Category Archives: Space

Space History Today: Cape Kennedy

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Forty-five years ago today — on 29 November 1963 — President Lyndon Johnson issued Executive Order Number 11129 to change the name Cape Canaveral to Cape Kennedy.

According to this site,

On November 28, 1963 President Lyndon B. Johnson announced in a televised address that Cape Canaveral would be renamed Cape Kennedy in memory of President John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated six days earlier. President Johnson said the name change had been sanctioned by the U.S. Board of Geographic Names. Executive Order Number 11129, issued by President Johnson on November 29, 1963 decreed that the NASA Launch Operations Center (LOC), including facilities on Merritt Island and Cape Canaveral, would be renamed the John F. Kennedy Space Center, NASA.

Florida residents didn’t appreciate the historic Cape Canaveral name being taken from them without their approval. Ten years later, the U.S. Board of Geographic Names responded to challenges from the State of Florida by officially recognizing the state’s name change from Cape Kennedy back to Cape Canaveral. The space center remained John F. Kennedy Space Center, NASA.

On a political note, this makes an interesting contrast to the numerous calls to name places after the current President-elect. At least, I think it’s an appropriate counterpoint.

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On the Writing Retreat, and Today's Space History Tidbit

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The writing retreat is working out well so far; in the last 24 hours, I’ve added 4000 words to the novel. MARE NUBIUM (THE SEA OF CLOUDS) is now about 95,000 words long. If I make it to 100K by the end of the weekend, I will have made my word count goal, but it looks as if the complete draft is going to be around 120K.

[break, break]

In today’s space history tidbit, 25 years ago today Space Shuttle COLUMBIA lifted off from Kennedy Space Center on mission STS-9. The mission included astronauts John Young — one of the most experienced astronauts and a veteran of the Gemini and Apollo programs — Brewster Shaw, Owen Garriott, Robert Parker, Byron Lichtenberg, and Ulf Merbold, and was the first Spacelab mission.

And now you know.

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50 Years Ago in Space History: 26 Nov 58

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An obscure tidbit from the space anniversary files: on November 26, 1958, the Project Mercury designation was officially approved. Project Mercury went on to place our first U.S. astronauts in space and in orbit, and paved the way for Gemini and then, of course, Apollo.

You can read more about Project Mercury at this Kennedy Space Center web page.

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Two New Space Warfare Items

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Two items of interest — and concern — with respect to national defense and space technology, up for discussion in the Space Warfare Forum. Thanks to Bill Romanos for bringing them to my attention.

First, under the heading of “Chinese Space Ambitions,” a report of more space technology being stolen from the U.S. by China.

Second, an item about missile warning, and especially the apparent failure of one of our missile warning satellites.

Sometimes I wonder why I keep the Space Warfare Forum active; the old compadres with whom I started it have moved on and don’t seem to have time or inclination to use it. But I keep hoping — and I’m reminded of what my high school English teacher, Jim Parker, wrote in my yearbook with respect to writing: “Our beach is a lonely beach, and few come to see our castles. But, on we build.”

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Space History, 11.21: The Time Dilation Song

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This isn’t the usual “multiple of 5”-year space anniversary I usually post, but it’s too good not to include. On this date in 1975 — according to Wikipedia, the official source for everything that might be true — Queen released the album A NIGHT AT THE OPERA.

What does that have to do with space history, you ask? Because, in the fine tradition of such songs as “Rocketman” and “Major Tom,” this album included a song about space travel: “’39.” Written and sung by Brian May — the astrophysics student who stopped working on his doctorate to pursue music but eventually earned his PhD in in 2007 — the song involves the time dilation effect of traveling at near-relativistic speeds. A science fiction song by someone who knows science.

And that’s today’s space history, kids. Now, back to your regularly-scheduled browsing.

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Space Technology Exports and Installations

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Two space-related items today: an article in New Scientist covers the illegal export of space technology to China, and the Space Shuttle crew plans to install a new toxic gas detector on the ISS.

First, from New Scientist: China denies attempting to get US space data. The story relates how Shu Quan-Sheng, a physicist born in China but now a naturalized US citizen, pled guilty to illegally exporting space technology to China: specifically, data on space launch vehicle technology.

This piqued my interest because I was a space technology security monitor for almost 3 years in the Defense Technology Security Administration. The NS article was heavy on Chinese denials, but light on their previous shenanigans (although it did link to an article with a list of a few previous items). Yet all they had to do was Google “Cox Commission Report” and downlink the file to learn about previous activities in which China obtained launch vehicle technology from U.S. corporations.

(I cross-posted this item in the Space Warfare Forum.)

Second, a link I got from Twitter: Astronauts to Install ENose Hazardous Gas Detector. The “ENose” detector is the latest version of a detector to warn station residents of dangerous levels of toxic gases.

I was interested in this item for two reasons. First, I used a variety of vapor detectors in my assignment as a Bioenvironmental Engineer at the AF Rocket Propulsion Laboratory at Edwards AFB, and I hope — but have some doubts that — the device will perform as advertised. I don’t doubt at all that it will work: it’s a polymer film detector based on electrical conductivity, more sophisticated than the old paper-tape, photosensitive detectors and certainly easier to use than some of the more complex, chemically-intensive instruments we had. I’m more concerned with its useful life, what happens if the detector medium gets saturated, that sort of thing.

But enough geeky reminiscing.

The second reason that story interested me is that two of the main characters in my novel (my work-in-progress) are environmental engineers who are trying to keep the new lunar colony alive — and detecting hazardous vapors is a big part of that job. I’m trying to get just enough realism in the novel to make it believable, without going to the geeky extreme. Hopefully, I’ll do a better job in the novel than I did in this blog post. :rolleyes:

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85 Years Ago in Space History

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I know what you’re thinking: nobody was in space 85 years ago. You’re right.

But 85 years ago today — on November 18, 1923 — Alan Shepard was born in East Derry, New Hampshire. And a few years later, in May 1961, he became the first U.S. astronaut in space, when he flew a suborbital flight on a Mercury Redstone rocket. In January 1971 he walked on the moon as the mission commander of Apollo-14.

His official NASA biography is here. Rear Admiral Shepard died ten years ago this past July.

As I read his bio, I remembered that I’ve actually been to Derry, NH, where Shepard went to school. I traveled up there to play a Pop Warner football game when I was in middle school. A geographic coincidence, I guess.

(If I was more into coincidences of that type, I’d have sited my novel closer to one of the Apollo landing sites, instead of out-of-the-way in Mare Nubium.)

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Today's Space Anniversary: the Last Skylab Launch

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Thirty-five years ago today, the last manned flight of the Skylab program — Skylab-4 — launched from the Kennedy Space Center. The three crewmembers were Gerald Carr, Edward Gibson, and William Pogue, who would spend 84 days in space.

This NASA page has links to more information about the Skylab program; this Wikipedia page has details about Skylab-4.

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Today in Space History: Buran

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Today’s space anniversary marks the first and only flight of the Soviet Union’s space shuttle “Buran” — November 15th, 1988. It lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on a modified Energia booster, and returned to the launch site a few hours later.

When I was at Baikonur in 2002, the Buran facility was pointed out to me as we drove by it. Part of it had collapsed earlier in the year, damaging the remaining orbiter. What was left of it looked to be in sad shape — Baikonur is an unforgiving environment.

More about the Buran program is here and here.

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NASA Announcement: First Extrasolar Planet Imaged by Hubble

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Let me start by saying: It was really cool to be allowed to call in to the NASA press conference to hear the announcement live. I am space today.*

So here’s what NASA had to say:

The Hubble Space Telescope collected the first visible light images of a planet circling another star. The star, Fomalhaut, is one of the twenty brightest stars in the sky; even though it’s about 27 light years away, it’s visible with the naked eye if you know where to look (an image of the constellation is on the page linked below).

The planet, known as Fomalhaut-B, was observed in 2004 and 2006, but not “discovered” until scientists reanalyzed their data this past Memorial Day weekend. The NASA team concluded that the object was a planet based on three factors: first, its relatively low mass of around three Jupiters; second, the presence of a perturbed dust ring in the Fomalhaut equivalent of our Kuiper Belt; and third, comparative images from 2004 and 2006 that show the planet’s motion in its orbit. The team expressed high confidence that Fomalhaut-B was a planet rather than a brown dwarf star because the object did not show up at infrared wavelengths as a brown dwarf should, but was only detected using visible wavelengths.

After the next Hubble servicing mission, the team hopes to make further observations of the Fomalhaut system. With a third observation of the planet in its orbit, they can make more accurate calculations of its orbital elements.

See this page for the story and this page for the briefing materials.

As a space geek and would-be “steely-eyed missile man,” this was pretty awesome for me. 😀

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*To add to all the other days when I was space, which seem oh so long ago now. I miss my space days.

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