Author Archives: Gray Rinehart

Farewell, Neil Armstrong

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Neil Armstrong, first human to walk on the moon, has taken his final small step, his final giant leap into the great unknown.

Other people with deeper insight will pen better tributes than I. All I can contribute is a measure of how much of an inspiration Armstrong and his astronaut colleagues have been to me: in my decision to join the Air Force and to work specifically in space and missiles, and in my desire to explore space in my imagination and my stories.

Thank you, Neil Armstrong, and Godspeed.

___

Previous Armstrong-related space history posts:
Apollo 11’s 40th Anniversary
Happy Birthday, Neil Armstrong

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My Story, The Second Engineer, in Asimov's Science Fiction

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if you want to read my novelette, “The Second Engineer,” it’s in the October-November issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction which goes on sale next week. Ask for it at your local bookseller.

The history of this story demonstrates how s-l-o-w-l-y I write. It began as an entry in a contest to write a short story in a weekend. I didn’t finish the story that weekend; in fact, it took almost 18 months — and wise council at a con — to produce the version that was a “Writers of the Future” semi-finalist, and another few months of subsequent clean-up to get to this version.

For the contest, the story prompts were, “Think of a human body part and a physical object that should never, ever come into contact. Write a story about the day when they do,” and selections from three poems, one of which was Sylvia Plath’s “Tale of a Tub” which includes the lines “when the window, / blind with steam, will not admit the dark.” I can’t remember how my brain went from there to here … but there is a window in the story that won’t admit the dark.

The entire table of contents is laid out in this SFScope post.

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An ACE in the Halo — the Advanced Composition Explorer

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Fifteen years ago today — August 25, 1997 — the Advanced Composition Explorer was launched from Cape Canaveral by a Delta II rocket.


(ACE. NASA image.)

The ACE spacecraft carried “six high resolution spectrometers, each designed to provide the optimum charge, mass, or charge-state resolution in its particular energy range,” in order to collect data on energetic particles from the Sun and other sources.

ACE is in a halo orbit around the L1 Lagrange point, between Earth and the Sun. According to the CalTech ACE mission site, the spacecraft “has a prime view of the solar wind, interplanetary magnetic field and higher energy particles accelerated by the Sun, as well as particles accelerated in the heliosphere and the galactic regions beyond,” and has enough fuel to maintain that orbit until 2024.

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First Successful Launch from SLC-6

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Fifteen years ago today — August 22, 1997 (local time) — the Lewis spacecraft launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base aboard a Lockheed Martin Launch Vehicle.


(An LMLV on the pad at Vandenberg. NASA image.)

Lewis was a small satellite built under NASA’s Small Spacecraft Technology Initiative and part of the “Mission to Planet Earth.” a long-term research program designed to study the Earth’s land, oceans, air, and life as a total system.

This launch (on August 23, by GMT) was the first success for the LMLV, also known as an Athena rocket, and also the first successful launch from SLC-6 — Space Launch Complex Six — at Vandenberg.

Unfortunately, Lewis encountered attitude control problems: “telemetry received early August 26 indicated that the spacecraft was spinning at approximately two revolutions per minute. The spinning resulted in the spacecraft shutting down after its solar panels could not capture enough sunlight to properly recharge onboard batteries.” The satellite burned up in the atmosphere on September 28.

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Honorable Mention No. 8

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In today’s news, the results of the 2nd Quarter of the Writers of the Future contest are out, and I earned my eighth Honorable Mention.


(Image from the Writers of the Future web site.)

You can see all the results here. I recognized several names from the Codex Writers Group, and noted a sizable representation from here in North Carolina.

According to the contest rules, and as verified to me by the contest director, my forthcoming publications in Analog and Asimov’s will render me ineligible to enter the contest any more. But because the issue dates on the magazines are October and November, if I get a story submitted by September I’ll have one more shot. So guess what I’ve been working on the last week or so?

One last thing, while we’re here …

In space history, 40 years ago today — August 21, 1972 — Orbiting Astronomical Observatory 3 (OAO-3) was launched by an Atlas-Centaur from Cape Canaveral. It was the “second successful spacecraft to observe the celestial sphere from above the earth’s atmosphere,” and operated until February 1981.

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Missourians, You Have Another Choice: the Anti-Candidate!

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Actually, that goes for just about anyone, anywhere, but most especially for my friends in the Show-Me State who are as appalled as the rest of the thinking world at the idiocy spouted by Representative Akin.

Remember, the Anti-Candidate is available to be your write-in vote for any election, any time, anywhere.

You DO have a choice this November. As the Grail Knight said to Indiana Jones, “Choose wisely!”

I’m the Anti-Candidate, and I approved this message.

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Voyager 2's Epic Journey Begins

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Thirty-five years ago today — August 20, 1977 — the Voyager 2 space probe launched from Cape Canaveral aboard a Titan-IIIE-Centaur rocket.


(Voyager 2. NASA image.)

Voyager 2 was actually the first of the Voyager spacecraft to be launched. Voyager 1 would be launched a little over two weeks later.

The Voyager mission had at first been named “Mariner Jupiter/Saturn,” and was itself a less ambitious mission than originally planned:

Originally planned as a Grand Tour of the outer planets, including dual launches to Jupiter, Saturn, and Pluto in 1976-77 and dual launches to Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune in 1979, budgetary constraints caused a dramatic rescoping of the project to two spacecraft, each of which would go to only Jupiter and Saturn.

The mission succeeded beyond all expectations, however:

Voyager 2’s launch date had preserved one part of the original Grand Tour design, i.e. the possibility of an extended mission to Uranus and Neptune. Despite the difficulties encountered, scientists and engineers had been able to make Voyager enormously successful. As a result, approval was granted to extend the mission, first to Uranus, then to Neptune and later to continue observations well past Neptune.

The extended mission required controllers to upload new software to take into account the communication lag times and the lower light levels in the outer solar system, but Voyager 2’s systems continued to work superbly. Our space history series has already noted Voyager 2’s successful visits to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.

Now known as the Voyager Interstellar Mission, Voyager 2 is currently over 99.35 astronomical units from the sun … and still going.

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August 14: Sons of Liberty Day

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On August 14, 1765, the recently-formed “Sons of Liberty” made themselves known in a very public way.

Starting as “the Loyal Nine,” the group formed in Boston in the summer of 1765 in response to the Stamp Act. By August their agitation produced a violent response, when on the 14th a mob burned the Stamp Distributor in effigy and ransacked his home. Four years later, the Sons of Liberty gathered at Boston’s “Liberty Tree” to commemorate the event and one of the participants compiled a list of those present.

According to this USHistory.org page, however, “The success of these movements in undermining the Stamp Act cannot be attributed to violence alone. Their most effective work was performed in newsprint [as] accounts of the most dramatic escapades spread throughout the colonies.”

The most famous of the Sons of Liberty’s escapades was the Boston Tea Party on December 16, 1773. That particular protest contrasts with recent protests we’ve seen ….


(Click for larger version.)

Well might we ask ourselves, who are today’s true-born Sons of Liberty? And for what liberty do they fight?

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Measuring Some of the Hazards of Spaceflight

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Forty years ago today — August 13, 1972 — Explorer 46 launched from Wallops Island, Virginia, atop a Scout rocket.


(Refurbished backup Meteoroid Technology Satellite. National Air & Space Musuem image.)

Also known as the Meteoroid Technology Satellite, the spacecraft was built to measure meteoroid velocity, distribution, and penetration in target panels that extended from the body of the vehicle. According to this National Air & Space Musuem archival page, the satellite recorded twenty meteoroid and over two thousand micrometeoroid impacts through December 1972.

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Pioneering High-Energy Astronomy

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Thirty-five years ago today — August 12– High-Energy Astronomy Observatory 1 (HEAO 1) was launched by an Atlas Centaur from Cape Canaveral.


(X-ray source catalog from HEAO-1’s all-sky survey. NASA image.)

HEAO 1 was the first satellite in a series of three to study X-ray and gamma-ray sources. HEAO 1, in particular,

was specifically designed to map and survey the celestial sphere for X-ray and gamma-ray sources in the energy range of 150 eV to 10 MeV, to establish the size and precise location of X-ray sources to determine the contribution of discrete sources to the X-ray background, and to measure time variations of X-ray sources.

The HEAO 1 observatory was capable of scanning the entire celestial sphere in 6 months, but failure of some of the detector components meant the complete survey took longer than planned. In addition, the instruments had to be turned off when passing through the inner Van Allen radiation belt to protect itself from damage. The mission lasted until January 9, 1979, during which HEAO 1 compiled a comprehensive catalog of X-ray sources, classified several hundred X-ray source with their visible-light companions, and discovered the first X-ray eclipse in a low-mass binary star.

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