Potpourri CXLI

Science, Technology, and Space

And you thought your job sucked? Check out this accident report from the National Transportation Safety Board: http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief2.asp?ev_id=20060131X00140&ntsbno=DFW06FA056&akey=1

The politics of open government: http://govfresh.com/2010/05/the-politics-of-open-government-free-speech/
Russia is starting a 520-day Mars simulation mission: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100602/ap_on_re_eu/eu_russia_mission_to_mars

Oil Stories…worst case, the leak might last through Christmas: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aPfFTgqayIKY&pos=9  

A 21-year-old in NY has a proposed solution for the leak: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/leak_solution_Zw3RdLcmYcdsA4UAz6WMwM#ixzz0phF8fb9b

A little history on the spill…the present mess is not the worst the Gulf of Mexico has seen: http://news.discovery.com/earth/gulf-oil-spill-ixtoc.html, nor is it the largest spill in world history. That distinct dishonor belongs to Saddam Hussein and his troops, who dumped over 400 million gallons of oil into the Persian Gulf: http://employees.oneonta.edu/baumanpr/geosat2/Environmental_Warfare/ENVIRONMENTAL_WARFARE.htm. There is some hope for recovery (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_War_oil_spill), though military friends of mine tell me you shouldn’t go swimming in the Persian Gulf anyway. Space-based solar power doesn’t do any of this, folks…but it’s hard to prove until we try to build a satellite.

From Lin, a couple of reports on the Navy's Littoral Combat Ship:
http://liveshots.blogs.foxnews.com/2010/06/02/the-navys-new-corvette/?test=latestnews and http://www.foxnews.com/slideshow/scitech/2010/06/02/military-tech-action/?test=faces#slide=1. Too bad they're likely to cancel it.

NASA is seeking research proposals for "green" aircraft: http://nspires.nasaprs.com/

From Hu: Coke bottles and Mentos. What could be better? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-hXcRtbj1Y&feature=player_embedded 

As Jimmy Durante used to say, "Everybody wants to get in on the act." Dolphins are now using iPads: http://www.boingboing.net/2010/06/01/dolphin-uses-ipad-as.html

Also from ISDC: a great debate turns out to be a bit of a dud: http://www.spacepolitics.com/2010/05/30/the-other-great-debate/

Satellite highlights of the 2009 hurricane season: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html?media_id=14606692

From Kate Down Under:

• NASA Revives Voyager 2 Probe at Solar System's Edge - Yahoo! News http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20100529/sc_space/nasarevivesvoyager2probeatsolarsystemsedge
• The conspiracy behind the conspiracy: http://www.newsbiscuit.com/2009/08/12/de-classified-documents-reveal-4th-astronaut-%e2%80%98accidentally-left-behind%e2%80%99-after-first-moon-landing/
• This ain't over: Shuttle Atlantis could fly one more mission before retiring. http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20100526/sc_space/shuttleatlantiscouldstillflyonemoremissionbeforeretiring

Masten Space Systems has done something very cool: started, stopped, and restarted a rocket engine in flight. Not easy. http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=30929
A golf ball hitting a steel plate at 150 miles per hour. That reminds me, I need to get to the driving range when I'm done blogging here. http://www.wservernews.com/56LS6X/100531-Slow-Motion

The X Prize Foundation is hiring... http://www.xprize.org/about/join-our-team

Speaking of hiring, Doc pointed out this site for people looking for a job in the gaming business: http://www.gamasutra.com/jobs/

From Hu:

• NASA unveils a satellite system for locating lost hikers, boaters, and other lost outdoorsy types: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/bs-md-satellite-rescue-beacon-20100525,0,2765269.story?track=rss
• Autonomous robots could be used for Homeland Security: http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/may/25/mighty-machines-autonomous-robots-could-be-used-ho/

Citizens Against Government Waste cheer the demise of the Constellation Program: http://www.spacepolitics.com/2010/05/26/augustine-in-huntsville-cagw-cheers-constellations-demise/. Can I come stay at your house if I lose my job?

Here's something new: "Random Hacks of Kindness," putting this interweb stuff to constructive purposes. http://www.rhok.org/events/rhok-1-0/

Another argument for killing Constellation: pollution. http://spacenews.com/commentaries/100524-obama-rocket.html

From @DindraneErin: quantum teleportation. Neato! http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2010/05/quantum-teleportation-achieved-over-ten-miles-of-free-space.ars


Education
The National Academies have a cool podcast series called The Sounds of Science. One of their recent 'casts was about STEM education, alwasy a favorite topic of Your Humble Narrator. Enjoy!

D2 finally got back to me on what she meant by "stealth STEM."

http://water.signtific.org/


You take a regular guy/gal. They play a game. They solve an EPIC world problem - or just propose solutions. They get hooked on the topic. They want to know more / do more. And they pursue it.

Like an English major who dreamed of Space.

Thanks!

Teacherrrrs innnn SPAAAAACE! http://www.teachersinspace.org/

A kid-made science kit: http://www.boingboing.net/2010/05/25/kid-made-science-kit.html

Not sure I hold with all of this, but Lin forwarded the following editorial on how to improve schools: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/class-struggle/2010/05/improving_schools_by_paying_te.html. Lin also provided the following thoughts as well: http://theempressisnaked.blogspot.com/2010/05/yeah-but-never-did-anything-worthwhile.html. (Expecting Sabine not to like these...)

This is sort of a space thing, but it can also fit under the "citizen science" rubric, so I'll do a little relocating. MoonZoo.org wants people to do detailed counts of craters on the lunar surface. http://www.moonzoo.org/about

U.S. Politics
Conservative women are running for Congress in record numbers: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127369770

A TSA critic passes through the airport: http://www.boingboing.net/2010/05/24/schneier-at-the-airp.html



Foreign Affairs
Someone suggested this as a “solution” for Israel’s problems with their neighbors: http://wargames.co.uk/Poems/Grave.htm. Western military minds don’t think this way anymore.

The U.S. will join South Korea in a military exercise off the North Korean coast: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Media/us-join-south-korea-military-exercise-north-korea/story?id=10807101 ... and North Korea threatens military action: http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/NKorea_says_Souths_navy_trespassed_warns_of_military_action_999.html

This is from awhile ago, but it's just a reminder that it's a dangerous world out there (like we needed any more reminders?): http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/05/24/embassy-jamaica-curtails-service-accused-drug-lords-impending-extradition-spurs/



Culture

From Lin:

• This is kind of cool: a way to give kids toys at low cost: http://www.unplugdesign.com/project2.html

From our British cousins across the pond, a little lesson on how airplanes work (warning: contains dry humor): http://bit.ly/doaQpU

From Anika:

• A podcast of a Star Trek: The Next Generation reunion: http://www.vtwproductions.com/home/2010/5/30/podcast-of-the-star-trektng-reunion.html
• You suck at Craigslist, a site dedicate to people who just can't put decent Craigslist ads together: http://www.yousuckatcraigslist.com/
• Some interesting artwork involving Muppets and Star Wars characters: http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2010/05/james-hance-channels-our-collective-inner-geek/ 
• An artist who works with recycled packaging. No, really... http://www15.ocn.ne.jp/~package/package_002.htm  

This is all sorts of wrong, but I laughed anyway: an alien taxidermy throw rug. http://www.boingboing.net/2010/06/01/alien-taxidermy-thro.html. You realize, of course, that there's an alien out there somewhere with a human throw rug, right?

Now on a t-shirt: "I'm an English major, you do the math."

Some words of wisdom regarding your old friend, the #2 pencil: http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/57276  

Whatever happened to achievements? http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2010/06/achievement-unlocked/

Three Saudi youths are in trouble with the Saudi Arabian religious police after appearing on an MTV reality show: http://alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/LDE6500FV.htm

My buddy Tammie is trying win a $600 writing class. If you have time to vote could you please go to http://www.savvyauthors.com/vb/content.php?242-First-Step-Contest and click #59 "Four demons down ... but how many remained?" Just tryin' to help.

One of D2's friends has a new food and wine blog worth checking out. This site does serious "long form" essays and reviews on food and wine.

D2 also shared this: Star Wars cookie cutters. Because, really, every home should have some. http://www.williams-sonoma.com/products/star-wars-cookie-cutter/

Not sure what the point of Wimp.com is, but they have a great video of three teenage kids belting out O Sole Mio. Do they even give American kids vocal lessons anymore? http://www.wimp.com/threetenors/

What, you didn't know? The movie Airplane was a serious sendup of the '50s movie "Zero Hour." http://www.boingboing.net/2010/05/26/airplane-side-by-sid.html

Hmmmm...what Disney Princesses supposedly teach girls about life: http://www.boingboing.net/2010/05/24/what-disney-princess.html
From Anthony in Hong Kong: all the comforts of home in a Beijing wet bar. http://8daysshanghaibeijing.posterous.com/all-the-conveniences-of-home

From Martin: another Star Trek fan film: http://videos.startrekphase2media.com/Enemy/

You want information? I don't think so: http://www.redstone.army.mil/history/pdf/welcome.html

The rich are different from you and me, they have more money. …they have more money. http://www.orlandosentinel.com/features/home/orl-celebrity-home-pictures,0,6820906.photogallery

D2 and I are big fans of TED Talks. Here's a talk that takes a punchy look at things and demystify how to create a create TED talk. D2 also directed me to the site that can make it happen: http://get-tedpad.com/  

From the MSN Relationships department, an attempt to "demystify dude theory." Well, maybe. http://glo.msn.com/relationships/debunking-dude-theory-1533313.story?gt1=49000

Potpourri CXXIV

First up from Doc: a little humor involving chemistry. Yes, you read that right. Really. Specifically, fluorine. I heard that back in the 1960s, when the Apollo guys were looking for a high-energy propellant, they looked at fluorine, but determined that one launch of a Saturn V-type booster filled with that stuff would make a good portion of the Florida East Coast a hazardous environment for several years. An explosion would make for a Bad Day for a lot of people.

NASA Administrator insisted to Senators that Mars is the ultimate goal of America's space program, but acknowledged that the technologies needed for such a program (under the Obama plan) would not be available for at least 10 years...never mind the fact that at the end of those 10 years that there wouldn't be a vehicle to put those technologies on. NASA's human exploration program is about to spend a lot period wandering in the wilderness until someone gives them an honest-to-gosh mission that goes somewhere.

SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket will be on the launch pad for tests next week, edging closer to its first flight.

Something off the beaten path for this blog, but it amused me: a blog on the science of Olympic bobsledding and curling.

China seems to be happy that the U.S. is backing off of its lunar plans.

Potpourri CXI

Cleaning out the inbox and getting laundry done this morning...it's an epic morning at Casa de Bart! Why not join in the fun?

The Iranians claim to be behind a crash/hack of Twitter yesterday. Message: "You allow our people to tell the world what we're doing to them, we'll crash your site." Nice.

From Melissa: an alternative to the Diet Dr. Pepper I've been drinking ("That stuff causes kidney damage!")...Zevia Black Cherry Cola. Well, first I'll have to find it locally. Second, I'll have to find out if I'm allergic to it. The reason I shifted from regular to diet was because I liked the caffeine but was allergic to the high-fructose corn syrup. Zevia is sweetened with stevia, a plant-based sweetener that has recently appeared on TV as an alternative to aspartame or saccharine (both old favorites of mine).

Need something fun (toys/treats) for your dog this holiday season? Here's a shameless plug for Bark Avenue Bakery, my friend Christine's dog bakery in southwest Orlando. Chris also takes internet orders for merchandise.

A reflection of sunlight was found on a frozen lake on Titan, the largest moon of Saturn. Frozen water? Unlikely, given how far out Saturn is from the sun, but interesting nonetheless. Interesting universe out there.

From Pastor: Luther Bible verses in MP3 online. Guess who volunteered to read for the German service this year? That'll teach me to take Spanish in high school...

The Zombie Apocalypse craze continues. Doc ordered one of these shirts--how the Scooby Doo Mystery Machine would look like in the event of the Z.A. Still don't get this zombie thing. Some sort of comment on the quality of acting on television? Our politicians? I'm baffled.

Insurgents in Iraq have occasionally intercepted imagery from overhead drones. Apparently encryption wasn't high on the list? How good would an insurgent feel if the feed they were getting was of themselves just as the missile was being fired? The Department of Defense is working on this issue, presumably.

With the sun's sunspot cycle being very quiet the last few years, NASA has determined that the outermost layer has been cooling dramatically. No word from the global warming crowd if they were going to accuse the sun of being in collusion with oil companies to undermine the proof of global warming.

SpaceX was planning to run its last engine test prior to launching Falcon 9 in 2010. No word on the SpaceX website yet that they've actually run the test, though.

Scientists using data from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) presented a paper suggesting that the radiation environment on the Moon might not be any worse than what a nuclear industry or x-ray technician gets exposed to in a year. This is good news for future explorers or settlers, as there are existing protocols and mitigation steps to cope with those levels of radiation. Still, you wouldn't want to be sunbathing out there...

Alerting Bruce Willis...saving the world from an incoming asteroid wouldn't be as simple as NASA sending up a group of roughnecks to take care of business. Former Apollo 9 astronaut Rusty Schweickart suggests that a certain amount of international diplomacy would be called for first. Why? Well, deflecting an asteroid using some sort of tug would be a very gradual process, and until it was safely out of the risk zone, its trajectory could actually be pointed at various countries on the Earth. Who decides what a safe trajectory is? Who builds the hardware? Sigh. There are times when it helps to take unilateral action.

From Tracy: an article explaining why the trends in new media are hard to track.

NASA is making audio files of space stories available online.

From Lin:

• An editorial on the source of the ongoing problems with the economy. If you've read this blog or Lin's contributions long enough, you probably don't need to guess what direction this editorial is pointing.
• An open letter from the National Taxpayers' Union asking Congress to reject H.R. 4173, "The Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2009" because of the amount of additional regulation taxes it would impose on an already struggling economy. The Obama administration either doesn't get it or gets it and doesn't care, but if you take more money from businesses by increasing taxes and make it harder for them to operate, they will not create jobs and the economy will remain stuck.
• While salaries might be declining in the private sector, the number of civil servants making big money has increased dramatically in the last two years (note: this implicates Bush AND Obama).

And to end on a more positive note, I've been toying with research for a science fiction novel. Dr. OZMG is a sharp observer of Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) personality types, so I'll probably be pinging her at some point on how the various MBTI types might operate in a space environment. One thing that was interesting to note was that the primary jobs needed to get any mission done up there--astronaut, engineer, scientist, researcher, pilot--tend to fall into two major personality categories: INTJ (my type, incidentally), and INTP. Both of these types are introverted, more focused on abstract principles than exterior/social cues, and thinking (as opposed to feeling). This also describes most of my friends in the space business.

That is not to say that there are not extroverted scientists or engineers (or even technical writers). It's just that folks with this set of personality traits is more drawn to the technical disciplines that make space travel possible. The more social folks will probably end up making money elsewhere and becoming passengers on Virgin Galactic or some other space tourism operation.

Potpourri CVI

I got this extended note from the Moon Society, which deserves reading. While Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin might be a little overexposed, he's a very smart man, and his thoughts on space exploration deserve some attention.

Group: The Moon Society
Subject: Moon Society Endorses Aldrin's Proposal for a Lunar Infrastructure Development Corporation
Buzz Aldrin published a proposal for a public/private/international plan to open the Moon for exploration and development in the Huffington Post

http://digg.com/d3176tD

Below are key excerpts:

• “I propose instead America call the world to the Moon. In a new global effort to use the Moon to establish a global space consortium with a lunar surface facility as its epicenter, “
• “... competition, in an Apollo-style race back to the Moon, would be a fruitless exercise in national hubris whose rewards, if we “won”again, would prove fleeting”
• “I am proposing a different way back to the Moon: international collaboration. “
• “... the goal of creating a new public-private partnership todevelop the Moon. I call it the Lunar Infrastructure DevelopmentCorporation (LIDC). The purpose of the LIDC would be to enable thenations of the Earth to join together and return to the Moon as an international cooperative venture. The LIDC will pool the financial,technical and human resources of its member nations to build the lunar communication, navigation and transportation systems needed for human exploration of the Moon. It would be a public/private global partnership to make the Moon accessible to all humanity. The LIDC will build the communication and navigation satellites needed by future lunar travelers, develop fuel depots using lunar LOX – perhaps derived from the recently discovered lunar water-and construct habitats that will shelter space travelers while on the surface. It will enable a sustainable human presence on the Moon that will be accessible to all the nations on Earth."
• “Unlike the International Space Station (ISS), which is governed by complex treaties, the LIDC will have the same flexibility as an NGO in working with different nations and private entities to finance build and operate the facilities and equipment needed for lunar exploration. “
• “To do so [i.e., honoring the astronauts of the Apollo Era Missions] doesn’t require rerunning a long-ago Cold War race in which America plays the role of a space-going Colonial power.

Moon Society Officers and Directors, who collectively make up the Management Committee gave the Moon Society's official endorsement. The email vote was unanimous.

As Ben Nault, Director from Tucson, put it: “Probably the main reason the ISS is still "alive" and supported by Congress is that it is part of a number of international agreements. Backing out of these agreement would have financial, political and diplomatic repercussions on the US. Therefore, having an international component helps large complex programs survive the transition to different administrations and different congressional moods. The international angle gives long-term "sustainability" to the Lunar Infrastructure Development Corporation.

“In asking for Committee member support, we pointed out significant similarities with our own proposal, also strongly endorsed byCommittee members, for an International Lunar Research Park. Bothproposals are for public/private/international collaboration. There are, of course, those who would prefer a NASA-stand alone effort, and those who would prefer a purely private enterprise approach. But a reality check shows that the public/private/international approach will be much more robust, and stand a much greater chance of becoming a permanent beachhead on the Moon. It is also much more likely to lead to the first civilian industrial settlement.And that is precisely the Vision of the Moon Society. The Moon Society urges other pro-space organizations, the public, and the media to support Buzz Aldrin's proposal.

For more on the Moon Society International Lunar Research Park proposal, see: http://www.moonsociety.org/reports/beyond_nasa.html

Thank you for your support

http://www.moonsociety.org/

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New from Hu:

• The Dow Jones Industrial Average has finally hit 10,000, a number it hasn't reached in a year. That's still not the high it reached during the Bush administration. Still waiting to hear when this becomes "Obama's economy."
• CNN/Money ran a business profile piece on Huntsville, Alabama.
• The Airborne Tactical Laser (ATL) has hit a moving target from the air. Sha-ZAAAAM!!

The Constellation Program has a pretty cool 12-minute video explaining some of the roles flight testing have in making a better space program.

Your useful piece of trivia for today: 62 years ago today, Charles E. "Chuck" Yeager broke the sound barrier--750 miles per hour in level flight over the high desert of California--in the Bell X-1. Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff, the book or the movie, is still the best portrayal of the seminal moment in aviation history. Saaaa-lute!

There's a web site out there that depicts every space mission ever sent to other worlds of the solar system. Very cool!

NASA is again looking at technology development for reusable launch vehicles. Good! Actually, a meeting I was in today gave every indication that the Obama administration is interested in spending more money on science and technology development research. About bloody time.

From my AIAA news feed:
Some Astronauts Annoyed At SpaceX's Dragon
The Orlando Sentinel (10/14, Block) reports, "Asked what bugs them most about NASA outsourcing the job of flying crew to the International Space Station, some astronauts roll their eyes and say: 'Dragon,'" the manned capsule being built by SpaceX, because of the fear of being "little more than human cargo" since the ship is fully automated. "SpaceX has hired its own former astronaut, Ken Bowersox, to make Dragon more astronaut-friendly," a move the article describes as a "clear example of how serious it is about leading a new commercial era in American space exploration." The article, positively describing SpaceX's efforts, notes the "biggest concern" of "astronauts, NASA officials and some members of Congress" is that "SpaceX ships are rivals to Ares and Orion, a view SpaceX dismisses." Bowersox describes the ships as "enablers" for NASA to conduct exploration.

From the Wall Street Journal:

• God vs. Science isn’t the issue…
  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748704429304574467320574576460.html
• Sudden Change, Big Effect http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704107204574469473830302630.html

From Lin: Sheriff Arpaio, the tough-guy from Arizona, vows to continue sweeps to capture illegal immigrants while the Obama administration would prefer that he not.

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Some late-breaking news from the Drudge Report: Rush Limbaugh has been dropped from a group bidding to purchase the St. Louis Rams. The sole reason for this is his political views, however tactfully or tackily expressed, and the negative publicity they generated. The campaign run against him and the restraint of trade that this campaign has now created sets a very ugly precedent: the NFL has just announced that Limbaugh's cash is good only at the ticket gate or the bar, it won't be accepted in the front office. I wonder what would happen if another conservative ever decided to invest in a football team. Heck, I wonder what would happen if I ever decided to. It will be interesting to see what the fallout is from all this. Limbaugh won't take it lying down: of that I am reasonably certain.

Potpourri LXXIII

SpaceX successfully launched a Malaysian satellite. The nicest thing I heard some folks at work say was, "Well, he's 2 for 5." Rude.

From Gwen: a "slap-chop" rap.

New from Hu:

• Bobby Block at the Orlando Sentinel has another misinterpretation of what's going on with the Augustine Panel. In plain English, the Augustine people are asking NASA questions--as they should--and NASA is answering. A lot of what you read in Block's work beyond that is arm waving and seal clubbing.
• Frank Morring at Aviation Week, who usually gets things right, makes it sound as if the Augustine people changed their itinerary when it came to visiting sites and asking sites. However, that's all that they've ever had on their agenda. So why portray this as something different?
• Mr. Augustine is holding a press conference on the panel's work Friday.
• And there's a Space Review piece discussing some previous studies.

Other items might come to me, but that's all for now. Salud.

Oh! Here's one more from Melissa: some criticism of the Space Shuttle one year before the first launch. Puts the criticism of Ares in perspective a little bit.

The Revolution Might Not Be Televised

One of the cool things about living in Huntsville, Alabama, especially if you're a space geek like me, is that you've got relatively easy access to very smart people who know a lot about building things that go into space. One of those very smart people is a member of the Huntsville Alabama L5 Society (HAL5), former member of Project HALO, and now president of a private space company, Orion Propulsion: Tim Pickens.

Pickens was the guest speaker at this month's HAL5 meeting, and as usual he drew a crowd. Part of that might have come from the title of his talk: "Greening the Aerospace Community," in which he talked about developing green(er) propellants for getting rockets into space. He talked about aerospace companies looking for the "Holy Grail" of rocket propellants--they want the maximum energy for the minimum mass (what rocket scientists would call "high specific impulse"). Orion Propulsion is testing a methane-oxygen engine, using a cadre of college students from University of Alabama-Huntsville.

Marketing Orion Propulsion
Pickens spent a great deal of his time promoting his company, perhaps rightly so. For a company with fewer than 40 employees, Orion has a lot of unique capabilities, including designing, building, and testing new rocket designs. They have contracts with commercial (Bigelow), defense, and NASA (Ares) customers, and are executing them. These include attitude control systems for Bigelow's "Sundancer" inflatable space station, roll control thruster systems for the Ares I crew launch vehicle built on a contract through Boeing, and a small-sat launcher for the Department of Defense. What's fun about Orion is Pickens' willingness to experiment on new hardware and designs, often on what would be a shoestring budget for a government project.

Origins of Orion: SpaceShipOne and Beyond
Project HALO's work on hybrid rockets (solid/HTPB rubber fuel, nitrous oxide oxidizer) caught the attention of Burt Rutan earlier this decade, when he was looking for a rocket engine that a pilot could turn on and off, like a jet engine. Hybrids allow that ability by shutting down the flow of oxidizer, killing combustion. Pickens and a couple of Project HALO team members headed out to Mojave California to supervise propulsion development for SpaceShipOne, the first privately built vehicle to reach space three times. On the strength of that success, Pickens was able to come back home to Huntsville and start, with the help of his wife, Orion Propulsion.

And Pickens is not satisfied with the remarkable progress he's made with his woman (wife)-owned business so far. He's excited by the challenges involved in designing fuel tanks that allow for long-term storage of cryogenic (super-cold) propellants, which are needed for NASA's Altair lunar lander. "Some folks say they're redoing Apollo. That's a lot of bull." He also believes in the usefulness of building completely reusable fly-back first stage boosters, which were considered for the Space Shuttle. But again, he thinks small-scale prototypes are the way to go: "If you can't build a small-sized model fly, you might as well not fantasize about building a big one."

A Vision for Space Hardware Development
As I noted in my blog on young people and the space business, it's this willingness to experiment that gives smaller, "New Space" companies like Orion a leg up on the big aerospace companies or NASA when it comes to recruiting a new generation of graduates coming out of the nation's engineering schools. One typical example came from Pickens' building of a high-voltage exciter, which he wanted to use for an engine igniter. The item he wanted to purchase from an established aerospace company cost $15,000 and weighed 3 pounds. There were features on the "legacy" hardware he needed, but the electronics were 30 years old and "clunky." So what Pickens' team did was take what he wanted from the other company's hardware "and put my stuff on 'em." Pickens' new unit cost $3,000 and weighs half a pound. "Multiply that out by eight or ten thrusters, and you're saving somebody a lot of weight."

Young people don't want to spend ten years of their life designing one tiny part of a very large and complex system; they want to get their hands dirty and have a hand in building the whole thing. Small-scale engines and experiments like Orion's liquid oxygen-methane engine are exactly what fresh-out-of-school engineers are looking for when they come to NASA, and don't always find. While following traditional paths to aerospace legitimacy such as joining a "mentor-protegee" relationship with Boeing and getting Orion AS9100 certified, Pickens has fought to maintain a "Skunk Works" type of environment at his company.

In the end, this was the message Tim Pickens had for his audience, more than talking about the values of environmentally friendlier propellants ("If you're going to fine me for my CO2 emissions, you better have a machine you can turn on to undo the emissions I made"). "I know why Elon [Musk, CEO of SpaceX] is trying to do everything in-house...You need to do some of things I've been a proponent of." And the way to do that, according to Pickens, is to start small, get your hands dirty, and be willing to fail. “We are not allowed to fail. No one wants to pay for that on their watch. Tax payers especially. Maybe this is an artifact of some programs gone bad! Private industry is allowed to try new things that might be different and risky, but the payoff could be huge.” No doubt we will hear more from Pickens and Orion Propulsion in the years ahead. I'm looking forward to seeing what revolutions they produce, even if no one outside the space community ever hears about them.

SpaceX Has First Successful Falcon 1 Launch

This is huge: SpaceX has had its first successful launch of a payload to orbit. The launch video can be found here: http://www.nasawatch.com/archives/2008/09/spacex_update_2.html

Why does this matter? Simple: it brings the U.S. one step closer to not having depend completely upon the Russians or anyone else, for that matter, to get cargo or people to the International Space Station. This is the first privately developed launch vehicle to achieve orbit.

Mind you, this is the Falcon 1, the smaller of Elon Musk's launch vehicles. Falcon 9 is the one that would take cargo to ISS, and the Falcon 9 Heavy variant is supposed to launch crew (aboard the Dragon spacecraft) or cargo to ISS. No doubt SpaceX will face more challenges with Falcon 9, as it did with Falcon 1, but I would hope that the commercial doubters out there have enough good grace to wish SpaceX congratulations. I'm not counting on that 100%. I know a few people who will say, "Yeah, but they haven't put up a working payload, reached 99.9999% reliability, launched heavy cargo, gone to ISS, split the fifth dimension, altered time, sped up the harvest, or saved the galaxy yet." To which I want to respond, "Well, jeez, you've got to start somewhere! And how many launch failures did NASA have when the space program first began?" [Take a look at The Right Stuff book or movie for an answer to that.] An example of this attitude can be found in response to a book review about a book on SpaceShipOne:

So called "Spaceship One" was not in any way a space ship, did not go into "space", did not go into orbit around the Earth, nor was it an achievement in aerospace technology at all. The vehicle was a rocket propelled engineering stunt circa 1955 that burned old rubber tires for fuel! How far are you gonna get on that stuff? The age of freeboot space pioneers financed by freeboot capital has yet to dawn but when the light shines those that go into the High Frontier won't be burning rubber!

I've got to wonder about that sort of psychology: when national capabilities are increased or great achievements are made, what purpose does it serve to put them down or minimize them, except to feed or soothe the egos of others? Still, I take this flight a good sign after three failures.

Am I a little too gung-ho for the commercial sector? I'm not quite sure how. Why should anyone wish them ill, or wish to doubt their abilities? If the private sector can get stuff into space, that is only to NASA's benefit, as the agency will be able to use other providers and eventually to reduce costs to the taxpayer. This launch will increase confidence in Falcon 1, in SpaceX, and in "commercial space" in general. And quite frankly, the space business (and the nation) could use all the confidence it can get right now.

More Space News, Things That Bug Me, Etc.

This story bears paying some attention to; I referenced it previously in my analysis of John McCain's space policy. We need to consider how much we care about access to space. Why? Well, Congress is showing signs that they don't want to drop the waiver to trading with Russia despite their repeated violations of the Iran-North Korea-Syra Nonproliferation Act. The choices are simple, but ugly:

• Grant Russia the waiver. Under this plan, we would continue to have access to the International Space Station (ISS). However, if we don't punish Russia somehow, they will continue to sell arms to Iran, a nation committed to killing us and one of our chief allies, Israel. And Iran will continue to receive Russian-made weapons.
• Drop the waiver. However, Russia doesn't always have our best interests in mind. This might be just the excuse they need to keep their oil off the market, refuse to build more Soyuz rockets, or refuse to fly American astronauts to ISS.

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Elon Musk, founder and CEO of SpaceX, has become the Winston Churchill of the commercial space sector, saying to his people, more or less, that he will never give up on building rockets to access ISS. And we'll need that kind of tenacity in our private sector, if we hope to have a viable substitute for Russian access (see above).

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More stories on Obama's policy shift/flip-flop on gutting Constellation to fund education:

http://www.nasawatch.com/archives/2008/08/obama_reverses.html
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0808/02obama/
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/orl-obama0308aug03,0,1723381.story?track=rss
http://www2.tbo.com/content/2008/aug/03/na-nasa-funding-a-top-priority-obama-tells-space-c/?news-nationworld

I see no reason to change my analysis from Saturday:

Obama might be backing off his idea of slowing the Constellation Program to fund some education program; that is not, however, the same thing as saying that he would give Constellation the green light.

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And then there's this: the Department of Homeland Security has now stated that they can seize and hold (that's steal in plain Chicago English) iPods, laptops, etc. I'm still p!$$ed off about the sunblock and shampoo that the Transportation Security Agency has stolen from me over the past few years. This is a little too much. Now admittedly the innocent shouldn't have anything to worry about. I'm not smuggling drugs, pot, illicit data, illegal aliens, kiddie porn, endangered species, or weapons.

Still, I resent that my government is willing to treat the innocent on the same level as the guilty--in short, that they are governing according to the lowest common denominator. The assumption should not be, "We have a small number of criminals among the traveling or border-crossing public; therefore, we shall treat everybody as criminals." This is one of those great opportunities for warrants, just cause, etc. Again, I'm not a criminal, but why should I consent to be treated as one? This is the difference between being treated as a citizen and being treated as a subject.

Wedding Distress, More Obama Comments on Space, SpaceX Has an "Anomaly"

I still find weddings to be one of the most uncomfortable social events imaginable. Thus my continued singularity. Blah blah blah. There are more important things going on in the world than my social insecurities. Such as...

Obama might be backing off his idea of slowing the Constellation Program to fund some education program; that is not, however, the same thing as saying that he would give Constellation the green light. More to be found on this here:

http://www.nasawatch.com/archives/2008/08/obama_reverses.html#more

I'll comment more tomorrow. I'm too tired for deep thought, about Obama or anything else.

For more on SpaceX, see here:

http://www.spacex.com/index.php

http://kwajrockets.blogspot.com/

Bottom line on SpaceX's latest Falcon 1 launch attempt: they were fine until about 2 minutes into the flight, when the video went out (I was watching live and saw the Quicktime version of the Blue Screen of Death). Launch control at Kwajalein Atoll reported an "anomaly," which is usually space-guy talk for, "the rocket blew up into millions of tiny hot pieces that are now raining down over the Pacific." However, space guys will never SAY that specifically. The closest they might come is "the vehicle experienced dynamic disassembly." I guess I'll see more about this when I wake up tomorrow. This does not bode well for those of us who are private-sector space advocates.