and return without the aid of external fuel tanks or boosters, it gambled too heavily on untested technologies and eventually had to be cancelled.
Continued funding for George W. Bush’s Constellation program was excluded from President Obama’s near-trillion dollar stimulus; and the program was abruptly terminated in 2010 without any proposed substitute, thus depriving the United States of the heavy lift boosters and crew capsules it needs to ever again travel beyond Earth’s orbit.
It is interesting to speculate on what life might be like today had earlier politicians actually possessed the economic foresight they claimed when striking down ambitious space initiatives.
We know, for example, that the moon’s crust contains helium3, a rare element here on Earth that can produce abundant energy without also producing radioactive waste. Could the problem of reducing hydrocarbon pollution of the atmosphere already have been solved by now, and for a fraction of expensive “cap and trade” proposals?
The price could probably have been covered, not with tax increases, but by trimming waste, fraud, and abuse elsewhere in the budget.
We also know that many other valuable minerals, including high quality nickel, cobalt, and platinum, exist in large quantities in asteroids and moons throughout the solar system—an incentive that undoubtedly contributed to the recent formation of SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, Orbital Sciences, Blue Origin (owned by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos), and other fledgling space transportation companies. How much could we already have benefited from the deployment of a technology for retrieving such commodities?
And finally, we know that the Apollo effort to land the first men on the moon in the 1960s inspired a whole generation of young people to study astronomy, physics, engineering, and other scientifically related subjects. What could an ambitious space exploration program have done to help reverse the current decline in the quality of public education?
Now, some might naturally ask, “If Washington is so incompetent as to waste $391.9 billion in the current fiscal year (again according to CAGW), did NASA ever have the ability to realize any of the abandoned space proposals?” An understandable reservation; yet history shows that, if government is capable of achieving anything, it is a difficult, well-defined technical goal requiring the coordination of top-flight scientific talent.
From the days of the Erie Canal down through the Hoover Dam, the Manhattan Project, and the Apollo moon program itself, government accomplishment in complex engineering stands in stark contrast to most everything else it attempts. Even the Soviet Union managed to build a credible space program—so successfully, in fact, that we now rely on Russian rockets to supply the International Space Station.
Whatever mistakes NASA might have made on its way to the stars, we certainly would have ended up with a far more interesting space program than the one we have today, which is to say practically no program at all.
Many other valuable minerals, including high quality nickel, cobalt, and platinum, exist in large quantities in asteroids and moons throughout the solar system.
The Office of Management and the Budget has zeroed funding for future Mars probes. After the recently launched Mars science lab Curiosity and the MAVEN orbiter, set for departure in 2013, America’s half-century of planetary exploration, which began with the Mariner probes, will come to an abrupt end.
America’s astronomy program is also in jeopardy. The orbiting Kepler space observatory is scheduled for shutdown before it can complete its search for Earth-like planets; and plans for the Terrestrial Planet Finder, a successor powerful enough to find and study worlds 100 light years away, have been abandoned. NASA still hopes to orbit the James Webb Space Telescope, a replacement for the Hubble, in 2018, but the budget does not allow for a retractable shade to make viewing distant planets possible.
And while it is to be hoped that rockets built by private companies like SpaceX will be able to supply the International Space Station, President Obama’s cancellation of the Constellation program means that the American government has effectively terminated its once admired manned space program.
Unfortunately, it is hard to imagine any scenario—save perhaps China making unexpected progress in its own desire to mine helium3—under which the current administration might reverse course. Certainly, there will be no assist from President Obama’s science advisor, John Holdren, who once called the United States an “overdeveloped country” badly in need of de-industrialization.
Small wonder Americans feel their country is in decline. If a wistful appreciation for the once-promising space future that never materialized teaches us anything, it is the folly of trusting big-spending politicians to tell us what is affordable—and what is not.
Lewis M. Andrews is the senior policy analyst at the Yankee Institute in Hartford, Connecticut.
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
The coming year in space exploration
From Boing Boing: The coming year in space exploration
Ariel "Spacehack" Waldman points us to this survey of "the most anticipated space missions of 2012." Yes, the Space Shuttle has been retired but as Ariel has said, "I see it as more of a beginning of an era than the end of one. It’s due time that NASA no longer has a monopoly on space exploration." Above, an artist's representation of the Planetary Society's LightSail-1, a solar sail-powered spacecraft set to launch this year. At left, an illustration of SpaceX's Dragon capsule docking with the International Space Station. The plan is for the commercial outfit to take over space station supply missions beginning in February.
"The 12 Most Anticipated Space Missions of 2012"
1. First Commercial Spaceship Flights to ISS
In the wake of this year's space shuttle retirement, NASA has been encouraging commercial companies to develop spaceships that can pick up the slack in carrying both cargo and crew to the International Space Station.
In 2012, the first of these private vehicles is set to make its maiden voyage to the orbiting laboratory. The Dragon space capsule developed by Hawthorne, Calif., company Space Exploration Technology (SpaceX) is scheduled to launch atop the company's Falcon 9 rocket Feb. 7. A few days later, the craft is due to autonomously rendezvous with the space station. When it comes within range, the astronauts aboard the station will grab hold of it with the station's robotic arm and berth it to the outpost.
Another private spacecraft, the Cygnus capsule being developed by Orbital Sciences Corp., of Dulles, Va., is also set to make its debut in 2012. Cygnus is due to fly atop Orbital's Taurus 2 rocket in May.
2. Virgin Galactic Powered Flight
Another burgeoning field of commercial spaceflight is the suborbital space tourist industry. A leader in this market is Mojave, Calif.-based Virgin Galactic, headed by British billionaire Sir Richard Branson. Virgin Galactic plans to fly paying passengers on suborbital joy rides to the edge of space and back, initially at $200,000 a pop.
Virgin Galactic's vehicles, the space plane SpaceShipTwo and its mothership WhiteKnightTwo, have so far made gliding test flights. The first powered flights have not been announced, but experts are hoping to see SpaceShipTwo's rocket engines ignited for flights sometime in 2012. These test flights will be a major step toward flying space tourists, more than 400 of whom have already paid in full.
3. China's Manned Space Laboratory
China, a growing player in space, is working on its own manned space station. This year the nation launched its first space station test module and conducted its first in-orbit rendezvous and docking. Though these spacecraft were unmanned, Chinese astronauts are expected to fly on a subsequent docking test flight in 2012.
The Tiangong-1 module, launched Sept. 29, is still in orbit. The robotic Shenzhou 8 mission launched Oct. 31 and met up with Tiangong-1 multiple times before returning to Earth in November.
The next docking missions, which will further develop this critical skill for building a space station, will be Shenzhou 9 and Shenzhou 10. At least one of them will be crewed, Chinese officials have said.
4. NASA's GRAIL Probes Arrive at the Moon
On Sept. 10, NASA launched the $496 million Grail spacecraft (short for "Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory") on a mission to map the moon's gravity, to help learn about our natural satellite's interior and formation.
The twin probes are due to arrive at their target on New Year's Day. They will stay in orbit around Earth's moon for about three months, tracking the moon's gravitational field by measuring minute changes in the distance between the two spacecraft due to gravitational variations.
5. LightSail-1 Launches
LightSail-1 is an unmanned solar sail spacecraft being developed by the nonprofit Planetary Society, an organization that advocates space exploration.
Solar sail technology offers the potential to use the sun's radiation to push a spacecraft farther and faster than traditional propulsion does. The LightSail-1 vehicle is the first of three planned tests of the technology by the Planetary Society. It is due to launch sometime in 2012.
LightSail-1 is made of three small cube-shaped spacecraft attached to four triangular Mylar sails arranged like a kite. The vehicle will rely on pure sunlight for propulsion.
6. Dawn Probe Departs for Second Asteroid
NASA's Dawn probe, launched in 2007, has been in orbit around the asteroid Vesta since July 2011. Vesta is the second-most- massive body in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. [Photos: Asteroid Vesta and NASA's Dawn Spacecraft]
In July, the $466 millionDawn spacecraft is due to depart Vesta and head toward the dwarf planet Ceres, the only larger body in the asteroid belt. Its arrival is set for February 2015. The probe aims to study these space rocks for clues about the history of our solar system and the formation of the planets.
7. Curiosity Rover Arrives on Red Planet
NASA's huge new rover Curiosity, the centerpiece of the space agency's Mars Science Laboratory mission, is expected to land on the Red Planet Aug. 6.
The $2.5 billion Curiosity lifted off Nov. 26, 2011. It's the largest and most ambitiously designed Mars rover to date, packed with 10 different science instruments to search for signs that Mars is, or ever was, habitable to life.
The landing is expected to be a nail-biter, as Curiosity is due to descend to the planet's surface as no vehicle has done before. NASA engineers devised a sky crane descent module that will parachute down to hover over Mars, then lower Curiosity on tethers to a gentle touchdown.
8. Dream Chaser Drop Tests
The Dream Chaser is a private space plane built by Sierra Nevada Corp., of Colorado. This orbital flier is another bid to take over the task of ferrying NASA astronauts to the International Space Station.
When it launches to space, Dream Chaser will fly atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket. But first, Sierra Nevada plans to conduct test flights of the vehicle closer to the ground during the summer.
For Dream Chaser's first test flight, the space plane will be lofted to high altitudes by Virgin Galactic's WhiteKnightTwo mothership. Then Dream Chaser will be dropped so it can glide back down to the ground, to test its landing capabilities. The test flight reportedly will take place from either Edwards Air Force Base in California or White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.
9. Secret Air Force Space Plane Landing
The U.S. Air Force has a secretive spy spacecraft called X-37B in orbit right now. The unmanned space plane, operated by the Air Force's Rapid Capabilities Office, launched atop an Atlas 5 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on March 5, 2011. It is the second craft of its kind.
Though officials planned for only a nine-month mission, the hush-hush is vehicle is expected to land sometime in early 2012.
There's also a chance the Air Force will launch another version of the test vehicle next year. Though details are scarce, the spacecraft is designed as a prototype robotic long-duration platform for space-based Air Force activities. The X-37B's payload is classified.
10. Space Station Gets New Additions
The International Space Station, though practically complete, is not quite done with new facilities and tools.
The orbiting laboratory is a $100 billion, football field-size collaboration among the United States, Russia, the European Space Agency, Japan and Canada.
In May 2012, Russia will launch the Nauka Multipurpose Laboratory Module (MPLM), a new room to be added onto the space station's Zvezda nadir port, replacing the Pirs docking compartment currently there. Nauka will house science experiments and cargo and will be used for docking, as well as work and rest areas for the crew.
The same Russian Proton rocket that launches Nauka will carry the European Robotic Arm. This new tool will be attached to the Russian side of the space station to assist with work on the station's exterior.
11. Planetary Exploration Milestones
Many of the robotic probes currently exploring the solar system will reach milestones next year. For example, the Cassini orbiter, which has been circling Saturn since 2004, will make multiple flybys of the Saturnian moons Titan and Enceladus, as well as distant flybys of many other moons, including Helene, Mimas, Janus, Polydeuces, Telesto, Pallene and Dione.
NASA's Messenger mission, which arrived in orbit around Mercury this year, will continue its up-close study of the planet closest to the sun.
And the agency's New Horizons mission, which launched in 2006, will come closer to Pluto than any other spacecraft yet. New Horizons is due to reach its target in 2015, when it will fly by Pluto to study the dwarf planet and its moons. The craft has already passed the orbit of Uranus and is due to pass Neptune's orbit in 2014.
Many other planetary probes will continue plugging along next year to advance scientists' goals of better understanding the solar system.
12. Permanent Human Presence in Space
Expedition 29 crew
It's easy to overlook because it's been happening for more than a decade, but the five partner space agencies behind the International Space Station will continue to send people to the outpost to maintain the human presence in space that's been constant since 2000.
Though NASA's space shuttles retired in 2011, the agency didn't stop sending astronauts to help crew the space station, which will continue to operate to at least 2020.
Twelve spaceflyers are scheduled to travel to the space station on four different launches in 2012. These men and women will spend around six months each living and working in space, performing experiments in a wide range of sciences inside humanity's only microgravity laboratory.
Ariel "Spacehack" Waldman points us to this survey of "the most anticipated space missions of 2012." Yes, the Space Shuttle has been retired but as Ariel has said, "I see it as more of a beginning of an era than the end of one. It’s due time that NASA no longer has a monopoly on space exploration." Above, an artist's representation of the Planetary Society's LightSail-1, a solar sail-powered spacecraft set to launch this year. At left, an illustration of SpaceX's Dragon capsule docking with the International Space Station. The plan is for the commercial outfit to take over space station supply missions beginning in February.
"The 12 Most Anticipated Space Missions of 2012"
1. First Commercial Spaceship Flights to ISS
In the wake of this year's space shuttle retirement, NASA has been encouraging commercial companies to develop spaceships that can pick up the slack in carrying both cargo and crew to the International Space Station.
In 2012, the first of these private vehicles is set to make its maiden voyage to the orbiting laboratory. The Dragon space capsule developed by Hawthorne, Calif., company Space Exploration Technology (SpaceX) is scheduled to launch atop the company's Falcon 9 rocket Feb. 7. A few days later, the craft is due to autonomously rendezvous with the space station. When it comes within range, the astronauts aboard the station will grab hold of it with the station's robotic arm and berth it to the outpost.
Another private spacecraft, the Cygnus capsule being developed by Orbital Sciences Corp., of Dulles, Va., is also set to make its debut in 2012. Cygnus is due to fly atop Orbital's Taurus 2 rocket in May.
2. Virgin Galactic Powered Flight
Another burgeoning field of commercial spaceflight is the suborbital space tourist industry. A leader in this market is Mojave, Calif.-based Virgin Galactic, headed by British billionaire Sir Richard Branson. Virgin Galactic plans to fly paying passengers on suborbital joy rides to the edge of space and back, initially at $200,000 a pop.
Virgin Galactic's vehicles, the space plane SpaceShipTwo and its mothership WhiteKnightTwo, have so far made gliding test flights. The first powered flights have not been announced, but experts are hoping to see SpaceShipTwo's rocket engines ignited for flights sometime in 2012. These test flights will be a major step toward flying space tourists, more than 400 of whom have already paid in full.
3. China's Manned Space Laboratory
China, a growing player in space, is working on its own manned space station. This year the nation launched its first space station test module and conducted its first in-orbit rendezvous and docking. Though these spacecraft were unmanned, Chinese astronauts are expected to fly on a subsequent docking test flight in 2012.
The Tiangong-1 module, launched Sept. 29, is still in orbit. The robotic Shenzhou 8 mission launched Oct. 31 and met up with Tiangong-1 multiple times before returning to Earth in November.
The next docking missions, which will further develop this critical skill for building a space station, will be Shenzhou 9 and Shenzhou 10. At least one of them will be crewed, Chinese officials have said.
4. NASA's GRAIL Probes Arrive at the Moon
On Sept. 10, NASA launched the $496 million Grail spacecraft (short for "Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory") on a mission to map the moon's gravity, to help learn about our natural satellite's interior and formation.
The twin probes are due to arrive at their target on New Year's Day. They will stay in orbit around Earth's moon for about three months, tracking the moon's gravitational field by measuring minute changes in the distance between the two spacecraft due to gravitational variations.
5. LightSail-1 Launches
LightSail-1 is an unmanned solar sail spacecraft being developed by the nonprofit Planetary Society, an organization that advocates space exploration.
Solar sail technology offers the potential to use the sun's radiation to push a spacecraft farther and faster than traditional propulsion does. The LightSail-1 vehicle is the first of three planned tests of the technology by the Planetary Society. It is due to launch sometime in 2012.
LightSail-1 is made of three small cube-shaped spacecraft attached to four triangular Mylar sails arranged like a kite. The vehicle will rely on pure sunlight for propulsion.
6. Dawn Probe Departs for Second Asteroid
NASA's Dawn probe, launched in 2007, has been in orbit around the asteroid Vesta since July 2011. Vesta is the second-most- massive body in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. [Photos: Asteroid Vesta and NASA's Dawn Spacecraft]
In July, the $466 millionDawn spacecraft is due to depart Vesta and head toward the dwarf planet Ceres, the only larger body in the asteroid belt. Its arrival is set for February 2015. The probe aims to study these space rocks for clues about the history of our solar system and the formation of the planets.
7. Curiosity Rover Arrives on Red Planet
NASA's huge new rover Curiosity, the centerpiece of the space agency's Mars Science Laboratory mission, is expected to land on the Red Planet Aug. 6.
The $2.5 billion Curiosity lifted off Nov. 26, 2011. It's the largest and most ambitiously designed Mars rover to date, packed with 10 different science instruments to search for signs that Mars is, or ever was, habitable to life.
The landing is expected to be a nail-biter, as Curiosity is due to descend to the planet's surface as no vehicle has done before. NASA engineers devised a sky crane descent module that will parachute down to hover over Mars, then lower Curiosity on tethers to a gentle touchdown.
8. Dream Chaser Drop Tests
The Dream Chaser is a private space plane built by Sierra Nevada Corp., of Colorado. This orbital flier is another bid to take over the task of ferrying NASA astronauts to the International Space Station.
When it launches to space, Dream Chaser will fly atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket. But first, Sierra Nevada plans to conduct test flights of the vehicle closer to the ground during the summer.
For Dream Chaser's first test flight, the space plane will be lofted to high altitudes by Virgin Galactic's WhiteKnightTwo mothership. Then Dream Chaser will be dropped so it can glide back down to the ground, to test its landing capabilities. The test flight reportedly will take place from either Edwards Air Force Base in California or White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.
9. Secret Air Force Space Plane Landing
The U.S. Air Force has a secretive spy spacecraft called X-37B in orbit right now. The unmanned space plane, operated by the Air Force's Rapid Capabilities Office, launched atop an Atlas 5 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on March 5, 2011. It is the second craft of its kind.
Though officials planned for only a nine-month mission, the hush-hush is vehicle is expected to land sometime in early 2012.
There's also a chance the Air Force will launch another version of the test vehicle next year. Though details are scarce, the spacecraft is designed as a prototype robotic long-duration platform for space-based Air Force activities. The X-37B's payload is classified.
10. Space Station Gets New Additions
The International Space Station, though practically complete, is not quite done with new facilities and tools.
The orbiting laboratory is a $100 billion, football field-size collaboration among the United States, Russia, the European Space Agency, Japan and Canada.
In May 2012, Russia will launch the Nauka Multipurpose Laboratory Module (MPLM), a new room to be added onto the space station's Zvezda nadir port, replacing the Pirs docking compartment currently there. Nauka will house science experiments and cargo and will be used for docking, as well as work and rest areas for the crew.
The same Russian Proton rocket that launches Nauka will carry the European Robotic Arm. This new tool will be attached to the Russian side of the space station to assist with work on the station's exterior.
11. Planetary Exploration Milestones
Many of the robotic probes currently exploring the solar system will reach milestones next year. For example, the Cassini orbiter, which has been circling Saturn since 2004, will make multiple flybys of the Saturnian moons Titan and Enceladus, as well as distant flybys of many other moons, including Helene, Mimas, Janus, Polydeuces, Telesto, Pallene and Dione.
NASA's Messenger mission, which arrived in orbit around Mercury this year, will continue its up-close study of the planet closest to the sun.
And the agency's New Horizons mission, which launched in 2006, will come closer to Pluto than any other spacecraft yet. New Horizons is due to reach its target in 2015, when it will fly by Pluto to study the dwarf planet and its moons. The craft has already passed the orbit of Uranus and is due to pass Neptune's orbit in 2014.
Many other planetary probes will continue plugging along next year to advance scientists' goals of better understanding the solar system.
12. Permanent Human Presence in Space
Expedition 29 crew
It's easy to overlook because it's been happening for more than a decade, but the five partner space agencies behind the International Space Station will continue to send people to the outpost to maintain the human presence in space that's been constant since 2000.
Though NASA's space shuttles retired in 2011, the agency didn't stop sending astronauts to help crew the space station, which will continue to operate to at least 2020.
Twelve spaceflyers are scheduled to travel to the space station on four different launches in 2012. These men and women will spend around six months each living and working in space, performing experiments in a wide range of sciences inside humanity's only microgravity laboratory.
Saturday, January 7, 2012
Space News: Orion deep space exploration vehicle put through landing drop test
From Lake County News (CA): Space News: Orion deep space exploration vehicle put through landing drop test
Orion, the next deep space exploration vehicle, will carry astronauts into space, provide emergency abort capability, sustain the crew during space travel, and ensure safe re-entry and landing.
Water drop testing on the vehicle, which began in July 2011, simulated different water landing scenarios and took into account different velocities, parachute deployments, entry angles, sea states and wind conditions that Orion could face when landing in the Pacific Ocean.
On Friday the vehicle was put through what represented a worst case landing for an abort scenario in rough seas.
The test impact conditions simulated all parachutes being deployed with a high impact pitch of 43 degrees. The capsule traveled approximately 47 miles per hour before splashing into the basin and rolling over into the Stable 2 position.
This type of landing scenario isn't likely to occur during actual vehicle operation, but is essential for the validation of analytical models.
As was the case with Apollo, the Orion flight design will feature an onboard uprighting system.
Orion, the next deep space exploration vehicle, will carry astronauts into space, provide emergency abort capability, sustain the crew during space travel, and ensure safe re-entry and landing.
Water drop testing on the vehicle, which began in July 2011, simulated different water landing scenarios and took into account different velocities, parachute deployments, entry angles, sea states and wind conditions that Orion could face when landing in the Pacific Ocean.
On Friday the vehicle was put through what represented a worst case landing for an abort scenario in rough seas.
The test impact conditions simulated all parachutes being deployed with a high impact pitch of 43 degrees. The capsule traveled approximately 47 miles per hour before splashing into the basin and rolling over into the Stable 2 position.
This type of landing scenario isn't likely to occur during actual vehicle operation, but is essential for the validation of analytical models.
As was the case with Apollo, the Orion flight design will feature an onboard uprighting system.
Friday, January 6, 2012
From the Earth to the Moon, Ch 20: ATTACK AND RIPOSTE
CHAPTER XX --ATTACK AND RIPOSTE
As soon as the excitement had subsided, the following words were heard uttered in a strong and determined voice:
"Now that the speaker has favored us with so much imagination, would he be so good as to return to his subject, and give us a little practical view of the question?"
All eyes were directed toward the person who spoke. He was a little dried-up man, of an active figure, with an American "goatee" beard. Profiting by the different movements in the crowd, he had managed by degrees to gain the front row of spectators. There, with arms crossed and stern gaze, he watched the hero of the meeting. After having put his question he remained silent, and appeared to take no notice of the thousands of looks directed toward himself, nor of the murmur of disapprobation excited by his words. Meeting at first with no reply, he repeated his question with marked emphasis, adding, "We are here to talk about the moon and not about the earth."
"You are right, sir," replied Michel Ardan; "the discussion has become irregular. We will return to the moon."
"Sir," said the unknown, "you pretend that our satellite is inhabited. Very good, but if Selenites do exist, that race of beings assuredly must live without breathing, for— I warn you for your own sake— there is not the smallest particle of air on the surface of the moon."
At this remark Ardan pushed up his shock of red hair; he saw that he was on the point of being involved in a struggle with this person upon the very gist of the whole question. He looked sternly at him in his turn and said:
"Oh! so there is no air in the moon? And pray, if you are so good, who ventures to affirm that?
"The men of science."
"Really?"
"Really."
"Sir," replied Michel, "pleasantry apart, I have a profound respect for men of science who do possess science, but a profound contempt for men of science who do not."
"Do you know any who belong to the latter category?"
"Decidedly. In France there are some who maintain that, mathematically, a bird cannot possibly fly; and others who demonstrate theoretically that fishes were never made to live in water."
"I have nothing to do with persons of that description, and I can quote, in support of my statement, names which you cannot refuse deference to."
"Then, sir, you will sadly embarrass a poor ignorant, who, besides, asks nothing better than to learn."
"Why, then, do you introduce scientific questions if you have never studied them?" asked the unknown somewhat coarsely.
"For the reason that `he is always brave who never suspects danger.' I know nothing, it is true; but it is precisely my very weakness which constitutes my strength."
"Your weakness amounts to folly," retorted the unknown in a passion.
"All the better," replied our Frenchman, "if it carries me up to the moon."
Barbicane and his colleagues devoured with their eyes the intruder who had so boldly placed himself in antagonism to their enterprise. Nobody knew him, and the president, uneasy as to the result of so free a discussion, watched his new friend with some anxiety. The meeting began to be somewhat fidgety also, for the contest directed their attention to the dangers, if not the actual impossibilities, of the proposed expedition.
"Sir," replied Ardan's antagonist, "there are many and incontrovertible reasons which prove the absence of an atmosphere in the moon. I might say that, a priori, if one ever did exist, it must have been absorbed by the earth; but I prefer to bring forward indisputable facts."
"Bring them forward then, sir, as many as you please."
"You know," said the stranger, "that when any luminous rays cross a medium such as the air, they are deflected out of the straight line; in other words, they undergo refraction. Well! When stars are occulted by the moon, their rays, on grazing the edge of her disc, exhibit not the least deviation, nor offer the slightest indication of refraction. It follows, therefore, that the moon cannot be surrounded by an atmosphere.
"In point of fact," replied Ardan, "this is your chief, if not your only argument; and a really scientific man might be puzzled to answer it. For myself, I will simply say that it is defective, because it assumes that the angular diameter of the moon has been completely determined, which is not the case. But let us proceed. Tell me, my dear sir, do you admit the existence of volcanoes on the moon's surface?"
"Extinct, yes! In activity, no!"
"These volcanoes, however, were at one time in a state of activity?"
"True, but, as they furnish themselves the oxygen necessary for combustion, the mere fact of their eruption does not prove the presence of an atmosphere."
"Proceed again, then; and let us set aside this class of arguments in order to come to direct observations. In 1715 the astronomers Louville and Halley, watching the eclipse of the 3rd of May, remarked some very extraordinary scintillations. These jets of light, rapid in nature, and of frequent recurrence, they attributed to thunderstorms generated in the lunar atmosphere."
"In 1715," replied the unknown, "the astronomers Louville and Halley mistook for lunar phenomena some which were purely terrestrial, such as meteoric or other bodies which are generated in our own atmosphere. This was the scientific explanation at the time of the facts; and that is my answer now."
"On again, then," replied Ardan; "Herschel, in 1787, observed a great number of luminous points on the moon's surface, did he not?"
"Yes! but without offering any solution of them. Herschel himself never inferred from them the necessity of a lunar atmosphere. And I may add that Baeer and Maedler, the two great authorities upon the moon, are quite agreed as to the entire absence of air on its surface."
A movement was here manifest among the assemblage, who appeared to be growing excited by the arguments of this singular personage.
"Let us proceed," replied Ardan, with perfect coolness, "and come to one important fact. A skillful French astronomer, M. Laussedat, in watching the eclipse of July 18, 1860, probed that the horns of the lunar crescent were rounded and truncated. Now, this appearance could only have been produced by a deviation of the solar rays in traversing the atmosphere of the moon. There is no other possible explanation of the facts."
"But is this established as a fact?"
"Absolutely certain!"
A counter-movement here took place in favor of the hero of the meeting, whose opponent was now reduced to silence. Ardan resumed the conversation; and without exhibiting any exultation at the advantage he had gained, simply said:
"You see, then, my dear sir, we must not pronounce with absolute positiveness against the existence of an atmosphere in the moon. That atmosphere is, probably, of extreme rarity; nevertheless at the present day science generally admits that it exists."
"Not in the mountains, at all events," returned the unknown, unwilling to give in.
"No! but at the bottom of the valleys, and not exceeding a few hundred feet in height."
"In any case you will do well to take every precaution, for the air will be terribly rarified."
"My good sir, there will always be enough for a solitary individual; besides, once arrived up there, I shall do my best to economize, and not to breathe except on grand occasions!"
A tremendous roar of laughter rang in the ears of the mysterious interlocutor, who glared fiercely round upon the assembly.
"Then," continued Ardan, with a careless air, "since we are in accord regarding the presence of a certain atmosphere, we are forced to admit the presence of a certain quantity of water. This is a happy consequence for me. Moreover, my amiable contradictor, permit me to submit to you one further observation. We only know one side of the moon's disc; and if there is but little air on the face presented to us, it is possible that there is plenty on the one turned away from us."
"And for what reason?"
"Because the moon, under the action of the earth's attraction, has assumed the form of an egg, which we look at from the smaller end. Hence it follows, by Hausen's calculations, that its center of gravity is situated in the other hemisphere. Hence it results that the great mass of air and water must have been drawn away to the other face of our satellite during the first days of its creation."
"Pure fancies!" cried the unknown.
"No! Pure theories! which are based upon the laws of mechanics, and it seems difficult to me to refute them. I appeal then to this meeting, and I put it to them whether life, such as exists upon the earth, is possible on the surface of the moon?"
Three hundred thousand auditors at once applauded the proposition. Ardan's opponent tried to get in another word, but he could not obtain a hearing. Cries and menaces fell upon him like hail.
"Enough! enough!" cried some.
"Drive the intruder off!" shouted others.
"Turn him out!" roared the exasperated crowd.
But he, holding firmly on to the platform, did not budge an inch, and let the storm pass on, which would soon have assumed formidable proportions, if Michel Ardan had not quieted it by a gesture. He was too chivalrous to abandon his opponent in an apparent extremity.
"You wished to say a few more words?" he asked, in a pleasant voice.
"Yes, a thousand; or rather, no, only one! If you persevere in your enterprise, you must be a——"
"Very rash person! How can you treat me as such? me, who have demanded a cylindro-conical projectile, in order to prevent turning round and round on my way like a squirrel?"
"But, unhappy man, the dreadful recoil will smash you to pieces at your starting."
"My dear contradictor, you have just put your finger upon the true and only difficulty; nevertheless, I have too good an opinion of the industrial genius of the Americans not to believe that they will succeed in overcoming it."
"But the heat developed by the rapidity of the projectile in crossing the strata of air?"
"Oh! the walls are thick, and I shall soon have crossed the atmosphere."
"But victuals and water?"
"I have calculated for a twelvemonth's supply, and I shall be only four days on the journey."
"But for air to breathe on the road?"
"I shall make it by a chemical process."
"But your fall on the moon, supposing you ever reach it?"
"It will be six times less dangerous than a sudden fall upon the earth, because the weight will be only one-sixth as great on the surface of the moon."
"Still it will be enough to smash you like glass!"
"What is to prevent my retarding the shock by means of rockets conveniently placed, and lighted at the right moment?"
"But after all, supposing all difficulties surmounted, all obstacles removed, supposing everything combined to favor you, and granting that you may arrive safe and sound in the moon, how will you come back?"
"I am not coming back!"
At this reply, almost sublime in its very simplicity, the assembly became silent. But its silence was more eloquent than could have been its cries of enthusiasm. The unknown profited by the opportunity and once more protested:
"You will inevitably kill yourself!" he cried; "and your death will be that of a madman, useless even to science!"
"Go on, my dear unknown, for truly your prophecies are most agreeable!"
"It really is too much!" cried Michel Ardan's adversary. "I do not know why I should continue so frivolous a discussion! Please yourself about this insane expedition! We need not trouble ourselves about you!"
"Pray don't stand upon ceremony!"
"No! another person is responsible for your act."
"Who, may I ask?" demanded Michel Ardan in an imperious tone.
"The ignoramus who organized this equally absurd and impossible experiment!"
The attack was direct. Barbicane, ever since the interference of the unknown, had been making fearful efforts of self-control; now, however, seeing himself directly attacked, he could restrain himself no longer. He rose suddenly, and was rushing upon the enemy who thus braved him to the face, when all at once he found himself separated from him.
The platform was lifted by a hundred strong arms, and the president of the Gun Club shared with Michel Ardan triumphal honors. The shield was heavy, but the bearers came in continuous relays, disputing, struggling, even fighting among themselves in their eagerness to lend their shoulders to this demonstration.
However, the unknown had not profited by the tumult to quit his post. Besides he could not have done it in the midst of that compact crowd. There he held on in the front row with crossed arms, glaring at President Barbicane.
The shouts of the immense crowd continued at their highest pitch throughout this triumphant march. Michel Ardan took it all with evident pleasure. His face gleamed with delight. Several times the platform seemed seized with pitching and rolling like a weatherbeaten ship. But the two heros of the meeting had good sea-legs. They never stumbled; and their vessel arrived without dues at the port of Tampa Town.
Michel Ardan managed fortunately to escape from the last embraces of his vigorous admirers. He made for the Hotel Franklin, quickly gained his chamber, and slid under the bedclothes, while an army of a hundred thousand men kept watch under his windows.
During this time a scene, short, grave, and decisive, took place between the mysterious personage and the president of the Gun Club.
Barbicane, free at last, had gone straight at his adversary.
"Come!" he said shortly.
The other followed him on the quay; and the two presently found themselves alone at the entrance of an open wharf on Jones' Fall.
The two enemies, still mutually unknown, gazed at each other.
"Who are you?" asked Barbicane.
"Captain Nicholl!"
"So I suspected. Hitherto chance has never thrown you in my way."
"I am come for that purpose."
"You have insulted me."
"Publicly!"
"And you will answer to me for this insult?"
"At this very moment."
"No! I desire that all that passes between us shall be secret. Their is a wood situated three miles from Tampa, the wood of Skersnaw. Do you know it?"
"I know it."
"Will you be so good as to enter it to-morrow morning at five o'clock, on one side?"
"Yes! if you will enter at the other side at the same hour."
"And you will not forget your rifle?" said Barbicane.
"No more than you will forget yours?" replied Nicholl.
These words having been coldly spoken, the president of the Gun Club and the captain parted. Barbicane returned to his lodging; but instead of snatching a few hours of repose, he passed the night in endeavoring to discover a means of evading the recoil of the projectile, and resolving the difficult problem proposed by Michel Ardan during the discussion at the meeting.
As soon as the excitement had subsided, the following words were heard uttered in a strong and determined voice:
"Now that the speaker has favored us with so much imagination, would he be so good as to return to his subject, and give us a little practical view of the question?"
All eyes were directed toward the person who spoke. He was a little dried-up man, of an active figure, with an American "goatee" beard. Profiting by the different movements in the crowd, he had managed by degrees to gain the front row of spectators. There, with arms crossed and stern gaze, he watched the hero of the meeting. After having put his question he remained silent, and appeared to take no notice of the thousands of looks directed toward himself, nor of the murmur of disapprobation excited by his words. Meeting at first with no reply, he repeated his question with marked emphasis, adding, "We are here to talk about the moon and not about the earth."
"You are right, sir," replied Michel Ardan; "the discussion has become irregular. We will return to the moon."
"Sir," said the unknown, "you pretend that our satellite is inhabited. Very good, but if Selenites do exist, that race of beings assuredly must live without breathing, for— I warn you for your own sake— there is not the smallest particle of air on the surface of the moon."
At this remark Ardan pushed up his shock of red hair; he saw that he was on the point of being involved in a struggle with this person upon the very gist of the whole question. He looked sternly at him in his turn and said:
"Oh! so there is no air in the moon? And pray, if you are so good, who ventures to affirm that?
"The men of science."
"Really?"
"Really."
"Sir," replied Michel, "pleasantry apart, I have a profound respect for men of science who do possess science, but a profound contempt for men of science who do not."
"Do you know any who belong to the latter category?"
"Decidedly. In France there are some who maintain that, mathematically, a bird cannot possibly fly; and others who demonstrate theoretically that fishes were never made to live in water."
"I have nothing to do with persons of that description, and I can quote, in support of my statement, names which you cannot refuse deference to."
"Then, sir, you will sadly embarrass a poor ignorant, who, besides, asks nothing better than to learn."
"Why, then, do you introduce scientific questions if you have never studied them?" asked the unknown somewhat coarsely.
"For the reason that `he is always brave who never suspects danger.' I know nothing, it is true; but it is precisely my very weakness which constitutes my strength."
"Your weakness amounts to folly," retorted the unknown in a passion.
"All the better," replied our Frenchman, "if it carries me up to the moon."
Barbicane and his colleagues devoured with their eyes the intruder who had so boldly placed himself in antagonism to their enterprise. Nobody knew him, and the president, uneasy as to the result of so free a discussion, watched his new friend with some anxiety. The meeting began to be somewhat fidgety also, for the contest directed their attention to the dangers, if not the actual impossibilities, of the proposed expedition.
"Sir," replied Ardan's antagonist, "there are many and incontrovertible reasons which prove the absence of an atmosphere in the moon. I might say that, a priori, if one ever did exist, it must have been absorbed by the earth; but I prefer to bring forward indisputable facts."
"Bring them forward then, sir, as many as you please."
"You know," said the stranger, "that when any luminous rays cross a medium such as the air, they are deflected out of the straight line; in other words, they undergo refraction. Well! When stars are occulted by the moon, their rays, on grazing the edge of her disc, exhibit not the least deviation, nor offer the slightest indication of refraction. It follows, therefore, that the moon cannot be surrounded by an atmosphere.
"In point of fact," replied Ardan, "this is your chief, if not your only argument; and a really scientific man might be puzzled to answer it. For myself, I will simply say that it is defective, because it assumes that the angular diameter of the moon has been completely determined, which is not the case. But let us proceed. Tell me, my dear sir, do you admit the existence of volcanoes on the moon's surface?"
"Extinct, yes! In activity, no!"
"These volcanoes, however, were at one time in a state of activity?"
"True, but, as they furnish themselves the oxygen necessary for combustion, the mere fact of their eruption does not prove the presence of an atmosphere."
"Proceed again, then; and let us set aside this class of arguments in order to come to direct observations. In 1715 the astronomers Louville and Halley, watching the eclipse of the 3rd of May, remarked some very extraordinary scintillations. These jets of light, rapid in nature, and of frequent recurrence, they attributed to thunderstorms generated in the lunar atmosphere."
"In 1715," replied the unknown, "the astronomers Louville and Halley mistook for lunar phenomena some which were purely terrestrial, such as meteoric or other bodies which are generated in our own atmosphere. This was the scientific explanation at the time of the facts; and that is my answer now."
"On again, then," replied Ardan; "Herschel, in 1787, observed a great number of luminous points on the moon's surface, did he not?"
"Yes! but without offering any solution of them. Herschel himself never inferred from them the necessity of a lunar atmosphere. And I may add that Baeer and Maedler, the two great authorities upon the moon, are quite agreed as to the entire absence of air on its surface."
A movement was here manifest among the assemblage, who appeared to be growing excited by the arguments of this singular personage.
"Let us proceed," replied Ardan, with perfect coolness, "and come to one important fact. A skillful French astronomer, M. Laussedat, in watching the eclipse of July 18, 1860, probed that the horns of the lunar crescent were rounded and truncated. Now, this appearance could only have been produced by a deviation of the solar rays in traversing the atmosphere of the moon. There is no other possible explanation of the facts."
"But is this established as a fact?"
"Absolutely certain!"
A counter-movement here took place in favor of the hero of the meeting, whose opponent was now reduced to silence. Ardan resumed the conversation; and without exhibiting any exultation at the advantage he had gained, simply said:
"You see, then, my dear sir, we must not pronounce with absolute positiveness against the existence of an atmosphere in the moon. That atmosphere is, probably, of extreme rarity; nevertheless at the present day science generally admits that it exists."
"Not in the mountains, at all events," returned the unknown, unwilling to give in.
"No! but at the bottom of the valleys, and not exceeding a few hundred feet in height."
"In any case you will do well to take every precaution, for the air will be terribly rarified."
"My good sir, there will always be enough for a solitary individual; besides, once arrived up there, I shall do my best to economize, and not to breathe except on grand occasions!"
A tremendous roar of laughter rang in the ears of the mysterious interlocutor, who glared fiercely round upon the assembly.
"Then," continued Ardan, with a careless air, "since we are in accord regarding the presence of a certain atmosphere, we are forced to admit the presence of a certain quantity of water. This is a happy consequence for me. Moreover, my amiable contradictor, permit me to submit to you one further observation. We only know one side of the moon's disc; and if there is but little air on the face presented to us, it is possible that there is plenty on the one turned away from us."
"And for what reason?"
"Because the moon, under the action of the earth's attraction, has assumed the form of an egg, which we look at from the smaller end. Hence it follows, by Hausen's calculations, that its center of gravity is situated in the other hemisphere. Hence it results that the great mass of air and water must have been drawn away to the other face of our satellite during the first days of its creation."
"Pure fancies!" cried the unknown.
"No! Pure theories! which are based upon the laws of mechanics, and it seems difficult to me to refute them. I appeal then to this meeting, and I put it to them whether life, such as exists upon the earth, is possible on the surface of the moon?"
Three hundred thousand auditors at once applauded the proposition. Ardan's opponent tried to get in another word, but he could not obtain a hearing. Cries and menaces fell upon him like hail.
"Enough! enough!" cried some.
"Drive the intruder off!" shouted others.
"Turn him out!" roared the exasperated crowd.
But he, holding firmly on to the platform, did not budge an inch, and let the storm pass on, which would soon have assumed formidable proportions, if Michel Ardan had not quieted it by a gesture. He was too chivalrous to abandon his opponent in an apparent extremity.
"You wished to say a few more words?" he asked, in a pleasant voice.
"Yes, a thousand; or rather, no, only one! If you persevere in your enterprise, you must be a——"
"Very rash person! How can you treat me as such? me, who have demanded a cylindro-conical projectile, in order to prevent turning round and round on my way like a squirrel?"
"But, unhappy man, the dreadful recoil will smash you to pieces at your starting."
"My dear contradictor, you have just put your finger upon the true and only difficulty; nevertheless, I have too good an opinion of the industrial genius of the Americans not to believe that they will succeed in overcoming it."
"But the heat developed by the rapidity of the projectile in crossing the strata of air?"
"Oh! the walls are thick, and I shall soon have crossed the atmosphere."
"But victuals and water?"
"I have calculated for a twelvemonth's supply, and I shall be only four days on the journey."
"But for air to breathe on the road?"
"I shall make it by a chemical process."
"But your fall on the moon, supposing you ever reach it?"
"It will be six times less dangerous than a sudden fall upon the earth, because the weight will be only one-sixth as great on the surface of the moon."
"Still it will be enough to smash you like glass!"
"What is to prevent my retarding the shock by means of rockets conveniently placed, and lighted at the right moment?"
"But after all, supposing all difficulties surmounted, all obstacles removed, supposing everything combined to favor you, and granting that you may arrive safe and sound in the moon, how will you come back?"
"I am not coming back!"
At this reply, almost sublime in its very simplicity, the assembly became silent. But its silence was more eloquent than could have been its cries of enthusiasm. The unknown profited by the opportunity and once more protested:
"You will inevitably kill yourself!" he cried; "and your death will be that of a madman, useless even to science!"
"Go on, my dear unknown, for truly your prophecies are most agreeable!"
"It really is too much!" cried Michel Ardan's adversary. "I do not know why I should continue so frivolous a discussion! Please yourself about this insane expedition! We need not trouble ourselves about you!"
"Pray don't stand upon ceremony!"
"No! another person is responsible for your act."
"Who, may I ask?" demanded Michel Ardan in an imperious tone.
"The ignoramus who organized this equally absurd and impossible experiment!"
The attack was direct. Barbicane, ever since the interference of the unknown, had been making fearful efforts of self-control; now, however, seeing himself directly attacked, he could restrain himself no longer. He rose suddenly, and was rushing upon the enemy who thus braved him to the face, when all at once he found himself separated from him.
The platform was lifted by a hundred strong arms, and the president of the Gun Club shared with Michel Ardan triumphal honors. The shield was heavy, but the bearers came in continuous relays, disputing, struggling, even fighting among themselves in their eagerness to lend their shoulders to this demonstration.
However, the unknown had not profited by the tumult to quit his post. Besides he could not have done it in the midst of that compact crowd. There he held on in the front row with crossed arms, glaring at President Barbicane.
The shouts of the immense crowd continued at their highest pitch throughout this triumphant march. Michel Ardan took it all with evident pleasure. His face gleamed with delight. Several times the platform seemed seized with pitching and rolling like a weatherbeaten ship. But the two heros of the meeting had good sea-legs. They never stumbled; and their vessel arrived without dues at the port of Tampa Town.
Michel Ardan managed fortunately to escape from the last embraces of his vigorous admirers. He made for the Hotel Franklin, quickly gained his chamber, and slid under the bedclothes, while an army of a hundred thousand men kept watch under his windows.
During this time a scene, short, grave, and decisive, took place between the mysterious personage and the president of the Gun Club.
Barbicane, free at last, had gone straight at his adversary.
"Come!" he said shortly.
The other followed him on the quay; and the two presently found themselves alone at the entrance of an open wharf on Jones' Fall.
The two enemies, still mutually unknown, gazed at each other.
"Who are you?" asked Barbicane.
"Captain Nicholl!"
"So I suspected. Hitherto chance has never thrown you in my way."
"I am come for that purpose."
"You have insulted me."
"Publicly!"
"And you will answer to me for this insult?"
"At this very moment."
"No! I desire that all that passes between us shall be secret. Their is a wood situated three miles from Tampa, the wood of Skersnaw. Do you know it?"
"I know it."
"Will you be so good as to enter it to-morrow morning at five o'clock, on one side?"
"Yes! if you will enter at the other side at the same hour."
"And you will not forget your rifle?" said Barbicane.
"No more than you will forget yours?" replied Nicholl.
These words having been coldly spoken, the president of the Gun Club and the captain parted. Barbicane returned to his lodging; but instead of snatching a few hours of repose, he passed the night in endeavoring to discover a means of evading the recoil of the projectile, and resolving the difficult problem proposed by Michel Ardan during the discussion at the meeting.
Thursday, January 5, 2012
From the Earth to the Moon, Ch 19: A MONSTER MEETING
CHAPTER XIX -- A MONSTER MEETING
On the following day Barbicane, fearing that indiscreet questions might be put to Michel Ardan, was desirous of reducing the number of the audience to a few of the initiated, his own colleagues for instance. He might as well have tried to check the Falls of Niagara! he was compelled, therefore, to give up the idea, and let his new friend run the chances of a public conference. The place chosen for this monster meeting was a vast plain situated in the rear of the town. In a few hours, thanks to the help of the shipping in port, an immense roofing of canvas was stretched over the parched prairie, and protected it from the burning rays of the sun. There three hundred thousand people braved for many hours the stifling heat while awaiting the arrival of the Frenchman. Of this crowd of spectators a first set could both see and hear; a second set saw badly and heard nothing at all; and as for the third, it could neither see nor hear anything at all. At three o'clock Michel Ardan made his appearance, accompanied by the principal members of the Gun Club. He was supported on his right by President Barbicane, and on his left by J. T. Maston, more radiant than the midday sun, and nearly as ruddy. Ardan mounted a platform, from the top of which his view extended over a sea of black hats.
He exhibited not the slightest embarrassment; he was just as gay, familiar, and pleasant as if he were at home. To the hurrahs which greeted him he replied by a graceful bow; then, waving his hands to request silence, he spoke in perfectly correct English as follows:
"Gentlemen, despite the very hot weather I request your patience for a short time while I offer some explanations regarding the projects which seem to have so interested you. I am neither an orator nor a man of science, and I had no idea of addressing you in public; but my friend Barbicane has told me that you would like to hear me, and I am quite at your service. Listen to me, therefore, with your six hundred thousand ears, and please excuse the faults of the speaker. Now pray do not forget that you see before you a perfect ignoramus whose ignorance goes so far that he cannot even understand the difficulties! It seemed to him that it was a matter quite simple, natural, and easy to take one's place in a projectile and start for the moon! That journey must be undertaken sooner or later; and, as for the mode of locomotion adopted, it follows simply the law of progress. Man began by walking on all-fours; then, one fine day, on two feet; then in a carriage; then in a stage-coach; and lastly by railway. Well, the projectile is the vehicle of the future, and the planets themselves are nothing else! Now some of you, gentlemen, may imagine that the velocity we propose to impart to it is extravagant. It is nothing of the kind. All the stars exceed it in rapidity, and the earth herself is at this moment carrying us round the sun at three times as rapid a rate, and yet she is a mere lounger on the way compared with many others of the planets! And her velocity is constantly decreasing. Is it not evident, then, I ask you, that there will some day appear velocities far greater than these, of which light or electricity will probably be the mechanical agent?
"Yes, gentlemen," continued the orator, "in spite of the opinions of certain narrow-minded people, who would shut up the human race upon this globe, as within some magic circle which it must never outstep, we shall one day travel to the moon, the planets, and the stars, with the same facility, rapidity, and certainty as we now make the voyage from Liverpool to New York! Distance is but a relative expression, and must end by being reduced to zero."
The assembly, strongly predisposed as they were in favor of the
French hero, were slightly staggered at this bold theory.
Michel Ardan perceived the fact.
"Gentlemen," he continued with a pleasant smile, "you do not seem quite convinced. Very good! Let us reason the matter out. Do you know how long it would take for an express train to reach the moon? Three hundred days; no more! And what is that? The distance is no more than nine times the circumference of the earth; and there are no sailors or travelers, of even moderate activity, who have not made longer journeys than that in their lifetime. And now consider that I shall be only ninety- seven hours on my journey. Ah! I see you are reckoning that the moon is a long way off from the earth, and that one must think twice before making the experiment. What would you say, then, if we were talking of going to Neptune, which revolves at a distance of more than two thousand seven hundred and twenty millions of miles from the sun! And yet what is that compared with the distance of the fixed stars, some of which, such as Arcturus, are billions of miles distant from us? And then you talk of the distance which separates the planets from the sun! And there are people who affirm that such a thing as distance exists. Absurdity, folly, idiotic nonsense! Would you know what I think of our own solar universe? Shall I tell you my theory? It is very simple! In my opinion the solar system is a solid homogeneous body; the planets which compose it are in actual contact with each other; and whatever space exists between them is nothing more than the space which separates the molecules of the densest metal, such as silver, iron, or platinum! I have the right, therefore, to affirm, and I repeat, with the conviction which must penetrate all your minds, `Distance is but an empty name; distance does not really exist!'"
"Hurrah!" cried one voice (need it be said it was that of J. T. Maston). "Distance does not exist!" And overcome by the energy of his movements, he nearly fell from the platform to the ground. He just escaped a severe fall, which would have proved to him that distance was by no means an empty name.
"Gentlemen," resumed the orator, "I repeat that the distance between the earth and her satellite is a mere trifle, and undeserving of serious consideration. I am convinced that before twenty years are over one-half of our earth will have paid a visit to the moon. Now, my worthy friends, if you have any question to put to me, you will, I fear, sadly embarrass a poor man like myself; still I will do my best to answer you."
Up to this point the president of the Gun Club had been satisfied with the turn which the discussion had assumed. It became now, however, desirable to divert Ardan from questions of a practical nature, with which he was doubtless far less conversant. Barbicane, therefore, hastened to get in a word, and began by asking his new friend whether he thought that the moon and the planets were inhabited.
"You put before me a great problem, my worthy president," replied the orator, smiling. "Still, men of great intelligence, such as Plutarch, Swedenborg, Bernardin de St. Pierre, and others have, if I mistake not, pronounced in the affirmative. Looking at the question from the natural philosopher's point of view, I should say that nothing useless existed in the world; and, replying to your question by another, I should venture to assert, that if these worlds are habitable, they either are, have been, or will be inhabited."
"No one could answer more logically or fairly," replied the president. "The question then reverts to this: Are these worlds habitable? For my own part I believe they are."
"For myself, I feel certain of it," said Michel Ardan.
"Nevertheless," retorted one of the audience, "there are many arguments against the habitability of the worlds. The conditions of life must evidently be greatly modified upon the majority of them. To mention only the planets, we should be either broiled alive in some, or frozen to death in others, according as they are more or less removed from the sun."
"I regret," replied Michel Ardan, "that I have not the honor of personally knowing my contradictor, for I would have attempted to answer him. His objection has its merits, I admit; but I think we may successfully combat it, as well as all others which affect the habitability of other worlds. If I were a natural philosopher, I would tell him that if less of caloric were set in motion upon the planets which are nearest to the sun, and more, on the contrary, upon those which are farthest removed from it, this simple fact would alone suffice to equalize the heat, and to render the temperature of those worlds supportable by beings organized like ourselves. If I were a naturalist, I would tell him that, according to some illustrious men of science, nature has furnished us with instances upon the earth of animals existing under very varying conditions of life; that fish respire in a medium fatal to other animals; that amphibious creatures possess a double existence very difficult of explanation; that certain denizens of the seas maintain life at enormous depths, and there support a pressure equal to that of fifty or sixty atmospheres without being crushed; that several aquatic insects, insensible to temperature, are met with equally among boiling springs and in the frozen plains of the Polar Sea; in fine, that we cannot help recognizing in nature a diversity of means of operation oftentimes incomprehensible, but not the less real. If I were a chemist, I would tell him that the aerolites, bodies evidently formed exteriorly of our terrestrial globe, have, upon analysis, revealed indisputable traces of carbon, a substance which owes its origin solely to organized beings, and which, according to the experiments of Reichenbach, must necessarily itself have been endued with animation. And lastly, were I a theologian, I would tell him that the scheme of the Divine Redemption, according to St. Paul, seems to be applicable, not merely to the earth, but to all the celestial worlds. But, unfortunately, I am neither theologian, nor chemist, nor naturalist, nor philosopher; therefore, in my absolute ignorance of the great laws which govern the universe, I confine myself to saying in reply, `I do not know whether the worlds are inhabited or not: and since I do not know, I am going to see!'"
Whether Michel Ardan's antagonist hazarded any further arguments or not it is impossible to say, for the uproarious shouts of the crowd would not allow any expression of opinion to gain a hearing. On silence being restored, the triumphant orator contented himself with adding the following remarks:
"Gentlemen, you will observe that I have but slightly touched upon this great question. There is another altogether different line of argument in favor of the habitability of the stars, which I omit for the present. I only desire to call attention to one point. To those who maintain that the planets are not inhabited one may reply: You might be perfectly in the right, if you could only show that the earth is the best possible world, in spite of what Voltaire has said. She has but one satellite, while Jupiter, Uranus, Saturn, Neptune have each several, an advantage by no means to be despised. But that which renders our own globe so uncomfortable is the inclination of its axis to the plane of its orbit. Hence the inequality of days and nights; hence the disagreeable diversity of the seasons. On the surface of our unhappy spheroid we are always either too hot or too cold; we are frozen in winter, broiled in summer; it is the planet of rheumatism, coughs, bronchitis; while on the surface of Jupiter, for example, where the axis is but slightly inclined, the inhabitants may enjoy uniform temperatures. It possesses zones of perpetual springs, summers, autumns, and winters; every Jovian may choose for himself what climate he likes, and there spend the whole of his life in security from all variations of temperature. You will, I am sure, readily admit this superiority of Jupiter over our own planet, to say nothing of his years, which each equal twelve of ours! Under such auspices and such marvelous conditions of existence, it appears to me that the inhabitants of so fortunate a world must be in every respect superior to ourselves. All we require, in order to attain such perfection, is the mere trifle of having an axis of rotation less inclined to the plane of its orbit!"
"Hurrah!" roared an energetic voice, "let us unite our efforts, invent the necessary machines, and rectify the earth's axis!"
A thunder of applause followed this proposal, the author of which was, of course, no other than J. T. Maston. And, in all probability, if the truth must be told, if the Yankees could only have found a point of application for it, they would have constructed a lever capable of raising the earth and rectifying its axis. It was just this deficiency which baffled these daring mechanicians.
On the following day Barbicane, fearing that indiscreet questions might be put to Michel Ardan, was desirous of reducing the number of the audience to a few of the initiated, his own colleagues for instance. He might as well have tried to check the Falls of Niagara! he was compelled, therefore, to give up the idea, and let his new friend run the chances of a public conference. The place chosen for this monster meeting was a vast plain situated in the rear of the town. In a few hours, thanks to the help of the shipping in port, an immense roofing of canvas was stretched over the parched prairie, and protected it from the burning rays of the sun. There three hundred thousand people braved for many hours the stifling heat while awaiting the arrival of the Frenchman. Of this crowd of spectators a first set could both see and hear; a second set saw badly and heard nothing at all; and as for the third, it could neither see nor hear anything at all. At three o'clock Michel Ardan made his appearance, accompanied by the principal members of the Gun Club. He was supported on his right by President Barbicane, and on his left by J. T. Maston, more radiant than the midday sun, and nearly as ruddy. Ardan mounted a platform, from the top of which his view extended over a sea of black hats.
He exhibited not the slightest embarrassment; he was just as gay, familiar, and pleasant as if he were at home. To the hurrahs which greeted him he replied by a graceful bow; then, waving his hands to request silence, he spoke in perfectly correct English as follows:
"Gentlemen, despite the very hot weather I request your patience for a short time while I offer some explanations regarding the projects which seem to have so interested you. I am neither an orator nor a man of science, and I had no idea of addressing you in public; but my friend Barbicane has told me that you would like to hear me, and I am quite at your service. Listen to me, therefore, with your six hundred thousand ears, and please excuse the faults of the speaker. Now pray do not forget that you see before you a perfect ignoramus whose ignorance goes so far that he cannot even understand the difficulties! It seemed to him that it was a matter quite simple, natural, and easy to take one's place in a projectile and start for the moon! That journey must be undertaken sooner or later; and, as for the mode of locomotion adopted, it follows simply the law of progress. Man began by walking on all-fours; then, one fine day, on two feet; then in a carriage; then in a stage-coach; and lastly by railway. Well, the projectile is the vehicle of the future, and the planets themselves are nothing else! Now some of you, gentlemen, may imagine that the velocity we propose to impart to it is extravagant. It is nothing of the kind. All the stars exceed it in rapidity, and the earth herself is at this moment carrying us round the sun at three times as rapid a rate, and yet she is a mere lounger on the way compared with many others of the planets! And her velocity is constantly decreasing. Is it not evident, then, I ask you, that there will some day appear velocities far greater than these, of which light or electricity will probably be the mechanical agent?
"Yes, gentlemen," continued the orator, "in spite of the opinions of certain narrow-minded people, who would shut up the human race upon this globe, as within some magic circle which it must never outstep, we shall one day travel to the moon, the planets, and the stars, with the same facility, rapidity, and certainty as we now make the voyage from Liverpool to New York! Distance is but a relative expression, and must end by being reduced to zero."
The assembly, strongly predisposed as they were in favor of the
French hero, were slightly staggered at this bold theory.
Michel Ardan perceived the fact.
"Gentlemen," he continued with a pleasant smile, "you do not seem quite convinced. Very good! Let us reason the matter out. Do you know how long it would take for an express train to reach the moon? Three hundred days; no more! And what is that? The distance is no more than nine times the circumference of the earth; and there are no sailors or travelers, of even moderate activity, who have not made longer journeys than that in their lifetime. And now consider that I shall be only ninety- seven hours on my journey. Ah! I see you are reckoning that the moon is a long way off from the earth, and that one must think twice before making the experiment. What would you say, then, if we were talking of going to Neptune, which revolves at a distance of more than two thousand seven hundred and twenty millions of miles from the sun! And yet what is that compared with the distance of the fixed stars, some of which, such as Arcturus, are billions of miles distant from us? And then you talk of the distance which separates the planets from the sun! And there are people who affirm that such a thing as distance exists. Absurdity, folly, idiotic nonsense! Would you know what I think of our own solar universe? Shall I tell you my theory? It is very simple! In my opinion the solar system is a solid homogeneous body; the planets which compose it are in actual contact with each other; and whatever space exists between them is nothing more than the space which separates the molecules of the densest metal, such as silver, iron, or platinum! I have the right, therefore, to affirm, and I repeat, with the conviction which must penetrate all your minds, `Distance is but an empty name; distance does not really exist!'"
"Hurrah!" cried one voice (need it be said it was that of J. T. Maston). "Distance does not exist!" And overcome by the energy of his movements, he nearly fell from the platform to the ground. He just escaped a severe fall, which would have proved to him that distance was by no means an empty name.
"Gentlemen," resumed the orator, "I repeat that the distance between the earth and her satellite is a mere trifle, and undeserving of serious consideration. I am convinced that before twenty years are over one-half of our earth will have paid a visit to the moon. Now, my worthy friends, if you have any question to put to me, you will, I fear, sadly embarrass a poor man like myself; still I will do my best to answer you."
Up to this point the president of the Gun Club had been satisfied with the turn which the discussion had assumed. It became now, however, desirable to divert Ardan from questions of a practical nature, with which he was doubtless far less conversant. Barbicane, therefore, hastened to get in a word, and began by asking his new friend whether he thought that the moon and the planets were inhabited.
"You put before me a great problem, my worthy president," replied the orator, smiling. "Still, men of great intelligence, such as Plutarch, Swedenborg, Bernardin de St. Pierre, and others have, if I mistake not, pronounced in the affirmative. Looking at the question from the natural philosopher's point of view, I should say that nothing useless existed in the world; and, replying to your question by another, I should venture to assert, that if these worlds are habitable, they either are, have been, or will be inhabited."
"No one could answer more logically or fairly," replied the president. "The question then reverts to this: Are these worlds habitable? For my own part I believe they are."
"For myself, I feel certain of it," said Michel Ardan.
"Nevertheless," retorted one of the audience, "there are many arguments against the habitability of the worlds. The conditions of life must evidently be greatly modified upon the majority of them. To mention only the planets, we should be either broiled alive in some, or frozen to death in others, according as they are more or less removed from the sun."
"I regret," replied Michel Ardan, "that I have not the honor of personally knowing my contradictor, for I would have attempted to answer him. His objection has its merits, I admit; but I think we may successfully combat it, as well as all others which affect the habitability of other worlds. If I were a natural philosopher, I would tell him that if less of caloric were set in motion upon the planets which are nearest to the sun, and more, on the contrary, upon those which are farthest removed from it, this simple fact would alone suffice to equalize the heat, and to render the temperature of those worlds supportable by beings organized like ourselves. If I were a naturalist, I would tell him that, according to some illustrious men of science, nature has furnished us with instances upon the earth of animals existing under very varying conditions of life; that fish respire in a medium fatal to other animals; that amphibious creatures possess a double existence very difficult of explanation; that certain denizens of the seas maintain life at enormous depths, and there support a pressure equal to that of fifty or sixty atmospheres without being crushed; that several aquatic insects, insensible to temperature, are met with equally among boiling springs and in the frozen plains of the Polar Sea; in fine, that we cannot help recognizing in nature a diversity of means of operation oftentimes incomprehensible, but not the less real. If I were a chemist, I would tell him that the aerolites, bodies evidently formed exteriorly of our terrestrial globe, have, upon analysis, revealed indisputable traces of carbon, a substance which owes its origin solely to organized beings, and which, according to the experiments of Reichenbach, must necessarily itself have been endued with animation. And lastly, were I a theologian, I would tell him that the scheme of the Divine Redemption, according to St. Paul, seems to be applicable, not merely to the earth, but to all the celestial worlds. But, unfortunately, I am neither theologian, nor chemist, nor naturalist, nor philosopher; therefore, in my absolute ignorance of the great laws which govern the universe, I confine myself to saying in reply, `I do not know whether the worlds are inhabited or not: and since I do not know, I am going to see!'"
Whether Michel Ardan's antagonist hazarded any further arguments or not it is impossible to say, for the uproarious shouts of the crowd would not allow any expression of opinion to gain a hearing. On silence being restored, the triumphant orator contented himself with adding the following remarks:
"Gentlemen, you will observe that I have but slightly touched upon this great question. There is another altogether different line of argument in favor of the habitability of the stars, which I omit for the present. I only desire to call attention to one point. To those who maintain that the planets are not inhabited one may reply: You might be perfectly in the right, if you could only show that the earth is the best possible world, in spite of what Voltaire has said. She has but one satellite, while Jupiter, Uranus, Saturn, Neptune have each several, an advantage by no means to be despised. But that which renders our own globe so uncomfortable is the inclination of its axis to the plane of its orbit. Hence the inequality of days and nights; hence the disagreeable diversity of the seasons. On the surface of our unhappy spheroid we are always either too hot or too cold; we are frozen in winter, broiled in summer; it is the planet of rheumatism, coughs, bronchitis; while on the surface of Jupiter, for example, where the axis is but slightly inclined, the inhabitants may enjoy uniform temperatures. It possesses zones of perpetual springs, summers, autumns, and winters; every Jovian may choose for himself what climate he likes, and there spend the whole of his life in security from all variations of temperature. You will, I am sure, readily admit this superiority of Jupiter over our own planet, to say nothing of his years, which each equal twelve of ours! Under such auspices and such marvelous conditions of existence, it appears to me that the inhabitants of so fortunate a world must be in every respect superior to ourselves. All we require, in order to attain such perfection, is the mere trifle of having an axis of rotation less inclined to the plane of its orbit!"
"Hurrah!" roared an energetic voice, "let us unite our efforts, invent the necessary machines, and rectify the earth's axis!"
A thunder of applause followed this proposal, the author of which was, of course, no other than J. T. Maston. And, in all probability, if the truth must be told, if the Yankees could only have found a point of application for it, they would have constructed a lever capable of raising the earth and rectifying its axis. It was just this deficiency which baffled these daring mechanicians.
From the Earth to the Moon, Ch 18: THE PASSENGER OF THE ATLANTA
CHAPTER XVIII -- THE PASSENGER OF THE ATLANTA
If this astounding news, instead of flying through the electric wires, had simply arrived by post in the ordinary sealed envelope, Barbicane would not have hesitated a moment. He would have held his tongue about it, both as a measure of prudence, and in order not to have to reconsider his plans. This telegram might be a cover for some jest, especially as it came from a Frenchman. What human being would ever have conceived the idea of such a journey? and, if such a person really existed, he must be an idiot, whom one would shut up in a lunatic ward, rather than within the walls of the projectile.
The contents of the dispatch, however, speedily became known; for the telegraphic officials possessed but little discretion, and Michel Ardan's proposition ran at once throughout the several States of the Union. Barbicane, had, therefore, no further motives for keeping silence. Consequently, he called together such of his colleagues as were at the moment in Tampa Town, and without any expression of his own opinions simply read to them the laconic text itself. It was received with every possible variety of expressions of doubt, incredulity, and derision from every one, with the exception of J. T. Maston, who exclaimed, "It is a grand idea, however!"
When Barbicane originally proposed to send a shot to the moon every one looked upon the enterprise as simple and practicable enough— a mere question of gunnery; but when a person, professing to be a reasonable being, offered to take passage within the projectile, the whole thing became a farce, or, in plainer language a humbug.
One question, however, remained. Did such a being exist? This telegram flashed across the depths of the Atlantic, the designation of the vessel on board which he was to take his passage, the date assigned for his speedy arrival, all combined to impart a certain character of reality to the proposal. They must get some clearer notion of the matter. Scattered groups of inquirers at length condensed themselves into a compact crowd, which made straight for the residence of President Barbicane. That worthy individual was keeping quiet with the intention of watching events as they arose. But he had forgotten to take into account the public impatience; and it was with no pleasant countenance that he watched the population of Tampa Town gathering under his windows. The murmurs and vociferations below presently obliged him to appear. He came forward, therefore, and on silence being procured, a citizen put point-blank to him the following question: "Is the person mentioned in the telegram, under the name of Michel Ardan, on his way here? Yes or no."
"Gentlemen," replied Barbicane, "I know no more than you do."
"We must know," roared the impatient voices.
"Time will show," calmly replied the president.
"Time has no business to keep a whole country in suspense," replied the orator. "Have you altered the plans of the projectile according to the request of the telegram?"
"Not yet, gentlemen; but you are right! we must have better information to go by. The telegraph must complete its information."
"To the telegraph!" roared the crowd.
Barbicane descended; and heading the immense assemblage, led the way to the telegraph office. A few minutes later a telegram was dispatched to the secretary of the underwriters at Liverpool, requesting answers to the following queries:
"About the ship Atlanta— when did she leave Europe? Had she on board a Frenchman named Michel Ardan?"
Two hours afterward Barbicane received information too exact to leave room for the smallest remaining doubt.
"The steamer Atlanta from Liverpool put to sea on the 2nd of October, bound for Tampa Town, having on board a Frenchman borne on the list of passengers by the name of Michel Ardan."
That very evening he wrote to the house of Breadwill and Co., requesting them to suspend the casting of the projectile until the receipt of further orders. On the 10th of October, at nine A.M., the semaphores of the Bahama Canal signaled a thick smoke on the horizon. Two hours later a large steamer exchanged signals with them. the name of the Atlanta flew at once over Tampa Town. At four o'clock the English vessel entered the Bay of Espiritu Santo. At five it crossed the passage of Hillisborough Bay at full steam. At six she cast anchor at Port Tampa. The anchor had scarcely caught the sandy bottom when five hundred boats surrounded the Atlanta, and the steamer was taken by assault. Barbicane was the first to set foot on deck, and in a voice of which he vainly tried to conceal the emotion, called "Michel Ardan."
"Here!" replied an individual perched on the poop.
Barbicane, with arms crossed, looked fixedly at the passenger of the Atlanta.
He was a man of about forty-two years of age, of large build, but slightly round-shouldered. His massive head momentarily shook a shock of reddish hair, which resembled a lion's mane. His face was short with a broad forehead, and furnished with a moustache as bristly as a cat's, and little patches of yellowish whiskers upon full cheeks. Round, wildish eyes, slightly near-sighted, completed a physiognomy essentially feline. His nose was firmly shaped, his mouth particularly sweet in expression, high forehead, intelligent and furrowed with wrinkles like a newly-plowed field. The body was powerfully developed and firmly fixed upon long legs. Muscular arms, and a general air of decision gave him the appearance of a hardy, jolly, companion. He was dressed in a suit of ample dimensions, loose neckerchief, open shirtcollar, disclosing a robust neck; his cuffs were invariably unbuttoned, through which appeared a pair of red hands.
On the bridge of the steamer, in the midst of the crowd, he bustled to and fro, never still for a moment, "dragging his anchors," as the sailors say, gesticulating, making free with everybody, biting his nails with nervous avidity. He was one of those originals which nature sometimes invents in the freak of a moment, and of which she then breaks the mould.
Among other peculiarities, this curiosity gave himself out for a sublime ignoramus, "like Shakespeare," and professed supreme contempt for all scientific men. Those "fellows," as he called them, "are only fit to mark the points, while we play the game." He was, in fact, a thorough Bohemian, adventurous, but not an adventurer; a hare-brained fellow, a kind of Icarus, only possessing relays of wings. For the rest, he was ever in scrapes, ending invariably by falling on his feet, like those little figures which they sell for children's toys. In a few words, his motto was "I have my opinions," and the love of the impossible constituted his ruling passion.
Such was the passenger of the Atlanta, always excitable, as if boiling under the action of some internal fire by the character of his physical organization. If ever two individuals offered a striking contrast to each other, these were certainly Michel Ardan and the Yankee Barbicane; both, moreover, being equally enterprising and daring, each in his own way.
The scrutiny which the president of the Gun Club had instituted regarding this new rival was quickly interrupted by the shouts and hurrahs of the crowd. The cries became at last so uproarious, and the popular enthusiasm assumed so personal a form, that Michel Ardan, after having shaken hands some thousands of times, at the imminent risk of leaving his fingers behind him, was fain at last to make a bolt for his cabin.
Barbicane followed him without uttering a word.
"You are Barbicane, I suppose?" said Michel Ardan, in a tone of voice in which he would have addressed a friend of twenty years' standing.
"Yes," replied the president of the Gun Club.
"All right! how d'ye do, Barbicane? how are you getting on— pretty well? that's right."
"So," said Barbicane without further preliminary, "you are quite determined to go."
"Quite decided."
"Nothing will stop you?"
"Nothing. Have you modified your projectile according to my telegram."
"I waited for your arrival. But," asked Barbicane again, "have you carefully reflected?"
"Reflected? have I any time to spare? I find an opportunity of making a tour in the moon, and I mean to profit by it. There is the whole gist of the matter."
Barbicane looked hard at this man who spoke so lightly of his project with such complete absence of anxiety. "But, at least," said he, "you have some plans, some means of carrying your project into execution?"
"Excellent, my dear Barbicane; only permit me to offer one remark: My wish is to tell my story once for all, to everybody, and then have done with it; then there will be no need for recapitulation. So, if you have no objection, assemble your friends, colleagues, the whole town, all Florida, all America if you like, and to-morrow I shall be ready to explain my plans and answer any objections whatever that may be advanced. You may rest assured I shall wait without stirring. Will that suit you?"
"All right," replied Barbicane.
So saying, the president left the cabin and informed the crowd of the proposal of Michel Ardan. His words were received with clappings of hands and shouts of joy. They had removed all difficulties. To-morrow every one would contemplate at his ease this European hero. However, some of the spectators, more infatuated than the rest, would not leave the deck of the Atlanta. They passed the night on board. Among others J. T. Maston got his hook fixed in the combing of the poop, and it pretty nearly required the capstan to get it out again.
"He is a hero! a hero!" he cried, a theme of which he was never tired of ringing the changes; "and we are only like weak, silly women, compared with this European!"
As to the president, after having suggested to the visitors it was time to retire, he re-entered the passenger's cabin, and remained there till the bell of the steamer made it midnight.
But then the two rivals in popularity shook hands heartily and parted on terms of intimate friendship.
If this astounding news, instead of flying through the electric wires, had simply arrived by post in the ordinary sealed envelope, Barbicane would not have hesitated a moment. He would have held his tongue about it, both as a measure of prudence, and in order not to have to reconsider his plans. This telegram might be a cover for some jest, especially as it came from a Frenchman. What human being would ever have conceived the idea of such a journey? and, if such a person really existed, he must be an idiot, whom one would shut up in a lunatic ward, rather than within the walls of the projectile.
The contents of the dispatch, however, speedily became known; for the telegraphic officials possessed but little discretion, and Michel Ardan's proposition ran at once throughout the several States of the Union. Barbicane, had, therefore, no further motives for keeping silence. Consequently, he called together such of his colleagues as were at the moment in Tampa Town, and without any expression of his own opinions simply read to them the laconic text itself. It was received with every possible variety of expressions of doubt, incredulity, and derision from every one, with the exception of J. T. Maston, who exclaimed, "It is a grand idea, however!"
When Barbicane originally proposed to send a shot to the moon every one looked upon the enterprise as simple and practicable enough— a mere question of gunnery; but when a person, professing to be a reasonable being, offered to take passage within the projectile, the whole thing became a farce, or, in plainer language a humbug.
One question, however, remained. Did such a being exist? This telegram flashed across the depths of the Atlantic, the designation of the vessel on board which he was to take his passage, the date assigned for his speedy arrival, all combined to impart a certain character of reality to the proposal. They must get some clearer notion of the matter. Scattered groups of inquirers at length condensed themselves into a compact crowd, which made straight for the residence of President Barbicane. That worthy individual was keeping quiet with the intention of watching events as they arose. But he had forgotten to take into account the public impatience; and it was with no pleasant countenance that he watched the population of Tampa Town gathering under his windows. The murmurs and vociferations below presently obliged him to appear. He came forward, therefore, and on silence being procured, a citizen put point-blank to him the following question: "Is the person mentioned in the telegram, under the name of Michel Ardan, on his way here? Yes or no."
"Gentlemen," replied Barbicane, "I know no more than you do."
"We must know," roared the impatient voices.
"Time will show," calmly replied the president.
"Time has no business to keep a whole country in suspense," replied the orator. "Have you altered the plans of the projectile according to the request of the telegram?"
"Not yet, gentlemen; but you are right! we must have better information to go by. The telegraph must complete its information."
"To the telegraph!" roared the crowd.
Barbicane descended; and heading the immense assemblage, led the way to the telegraph office. A few minutes later a telegram was dispatched to the secretary of the underwriters at Liverpool, requesting answers to the following queries:
"About the ship Atlanta— when did she leave Europe? Had she on board a Frenchman named Michel Ardan?"
Two hours afterward Barbicane received information too exact to leave room for the smallest remaining doubt.
"The steamer Atlanta from Liverpool put to sea on the 2nd of October, bound for Tampa Town, having on board a Frenchman borne on the list of passengers by the name of Michel Ardan."
That very evening he wrote to the house of Breadwill and Co., requesting them to suspend the casting of the projectile until the receipt of further orders. On the 10th of October, at nine A.M., the semaphores of the Bahama Canal signaled a thick smoke on the horizon. Two hours later a large steamer exchanged signals with them. the name of the Atlanta flew at once over Tampa Town. At four o'clock the English vessel entered the Bay of Espiritu Santo. At five it crossed the passage of Hillisborough Bay at full steam. At six she cast anchor at Port Tampa. The anchor had scarcely caught the sandy bottom when five hundred boats surrounded the Atlanta, and the steamer was taken by assault. Barbicane was the first to set foot on deck, and in a voice of which he vainly tried to conceal the emotion, called "Michel Ardan."
"Here!" replied an individual perched on the poop.
Barbicane, with arms crossed, looked fixedly at the passenger of the Atlanta.
He was a man of about forty-two years of age, of large build, but slightly round-shouldered. His massive head momentarily shook a shock of reddish hair, which resembled a lion's mane. His face was short with a broad forehead, and furnished with a moustache as bristly as a cat's, and little patches of yellowish whiskers upon full cheeks. Round, wildish eyes, slightly near-sighted, completed a physiognomy essentially feline. His nose was firmly shaped, his mouth particularly sweet in expression, high forehead, intelligent and furrowed with wrinkles like a newly-plowed field. The body was powerfully developed and firmly fixed upon long legs. Muscular arms, and a general air of decision gave him the appearance of a hardy, jolly, companion. He was dressed in a suit of ample dimensions, loose neckerchief, open shirtcollar, disclosing a robust neck; his cuffs were invariably unbuttoned, through which appeared a pair of red hands.
On the bridge of the steamer, in the midst of the crowd, he bustled to and fro, never still for a moment, "dragging his anchors," as the sailors say, gesticulating, making free with everybody, biting his nails with nervous avidity. He was one of those originals which nature sometimes invents in the freak of a moment, and of which she then breaks the mould.
Among other peculiarities, this curiosity gave himself out for a sublime ignoramus, "like Shakespeare," and professed supreme contempt for all scientific men. Those "fellows," as he called them, "are only fit to mark the points, while we play the game." He was, in fact, a thorough Bohemian, adventurous, but not an adventurer; a hare-brained fellow, a kind of Icarus, only possessing relays of wings. For the rest, he was ever in scrapes, ending invariably by falling on his feet, like those little figures which they sell for children's toys. In a few words, his motto was "I have my opinions," and the love of the impossible constituted his ruling passion.
Such was the passenger of the Atlanta, always excitable, as if boiling under the action of some internal fire by the character of his physical organization. If ever two individuals offered a striking contrast to each other, these were certainly Michel Ardan and the Yankee Barbicane; both, moreover, being equally enterprising and daring, each in his own way.
The scrutiny which the president of the Gun Club had instituted regarding this new rival was quickly interrupted by the shouts and hurrahs of the crowd. The cries became at last so uproarious, and the popular enthusiasm assumed so personal a form, that Michel Ardan, after having shaken hands some thousands of times, at the imminent risk of leaving his fingers behind him, was fain at last to make a bolt for his cabin.
Barbicane followed him without uttering a word.
"You are Barbicane, I suppose?" said Michel Ardan, in a tone of voice in which he would have addressed a friend of twenty years' standing.
"Yes," replied the president of the Gun Club.
"All right! how d'ye do, Barbicane? how are you getting on— pretty well? that's right."
"So," said Barbicane without further preliminary, "you are quite determined to go."
"Quite decided."
"Nothing will stop you?"
"Nothing. Have you modified your projectile according to my telegram."
"I waited for your arrival. But," asked Barbicane again, "have you carefully reflected?"
"Reflected? have I any time to spare? I find an opportunity of making a tour in the moon, and I mean to profit by it. There is the whole gist of the matter."
Barbicane looked hard at this man who spoke so lightly of his project with such complete absence of anxiety. "But, at least," said he, "you have some plans, some means of carrying your project into execution?"
"Excellent, my dear Barbicane; only permit me to offer one remark: My wish is to tell my story once for all, to everybody, and then have done with it; then there will be no need for recapitulation. So, if you have no objection, assemble your friends, colleagues, the whole town, all Florida, all America if you like, and to-morrow I shall be ready to explain my plans and answer any objections whatever that may be advanced. You may rest assured I shall wait without stirring. Will that suit you?"
"All right," replied Barbicane.
So saying, the president left the cabin and informed the crowd of the proposal of Michel Ardan. His words were received with clappings of hands and shouts of joy. They had removed all difficulties. To-morrow every one would contemplate at his ease this European hero. However, some of the spectators, more infatuated than the rest, would not leave the deck of the Atlanta. They passed the night on board. Among others J. T. Maston got his hook fixed in the combing of the poop, and it pretty nearly required the capstan to get it out again.
"He is a hero! a hero!" he cried, a theme of which he was never tired of ringing the changes; "and we are only like weak, silly women, compared with this European!"
As to the president, after having suggested to the visitors it was time to retire, he re-entered the passenger's cabin, and remained there till the bell of the steamer made it midnight.
But then the two rivals in popularity shook hands heartily and parted on terms of intimate friendship.
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