Resonant Constellation

Here’s two unrelated, but cool things.

First, from Phil Plait’s website, LRO has gotten a picture of the Apollo 17 landing area on the moon including the flag! Here’s a link to Phil’s post with the actual pictures. This is extra cool, because I have a friend who is a grad student in lunar geology who works with LRO data, and she knows a hell of a lot about the moon. Once, when a bunch of us physics/astro people had gathered around to imbibe some beer and partake of good company, we saw her skype status message was a physics problem about diffusion of gas from a thruster rocket hitting a certain object a certain distance away. We, being the huge nerds we are, immediately began working this problem out and arrived at a sensible answer, which we sent to her. Her reply? “Oh, God, please tell me you didn’t really do that, it was supposed to be a joke!” A few minutes later, our solution was sent to NASA. Keep in mind, by this point none of us was exactly 100% sober. If you hear about some moon satellite disaster, you may know who to blame…

Anyway, the other, unrelated cool thing I wanted to share was this, a periodic table table. That’s pretty neat.

40 years ago today Apollo 11 lifted off at approximately 9:30 AM (local time) from Kennedy Space Center, headed for the moon. Just four days later, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin would become the first humans on the moon. I’ve read a lot about the Apollo program, the most recent book being the authorized biography of Neil Armstrong, First Man (which is a REALLY good book that I sincerely recommend everybody should read), and I generally find rocketry fascinating (see my previous post). Let us, then, take this opportunity to view a series of videos of the launch of Apollo 11 and other assorted Apollo videos:

A really cool, ultra-high-framerate video from one of the launch towers during launch with excellent narration.

Some really cool views of the launch.

The actual TV broadcast.

The docking of CM Colombia to LM Eagle in Earth orbit.

The first part in a three part series (on youtube, anyway) featuring some really great in-flight footage I’ve never seen before

Simply awesome in-flight footage of Buzz opening and entering the LM for the first time. Parts 2 and 3 are really cool as well.

Some really cool footage from Apollo 4.

And, for good measure, an Apollo 10 40th Anniversary video, which includes my favorite Astronaut ever, John Young.

Warning: be cautious; YouTube comments are well known to be absolutely full of stupidity and extreme idiocy. Do not be bothered by moon-landing-hoax people, they have no idea what they’re talking about. If you have ANY doubts about this, visit the Bad Astronomer’s (Phil Plait) old website here. For some more really cool recent posts on Apollo 11 with great pictures, visit his newer blog here.

Extra note: Super awesome photos from The Big Picture found here. I really can’t accurately describe how incredible some of these photos are.

My good friend and next-door neighbor, Pete, often asks me:

Are you going to use your powers for good, or for awesome?

The answer is obvious; as Dark Helmet says in Spaceballs, “Evil will always win, because good is dumb.” Now, I’m not saying that I’m evil–as I often state, the thing keeping most of my friends and I from becoming evil geniuses that you see in comic books is a general lack of motivation (”I want to rule the world…but it’s so much work!”) or apathy (”I could rule the world…but meh.”). You have nothing to worry about-we’re content just doing our science.

So why am I telling you this? Well, it is the perfect preface to why I like explosions so much. Are explosions good? Most of the time, I’d say no, they are not good. But they are awesome, this is an indisputable fact. At the moment, I am watching the spacevidcast for the launch of STS-127 (found here), which is basically a barely controlled explosion used to hurl people and machinery into space. Afterwards, I am going to watch the SpaceX Falcon 1 launch. These are both live feeds of vehicle launches into space. How cool is the world that we live in that I can be at work, writing my programs, processing images, and I can watch a live feed of these launches, one on the opposite side of the country, the other from the Kwajalein Atoll in Malaysia-almost on the other side of the world.

I just found out the results of NASA’s node 3 naming contest and I must say, I am a little disappointed. The suggested name Colbert supposedly won by quite a large margin, but in second place was the name I backed, Serenity. NASA, being NASA, decided to name the node Tranquility.
What? Seriously, guys, why did you even have the vote if you were just going to totally ignore it?

On Monday, NASA brought out a mockup of its new Orion spacecraft to the National Mall for public viewing. This vehicle is pretty damned cool: it’s supposed to bring people back to the moon and perhaps to mars. This, however, is supposed to occur in the 2020s and 2030s, in other words 10-20 years from now. Now, I understand the rationale behind NASA’s long lead times-there’s not much money to go around, so they need to develop and build stuff when the money is around. This leads to truly ridiculous situations (example: the Orbiter’s computers compared to, say, my laptop and the obsolete, though awesome equipment on the Cassini probe).

For once, the problem is not NASA’s, it goes back to the Federal Government (as most problems do these days). In the 60s and early 70s, this country managed to go from never having sent a person into space to landing two on the MOON in just eight years (1961-1969). They had to develop all of the technology, the physics, the methods, the equipment, all of this incredible stuff with the severely limited technology of the time all from scratch. Nobody had done it before. Now the exact same agency, using the same technology (even though we’ve had 40 years of incredible development), the same methods, doing the exact same task is going to take two years longer. This is comically ridiculous, bordering on absurd.

So, I’ve gotta say: if the government wants to set these lofty goals for the space program, they should actually put some funding behind their words. At that point, the problems would all become NASA’s, and based on that institution’s intriguing history, I’d bet we’d have even more fun and dangerous problems. But at least they’d be working on them.

Real life is often more amusing and strange than fiction. Sometimes, though, it gets really weird.

On Sunday during the space shuttle launch, NASA observed a small bat clinging onto the Liquid Fuel Tank. After blaring loud sirens and trying to get the bat to leave (and failing), NASA officials signed off on a waiver that said that flying with the bat posed no risk to the mission. The bat was observed clinging on to the tank even as the shuttle lifted off:

The Batstronaut: Ready for Launch

Unfortunately, the Batstronaut was probably either fried by the heat of launch or froze in the upper stratosphere. Nevertheless, his valiant effort does not go unappreciated: he has done more for bats around the world than anybody since Count Dracula. We salute you, Batstronaut!

Some of you out there might remember a post I wrote a little while back about NASA’s online poll to name their new Node 3 module for the ISS. I suggested the (already provided) name, Serenity, for the obvious reasons (Browncoats unite!). But recently, Stephen Colbert mentioned the poll on his show and asked his fans to write in his name for the module. There is no way Serenity will win now-Colbert’s following is large and particularly good at contests like this one. Now, I must say, I love the show, but in this case I have to vote against Colbert, even if I know I’ll lose. Ah well, at least this’ll be entertaining.

Today I read an article about the new ISS module being sent up by NASA. So far, it is called “Node 3.” Not too inspiring, huh? Especially since it looks really cool (view pictures here: Help NASA name Node 3! ). So NASA decided to hold a public contest for people to vote on the name. Here are the suggested entries:
Earthrise
Legacy
Venture
Serenity
True geeks will spring to one IMMEDIATELY: Serenity. Perhaps the inside of the so-called “Cupola” looks kind of like 10-Forward from the Enterprise, but I must say, having an actual spacecraft “Serenity” outranks the Enterprise reference (there’s already an Enterprise, after all). This is suitably cool enough that I encourage everybody reading this to follow my link and vote for Serenity (which the site says is currently winning 83% to 7%, 6%, and 5%. This adds up to 101%. At least they’re not screwing up meters and feet anymore…)