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.

A dark and loosely plotted future

Greetings, friends of the blog. You're in for a treat: this will be the second post in a row about writing! I'd like to talk to you about "Ghost Fleet." (Like "Callahan Crossroads," it's about a world war, but it's a little... less kid-friendly.)

I'll try to keep this general and spoiler-free, but if a few plot points slip through here and there, my apologies--you've been warned.

The subtitle of "Ghost Fleet" is "A novel of the next world war." And almost immediately, it delivers on that idea. The setup, broadly, is that in the near future there has been some calamitous radiological warfare in the Middle East--not by the U.S.!--that wrecks the oil market, the stock market, and the global economy in general... except for China, which somehow escapes in a position of strength.

Ghost Fleet--the cover.

'Murca, facing sudden and gigantic budget constraints, cuts military spending, leaving a lot of research and development in limbo, and a lot of the Navy's vessels in mothballs. With me so far? OK. China is rich and powerful, and the U.S. is less so, although things are getting better, as American companies do brisk business with the Chinese. Oh, and the Communist government has fallen in China, laid low by the economic downturn. A military-business partnership called The Directorate runs the show now.

Then China discovers a huge petro-energy deposit in its waters, giving it energy independence, and that leads its leadership to decide the time is ripe to crush the United States.

For me, this was a bit of a "needle scratches on the record and the jukebox stops" moment.

It could be that the authors have greater insight into Chinese military thinking than I do, but this seems like a move with almost no upside and tons of downside. Right? If the Chinese military pulls it off, then China's position (as the book describes it) is not greatly improved, and if it DOESN'T pull it off, then China is in for a world of hurt, both militarily and economically. China is already top dog, and starting a world war just seems like trying to hit boxcars on one roll.

But hey, it's a novel, and every novel needs a starting point. From there, of course, things get heated.

China invades Pearl Harbor! Destroys most of the U.S. fleet at anchor! Has hacked critical systems in American weapons like the F-35! And, critically, destroys nearly all of America's space capabilities--GPS satellites, communications, and so on. (This is accomplished via every space nerd's worst fear: an ostensibly peaceful space station having hidden weaponry.)

The key to America's ability to strike back, or strike at all, lies in the aforementioned mothballed ships, which are called--wait for it!--the ghost fleet. In the book, they are America's only hole card: new enough to do damage but old enough to not have been hacked.

Ghost fleet--the real thing.

I will omit details from here, because, you know... you might want to read the book and enjoy it yourself. But the plot follows a reluctant Navy captain thrust into a position of heroism; a Marine forced to lead a jihadist-style insurgency in Hawaii; and various players on the Chinese and Russian side. Oh, yeah, about the Russians: they collaborate with China in the sneak attack.

America is left mostly without allies, as NATO dissolves itself and Japan turns its back, kicking the U.S. out of its bases there.

It's one of the few books I have read in which the United States is involved in a war in which it has literally zero advantages. After the Pearl Harbor invasion, China holds all the cards. This was illustrated nicely, to the point where I as a reader was feeling angry at China in real life--yikes.

Now, the thing about this book is that it is written by two defense analysts, and the text is heavily endnoted. Just about every supposition they make about technology or capabilities in general is supported by at least a smidgen of research, which lends some smaller plot points some weight. And the story itself moves fast. As Mrs. Blog can tell you, I traded sleep for reading time a couple of nights in the last week, which is rare.

Having said that, "Ghost Fleet" suffers from some problems in both the plot and writing departments.

In terms of plot, the setup is kind of a worst-case scenario. A lot of things have to go wrong to get to the status quo, but sure, OK--it's not implausible, I'd say, just unlikely. But from there, I was disappointed that the story did not have more sweep. America, in the book, is left with two allies: 'Straya and Great Britain (Scotland has seceded). But the story takes us to neither of those places, although they are mentioned repeatedly.

Some key stuff (like how the deus ex machina behind China's ability to target its anti-ship ballistic missiles works) is never explained, which is a little jarring considering the pains taken to add realism elsewhere. Other things, like where the huge U.S. military presence in Korea was during this whole affair, never even come up. And broadly, the story feels like it is missing a third act; there is a major battle at the end, but to me there was still a lot of war remaining. I would also have liked to see some of the politics play out, as the U.S. dealt with former allies like Japan.

In terms of writing, there is only one (maybe one and a half) human relationship in play in the book. That leaves plenty of action-based tension but not a lot of personal stakes. Characters often sort of fill archetypes rather that inhabit their own space. And on occasion, people take the time to explain to each other things they already know--just for the sake of the reader.

But let me reiterate, it's a good read. Just feels to me like it was cut off abruptly, and missing a resolution to a lot of subplots and themes that are abandoned by the end.

In conversations with others in the defense industry, it has become clear to me over the years that there is indeed a genuine fear that China might underestimate a U.S. response to aggression. China hasn't fought in a major war in forever, whereas--for better or worse--America has been shooting or blowing up enemies pretty much constantly since the early '90s. And this might lead China to make the same mistake Japan did at the outset of Pacific hostilities in World War II.

Let's hope everyone remembers the lesson from that bloody affair (China, in "Ghost Fleet," clearly did not):

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.

Flexing muscles in the dark

That title is not as weird as it sounds. Let me explain.

So Russia recently invaded Crimea. We know this. We also know that there is a certain amount of diplomatic and strategic brinksmanship going on right now, as both the West (read: the U.S.) and Russia try to make sure there is no shooting but also no backing down.

There isn't much serious doubt that a conventional war--over Ukraine or anything else--between the U.S. and Russia would be bloody but that the outcome would eventually be a U.S. victory. The U.S. military simply has more hardware, better hardware and more resources for keeping it all working. (A nuclear war would, it goes without saying, be devastating for both sides in an "everyone on the whole planet loses" kind of way.)

The advantage the U.S. does not have, however, is much of a presence in Eastern Europe. If Russia moved into the rest of Ukraine, the Western response would necessarily be airpower-based and extremely violent, simply because it would need to buy time to get forces on the ground. That means there exists a plausible chance that the West would opt to do nothing, rather than potentially escalating the conflict.

So how do you deter an attack in that kind of situation? That's where the muscle flexing comes in.

Bill Sweetman, the ace aviation journalist at Aviation Week, reports that a large, manned, and heretofore unknown aircraft was spotted over Texas on March 10. It looked something like this:

The blurriness is not one of its stealth features.

You can read his analysis, but basically it looks different than a B-2, too big to be one of any known drone type, and fills an obvious gap in the U.S. arsenal.

Remarkably, the same guy who first posted the picture above, a well-regarded planespotter and blogger, did some interesting reporting on a bizarre weather event in New Mexico. Here's the nut graf, as we say in the industry:

Early in the evening on March 18th - something strange happened in New Mexico.

A mysterious jet of disturbed air erupted up into the atmosphere near the remote town of Carrizozo, New Mexico.  In minutes this jet of air morphed into a plume, so large it was seen by weather radars across two states and was automatically classified by weather computers as a storm.

But it wasn't a storm and in fact the radar return baffled meteorologists in both New Mexico & Texas because no precipitation had been forecast in the foreseeable future and at the time  the atmosphere was drier than baby powder due to a prolonged period of severe drought that had plagued the region all winter.

Aha, a mystery! I'll leave it to you to read his writeup of how he reported it out, but here is his conclusion:

The USAF has a Directed Energy Laboratory located on North Oscura Peak!  It is managed and headquartered at Kirtland Air Force Base, 140 miles to the north in Albuquerque.

--snip--

Although North Oscura Peak is known more for being a laser weapons laboratory it's quite possible much more exotic weapons are being tested there, running the gamut from microwave, particle beam and plasma weapons all capable of disrupting the atmosphere. They also agreed that SDI had not gone away but had gone black and billions had been pumped into developing exotic weaponry since the mid 1980s.

In May of 2003, an article in the New York Times reported that the facility is part of wide ranging efforts in developing weapons designed to destroy enemy satellites or incoming ICBMs. 

"The Air Force has pursued the secret research for several years but discussed it in new detail in its February budget request. The documents stated that for the 2007 fiscal year, starting in October, the research will seek to "demonstrate fully compensated laser propagation to low earth orbit satellites."

Seven years later, it's probably safe to say they’ve made some technical breakthroughs.

So within a couple of weeks, a ground-based directed-energy weapon--in nerd-speak, that means "science-fiction zap gun"--may have disabled a satellite target in a very conspicuous test, and a classified aircraft may have been spotted in daylight, at contrail altitude, over a populated area.

The explanations linked here could be wrong. The timing could be coincidence. And they could just represent serious, if accidental, lapses in secrecy.

Or it could be a shadowy show of strength.

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.

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.

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.

Going out on top

Neil Armstrong's career involves more than 200 different types of aircraft, teaching, advanced engineering degrees, combat experience and of course spaceflight. That's a lot of highlights.

He piloted the X-1, the plane used earlier to break the sound barrier for the first time...



He took the X-15 to the edge of space and hypersonic speeds--more than 3,500 miles per hour...



He saved the Gemini 8 mission from disaster by hands-on piloting in Earth orbit...



And of course, the guy didn't just walk on the Moon, he landed a spaceship on it...



As I mentioned in my previous posts, achievements like this aren't just individually important--they inspire great things. Here's to those great things including another giant leap for mankind, whether on Mars or elsewhere in deep space. 

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.

Ground control to major exhibition

As I mentioned before, China's space program has landed in our little corner of Hong Kong. A display of rocket models, space paraphernalia ranging from a toilet (er...) to a space capsule and informational signs have been set up in CityPlaza for the last month.

Most of that time, I was in the United States of Awesome. But last week, as it was raining for the fifth (or sixth? I lost count) consecutive day, Mrs. Blog and I decided to do a little mallwalking in space. Or spacewalking in the mall. Whatever, we went to look at the exhibit.

Visitors are greeted by six giant models of China's launchers. Five of them are for unmanned projects; one of those five still has not been launched because it is awaiting a facility large enough to accommodate it. One was used for the Shenzhou manned program.

 What's white and red and flies all over?

A bit down the hall, there is a smattering of additional models, plus some real, live hardware. Here's what the Shenzhou capsule stack looks like, with service and docking modules on either end:

Big, but not as big as the real thing.

Next to it was a model of the Tiangong assembly, which was used to perform tests of in-orbit docking:

Like a mobile home in the stars.

It will be used as a basis for China's planned space station program. Next to it (and behind the model in the second photo) there was an escape tower for a Shenzhou capsule that actually flew. The tower is discarded after the rocket hits a certain speed and altitude. Before that, it can accelerate the manned portion of the rocket--the capsule--if there is an emergency.

Also on display were random items from everyday life in space: food pouches, the aforementioned toilet, a sleeping bag, canteens, and my personal favorite, the space tray:

You know it's a space tray because it's decorated with an astronaut!

And finally, the main event. I posted a picture of this before when they were setting up the exhibit, but now the real, only-been-used-once Shenzhou capsule is all prettified, with glittering rocks underfoot, a spacesuit standing guard and its parachute draped overhead:

 One small capsule for three people. One giant leap for the Chinese space program.

Overall, an impressive setup. China has come a long way in a short amount of time; of course, its space program also has benefited greatly from all the space exploration of the last 60 years, so the nation's scientists know what works and what doesn't, and how to do it right. The Chinese also have universities that can train rocket scientists and the resources to build those rockets. Theoretically, they have a high ceiling indeed.

But I remain optimistic the U.S. will win the race for a mall exhibit of Mars landings.

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.

Slightly underqualified

My dream job is hiring right now. Unfortunately, I fall short in a few key areas, like having 1,000 hours of jet aircraft flight time and a degree in engineering, medicine or technology.

On the bright side, I'm the right height and have perfect vision.

I am of course talking about the Astronaut Candidate position being advertised on the government jobs Web site right now.

You get to take cool pictures like this if you get the job.

The Guy Sitting Next to Me is of the opinion of, "How hard a job is that, anyway? All they're doing is just sitting there." That of course is not true, but even if it were, being an astronaut would be the best... desk job... ever.

That's no moon, that's a...

More proof that if you look into space long enough, you're bound to spot something interesting. A NASA/U.S. Navy mission to keep tabs on the Sun's solar flares (using satellites called STEREO A and B) took this video:

Hmmmm. (to see the original, not-so-X-Filed version, go here)

As Gizmodo puts it,

The video shows a coronal mass ejection coming from the Sun and reaching the planet Mercury. Coronal mass ejections are massive explosions of solar wind, radiation and magnetic fields that go well beyond the solar corona, deep into space. They are so big that sometimes they reach Earth.

You can see the gigantic solar wave reaching Mercury but, just as it goes through, something else becomes visible: a very angular shape that seems to be formed by two separate objects joined together. It looks as if the CME wave reveals a volume on impact, interacting with it.

You know, like a cloaked Klingon Bird of Prey being uncovered by the Sun's radioactive fury.

So, digital artifact or planet-sized spaceship? I know which one I want the answer to be. Perhaps it came from our newly discovered sister planet....