Steve

In a discussion on james_nicoll's blog the subject of radioisotope thermal generators (RTGs) came up, and a little Wikipediaing caused me to stumble upon an absolute marvel: the Stirling radioisotope generator.

Think of it as a closed-loop steam engine, but instead of using boiling water heated by burning coal it's using compressed helium heated by radioactive decay. Apparently that model generates 55-60W initially from it's 1.4kg (3lb) fuel bundle, though that'll drop off over time; plutonium-238's half-life is 87 years. NASA wants it to power deep space probes.

-- Steve just wants it.

I just saw NASA ram the Moon. Live, on TV. Yep, CanadaAM ran the live NASA feed from the LCROSS mission this morning... not much to see, as to my undereducated eyes the impact flash drowned out the visual detail, truth be told.

-- Steve still found the footage of the rapidly-approaching crater surface mesmerising to watch.

-- Steve'll 'splain later.

Last night, CTV News reported that the International Space Station's closest analog to Red Green, Canadian astronaut Bob Thirsk, finally managed to get the second toilet back up and running. Alas, I can't find a link to confirm it.

-- Steve wonders how much of the Handyman's Secret Weapon was involved in the repair.

So, here we are, 40 years older than we were when one of our species first set foot on another world. It was an epochal event for me, even though I was far too young to even remember the landing; my mother tells me that we were on a vacation trip to Cape Cod at the time, huddled around a little black-and-white TV in the cabin, and apparently I started kicking up some sort of fuss and as a result my parents missed the instant of the landing.

It wasn't the moment of the landing that so affected me. It was its resonance.

I grew up in Brampton, Ontario, a tech and manufacturing centre during my childhood with a double-handful of Fortune 100 companies present; Dad worked at Northern Telecom and dealt with the Bell-Northern Research lab on occasion, Chrysler had two assembly plants there, Ford another, I believe Phillips had a plant there for a while if I recall correctly... and the seed of that came from the nearby Malton plant owned by McDonnell Douglas.

It wasn't McD's influence that affected me, not really, but rather the guys from whom they bought the plant; Avro Canada. Brampton was the beneficiary of this former aeronautical engineering giant, and had even inherited much of the company's oral and filmic legacy. Our local cable access channel often ran promotional reels and internal documentaries shot by Avro, showing the CF-100 "Canuck" interceptors under construction, the Jetliner, the weird-but-paid-for-by-USAF Aircar... but most often, films of the legendary CF-105 "Arrow" interceptor. I'd watch those films on rainy or blustery days, imprinting on those 1950s images on what the future meant to Canada and my neighbourhood. (Indeed, I later found out that the host of our Saturday Night at the Movies show on public television, Elwy Yost (father of writer/director Graham Yost, of Speed among others), had worked at the Avro plant.)

Alas, the Avro story did not end well. Amid great publicity and with much outcry the government cancelled the Arrow in February of 1959. Having concentrated entirely on construction of this one ultra-high-tech aircraft, which suddenly lost its sponsorship and could find no other market given how optimised it was for Canadian requirements, and forced to destroy the plans and jigs to maintain the secrecy of some of its design components the company failed soon afterward.

How does this relate to Apollo? Well, the very next morning after the announced cancellation of the Arrow, NASA had a recruiter at the plant. Some 25 engineers alone migrated south from Avro to work on the US manned space program, some of whom eventually worked on the design and build team for the Lunar Module and others worked in Mission Control.

So, however indirectly, there's a piece of my youth up there. There's likely more to it than that, but that's what comes to mind.

-- Steve thinks that those old Avro newsreels are probably key to his eventual obsession with science and space. (Pity they didn't impart any actual talent in said obsessions.)

PS: I suppose that's also the reason attacks on Apollo and the manned space program in general hit my hot-buttons; I've seen the long-term effects of killing dreams first-hand. Also, having some bloated TARP-recipient ($800bn in one lump, 2008 dollars) complain that Apollo (<$200bn over 10 years, 2008 dollars) was a waste of taxpayer money strikes me as hypocritical in the extreme.

Of course it's only when you have a big group of houseguests over that the toilet floods, even in orbit.

-- Steve really wouldn't want to have to deal with that mess. How do you mop out the air?

http://www.wechoosethemoon.org/

The JFK Library is sponsoring (running?) a web site that turns the clock back exactly 40 years to cover the Apollo 11 mission "as it happens". That means that 8am EDT (12:00 GMT) Thursday they'll start covering the launch, and then follow the in-flight events in real time until splashdown on the 24th. (Turn your speakers up; this is a multimedia site. Also be advised it's very heavy on Flash, for those on low-bandwidth connections.)

-- Steve loves this sort of stuff.

This morning's launch of the shuttle Endeavor was scrubbed due to a leaky valve on the hydrogen line. Looks to be a minimum 4 day delay, just to replace the valve, possibly longer if the mission gets "bumped" by an upcoming lunar orbital mission.

-- Steve was really looking forward to starting his day by watching history.

The space shuttle Endeavor is scheduled to launch tomorrow at 7:17am EDT (11:17 GMT) for the first docking of a full shuttle mission to a fully-occupied International Space Station. The weather forecast is good (better than 90% chance of an on-time launch) and should make for a great backdrop.

NASA TV will of course carry it live, as may some news providers. As before, I'll be catching it from NASA's live web feed. This time, though, it'll likely be on my Origami minislate while consuming First Coffee of the Day.

-- Steve still watches this stuff as eagerly as he did as a kid... indeed, as he used to watch commercial and military aircraft at runways as well. There's just something special about manned flight that never loses his interest.

edited to add: It's an extra-special event for fellow Canadians interested in the space program, I should mention. Julie Payette, who last visited the space station ten years ago, will be riding Endeavor up to meet Bob Thirsk, one of Canada's first astronaut class who is now part of the first six-man crew of the ISS. So for the first time in our history we'll have two Canadians in orbit, and they're even from different missions to boot.

I love living in the future.

http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2009/06/08/f-payette-q-and-a.html

CBC interviewed Canadian astronaut Julie Payette for her Shuttle mission next Saturday, and in it she says one of the fun parts of being in the space program is coming home from a mission simulation and bringing left-over meal packets so her 5-year-old can eat space food.

-- Steve doesn't remember the actual act of eating freeze-dried ice cream from the KSC gift shop, but remembers how awesomely cool the idea of eating real space food was.

Apparently there was an extra passenger on the Shuttle that wasn't on the manifest; a fruit bat tried hitching a ride on the large external tank, and hadn't let go before the launch cleared the tower.

-- Steve's trying to imagine what that ride would've been like.

Discovery is at T-00:09:00 and holding on its scheduled hold, looks to be launching ten or eleven minutes after I post this. If your local cable company doesn't cover the launch, NASA is streaming a live feed:

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/

Enjoy!

-- Steve's hoping for a picture-perfect launch.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/03/12/breaking-small-but-finite-chance-iss-to-be-hit-by-debris/

Quick note on a busy day, but I just heard; the current crew of the International Space Station has closed hatches and evacuated to the Soyuz "lifeboat" due to a warning issued to them by NORAD of an unlikely but possible collision with a large piece of orbiting debris. The Soyuz itself isn't sealed up, and the odds against an actual impact are steep, but NASA is invoking mission safety rules just in case.

-- Steve wishes everyone in the ISS program the best of good fortune.

Just saw this over on the Bad Astronomy Blog.

They're putting high-resolution photography from the Apollo missions up on the web. High resolution really doesn't say enough; if I've done the math right, the highest resolution pictures are at 5000 dots per inch. We're talking one photo taking up to 300 MB of image data... and they'll be in the public domain, available to anybody who cares to take the time and download. (Downscaled versions are also available for those with less patience.)

-- Steve's looking forward to seeing how this, er, "develops".

Tonight at 7:38 EDT is the Shuttle launch. Weather looks good, no mechanical issues so far, and it should be a pretty one.

If you're like me and am not lucky enough to be able to get good coverage on TV, NASA is streaming footage from their cameras over on NASATV's web site. I've got their coverage running in the background now, but there's not much happening at the moment.

Don't forget to tune in and enjoy!

-- Steve tuned in now because he'll be a touch busy making dinner in a bit... and doesn't want to absentmindedly forget until too late.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18620550/

I don't know if anybody can confirm this... the above article claims that 20 years ago tomorrow Soviet space officials tried to orbit a carbon dioxide laser platform^** for "Star Warski" tests. The only reason it stayed quiet is that, though the Energia booster worked perfectly, the orbital insertion stage fired the direction opposite of what was required; the article claims human error and insufficent error trapping as opposed to deliberate data sabotage^*. As a result, the payload reentered over the Pacific and was destroyed.

Sounds incredible, but not completely impossible. Photography of the platform mounted on an Energia is on the site, but grainy enough that it could be photo-chopped.

-- Steve'd rather believe this is a hoax; 1987 didn't have to be that exciting, thank you.

^* plausible in light of the Mars mission debacles, and that this was a sooper-sekret-rush-rush mission to counter the US "Star Wars" development program.

^** Point added for clarification, because I wasn't clear until just now (4:40pm EDT); the CO₂ laser in the platform was a dummy, and not live. The platform was intended for target aquisition and maneuver tests only, not live-fire exercises.

http://www.thewonderofitallfilm.com/

Candid discussions by most (all?) of the astronauts who landed on the Moon. Not rocket pr0n (though I love that too) but a look at how touching another world changed these men.

-- Steve will be keeping a careful eye out for local releases and/or DVDs.

Darned if this isn't the truth.

-- Steve's astonished at how cute the anthropomorphic Shuttle is, but still thinks it was a mistake too.

I'm looking forward to the launch of Cosmos 1 next Tuesday... a fully operational, if prototype, light sail probe. Here's hoping that it proves out, and that the way to the stars may at last become open.

-- Steve won't be signing on any star clippers as crew, though. He's terrible with knots.