Past and Future of Spaceflight at the Museum of Flight

Last weekend was a celebration of space at the Museum of Flight in Seattle. A Yuri's Night party and SpaceUp Seattle provided for both a celebration of the beginning of manned spaceflight 52 years ago and some contemplation about the future through part what's being done today, part what could be done.

I've Seen Moon-Walkers, and They're Old

I've seen moon-walkers face to face. I shook hands and exchanged words with Buzz Aldrin, Gene Kranz and watched many others as they got a standing ovation at the Museum of Flight gala in September. The youngest moon walker, Charles Duke, is 77 years old. All of their space-expansion glory dates back to 1969 - 1972. When I saw these amazing people a realization that accompanied my inspiration was that they were old. Not only that, they are also the only ones that did this. Unlike other positive beginnings, this one seems more like a blip on our terrestrial bound existence rather than a the sign of things to come. Am I simply impatient?

Wings of Heroes Gala - Space Reunion at the Museum of Flight

When I moved to Seattle now almost two years ago with my family to try my luck at Jeff Bezos's bigger of his two companies (not Blue Origin), little did I know that one of the opportunities that to open up would be to share a tent (one fit for tuxedos and evening dresses) and dinner with five decades of space icons flown-in from across the United States and beyond to a museum less than twenty miles from my home. All that and more took place at the the Wings of Heroes Gala on September 22 2012 at the Museum of Flight in Seattle.

Launching West - Israeli Space

Prof. Ehud Behar (left) and me after his talk, 26 July 2012

The Washington Israel Business Council (WIBC) and American Technion Society (ATS) organized an evening on July 26 consisting of a light dinner and presentation by Prof. Ehud Behar, Director of the Asher Space Research Institute (ASRI) at the Technion university in Haifa, Israel. The event took place at the closest place to space in Seattle, the Columbia tower, on the seventy-fourth floor. Prof. Behar talked about space research in Israel in the past and present.

This was Prof. Behar's last appearance in a two-week tour of the US. He is an eloquent speaker posessing the landmark Israeli accent that I share as well. Fluent in English, he kept his audience of about seventy engaged, weaving trade humor into his talk.

Space Shuttle, Mercury and Paper Airplanes

Today is Father's Day, at least in the United States. It's a day of appreciating one's father, and in our family it is one of two days every year when I get to have breakfast in bed. It is a day of reflection about my relationship with my kids and as pertaining to this blog, pondering whether my interest in space rubs off on them.

In 2010 we bought our kids a special calendar, where every day can be folded and/or cut into a different paper airplane. They were nine years old and it seemed like something they would take on and enjoy. They did (for a short time, at least) and then the calendar got "stuck" in some date fairly close to the beginning of the year.

John Glenn 50th Anniversary Angry Mob

Don't tell me you're not pissed. I mean, WT*? 50 years ago John Glenn went to space and I can't do it yet? Oh, wait. No one can do it from US soil at the moment, there's progress for you, damn right!

Really? What happened to all the dreams of being able to exercise my right to throwing my shoe at the TV at 0 gravity? What happened to all the O'Neil Colonies and sh*t? Yes, I watch PBS, I'm not stupid!

But tell me one, thing, really. Where did all the money go? They are hiding gold bars on the International Space Stashion. And that's not a typo. Why else would they build this pile of cans that look like a cheap knock-off Lego set that can't go anywhere or create gravity or purify everyone's pee? You know what, even if they PAID me I wouldn't go. They don't ever BBQ there. To light a rocket under you is fine, but have some good steak, that's too much. 100 billion dollars and no patio. I want some answers, darn-it!

I mean, geez, where's Spock? WHERE'S SPOCK?!?

Anyway, did you all see Apollo 18 and that Transformers movie? One of them is lying, they can't both be telling the truth. And they both cover up what really happened. But I can't tell you because I'd have to kill you. That's right. Newsflash - the aliens are here. Just look at my mother in law.

And what about all those internet billionaires making rockets? Don't they have better stuff to do with their money, like hire lawyers or buy some bling or solve some real space problem other than whose (rocket) is bigger? I mean, do something useful like develop cars that run on compost or something...

At any rate, if you see Buzz tell him both me and my kid are pissed at him too. For $39.99 it should have been real laser.

Honey, Don't Forget the Replicator!

A little over a year ago I went camping with my family near Grand Lake, Colorado. We had everything we needed - tent, stove, air inflatable mattresses and rechargeable pump (we left the flat-screen TV at home, what more can you ask for?). On the second day we had a problem we didn't anticipate - the beautiful Colorado summer weather turned its face - a swift but fierce hail storm broke one of the fiberglass poles of our tent, more precisely the metal joint that puts them together. We found a repair kit in the nearest town, but needed pliers to get the broken piece off and put the new one from the repair kit on. Being on a paid-for campground (OK, I admit, we even had power and running water, not exactly the wilderness...) we conveniently borrowed one from a friendly neighbor. A short time later the tent was as good as new apart from Duct-tape (look at the bottom of the page for another example of my Duct-tape mastery) replacing what was once a clear triangular skylight, heavily perforated by the hail storm.

What if instead of a campground I were somewhere in deep space and instead of Amnon Govrin my name was Jean-Luc Piccard? Then I'd be on the Starship Enterprise, of course, where a replicator could in seconds create nearly anything, from a cup of tea (cup included) or, in my case, pliers.

Exodus Story Telling - Egypt and Earth Gravity

Story telling is an art. Captivating an audience by telling a story pivots on how the story is told no less than the story being told. Passover Seder ("Seder" means order in Hebrew) is a very effective way of perpetuating the story about exodus, going out of a known situation into the unknown called freedom. The paradigm is so effective, in fact, that its structure was borrowed to commemorate another story about another pseudo-exodus - getting free of Earth gravity for the first time and traveling to the unknown of space.

A Three-Way Space Decade

In a few days the fiftieth anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's historic orbital flight around Earth will take place. Yuri's Night, as it has been called for a decade now will entail hundreds of parties and events around the world to commemorate that event and the first space shuttle flight twenty years later. Space enthusiasts will collectively remember and celebrate. In fact, this decade will be full of golden anniversaries. However, in some ways, it will also look like a remake of an old movie, the one about rockets and capsules. Most interestingly, perhaps, this decade will be about beginnings and new steps towards space accessibility and use through suborbital and possibly orbital flights.

Discovery Final Launch Poll Results

Discovery, STS-133.
Credit: NASA

Back in September, a little over a month before Space Shuttle Discovery was supposed to originally launch for the last time I published an informal, low-tech poll whose purpose was to get a feel for awareness and interest levels of people who are not space enthusiasts themselves but rather friends or family of ones.

Questions

I purposefully asked pretty rudimentary questions:

1. Which Space Shuttle is getting ready for launch?
2. When is the next launch?
3. How many Space Shuttle launches remain after this one?
4. What mission number is it going to be?

Violinist and Basketball, Astronaut and Bicycle

An astronaut and a friend of mine shared a similar experience about twenty years apart...

When you're a budding violinist getting ready for an important recital you practice, then practice and then practice some more. To achieve the level of perfection that is needed to play the violin, knowing the notes by heart is not enough. Your muscles, ligaments, fingers and soul have to become one with the piece you play, so you invest a lot of time towards those crucial few minutes of performance. At some point, especially close to the big day, you may want to take a break from practicing and do something else to take the edge off the tension and jitters, for example play basketball. You think nothing of it. Just for an hour, you rationalize it to yourself; it's better to take a break than to fall prey to the concern you're not ready. Relaxing is just what you need. So you go out and play ball.

Being an astronaut is hard work. When you're an astronaut you train for years for a single mission. Like a violin player, dedication and repetition are necessary so that all possible mistakes happen on Earth - in the simulator, classroom and at the pool (Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory) rather than in space or on the way to and from. After all, when you're in space, there is very little room for error, which would cost time and money if not life. As a mission draws near (or gets delayed multiple times), you may need to clear your mind. Riding a bicycle fits the bill - exercise and nature combined, feeling the wind you won't feel in space, cutting through real air, not a crafted mixture coming out of compressed tanks. So you hop on.

Lunar Eclipse and Chuck E. Cheese's

Photograph by Doug Murray, Reuters (sans Chuck...)

The lunar eclipse on December 21st of last year was magnificent. If you missed it because it was too cloudy, too late, daytime or you're just not into that sort of thing you can find many photos online. I was out and about, next to the hotel we slept in on our last night in Colorado before launching into our new life in the Seattle WA area. I took some inadequate pictures due to lack of tripod lying on a bench, switching my thoughts between how beautiful it was and how to time my escapes into the hotel to avoid missing too much while maintaining the feel of my extremities.

"Rocket Science" and a Successful Falcon 9 Launch

SpaceX added a very positive event to a line of problems and mishaps that occurred recently, from the failed Russian three-satellite launch to more delays in Discovery STS-133 launch, originally set for the end of October, now scheduled for Febuary.

All in all, these recent events show us that even after a space access system has been working for 30 years and more than 60 years after launching the first satellite, getting complex systems or people to space is still, as the saying goes, rocket science.

In contrast, through what looks like a flawless launch, a couple of orbits, reentry, splash-down and recovery, Falcon 9 (overview and comparison to Shuttle and Soyuz here) is on track to fulfilling its contract as a cargo platform to the International Space Station, and later on possibly taxi astronauts as well, ending the Russian monopoly formed by the retirement of the Space Shuttle in 2011.

The Boy Who Cried Wolf

Remember the story about the boy who repeatedly cried wolf when there was no wolf, so when there was actually a wolf no one believed him? Well, the more I listen to people who know a lot more than I do about NASA, prior manned space programs, space technology and yesteryear budgets, the more this story comes to mind, though between all the pros, cons and possible futures I can't decide is who is the boy, who is the wolf and who are the towns' people.

Congress recently passed the authorization bill to fund NASA for fiscal year 2011, which started on October first. The bill was a compromise between the initial road-map president Obama laid out in February and the program of record until recently, Constellation. Analysis of the original plan and the eventual bill are easy to find, for example on Space News.

Discovery - The Oldest Shuttle

A tweet by Mike Massimino (aka @Astro_Mike) caught my eye today:


It points to a cool video that shows the history of Discovery and its last planned mission, STS-133. Mike has been one of the most active astronauts on the internet (more over a million and a quarter followers on twitter, many videos), and has been doing a great job showing a less official angle of astronauts and their missions.

What caught my eye was the description of Discovery as NASA's oldest shuttle. While technically correct, it's only because of the two great disasters of Columbia and Challenger, the former burning on deorbit and the latter disintegrating at launch, both seen by some as the hard way NASA learned about severity of problems previously deemed as not posing a major risk by some.

The end of the space shuttle era is near, and sometime in the future we may look at it as either a stepping stone or a detour on our way to settle space. No matter what - Columbia, Challenger, Discovery and their younger sisters Atlantis and Endeavour are probably the most amazing spacecraft to watch launching (I got to experience STS-132) of all manned spacecraft to date and probably for years, if not decades, to come.

NASAssarry

The NASA Toaster. For more, see here

Space exploration and exploitation is slowly but surely going on a new trajectory, one of NASA leaving some pieces of the puzzle to the private market including design. For example, through the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program NASA awarded a contract to SpaceX fot getting cargo to the International Space Station without designing the rocket or capsule at NASA, thus allowing SpaceX to design and build the hardware, letting it do more than space contractors did in the past.

This shift is not easy, especially when human life is at stake, as the existing model where NASA has very close control over the design and manufacturing of space hardware, especially manned spacecraft, was put in place for crew safety reasons. Instead, NASA will have to trust private companies to design the hardware, which will have to pass a safety standard (for example, NPR 8705.2B, "Human-Rating Requirements for Space Systems").

In the following years, there will be cases of inertia and fall-back on how things have been done in the past 50 years. Even in software companies I worked for, a lot younger than NASA, inertia and resistance to new ideas occasionally manifested in the form of the statement "but that's how we've been doing it for the last 5 years". Yes, old-and-comfortable is as cozy an environment as a 3 year old favorite blanket.

My request to our elected government officials and those who will be designing and building space hardware in the upcoming years - for every decision, every design, every expense - ask yourself and honestly answer the following question from the perspective of benefiting humanity progress into space: Is this really necessary to be done within NASA and the old controlled way or should this be a commodity NASA buys as a shelf product from someone else?

In short - Is this really NASAssary?

10/10/10 - What's in a Date?

Today is October 10th 2010 or in it's more serene form, 10/10/10. Take the delimiters out and you get 101010, or 42 in binary which is of course the famous Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything, as written over 30 years ago by Douglas Adams. In Roman numbers we're looking at XXX, a term originating from over 40 years ago in relation to movies (X-rating). On the internet, #101010 is a very dark shade of gray.

This is, of course, not the first time the 10/10/10 date happened. 10/10/10 can designate 1910, 1810, and any century before that. If you're one of the people wearing this shirt ("There are 10 types of people in the world: Those who understand binary and those who don't") you'd be probably even more excited a thousand years ago on 10/10/1010 (albeit you wouldn't be able to blog or tweet about it...). Interestingly, October 10th 1010 was actually an ordinary Wednesday noted as October 4th in Europe, as the Julian calendar was still used rather than the Gregorian calendar, created in 1582 but adopted by some countries as late as the 20th century.

As the world rejoices and birds tweet, unless you're Jewish, Muslim, Persian or Mayan (OK, you're probably not Mayan) you may not realize this is not the only calendar used over the world and may want to look at the Fourmilab Calendar Converter, just to get a whiff of some other cultures, current and past.

Since Spacepirations is a space oriented blog, I tried to find space related events that happened on October 10. The most notable event I found was that in 1967 the Outer Space Treaty, which calls for responsibility in space activities, entered into force.

Also on October 10 (courtesy of the New Mexico Museum of Space History):

1846: William Lassell discovers Neptune's moon Triton.
1960: The Soviets' first attempted planetary spacecraft, the Mars probe 1M s/n 1 fails to leave Earth orbit.
2007: Russia launches TMA–11, which carries the Sixteenth Expedition to the International Space Station.

Finally, thanks to Virgin Galactic:

2010: SpaceShipTwo, aka VSS Enterprise did it's first gliding flight - (video here). We just got one step closer to commercial manned space flight.

Whether you're celebrating October 10 2010, 2nd of Cheshvan 5771, 2 Thul-Qedah 1431 or any other date, may your dreams come true until 11/11/11!

Sputnik - The Launch of Space

Sputnik (Source: US Air Force)

Sputnik 1 was launched 53 years ago, on October 4th, 1957. In many ways, it can be seen as the launch of the space age. Being the first man-made satellite to orbit Earth, it started the space race which led to Buzz and Neil landing on the moon in 1969 and contributed to the demise of Communism.

Most of the people writing nowadays about space weren't alive yet in 1957, myself included. As such, we cannot fully grasp the feelings that swept through the United States of America knowing a USSR made object was flying invisible and uninterrupted above its skies. However, from the events which proceeded it is obvious, to put it mildly, that it was a very big deal.

Similarly to the first successful Wright brothers flight at Kitty Hawk NC, this was a modest beginning. Sputnik had some radio capabilities, short 22 day battery life and limited scientific capabilities. However, it was the eye opener that ignited decades of advancements and discoveries, the proof of the entire concept, which today is a versatile tool for both looking out to space and looking at Earth, helping us understand our pale blue dot, the solar system and far beyond.

Next Space Shuttle Launch - Informal Poll

Space Shuttle Discovery on her way to the launch Pad, taken by Larry Tanner

Launch Buzz

There is something special about the Space Shuttles that didn't exist when every rocket and capsule were built as disposable spacecraft. Just like we get attached to our cars (OK, maybe it's just me), we got attached to these vehicles that at least in the 1980s and 1990s symbolized a revamped pursuit of space and getting one step closer to space travel as we'd really like to experience it (whenever, wherever - à la Star Trek with some extrapolation).

Every Space Shuttle launch causes a special buzz among space enthusiasts, who in recent years have had online venues for their thoughts and experiences. Blog posts are written, pictures are uploaded (also here) and the social network is flooded with copious amounts of updates. NASA itself joined the party in several ways - allowing the public to vote for astronaut wake-up songs, the opportunity to upload one's face to space and NASA Tweetups like the one I attended last May, where 150 lucky people become journalists of the best kind - supportive and enthusiastic, almost NASA ambassadors to the world, all posting to Twitter using the #NASATweetup tag.

STS-133 and Space Shuttle Discovery are no different. In fact, since after this launch there will be only one more (maybe two) Space Shuttle launches before the program reaches its planned shutdown, the normal jitter and excitement seems to be even greater. The NASA Tweetup event even got its own blog created by Nathan Bergey. This last flight of Discovery will also bring a new dweller to the ISS, one that doesn't consume oxygen or water - Robonaut2, the first first dexterous humanoid robot in space, aimed at providing another pair of hands for repetitive and maintenance tasks that would otherwise require people, without making changes to the original component, for example an air filter.

An Informal Poll

Since you're reading these lines it would be almost moot to ask if you know when Discovery is being launched and you obviously know the name of the Space Shuttle being launched. What I'm wondering about is how much of that is known to your friends and family, that might not share the same enthusiasm for space.

My request to you is this: Ask your family, coworkers and friends:

1. Which Space Shuttle is getting ready for launch?
2. When is the next launch?
3. How many Space Shuttle launches remain after this one?
4. What mission number is it going to be?

Please report back by commenting on this post (no need for names, just people's answers).
Update: Commenting disallowed, as Discovery successfully launched on February 24 2011. Thank you everyone who participated!

After the launch I will tally your reports in an attempt to answer this question:
Have NASA and the space enthusiast community been successful at keeping space exploration on people's minds in such a critical era of economic woes and budgetary battles?

Orbital Tourism Around the Corner?

The Boeing CST-100 Capsule

If you're a bit like me, you want to go to space. If you're like me but with a lot of money (or complete disregard for that rainy day when you'll need what you have) you already booked a flight with Virgin Galactic, meaning you paid $20,000 and have the other $180,000 in a safe place (like under your mattress) waiting for Eve and SpaceShipTwo to start flying for real.

If you've just robbed a bank, made a killing in the stock market or won the lottery and are about to put some Franklins down for a suborbital flight, read this joint Boeing and Space Adventures press release first, because you might want to hold on to your money a little longer and get something bigger.