The best news on Earth is not on Earth

This year has been one of the worst, and most bizarre, in decades. Certainly of my lifetime. Democracy is crumbling, fascism seems ascendant, climate change is causing catastrophes and of course there's the pandemic, which... well, we all know how bad that is.

Maybe that's why the news that leaked--and then gushed--out earlier this week felt so important. Signs of life on Venus! Right next door! Closer than Mars, even! The details of the announcement, that scientists had found in Venus' atmosphere phosphine, a gas that is only naturally produced by organisms, made it all the more exciting. They had worked hard to rule out other explanations, and made their observations at different times using different equipment. The most likely explanation for what they were seeing, they said, was life.

Venus. Not pictured: atmospheric microbes.

When methane was found on Mars a few years ago, it felt more interesting than exciting. Like phosphine, methane is unstable and most often is produced by living organisms. The amounts detected on Mars shouldn't exist unless it is being continually produced, or released from deep under the planet's surface. The methane still hasn't been explained (or biological origins ruled out) but I guess that caveat felt pretty big.

With the Venus news, the chances that it wasn't a sign of life seem much smaller. It would need to be an observation error, or the phosphine would have to be caused by some undiscovered natural process.

That's cool on its own. But what makes it even more moving, for lack of a better word, is what it says about the universe. Venus is inhospitable in every sense. Heat, pressure, corrosive substances. Like the song says, if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. Life on Venus, even microorganisms, sure seems to imply that it is likely to exist on some of the other billions of planets in just our galaxy.

Handy neighborhood map.

So while we're wallowing through 2020, it's nice to think that at least we might not be doing it alone.

Why isn't the future now?

As I stare down the barrel of an upcoming 14-hour flight back to the United States of Awesome--this time with a tiny human being--I ponder a different reality. A gentle universe where 14 hours is two hours, and "how on earth will we distract her for half a day!?" becomes "hey, maybe she'll just nap through it."

The thing about this scenario is that it was this close to being not an alternate reality, but simply reality. So pull up a chair and let's talk about VentureStar, a grand idea in the mid-90s that was derailed by something utterly mundane.

There's this proverb about how a horseshoe nail caused the downfall of a kingdom. There are lots of steps between the nail and the downfall, but the gist is simple: a bunch of things had to happen right, but one went wrong, and bam, all of a sudden the barbarians are there installing a new king and reorganizing your postal system.

What does that have to do with VentureStar? Let's first take a look at what VentureStar was.

The short version was that it was a single-stage-to-orbit, reusable launch system. In non-nerd terms, that means it takes off and lands in one piece, and like an airliner, you can refuel it, check the oil and shoot it back into space again. This is simpler that today's staged designs, and crucially, much cheaper because you're not dumping millions of dollars' worth of hardware into the ocean each time you launch.

Also looked awesome.

It was a joint venture between NASA and Lockheed Martin, neither of which were rookies in the shooting-things-into-space game. And the first step would be a technology demonstrator: the X-33, a suborbital spaceplane that could in theory be scaled up for passenger travel.

Passenger travel. Yeah. You see where I'm going with this?

The amazing thing about all of this is that despite the science-fictional feel of the whole endeavor, the technology was pretty much ready. One of the most complex bits of any rocket--the engine--was tested and worked great. Unlike conventional rocket nozzles, this was an "aerospike" design, in which the exhaust flowed around a central pillar. This actually simplified the design and allowed it to work well at many different altitudes, unlike a conventional engine, whose nozzle is most efficient in a relatively narrow band. Whatever, here it is:

OK, so the engine was good. Avionics--the electronic gizmos you use for naviation, communication and so on--all well-developed, thanks to the Space Shuttle program. Ditto for flight controls. Heat management for the X-33 wouldn't be a huge deal, as it didn't have to hit the blistering speeds necessary to make it to orbit.

But then there was the issue of the fuel tanks. Remember, this is a single-stage spacecraft. And the thing about staging is it allows you to drop excess weight as you go--are those engines done firing? Drop 'em! Fuel tank empty? Drop it! VentureStar would not be able to do that. So everything it carried would have to be as light as possible.

Rather than building the tanks from metal--as one does--these tanks would be made from composites, which are lighter and stronger. But they also had to fit in an oddly shaped space. To wit:

A very trying angle. Ha. Trying. Angle. Triangle. Sorry.

And that worked against composites. Being crammed into an asymmetrical space meant that the forces exerted on the tanks were not distributed evenly. And that worked against composites' strengths. In 1999, the hydrogen fuel tank for the X-33 failed during testing. And even with something like 90 percent of the spacecraft built, NASA threw up its hands and said, "Eh, not worth it." At the time, it seemed like an insurmountable problem. So after a bit more fiddling around with it, Lockheed Martin gave up too.

Could this be pulled off in 2015? Probably. Is anyone working on it? Not that I'm aware of. Does this mean I'm probably going to be stuck with a discombobulated kid on my lap for 14 hours instead of two? Absolutely.

So that's the story. The fuel tank, arguably the least complex piece of a multibillion-dollar rocket, ended up being the VentureStar's horseshoe nail. And for want of a nail... well, you know how this ends.

To the stars, through a̶d̶v̶e̶r̶s̶i̶t̶y̶ budget cuts

A few hours from now, NASA is about to send a brand-new manned spacecraft called Orion into orbit. It's the first time this has happened since 1981, when NASA did this:

I remember watching this with my parents, excited but not fully realizing what a big deal it was (more specifically, I remember holding a plastic model with the vertical stabilizer broken off, sitting on the edge of my parents' bed in front of the TV). I was too young to feel nervous for the two guys strapped into Columbia's cockpit or to feel like there was even any chance of failure. The whole experience got me hooked on space, rockets, and space rockets--much in the same way, I'm sure, that others were mesmerized by Apollo 11.

Over the years, Space Shuttle launches became almost routine, but its first flight was a big moment for NASA. It was, essentially, a brand-new concept. And it was, literally, a manned test flight of a vehicle's maiden trip into space, something the organization had never done before and has never done since.

Indeed, Orion will carry all kinds of things--including a rubber ducky from Sesame Street and a T. rex fossil--but no astronauts. It will blast into high Earth orbit, circle the planet a couple of times, and splash down. The whole exercise will only last a few hours, but it's a huge deal because it marks the first tiny steps of much longer journeys. NASA has its sights set on a manned asteroid landing, and of course eventually Mars.

Neat, right? Everyone these days is focused on space as a source of resources, and that's important. It would be nice to be able to build things without destroying our planet looking for the raw materials. But it's much more important for us as a species to keep exploring, keep looking for questions to answer. Some of what we find might be practically useful, like new technology or materials. Other stuff might be bigger picture, like discovering extraterrestrial organisms. But regardless, it's not healthy for humans to just look around at where we are, shrug, and say, "eh--good enough."

(Orion is also a nice distraction from the awfulness of Ferguson, New York and Cleveland. And I don't just mean the killings or grand jury decisions--the way some have responded to the protests is beyond disheartening.)

So here's to a successful test flight. I hope by the time astronauts are using the craft, perhaps five years from now, Earth will be a better place than it is now, and we'll be well on our way to a new chapter of space exploration... and the Littlest Blog will get to watch astronauts walking on Mars.

Blasts from the past

Hey, gang--long time, no see. It's not that I've been ignoring you, it's that life has been a little busy lately (and will soon get busier). But that's the usual blogger excuse. Let's talk about something more interesting, like... rockets.

There has been lots of space in the news lately. NASA's next-generation Orion spacecraft hit some milestones. Boeing was chosen as the lead contractor for a "space taxi" into Earth's orbit. Blue Origin is pitching new engines to use instead of the Russian-made RD-180s. And of course the Maven probe to study Mars' atmosphere arrived safely.

So it's fun to think that all this does indeed point to a real renewal of interest in deep space exploration. Indeed, in the next five or so years, the Orion capsule is planned to be on a spin outside Earth's orbit, just to see what she can do. It will be launched on top of the (unimaginatively named) Space Launch System, which bears some resemblance to the Apollo program's mighty Saturn V:

Tall. White. Rocket-like. Yep, fits the profile.

It should work well! But there were times before we figured out the whole rocketry thing that some really epic plans were on the drawing board. I've written a little about the U.S. proposals for nuclear rockets; here is an fascinating look at Russian plans along the same lines:

By the end of 1967, the Kremlin gave the green light to Vladimir Chelomei to work on the preliminary design of the UR-700 rocket as a backup to the troubled N1. Unlike the N1, Chelomei's rocket would be assembled out of components built in Moscow and transportable by rail. Even more importantly, it would use just 12 engines on its three stages, instead of 42 on the boosters stages of the N1. Finally, the UR-700 could launch 151 tons of payload versus 97 tons carried by the N1 and 127 tons delivered by the American Saturn-5.

In parallel with the development of the UR-700, Chelomei's engineers drafted a much bigger follow-on vehicle, which would be equipped with nuclear engines. (658) Known as Skhema "A" (Configuration "A") engine would feature the solid core nuclear reactor and enable the UR-700 to deliver as much as 250 tons into the Earth orbit. In a more distance future, a nuclear engine with liquid core reactor known as Skhema "B" (Configuration "B") would be developed, followed by an engine with a gaseous core reactor dubbed Skhema "V" (Configuration "V").

In the end, it lost out to the impressive but poorly built N1, which literally never got off the ground. And that was that for Soviet moonshot hopes.

These days everyone seems focused on getting back to the moon, or even Mars, which is great. Rocket technology has become more efficient and reliable in the decades since Apollo, but the basic physics (fuel, oxidizer, ignition) remain little changed. Because of the relative danger of getting a nuclear rocket into space--even using chemical engines--projects like the UR-700 are not likely to be revived. But it's always fascinating to see what technological solutions smart people come up with to solve problems like this... even if they don't always work out.

Moon shot

There doesn't seem to be much to celebrate in the news the last few weeks. Tragedy, death, mayhem--almost every day, a full house of unhappy tidings.

But right around this time, 45 years ago, some remarkable stuff happened. Stuff worth celebrating. Mankind took a few minutes off from doing dumb and destructive things, and landed on the moon.

I've written about this before. But there's a picture I wanted to point out:

Flying high. Really high.

At first glance, it's just cool in the way that nearly all space pictures are cool. There's a spaceship! And planets! Awesome!

But there's actually something really remarkable about this shot, taken by astronaut Michael Collins in the Apollo command module. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat... they are cluttered with selfies. Taking a picture of yourself is common and expected.

But Collins' picture? There's a good chance it is the world's first (and only) everyone-elsie. That's right. That single frame, with the lunar lander and the Earth, contained what at that time was every single person on Earth, living or dead.

The only person not pictured was Michael Collins, the photographer.

It's a photo that literally puts everything in perspective. And maybe embracing that perspective, one optimistically hopes, would lead to more news of the inspiring kind.

The right stuff

Like any era, the current one has plenty of grumbling about "those damn kids" and about how "men were men" back in the day. It's always been that way. And so it was when Bill Dana, one of the most accomplished test pilots in world history, died last week. A common reaction was that when men were men, you see, people flew by the seat of their pants and didn't care about no namby-pamby rules.

But that's not the way it was at all.

Flight testing has always pushed the limits, and always will. Sometimes it seems like programs took more risks back in the '50s, '60s and '70s, and I think that's true to a certain extent. There were definitely more risks, but that was largely a function of where technology and science stood.

For instance, we know much more about how extremely high Mach-number flight works, have much better computer systems, and have satellites that enable communications anywhere, anytime. The result? We didn't strap a man onto the top of an ICBM and send him hurtling downrange at Mach 20 in DARPA's Falcon program. That's good, because...

In short, we are pushing into more dangerous flight regimes than ever before, and can gather data without putting a person at risk. That's not a bad thing.

More to the point, though, guys like Dana didn't fly by the seat of their pants. He was an engineer with a master's degree who pushed aircraft as far as he could, and could analyze and explain what worked and what didn't.

Good flying leads to good photo ops (that's Dana in the foreground).

So what is the right stuff, which Tom Wolfe wrote about and Dana more or less embodied? It's knowing how to fly, sure. It's having the courage to push the aircraft. But it's also being smart enough to understand why it's happening (and why to follow the namby-pamby rules). And fortunately those qualities are still here in the 21st Century.

A (very) fast note about hypersonic testing

As noted in the New York Times, China has apparently tested a hypersonic glide vehicle. Another story, in the Washington Free Beacon, is more detailed but also a little confused about some things, like stating that hypersonic speeds meant more precise targeting. (A follow-up story had much better context.)

A few things to note here. Without any details about the Chinese test other than the implication that the vehicle traveled about Mach 10, or 10 times the speed of sound, it's difficult to determine exactly how big of a leap forward this is. For instance, simply launching an uncontrolled glider from atop a ballistic missile is trivial in terms of weapons science; it's just a projectile that travels farther downrange because it generates some lift.

Controlling it is much more difficult, as the U.S. knows from its mostly unsuccessful Hypersonic Technology Vehicle tests. And those tests occurred about Mach 20, aka ludicrous speed, which is obviously a much more challenging flight regime.

It apparently looks worse in person.

But this technology, if it is developed successfully, engenders all kinds of cliches: game changer, checkmate, silver bullet. It means the country that possesses it can essentially conduct a conventional bombing raid on a target anywhere in the world in a matter of 10 to 15 minutes, no airfield or aircraft carrier necessary.

For a country that is already a global power, like Russia or the United States, which occasionally have the need to blow up some remote place, it makes a modicum of sense. For China, the capability is a little more puzzling. Targets far enough away to require this kind of a strike are in places that can punch back--and punch hard. And to date, most of China's weapons development has been devoted to securing the region around it. It is hard to see  how this would be a priority, unless China has much bigger (and I would argue, totally unrealistic) plans than simply dominating Asia.

Beijing, the Jade Rabbit has landed

It's been a while since Earthlings have sent something to the Moon that hasn't had a hard landing. But over the weekend, China's Yutu rover (Yutu meaning "Jade Rabbit" in Mandarin) set down in the Bay of Rainbows, and did so without making a crater. Here's a CCTV video of it rolling onto the moonscape:

This is, to paraphrase Neil Armstrong, a fairly significant step for the Chinese space program. It takes a lot of technical know-how and organization to pull something like this off. You need a reliable booster--something that China hasn't always had--to go with all the components on top, which need to work nearly perfectly in a harsh environment. And that's not even counting all the calculations needed to get the thing to hit the Moon from the Earth, both of which are moving in relation to each other and to the Sun. (The more cynical, and I mean possessing weapons-grade cynicism, might suggest a Chinese remake of "Capricorn One.")

It appears that the Yutu can do some legitimate science; among other things, it carries ground-penetrating radar that could offer useful insights into the moon's composition. And that's something that everyone should be happy about.

But there are also some concerns about the end game for China. For one thing, the official announcement said "We finally have the right to share the resources on the moon with developed countries." Which isn't exactly starting a war, but it's not coming in peace for all mankind either. For another, the space program closely is intertwined with the military--something that is true in many countries, but especially so in China.

I don't think China has nefarious plans for the Moon, or, at this point, the ability to pull them off. It just sent its first astronaut into space in 2003. But this achievement clearly shows that the China's technical abilities are making strides even as--and perhaps because--space is more accessible now than at any point in history.

How it all shakes out remains to be seen. But perhaps if nothing else it will remind the world that space exploration is, and should be, inspiring.

The future (of the past) is now!

Space dorks like me often have a childhood filled with science fiction books. I pawed through a lot of pulp as a kid, including the stuff kids are supposed to read, like Tom Swift; the stuff kids of a different generation were supposed to read, like The Secret of the Marauder Satellite (dunno why that one stuck in my head, but hey, it did); and stuff that blew my mind, like Fahrenheit 451.

Almost everything I read was written before 1980. A lot of the "classic" stuff was from the '50s and '60s. And space travel, in that era, had a common mechanical element: rockets took off and landed tail first (check out what happens about 1:38 or so).

Of course, all that changed in the late '70s, when the Space Shuttle did its now-famous "take off like a rocket, land like an airplane" trick:

And basically from then on, you had spaceships that were either never meant to land at all, and thus could look more or less like a flying radiator…

In space, no one can hear you complain about aerodynamics.

… or like an aircraft of various permutations. Taking off vertically seemed optional, and landing vertically seemed, well, anachronistic.

Well, here we are in the 21st Century. The Space Shuttle is retired, we're hitting "interplanetary holes in one" with Mars rovers and private launch companies are perfecting new vehicles for getting stuff, and people, into Earth orbit and beyond. And what do we see as the latest round of innovation?

Why, a rocket landing tail-first, of course.

And so it was that the tales (and tails, ha, little space dork humor there) of my childhood have become reality. Not just because it looks neat, either: when landing on a planet with a thin atmosphere--like Mars--parachutes and wings become dramatically less effective ways of slowing an object down to non-splat impact speeds. And as computers, robotics and other technology have matured, we have gotten to the point where this can be routinely pulled off.

That's exciting. I just hope the arrival of science fiction past doesn't also include tentacled monsters and mind-control rays.

Missile interceptors and you

North Korea has continued popping crazy pills at an astounding rate. Their latest move, it seems, will be to fire (or test-fire, as in, not at an enemy target) a medium-range missile or two from its east coast. This has everyone a little nervous, because if even if the thing flies perfectly--and they don't always work out that way--it could very well fly over or land near Japan.

A brief look at what the DPRK is bringing to the table: The Musudan ballistic missile.

Pointy? Check. Fins? Check.

With a range of a little over 2,100 miles, it could concievably hit all of Japan, bits of Russia, a scattering of U.S. island bases and of course China. (A Co-Worker of the Blog suggested hitting China would be North Korea's ultimate "look at us, we're so crazy and unpredictable!" card.) It can theoretically carry a 1,600-pound warhead. I say theoretically because it has not been successfully tested.

Meanwhile, South Korea, the United States and Japan have brought their own pointy-finned toys to the table. In Japan, you have the MIM-104F Patriot PAC-3 deployed around Tokyo.

It's in a box, but yes--pointy and finned.

These are the latest iteration of the Patriot air defense missile made famous--or infamous--in the first Gulf War. These days, they are lighter, faster, stronger and have a tougher job than their predecessors. The early Patriots were designed to destroy their targets by exploding nearby and spraying it with high-velocity fragments. The idea is that this structural damage would rip the target, also traveling at high speed, straight to pieces.

But there is a better way: hitting it directly. Until relatively recently, the idea of hitting a missile directly with another missile was too difficult an engineering challenge to pull off reliably--thus the blast-fragmentation warhead. But the PAC-3 is in fact designed to hit its target directly. It does this by combining high-quality radar data from ground stations with a radar receiver in its own nose (now conveniently empty of a large warhead). When it hits its target, the kinetic energy of two objects, each moving about five times the speed of sound, is enough to completely obliterate the incoming missile... and thus prevent its warhead from following a ballistic path and hitting something on the ground. To make sure the job is done, the PAC-3 also carries a small explosive charge.

Meanwhile, in Korea and Guam, you have the latest in missile-blowing-up technology, the THAAD, whose unwieldy acronym stands for Terminal High Altitude Area Defense. It looks a little something like this:

Yep. Another box.

The THAAD is designed to actually destroy an incoming ballistic missile at the edges of the Earth's atmosphere, essentially before it has time to begin falling toward its target. This is a fantastically tricky task, and the actual interceptor is studded with reaction control jets that make it look like a freaky alien spaceship:

And that weird-looking box smashes into the warhead, again using kinetic energy to blow the enemy missile up real good.

And finally, both the U.S. and Japan have ships loaded with RIM-161--the boringly named Standard Missiles--that can actually blast satellites out of orbit.

Pointy again!

As the link above illustrates, these missiles, in combination with the U.S. Navy's Aegis radar system, are designed to hit incoming warheads well away from the target. This includes ICBMs, which thankfully North Korea has none of, but also shorter-range ballistic missiles. And like the THAAD and PAC-3, they are designed to directly hit their targets.

The exact ranges and capabilities of these systems are played relatively close to the vest. The Patriot's ground-based radar has a range of 65 or so miles. The THAAD and RIM-161 are harder to pin down, but as their targets are essentially extra-atmospheric, we're talking hundreds of miles, most likely.

What does this all mean? Well, essentially, it means that barring multiple failures--not impossible, but unlikely--if North Korea shoots a missile... and it works... and it's headed anywhere remotely dangerous... it will probably be shot down by one of the above systems. But in the meantime, let's hope for a sure thing: if North Korea doesn't test its missile, no one will get hurt.

A quick refresher on the problems with playing God

So by now, we've all read about the meteor that exploded over Russia last week, right? It has been covered extensively, so I won't waste too much time rehashing it. Suffice to say it was an impressive look at what nature can do with a little gravity, velocity, friction and deceleration.

For a few seconds, the meteor--called a "bolide" when it turns into this sort of fireball--shined brighter than the rising sun...

... and its explosion, caused by the intense, uneven heating of its surfaces as it streaked through the atmosphere at about 11 miles per second, released energy equivalent to the detonation of 500,000 tons of TNT. Because the explosion happened several miles above the ground, the blast effects weren't devastating... but were still dramatic:

For comparison's sake, 500 kilotons is roughly 25 times the yield of "Fat Man," the nuclear weapon dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. And it was caused, basically, by a fast-moving rock.

Which brings us to playing God. I thought I had written about this before, but a quick search of The Blog tells me I apparently haven't: the United States has for decades kicked around ideas for a space-based kinetic-energy weapon called Project Thor--and nicknamed "Rods from God." The gist is that orbiting satellites would be armed with long, pointy, semi-guided rods made of super-dense tungsten, roughly the size of telephone poles. Give them a push in the right direction, and these heavy things deorbit and hit something on the ground.

Because it is deorbiting, it literally has to slow down, which means it will only impact at Mach 10--almost six times slower than the Chelyabinsk bolide. The energy released would be the equivalent of a mere 12 or so tons of TNT.

It's easy to see why people might be terrified of a random space rock blowing up over their heads--you can't stop it, and you can't see it coming. And it's exactly why putting weapons in space is not a good idea. It's bad enough that a bad roll of the cosmic dice could wipe out a city. But giving ourselves that power does nothing but increase the odds of unstoppable death falling from the sky.

The best defense....

In these heady days of McDonald's-dominated globalized economies, the idea of a world war seems far fetched. Resources, no matter how scarce, can always be traded for at a lower cost than mobilizing a military and doing some killin'. Conventional thinking is that small, "low-intensity" or "brush fire" conflicts will become more common even as large-scale confrontations become a thing of the past.

And it makes sense. Japan and China will posture for the fans back home about the national importance of some stupid islands, but in the end no one will pull a trigger... because even posturing carries economic consequences.

This is the way rational actors behave.

That leaves the other, crazier side of the coin to worry about. Places like North Korea, which by just about any standard seem to put somewhat random military goals above the welfare of their own people. Such "rogue states" are a major reason why the U.S. has poured billions of dollars into developing missile-defense systems of various kinds.

Some systems, like the one now deployed in Turkey, exist to shoot down shorter-range ballistic missiles that travel a few hundred miles and follow an unsophisticated ballistic trajectory. Thanks to math, they are easy to hit.

Other systems are designed to hit warheads in their "terminal" phase, which is to say after they are on their way down. This is tougher because not only are the warheads involved here generally traveling much faster, but they have to be completely destroyed or their explodey bits and pieces will continue on the same trajectory, landing more or less where they were aimed.

(Yes, that twisty maneuver at the beginning is deliberate.)

And finally, there's the toughest shot of all: the "mid-course" interception. Roughly put, this is the best time to blow up a missile, because it means it won't land where it is supposed to. It's also hard because it is incredibly high up--hundreds of miles--and involves tremendously high speeds.

The third one is probably most important if you're talking about dealing with serious threats from irrational actors. North Korea, for example, could use short-range missiles to hit Seoul, but would need an ICBM, perhaps modeled off their most recent successful rocket launch, to hit the United States.

And if you're shooting a missile that far, it's probably going to be a special delivery, i.e., nuclear, chemical or biological. Fun!

In terms of deterring people with huge arsenals, like Russia, anti-ballistic missile systems make little sense. Indeed, you could argue that they are not just a waste of money, but are destabilizing, because they offer one side the (false) belief that it could shoot first without suffering retaliation.

So again, that leaves the North Koreas of the world as the justification for developing these extremely tricky, extremely expensive systems.

It is on that note that we arrive at the punchline: China, North Korea's closest ally, just announced a "successful" test of a mid-course interception system.

China again carried out a land-based mid-course missile interception test within its territory Sunday.

Xinhua learned the news from the Information Bureau of China's Defense Ministry.

"The test has reached the preset goal," an official with the bureau said.

"The test is defensive in nature and targets no other country," he said.

For all the grumbling about U.S. interference in Asian affairs, it appears the continent's most powerful military is spending its money developing weapons to protect it not from a Western hegemony... but from its next-door neighbor.

In space, no one can hear you hum

Voyager 1 is on the doorstep of interstellar space; as of a few weeks ago, it probably became the first man-made object to leave the solar system. Besides instruments and a big antenna, it also carries a bunch of stuff meant to help whoever finds it understand the people who built it. In other words, humanity.

Of course, that's a tall order, summing up several billion people. But we gave it a good shot. There's a kind of dust jacket describing humanity:

Not out of place on a Pink Floyd album.

... and a gold-plated record inside that included sounds, messages and data from all corners of the world:

The hottest record in the galaxy.

The music on the disc--images were also encoded--is what I find most interesting about all the inclusions. In terms of music, it featured recordings of many genres and nationalities from throughout history (listen here). But even that turned out to be just a snapshot, not a sampling. Hip-hop, a form of music popular around the globe in 2012, barely existed in 1977, when Voyager 1 was launched (and almost certainly did not exist in the record collections of the probe's creators). Same with modern electronic music, and I'm sure many others that people more plugged in than I could tell you about.

In the end, it's all fairly academic. Even if some alien race were to come across Voyager 1 tomorrow, the civilization they would find on Earth would, culturally speaking, be in a much different place than what the record depicts. Some things about humanity are universal--basic shape, expressions, nourishment. Some aspects of culture will endure; Mozart's work, the pop music of his generation, is still moving audiences hundreds of years later. And of course, the odds that an extraterrestrial civilization not only notices Voyager but traces its footsteps are infinitesimal to begin with.

But if they do, I guess there are a lot worse problems than the aliens thinking Chuck Berry is our president.

To the stars of tomorrow via the science fiction of yesterday

If you have for some reason Googled "Star Trek" or "warp drive" in the last 24 hours, your results were drastically different than they would have been a week ago. In the second week of September, both of those terms pretty much went together: in the Star Trek universe, the warp drive is the main means of interstellar travel, allowing giant, funny-looking spacecraft to go real far, real fast.

But starting early this week, those results would have been a bit different. That's because scientsists think they may be close to warping a tiny bit of space... a small step toward the gargantuan goal of warping enough space to literally move stuff around at up to 10 times the speed of light, without breaking any of nature's laws.

An Alcubierre warp drive would involve a football-shape spacecraft attached to a large ring encircling it. This ring, potentially made of exotic matter, would cause space-time to warp around the starship, creating a region of contracted space in front of it and expanded space behind.

Meanwhile, the starship itself would stay inside a bubble of flat space-time that wasn't being warped at all.
"Everything within space is restricted by the speed of light," explained Richard Obousy, president of Icarus Interstellar, a non-profit group of scientists and engineers devoted to pursuing interstellar spaceflight. "But the really cool thing is space-time, the fabric of space, is not limited by the speed of light."

With this concept, the spacecraft would be able to achieve an effective speed of about 10 times the speed of light, all without breaking the cosmic speed limit.

Yeah, the math behind this--which the scientists thankfully left out--would no doubt make my head implode like a dying star. But the idea is actually pretty simple, and on paper anyway, pretty promising.

An object can't physically move faster than the speed of light; E=MC^2 means the amount of energy needed to accelerate that object becomes infinite as it approaches that "barrier." But if space itself can be reshaped, then the actual velocity of that object can remain at non-ludicrous levels, and it can get from Point A to Point B much faster because the distance has been made much smaller. Actually, when you think about it, this isn't much different from what Madeleine L'Engle proposed in "A Wrinkle in Time": like folding a piece of cloth to make points far apart close together.

So what is the upshot of all this?

Well, humans have been trying to explore more and more space for a while now, and at some point we're going to want to leave our solar system. Even that is a huge amount of celestial real estate; the Voyager I probe is JUST NOW leaving the neighborhood, and it was launched in 1977. So we need to travel faster. All kinds of proposals have been made in this area, mostly involving nuclear propulsion. Some, like Project Orion, might actually work. But they all have drawbacks (Orion's drawback: its propulsion system involved detonating nuclear weapons behind it).

The "warp drive" described above skirts all those issues. Of course, the scientists involved are careful to note that these are only small-scale experiments and a long, long way (light years, one might say) from an actual engine. But hey, even the mighty Space Shuttle started life hundreds of years ago as some gunpowder and a hollowed-out bamboo shoot. In the meantime, it's fun--and exciting--to think that science may actually be catching up to science fiction.

Landing on Mars: a first-person account

The coverage of Curiosity's landing yesterday was pretty awesome, right? I thought so too. But I had also thought that the lander was capturing video of its own descent, which was going to be streamed live. That didn't appear to be the case.

But it turns out I was half-right. The lander actually captured more than 1,500 high-resolution images during its descent; when sequenced, those will of course look a lot like a video.

Curiosity is still warming up on the surface of Mars, and there are many higher priorities for bandwidth than getting those images back to Earth. In the meantime, however, it has sent nearly 300 low-resolution images of the landing, which are good enough for security-camera-style video.



HOW COOL IS THAT? You see the heat shield fall away, you see the surface approaching, you even see the dust kicked up by the "sky crane's" engines as it hovers and lowers the lander. I can't wait to see what the full-length, full-resolution images show; someday, that will roughly be the view of astronauts as they hurtle toward another giant step for mankind.

NASA is landing on Mars!

Everyone agrees the Curiosity lander will arrive on Mars sometime in the next couple of hours. The suspense stems from a more difficult question: whether the attempt will results in a scientific triumph or a gently smoking crater.

This project is a big deal, as it gives NASA the ability to do more science on Mars' surface than ever before. Liquid water--and even small-scale life--could be among the discoveries Curiosity digs up. That's neat. What's also neat is that they will be streaming the landing live from more than 350 million miles away... a distance so great it takes light (and radio transmissions) about 15 minutes to traverse.

So by the time you watch Curiosity touch down here...

Live Video streaming by Ustream

... it will already have been on the surface of Mars long enough to listen to half a Weezer album.

No human boots will make footprints like Apollo 11 in 1969. But like that mission, people all over the world (OK, mostly space dorks like me) will be watching... and hoping this is a giant step.

The Shenzhou has landed...

... right below my apartment. In a shopping mall. Want proof?

Sure, it's a little worse for the wear, but it's been IN SPACE, people. (photo courtesy Mrs. Blog)

Apparently they're setting up for a big exhibition about the Chinese space program. The capsule is the only artifact actually in place at the moment--there's not even a sign on it--so I can't wait to see what the rest of the display will entail.

China has come a long way in terms of space exploration, and recently became only the third nation to successfully dock two spacecraft in orbit. It is roughly where America was in the early 70s, and that's not a diminuative--what they're doing takes a ton of engineering and science expertise. Seeing an exhibition of the technology that got them where they are will, I'm sure, be fascinating... and I can see it on the way to pick up our morning pastries.

Weapon of the future delayed by weather of yesterday

Today's space dork news: DARPA, the United States' "let's think of some crazy technology to blow things up with" agency, delayed Wednesday's test of its Prompt Global Strike system because of rain in the target area.

All of which sounds dry and boring. But the details of this program are actually quite cool--or scary, depending on your point of view.

Prompt Global Strike, at least in this testing phase, uses what is basically a leftover Peacekeeper ICBM launcher to toss a wedge-shaped hypersonic vehicle out of the Earth's atmosphere, where it will begin to glide back down.

What happens next? The hypersonic test vehicle, creatively named "Hypersonic Test Vehicle-2" hits speeds of Mach 20 and uses jets of compressed gas to maneuver and orient itself at its target, which in this case is the Kwajalein Atoll. (I had to look it up--it's in the Marshall Islands, roughly 2,400 miles southwest of Honolulu. The U.S. does lots of missile testing there)

Because of its maneuvering capabilities, the vehicle is expected to have a 50 percent chance of landing within a circle 13 meters in diameter. (roughly 43 feet) That sounds like a pretty big target, but when you're shooting from 3,500 miles away, it's the size of a pea.

Hypersonic test vehicle, glowing with promise.

When I tried this as a kid, by the way, it looked like this:

Slower, bluer, more cardboardy.

Anyway. What makes this whole project interesting is the combination of speed, distance and accuracy. The idea is that if a target anyplace in the world is identified, one of these hypersonic gliders can hit it within an hour. Theoretically, you wouldn't even need a warhead, thanks to the magic of physics: The equation Ke=1/2mv^2 means a four-ton vehicle that has slowed to Mach 15, about 11,000 mph, would hit with about 22 BILLION joules of kinetic energy. That's the rough equivalent of detonating five tons of TNT.

The utility is that what the military calls "time-sensitive" targets can be hit without putting any soldiers in harm's way. GPS coordinates and a button push are all that is needed. Rogue nuclear programs and terrorist meetings are two obvious choices for that kind of action.

But there are scientific issues to overcome, including steering the vehicle; a test last year ended after nine minutes when the first test vehicle began spinning uncontrollably.

Political issues also pose a hurdle. A less-techologically challenging program in which conventional warheads were simply mounted on ICBMs was abandoned after other nuclear-armed countries noted that there was no way to tell a conventional strike from a nuclear one. And no one wants to start World War III.

And obviously the weather is an issue too.

No matter what the technology will be used for, this is a fascinating program. It is collecting data that are nearly impossible to get on the ground.

And by the time most of America is awake, 7 a.m. Pacific time, a Minotaur IV booster will have launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. And about a half-hour later, if everything goes according to plan, the HTV will make a big splash in the South Pacific.

Michael Crichton called; he'd like his reality back

In a potentially excellent example of life imitating art, a Swedish salvage team has spotted a science fiction story at the bottom of the ocean.

Explorer Peter Lindberg, who has apparently been successful at finding expensive things under the ocean before, says he noticed an anomalous sonar return in about 300 feet of water between Sweden and Finland. It caught his attention for two reasons:

-The object is circular, and regular enough to appear non-natural

-The object appears to have left a trail of scars on the seabed, implying it hit at a shallow angle

Here's what the actual sonar picture looks like:

As a writer and lover of rockets, this is exciting. (although, as the title implies, someone else thought of this scenario first.) The Earth is mostly water and mostly unpopulated, so odds are that if an extraterrestrial ship crashed, it would land in water and no one would see it. It could literally be the most important discovery in the history of mankind.

The realist in me, however, knows this is a remote possibility. Just about every other explanation for the object--from a natural formation to a manmade object jettisoned from a ship--is more likely. And sadly, it would take a lot of cash to go down and check.

But for the time being, I'm going to enjoy the mystery. At the very least, it's refreshing to know that there are still interesting bits of our planet out there to discover.

*Yes, there are blog posts on Turkey coming. Patience, grasshoppers.

Allow me to solidify my credentials as a space dork

Those of you who were hanging around the greater Red Bridge area in the mid-80s probably witnessed a few trails of acrid smoke hanging in the air. Maybe saw a skinny blond kid climbing a tree, trying to fish what looked like a small-scale red-and-white parachute out of the branches.

And of course those of you who attended Red Bridge Elementary (Roadrunners, holla!) witnessed, one spring day, the prelude to that aftermath: the launch of a model rocket. Hey, if I couldn't shoot myself into space, I was at least going to build something and launch it into the sky.

But this guy had bigger ideas.

Slightly smaller rocket go whoosh.

I have no idea who this dude is, but he built a 1/10-scale replica of a Saturn V rocket and launched it. One-tenth scale, in this case, means 36.3 feet. By contrast, I think the biggest thing I ever shot off was maybe 36 inches. It's probably just as well; anything remotely life-size, and there's a good chance I would have tried to climb onboard.