Author Archives: Gray Rinehart

Delivering a Secret Payload

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Twenty years ago today — November 15, 1990 — Space Shuttle Atlantis launched from the Kennedy Space Center on a classified Department of Defense mission.


(STS-38 crewmembers in the crew compartment trainer. NASA image.)

STS-38 astronauts Richard O. Covey, Frank L. Culbertson, Jr.,* Charles “Sam” Gemar, Robert C. Springer and Carl J. Meade deployed their classified payload — which was probably classified higher than SECRET — and then returned to Earth on November 20th.

This Wikipedia article includes speculation about what that payload might have been. Don’t ask me: I don’t know, and if I did I still wouldn’t say.

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*I met CAPT (Ret.) Culbertson last year, at the NASA Industry/Education Summit. In the “small world” department, our high schools used to be in the same conference, back when my high school still existed.

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Voyager Visits Saturn, Atlantis Launches to Mir

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Thirty years ago today — November 12, 1980 — Voyager-1 made its closest approach to Saturn.


(Image of Saturn and its moons Tethys and Dione, taken on November 3, 1980, as Voyager-1 approached the planet. The shadow of another moon can also be seen on the planet itself. NASA image.)

Voyager-1 flew by the ringed planet at a distance of about 78,000 miles. It sent back wonderful close-up photographs of Saturn and many of its moons. Voyager-1 continues to operate even now, along with its sister spacecraft Voyager-2, exploring beyond the boundary of the solar system. (This Voyager Interstellar Mission page has a neat counter ticking off how far away both Voyagers travel every second.)

On this same date, 15 years ago, the Space Shuttle Atlantis blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center on mission STS-74. U.S. astronauts Kenneth D. Cameron, James D. Halsell, Jerry L. Ross, and William S. McArthur, Jr., along with Canadian astronaut Chris A. Hadfield, delivered the Russian Docking Module to the Mir space station on only the second Shuttle-Mir flight.

Personally, I look forward to the day when people get to visit the outer planets, too. I wish I could.

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The First Moon Rover

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Forty years ago today — November 10, 1970 — the Luna-17 mission launched on a Proton-K rocket out of the Baikonur Cosmodrome.


(Sketch of Luna-17. Image from the National Space Science Data Center.)

Luna 17 landed in Mare Imbrium (the “Sea of Rains”), where it deployed the first Moon Rover, Lunokhod-1.

A team on Earth directed Lunokhod-1 by remote control as it took photos and soil samples. The rover was only intended to operate for 3 months — i.e., 3 lunar days — but it ended up working for 11 months, until operations ended on the anniversary of Sputnik-1.

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Venus Express, and Frogs in Space

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Five years ago today — November 9, 2005 — the European Space Agency’s Venus Express mission launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome.


(Artist’s conception of lightning on Venus. European Space Agency image by J. Whatmore, from the ESA Images Multimedia Gallery.)

Venus Express launched atop a Soyuz-Fregat rocket; it arrived at its destination in April 2006. Its mission to study the Venusian atmosphere is currently scheduled to continue through 2012.

In other space history, 40 years ago today the U.S. launched the Orbiting Frog Otolith (OFO-A) spacecraft on a Scout rocket out of Wallops Island, Virginia. True to its name, the spacecraft carried two bullfrogs into orbit to study the effects of weightlessness on the otolith, i.e., the part of the inner ear that senses gravity and linear acceleration.

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Milstar Flight Two

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Fifteen years ago today — November 6, 1995 — Milstar-2 launched from Cape Canaveral on a Titan-IV rocket.


(Artist’s conception of a Milstar satellite. USAF image.)

I was newly assigned to the 4th Space Operations Squadron when the Milstar-2 satellite was launched and went through its on-orbit checkout. This was not a Milstar “Block II” satellite, with the medium data rate payload, but the second of the Block I satellites.

Serving in the 4 SOPS at the time of the launch, since the launch vehicle was a Titan, made a nice combination of assignments: my previous assignment had been with the Titan system program office.

Bonus space history: On this date 45 years ago, the GEOS-1 (Geodetic Earth Orbiting Satellite) satellite was launched on a Delta launch vehicle from Cape Canaveral. It was “the first successful active spacecraft of the National Geodetic Satellite Program.”

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Radar Mapping the Earth

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Fifteen years ago today — November 4, 1995 — Canada’s RADARSAT-1 launched from Vandenberg AFB atop a Delta-II rocket.


(Artist’s conception of RADARSAT in orbit. National Snow and Ice Data Center image.)

RADARSAT employed a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) to map the earth, with particular attention to “sea ice and terrestrial ice sheets.” The radar satellite program was directed by the Canadian Space Agency (you can visit their page devoted to RADARSAT-1), and was launched by NASA under a joint agreement which allowed NASA access to the spacecraft’s data.

Take a look at this fantastic radar mosaic of Antarctica, as well as this radar image of the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, both from the National Snow and Ice Data Center.

And finally, on the same Delta-II NASA also launched SURFSAT, an experiment supporting its Deep Space Network.

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Expedition One, on the International Space Station

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Ten years ago today — November 2, 2000 — the first International Space Station crew arrived and took up occupancy aboard the orbital outpost.


(ISS Expedition One crew publicity photo: L-R, Krikalev, Shepherd, Gidzenko. NASA image.)

The Expedition One crew — William M. Shepherd, Station Commander; Yuri Gidzenko, Soyuz Commander; and Sergei K. Krikalev, Flight Engineer — had launched on October 31st from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, aboard Soyuz TM-31. They spent 136 days together on the ISS.

The ISS has accepted crew after crew since that time. You can see a “count-up” clock of ISS occupancy and get more information on this ISS page.

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A Pre-Election-Day Reminder

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If you can’t find anyone you want to vote for, you can always write in the Anti-Candidate.

… we’re not on the ballot for … any elected office (so far as we know). You won’t see our name on those irritating little signs in your neighborhood. You won’t see any obnoxious “I approved this message” ads on television. In fact, if you’re committed to one party or one issue and you find a candidate who will represent you adequately, we encourage you to vote for that person.

Then again, if you find you’re not satisfied with the candidates already on the ballot — and you can’t pick one to vote against, as Robert A. Heinlein suggested — just vote against all the candidates and write in “Gray Rinehart.” It doesn’t matter what office: put us down for any or all of them. (Be sure to spell the name right: we wouldn’t want the election officials to get confused.) On the off chance that we win, we probably won’t show up anyway, since we agree with Thoreau that the government governs best “which governs least.”

You can read more on the Anti-Campaign page.

I’m the Anti-Candidate, and who else in their right mind would have approved this message?

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Spacelab GLOMR

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Twenty-five years ago today — October 30, 1985 — the Space Shuttle Challenger launched from Kennedy Space Center with an international crew of eight.


(Crew of STS-61A on the mid-deck of the orbiter. NASA image.)

Mission STS-61A included U.S. astronauts Henry W. Hartsfield, Steve R. Nagel, Bonnie J. Dunbar, James F. Buchli, and Guion S. Bluford, along with West German astronauts Ernst Messerschmid and Reinhard Furrer, and Wubbo J. Ockels of the Netherlands.

The crew spent a week in space, performing 75 different experiments in Spacelab D-1. The scientific experiments were directed from the German Space Operations Center at Oberpfaffenhofen, making this the first German-dedicated Spacelab mission.

The crew also launched the Global Low Orbit Message Relay (GLOMR) Satellite, a small experiment for the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency. The GLOMR proof-of-concept relay operated for a little over a year before it re-entered the atmosphere.

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Freedom of Speech Is Not Free

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Subtitle: “Elizabeth Moon, Juan Williams, and Liberal Hypocrisy”

It interests me, in the way all coincidences interest me, that on the same day National Public Radio declared its disinterest in free speech by firing Juan Williams for expressing a contrary opinion, the Society for the Furtherance and Study of Fantasy and Science Fiction (SF3) disinvited guest of honor Elizabeth Moon from the 2011 WISCON (its convention in Madison, Wisconsin) for having expressed her opinion on her own LiveJournal account.

Both examples demonstrate the cost of free speech; not the cost of defending it, which Ms. Moon paid as a U.S. Marine, but that free speech can sometimes cost the speaker quite a lot.

It will not surprise anyone who knows me that I stand with Ms. Moon and Mr. Williams.

I have never met Mr. Williams, and have only met Ms. Moon once: I spoke with her briefly after the “Politics in Science Fiction” panel at Dragon*Con that was the impetus for her LiveJournal post. I found her to be delightfully thoughtful, even if I do not agree with everything she said during the panel. I think everyone should read what she wrote about citizenship and consider it carefully.

Let me be clear that NPR has the right to hire and fire in order to maintain its “standards,” even if those standards have more to do with their political agenda than journalistic integrity; however, they should be forthright about their agenda. SF3, which has a crystal clear agenda as the “leading feminist science fiction convention,” has the right to invite whomever it wishes to be its guest of honor; however, to cancel a standing invitation because they find an author’s recent statement distasteful is bad form and hardly conducive to examining the issues in a reasoned, dispassionate debate.

I find it extremely interesting that the decision by SF3 (which, so far as I can tell, did not come with any detailed explanation) came a month after the WISCON directors decided specifically not to rescind Ms. Moon’s invitation:

Even though we strongly disavow … elements of Ms. Moon’s post, we have not rescinded her invitation to be a Guest of Honor, nor do we plan to do so. The WisCon planning committee selected Ms. Moon earlier this year based on her past work and our feeling that she would make a positive contribution to WisCon. After extensive conversation in recent days, and having spoken directly with Ms. Moon on the subject, we continue to believe that her presence will contribute to the Con.

I’m curious as to what changed in the last month.

The deeper problem here is that these kinds of actions — metaphorical excoriations of public figures, and the inevitable backlashes — raise everyone’s hackles, mine included, and make rational discourse even more difficult than it usually is. Our political reflexes kick in, whichever side of the aisle we sit on. We are less prone to listen, more prone to shout.

Indeed, I wonder how loud the shouting would be — how much louder it would be from the left — if any organization, anywhere, fired or disinvited someone who, say, called right-wingers racist because they disagree with the President’s policies, or who maligned the military because it seeks to impose good order and discipline under the law, or who ridiculed all Christians because a misguided few seem to have stricken “God is love” from their Bibles.* It is an interesting thought experiment, but only that, because those opinions, it seems, are protected … and even celebrated.

And the hypocritical message repeats, loud and clear: free speech is free when it agrees with X; free speech is free when it doesn’t offend Y; free speech is free when it is mine, rather than yours.

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*Saint John’s first letter, chapter 4, verse 8 (paraphrased): Anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love.

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