Sizing Up Olympus Mons

Olympus Mons is the largest known volcano and mountain in the solar system. It reaches 27 kilometers above mean surface level (around 88,600 feet) and is about 550 kilometers in width. What would it look like to fly near this enormous thing? Tonight I downloaded from Orbit Hangar a newly posted Orbiter add-on by "ark," intending to have a look. This "Smooth Transition Olympus Mons" is a textured 3D object that blends nicely with Orbiter's normal flat Mars texture (all Orbiter default planetary textures are smooth, which doesn't matter much as long as you are a few hundred kilometers up).

From Olympus Base, you can now see Olympus Mons low and wide on the horizon. It rises with such a gentle overall slope that you have to fly around and above it to get a sense of its real size. In the pictures here, you can see the steep cliffs and the giant caldera of the volcano. It's a pretty nice effect.

Not Cuil Yet

There's a new search engine in town, cuil.com (pronounced cool). Several ex-Google people created this new search engine, which like Google itself, aims to index everything on the web.

After some brief and non-scientific testing, I think Google is safe for a while. Cuil includes pictures in some of its results, but when I did searches that included some results from this blog, if a picture was included, it was not from my blog. I noticed on some searches for my own music that some of the returned pictures are from me, but they are from web sites that are completely unrelated to the site where my music was found (e.g., Orbiter graphics or air show photos). Weird.

A simple search such as "starfest aldrich" produced no results (Google: 504, including several hits for recent blog posts of mine on last night's excellent Starfest event). Changing the case of s or a changes the results but not very usefully (why should a search string be case sensitive unless this is a preference setting?).

I did a bunch of other searches for things where I know what some results should include (e.g., in optical design and illumination simulation), and cuil's results were disappointing. Sometimes I use Yahoo search in addition to Google, just to see what shows up near the top. I might use cuil the same way sometimes, but based on my limited testing, this is 1.0 software and doesn't seem to bring much to the party so far (wait for 2.0).

Virtual Astronaut - Cool!

I just stumbled on a really cool web-based activity that has apparently been around since 2005 or maybe earlier. It's called Virtual Astronaut, and it puts you inside a 3D model of the ISS. You can fly around and locate various activities, which are brief educational modules on subjects like bones, muscles, plant growth in space, recognizing Earth features from space, and others. Most of them are biological or medical in nature, relating to the challenges faced by humans living and working in space.

Each activity ends with some sort of quiz or puzzle for which you gain points. Gain enough points and you can go to the space suit fitting area to purchase the components and assemble your space suit, and then buy 2 minute blocks of EVA time. Go to the airlock, press O to open the hatch, and you can then go outside and explore the 3D exterior of the ISS. There are no EVA activities other than floating around and looking, but it's still pretty cool.

Most of the activities seemed suitable for elementary school kids, though the ones involving muscles, bones, and the inner ear had some tough vocabulary to learn (the activity itself teaches you the vocabulary, and you can repeat each activity as often as you like to increase your score).

This "learning environment" was probably developed for NASA by Tietronix, though I can't see an "about" page for background so I don't know. It's well designed and easy to navigate. It requires downloading and installing a couple of plugins including one for a 3D viewer (though there are Flash-only and text versions also available).

I think this would work really well with Marianne Dyson's book Space Station Science which I have mentioned in a past post, providing a way for students to explore the ISS after they read about it (the book also has various activities).

If You're in New England...

...this weekend, don't forget Starfest 2008 tomorrow night at Anna Maria College, near Worcester. It's free and will go on regardless of weather, though we hope for clear skies when the telescopes open up at 9 pm. There will be many indoor activities too (in Foundress Hall, not the Science Building as shown above). I will present "Robots, Astronauts, and You," including some live and noisy Orbiter demos. Bring the kids!

Get Your Kicks at Carnival 66

Carnival of Space #66 is running this week at A Mars Odyssey. Check it out. This graphic isn't part of the carnival, it's just a screen shot from Orbiter of Phobos with Mars in the background. Olympus Mons is at the upper left, Valles Marineris is at the lower right, and the three other volcanic mountains to the right of Phobos are Arsia Mons, Pavonis Mons, and Ascraeus Mons.

Almost Famous (Among German Nerds)

I'm a nerd, and proud of it. Believe me, only a nerd would say that and link the word "nerd" to the Wikipedia article for nerd. Not to mention that I'm a space blogger and this is, what, my fourth post of the day? But enough about me. Almost.

Thanks to Martin Schweiger, the author of the Orbiter space flight simulator, I now have the chance to be mildly famous among German nerds, or at least those German nerds who read a popular biweekly computer magazine called c't. The current c't has one of their occasional bonus cover DVD's, this time including software with the theme "Wissenschaft" (science). Martin was asked to allow Orbiter to appear on the c't cover DVD, and he kindly suggested that they also include my Orbiter tutorial and exploration guide, Go Play In Space.

And they did. I hope their inclusion on the DVD allows many German c't readers to discover and enjoy Orbiter. I just received a copy of the magazine and I see it's in there, along with many other free software offerings of a sciencey nature. I can only read a little German, but I see that many of the programs on the DVD are actually in English. I noticed and installed one called Periodic Table Explorer by Paul Alan Freshney. Why? See paragraph one. The periodic table is a thing of beauty, OK?

SpaceX: Openness and Optimism

Elon Musk of SpaceX has reported the details of what went wrong on the third launch of the Falcon 1 the other day. It was a case of a few too many uncontrolled variables. This was the first launch with the re-designed Merlin 1C engine which uses a different cooling method from the original version (it circulates cold fuel through tubes inside the engine nozzle rather than lining the engine bell with a material that removes heat by slowly burning away). The new engine had a small amount of residual thrust after shutdown, too small a pressure to measure in ground tests, but at 200 km up, enough to bump the first stage into the second stage just after it had separated. A very slight delay in staging would have allowed this tiny excess thrust to dissipate and staging would have succeeded. Everything else about the launch to that point went well, and they may try flight 4 as early as September.

Of course there is a tendency to second guess things like this, or to rationalize them, or both. You might think that with all the experienced engineers SpaceX has hired, and with all the engineering and simulation tools that are now available, that a relatively simple two-stage booster would be "easy" to get working. After all, governments have been launching things like this since the late 1950's. But on the other hand, a rocket is a "full up" system, with lots of interacting stuff. Simulation is great, but there's nothing like a full-up test to truly see how everything works together (or doesn't).

Viewed this way, three test launches are really not a lot to get the bugs out, especially when the third flight had a substantially redesigned engine. This is rocket science, after all (really rocket engineering, but OK). As an example of more extensive second guessing, this NewScientist article talks about how much better reusable systems would be for development - you get the vehicle back to check out and improve after the flight instead of every launch being brand-new never-flown hardware (the first stage of Falcon 1 is ultimately intended to be recovered by parachute and re-used).

Of course fully-reusable launch systems (space planes or whatever) should be the ultimate goal. As they say, we don't throw away a Boeing 777 after one flight. But we know from NASA's experience with the shuttle and various proposed systems (the National Aerospace Plane SSTO?) that full reusability is a whole different level of complexity, and SpaceX believes that at this stage, there are still economies of scale that are possible for expendibles with modern hardware design and fabrication, modularity, and other techniques. The fact that they are working out the bugs with the single engine Falcon 1 means that things should go better next year with the Falcon 9 that uses nine of the Merlin 1C's in its first stage.

Starting with a clean sheet of paper in something as complex as launch vehicle development is a tall order, and you have to give Musk and SpaceX a lot of credit for taking this on and sticking with their plan.

Space Based Solar Power Videos

The above video is "a message for the next president of the United States" on the subject of space based solar power. I agree with the motivation, concepts, and the long-term need, though I'm not sure about all their numbers. They say that our usable oil reserves will only last 45 years. They say that even if we tap all available Earth-based alternative energy sources, we will still be short about 66% of world-wide energy requirements in 2100. There are a lot of assumptions and extrapolations in figures like those on both the supply and demand sides, and they don't say anything about their sources or calculations (a lot of the background seems to be here). But they finally suggest that you Google "space based solar power" to learn more, which is a good idea. I do love the line, "when it comes to energy, it's time to drill up, not down." Read the transcript here.

Thanks to Louise Riofrio for the tip. She referenced NSS, and NSS also provides a link to a 5 minute ESA video on space based solar. That video is much less political and includes a really interesting graphic of historical energy use. NSS is a great resource on space based solar power.

Low Cost Astronomy Library

Even with millions of astronomy and space images freely available on line, I still like books, and I have tons of them on space and astronomy and many other subjects. Old habits die hard I guess. I sometimes also give away books as raffle prizes at educational outreach events, so I'm always looking for good quality, low cost astronomy books to use for this (and to add to my own overcrowded shelves).

One series I really like is from UK publisher Quercus, Earth and Universe by Nicolas Cheetham and a third one I found just last week, The Planets by Giles Sparrow (the Amazon links are for hardcovers for $15 to $19 - I've found the paperback versions for $5.99 on the discount tables at Borders and Waldenbooks). They are basically all photos with brief text captions for each one. They are large format books and the color print quality is good. If you want to start or add to a low-cost astronomy library for yourself or your kids, you can't go wrong with these.

I (Heart) GPS

My favorite down-to-Earth space application is GPS. I secretly had a simple Magellan 315 back in my student pilot days (2000-2001). I say "secretly" because I wasn't allowed to use a GPS for navigation as a student pilot, though I used it on my solo cross-country flights anyway, to back up my visual, chart, and VOR flight planning and navigation. I bought an add-on aviation database for that GPS (it was mostly intended for boating and hiking but it worked great in the air). Apart from my CFI's rules and the fact that I was only flying VFR, that GPS was not certified for aviation use, so it couldn't be anything more than a backup navigation device anyway. It was cool to know my real groundspeed all the time.

For the last few years I've had a small Garmin GPS for the car, probably one of the last non-touch-screen models they made. We used the British English voice and called her Lucy. Lucy helped out on many road trips but her ~2006 database was getting a bit dated and would cost about $70 to update. So I looked into other Garmin units and bought a StreetPilot c550 for $184 from Amazon (now it's $170!). This is a highly rated 2006-era touch-screen GPS that is compact but not super-slim like the latest ones, so I guess that's why they are discounting them. When I registered the new GPS with Garmin.com, I got a free update to the latest 2009 firmware and North America navigation database, which I downloaded (2 GB!) and installed.

It's a fantastic little device. My new road companion is a saucy Australian girl named Karen (she's actually a synthesized voice who unlike Lucy can pronounce street names). The c550 also comes with an FM radio receiver cable and a three-month trial subscription for real-time traffic reporting. It displays and navigates around construction, accidents, slow traffic, etc. There are thousands of "points of interest" (POI) built in, and you can add your own for various things including audio-visual guided tours that some people record and provide on the web. It even includes an MP3 player - not that I need that in a GPS.

My only disappointment is with another unexpected feature, Bluetooth cell phone support. This allows you to use the GPS on your windshield for hands-free phone calls. It's got some great features, but unfortunately it won't stay connected to my Blackberry's Bluetooth, even though I updated to the latest firmware and software. I don't talk on the phone that much in the car, and I have a Bluetooth headset for when I need to be hands-free. So I won't hold this against Karen or Garmin.

Stuck on the Blue Marble?

I decided to promote a comment exchange from my recent "Obama Shifts Spaceward" post into a new post. Reader "ZZ" first commented:

The sad truth is that 90% of the American populace don't give a flying fig about space exploration. Once Apollo failed to morph into Star Trek, they lost interest, and Presidents and candidates ever since have followed suit by ignoring the issue. It's time to face the fact that we're bound to this blue marble forever.

I replied:

True enough that most people don't care about space exploration per se. They also don't especially care about materials research that gives them hard drives for their iPods, biological research that might someday lead to useful new drugs, and many other wonky things that engineers and scientists do. They mostly care about results that can benefit them, and to a certain extent they enjoy novelty for its entertainment value.

People like things that space technology has given us, like hurricane warnings and GPS, though this stuff happens mostly near the Earth and without astronauts, and most people don't think much about the space connection anyway.

Some people do care about national competitiveness and technology when it affects jobs, especially their own. But apparently not enough to demand better education systems let alone space exploration. That's a problem that will be solved, in some countries at least.

Apollo is still a tough act to follow. So many things went well and so much money and priority went into it in those few amazing years, and it was also quite novel and entertaining (for a while).

So I can understand your cynicism and pessimism. But "forever" is a long time. I'd love to see humans on Mars in my lifetime, but it may not happen for 50 more years. I'd love to see Americans as key partners when it does happen (I hope and assume it will be an international effort). But maybe it will be the Chinese. And maybe it will take another full-blown space race or a near-hit by an asteroid to really kick things into gear. Or maybe it will only take a couple of companies finally making a big profit in space and going public.

It could go many ways. I went into a technical field myself because of Gemini and Apollo, and many other engineers and scientists were similarly inspired. This was the "human spinoff" from the space program of the 60's that greatly helped the development of US technology businesses for many years afterward.

It's easy to be cynical and pessimistic, but I believe optimism is a better strategy. Maybe nothing much will happen in the next 8 or 15 years, but I'm optimistic that space will open up vast new opportunities for mankind, and that new discoveries and developments will come along that will again make it exciting to more people.

This blue marble isn't so bad. We can still do a lot with it and we should. But "bound here forever" is a lot like those predictions of respected physicists and others who confidently said in 1902 that heavier than air flight was essentially impossible. It's a very shortsighted view, unless your "forever" only extends through an administration or two.

What Makes Us Explore (Continued)

At the end of last week's Carnival of Space #64, I compared the perspectives of one of the blogs I was hosting (21st Century Waves) with a recent article by Rand Simberg in The Space Review. The subject was "are we driven to explore?"

While browsing a few blogs tonight (catching up after my Taiwan trip), I came across an interesting followup on Rand's article at Centauri Dreams, in a post titled "What makes us explore?" (thanks for the kind plug, Paul). While Paul believes there is some sort of "exploratory impulse," he also finds more common ground with Rand than the terms "fear and greed" might imply - it seems that Rand's emphasis is more on space development than space exploration. Is "space development" better or more inspiring than "space exploration?" I guess that depends on your point of view, and if you read the animated exchange of comments for that post, you'll find that the points of view are pretty diverse (and culturally loaded!).

I think some people do explore for the sake of exploration, though perhaps not very many people have been driven primarily by this. And I think there is a lot of overlap and synergy between exploration and development - something like science and engineering. There's no one right answer here, but I do find that in my recent outreach presentations on space, I have been talking more about private space and about the possible future economic benefits of space, while still highlighting the wonder and beauty of what we find in the cosmos. In the long run, I think space can be good for the soul and good for the pocketbook.

Obama Shifts Spaceward

Although political "flip flopping" is sometimes condemned as if it were a crime, let's face it - politicians are always adjusting their positions and sometimes even reversing them. Situations change, new information and analysis becomes available, mistakes are made, strategies are changed. If there's a good reason to change a position, and if the candidate can explain and justify it, it's crazy to stick to the original position for its own sake.

This doesn't mean that it's OK to just say whatever you want for the circumstance or the current audience (besides, for a presidential election, the whole world is your audience anyway). Consistency is important, but I think it's most important to be consistent at the big-picture level of what's good for America. Of course if candidates change their positions too much or too erratically, their opponents will point this out, and if those positions are really not workable and good for America, the people will see this too and vote accordingly.

McCain and Obama have both changed positions on issues, and today it seems that Obama has significantly reversed his previous position on space exploration and NASA. He had originally proposed delaying the Constellation program by five years and using the savings to fund an early education program. I disagreed with this position because I believe the savings would be too small to make a difference in any significant social program, and because NASA and its work force are an important national resource that would be difficult to rebuild. Even with the growth in private space (which I believe NASA should be funded to support at a higher level), I believe that NASA's 0.6% of the Federal budget represents a true investment in our future, unlike so many other Federal programs.

Today in a speech in Titusville, Florida that was largely focused on economic issues (according to a community blog on Obama's web site), Obama changed his position and emphasized the risk of the US losing its competitive edge in space capability. He proposed extending the shuttle program by one launch and speeding development on the Constellation program to minimize the gap in US manned space capability. Of course he's talking about jobs in this region, but he had a bigger picture in mind as well:

"More broadly, we need a real vision for space exploration. To help formulate this vision, I’ll reestablish the National Aeronautics and Space Council so that we can develop a plan to explore the solar system – a plan that involves both human and robotic missions, and enlists both international partners and the private sector. And as America leads the world to long-term exploration of the moon, Mars, and beyond, let’s also tap NASA’s ingenuity to build the airplanes of tomorrow and to study our own planet so we can combat global climate change. Under my watch, NASA will inspire the world, make America stronger, and help grow the economy here in Florida."

Right on!

Starfest 2008 Update

I mentioned Starfest 2008 in an earlier post, and now it's just one week away (August 9, 7-10 pm). Aldrich Astronomical Society president Jim Zebrowski was interviewed by the Worcester Telegram & Gazette and a nice article on Starfest and Aldrich ran on Thursday.

Update: I learned today that Anna Maria College will be painting and rewiring the Science Building during August. This means that we will have to move Starfest to another building at AMC, Foundress Hall (#19 on this PDF campus map - telescopes will still be set up behind the science building, #28). Directions to Anna Maria's Paxton, MA campus (near Worcester) are here.

Falcon 1 Launch Tonight!

I received two news emails from SpaceX today. The first one said that they successfully conducted the first nine engine firing (pictured) of its Falcon 9 launch vehicle at its Texas Test Facility outside McGregor on July 31st, two months ahead of schedule. This is the full engine complement for the first stage of the big vehicle that will carry cargo and eventually passengers to the ISS in the next couple of years.

The other big news is that they plan to launch the Falcon 1 this evening from Omelek Island at Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. The launch window opens at 7 pm EDT (4 pm PDT) and there will be a live webcast of the launch. I will be at an astronomy club meeting this evening and I hope we can get web access to watch this (our usual university meeting place is being painted so we have to meet in another building). I can always tether my Blackberry if there's a good Verizon signal but I'm not sure how well that will work on streaming video!

This will be the third launch of the Falcon 1. The first two tests failed to achieve orbit, though the second demo flight in March 2007 came close. I'm sure they have worked out the design problems discovered in the earlier tests and I look forward to a successful launch tonight.

UPDATE: After several delays and an aborted launch attempt, the Falcon 1 was launched at 11:34 pm EDT. Unfortunately at about 140 seconds into the flight, an unidentified "anomaly" was reported and the webcast ended. The vehicle was apparently lost. I read later that the second stage failed to separate. This is a big disappointment for SpaceX and private space fans, but they will press on. "For my part, I will never give up and I mean never," SpaceX president Elon Musk said.

Carnival of Space #65

Carnival of Space #65 is on display this week at 21st Century Waves. As usual, there's a wide range of space and astronomy topics to explore, which is also true of the 21st Century Waves itself. This blog takes an interesting approach to forecasting space development and eventual colonization based on long term economic and technological patterns.

Supporting Obama

One last post for the month, another rare political post...

As I've mentioned a couple of times before, I'm supporting Barack Obama for president. I've been contributing regularly to the campaign because I believe this election is really important and that Obama has the potential to finally lead America back into the world community and into the twenty-first century. The challenges are great and I have no illusions that Obama is something magical, "the One" or whatever. But I've read his books and studied his positions. He's real. He's smart. He's practical. He cares. He knows he can't do it alone, and he will build a great team. He actually gets it. And McCain is clueless.

If you're an American and you are undecided, or if you don't know much about Obama - please take some time and learn about him and what he represents. Learn about McCain too. And if you support Obama, contribute to the campaign if you can. This truly is about the future, and it's important. Thanks.

Hayabusa Visit 2005

I was checking on Orbit Hangar for new Orbiter add-ons, and I noticed one from Brian Jones that I hadn't seen before, a set of Japanese exploration missions based on the JAXA M-V launch vehicle series (MV Missions). These include the Nozomi mission (which failed to reach Mars), the canceled Lunar-A mission, and the partly successful Hayabusa mission that launched from Japan in 2003 and visited asteroid 25143 Itokawa in fall 2005.

As usual, Brian includes a lot of detail in this add-on, including the M-V launch pad area at Uchinoura and the rubbly and potato-like Itokawa itself. There are animations and multiple scenarios including the chance to land on Itokawa to collect a sample for return to Earth, simulating what Hayabusa apparently failed to complete in 2005. I have only played a bit with Hayabusa, not the other two. This add-on is a great value for the price (which is zero, as usual for Orbiter add-ons and Orbiter itself). Nice work, Brian. I'd like to play some more but I have to pack up and go to sleep. I'll be flying over Japan tomorrow en route from Taiwan to SFO (and eventually back to BOS).

New NASAimages.org

This is how it ought to be - NASAimages.org is a huge new web collection of all sorts of NASA images and videos hosted not by NASA, but by the Internet Archive (which hosts a lot of other stuff too, some of it pretty strange). You can browse by categories (among other methods) and display up to 250 thumbnails per page. There are some cool features for browsing, searching, embedding, and for creating media groups and presentations. I'm sure there are more features, but best of all is the easy access to zillions of NASA images.

There are already a huge number of images and videos but they apparently plan to expand to millions of photos and thousands of hours of video. Way cool!

Sea of Scooters

I took a nice long walk this morning around the Hsinchu area where I'm staying this week. Every time I'm in Taiwan, I'm amazed by the number of motor scooters that dominate the traffic here. It's not as chaotic as traffic in India or most places in China that I've visited, and Hsinchu is not nearly as bad as Taipei (pictured here, photo courtesy of Poagao on Flickr). But it's still pretty much a sea of scooters in the morning rush hour, so you have to be careful crossing the street to get to Starbucks for your cafe mocha!

$10 No-Lens Microscope!?!

Now this is thinking outside the box (or lens in this case). A Caltech engineer has developed a "microscope on a chip" that doesn't use any lenses. Instead, the liquid containing the cells or organisms of interest is run through microscopic fluid channels that pass over a sensor array chip like those in a digital camera. A thin metal layer blocks most of the pixels except for some tiny holes punched in the foil along the fluid channels. The size of these holes (not the pixel size of the detector array) determines the resolution, and the picture is "stitched together" digitally from the changing signals received by the sensors behind the holes. The device will take some time to commercialize, but if the $10 price is realized, optofluidic microscopy (OFM) could allow for small, hand-held, and inexpensive blood analysis devices and probably many other applications.

I've read of some other examples of this sort of radical rethinking of what it means to record an image (can't find a reference at the moment). We've been working from a "fairly large lens and film-like detector that records the whole image all at once" model even in the digital camera age, but it seems there is more than one way to slice and dice light reflected from objects to form images when sensors and computers are cheap and easily configurable. Future cameras and other optical devices may not look anything like a camera does now.

This page has a diagram of the device and some sample images from a prototype. Photo credit: Changhuei Yang, Caltech.

Physics for Future Presidents

This is a review (five stars) that I posted on Amazon.com of Physics for Future Presidents: The Science Behind the Headlines by Richard Muller. Dr. Muller is a professor at UC Berkeley who teaches a very popular course based on a textbook version of this book. You can find his lectures on video and audio through iTunes U and probably also on YouTube...

Although there are a few graphs and diagrams and a lot of numbers and units, I think this book is accessible to any reader with a citizen's interest in energy, terrorism, nuclear weapons and nuclear power (not the same!), and climate change. You don't have to consider yourself a future president to want and really need to understand this stuff - all elected officials and voters should have this level of familiarity with the science (and often engineering) behind these important issues. And it's really not that hard to follow - it's very readable.

There are no equations here (OK, a few in the notes if you're interested), and the "physics" comes mainly in the approach, breaking problems down into essentials to which basic concepts like energy conservation and efficiency can be applied. A lot can be accomplished simply by converting energy and other quantities in different situations into common units and comparing them (Muller uses mainly common US units rather than metric units that physicists use in their real work).

It is true that Muller does not completely remove his own opinions in favor of "pure science" on some topics - but this is a book for general readers, not a text book (he also has a text book version for his course at UC Berkeley). And the issues are real-world issues, not abstract physics problems. But for the most part he is combining basic science with logic and common sense, and if you learn to do this yourself, and remember some of the conversions and rules of thumb he discusses, you will be better able judge for yourself whether some claim about energy or terrorism really makes sense, and have a better calibration of risks and opportunities in this complex world.

I was a physics major and have a masters in optics, but I also do educational outreach programs, so I'm really viewing this book more from the perspective of an educator and citizen than as a science-educated person. And I personally learned a lot.

Blog P.S. There is also a section on space which is pretty good, though I wouldn't buy this book for its space related content. I didn't mention the space section in the Amazon review because I felt that the energy, nukes, terrorism, and climate change sections would be of more interest to the general reader.

Time and the Secret of Life

Now the thing about time
Is that time isn't really real
It's all on your point of view
How does it feel for you?
Einstein said that he could never understand it all
Planets spinning through space
The smile upon your face
Welcome to the human race
Isn't that a lovely ride?

-James Taylor
“The Secret of Life” (excerpt)

I’ve always liked James Taylor’s song “The Secret of Life,” the first line of which is “the secret of life is enjoying the passage of time.” That sounds desirable, and maybe even plausible, though it’s one of those easier-said-than-done things. But it’s the verse quoted above that got me thinking about the nature of time and how we experience it, compared to how we think about it in the context of science and history.

Our subjective experience of time must have evolved just like every other aspect of our physical and mental characteristics, and it seems to be related to consciousness (whatever that is!). In hunter-gatherer and even basic agricultural cultures, there are a few basic time scales, and not much need for precision. Your body needs to be able to sense and react in fractions of a second to detect and properly respond to movement associated with predators and prey, and to be able to throw things accurately. Without artificial light sources and timekeeping devices, you also need a sense of the day/night cycle to plan and accomplish those things you need to do in daylight, and to seek safe shelter for night time. This scale comes pretty naturally from the apparent movements of the sun and the stars.

You also need a sense of the seasonal/annual cycle to judge the likely availability of food sources, and for planting and harvesting. There are environmental cues for this scale too – the changing length of the day, changes in weather, the location of the rising and setting sun, and the patterns of stars that change with the seasons. Early humans spent a lot of time outdoors and certainly would notice these things more than most people do these days.

The longest time scale for most basic human activities would be essentially your lifetime, say 20-100 years. Children grow and change noticeably on scales of months to years, and our faces and bodies change through adulthood. Beyond a lifetime, you need some sort of artifact to keep track of time. Before writing, there were oral traditions, stories memorized and passed on to children to help preserve traditions and know-how and to provide some sense of continuity. This might be counted in generations, but here is where it starts to get somewhat abstract, when you think about what happened before your life and what might happen after you die.

These seem to be the natural and easily understandable human time scales, and anything outside of this range is going to require something beyond your own senses. Writing allows records to extend beyond a lifetime more reliably than oral storytelling. Calendars and simple timekeeping devices like an hourglass or sundial make it possible to measure time and to compare ideas of time with other people. Subjective time starts to have some objective milestones.

Where this all breaks down is when science and history start to tell us about events and phenomena that fall outside these individual human time scales. I know about all sorts of events with all sorts of time scales – e.g., different events in a computer take place in nanoseconds to microseconds (CPU and memory operations) or milliseconds (disk operations), different by factors of thousands to millions, but all too short for me to comprehend in any direct sense.

At the other end, we have geological and cosmological events happening over scales of many thousands to millions to billions of years. While I can use analogies like the cosmic calendar (here's Carl Sagan explaining it) to understand these time scales in some sort of abstract way, I can’t directly or emotionally comprehend how long even 500 years is, let alone ten million or thirteen billion years.

I accept the reality of these time scales, and since I have read and studied a lot of science over the years, I perhaps have more familiarity with “scientific time” than the average person. But even when the scientific evidence is clear, these enormous time scales are still literally mind boggling to me. So I can understand how it can be hard for some people to "get their head around" concepts like “continental drift” (plate tectonics) and evolution that require time scales so far beyond anything an individual human can experience or even imagine.

I don’t know if the secret of life really is enjoying the passage of time. I’m not even sure whether time is really real (I do know that my 13 hour flight from San Francisco to Taiwan really seemed more like 30 hours). Or as somebody undoubtedly said before, maybe time is just nature’s way of keeping everything from happening at once.


P.S. I'm re-reading Bill Bryson's A Short History of Almost Everything, which is great (more later I suppose). In chapter 21, he talks about how difficult it is for anything to get fossilized, and about trilobytes and other odd creatures of the "Cambrian explosion," referring to the geological period when complex life-forms somewhat suddenly appear in the fossil record, around 540 million years ago. To try to convey this distant age, he suggests you imagine that you can travel backwards into time at the rate of one year per second. At this rate, you reach the first century CE in about half an hour (2008 seconds), and the beginnings of human life in just over 3 weeks. But you would have to fly for almost 20 years to get to the start of the Cambrian period!

In Math, Girls = Boys

As has been widely reported, a new study shows that girls and boys perform equally well in math. University of Wisconsin researchers reported on the study in Science magazine. "There just aren't gender differences anymore in math performance," says UW-Madison psychology professor Janet Hyde, the study's leader. "So parents and teachers need to revise their thoughts about this."

I've always thought that the idea that girls aren't as strong in math as boys was something of a self-fulfilling prophecy and thus a very harmful stereotype. When I have done space-related educational outreach events for school groups and girl scout events, I have found girls to be every bit as curious about the universe and its workings as boys. I thought it was unfortunate that few of these smart girls would likely go on to pursue education and careers in science and engineering. I hope this new study will take away any excuse anyone might have for not encouraging girls (and boys) to do what they are good at and what they enjoy.

Grandroid Dreams

I've just finished reading Steve Grand's second book, Growing Up With Lucy (how to build an android in twenty easy steps). He points out on the page just before the introduction that he lied about the number of steps, but never mind that. I'll even give away the ending. By the end of the phase of the project described in this book, his orangutan-inspired android "daughter" Lucy has learned to (sometimes) point at a banana.

This may not sound like much, but it's actually a good step beyond Steve's earlier artificial life project, the computer game Creatures. The development of that game and of Steve's ideas about the nature of life and intelligence were described in his earlier book, Creation, which I wrote about in 2006. It's pretty amazing stuff - all the more so because the creatures in Creatures actually learn to do everything they do in their fairly complex 2D world. They have brains and immune systems and so on. Richard Dawkins has said that Creatures could be the closest that anyone has come to actually creating artificial life.

But Steve was not content to stop there. As complex and realistic in some respects as the artificial life forms of Creatures could be, they still developed in a very limited 2D world. Steve makes the very logical point that we (humans and other mammals, mainly) do not exist as isolated "intelligences" but that intelligence and other attributes are consequences of having bodies that have to learn to survive in a real 3D world. With Lucy, he set out to create a "creature" that would actually have use for intelligence. In the Lucy book, he describes his ideas and his self-funded "non-disciplinary" research in more detail, in addition to describing the trials and tribulations of Lucy and her software-emulated muscles (driving real and very troublesome hardware) and brain structures (modeled on the overall architecture of the mammalian brain, with a visual and motor cortex and so on). It's a "synthesis" approach that makes a lot of sense, and his telling of it is quite clear and often quite funny.

At the end of the book, Steve reports that his self-funding had just about run out when he fortunately received a UK foundation grant to continue the work for another year, allowing him to start work on a "Mark II" version of Lucy. That was around 2000 I think, and to learn more I'm afraid you will have to explore his web site (which has frames, alas, the de-framed Lucy part is here). It seems that Lucy is again (still?) on hold, but maybe things will change, and maybe someday Lucy-type robots will be common and will be called grandroids in Steve's honor. Then again, maybe not.

In any case, this is a very clever, sometimes funny, and always thought-provoking book, and I highly recommend it. Now I have to pack for a lightning trip to Taiwan, leaving for the airport in about 11 hours.

Solar Power Satellites

The basic idea of solar power satellites (SPS) has been around since 1968, but with high and rising energy costs and with improvements in solar photovoltaic technology, the idea seems to be getting more attention now. There was an opinion piece in the New York Times last week that outlined the basic ideas of SPS, noting that the required technologies all exist now, and that with lighter and higher efficiency solar cells, the mass of an SPS could be much less than the monster systems envisioned in the seventies. The ISS could be used for testing some SPS technologies in space (even though it is in low Earth orbit and therefore doesn't stay over one point on Earth as a real SPS would presumably do from GEO). There are other promising developments:

• An October 2007 report to the National Security Space Office called "Space-Based Solar Power As an Opportunity for Strategic Security" (available here). Strange maybe, but at least DoD is an interested party with money!
  
  
• Japan has been testing SPS technology including power-beaming and plans to have an SPS in space by 2030 (JAXA concept picture shown).
  
  
• A new organization called SSAFE (Space Solar Alliance for Energy Future) was announced last fall by NSS. SSAFE is a coalition of 13 research and space advocacy groups advocating investments in space-based solar power. NSS also has an extensive on-line library of books and other materials on space based solar power.

A recent article in Air & Space Magazine also talks about the issues of space-based solar power. While there is great promise, and progress is being made, there are also many problems, including public perception of the safety of beaming power to Earth with microwaves (really not a major issue) and the fact that ground-based energy technologies are also developing faster now, reducing possible energy cost advantages of space-based solar. But in the long run, placing arrays of efficient solar cells in a place where the sun always shines is too good an idea to waste!

Welcome to Carnival of Space #64

Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.

-Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Of course I knew space was big, but after metaphorically flying around for a few hours with a couple dozen space and astronomy bloggers who are just all over space, I had to pull up Adams’ quote for some perspective. Welcome to the 64th Carnival of Space. It may not be the biggest ever, but it sure has grown since I hosted a few of the early and middle carnivals way back in 2007.

Starting out in the depths of galactic space, Bad Astronomy asks how you can weigh a supermassive black hole in the center of some distant galaxy? Turns out there’s a clever new method – you take its temperature.

What’s in a name? Star Stryder brings up active galactic nuclei as an example of astronomical objects that have many different names, which can sometimes cause problems. And in what may be a case for Galactic CSI, Free Space reports on a galaxy where something has been killing organic molecules!

Moving into stellar range, Simostronomy tells us of three astronomers who worked with variable stars and who had an unusual and impressive common thread. And Centauri Dreams (approaching its fifth anniversary!) thinks about how to keep a blog about reaching the stars alive until someone actually reaches one, among other issues in communicating with the future.

OK, back in the solar neighborhood. You know the sun is a star, but do you know what type it is? Astroengine tells us what it is and why. Cosmic Ray talks about Ceres and whether this largish dwarf planet in the asteroid belt might be an escapee from the distant Kuiper belt. Dawn may provide some clues when it visits this intriguing place in 2015. And Universe Today offers an interesting post about the possibility of colonizing Venus with floating cities!

Several of this week’s bloggers wrote about the Moon, a few inspired by the 39th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on July 20, 1969. Stuart at Cumbrian Sky looks back at that day, wishing that the history had been better documented (no pictures of Neil Armstrong on the surface?). But he found out later that it was documented a bit better than he thought. Gumby the Cat wrote a nice Apollo 11 post, comparing NASA then and now (he thinks it was better then). I missed July 20 but compensated by remembering another historic event – the first launch of a human spacecraft from a body other than Earth on July 21, 1969. Naturally I used Orbiter and AMSO to simulate it and take a picture that Neil and Buzz couldn’t have gotten if they tried (see above).

There were a few non-Apollo Moon posts, including Babe in the Universe who talks about the impressive video of the Moon transiting Earth, shot from the Deep Impact (now EPOXI) spacecraft. And My Dark Sky was blown away by the you-are-there high-def imagery of Tycho crater from Japan’s Kaguya Moon orbiter. Ken Murphy at Out of the Cradle discusses some 24 Moon-related children’s books from the 50’s and 60’s. I must have gotten some of those from the library way back then!

Coming down to Earth, we have a few posts on observations and technology. Astroblog gives a progress report on building an orrery, a physical (not software) model of the solar system. Chris writes from Space Across the Pond on the Top Ten Telescopes. The selection and ranking are a bit arbitrary, but you can’t argue with Galileo (the dude, not the spacecraft) and Hubble (the spacecraft, not the dude). Visual Astronomy discusses astronomy software, including one of my freeware favorites, Stellarium. And in a case of “some bloggers have all the luck” (though not necessarily in gradeschool), Space Disco’s Dave Mosher will get to view the solar eclipse of August 1 from an airplane high above the Northern Arctic. There are no obscurations up there, except for the journalist in the window seat.

Speaking of the Earth and dreidels (weren’t we?), Starts With A Bang! has a great little lesson on how days on this spinning Earth are getting (very gradually) longer. And if you’ve got a spinning Earth, why not toss up a few carbon nanotube (CNT) fibers from the equator and make a space elevator? Next Big Future says that CNT fibers as long as 30 centimeters have been reported, with 1 meter possible soon. This bodes well for the eventual practicality of space elevator CNT ribbons, though there is still a long way to go (technologically and otherwise). Riding with Robots compares Mars and Earth, and they come up looking pretty similar (at least if you’re in Utah looking at rock formations).

OK, we’ve got just a few more posts. CollectSpace offers several posts related to animals in space and/or in movies (mainly animated, except for a live Buzz Aldrin cameo). The animals in question are chimps, flies, and dogs (sounds like a Carnac punch line). Kentucky Space reports on a new documentary, Apollo’s Orphans, about a group of American and Russian space officials who tried to save the Mir space station.

Finally, a note about exploration. In an article in The Space Review this week, Rand Simberg asks “are we driven to explore?” His conclusion: normally not. He goes on to say that while some restless people do explore, with regard to space, exploration isn’t a very good reason to go. He suggests some better reasons, like fear and greed, that will get us there eventually. He makes some very good points. But there’s also a very interesting post this week from a blog that’s new to me, 21st Century Waves. “What is it about space, anyway?” makes a case for exploration and closes with these lines:

Survival comes first, but exploration is like a long-term societal “life insurance” policy — economically, technologically, and even spiritually. That’s probably why Harvard philosopher Alfred North Whitehead once said, “Without adventure society is in full decay.”

Wow, that was a pretty long carnival! I hope you enjoyed this guided tour of some of the week’s space and astronomy blogging. To learn more about the Carnival of Space, visit Universe Today.

Shiny Happy APOD

NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day certainly takes a broad view of "astronomy," and today's APOD is a case in point. Titled "Happy People Dancing on Planet Earth," it's the popular and smile-inducing video by Matt Harding, a guy who records himself (and sometimes many local helpers) doing a rather goofy little dance in scenic locations all around the world. There's even an underwater dance and a zero-G dance (in "Nellis Airspace, Nevada"). The music is cool too. I've seen it three or four times now, and I still have to smile.

The Ship that Sailed the Moon

Somewhat like 2008, 1973 was a pretty crappy year. Nixon was president. We were still in Vietnam. Arab-Israeli War. OPEC oil embargo. Gas lines (gas went from 38 cents a gallon in May 1973 to 55 cents in June 1974, oil quadrupled to $12 a barrel in 1974). Recession. Apollo was over.

I was still in college but spending most of my time with music - listening, writing, singing, recording. That was cool except for being dirt poor and having to take a full time job in a psych hospital to live (and eventually finish my physics degree when I finally realized that I wasn't the next Elton John or James Taylor).

That May one of my favorite albums by one of my favorite writer/artists was released, There Goes Rhymin' Simon by Paul Simon. Al Gore said in a speech the other day that we need to move within ten years to 100% renewable energy sources for our electricity. I think he's right - we need to try anyway, really try. As many have done recently, he cited the Apollo timetable from JFK's speech to Apollo 11's landing as evidence that when it's really important, we can do amazing things, even though we are far from perfect, and we all have lives to go on with. I think we can do amazing things too, and for some reason it reminded me of a song from that 1973 album.

American Tune

Many's the time I've been mistaken
And many times confused
Yes, and often felt forsaken
And certainly misused
But I'm all right, I'm all right
I'm just weary to my bones
Still, you don’t expect to be
Bright and bon vivant
So far away from home, so far away from home

And I don't know a soul who's not been battered
I don't have a friend who feels at ease
I don't know a dream that's not been shattered
or driven to its knees
But it's all right, it's all right
For we've lived so well so long
Still, when I think of the road
we're traveling on
I wonder what went wrong
I can't help it, I wonder what went wrong

And I dreamed I was dying
And I dreamed that my soul rose unexpectedly
And looking back down at me
Smiled reassuringly
And I dreamed I was flying
And high up above my eyes could clearly see
The Statue of Liberty
Sailing away to sea
And I dreamed I was flying

For we come on the ship they call the Mayflower
We come on the ship that sailed the moon
We come in the ages most uncertain hours
and sing an American tune
Oh and it's all right, it's all right
You can't be forever blessed
Still, tomorrow's going to be another working day
And I'm trying to get some rest
That's all I'm trying to get some rest

Words and music by Paul Simon (c) 1972

Apollo 11: 39 Years and a Day

I can't believe I missed blogging about the 39th anniversary of Apollo 11 landing on the Moon yesterday! Next year I'll pay closer attention, but it will be the 40th and it will probably be more widely noticed anyway.

So I will commemorate something that did happen 39 years ago today: the liftoff of Apollo 11 from the Moon at 17:54 UTC on July 21, 1969. This Orbiter screen shot (with the AMSO add-on) shows the ascent module just after liftoff from Tranquility base, with the EASEP scientific instruments to the left, and the US flag to the right. According to Buzz Aldrin, the the real flag was blown over by the engine exhaust (later missions planted the flag farther away from the LM). AMSO simulates impressive dust clouds when you land on the Moon, but doesn't seem to kick up any simulated dust from the ascent stage exhaust. There was no video camera on the Moon to record Apollo 11's launch, but on Apollo 15 and later missions there were remotely operated cameras that sent back videos (like this one of Apollo 17). You can see some debris but not a lot of dust, so maybe AMSO got this right too!

I've mentioned it before, but this 11 minute video of Apollo 11 simulated in Orbiter with AMSO is really cool. It recaps the whole Apollo mission and shows you what Orbiter and AMSO can do (with great production and music too). You can download a higher resolution version of "Apollo 11 Remastered" from the Tex-Films web site, along with many other Orbiter and other simulation videos.

Long Clear ISS Pass

I just watched the ISS sailing over for about 5 minutes. We had thunderstorms earlier and there were still clouds around, but the station's path from southwest to east-north-east was clear. There are good mid-evening passes over the northeastern US the next few nights - check this web site with your zip code to find the times and directions. The ground track map is from Heavens Above which provides more detailed information.

Carnival of Space #63

Carnival of Space #63 is running this week at Angry Astronomer, a new blog for me. I looked at Jon's profile, and it doesn't explain why he's angry (I actually once explained Flying Singer), but he sure has an interesting animated gif "avatar" on his sidebar. I thought it must be his picture until I saw the name of the file, dawkinsthrust.gif. I looked closely, and sure enough, it's my godless idol Richard Dawkins, thrusting like mad and wearing an evolving fish symbol on his pasted-on baseball cap. Cool.

P.S. I don't know why but animated gif's like this one don't animate on my blog.

Where's My Spaceship?

Now this is a scary essay by an Israeli professor of history. He says that Israel is likely to launch a military strike to try to destroy Iran's "peaceful" nuclear development program before Iran actually builds their own nuclear weapons. Some in Israel believe this could be achieved by late 2009, and that once Iran has the bomb, they will use it to destroy Israel, so someone must act - if the US doesn't, then Israel must. Prof. Morris thinks that November 5 to January 19 (between the US election and Inauguration Day) could be the best window for this very difficult military operation, and that if it fails, that Israel might use its own nuclear weapons to finish the job. Nuclear war in the Middle East?!? We'll be longing for those lazy summer days of 2008 when gas was available and only $4.09 a gallon. And that will be the least of our problems.

Morris doesn't work for the Israeli government, but I don't know how independent he is. Is this just his opinion, or some sort of message? It got my attention! I don't have time now to research this deeply, but this recent page features several experts of widely varying positions discussing the question, "How likely is a scenario in which the US or Israel strikes Iran before Bush leaves office?" The consensus seems to be that the situation is dangerous, but that a near-term attack by Israel or the US is not that likely. But not out of the question either.

Talk about religion poisoning everything! I guess some people are too impatient to wait for global warming or an asteroid to destroy us. Where's my spaceship?

Apollo Sites Imaged By Kaguya

JAXA has released some images captured by the high resolution Terrain Camera (TC) on the Moon-orbiting Kaguya/Selene spacecraft. You can find them in the Kaguya Image Gallery. The most recent (July 14) shows the Apollo 17 Taurus-Littrow landing area. They got Dr. Harrison Schmitt to look at some of the pre-release images and comment on them. He was able to identify some of the geological sites and features that he and Gene Cernan investigated in December 1972.

Japanese engineers have reported seeing a lighter color "halo" area that is believed to have been caused by the Apollo LM's descent rocket engine (observed at both Apollo 15 and Apollo 17 sites). At about 10 meters per pixel, this camera is good, but it is still not at the level of MRO which has returned pretty clear images of Phoenix and the Rovers on the surface of Mars. The upcoming LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) mission will have enough resolution to see the Lunar Module descent stages and other hardware left behind on the Apollo missions. This (September 2008?!) article from Air & Space Magazine says that LRO will be able to image objects on the surface "the size of a microwave oven." That should just about do it, though I don't expect Moon landing hoax conspiracy nuts to be satisfied, seeing as LRO is a NASA mission too.

(Don't you get it? They're ALL in on the hoax, even 36 years later! It's part of the training when you go into the space business. You have to learn how to keep all those secrets.)

Big Things, and Really Big Things

There are all sorts of demonstrations of the relative sizes of things in the universe, including the famous Powers of Ten video (here's an interactive Java variation on that). This animated GIF takes a sequential pairing approach and focuses on planets and stars, and it's really cool. Hard to believe that there are some stars even bigger than Miley Cyrus! Thanks to Cumbrian Sky for the tip.

Rescue Me

I read a long time ago that there was a rescue mission planned for the Hubble service mission this fall, but I hadn't heard any details. Today I found this June article from ABC News and learned a little more.

All recent shuttle missions have visited the ISS, and if there had been any problem with the shuttle that would prevent it from entry and landing, the shuttle crew could "camp out" at the space station for quite a while (nearly 3 months) if necessary while a rescue shuttle was prepared and launched. These rescue missions were planned for as a contingency (STS-300 series missions) for each mission, but because the ISS could provide weeks of safe haven, it wasn't necessary to have a shuttle on the pad. They would have a few weeks to get one ready and launch.

Hubble orbits at an altitude of almost 600 kilometers with an inclination (angle from the equator) of about 29 degrees. The ISS is much lower (around 340 km) and at a higher orbital inclination (about 51 degrees), so there is not enough propellent on board Atlantis to get from HST's orbit to the ISS if there were trouble (assuming it could even maneuver). So any rescue mission would have to launch fast - the HST service crew on Atlantis would only have around 23 days of consumables. For this contingency, NASA has the STS-400 rescue mission, which requires having the rescue shuttle on the pad at KSC so it could be prepared and launched within a week in case the HST shuttle gets stranded. For STS-125 (Atlantis), the rescue shuttle would be Endeavour, and both shuttles will be on the pads in October when STS-125 launches. This has happened occasionally before, but this is the last time it will ever happen.

This isn't considered very likely (I read 1 chance in 400), but it's good to have a plan ready, and it would be cool (and possible) to simulate it in Orbiter. I edited a quick scenario with Atlantis (HST) and Endeavour (rescue) just to have a look. I haven't tried the grappling, tethers, or EVA transfers yet (all possible to simulate in Orbiter). I think it looks cool to see two shuttles orbiting a few meters apart at right angles to each other. But I hope we don't get to see it for real!