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Genesis (remember Genesis?) returns Wednesday, in spectacular fashion:
Two Hollywood stunt pilots and a space capsule full of stardust were on track for a historic mid-air encounter above the Utah desert on Wednesday at the end of a three-year mission to probe the origins of the solar system.
The Genesis spacecraft was expected to swing by Earth at about noon EDT on Wednesday and jettison a capsule containing particles that may yield insights about the early formation of planets.
As the disc-shaped capsule, just five feet in diameter, streaks toward its landing site at the Utah Test & Training Range, the helicopter pilots will try to snatch it out of the sky to avert a rough landing that could damage the samples and delicate instruments on board…
The mid-air retrieval by pilots Cliff Fleming and Dan Rudert, whose resumes include aerial stunts for action films like “Batman” and “Hulk,” will make aviation history by capturing the first man-made object to enter Earth’s atmosphere from outer space, Corwin said.
The two were hired after conventional helicopter pilots declined to attempt the controlled mid-air collision, saying it sounded too much like a stunt, NASA officials said earlier.
After plucking the parachuted capsule from the sky, the pilots must quickly fly it to a clean room at Michael Army Air Field, 20 miles from the landing site.
There, scientists have two hours to remove the scorched heat shield and capsule and purge the sample canister of gases from Earth’s upper atmosphere to prevent contamination, Genesis project manager Don Sweetham said.
The canister and capsule will be trucked to Johnson Space Center in Houston for further preparations before samples are parceled out to laboratories around the world, Sweetham said.
Steven den Beste may be hanging up his keyboard. For good, this time.
Frank Sietzen gives us an update on the CEV and the boost vehicle concepts being considered for launching it: Apollo Inspires New Moon RocketsIt’s especially interesting to learn (like it or not) that Shuttle-derived (ET/SRB-based) heavy lift is still in the running, after all, as is the SRB-derived “pogo stick” concept (CEV capsule atop a modified SRB) — I’m surprised that those two concepts have not yet fallen out in favor of one or both EELVs, given the apparent economic incentives in increasing EELV flight rates and mothballing the Shuttle-related infrastructure.
It appears I missed a good time in Chicago last week.
In addition to the major speakers, there was an interesting announcement made:
A major sensation was caused at the convention by the announcement by award-winning filmmaker Sam Burbank that he would be making a theatrical motion picture based on Robert Zubrin’s novel “First Landing.” Listing the various Hollywood horror pictures or shoot-em- ups nominally featuring Mars, Burbank drew a sharp distinction between those efforts and the kind of movie “First Landing” will be.
What…it will actually be good?
There never has been a movie actually about the human exploration of Mars. This will be the first.” Burbank said, adding: “It will not be set in the glorious science fiction future, but in our own time, and it will show the mission done with all the grungy realism of the kind of space travel we can really do. It’s not going to show the Mars mission as being easy. It’s not going to show it as being impossible. It’s going to show it as being really tough, but doable, by a group of people who have what it takes to do it.”
Read: a sales pitch for Mars Direct.
If the heavy applause Burbank received wasn’t sufficient indication of the audience’s appreciation of his project, what happened next certainly was, as following his remarks, paperback copies of “First Landing” were bought up literally by the dozens by conference members mobbing the book table.
Now, even by the standards of a Mars Society press release, that’s laying it on a bit thick.
I’m currently reading John Steele Gordon’s The Business of America a collection of his essays from American Heritage on the history of business in the United States. The book has been a great read so far, but the first essay, “Profits in the Wilderness”, stands out for its relevance to space commercialization and settlement. It concerns the rise of the joint-stock corporation, the ancestor of the modern corporation, as a means of funding exploration of the New World, and its later adaptation by settlers to the task of town founding.
Even more ignored than technology as a driving force in history is organization. The full-rigged ship was extraordinarily expensive in the economic universe of Columbus’s time. If exploration’s full commercial potential was to be exploited, new ways of financing it beyond appealing to princes were needed. Spain did not develop these new ways and soon stagnated. England and Holland, however, developed the joint-stock company and prospered mightily…
[emphasis added] There are a couple of lessons in this paragraph alone. First, even the Renaissance explorers understood the limitations of government-funded exploration programs, and developed a new form of organization to overcome them. Second, the country which initially led in the exploration of the new world quickly lost that lead because it continued to rely on the old methods (and because it was corrupted by the easy wealth it initially gained from its activities, as Gordon explains elsewhere).
Continue reading Profits in the Wilderness
The miracle of Google News brings us another clueless editorial (oops, no, it’s “straight news” this time) from an obscure newspaper: Saskatoon StarPhoenix: Da Vinci rocket pilot faces real dangers
When the Torontonian dons his space suit on Oct. 2, he risks being killed in an explosion or in a spectacular crash should his rocket engines fail to ignite or should the balloon that is supposed to carry him on the first leg of his journey deflate.
“If there are any problems, the chances of surviving are zero,” said Ted Llewellyn, a professor of engineering and physics at the University of Saskatchewan.
“The temperature at 24 kilometres is not warm. It’s colder than Saskatoon in the middle of winter. The polyethylene balloon can become brittle and if it goes upwards too fast, it could shatter.
“The balloon, reputed to be as big as three football fields, should also be a concern before it ever starts reaching for the sky.
“This thing’s going to be so big on the ground that any wind greater than one kilometre per hour is going to kill him,” said Llewellyn.
Who needs probability when you have certainty?
And then…after predictions of his assured impending demise…the punchline:
Feeney is not presently doing interviews.
And of course, what space-related news item would be complete without a pearl of wisdom from He Who Must Be Quoted:
“I assume anyone who goes up in one of these contraptions has reconciled themselves to the possibility that they might go out in a blaze of glory,” John Pike, director of space policy for the Federation of American Scientists, told CNN.com.
At least Feeney himself has the right perspective:
“There are dangers inherent in every attempt to push the boundary of the known into the unknown,” says his website (davinciproject.com/beta).
Rocket’s Wreckage On Sale To Help Fund Next Launch
Wreckage from a private rocket that exploded after takeoff is up for sale, with proceeds going to finance the owner’s next launch.
Space Transport Corp.’s Phillip Storm and Eric Meier on Wednesday put the remains of the Rubicon 1 up for online auction at eBay.com. The twisted rubble of its space capsule and nosecone are available for a minimum bid of $500.
Rubicon 1 launched unsuccessfully Sunday from a Pacific Ocean beach bluff about two miles south of Queets, on the Olympic Peninsula’s southwest edge.
“We were just going to toss the thing,” Storm said, “but John Anderson said, ‘Hey, you better put it up on eBay.”‘
Just think of how much money NASA could have raked in had eBay existed in the late 1950s.
It seems building a rocket is a bit trickier than setting up a dot.com:
The SpaceX Falcon 1 rocket is headed for a September delivery to Launch Complex 3 West at the Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. Once in position, the launcher will undergo an on-the-pad firing of its main engine, leading to a potential first flight towards the end of November.
Not quite the January 22nd launch date announced this time last year.
Falcon 1 is a two stage, liquid oxygen and rocket grade kerosene powered launch vehicle. The vehicle?s main engine is called Merlin, with a SpaceX Kestrel engine powering the booster?s second stage. Falcon?s first stage is also rigged for a water landing under parachute, to be picked up by a ship in a process similar to recovery of the space shuttle solid rocket boosters.
SpaceX is developing a five-engine version of the single-engine Falcon 1 booster — the Falcon 5 — that is slated to be completed for launch in mid-2005.
It’s good to be ambitious, but can they deliver? I seem to remember someone else leapfrogging to a larger vehicle before his small vehicle was ready to fly…
“A lot depends on our first launch,” Musk said. “Even though I really want to launch as soon as possible, I don?t want to take any chances. I?d rather be late than sorry.”
Well, you certainly got the former…just cross your fingers that you don’t get the latter as well.
Perennially near-death Kistler Aerospace is shaking up it’s management as it works to emerge (eventually…any month now) from bankruptcy:
The hiring of Randy Brinkley and Will Trafton as chief executive officer and chief operating officer, respectively, adds cachet to the Kistler management team, but also raised concerns about fairness in NASA competitions from rival Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX). And it remains to be seen whether Kistler can raise the $500 million still needed to finish developing the company?s K-1 reusable rocket.
An anonymous op-ed in this week’s East Texas Review comes to the right general conclusions about alt.space and prizes:
But it is becoming apparent that it is a venue that cannot be ignored for long. SpaceShipOne?s June 21 flight was surrounded by a rave-like atmosphere, where hundreds of space enthusiasts braved gale-force winds and arid desert heat to camp out and be there when the historic flight occurred.
Whether or not any company succeeds at meeting the Ansari X Prize?s requirements by its Jan. 1, 2005, deadline, this financial incentive has proven to be a great way of generating a large amount of public interest with relatively little cash outlay.
…but bases this conclusion on faulty premises:
In October 2003, China sent its first astronaut into space. With Yang Liwei?s 14 orbits around Earth, China became only the third country in the world to have sent a man into space. In what U.S. officials claim was an unconnected move [why describe it as a “claim” when the evidence indicates there was no such connection?], four months later, President George W. Bush announced a new U.S. space policy whose goals include putting a man on the moon. Again.
For the United States to repeat an accomplishment that is decades-old is no one?s idea of a technical achievement [because we couldn’t possibly do it better now or get more out of it than they did in 1969-1972…]. However, boosters in the government argue that a manned space program has one benefit. At a time when NASA?s scientific satellites are being quietly de-orbited due to funding concerns, a demoralized reusable launch program [what reusable launch pr– oh, they mean Shuttle…] is riddled with defense contractor scandal [what scandal is this?], and the United States must use Russian crafts to get to the International Space Station since no American shuttles are up to the trip [sure they are, for a while longer — but politically, the agency has to make a show of making safety improvements before flying them again], a manned space program could re-spark the American public?s imagination and thus fervor for space.
On the bright side, the author(s) didn’t toss out the fictitious trillion-dollar pricetag.
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