the final frontier
This is an amazing video. You’ve likely seen video of the Space Shuttle takeoff. You’ve likely even seen video of takeoff from the view of the camera’s on the Space Shuttle’s 2 solid rocket boosters. This one is slightly different. Turn up your speakers and listen to this one. The folks at the legendary Skywalker Sound mixed and enhanced this one.
Via Bad Astronomy
I love when people send something they made themselves to the edge of space. LEGO guy holding Canadian flags is no exception. Very cool.
I’m still young enough to say the shuttle program is older than me, yet I’m old enough to say I’ve lived through the vast majority of it’s 30 year run. I suspect it will be many years before we’re able to create something of nearly that quality again.
There is a very reasonable chance that nobody of my generation will every enter earths orbit on a NASA spacecraft. By the time NASA gets funding, develops a program and gets to the point of manned flight, they may be too old. Kennedy in 1961 challenged the US to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. By 1969 they were strolling on the moon. That was the entire programs length. It’s unlikely that NASA’s current roadmap to Mars by the mid-2030’s won’t be modified/scrapped by a future president. Even 2015 to start construction of a new heavy-lift vehicle is somewhat unlikely.
An amazing program despite it’s failures. Hopefully at some point we’ll get a successor together. 30 years is a long time. Technology has come a long way. If applied correctly, space exploration could be light years ahead of where it is today.
Here’s curious tidbit from someone on reddit.com who identifies themselves as a Johnson Space Center Employee:
The Shuttle suffers from its own Y2K problem. The system computers run clocks that are set for GMT days: I think today is GMT 49. Anyway, when it gets to December 31, it’s GMT day 365. When it moves to January 1, it goes to GMT 001. This screws up the flight computer. I don’t believe there has ever been a Shuttle flight over a new year. A software fix is possible, but it has never been worth the millions of dollars necessary to fix it.
This actually seems very believable. For a little background, the Space Shuttle originally flew a set of 5 IBM AP-101‘s. In 1991 they upgraded to AP-101S, which has about 1 MB of semiconductor memory (as opposed to the core memory on the AP-101) and 3X the CPU speed. 4 run in sync, and 1 runs a separate set of software written independently for the ultimate in redundancy. They sit in two separate places in the orbiter and are quite rugged and power-hungry at 550W. That’s substantial considering the processing power. Since they mainly handle number crunching for the orbiter’s thrusters and run through things like the launch sequence. They just need to be reliable. They are programmed using HAL/S. The original memory limitations are likely why it uses GMT dates, and the reason to avoid upgrading the software is because of the complexity of the environment.
While a software upgrade would likely fix this issue, upgrading something that needs to be this well-tested would be insanely expensive.
I’ve mentioned Phil Plait and his awesome Bad Astronomy blog a few times here over the past few years. Way back when (early last decade) we were using the same web host and support forum. He’s now getting his own show: Phil Plait’s Bad Universe on the Discovery Channel.
I can also say that I remember him before he was actually famous.
Back in 2004 I mentioned 99942 Aphophis, a near earth asteroid who was calculated to have a 1 in 37 (2.7%) chance of hitting earth in 2029. That was subsequently ruled a non-existent risk however if it passed through a gravitational keyhole in 2029 it would have a 1 in 250,000 chance in 2036 or 1 in 12.3 million in 2037. Most of us have other terrestrial things to worry about. There’s also a chance something else from the heavens is on a collision course and we just don’t see it. We only monitor a tiny portion of the sky.
Russia however sounds like it may want to make an attempt to divert the course of this asteroid in 2029. If that idea sounds familiar from somewhere, you’re right. It’s the plot for Armageddon. Bruce Willis might be a little to old for the job by 2029 though.
Unless the trajectory data in 2029 substantially changes the odds, it seems like it would be a bad idea to even attempt something like this. The odds of a human failure would likely be higher than the risk of the asteroid without human meddling. Being prepared may not be such a bad idea however, odds are we’d be able to reuse the technology as an impact is inevitable given enough time.
Philip Plait, Ph.D. of Bad Astronomy mentions this specific asteroid and the idea of moving or blowing it up in Death From The Skies. The movies are bogus, it’s not easy. Density and composition of the asteroid are important. It may just be a giant chunk of iron, or a “garbage pile” of rock.
There was pretty interesting news yesterday that NASA’s Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) impact did find evidence of water on the moon.
Equally if not more interesting is how quickly Google jumped on the news:
Google has always done lots of science related logo’s. They are the only ones I know of who marked the anniversary of the barcode’s creation or Samuel Morse’s birthday.
However, I can’t recall Google ever putting up a logo for a news event as quickly as they did yesterday regarding yesterdays announcement.
NASA posted some video of the first stage of the Ares I rocket being test fired out in the desert. 22 million horse power. As powerful as this rocket is, it doesn’t compare to Ares IV and of course the Saturn V.
I get the impression you don’t want to be anywhere near the business end of this thing when it’s lit:
During the test the flame exited the rocket motor out of a nozzle at about mach 3 and burned for approx. 123 seconds and the temperature of that flame approached approx. 4500 F. This is approx two-thirds the temperature of the sun’s surface. At this temperature steel does more than melt, it boils. And sand that was placed around just aft of the rocket motor got hot enough to actually turn to glass
It started during a Joint Session of Congress on May 25, 1961 with John F. Kennedy challenging the United States to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. 1969, 6 years after JFK was assassinated Apollo 11 landed on the moon and this famous newscast with the late Walter Cronkite who coincidentally passed away on Friday.
For the 40th anniversary NASA restored some of the old video of the landing, now available in H.264 to view. It’s not true HD in today’s terms but still impressive to see. NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) also manged to snap a few pictures of the landing sites of the Apollo missions just in time. I believe this is the first time they have ever been identified since the actual landings. 2-3X higher resolution images are under way.
Lastly The John F. Kennedy Library launched “We Choose the Moon” a clever “live” broadcast of the Apollo 11 mission in its entirety with exactly a 40 year delay.
Now 40 years later NASA is embarking on Constellation which even in vehicle design parallels what was done in Apollo. We may be back on the moon by 2020 assuming Constellation, Aries IV or DIRECT succeed.
Attach Orbiter Here
Note: Black Side Down
NASA is known as a pretty bureaucratic organization with lots of CYA procedures. But this is just a great little joke hidden up above one of the Boeing 747’s used to ferry the Shuttles when they land somewhere other than Kennedy Space Center.
It’s not just software engineers embedding Easter eggs in their work.
[Via: Wikipedia]
