Weathertop Observatory

"Space Alone" - What We Would Feel

2008-03-05T18:25:00.000-08:00

I think that at the end of the day we really don't have a strong idea of what space travel would be like. I think it would be like combat - monotony broken up by periods of intense emotion. 2001 probably does the best job at communicating that sensation and the effect it would have on our primate brains.

But here is another try - "Space Alone" is a simple, touching 3 minute film about a space traveler and his space-cat-thing friend. At least for a while.

Our Vision is Truly Frightening

2008-02-23T17:57:00.000-08:00

This is a short video presentation from the 2007 TED Conference by George Dyson (son of physicist Freeman Dyson). The elder Dyson was part of a project that fascinated the son and became a lifelong interest - Project Orion.

Project Orion was a nuclear powered spacecraft that would cruise between planets - powered by nuclear warheads impacting a massive inertial plate. Liftoff to low Earth orbit would be catastrophic for life on Earth, but interplanetary travel via nukes was considered safe enough.

Not to spoil the video, but the project never got far off the ground. There were ground tests with conventional explosives, but thankfully the full concept was never funded. Then, 40 years later, NASA resurrects the concept. Be slightly afraid.

Getting Off the Planet

2008-02-13T19:10:00.000-08:00

This post is about getting up into space, rather than just staying here and admiring the view. I remember being a kid in the 70s, enjoying the afterglow of the Apollo missions. Then we waited for the Shuttle in the early 80s. The program just didn't know what it wanted to do beyond getting to orbit reliably. Interest in astronauts waned big-time into the 90s.

These days it seems like there is a greater impetus to our exploring space with humans - even Stephen Hawking is on board with this one. The uncertainties of global warming, peak oil, and international security loom large in our minds. And in the budgets of our governmental agencies.

It shouldn't be a big surprise that there are some who think that we shouldn't have "all our eggs in one basketcase" planet-arily speaking. Those folks argue we need to return to space ASAP in order to be sure that we can avoid getting wiped out in one fell swoop (asteroid? global warming? epileptic Japanese TV shows?).

Today the Russians are pretty much out of the space race... their rocket program involves ICBM and submarine-based leftovers from the Cold War (and those have not been that reliable). The US still maintains an astronaut corps, but with the Shuttle going offline in 2010 and its replacement, the Ares Rocket, CEV and Orion, won't come online until 2015 at the earliest. Those astronauts will spend a lot of time with simulators for those five years.

There is some argument that the private sector will make it up before the US CEV and the Chinese. I am not sure - the Virgin/Rutan collaboration seems like it has the most steam behind it, but the payloads will really have to ramp up to make it possible to get orbital structures up there. Really not rocket technology for that and NASA's Ares and the Chinese Chang'e seem like the only ones that will do it.

So, our other major competitor is... the next country with an astronaut corps... they are actually taikonauts... is China. The US and the Chinese space agencies have set the same goal - back to the Moon starting in 2020. Same schedule.

Who wins bragging rights?

Name That (Gamma Ray) Satellite

2008-02-11T12:31:00.000-08:00

It is not often that we get a chance to name things... theories are so few and far between. "Theory of Chixiclub Jello Vibrations" or "Theory of Long Tail Marketing". Patents that work are tough and so many of those are for brand names... "Chia pets", "Foreman Grill",..

And they don't name monuments after you until you are dead. Or spacecraft for that matter.

But now comes your chance at least some fame - you get a chance to name a new NASA spacecraft - the Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST). Mouthful, eh? Mission that seems to be a bit too esoteric (Gamma rays? Like the Hulk's origin story?). What if you had a better name... ideas you can use a starting points:

Bruce Banner-scope
Gamma-meleon
Gamma ray-nbow
Sievert-a-scope

Here are the rules and where you can submit your super-name! Can't name it after yourself (or anyone else living).

Thinnest Moon

2008-02-09T17:38:00.000-08:00

From Spaceweather.com, February 8th:

"It could be the thinnest crescent you'll ever see. Behold, the 0.5% Moon:

"I took this picture last night about 30 minutes after sunset," says Sam Cole of Austin, Texas. The Moon was only visible for about 8 minutes before it set below the curve of the Earth."

We didn't get a chance to see this one, clouded out by rainclouds. The next night (Thursday) we could see a fantastic thin crescent moon when we went out for evening chores. By the time we were done, some high clouds had rolled in from the west and completed obscured the sky (sorry, Eiley). Next night and then tonight - more clouds. The image below shows a slightly thinner view than we had... another month, perhaps.

The best bet for a super-young crescent moon this year in eastern North America is on May 5th, 2008 when an 11 hour moon should be visible. And the next night (when it is about 4% illuminated), Mercury should be visible right next to it (about 45 minutes before sunset). Like the picture above from a 1999 pairing.

Till then, I'll just dream about seeing the sky beyond the scudding clouds. Seeing the Sun would be a nice change of pace, too.

2008-02-07T19:52:00.000-08:00

My Favorite Planet Looks Wonderful Tonight (on the net)

This is the glory of Saturn. Not a CGI movie version, but the real-deal image from NASA's Cassini spacecraft in orbit around Saturn (still!). Saturn is a wonderful sight and our view of it is slowly decreasing this year. It's rings are tilted and this year our orientation to Saturn means that the tilt makes the rings appear almost flat to us.

So no "planet with ears" like Galileo first sketched 400 years ago :D I cannot imagine what he would have said at that moment, but... wow.

Saturn does not look much different today through the telescope - yellow-ish and distinctly "eared", these spacecraft images just make it seem more real. Someday, we will see this majestic gas giant with her beautiful rings in real, 3-D, human eyes. Not mine, I am sure, by remember that in the movie "GATTACA", the hero's dream mission was to be on the launch crew to go to Titan.

In the meantime, we can still dream of it (especially on cloudy nights like this one). Or, if we are frisky, we can try out NASA's 3-D "Where is Cassini Now?" web browser - highly recommended (you do have to install a small 3-D plugin, but it was quick). Well worth it to see Cassini fly-by the moons, flop about to send data back to Earth, and give us a sense of the size of the whole Saturn-ring-moon system. She flies all day and never seems to get close to anything.

Vast and beautiful.

2008-02-02T13:59:00.000-08:00

When the Groundhog Doesn't Like the Sky's Look

So that poor Groundhog (version 12.0?) saw another stretch of winter. And this on the day that we had rain and melting ice here. Gray gray gray and no vision of the Sun at all. Guess we have to agree with him, no shadows possible here.

Of course, according to WikiP, there have been only "early spring" predictions only 13% of the past 122 predictions. Given the weather and cloudiness, this may not be a big surprise. Could be cloudy and wrong just as likely as cloudy and right. How good are his predictions?

According to this article at CNN from 1998 (they had the Internet in 1998!?!), the National Climate Data Center has Phil's accuracy rate at about 59%. Could be a little higher or lower, but that is darn close to 50/50 in my book.

How about for us? Including last year, which was a decidedly late spring (our snows began in March and several feet later, we slumped into April), Phil is 50/50 for 6 years (2002-2007).

I guess I need some of that immortality-inducing "Groundhog Punch" to make it through the winter, tho.

Observatory Conditions - Overcast, 40 F, no precip