Brussels

It's been 15 years or more since I've been to Brussels. This time the airline didn't lose my luggage, so I'm starting out ahead of the game. I'm staying near the Grand-Place, the classic central square of the city, and it's as scenic and semi-French and chocolate-shoppy as ever. It's all tourists but I ate dinner there anyway, at a place called La Chaloupe d'Or (it's the place with the red and green awnings at the left of the picture above). I first tried a small glass of "Kriek" beer and it still tastes like cherry cough syrup. So I switched to Affligem brune which was quite nice, and the label on the glass says "Anno 1074" so I guess this old abbey recipe is working out for them.

I forgot to bring a camera so I searched Flickr for a recent Grand-Place picture and borrowed this one taken just yesterday by urbanlegend (thanks). It looks just like this today too.

Evolution: Under the Hood

On the flight to Brussels last night, I finished a really good book, The Making of the Fittest (2006) by Sean B. Carroll. The subtitle is "DNA and the ultimate forensic record of evolution," and he starts out with a discussion of how "DNA matching" is pretty much the gold standard for evidence in criminal cases in the United States. The ability to read and compare DNA sequences of living (and dead!) organisms is a practical benefit of years of genetic and molecular biological research. Of course that same ability has also shown us how closely related we humans are to all other life on this planet, which is not surprising considering the fact that we have evolved from earlier life forms. The ironic thing is that a majority of Americans still don't believe in this. Strange but true.

The amount of detail that is now understood about evolution at the level of DNA is amazing, and Carroll provides many examples, from color vision to antifreeze in Antarctic fish species. His explanations are detailed, talking about specific mutations, protein changes, and comparisons of nearly identical protein sequences in sometimes very distantly related animals (like blue-shifted photoreceptor proteins in eels and dolphins, a convergent adaptation to vision in deep water). This does require a little background (he provides a basic review of how DNA, RNA, proteins, etc. work), but his writing is very clear and the book is highly readable.

DNA reveals the mechanisms of the machinery of life as it works now and shows how mutations and natural selection lead to very specific adaptations. It also contains a historical record of past changes that can be used to figure out when adaptations occurred and species diverged. As the genomes of more and more species are decoded, scientists are able to expand the already detailed and unambiguous "tree of life" directly from the "code" that operates the machinery of life. Darwin would be pleased.

I would think that any intelligent and open-minded denier of evolution who is willing to read this book and follow along with these "under the hood" explanations and details would have to be convinced. But people who deny evolution are clearly not doing so on scientific grounds, and intelligence and open-mindedness are not exactly the hallmarks of religious zealots. But anyone who does want to understand in more detail how evolution by natural selection actually works should read this book.

Mainstream Asteroid Fears

Space-related articles in the mainstream press are a mixed bag. They can bring space related issues to a wider audience, but they often suffer from poor or selective research, sensationalism, and oversimplification or mistakes. The cover of the June issue of The Atlantic shows a glowing-gas-streaked asteroid about to hit the Earth, with the headline "The Sky Is Falling." The subhead says, "It's inevitable: asteroids with the power to annihilate us will come this way. Can NASA divert them before it's too late?"

I like The Atlantic and I have read other articles by Gregg Easterbrook. He's generally a good and careful writer. But this article is a bit mixed. It is true that over some time period that the Earth will certainly be hit by a large "space rock." I agree that this is a threat that humanity should take seriously, and more people are thinking about this than ever before. We are building up the ability to monitor the skies for near-Earth objects on a finer and more regular basis. The article is good on explaining the threat and what could be done about it (but mostly isn't). More can and should be done, and it ultimately is a world-wide threat that should be addressed internationally.

My main objection concerns his handling of the immanence of this threat. True, we don't know the exact odds, and even if it were once in a million years, that could be tomorrow. But finding and quoting one "asteroid expert" who puts the odds as 1 in 10 within this century exaggerates the urgency of the threat in my opinion. This also dramatizes his complaints that NASA is doing nothing about the threat, other than estimating a cost of $1 billion to do the NEO survey requested by Congress. Easterbrook clearly doesn't think much of the NASA's mandated plans for the Moon and Mars, and suggests that instead of the "Vision" that NASA should be working on ways to detect and deflect rogue asteroids.

But Mike Griffin is right when he says that he doesn't decide NASA's direction, he just runs it. If the President and Congress provide the direction and funds for NASA to work on asteroid defenses, I'm sure they will. We'll have to wait until after the election to see how this will go. I happen to think we need and can afford expanded human and robotic exploration as well as expanded asteroid research and defenses, and that these programs will ultimately prove to be synergistic and also contribute to our economic development. The "sky" certainly could fall someday, and we should prepare for that as one part of our space program. But that's not the only reason for more active space programs.

Phoenix Mars EDL Video

Great 5 minute video from JPL on the "7 minutes of terror" coming up on May 25.

Million Mile Mission

The new Air & Space Magazine arrived yesterday with a cool cover story on a possible mission to visit a near-Earth asteroid using NASA's Constellation program hardware (specifically the Orion spacecraft). While Orion will be considerably roomier than the old Apollo command module, it would seem a bit cramped for a possibly six-month mission, even with only 2 or 3 crew members. Perhaps a Bigelow Sundancer inflatable could somehow be sent along for more living space? But asteroid enthusiasts with good credentials have studied this, and even with only the Orion, astronauts say they would sign up for it in a heartbeat, so who knows? It's definitely not funded at this point, but it surely would make sense to get some sort of practical experience intermediate between the Moon and a two-year Mars mission.

The article includes some nice paintings, but the illustration here was done with a couple of Orbiter add-ons. I can't get the links right now, but if anyone is interested, post a comment and I will find and post them when I have some free time and an internet connection, maybe Sunday in Brussels.

UPDATE: The asteroid is actually the core of Comet 67P from Brian Jones' ESA Rosetta add-on which is available on avsim.com (search for rosetta_v3.zip). I edited a Rosettta scenario file to replace the Rosetta with the Orion and to remove the comet's tail (coma) which is implemented as a "spacecraft" landed on the core object. The Orion add-on is a recent CEV version by "Francis Drake" found on his downloads page (Orion CEV 606 at bottom of list). I saw in a forum post that he is working on a newer version with the smaller "service module" shown in more recent Lockmart and NASA graphics, but I don't know the status of that.

Carnival of Space #54

David Portree is hosting the Carnival of Space this week at his blog, Altair VI. It appears to include many interesting posts, but unfortunately none of mine. The combination of some ongoing extended family problems and another European business trip coming up this Saturday have pretty much knocked me out of the blog writing (and reading!) business for a while. My Blackberry's data plan gave me sporadic internet access from my mother's home and from the upstate New York rehab center where she is now recovering from complications of pneumonia. So I was able to keep up with work to some degree. But Verizon's signal up there was weak and variable, as was my concentration. It's always something. June should be better.

Popular Space Elevator View

I was just looking at the most popular "photos" on my Flickr site, most of which consists of Orbiter screen shots of various space scenes. My images have been viewed around 25,000 times which is not bad for a set of pictures with absolutely no sexual content. This space elevator view (a cool Orbiter add-on by Kulch) is one of the most popular, with 1,434 views. Somebody with a more popular site than this one must have linked to it or something.

Two Earth views from Orbiter are still the most popular with 2,374 and 2,148 views. I realized as I typed this that I discussed these pictures in post back in March. It's a good thing I have web sites, computers, and a Blackberry to supplement the natural neurons!

Momofuku: This Year's Model!

The new Elvis Costello album Momofuku is awesome! This was another impulse download (from Amazon where it was $8.99 instead of $10.99 on iTunes). The reviews were good but the fact that Jenny Lewis of Rilo Kiley sings on it with him clinched it. It reminds me of his early 1978-1980 stuff which I always loved. It was recorded in a week and sounds wonderfully spontaneous. Some of the tracks were recorded live in the studio - on one song he shouts to the band, "Now the bridge!" Cool.

He may be "a limited, primitive kind of man" (from "Drum and Bone," maybe my favorite song on the new one), but what a brilliant songwriter he still is.

Phoenix: Two Weeks Out

The Phoenix Mars spacecraft is just a little over two weeks from landing on Mars (16 days, 11 hours, 20 minutes according the landing countdown clock here). I was reminded of this the other day when I read Phoenix principal investigator Peter Smith's introduction to the "Visions of Mars" mini-DVD that is mounted on the spacecraft. That special DVD was provided by the Planetary Society and is a sort of time capsule, a message to (human?) Martians who may recover and decode it some time in the future. It contains messages, stories, and various other materials, plus a list of thousands of names, including all the members of the Planetary Society (so I'm in there). There's a lot of cool material on the DVD, and you can read and hear some of it on the Planetary Society's web site. I'm listening to Carl Sagan's audio message right now.

As I wrote last summer, if you would like to experience the entry, descent, and landing (EDL) for Phoenix yourself, you can do so in Orbiter with the nice Phoenix add-on by Brian Jones (it's at avsim.com, not Orbit Hangar). The picture above shows the spacecraft about to touch down, having already detached from the parachutes and ejected its landing shroud. Is anyone going to try to follow the EDL in real time on May 25?

P.S. If you want to get up to speed quickly on the Phoenix mission, download the JPL press kit for the Phoenix landing, a 3 MB PDF here.

Carnival of Space #53

Thanks to the Space Cynic for stepping in at the last minute to host the fifty-third Carnival of Space. Rod Serling's Night Gallery is the theme.

Starry Starry Night

I'm staying for a few days at my mother's house in upstate New York. Although she's not in the deep countryside, there is much less light pollution here than at my home near Worcester, Massachusetts, and the sky at night is really, really dark. Last night it was also very clear and the stars were amazing. In the west there was a distinctive line of three bright objects like a giant Orion's Belt. It was made up of Castor and Pollux (the two brightest stars of Gemini) and Mars. There was also a distinctive pair higher in the southwest, made up of Regulus, the brightest star in Leo, and Saturn. Really a lovely sky with many more visible stars than I usually see at home. I had no way to take a decent picture, so I captured the screen shot here from Stellarium.

P.S. NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day for May 10 is a nice time exposure of the Mars-Gemini lineup on May 4.