This Day in Space History: Apollo-X Launch

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Forty years ago today — May 18, 1969 — astronauts Thomas P. Stafford, John W. Young, Jr., and Eugene A. Cernan lifted off on the Apollo 10 mission. Their Saturn V launch vehicle (number SA-505) launched at 12:49 a.m. EDT from the Kennedy Space Center, on “the mission before THE mission.”

(Apollo-X launch. Click to enlarge.)

Travelling in Command Module “Charlie Brown” and Lunar Module “Snoopy,” the astronauts tested all aspects of the lunar mission except the actual lunar landing, and accomplished several “firsts” including:

  • First transmitted color photographs of the full Earth from a crew in space
  • First demonstration rendezvous in lunar orbit
  • First burning of LM descent stage engine in lunar landing configuration
  • First LM steerable antenna at lunar distances
  • First LM within 15,240 meters [8 nautical miles] of the lunar surface
  • First crew-assisted navigational, visual, and photographic evaluations of the moon
  • First and only Apollo launch from Launch Complex 39B



(Views of Earth from Apollo-X. Click to enlarge.)

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Images from the Johnson Space Center Digital Image Collection.



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First Geosynchronous Weather Satellite

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Thirty-five years ago today — May 17, 1974 — a Delta rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral carrying SMS-1, the Synchronous Meteorological Satellite-1. It was a weather satellite prototype, the first in geosynchronous orbit.

Thought you ought to know.

If you want to know more, here’s the NASA catalog description of SMS-1, and here’s a page about the history of satellite meteorology.

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Lack of Security at the Department of Homeland Security

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So the Secretary of Homeland Security announced that DHS would remove the “right-wing extremist” report from their web site.* The horse-and-barn-door metaphor seems appropriate, because it’s a meaningless gesture: the report’s been cached and will continue to be available on other sites (for example, the Anti-Secrecy Society … a.k.a. the Federation of American Scientists).

The real question is, why was it on-line in the first place?

I have a copy of the report, which I downloaded almost a month ago; I don’t remember whether I got if off the DHS site, but I don’t think so. Notwithstanding the other controversy surrounding its contents I was more disturbed by the fact that several of the paragraphs are not marked FOUO, but instead are marked LES. Most people can recognize FOUO as “For Official Use Only,” but LES may not be as familiar. LES means “Law Enforcement Sensitive.”

How sensitive? The paragraph in the report that describes the LES marking says,

This product contains Law Enforcement Sensitive (LES) information. No portion of the LES information should be released to the media, the general public, or over non-secure Internet servers. Release of this information could adversely affect or jeopardize investigative activities.

Let’s see that again: “No portion of the LES information should be released to the media, the general public, or over non-secure Internet servers.”

I got the report over non-secure Internet servers. Who put it there? A reprimand would seem to be in order.

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*According to this report.

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All Quiet on the Agent Front

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The third week of the agent hunt has come and gone, with no breakthroughs. Here’s the tally:

  • 26 queries submitted
  • 8 “thanks, but this isn’t right for us” rejections … some of them quite nice
  • 3 “interesting, tell us more” responses (no change)
  • 2 manuscripts submitted (no change)
  • 1 “partial” submitted — 50 pages & synopsis (no change)

In other news … well, there isn’t any other news. I’ve still got a long list of potential agents to investigate (to see if they’re looking for new clients, if they represent science fiction, etc.), with a few at the top for whom I hope to prepare queries this weekend.

And so it goes!

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Bouncing Signals Off the Moon, a Half Century Ago

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Today in space history — 50 years ago, in fact — an intercontinental radio transmission was made using the moon as a relay station. The signal went from Jodrell Bank, England to the Air Force Cambridge Research Center in Bedford, MA.

(Click to enlarge.)

It was a neat idea, and perfectly reasonable in the age before long-lived, reliable communications satellites had been built. This book chapter details the Jodrell Bank work, and this page discusses an earlier U.S. Navy program to use the moon as a communications relay.

(Image from Flickr, by longhorndave, Creative Commons licensed.)

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A Lifting Body and a 'Misty' Launch

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Two space history anniversaries today:

Forty years ago today — May 9, 1969 — John A. Manke flew the HL-10 lifting body in its first supersonic flight at the Dryden Flight Research Facility at Edwards Air Force Base.

(HL-10 on the Edwards AFB lakebed, with B-52 flyover. NASA photo ECN-2203. Click to enlarge.)

And fifteen years ago — May 9, 1994 — a Scout rocket launched from Vandenberg AFB carrying the second Miniature Sensor Technology Integration spacecraft: MSTI-2, pronounced “Misty-two.” I was stationed at Vandy at the time, though I confess I don’t remember that particular launch.

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Shhh, be vewwy quiet … I'm agent hunting

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My hunt for a literary agent to represent WALKING ON THE SEA OF CLOUDS — and such other work as I hope to produce in the next ever-how-many years — continues. Slowly. I do have a day job, after all. And a night job.

So, after two weeks pursuing elusive agents, tracking them by their Internet presences and deciphering the glyphs they’ve carved in electronic “guidelines,” I’ve racked up the following record:

  • 20 queries submitted
  • 4 “thanks, but this isn’t right for us” rejections
  • 3 “interesting, tell us more” responses
  • 2 manuscripts submitted
  • 1 “partial” submitted — 50 pages & synopsis

If you want to play “hunt the agent” with me, see if you can spot one of the wild agents who might be interested in a near-future, realistic science fiction novel about survival and sacrifice in the early days of a lunar colony. If you see some, don’t scare them away! Try to chase them in my direction. And let me know, so I can get the right query ready! 😉

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Image by Gaetan Lee, from Flickr, under Creative Commons license.

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Should I Opt Out of the Google Books Settlement?

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Yesterday I verified that my first book, Quality Education, has been “archived” by Google. Its entry is at this Google Book Search page.

(Click to enlarge book cover image.)

Today was the original deadline for deciding whether to “opt out” of the Google Books class-action settlement; thankfully, that’s been extended. The rights to the book reverted back to me after Quality Press let it go out of print, so they’re mine to protect if I want.

A few years ago, McGraw-Hill expressed an interest in printing the book again, but that didn’t work out; I had also considered doing a “print on demand” version, but obviously never did; and at one time I had planned to update the text in a new edition, but I don’t foresee that happening any time soon. My quandary now is whether to take any action with regard to the settlement or just to make the book available myself through a Creative Commons license.

So, should I upload it on my own web site for anyone to access and use?

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Space History: Magellan, Mission to Venus

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Twenty years ago today — May 4, 1989 — the Space Shuttle Atlantis launched from Kennedy Space Center on mission STS-30. Astronauts David M. Walker, Ronald J. Grabe, Norman E. Thagard, Mary L. Cleave, and Mark C. Lee deployed the Magellan spacecraft on its voyage to map the planet Venus.

(STS-30 mission patch. Click to enlarge.)

The Magellan mission used synthetic aperture radar to map 98% of the planet’s surface before contact with the spacecraft was lost in October 1994. More information about the mission is available on this NASA page.

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Goddard, ENTERPRISE, and the Agent Scorecard

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Fifty years ago today — May 1, 1959 — The “Beltsville Center” was renamed the Goddard Space Flight Center in honor of the first person to launch a liquid-propellant rocket, Dr. Robert Goddard.

Thirty years ago today marked the first time the Space Shuttle pathfinder configuration — using the Shuttle Enterprise — was assembled in the Vehicle Assembly Building and transported to Launch Complex 39A.

(Shuttle Enterprise at the Udvar-Hazy Center of the National Air & Space Museum. Click to enlarge.)
(Image from Wikipedia by Ad Meskens, licensed under Creative Commons.)

Finally, after the first week here’s the tally on my hunt for a literary agent:

  • Agents queried: 9
  • Rejections received: 4

No expressions of interest or offers of representation yet. I’m still researching other agents to query. Wish me luck!

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