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Sunday, 31 July 2005
Sunday Blogging
From the Baptist Hymnal, 1975 Edition:
God of earth and outer space,
God of love and God of Grace,
Bless the astronauts who fly
As they soar beyond the sky.
God who flung the stars in space,
God who set the sun ablaze,
Fling the spacecraft thro' the air,
Let man know your presence there.
(Words, Thad Roberts, Jr., Copyright 1970 by The Hymn Society of America.)
One More Day
Per Spaceflight Now:NASA's mission management team today extended the shuttle Discovery's flight by one day, giving the astronauts more time to assist and resupply the international space station's two-man crew, and concluded the shuttle's heat-shield tiles and insulation blankets are fit for a normal re-entry Aug. 8.
Saturday, 30 July 2005
Eight, Nine Or Ten?
Well, the other shoe has dropped.
First, there was Quauor, the large Kuiper Belt Object discovered recently that raised the discussion about what exactly, in our solar system, should be considered a planet. Quauor, though, was small enough that it obviously wasn't going to make the cut-off, so the issue remained academic at that point.
Then, there was Sedna, a KBO significantly larger than Quauor, but still smaller than Pluto. The discussion was raised again, but was taken seriously at this point only by those wanting a change.
Now, though, there is 2003UB313. And the issue can no longer be ignored.
2003UB313, while still a KBO, and much more than twice as distant as Pluto, has the distinction of being larger than Pluto.
The story on the front page of NASA.gov says outright that 2003UB313 is a planet, though a formal decision has yet to be made:
The planet is a typical member of the Kuiper belt, but its sheer size in relation to the nine known planets means that it can only be classified as a planet, Brown said.
It seems to me, though, that's not the only option. In my mind, there are at least three possibilities:
- There are eight planets. End the solar system with Neptune. Everything up through Neptune is a planet; everything beyond is a KBO, including Pluto, Quauor, Sedna and 2003UB313. Sad for Pluto, but probably the most practical solution, particularly since it saves making this decision every time a new large KBO is identified, which could easily be increasingly frequently. (One issue it raises, though, is what to do about Mercury on the off-chance that a KBO is discovered that is larger than the innermost planet.)
- There are nine planets. Period. Decide that Pluto is grandfathered in, but cut the list off there. No real scientific basis for this one; it has more to do with sentimental factors. That, really, are kind of irrelevant -- while almost everyone around today pretty much takes Pluto for granted, in the history of our knowledge of the solar system, the 75 years that we've known about Pluto is really not significant.
- There are ten (or more) planets. Pluto stays in the solar sytem, so 2003UB313, being larger, makes the list, too. And so, presumably, does anything else larger than Pluto discovered later. This route really needs for the International Astronomical Union to finally decide formally what the guidelines for planethood are, rather than just deciding it on a case-by-case basis. The only difference between 2003UB313 and Sedna is size, so where exactly is the line. Obviously, the cut-off can't be higher than Pluto, but is there any rationale for making Pluto the lower limit other than, again, sentimental reasons? The rocky planets and the gas giants are clearly different than other bodies in the solar system, but the only difference between KBOs and Kuiper Belt Planets (KBPs, I suppose?) would be an arbitrary size limit.
I did think this part of the story was interesting, though:
A name for the new planet has been proposed by the discoverers to the International Astronomical Union, and they are awaiting the decision of this body before announcing the name.
If 2003UB313 does become a planet, when the name is announced, Blogpoints will be awarded for the best mnemonic devices for remembering the new solar system.
For the sake of full disclosure, though, I do have to admit it was kind of exciting to read that the tenth planet had been found.
A Future Yet
Per Spaceflight Now:NASA Administrator Michael Griffin mounted a spirited defense of the shuttle program and the beleaguered external tank project today, saying virtually all of NASA's post-Columbia improvements to the huge tank worked as expected during Discovery's launching Tuesday. While at least three relatively large pieces of foam debris fell away from the tank during ascent, Griffin said he's confident engineers will develop a fix and that flights will resume sooner rather than later.
...
"Discovery is the cleanest bird we've seen," Griffin said, referring to the overall number of dents, dings and chips seen in the shuttle's heat-shield tiles. "Six times cleaner than the average across 113 (previous) missions. So the fact that we have three or four things that we still need to clean up from our first test flight in two-and-a-half years - I'm not a spin kind of a guy, you all know that - but in the world of engineering, we did pretty well."
...
Griffin agreed NASA "missed" the threat posed by the PAL ramp foam, "but to extrapolate from that fact and say that we can't fix it, I think is just a bridge too far. I think we're going to fix it, I think we're going to fix it in short order, we're going to get back flying. All we ever said the other day was that we are not going to fly again until we fix it. And I think that's the right thing to do. But we don't expect this to be a long, drawn-out affair, to be honest with you. If that changes, we'll tell you, but that's what we're looking at now."
Friday, 29 July 2005
That Our Flag Was Still There...
A while back, I posted something about "The Empty Flagpole," a flagpole at Marshall that is used solely to fly flags representing the Orbiters only when one of the Shuttles is in space; a flagpole that had been unused for almost two and a half years.
Today, though, a flag is flying there. I finally made it over to see it, and I was glad I did. Somehow, with everything going on -- the concerns about the launch, the uncertainty about the future -- it was reassuring to see that flag flying. It was something of a Francis Scott Key moment, and my mind began to
Oh, say can you see,In the void’s endless night
What so proudly we launched
On that bright Tuesday morning?
Whose bold thrust and brave crew
Did return us to flight,
While new worlds await,
A new era aborning?
And the rockets’ red glare,
The foam falling through air
Gave proof through their flight
Just how bravely they dare!
Oh, say does our Shuttle Discovery yet soar,
As we fly once again, and once more we explore?
Editorial Note
From The New York Times:HOUSTON, July 28 - Clara Olvera has worked in the cafeteria at the Johnson Space Center here for only a year, but on Thursday afternoon she could detect a shift in the mood of the engineers, astronauts and administrators who come in for lunch each day. The grounding of shuttle flights because of another pesky foam problem, she said, was clearly weighing on spirits.
"You can see it in their faces," Ms. Olvera said, wiping tabletops after the lunchtime rush. "It's been a very emotional week, after reaching the goal on Tuesday only to have it all turn around so quickly. We can only hope for the best."
The mood elsewhere around NASA's manicured campus, and in the restaurants, hotels and bars outside the center along Nasa Road 1, also stood in contrast to the euphoria that had accompanied the launching of the shuttle Discovery just two days earlier. It was clear that some NASA employees, and others who depend on the agency for their livelihood, had been hoping for the celebrations to continue after waiting more than two years for a launching in the wake of the Columbia disaster.
"There's disappointment in the back of people's minds," Charla Stuart, a NASA education program specialist, said of the grounding, although, referring to the program's astronauts, she added, "We need to remember these are people's lives we're talking about."
Happy Anniversary!
Happy 20th Anniversary to Arlo and Janis, one of my all-time favorite comic strips!
Thursday, 28 July 2005
Godspeed, Discovery!
This week's new Hatbag is online.
The Sleeper Awakens!
Wow!There's two day's worth of new blogging over at Taking A Nap, after five months of dormancy!
Go, check it out! Joe's back, and he's pissed!
The Future
I've seen only a couple of stories along this line today. I've discounted similar pieces since the loss of Columbia, but I'm beginning to wonder if it may be true this time.Tuesday may have marked the last launch of the Space Shuttle.
Hopefully, that will turn out not to be the case. Hopefully, the cause of debris shedding can be identified quickly, and the problem can be repaired quickly, simply and cheaply. Hopefully, Atlantis will launch on schedule in September.
But, at this point, I really wonder how much time, money and effort it could require to get the fleet flying again before the administrator decides it's not worth it. Mike Griffin has made it very clear that he's not a big fan of the Shuttle, and wants to retire the Orbiters as quickly as is reasonably possible. He also has made it clear that his main priority is moving ahead with execution of the Vision, and is willing to make cuts to bring that about quickly. It's not impossible to imagine a scenarion in which Griffin would decide that the cost and effort needed to get the Orbiters flying again would be better invested in new launch systems.
Agency officials have already said that the Shuttle may not fly again this year. Beyond that, only time will tell.
Virgin Honeymoon
Per Space.com:At the Experimental Aircraft Association’s (EAA) AirVenture gathering being held in Oshkosh, Wisconsin yesterday, Sir Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Galactic, announced that George Whitesides, the Executive Director of the National Space Society and his bride-to-be, Loretta Hidalgo, will be the first honeymoon couple to take a trip on the fledgling space tourism company’s sub-orbital craft when the company goes into operation.
Branson brought the couple on stage Tuesday night during an airshow gala event sponsored by Virgin Galactic, there he gave them a bottle of champagne and a pin to signify their future Virgin Galactic space trek.
“Loretta and I have tickets to be the first honeymoon couple on the Virgin Galactic service. It’s not going to happen for a few years, but it’s something we’ve been thinking about for a long time,” Whitesides told SPACE.com in a phone interview.
“We have put money down. We think the Virgin Galactic team is terrific. There’s a bunch of great groups out there…and I hope they’ll all succeed,” he added.
While Virgin Galactic suborbital operations are still several years away, Whitesides said he’s looking forward to his honeymoon trip into space.
And will they hold hands on liftoff? “You bet,” Whitesides said.
Together At Last!
The Space Shuttle Discovery has docked with the International Space Station, and the nine people now in space have begun joint operations.So far, the checks of Discovery's thermal protection system have shown no problems. According to Administrator Mike Griffin: "We continue to examine the data but at this point, we think Discovery is a clean bird."