When a Space Station Fell From the Sky

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Thirty years ago today — July 11, 1979 — the nascent U.S. space station Skylab re-entered the atmosphere from its low orbit. It broke up and burned, but parts of it made it to the surface. The debris field began in the Indian Ocean and extended into Western Australia.


(Skylab in orbit, as seen by the Skylab-2 crew upon their departure. NASA photo.)

Three different crews had lived aboard Skylab while it operated, as detailed on NASA web pages here and here. I doubt that Skylab had much potential to be expanded into anything bigger, but it still seems as if falling from the sky was an ignominious end.

I wish I had a piece of Skylab, to go along with the piece of Titan-IV on my desk. Then I’d have some space hardware that fell from orbit, as well as some hardware fished up from the bottom of the ocean. That would be cool.

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Related-but-still-shameless plug: Skylab is mentioned in my short story, “The Rocket Seamstress,” which is available at Anthology Builder.

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Does the Moon Matter?

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As someone who a) loves to look up at the bright, shining moon, and b) has written two novels about life at a lunar colony,* I naturally answer “yes.”

New Scientist apparently agrees, in its commemorative series of articles entitled “Why the Moon Still Matters.” This month, if you didn’t already know, is the 40th anniversary of the Apollo-11 lunar landing. As you might imagine, that’s a big deal to the likes of me.

In related news, here’s a Spaceflight Now article about NASA’s preparations for launching the Ares X-1, which will become the country’s “new moon rocket.”

So, to repeat: yes, I think the moon matters.

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*The first one, like so many first novels, was not worthy of being published. I thought it was, and so did a very small publisher, but that’s a story for another day. The second one, WALKING ON THE SEA OF CLOUDS, is making the submission rounds now. I think it’s a much better book, so here’s hoping….

(Image Credit: Full moon image by longhorndave, licensed under Creative Commons, from Flickr)

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Jupiter, Up Close and Personal

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Thirty years ago today — July 9, 1979 — Voyager-2 made its closest approach to Jupiter. Voyager-1 had already visited the planet on March 5, and was on its way to Saturn. After Voyager-2’s flyby of the gas giant, it also headed toward the ringed planet.


(Voyager spacecraft and trajectories. Click to enlarge. Images from NASA.)

In August 2007, 30 years after its launch on a Titan-Centaur rocket, Voyager-2 entered the heliosheath, that “region at the edge of our solar system where the solar wind runs up against the thin gas between the stars.” Because it entered the region far away from where Voyager-1 did, it proved that the region is not spherical but is “pushed in closer to the sun by the local interstellar magnetic field.”

The Voyager spacecraft represent a marvelous engineering achievement. Built to last five years, they are still probing the mysteries of the local interstellar neighborhood.

You can read more about the Voyager missions on this NASA page.

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The (Solar) Farmer in the Dell

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Here in the south, where the summer sun blazes and bakes man and beast and flowering field, growers often cover their youngest and most delicate plants with shade cloth.

A couple of weeks ago, driving to the Outer Banks, I saw a field full of shaded frame structures, under which appeared to be growing row upon row of young flowers. The shaded frames stretched off into the distance, and it occurred to me that if the cloth protecting those plants was photovoltaic, it could allow enough light through to promote photosynthesis (commercial shade cloth comes different grades, by percent of sun it passes) while generating some moderate amount of electricity. It might produce an appreciable amount by virtue of providing so much surface area.

I found a couple of web pages and recent articles that documented progress in developing photovoltaic cloth. Whether it can be made cost-effective, efficient enough to be worthwhile, and durable enough to withstand years of wind and sun and rain, remains to be seen. But if it could be made cheaply enough, farmers in hot spots around the world could benefit from it. I don’t know if it would generate enough electricity to sell, or just enough to run some of the farmers’ own devices, but in either case it seems like a beneficial arrangement.

If I had money to invest, I might invest in that kind of research.

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Image: “Corolla Sunrise,” by jvader33, licensed under Creative Commons, from Flickr

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First Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Images: Near the SEA OF CLOUDS

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How cool is this? From NASA’s LRO web site:

NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has transmitted its first images since reaching the moon on June 23. The spacecraft’s two cameras, collectively known as the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera, or LROC, were activated June 30. The cameras are working well and have returned images of a region in the lunar highlands south of Mare Nubium (Sea of Clouds).


(L: An LRO image of the highlands south of Mare Nubium [the Sea of Clouds]. R: A Clementine image of the moon, showing the location of Mare Nubium. NASA images. Click to enlarge.)

Since I’m currently trying to interest publishers and agents in WALKING ON THE SEA OF CLOUDS — a novel of survival and sacrifice at the first commercial lunar colony, located on the southwestern edge of Mare Nubium — the fact that the LRO’s first images are of that area is exceedingly cool to me. That made my day!

So … if you know of anyone interested in publishing such a novel … or even if you’re interested in reading such a novel … let me know. That would make my day, too.

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P.S. Here’s the NASA LRO page with the images on it, and here’s the LRO main page.

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Back to Grinding Stones …

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… or something like that.

After my closest approximation to an actual vacation in many years (i.e., a trip away from home and Internet, during which I worked very little [on one or two days I didn’t do any work at all]), I’ve found it very hard to get back into the groove.

I’ve got to start turning the grindstone faster. So much to do …

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LCROSS, and the Hazards of Writing Near-Future Science Fiction

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Today the LCROSS (Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite) is supposed to launch on an Atlas-V rocket, along with the LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter). LCROSS is specifically designed to check for water in shadowed craters at the lunar south pole.

(Artist’s conception of LCROSS approach to the moon, from http://lcross.arc.nasa.gov/. Click to enlarge.)

The mission profile involves crashing the Centaur upper stage into an as-yet-undetermined crater, with the LCROSS vehicle and its sensors following close behind. Not only will LCROSS itself examine the ejecta for signs of water, but the debris from the impact is expected to rise high enough above the moon’s surface to be visible to earth-based instruments as well. Analysis should show whether hydrogen detected by previous missions (e.g., Clementine) is in the form of water.

Why does this demonstrate the hazards of writing near-future SF? Because I know of a novel — written by me, for which I’m trying to find a publisher and an agent — in which a major part of the plot is a difficult journey to the lunar south pole to retrieve ice to keep the fledgling colony alive.

The LCROSS mission could either lend credence to my treatment of lunar conditions, or it could make the novel much more fiction than science. So here’s what I would like:

  • First, I’d like the mission to detect appreciable amounts of water ice, no matter what crater they choose.
  • Second, I’d like NASA to select a different crater than I did, so no matter what LCROSS finds my story could still be plausible. I picked Faustini Crater for my ice expedition, so anywhere else, okay?

Such is the hazard of writing realistic, near-future SF — your assumptions may be subject to verification before your story ever sees print! (Here I repeat my hope that my story will indeed see print. Time will tell. But if you know of a publisher looking for such a story, point them my way!)

If you want more info, here’s the NASA page about the mission.

[BREAK, BREAK]

And, how about a little space history: Five years ago today — June 18, 2004 — marked the first time a U.S. astronaut was in space when his child was born on Earth. Edward Michael “Mike” Fincke was aboard the International Space Station when his wife gave birth to their second child.

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First X-15 Glide Flight, a Half Century Ago

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Fifty years ago today — June 8, 1959 — Scott Crossfield flew the X-15 on its first glide flight above NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Facility at Edwards Air Force Base, California.


(NASA Photo E-4942, from the X-15 Photo Collection.)

From Crossfield’s bio:

Crossfield left the [National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics] in 1955 to work for North American Aviation on the X-15 rocket-powered research airplane project. There, he served as both pilot and design consultant for the revolutionary new aircraft that was carried aloft and launched from beneath the wing of a B-52 for high-speed, high-altitude research missions.

As a result of his extensive rocket plane experience, he was responsible for many of the operational and safety features incorporated into the X-15 and was intimately involved in the design of the vehicle. Crossfield piloted its first free flight in 1959 and subsequently qualified the first two X-15s for flight before North American turned them over to NASA and the U.S. Air Force. Altogether, he completed 16 captive carry (mated to the B-52 launch aircraft), one glide and 13 powered flights in the X-15, reaching a maximum speed of Mach 2.97 (1,960 miles per hour) and a maximum altitude of 88,116 feet.

I feel an affinity for the X-15 and similar programs because of my work at Edwards. Even though I worked across the lakebed at the Rocket Lab, I got to interact with some of the Dryden folks, and have a photo of NASA’s B-52 mothership (carrying a Pegasus rocket) on the wall in my office.

Read more about the X-15 program at this NASA history site.

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The STARSHINE Demonstrator — Today's Space History Note

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Ten years ago today — June 5, 1999 — the STARSHINE passive reflector was released from Space Shuttle Discovery during mission STS-96 by Canadian astronaut Julie Payette. STARSHINE — a.k.a. Student Tracked Atmospheric Research Satellite Heuristic International Networking Experiment* — was sponsored by the Naval Research Laboratory and consisted of a hollow, 48-cm (19-inch) diameter sphere, covered with 878 mirrors.


(Starshine-1 at the Naval Research Laboratory. NRL photo by Michael A. Savell, from the Starshine project web site.)

Students from 660 schools in 18 countries, including some nations we don’t associate with spacefaring such as Zimbabwe and Pakistan, had polished the mirrors. An estimated 25,000 high school students around the world tracked the reflector during the demonstration and reported their observations via the Internet.

Pretty nifty, I think.

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*According to this NASA page.

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Space History: a Polar Explorer

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(Explorer-52, or “Hawkeye-1”. Public domain image from Wikimedia.)

Thirty-five years ago today — June 3, 1974 — Explorer-52 launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, aboard a Scout rocket. Built by the University of Iowa, the satellite was also known as Hawkeye-1.

According to NASA’s National Space Science Data Center Master Catalog,

The primary mission objective was to conduct particles and fields investigations of the polar magnetosphere of the earth out to 21 earth radii. Secondary objectives were to make magnetic field and plasma distribution measurements in the solar wind, and to study Type-3 radio emissions caused by solar electron streams in the interplanetary medium.

And now you know.

Since the satellite was launched into a polar orbit, I have to believe the Thule Tracking Station — callsign POGO, which I commanded for one year of my Air Force career — downlinked at least some of the data from it. That was many years later than this launch, of course, so it’s not much of a connection … but I’ll take what I can get.

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